Any Which Wall (15 page)

Roy grinned. “Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? So, Henry, now what do you think of American history?”

“I stand corrected,” said Henry. “I was wrong.” He elbowed Roy.

“Had to happen someday,” said Roy, and they both laughed.

N
OW THAT THEY WERE ALL SAFE
, they turned their attention to the dog, who was making a small but terrible sound. The dog seemed to be saying “Stay away! Help me? Stay away! Help me? Please?” Her eyes were scared. Her tail trembled. Then she looked straight at Emma and seemed to settle.

“Oh!” said Emma again. “She’s big.”

“Big and hurting,” said Susan. “She must be, to make that noise. She looks really scared.”

The dog licked one of Emma’s fingers and tried to smile. She nudged a nose at Emma’s knee.

“Her name is Bernice,” said Emma, “and she’s my dog. I know Roy rescued her, but she feels like mine.” She looked to Roy, and when he offered no argument, she continued, “And now we have to fix her.”

As though in agreement with Emma, Bernice let
out the smallest whimper you ever heard. It was a mouse of a sound.

“Such a tiny cry for such a giant dog,” said Susan. “I wonder what the matter is.” She reached over to inspect Bernice more closely, and the dog seemed pleased with the attention. But when Susan stroked one of the dog’s hind legs, she accidentally pushed aside a clump of matted fur, and Bernice gave a sharp yelp. Susan flinched and pulled back her hand, but Bernice didn’t nip or growl, so Susan gently pushed aside the clump of fur again.

When she did, she sucked in her breath. The leg was a mess. There was a long, jagged rip six inches long down the side of the dog’s leg, clumsily mended with what looked like old string. Susan could smell the sweet ick of infection. It made her think of dirty Kleenexes.

Emma cried when she saw it, “I wonder what happened to her—”

“Wichita Grim is what happened to her,” said Susan, standing up and starting to wheel her bike over to lean against the wall. “But don’t worry, because now
we
have happened to her too. Come on, everyone, line up and grab your bikes. I have an idea for how to get home. I don’t know why we haven’t thought of this before.”

They all wheeled their bikes over and reached out
to touch the wall, and then Susan wished them back home to Henry and Emma’s house, because it was less likely that their parents would be there—or show up unannounced—in the middle of the afternoon. And so it was that they all found themselves on the floor of Emma’s bedroom wearing calico dresses and sun-bonnets, with four bicycles and one gigantic dog.

After they’d taken off their pioneer finery and hidden it in Emma’s dress-up trunk, Henry ran to the kitchen for a bowl of sudsy water, a pound of lunch meat, and a bag of gingersnaps (kids need sustenance too). Emma raided the bathroom for towels and Susan dashed next door to get shoes for herself and Roy and to ransack their mother’s medicine cabinet (she was a doctor, and still is). Roy just sat and stroked Bernice’s ears until the others got back, marveling a little at his impulsive rescue.

When they were all back, Bernice made short work of the lunch meat (it was roast beef) and drank about half the sudsy water (it was delicious). She seemed to be feeling better, and while none of the kids was especially looking forward to it, the time had come to inspect her leg more closely.

Susan organized her armload of gauze pads, tubes, and bottles and took charge. “Emma, your job is to pet
Bernice’s head and keep her distracted, but if she starts to growl, I want you to sit back, okay?”

Emma nodded, her eyes wide and wondering.

“Henry, I want you to hold her leg really still. Is that cool?”

Henry was impressed that Susan seemed to know what she was doing. He nodded his head obediently.

“Roy, you need to hold her body absolutely still, in case she wiggles. Got that?”

Roy agreed, and Susan set to work.

First she cut back the clump of matted hair so that they could see a big bald patch of white skin where the stitched and festering wound stood out like a bumpy red (and a bit yellow) mountain on a relief map. There were gobs of dried gunk all over the cut and lots of dirt sprinkled into everything, which made it hard to tell where the skin stopped and the hurt began. Susan took a towel and dripped sudsy water over the cut. With the edge of the towel, she wiped gently until the dirt and gunk began to wash away.

