by David Kersey
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
“Marlene, I have a couple more small surprises, nothing big, but every little bit helps, right?”
The four of us were back in the TV room. John, Marlene, and Cassie were watching me bang out a few memory words on the keyboard. I was more interested in hearing the surprises than doing my homework. I was wracking my brain about the word hayride. I closed my eyes and thought. Hay. Sounds like day. I typed DAY, one of my memorized words.
“I want to invite Sid and Mary over for dinner. Sid has the brightest mind in the ACC science department. I think if you tell him about your concern with the cancer isolation problem that he just might take it on as his problem too.”
“Sure, I would like to meet more of your people, John. But really, the problem is solved, it’s just time consuming and very expensive. But yeah, invite them. Sounds good. And you have another surprise?”
Hay. Huh, huh, huh, huhhhhhh. No. Hih, hih, hih. Nuts. Ho, ho, ho…….By Jove, I think I have it. I typed HOME, another memorized word. It’s the H. I erased everything and started over. Then typed HAY.
Marlene grabbed John’s arm. “John, that isn’t a word he knows from memory. I think he just figured it out on his own. Buck, are you meaning to spell the word hay?” I barked once using my outside voice which was too loud for indoors, but I was excited and saw that I had leaked a little bit. Hay made me pee, what a hoot. Wonder if anyone else has that problem?
“John, he has done it! He worked it out on his own. He just broke new ground here.”
“Wonder if he solved it using what we call phonetics?”
“I bet he did, and what’s more, I think he wanted to choose that word. I mean he started with the word day. There’s bay, cay, gay, jay, you get the picture. He selected the H like he wanted to tell us something.”
I barked once without leaking.
“Marlene, I need you to help me with a decision. I have an offer to sell my condo in Florida. It’s for $375,000 and would close next month. The current tenant is making me the offer. What do you think? Would you rather have the money or the vacation place? He pays me $2,000 per month to rent it, so it’s not that big of a deal one way or the other. What do you think?”
“You don’t need the money, John. What would you do with it, the money that is?”
“I learned a long time ago never to spend money on the if-come. So when and if the money shows up in my account, I think we could think about improving the barn and old house. So, it could be that come spring we could start that program, which dovetails with the facility progress. Or, and the reason to have Sid over, if he wants to do it, and I’ll have to get board approval for this, is to send him on sabbatical to Vanderbilt to use that facility. Marlene, the dogs can detect cancer without spending a dime, why can’t humans? So I was thinking about offering him a hundred thousand for the year he’s gone from his family out of my own pocket.”
Rie, rie, rie. Cassie made an air circle with her paw. “Keep at it, Buck.”
“I don’t know, John. First, you haven’t used the condo once. You don’t need it. And if it’s rented, we couldn’t use it for a vacation. I think you should consider selling it. That way if we take a vacation we can go anywhere we want, not just Florida. And besides, I won’t have time for a vacation in the foreseeable future. And really, John, you bought that during your funk when you were devastated by the loss of Beverly. It may not have been a rational purchase, and please, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but you know I’ve been in the same boat. Second, if you improve the place here, you probably will never get your money back out, so that’s a consideration. Third, John, the medical community, and in particular oncologists, are not ready to accept the canine cancer detection phenomenon. It’s an amusement worthy of cocktail party talk, but not science to them. Right now there’s a strong wall separating the dogs from an acceptable level of detection. What is the current buzz is to develop a contraption that mimics the dogs’ olfactory senses. I see what you want to do, but I think you’re too out front with it to involve Sid at this time. In both cases; the improvements, or Sid, you’d be losing money in the long run, I think.”
“I have to make a yes or no decision by tomorrow. I think I’ll say yes. I’ll sell it. You ok with that?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll call him now.”
“You already had your mind made up didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I appreciate your thoughts and you make good points.”
Rie, riiiieeeee…….RIGHT. I typed RIGHT. HAY RIGHT.
John laughed heartily. “See, Buck agrees with me.”
I barked twice. I backspaced to make HAYRIGHT.
Marlene studied the screen and pondered, “Buck, are you trying to type hayride?”
Cassie and I both jumped up on her theater chair and licked on her face. Oops, I noticed I put a spot on her slacks.