The Wish Master

by Betty R. Wright

  Grandpa grunted. The grunt could have meant yes or no.

  “Some farmers use computers,” Corby’s mother said. “I read an article about it. The computer tells them what to plant and where.”

  Grandpa grunted again, a definite no this time. “Never needed a machine to tell me what to do,” he grumbled.

  Remembering, Corby threw a stone with extra force. It skipped five times before it sank.

  “Not bad!”

  The voice was right behind him. He turned and saw Buck searching for a flat stone to throw. Buck’s shorts and shirt were streaked with dirt. Gray dust coated his bare arms and legs, and there was a smudge on his nose.

  “I’ve been cleaning out our old barn,” he said. “It’s a real mess.”

  “Looks like it,” Corby said. He wondered why Buck had come back. Was he going to ask Corby to help him clean the barn?

  “Guess what just happened!” Buck grinned unexpectedly, and Corby felt a tingle of excitement. “My dad just said I’m doing a great job, and if I work this hard the rest of the week, I can order the mountain bike I want from the catalog!”

  “Wow!” Corby stared at him. “That’s great!”

  It was better than great. Another wish had come true, and this time it was a big one. The Wish Master really could do whatever you asked.

  “So now you can get your dog,” Buck said generously. “It’s okay with me.” Then he scowled. “Or do you already have it?”

  “No way.” But Corby was suddenly dizzy with hope. Maybe his dad would call tonight to say he should fly home right away. Maybe he’d say, “I’ve got a surprise here waiting for you,” and the surprise would turn out to be a puppy. It was possible.

  “I don’t even care if you did make two wishes,” Buck went on. “Just so I get my bike!” He scooped up a handful of pebbles and threw them as far as he could. Corby did the same thing, and soon they were having a contest to see who could throw the farthest and yell the loudest.

  When they got tired of throwing, they sat close to the river’s edge and wiggled their bare toes in the water.

  “You can use my old bike as soon as I get the new one,” Buck offered. “There’s a raspberry patch about two miles from here. I’ll show you.”

  “Sounds neat,” Corby said carefully. He would be back in Santa Barbara before the new bike arrived.

  “You have to watch out for bears, though,” Buck said. “They like raspberries.”

  A cloud drifted across the sun, making the water feel chilly. Corby put on his sneakers. “I’d better go,” he said. “My grandpa will be mad if I’m late for supper.”

  They saw the dog as soon as they stood up. It was about twenty feet away, partly hidden by meadow grass. One dark eye and one pale ice-blue eye watched them from behind a fringe of straggly gray hair.

  Buck snickered. “Now, there’s the ugliest animal I’ve ever seen!” he exclaimed. “Did you ever see a dog as ugly as that in California?”

  “Let’s just go,” Corby said. It was weird how the dog reminded him of someone he knew. There was a girl in his class, a really nice girl, who had bright blue eyes and straggly bangs. Her name was Agatha, and she wasn’t ugly, just different. She had the best collection of baseball cards in the whole school.

  “Listen,” Buck said, chuckling. “You wished for a dog, didn’t you? Well, here she is.”

  Corby’s heart sank. “That’s not funny!” he snapped. “I want a puppy, not—not that one!”

  “I was kidding,” Buck said, but Corby was getting more worried by the second. Maybe the Wish Master couldn’t be bothered with details, like sending the right dog. After all, he’d delivered the wrong video game, hadn’t he?

  The dog started toward them. She walked with an odd kind of shamble, as if her feet were too big and her legs were too long for the skinny rest of her. The strange eyes studied one boy, then the other, before she lay down at Corby’s feet.

  “She sure acts as if she belongs to you,” Buck commented. “Whether you want her or not.”

  Corby turned and walked fast along the riverbank, toward the path that led back to the road. He had to get home. A puppy might be waiting for him there right now. He tried to think of a way that could happen. Maybe the owners of the Labrador puppies had heard Grandma was sick and had sent a puppy to cheer her up. If so, she’d definitely want Corby to have it.

  Buck hurried after him. “Don’t look now,” he said, “but the dog’s right behind you.”

