Two Good Dogs

by Susan Wilson

“What are you doing?”

  “What I shoulda done long time ago. Beatin’ it.” Boy and dog walk away, following the trail that will lead to the parking lot of the state park.

  “You can’t! Mom will kill me! You’re going to be in such trouble!”

  Mingo doesn’t turn around, doesn’t react to her at all, and she realizes that trouble isn’t anything he is afraid of. He is unfettered by the fear of punishment. She’s a bit envious. Cody knows she’s going to be the one to have to face her mother, who is going to go ballistic. To say nothing of Mr. March. Despite the good intentions, she’s going to be the one in big trouble.

  * * *

  The sun is down, and in the fading light, the boy and the dog are barely visible. It is only the quick glitter of the reflective trim on his crisp white sneakers that alerts me to the boy and dog on the side of the road, walking with their backs to traffic. I pull up beside Mingo, scroll down the window. I really have no hope that he’ll get in the car, and fully expect that he’ll book it and disappear into the night; but he does get in beside me, holding the chunky dog in his lap.

  “Seat belt.”

  Mingo manages to buckle the strap despite the bulk of the dog in his lap.

  “Thank you, Mingo.”

  “A-ite.”

  “I’m taking you back, you know. I took a chance on you, at Cody’s insistence, against my better judgment. And if you hadn’t gotten into this car, I would be on the phone to the police, and I don’t think that you would be happy with that.”

  “I want my dog.”

  “I understand that, Mingo. I really do. But you can’t run away and blow off all the good that you’ve done—learning a trade, getting sober—just for the dog. If he were a human, would he want that?”

  “No.” He says it exactly as Cody says it when she’s been on the losing end of an argument. The no of adolescent capitulation.

  My purse is between us, lodged in the console. I reach in and pull out five twenty-dollar bills. “Besides, you didn’t get paid.” I hold out the money.

  “Dawg, you get in back.” The dog seems to understand and hops into the backseat. Mingo takes the cash. Folding it, he slips it into his pocket. “Thank you.”

  “A hundred bucks is a lot of money to walk away from.”

  “Yeah.” He nods. “Word.”

  “Word up.” I catch the suggestion of a smile on the boy’s face. “Cody hates it when I use slang; she thinks I’m trying to be hip and I’m not acting my age.”

  “Lotsa grown folks are hip. You never too old to be hip.” He glances away, then back. “Not sayin’ that you’re old. You cool.”

  I take that as high praise indeed.

  Mingo pulls out his phone and a set of earbuds.

  I feel a little excluded, a little bit shut out. I know I should try to engage him, not let him get away with shielding himself with thuggish bumped-up base. Then I recognize the maternal reaction; it feels exactly as it does with Cody half of the time. An audio wall of music shutting out any chance of a meaningful conversation. I plunge in. “Who’s your favorite artist?”

  Mingo shrugs. “Old-school, mostly. Fifty Cent, Dr. Dre. Not much into Kanye. Like Jay Z.”

  I nod, as if I’m familiar with these rappers’ work and the relative merits of each. I give myself props for at least knowing who they are. “What about female artists?”

  Mingo thinks for a moment. “I’m okay with Nicki Minaj. Missy Elliott, she’s good.” He doesn’t move to put the earbud back. “Actually, I’m good with Alicia Keys. She does something for me.”

  “Me, too.” I point to the glove compartment. “You might find one of her CDs in there.”

  The kid pulls out the four or five jewel boxes I’ve tossed in the glove compartment along with my secret stash of Radiohead, Sting, and Johnny Cash. He finds the Alicia Keys disc and plugs it into the slot. Mingo Ayala sits beside me, his long fingers tapping out a rhythm against his knees, bobbing his head in time with the music. I don’t know anything about him, or why Cody has taken up his cause. Maybe it’s a genetic predisposition to being attracted to misfits. This boy is enough like Randy that I worry that a version of the old adage—like mother, like daughter—is being played out here in front of me. He’s handsome, a bit charming, a drug addict, and probably a thief. And, if Adam is right, he’s a Michael Vick in training.

  I won’t be like my mother. I won’t object to Cody’s friendship with this kid. I won’t be like my mother, whose dislike for Randy effectively threw me into his arms. Cody is such a contrarian that the more I like Mingo, the quicker she’s likely to abandon her advocacy of him, a sad thought that makes me wonder why every interaction with Cody has to be strategized. Nothing is ever simple.