Bernice’s leg shook, but Henry held it firmly while Emma sang softly to comfort her. “You are my sunshine….”

Bernice seemed to like the song a lot.

When most of the nastiness was gone, Susan wiped
the leg clean, and the rest of the yellowish gunk came off. Although the puffy wound still looked bad, with its tangle of old string, it looked much less bad. At least you could tell it was skin. Bernice wiggled, but only the littlest bit.

Susan took a deep breath and pushed some hair out of her face. The others stared at her in admiration. “I think it’ll help just to get it clean and keep the fur out of it,” she said. “That way, it can scab over in a healthy way. The big question is whether we should cut out the stitches and tie it up tight with a bandage, but honestly, I’m scared to try. I’m not sure I know how to do that, and the string is pretty tangled. I don’t want to pull the knots and hurt her.”

Bernice looked over at Susan as if to say “Better leave it, don’t you think?”

Susan poured some peroxide onto the hurt leg. It foamed and foamed, and Bernice whimpered, but Susan kept pouring and the wound kept foaming. When the peroxide ran clear, Susan gently dried Bernice’s leg. She slathered the wound with ointment and wrapped the leg tightly with an Ace bandage. Finally she stood up and went into the bathroom alone. There was the sound of running water and Susan retching.

When she came back into the room, her face was
pale and dripping. Henry, Emma, and Roy clapped softly, and Henry said, “I’d like to see Alexandria do that!”

Susan blushed as she patted Bernice’s head. “It’s not such a big deal. I’ve seen our mom do it a gajillion times to Roy’s knees,” said Susan, but they all knew that Roy’s knees had never, ever looked like that.

Bernice looked up gratefully at Susan, and then down at her leg. She gave it a stretch, testing it out. Everyone could tell she felt much better.

“So … what do we do with her now?” asked Henry.

“I’m going to keep her,” said Emma firmly.

The other three looked around at each other and back at Emma with apologetic eyes. They knew better.

“It only works like that in books, Em. In real life, parents never let you keep a pet,” said Henry, who had once found a calico cat with a litter of three kittens under the back porch. “You always have to ‘do the right thing’ and take it to the pound, in case it ran away from home and someone else is looking for it.”

“No!” said Emma.

“Yeah,” said Roy, who had briefly adopted a lost dachshund the summer before. “And while they look for the owner, your mom thinks of seventeen reasons why you can’t have a pet, or she remembers she’s allergic,
and before you know it, someone else has adopted the animal and you never see it again.”

Emma looked at Susan with fading hope, but Susan had once rescued a family of baby opossums and been forced to take them to the tiny Quiet Falls Zoo so that they could be properly reintroduced into the wild. She nodded her head in agreement. “It’s true, Em. Sorry.”

“Well, maybe I just won’t tell Mom and Dad,” said Emma. “I’ll keep Bernice here in my room. I’ll hide her under my bed.”

“Good luck,” said Roy. He glanced over at Emma’s small bed and at Bernice, who was as big as the bed itself.

“Whatever we’re going to do with her, I think we’d better get out while the getting is good,” suggested Henry. “It’d be just our luck for Mom or Dad to swing by the house to check on us and find Bernice. We’d be toast.”

“What would happen to Bernice then?” asked Emma fearfully. “Would she have to go to the pound?” Emma still wasn’t quite sure what the pound was, but it didn’t sound like a good thing. She pictured a place where dogs got pounded.

Since the other three kids didn’t know the answer to this question, they all stood up to take Henry’s advice and get out of the house while they still could. With
some puffing and panting, the kids eased Bernice, now in much better spirits but still sore, down the stairs and outside into the yard, where they settled her under a dogwood tree.

Then everyone tried to think of a good place to hide her.

Henry was in favor of stashing her in a shed somewhere and taking shifts feeding and visiting her, but Susan argued that they didn’t actually know of any empty sheds. Plus, she pointed out, eventually Bernice would need to go to the bathroom when one of them was not around, and that could get messy.

