Harvey Comes Home

by Colleen Nelson

  “Thanks, Mrs. O’Brien.”

  Mr. Santos came by next. I breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t have his daily crossword puzzle with him. But that didn’t stop him from giving me a play-by-play of that day’s tricky clues and how he solved them. I gave him the answer to one question the week before, and now he thinks I’m some kind of puzzle-genius. “Thirty-six Down. By which meatballs are made from stale lamb,” he said, waiting for me to come up with something.

  I held out my hands. “I got nothing, Mr. Santos.”

  “Anagram!” he said proudly. “Meatballs and stale lamb have the same letters, just mixed up. Took me almost an hour to figure it out.”

  “I’ll have to remember that one,” I said with a laugh.

  Mr. Pickering’s door opened. Instead of getting back to work on the baseboards, I stood up, prepared to be friendly even if he looked like he wanted to bite my head off. I wondered if Mr. Pickering was lonely because he was mean, or mean because he was lonely.

  Squeezing the damp rag in my hand, I waited till he was right in front of me. “Going for dinner?” I asked. My voice came out a little squeaky.

  He moved right past me like I never spoke. Lots of old people can’t hear, so I tried again. “Mr. Pickering, are you going for dinner?” I said it so loud, the nurse at reception looked up.

  “Where else would I be going?” His voice was gruff like always.

  “It’s sweet-and-sour ribs tonight,” I told him. I’d seen the sign by the dining room.

  Mr. Pickering looked directly at me. His eyes were watery and hidden in wrinkles. “I like those.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I answered.

  He gave a “Harrumph” and shuffled past me.

  Lonely because he’s mean, I decided, and called him an old grump under my breath.

  Chapter 5

  Harvey

  Harvey walks through the night, snuffling through piles of wet leaves as he searches for a dry place to rest. There is a confusing tangle of scents, but nothing familiar. With his ears pricked, he catches a distant bark and follows it, arriving at the wrong side of a chain-link fence.

  The forest where Harvey has been wandering backs onto a wide-open field that is known as Norman Dog Park. This early in the morning, there is only one large dog racing after a ball. Harvey can smell an array of odors and wishes he had more in his bladder so that he too could leave his mark.

  Harvey sniffs along the fence, hoping for an opening. Small for a Westie, Harvey finds a space large enough for him to crawl through on his belly. The dog park does indeed reward him with all sorts of new and exciting smells. Once again, he forgets about how far he is from home. He races from tree to tree, sniffing to his heart’s content. As the morning brightens, more people arrive with their dogs. It’s a large park, with plenty of space for the bigger dogs. Harvey does not know to be wary of any dogs, so it comes as a surprise to him when he sees one bounding toward him, full-tilt and ready to play. Before Harvey can run, the dog has clobbered him, and Harvey is lying on his back.

  Harvey scrambles, but his short legs and soft paws are no match for the power of the beast on top of him. The creature growls and snarls. Harvey twists out from under the monster as one of its paws presses down on his side. He yelps at the sharp pain on his rib and runs away as fast as he can. Thankfully, the big dog’s owner is nearby and calls it off, clamping a leash onto its collar. But the man can do nothing to help Harvey, since he has his hands full with his own dog. Harvey skitters away, feeling a pang of loneliness that aches as much as his side.

  Harvey is now hungry, tired, hurt, and alone. He doesn’t put up a fight when he feels someone pick him up. It is another dog owner who is at the dog park with her partner. Miles and Lucy, a young couple, have seen that Harvey is in trouble. They look for his owner in the park, but of course there isn’t one. They ask around, but no one has seen anyone with Harvey.

  It was bad luck for Harvey to have been spotted by that brute. But it is good luck that he has been found by Lucy, since she works at a vet clinic. She and Miles discuss what to do. They wait, stroking Harvey’s back and trying to calm him.

  “Are you lost, Harvey?” she asks, after reading his name tag. If Harvey could answer, he’d say that he has seen enough of the world and wants to go home. The novelty of freedom has worn off.

