A Dog's Way Home (9 page)

I
vy Calhoun had lived outside of Galax, Virginia, near the banks of the New River, ever since most people could remember. Her daddy had built the cabin back in the twenties, when he'd bought the old Sawyer Mill and the forty acres around it. Folks had come from miles around to grind their corn and wheat, taking home sacks full of flour, cornmeal, and grits. Local legend had it that a fair amount of moonshine was bought from the Sawyer Mill too. That wouldn't have surprised Ivy at all. Her daddy was fond of saying, “A man's got to do what he has to do to feed his family.” And he had fed them well. There had been Ivy and her big brothers, Samuel and Ben; her older sister, Iris; and the middle child, Rose. Ivy was the baby.

Ivy shook her head as she pushed herself out of the worn leather chair by the fire. “I'll be eighty-two come spring, and I still think of myself as ‘the baby,'” she said to no one in particular. She glanced at the faded black-and-white photographs on the fireplace mantel. The mill had been silent for forty years or more now. The great, groaning wheel was still. The cabin, like herself, showed its age. But the river and the mountains and the land were the same as ever.

Ivy pulled on her boots and grabbed the walking stick her grandson had carved for her at camp. She stuffed a bag of stale bread crumbs in her coat pocket.

It was her custom when the weather was good to walk the perimeter of the property, just like her daddy had done every day she could remember. It drove her children crazy.

“What if you were to fall and break a hip or something?” her daughter would say almost every Sunday during their weekly phone visit.

“You don't know what all kind of weirdos might be out there by the river, Mama,” her son would say. He was a police officer in Roanoke. He thought everybody was a weirdo. Between those two and her nosy neighbors, Ivy Calhoun didn't get a moment's peace.

She stepped out onto the porch and squinted up into the winter sky. “Still,” she said, “I suppose they mean well.”

The sun touched the top of the ridge across the hollow.
New snow sugared the trees. She watched the ridgeline grow brighter and brighter. When Ivy was a child, she'd stood on this same porch every morning with her daddy and watched this same sight. “It's coming alive, baby girl,” he'd say. And it was true.

Beyond that ridge, thirty or forty miles to the east, wound the Blue Ridge Parkway. She and her husband used to drive up to the craggy balds where the best blueberries grew. Ivy smiled. “That man was a fool for blueberry pie,” she said to the brightening sky.

First she walked the fence line along the high pasture. The snow from two days before had melted in the open sun. A cardinal, bright red and black-masked head, watched Ivy from a fence post. Her husband used to say there was no prettier sight on God's green earth than a cardinal in the snow. That was true too.

Ivy picked her way down into the forest, careful of her footing. She followed the winding line of dogwood and redbud trees. Ivy reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the plastic bag of stale bread crumbs. “Come get breakfast,” she called to the birds as she scattered the crumbs upon the snow.

The ground leveled as she approached the bank of the river. The water was narrow and shallow here. Her children had spent many a summer day on these banks looking for salamanders and crawdaddies. Farther down,
where the river widened, the children had caught trout. Ivy knew where wild onions were plentiful in the spring and where the wild asparagus grew.

The old woman walked along the river, careful of slippery rocks buried beneath snow and dead leaves. Lids of ice capped the water pooled in the small, still places.

As she started up the gentle slope leading away from the river, something caught Ivy's eye. It looked like a pile of old leaves or perhaps some garbage washed up from the river. She was about to walk on when a raven landed on the ground right in front of her. It cawed in agitation.

“What do you want, you noisy old thing?” Ivy knew this particular raven by his oddly notched tail feathers.

The bird hopped over to the pile on the riverbank, raised his wings up and down, and cawed louder. Ivy watched the raven's strange behavior. Finally she said, “Oh all right, all right,” and made her way back down the bank.

“Oh my,” she breathed, bending down to get a better look. “What happened to you, you poor little fox?” Her daddy had hated foxes because they ate the chickens. But Ivy hadn't had chickens on the place for years. She took great pleasure in watching the foxes slip quietly through her front yard and hunt the fields.

An ear twitched at the sound of her voice. An eye opened and locked on her face. Without thinking, Ivy
lowered herself to the ground. “Why, you're no fox,” she gasped. “You're a dog!” She ran her hand carefully along the wet, matted coat. Bones rippled beneath her hand. Blood stained her glove. The dog whimpered. Tears stung Ivy's eyes. “You poor, poor thing,” she whispered.

Snow drifted down around her as she stood. She looked up. The sky had turned from blue to lead gray. A gust of wind blew open her coat. “I've got to get you up to the cabin,” she said. She studied the size of the dog and the distance to the cabin. She heard her daughter's voice, “
Honestly
, Mama! What are you
thinking
?” She heard the raven call from the tree above.

Ivy set her jaw, dropped her walking stick, and scooped up the dog. “Why, you're nothing but skin and bones,” she said as she carried Tam up the slope to the cabin.