  CHAPTER 25

  Cody is too freaked-out to even think about contacting Mingo. Her mother blew out of here like she had a zombie on her tail, not even asking where Cody thought Mingo might have gone. A friend would warn him that her mother was on his trail, but maybe she wasn’t his friend. Maybe he wasn’t hers, despite the fact he’d defended her in front of Ryan and the mean girls. Maybe that was just a thug wanting to give a white boy a whuppin’.

  She’s in the office, like a good employee, standing ready to help the itinerant traveler who might wander into the LakeView. They get them, mostly single men. Her mom calls them the “lost souls,” traveling alone, not on vacation, but on jobs that keep them moving from town to town, from motel to motel. Kind of like Mr. March.

  Cody doesn’t like being in here alone at night, doesn’t like opening the door to strangers, to men. She wouldn’t open the office door if a square-jawed man climbed out of a black car. No, she wouldn’t. The only reason Cody has stationed herself in the office tonight is so she can see when Mr. March returns. She really doesn’t want him to know that Mingo took the dog, but she doesn’t see any way out of it. The dog is gone. Ergo, as her science teacher likes to say, ergo Mingo must have him. If she thought her mother had gone ballistic, she can’t wait to see what Mr. March does.

  From the front window, Cody can watch the approach of headlights coming up the hill, and with each one, her heart beats a little harder. All keep going, bending around the curve, red taillights dipping out of sight. Her heart recovers. And there’s another. Is that him? Or Mom? It’s been an hour. Long enough, if she’s found Mingo, to get to North Adams and back, but not long enough if she’s had to drive around trying to find him, which, oddly, reminds Cody of the snowy night she and Mr. March went around looking for the dog. It’s a truck; Cody can hear the downshifting to get it up the hill. She flops into a chair. Scrapes her hair into a fresh ponytail. Looks at her nails, two of them shattered by her day’s work as assistant fence builder. There’s a car coming. She goes to the window and, sure enough, this set of headlights angles up the drive and comes to rest right in front of her, in easy proximity to the outside stairs that flank the office. She steps back into the room, hoping that Mr. March hasn’t spotted her. She should bolt the door, make it look like no one’s here. That they’re asleep in their cabin, inviolable. Bad news can wait.

  Feet going up the stairs, two sets in arrhythmic clumping, the sound of a stumble, a giggle. Cody peeks out the window, realizes that it’s not Mr. March’s car out there. It’s a blue Toyota. It’s the newlywed couple in room 14. Old newlyweds—in their forties, maybe. Both overweight and yet can’t keep their hands off each other.

  The sound of her own phone going off startles Cody away from the window. She peeks at the number and then smiles. It’s not her mother; it’s Mosley.

  “Hey, missed seeing you today. Thought you were coming down.”

  “I had stuff to do. I’ll be there next week.” The truth is, Cody had forgotten that Mosley asked her to come help set up a mini-exhibit. The whole Mingo thing had pushed it right out of her mind. She can hear him take a long drag, and waits into the silence for him to speak.

  “So, tell me, you been helping yourself to my stash?” His voice is pitched upward wi
th the effort of holding in the toke.

  Cody feels the scarlet of guilt prickle her face. “No. Why would you think that?”

  “Cuz I do.” Mosley laughs, inhales again. “This shit is for medicinal purposes only. You know that.”

  “I didn’t take it.”

  “Right, and I’m the king of England.”

  She doesn’t have an answer, or a ready fabrication. She had no idea that he’d ever miss the roaches. Plural. She thought that providing Black Molly with a little dope would placate her, a suggestion of agreement without committing to Molly’s moneymaking idea. She was stupid and now Cody just knows that Mosley’s going to tell her to never come back. “I’m sorry?” It comes out like a little kid’s forced apology.

  “I should tell your mother.”

  “Are you going to?”

  There’s another moment of concentrated silence. “Tell you what. I won’t if you’ll let me keep drawing you. Model for me again. We don’t have to tell your mother about that, either.”