  “So what?” Corby turned onto the path and started to run. Unexpectedly, the dog shot past him, loping with surprising grace. When she reached the road, she turned and lay down, waiting.

  “Listen,” Corby told her, “I’m not the person you’re looking for. What do you want, anyway?”

  The dog stood up, stretched, and plopped hairy front paws on Corby’s shoulders. She began to talk—no words but a funny mixture of yips and groans and howls. Corby had never heard anything like it.

  “You could let her follow you home,” Buck suggested slyly. “I bet your grandpa would know how to scare her off.”

  Corby winced, imagining what Grandpa would say if he saw this dog. He’d look at that scrawny body and the strange eyes and the scraggly coat, and that was all he’d see. He wouldn’t know how friendly she was or how she’d picked Corby for her pal. Or that when she stood on her hind legs and put her paws on your shoulders, she looked as if she were smiling under all that stringy hair. He wouldn’t know she could talk.

  “My grandpa’s not going to see her,” Corby said, making up his mind. He patted the dog’s chest, feeling the bony ribs under his fingers. “I’ll figure out what to do with her. I’m the one who asked for a dog.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Taking Care of a Pal

  “Now what?” Buck asked when they reached the road. “If we go any farther, your folks might see her.”

  “I’m thinking,” Corby said.

  “You have to have a place for Old Ugly to stay in,” Buck said, as if Corby didn’t know that. “And you have to feed her and give her some water. I s’pose you could tie her out in the woods—”

  “Who lives there?” Corby pointed at one of the summer cottages across the road.

  Buck looked alarmed. “That’s the Kellers’ place—they come up from Milwaukee for a couple of weeks in August. But you can’t put her in their house, pea brain! If that’s what you want to do, count me out. My dad would kill me!”

  Corby glanced at the dog. She was lying down again, with her chin on her paws, waiting.

  “I bet the Kellers would let us use their garage if they saw how skinny and tired she is,” he said softly.

  “No way!” Buck exclaimed. “Listen, you’re going to get into a whole lot of trouble, and you don’t even know if this is really your dog.”

  “Well, she thinks she’s mine,” Corby said. “And if I take her home my grandpa might—shoot her!” He hadn’t thought of that before, but now it sounded possible.

  “No way,” Buck repeated, only this time he didn’t sound so certain. When Corby and the dog started up the drive to the cottage, he followed them.

  The Kellers’ garage wasn’t locked. A wooden bar resting in rusted brackets held the doors shut. When Corby lifted the bar, the doors swung open.

  “See, it’s mostly empty,” Corby said. “Why would they care if we used it for a while?”

  Inside, the air was musty. Late afternoon sun streamed through two small, dirty windows at the back. Empty cartons were heaped in one corner, and there was a stack of burlap bags in the other.

  “We can make her a bed in one of those boxes,” Corby said. He picked up a burlap bag but dropped it in a hurry when two mice streaked out and ran through the open doors.

  “Old Ugly doesn’t need a bed,” Buck teased. “Look at her.”

  The dog lay close to Corby’s feet. Except for the strange, watchful eyes, she might have been a pile of rags on the dirt floor.

  “If you leave her here without f
ood and water, she’s going to bark,” Buck warned. “Howl, maybe.”

  Corby frowned. Finding a shelter had been easy, but feeding the dog would be harder. He wondered if he could smuggle leftover stew or some bread crusts without his mother or grandpa noticing.

  “Will you stay here with her while I go home and get some stuff?” he asked.

  Buck shook his head. “If you’re really going to keep her, then you stay here, and I’ll get some dog food. My dad buys it in forty-pound sacks. Only it’ll take awhile because I’ll have to eat supper before I come back.”

  The dog’s mismatched eyes were closed now, and she was snoring softly. She was practically telling Corby she trusted him.

  “Okay, then,” he whispered. “I say we both go home and eat, and we both come back.”

  “She’ll bark for sure if she wakes up,” Buck warned again, but he helped Corby close the doors and lift the wooden bar into place.

  “It’ll be okay,” Corby said confidently. “I don’t think she’ll bark. She’ll know I’m coming back.”

  The barking began while they were eating dessert.