 

In no time, Tam lay on a wool blanket in the leather chair before the fire. The snow came down hard now, burying the front yard and piling against the house. A fretful wind howled across the chimney, but inside the cabin it was warm and dry.

Ivy watched the snow, one hand stroking Tam's head. “If ever there was a dog in need of a vet it's you. But I don't dare drive in this storm. I'd get us both killed for sure, and then I'd never hear the end of it from my daughter.”

Ivy pulled up the footstool and sat down next to Tam.
She put on her glasses for a better look. After her husband had died, she'd worked as a nurse's assistant at the hospital in Galax. The old woman had helped put back together more folks than she cared to remember.

Ivy gently parted the bloody, matted hair on Tam's shoulder. She inspected the wound, then sighed. “Looks like the shot hit your shoulder bone and came out. That's lucky. We got to get you sewn up, though, so you don't lose any more blood than you already have.”

Ivy checked Tam from nose to tail, then, as carefully as she could, rolled him over. “Oh dear,” she said with a sigh. Ivy peered at the angry, infected abscess. She'd seen this often enough back when she'd had dogs of her own. “Just like I thought. You've had a run-in with a porcupine.

“Well,” she said, heading to the kitchen, “I got my work cut out for me.”

 

It was still snowing that night as Ivy sat, exhausted, in her rocking chair beside the fire. She had shaved the hair away from Tam's shoulder, cleaned and disinfected the gunshot wound, and sewn it up.

Removing the festering quill was harder. First, she lanced and drained the abscess, then cut into the cheek to find the quill. Once she'd dug it out, she washed and stitched his face. It was clear, though, that the dog's body was full of infection. In his near-starved state, she
wondered if he had the strength to fight it.

Ivy stood and rubbed the ache in the small of her back. She pulled a fleece blanket across the dog. “I have my doubts whether or not you'll make it through the night,” she said. “But if you're still alive in the morning, I'll call Doc Pritchett and see if he can come take a look at you.”

The wind pushed against the walls of the cabin. Snow scratched hungrily at the windowpanes.

By the end of my second week at Jesse Rogers Middle School, I didn't get lost finding my classes anymore. I remembered my locker number and combination. I didn't really need Madison to escort me around, but I was actually glad she still did. She was as different from me as a pickle is from a pear. But she was smart and knew just about everybody in sixth grade.

We were eating our lunch together as usual. She and her friend Bree pored over some teen fashion magazine. Every now and then, they'd eye me, then study a picture in the magazine and say, “We could do that to her hair,” or “Green would bring out those gray eyes of hers.”

I wadded up my paper bag. “I am
not
y'all's latest makeover project.”

Bree smiled, her lips all shiny with pink stuff. “But you could look so pretty, Abby.”

Madison sighed. “And no one wears their hair like that anymore. It's so, so…well, hillbilly.”

If there's anything I hate, it's being called a hillbilly. I
was just about to tell her what she could do with her precious magazine when Bree said, “Oh my gosh, there she is!”

Madison gasped. “So it's true. She
is
coming to this school.”

Bree and Madison and just about everybody else in the cafeteria, including the lunch ladies, stared at the girl who'd just walked in. She didn't look that much different from all the other girls at the school, except maybe a little taller and dressed all in black, from head to toe. She had on these clunky army-type boots with all kinds of buckles and laces and such.

“Who's she?” I asked.

Bree and Madison said at the same time, “Cheyenne Rivers.”

I looked back at the girl strutting over to the salad bar. Kids moved out of her way, like Moses parting the Red Sea.

“Why is she such a big deal?” I asked.

They looked at me like I'd suddenly sprouted two heads. “You don't know who Cheyenne Rivers is?”

I shook my head. Madison rolled her eyes. “She's
Randy Rivers's
daughter.”

“Please tell me you know who Randy Rivers is,” Bree said. Sometimes Bree had a way of talking like I was from another planet.

“Of course I know who Randy Rivers is,” I said, even
though I didn't. But in this city, if anybody was somebody, they had to be a country-western singer, so I figured that's who Randy Rivers was.

So I said, just like I knew what I was talking about, “What's the daughter of a rich and famous country music star doing at a public school?”

Without peeling one eyeball off the girl, Madison said, “I heard she's been kicked out of every private school in Nashville.”

Bree nodded. “I heard they hired a tutor for her at home, but she was so hateful, she ran the teacher off.”

I watched this Cheyenne Rivers walk over to an empty table by the windows, never looking right or left. She carried herself like the Queen of England.

“She doesn't look so bad,” I said.

They looked at me and shook their heads. “I heard practically everyone in eighth grade is making bets on how long it'll take for her to get kicked out.”

Bree and Madison pretended to read their magazine while they watched Cheyenne Rivers. “I heard her mother takes her to New York City six times a year just to shop for clothes,” Bree said.

“I heard she has a boyfriend who's
eighteen
,” Madison said.