  This seems a reasonable request; after all, he’s been sketching her despite his coerced promise to Skye not to. Sketching her while she putters around, no harm in continuing to do that. Seems a small forfeit for a potentially disastrous bargain. “Okay. Fine. I won’t tell.”

  “If I won’t, huh? Ha. Okay. When can we get together?”

  There is something in that phrase “get together” that seems off. “When I come for my lesson on Friday?”

  “No, no. You’ve been a bad girl. I want to sketch you sooner than that.”

  “I guess I could come after school on Monday.”

  “I’ll pick you up after school.”

  “I don’t think you can do that. There’re rules about who can pick us up. You could pick me up at the last bus stop. That’s at the intersection of Route Two and Canterbury Road.”

  “I’ll pick you up there. Monday. What time?”

  “Two-thirty.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Cody?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll give you a little weed of your own. No more taking mine.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “I’d have been tempted, too. Not to worry.” Mosley’s gone, and Cody is left to wonder if she’s gotten away with something or if she’s being played.

  The wash of headlights into the big picture window announces another car, and this time it is Mr. March. Cody watches as he climbs out of the vehicle. His dog, Chance, hops out of the backseat, immediately starts sniffing around, probably looking for his missing companion. As is Mr. March. Cody keeps herself out of sight, hoping that he’ll just go to his room, not worry about Dawg. But, of course he doesn’t. He tries the doorknob of the office, which by now she’s locked. She knows that he’s got two choices: go around back and see if anyone is home in the cabin, or dial Skye’s number. Either way, he’s going to find out that the dog is gone, and it might be better coming from her own mouth than from her mother’s; that way, she can spin the story her own way.

  Cody dashes to the door, flips the lock, and opens up to call out to Mr. March. “Mom’s taking Mingo back to his residence.” At least she hopes that’s what’s happened.

  “Where’s the dog?”

  Cody raises her chin, smiles, lies. “With them. But it’s okay.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.” Mr. March steps back onto the porch. “Look, I know I sound like a hard-ass, not letting the kid keep his dog, but you know that I’m right. I have to look out for the dog’s best interest. Mingo probably loves his dog. I understand that, but even if he isn’t fighting the dog, he’s certainly in no position to care for him. Don’t you agree?”

  “Sort of.” She hears that tone adults take with kids, that reasonable tone.

  “Cody. If your mother agrees to foster the dog so Mingo can see him occasionally, I have no problem with that. Although I hate losing the opportunity, I’ll let the potential adopters know that circumstances have changed, at least for a little while.”

  Cody gives him an authentic smile, which quickly turns into a frown. There’s no way Skye is going to agree to keep the dog for a boy she has no attachment to, and God knows, there’s no compelling reason for her mother to even care about Mingo. “I don’t think she will. She’s not into stuff like that. She says she’s got enough on her plate without taking on a dog.”

  “He’s a pretty easy dog.” Mr. March smiles at her, shrugs. “But I certainly get it. When Chance was foisted on me, I balked, I tried like anything to get rid of him. You see how that turned out.”

  Cody nods. She pulls the elastic out of her hair, letting it fall in a sheaf across her face, hiding her smile. Maybe this will work out. Then she remembers that her mother is out looking for Mingo, not driving him home like she told Mr. March, and that the dog is with him, and not on their way back to the halfway house. The minute Adam figures that out, no one wins.

  * * *

  It’s altogether too close to the nine o’clock curfew when I pull into the parking lot of Mingo’s residence. A post light illuminates the path to the door. We all get out of the car, the humans and the dog, who wags his tail, sniffs the beaten-down grass alongside the cement walkway, pees like a gelding, then regroups with the people. Mingo has his hood up, obscuring his face from me, hiding the expression of grief I know must be there. He must say good-bye to his dog now. I turn my back, giving him some semblance of privacy. I have no experience of this, of attachment to an animal, but the boy’s obvious affection for the dog is enough to spark a little sympathy from my cold, cold heart.

  “I got no choice, Dawg. I got to stay. You got to go. You be good. A-ite?”

  I turn slightly and see the boy on his knees, his face pressed into the neck of the dog. I can’t stand it. “Mingo, okay, okay, I’ll keep him. You can come and do some more work for me next Saturday. I’ll pick you up at nine.”