  They decide Lucy will take Harvey to the clinic where she works and use the chip in his ear to find his owner.

  Lucy loads Harvey into the car. Grit from the forest has made his coat heavy. When he tries to groom himself, he gets a mouthful of dirt. It disconcerts him that the wool blanket he lies on—in fact, the whole car—is rife with another dog’s odor. But he is tired, and against his instinct, Harvey lies down.

  Lucy pulls up to the vet clinic and steps out of the car. At the same moment, a taxi parked ahead of her begins to pull away. Harvey has an excellent memory for smells. Every odor he has come across has been recorded and catalogued in Harvey’s extensive scent memory. Some smells stand out as extraordinary because of the feelings attached to them—for example, the scent of the car that took his Maggie away.

  It is the slightest whiff of the sweet and spicy taxicab that perks Harvey up.

  Lucy opens the back door, prepared to lift Harvey off the seat and carry him into the clinic. Instead, she gives a surprised yelp as Harvey jumps out and darts past her. The taxi is pulling away from the curb, and with single-minded determination, Harvey races after it.

  Behind him, Lucy watches in shock as the Westie takes off and then turns the corner. She runs after him, yelling, “Stop, Harvey! Come back!” Harvey does neither. The scent of the taxi is the only thing that he is paying attention to. Even as the scent fades, he keeps running, desperately hoping it will take him to his Maggie.

  Panting, Lucy gives up the chase. She knows that if he was lost before, he is more lost now. Her good deed has gone hopelessly wrong. She goes back to her car and waits for a while in case the Westie returns. But he doesn’t. With a heavy heart, she realizes there is nothing to do but drive back to the dog park to share the unfortunate developments with Miles. She can only hope someone else will find the dog and do a better job locating his owner than she did.

  Harvey will wander aimlessly for another day, trotting down back alleys and away from the noise and exhaust fumes of downtown. He will raid garbage bags left on the street for food. He will be desperately thirsty and have to settle for a drink from a sudsy puddle outside of a restaurant.

  It is late in the evening when he finds a doorstep with an overhang to protect him from the rain that has started to pelt down. He huddles against the brick wall. His skirt is muddied and tangled and covered in grit from two days of neglect. Harvey does not resemble the dog Maggie left behind except for the red harness and the silver tag dangling from his neck.

  Chapter 6

  Austin

  “Windows,” Grandpa said, and passed me a spray bottle of blue window cleaner and a rag. I knew better than to roll my eyes.

  Windows actually means all the glass surfaces, and there are a lot of them. Sliding glass doors at the front of the building, mirrors in the hallway, protective glass on the tabletops, and the glass photo frames outside of every suite. The frames are for the photo collages the residents make. You can learn a lot from the collages. For instance, I never would have known Mr. Singh met the Prime Minister—the one before the one we have now—unless I’d seen the picture. And Mrs. Luzzi used to sing opera; there’s a bunch of photos of her on stage in costumes.

  The collage by Mr. Santos’ door has photos of him and his wife by the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal in India. He told me he’d traveled the world and had even swum in the Dead Sea between Isreal and Jordan—although I could have done without seeing Mr. Santos in a Speedo.

  “Do you miss traveling?” I asked him once.

  He got a faraway look in his e
ye. “After my wife died, I didn’t feel like it anymore. Guess it wasn’t the traveling I liked so much as spending time with her. Losing people you love is the hardest part of getting old.”

  I guess that is true for all the people at Brayside. A lot of them are on their own now, but almost all of their collages include a wedding photo.

  I was thinking about my conversation with Mr. Santos as I dusted the glass covering on Mr. Pickering’s collage. Even he had a wedding picture. It was in black and white like his other photos and in it he was wearing a uniform, like from the army or something. He was smiling and actually looked happy. In another photo, he was sitting in the cockpit of a two-person plane, and a different one showed him receiving a medal. But most of the pictures were taken on a farm. And the same dog was in almost every photo. The dog was big and fluffy, with patches of white and brown and a nose like a collie. I did a double take—in one of the pictures, the dog only had three legs. Usually I didn’t dawdle in front of Mr. Pickering’s suite, but I had never noticed the three-legged dog before. I was so distracted by the photos, I didn’t see the door open or Mr. Pickering glowering at me. I looked away, suddenly nervous.