Roy thought that maybe the nice lady at the pet store downtown might help them, but Henry argued that they didn’t really know her. “She could be a cat person,” he said.

Susan didn’t see why Bernice wasn’t fine the way she was, sitting under a nice tree. “We can just move her to the park!”

“No,” said Emma. “Someone might steal her.”

The others found that idea unlikely, given Bernice’s size, as well as her matted hair and funny smell, but they didn’t say anything. Besides, it was probably too hot to leave her sitting outside.

Thinking of bad ideas was frustrating, and they
didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, so when Emma said, “I think we should go to the library,” the others didn’t dismiss her entirely.

“The library?” Henry asked. “Why the library? They don’t let dogs into the library.”

“Bernice could have a bath in the fountain out back,” said Emma. “They let dogs play in the fountain all the time, and we have to go somewhere. Besides, I like the library.”

“Well, sure,” said Roy. “Who doesn’t?”

“Mom always says you can solve most problems at the library, and there’s a lady there who’s my friend. We could ask her about helping Bernice. She has to answer people’s questions. It’s her job.”

“Which lady?” asked Susan, who was thinking to herself that the help they needed wasn’t really what the help desk was intended for.

“Just someone I know,” said Emma.

Emma had an odd collection of friends scattered around town, people of all ages she’d met in shops and at bus stops. They were often kooky but usually pretty nice, as grown-ups who like talking to children can be.

“She has a bun on top of her head and wears glasses,” said Emma. “And she talks in a voice that sounds like a squiggly line. Like a nursery rhyme.”

“Not that strange librarian,” said Susan, “the one who’s always gazing off over your shoulder when you ask her to help you find a book?”

Emma, whose shoulder was considerably lower to the ground than Susan’s, didn’t think that was who she meant.

“The one who wears her hair with a pencil stuck through it,” asked Susan, “and dresses like a parrot?”

“Oh, I guess that
is
who I mean,” said Emma, “but she’s not strange. She’s nice.”

“If you say so,” said Susan. “But Alexandria says that she’s a weirdo, and she only became a librarian so that people would have to talk to her.”

Emma looked uncomfortable at hearing such words spoken about her friend. She didn’t know what to say, but Henry came to her rescue. “Alexandria is mean and dumb, and who cares anyway what someone’s hair looks like? What’s with you, Susan?”

Susan didn’t have an answer for this. “I didn’t mean it,” she backpedaled, “and anyway, I didn’t say she was a weirdo. I was just telling you what Alexandria said!”

Roy and Henry could tell Susan felt bad for what she’d said, but this was a cheap excuse, and Susan’s meanness decided the matter in Emma’s favor. While Henry and Roy would never have arrived at the library
idea themselves, it seemed no worse an option than anything else they’d come up with, and at the very least, it would get the dog clean. Henry went into the garage and dug out an old red wagon, and although Bernice didn’t quite fit into the wagon, they did manage to get her up onto it, though her floppiest parts spilled out.

Susan suddenly became even more helpful. She ran into her house and found a piece of rope to use for a leash, and a bottle of shampoo (no tears!). Then the kids trooped off down the sidewalk.

When they got to the library, the kids discovered that Bernice loved water. The minute she saw the fountain, she gave a normal, unhurt, happy-dog bark—the first they’d heard from her. Then awkwardly (so awkwardly that the kids made uncomfortable faces just watching) she tumble-struggled from the wagon and made a slow but straight path for the fountain, hobbling along on her hurt leg.

Thankfully, it was the kind of fountain that children are supposed to splash in on hot days, with jets of water coming straight up out of the ground. In the center of the jets was a friendly and climbable sculpture of a lady reading a book to a dolphin.

Bernice lumbered into the spray, eased her enormous self down, and rolled over onto her back. With all four
legs in the air, she wiggled happily, scratching her back along the dolphin and lapping the water as it rained down.