  Mingo gets to his feet. Walks over to stand in front of me. He’s taller by half a head, and he no longer smells of cheap cologne, but honest sweat. He pushes his hood off his head, extends a hand. “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”

  “I might, but that’s for me to worry about.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  “You cool. I’ll work hard for you.”

  * * *

  My turn is here, up the less spectacular mountain, the road less traveled. I’m anxious to get home, to open my cabin door, and if Cody is still awake, maybe we can talk a little bit about what changes will need to be made in order to keep this dog, however temporarily. This is not a permanent state of affairs, and Cody and I need to come to some agreement as to how long the dog will stay with us and next steps. Nonetheless, for at least a little while, I’ve made almost everyone happy. I allow myself to bask for a moment in the anticipation of winning Cody’s approval, such a rare occurrence lately. In the morning, I’ll knock on Adam’s door and let him know of my decision. I’m a little less sure about his reaction, given his concerns.

  The dog, riding shotgun, pushes himself up into a sitting position, gives me a sideways glance. He’s so heavy that I’ve had to buckle the seat belt behind him to keep the alarm from sounding. He snuffs, and his tongue slips over his red nose. He makes a sighing noise, as if he’s been thinking about his situation and is reconciling himself to it.

  I pat the dog on the head. “You get to stay with us for a little while. You’ll like it. It’s okay, fella, you’ll see Mingo again soon.”

  Dawg, or Lucky—take your pick—lifts one paw to set it on my arm, for all the world like he’s thanking me. Adam credits Chance with an almost humanlike comprehension, and who knows, maybe he’s right. This sure feels like Dawg understands what I’m trying to tell him and, as Mingo might say, he’s down with it.

  To my complete surprise, Cody and Adam are sitting together on the porch. Chance is stretched out between the Adirondack chairs. He’s the first to rise, lumbering over to greet Dawg as h
e hops down from the front seat. I step up onto the porch, sling my purse down.

  “All right, my friends. The dog stays here.”

  “Mom! You’re the best!”

  “Are you sure?” This from Adam.

  “No. But, as you say, Cody, it’s the right thing to do.”

  * * *

  The people are giving off a nice, friendly, happy vibe, even the unhappy girl, Cody, although Adam’s happy is muted. Dawg is not quite as cheerful as he was, and I know that this is because his boy, Mingo, is absent again. But I can smell the boy’s touch on him, so I decide that maybe this is a temporary absence and that Dawg won’t be lonely for him much longer. In the meantime, I offer myself and my affection to tide him over.

  Soon enough we bid good night to one another and Adam, accompanied by me and our friend, unlocks the door to the place I have come to think of as my little home. Adam flops on the bed and I join him, pressing my nose against the sweet skin of his neck, making him laugh. He gives me that halfhearted order to stop, but I don’t until he sits up. The other dog watches us from the safety of the space between the chair and fridge. Sudden movement still frightens him. Loud voices frighten him. No one saw it but me when the humans were having their discussion, laden with one or two tongue-language words I knew—dog and no and please—but filled more with the language of upset. With each succeeding increase in decibel, he shrank closer and closer to his boy. I noticed, too, that he didn’t greet Adam with the enthusiasm he deserves when Dawg came back tonight. He’s respectful, but clearly he’s not taking my word for it that Adam is his friend. We need to fix that. Tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 26

  I couldn’t believe it when Adam drove off, leaving my friend behind. I got it that Dawg was attached to the girl, and that his boy, although absent, was still in the picture. I just couldn’t understand why we didn’t take Dawg with us anyway. That’s what we’d been doing since that night when we found him and I became his best friend. Best canine friend. I have to qualify that, because part of our job is to be a friend to our human companions, and they to us. It’s a wonderful dynamic for most of us. Oh, yes, of course I know of dogs whose lives are proscribed, kept at arm’s length from their humans. Attached to chains that allow only a few feet of movement, forgotten, unloved. My heart cries out for them when we see them. Sometimes Adam, with me close by to prevent his anger from blooming, will knock on a door and have what he calls a conversation with the home owner. Sometimes we even go meet the disheartened dog, who will often display the reason he (as they are most often males) was remanded to life on the end of chain. Fierce but meaningless barking, or jumping up and planting heavy paws against Adam’s chest. He’ll calm them. I’ll calm them. And sometimes, they go with us.