  “What are you snooping around for?”

  “I’m cleaning,” I said. I held up the rag as proof.

  Mr. Pickering snorted. “Well, don’t let me stop you.”

  Why are you so grumpy? I wanted to ask him. But then I looked at the collage again and remembered that he was ninety-six. I imagined how many people he’d lost. His wife. His friends. It was really sad when I thought about it.

  Mr. Pickering walked past me on his way to the dining room. I went back to cleaning. But the whole time I was wiping those windows, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been wrong about Mr. Pickering. Maybe he was grumpy because he was lonely, and not the other way around.

  Chapter 7

  Harvey

  As a dog, Harvey has no hindsight. He can’t regret his decision to leave Maggie’s yard or run away from Lucy. But he does grow confused as darkness falls. He can’t catch the scent of home. The car headlights blind him, and unfamiliar sounds fly at him from all sides. He whimpers and spins in circles.

  Eventually, he finds a spot in an alley, where the stench of garbage fills his brain. The smell is so strong he finds it a relief. Harvey’s senses are on overload; his brain digs through every scent, searching for something familiar.

  After only a few hours, the nearby bark of a large dog startles him awake. Harvey starts moving again.

  The next day, it is midafternoon before instinct tells an exhausted and hungry Harvey to rest. He tucks himself behind a planter at the front door of Brayside Retirement Villa just before an eleven-year-old boy arrives.

  Chapter 8

  Austin

  Brayside has an awning that stretches out to the street so the old people won’t get too wet if it’s raining. There’s a red carpet rolled out to the street too, with Brayside written in curvy letters. If you didn’t know it was a place for old people, you’d think it was a fancy hotel.

  There are planters on either side of the door. Big flower arrangements filled them in summer, but now that it was fall, it was full of pumpkins and birch branches. I was so busy looking at what was in the planter that I almost missed what was lying behind it.

  Two brown eyes looked up at me. I knew right away that the little guy must be lost. Mom always says not to pat strange dogs, but this one looked so pitiful, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Aww! Come here,” I said, and held my hand out. He lifted his head, but he was trembling and looked too scared to move toward me. His coat was matted and muddy, and I wondered if he was injured.

  “Come here,” I tried again, patting my hand on the carpet.

  Louise, one of the nurses, saw me through the glass and came outside, wrapping her sweater around her. “What’d you find?”

  “A dog.”

  “Oh, look at the little thing,” she said. “He’s shaking. Bet he’s hungry.” She went back inside. When she came out again, she was carrying a bowl with a little bit of meat in it—probably stolen from the dining-room kitchen.

  Louise put the bowl down in front of the dog. He sniffed it, and a second later it was gone.

  “Told you,” she said.

  Louise took another piece and dropped it closer to me. The dog inched his way from behind the planter and snapped up the second piece. I put out my hand slowly and left it there so he could sniff it. I wanted him to know I was not going to hurt him.

  “It’s okay,” I said softly. “We won’t hurt you.” He inched closer and Louise set the whole bowl down. The meat was gone faster than I could blink. “I wonder how long he’s been lost.”

  “He’s a sweet thing,” she said. “Maybe we should bring him inside and call someone.”

  There was a tag hanging from his harness, which looked broken. One strap dangled and its end was frayed. I held out my hand again. This time he licked it, like he was saying thank you. I patted his head. He didn’t jump away or bark, so I slid my hand to his harness and held up the tag.

  “Harvey,” I read.

  “Harvey,” Louise repeated. “Is that your name? Is it Harvey?” She said it in an excited way, and Harvey perked up.

  “Think he’ll let me pick him up?” I asked her. Louise shrugged.

  “Only one way to find out,” I muttered. I crouched down and scooped him up. He seemed so tired that he let me hold him. But I could feel him shivering.