  “This is good pie,” Grandpa said. “I didn’t know California people could make pie this good.” He took a final bite and put down his fork. “Listen to that racket! One of the Millers’ dogs must have treed a raccoon.”

  “The poor thing doesn’t sound excited,” Corby’s mother said thoughtfully. “It sounds kind of mournful.”

  “Mournful because it doesn’t know how to climb that tree,” Grandpa said. He glanced at Corby. “Reminds me of when your dad and I used to go hunting when he was a boy. Do you hunt with him now?”

  “There’s no place to hunt where we live,” Corby said. He was about to say they did a lot of other things together, but Grandpa grunted impatiently and stood up.

  “Your dad used to be a good shot,” he said. “He was good at everything he tried.” He patted Corby’s mother on the shoulder. “I’m going upstairs to see if Meg ate her pie.”

  Corby waited till he was out of sight. “It’s not my fault we don’t go hunting,” he said angrily. “He hates me.”

  “Oh, Corby!” His mother shook her head at him. “Stop saying that! Don’t even think it. If he sounds cranky, it’s because he’s unhappy. He’d like everything to be the way it used to be, when he and Grandma were young and healthy.” She paused, and they listened to the heavy footsteps in the upstairs hall. “You know, Grandpa walks the way that poor dog sounds. Sad, sad, sad.”

  Corby didn’t feel sorry for Grandpa. After all, Grandma was getting better, wasn’t she? And in the meantime he had someone to bake apple pie for him and he had a grandson—the runt of the litter—to pick on. The dog was different. She was alone and maybe just a little bit worried that Corby wasn’t going to come back.

  “I have to go out for a while,” he said, trying to sound offhand. “Buck’s coming over.”

  His mother stared at him. “Now? It’ll be dark soon. What are you going to do?”

  “Just hang out,” Corby said. He edged toward the door. “Is it okay if I take this cottage-cheese container? It’s empty.”

  “I know it’s empty.” She laughed. “What in the world is going on, Corby? You’re up to something.”

  Corby laughed, too, but at the same time he pushed the screen door and ran down the porch steps, two at a time, before she could ask any more questions. That was the trouble with grown-ups, he thought. They either didn’t understand anything, like Grandpa, or they understood too much, like his mother.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Trapped Again!

  “Don’t call her Old Ugly,” Corby said. “Her name is Aggie.”

  “You’re kidding.” Buck made a face as he propped his rickety bicycle against a tree. “That’s a crazy name for a dog.”

  “Well, she likes it,” Corby retorted. “Before I opened the garage door, I said, ‘Aggie, quit barking,’ and she did.”

  “She was just glad somebody was coming to let her out. You could have called her Mudhead. She wouldn’t care.”

  “She likes Aggie,” Corby insisted. “You should have seen her jump all over me and try to lick my face.”

  “Big deal.” Buck grinned and pointed at a sack of dog food and a couple of battered tin bowls in the bicycle basket. “You can use one bowl for food and the other for water,” he said. “There’s probably a pump behind the cottage.”

  “We already found it,” Corby said proudly. “I filled that cottage-cheese container three times before she stopped drinking.” He poured some dog food into one of the bowls and watched Aggie dip her nose into it. “I’m going to teach her tricks,” he said. “I think she’s pretty smart.”

  “Because she eats when she’s hungry?” Buck teased. “How much brains does that take?”

  Corby didn’t answer. He knew Aggie was smart. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew.

  “Hey!” Buck said suddenly. “Did you ride horses at that camp you went to?”

  Corby nodded. He was trying to decide what tricks he would teach Aggie.

  “Well, that’s okay then,” Buck said. “My dad said you could use one of our horses in the parade, as long as you knew what you were doing. I’m going to be a lawman, and you can be my Indian pal.”

  “What parade?” Alarmed, Corby jerked his thoughts back to the present. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Fourth of July parade,” Buck said impatiently. “Berry Hill’s parade. Doesn’t your grandpa tell you anything? It’s really neat. Anybody can be in it who wants to be. It starts and ends at the Campbells’ farm—they’re on the other side of our place. We go through town, and afterward Mrs. Campbell serves hot dogs and ice cream to everybody in the parade.”