One thing I know from living in a small town where everybody thinks they know everybody else's business is
most of what is said about a person is just pure exaggeration. I watched this famous girl sitting over there by the window all by herself. It didn't look to me like her teacher in the eighth grade had thought to give her an escort, like Miss Bettis did for me. Nobody said hey or welcome to our school. I felt sorry for her.

 

I slid into the truck next to Mama that afternoon when school was out. “Mama,” I said, “do you know who Randy Rivers is?”

Mama peered through the rain and sleet lashing the windshield. “I hate this weather,” she grumbled.

Mama didn't seem like she was in the best mood in the world, so I figured I'd better keep my mouth shut and let her drive. Mama had not been the happiest person since we'd moved to Nashville. Oh, when Daddy was home, she tried real hard to act happy. But when it was just us—and with Daddy at the studio so much, that was most of the time—she sighed a lot and looked sad. And not being able to find a job wasn't helping her general disposition either.

We pulled into the parking lot of the Harris Teeter grocery store. Mama just sat there, watching the windshield wipers going back and forth, back and forth. I touched her arm. “Mama, are we going in?”

She looked at me and blinked, then turned off the
wipers and smiled. But it wasn't her real, I'm-happy-to-be-alive smile.

She touched my cheek. “Sorry, Abby. Let's go in and see if they have some of that good fried chicken for dinner. Your dad won't be home until later and I don't feel like cooking just for us.”

Me and Mama had already had Harris Teeter fried chicken for supper twice that week, and I surely was not eager to have it again. But I didn't have the heart to tell Mama that.

I hugged the warm, greasy bag of chicken pieces to my stomach while we wandered the grocery aisles. I tugged on Mama's sleeve and said, “Mama, do you know who Randy Rivers is?”

Mama tossed some boxes of cereal in our basket. “Sure, he's a real famous country-western singer. Why?”

“His daughter just started at our school,” I said.

“Really?” she said. “I'd think a rich kid like that would go to some fancy-schmancy private school.”

I grabbed a box of Nilla Wafers and slipped them in the basket. “She did, but you know what?”

Mama shook her head, her long braid switching back and forth. Madison and Bree would want to give her a makeover too.

“They say she's gotten kicked out of every private school there is, Mama, and she had a tutor at home and
she was so mean, she ran him off. Our school,” I whispered, “is a
last resort
.”

Mama frowned. “You know as well as I do that you can't believe half of what people say, especially about other folks. She's probably lonely, just like everybody else.”

“I know,” I said. “I was thinking that too. Nobody at school will talk to her or even go near her. It's kind of sad,” I said.

Mama stopped and looked down at me and smiled. “I bet you will.”

“Me?” I said. But, truly, sometimes it was downright scary how well Mama knew me.

 

The next day in the cafeteria, I watched for Cheyenne Rivers. As usual, Madison and Bree and another friend of theirs were busy dissecting the way everybody in school dressed and how they acted.

Just when I'd about given up on her, Cheyenne Rivers appeared in the door of the cafeteria. And again, the whole noisy place went stone quiet.

She sashayed over to the salad bar and tossed a few things on her tray. Then she made her way over to that table by the window, not once looking at anybody, just like before.

She sat down, opened a book, and took a bite of apple.

Madison sighed. “She's so cool.”

“Totally,” Bree said.

“Beyond cool,” their friend Courtney said.

“Then why don't you go say hey to her?” I asked.

They looked at me like I'd asked why they didn't go peek into the boy's bathroom.

I threw up my hands. “Great bucket of gravy.”

I could feel a million eyes watching me as I walked over to Cheyenne Rivers's table. The closer I got, the more it seemed like this was not such a bright idea. Then I remembered Mama saying,
She's probably lonely, just like everybody else.

I took a deep breath and walked right up to her. “Hey,” I said.

Without even looking up from her book, she said, “Hey.” But it wasn't a hey-I'm-happy-to-meet-you kind of hey. It was more like a go-away-and-leave-me-alone hey.

“My name's Abby Whistler,” I said.

She looked up from her book and glared around the cafeteria with narrow, mean eyes. “So who put you up to this?”

I shuffled my feet. “Nobody,” I said. “It's just, I'm new here too, and I thought—”

She looked back down at her book and waved me away like an annoying fly. “Stop thinking and scram.”

My mouth fell open, and my face turned hot. Who the heck did she think she was? I balled up my fists and said,
“Just because you got a rich and famous daddy doesn't give you the right to be rude. My Mama would jerk a knot in your tail for talking that way to someone offering kindness.”

She closed her book, sat back in her chair, and took me in. There I was, a scrawny little sixth grader with long braids, baggy jeans, and a flannel shirt, who didn't matter a toot, telling the Queen she was rude. Right then and there, I wanted a big ol' hole to open up and swallow me up.

She smiled like a cat fixing to eat a mouse. She opened her mouth to say something…

And the bell rang.

I never made it so fast from lunch to history before.