  When I brought Harvey inside, it caused a commotion. Louise started bossing everyone around—even Mary Rose, who is technically her boss. “Mary Rose,” she whispered, “get a blanket. Artie, this dog needs some water.” We had to whisper because Charlie was in his office. I wasn’t sure dogs were allowed at Brayside. I sat down behind the reception desk and hugged Harvey against my chest to let him know he was safe.

  Grandpa, up from the basement, joined the others. “What’s going on?”

  “Well, Phillip,” Louise said, “your grandson found a dog.”

  “His name’s Harvey,” I said.

  Grandpa’s got a soft spot for dogs. He reached out a hand and rubbed the top of Harvey’s head.

  “Looks like he needs a bath.”

  “He should eat first,” Artie said, coming back with food and water. Harvey practically leapt out of my arms when he smelled the meat in the bowl. It looked like ground beef, with a bit of gravy and potatoes mixed in.

  Everyone had an opinion about what to do with Harvey. Call the vet, call the shelter, call the Humane Society, put up posters, take him home. Okay, well, taking him home was my idea; even Grandpa looked skeptical when I suggested it.

  “If we take him to a shelter, he’ll have to wait in a cage until they find his owner,” I explained. “Isn’t it better if he stays with me?”

  I gave them all my best sweet-and-innocent face. Artie, Louise, and Mary Rose agreed—I should take Harvey home. But Grandpa shook his head. He knew what Mom would say if I walked in with Harvey. My sweet-and-innocent face had stopped working on her a while ago.

  “Better let me do the talking for you,” he said with a sigh. I grinned at Grandpa and held Harvey a little tighter. “And we’d better get Harvey cleaned up. No way is your mom going to let you bring a dirty thing like him into the apartment.”

  Chapter 9

  Harvey

  Harvey lifts his nose, trying to detect the scent of his Maggie. Peeling apart layer upon layer of smells is no easy task. But, as hard as he concentrates, his nose comes back empty.

  Instinct tells him he is safe in the boy’s arms, so Harvey doesn’t try to jump away, even as they go down to a place that is dark and damp. Harvey’s ears go down when he hears a gush of water from a tap. He knows that sound. A bath! Harvey hates baths, even though his coat is dirty and burrs are tangled in his beard.

  “Don
’t be afraid,” the boy named Austin whispers. “It’s just a bath.” But the stress of the last few days and the newness of this place make Harvey shiver and cower against Austin’s chest. “Aw! He’s scared, Grandpa!” Austin says.

  The man named Phillip speaks in a soothing tone and pats Harvey’s head. “Shh, shh,” he whispers. “Everything’s okay.”

  Phillip unbuckles Harvey’s harness and lays it on the side of the tub. Harvey feels bare without it. “Okay, Austin, put him in real gentle.” Harvey struggles to lift his paws as he’s lowered into the tub. He even scratches Austin’s arm in his desperation to escape. But it’s no use. Warm, sudsy water swishes against his legs and belly. Austin takes handfuls of water and lets it run over Harvey’s filthy coat.

  Harvey snorts as water drips into his nose, surprised that today’s bath isn’t as horrible as the ones at Maggie’s house. Austin chats to Harvey the whole time, gently pouring water from a container. Harvey can feel the knots in his fur weakening. One knot is stubborn and Austin tries to run his fingers through it, but the tug makes Harvey yelp.

  “Sorry,” Austin whispers.

  As soon as the soap has been rinsed away with clean water, Phillip returns with a towel. The towels at Brayside are washed with special detergent to keep them soft. They sit in a fluffy pile, neatly folded on a shelf beside the dryer. He unfolds one of the towels and shakes it out. Austin lifts the dripping Harvey out of the sink and places him on the towel.

  Harvey, like all dogs, hates the feeling of heavy, clinging fur. As soon as he is on the towel, he begins to shake. He shakes so violently that water spatters all over Austin and Phillip. His shaking is met with shouts and laughter, which Harvey knows is a good thing.