  Corby bent to scratch Aggie’s bony head. “I don’t want to,” he said in a muffled voice.

  “Don’t want to what?”

  “Be in it,” Corby said, not looking up. “I’m going to be pretty busy taking care of my dog.”

  “You’re kidding!” The words practically exploded out of Buck’s mouth. “You don’t have to be with her every minute, for Pete’s sake!”

  Corby’s face felt hot. “I probably won’t even be here on the Fourth of July,” he said. “My dad wants me to come home. He’s sort of lonesome.”

  “You’re making that up,” Buck said angrily. “You don’t want to ride because you think the parade sounds corny, just because it won’t have big bands and floats and all the city stuff. So who cares what you think!” He grabbed his bike and swung it around toward the road.

  “Wait,” Corby said unhappily, not sure what to say next. If only he could be sure his second wish were going to come true! “I just meant—I won’t have time to learn tricks or anything like that.”

  “Tricks?” Buck repeated. “Who said anything about tricks? All you have to do is sit on old Josey and ride.”

  Corby gave up. “Okay,” he said. He was trapped again.

  Buck eyed him. “Do you swear? Just remember, you wouldn’t even have Old Ug—Aggie if I hadn’t taken you to the Wish Master.”

  They both looked at the dog, who peered back at them as if she were eager to see what would happen next.

  “I swear,” Corby said. “Thanks for bringing the dog food.”

  When Buck rode away, Corby hoisted the bag of dog food to a rickety shelf and then sat down on the dirt floor of the garage. He’d been on a horse exactly twice at Camp Macaho. Both times he could hardly wait to get off. When he closed his eyes, he had the same sick feeling he’d had then.

  “Dogs are lucky,” he told Aggie. “You don’t know how lucky.”

  The pale blue eye blinked behind its curtain of gray hair. Then Aggie folded her skinny legs and laid her head on Corby’s knee. She seemed to be saying that she did know, and, for a moment at least, the sick feeling faded.

  “Good girl,” Corby said. “We like each other the way we are, right?”

  Aggie sighed and fell asleep.

  Aggie never bar
ked again when she was left alone in the garage. Each morning, as Corby neared it, he could hear toenails scratching the door and funny little whimpers of excitement. When he lifted the bar from its braces, the doors burst open so fast he was almost knocked off his feet. Aggie hurtled through the opening and shot around the yard, leaping at tree branches and jumping over stumps. Sometimes she showed off, walking on her hind legs and swatting butterflies. Sometimes she ran in figure eights, snapping at her tail. When she was tired, she skidded to a stop at Corby’s feet and rolled over, her skinny legs paddling the air. The pale blue eye looked up as if to say, “Well, how did you like that?”

  Corby liked it fine.

  On the third morning he decided that when Aggie ran she was beautiful. The long bony legs stretched into a graceful lope, and the gray tail curled elegantly over her spine. That afternoon Corby found an old scrubbing brush in Grandpa’s shed and brought it with him when he returned to the garage. He brushed Aggie’s coat until it shone, noticing that after just three days of Buck’s dog food the bony ribs were almost hidden.

  Every day they went exploring along little back roads, and Corby tried to teach Aggie to fetch. She always watched with interest as the stick sailed over her head, but she clearly didn’t see the point of chasing it. When she did, she was usually gone for several minutes. Once in a while she brought back the stick Corby had thrown, but usually she had found something she liked better. A tiny bluebird’s egg. A smelly dead fish. An empty peanut-butter jar. Once she dropped a small gray woodchuck at Corby’s feet.

  “Bad dog!” Corby scolded, but he couldn’t help laughing at the woodchuck’s surprised expression. When the little animal waddled back into the brush, Aggie looked as if she were laughing, too.

  “It’s too bad Buck has to work so much,” Corby’s mother said when he came home for meals. “What in the world do you find to do all day?”

  “I’m fine,” Corby said truthfully. The hours he spent with Aggie flew by. It was the evenings that dragged, with Grandpa glaring at him every time he turned on the television set or took out a video game. There was nothing to think about except Buck’s parade.