Dog Gone (2 page)

Cub pulls and I push Dead End into the stall. Inside it, he whimpers and looks up at me with huge, questioning, chocolate-brown eyes. “Only for a minute,” I whisper as I close the door. “For the love of steak bones, be a good dog. PLEASE!” Thank goodness he isn't much of a barker.

“The shampoo and towels!” Cub dives at the tin tub and turns it over on top of them. He grabs the spit-wet bone and tosses it under the tub.

The barn door hinges squeal. The bailing twine Cub has been working with unravels as G.D., as thin and bent as a willow branch, pushes the door open and steps inside. Years ago, when Mom and I had started our game of picturing people as animals, we'd labeled him a mountain lion. But he's shrunk since then. A cold twang shoots through my chest as I wonder what animal Mom would see him as now.

“Phew! This Virginia summer is sizzling like butter in a hot frying pan.” G.D. leans on the plain, dark wood cane that he got from some antique dealer in New York. That dealer swore the cane had belonged to a Civil War captain and that the round top had come from a melted-down rebel cannon. No wonder the thing became irresistible to G.D.

“Knew I heard someone out here.” He pushes up the brim of his tan cowboy hat—another souvenir, this one from Texas, that I've seen a million times during all his visits over the years. It had once fit him as snug as a sock, but when G.D. came to live with us nine months ago, to help Lyon and me take care of Mom, I'd noticed that either G.D.'s hat had swelled or his head had shrunk.

“What are you two magnets for trouble doing in this old dust trap of a barn?” He smiles, his sky-blue eyes getting lost in the creases of his tanned face—a map of his seventy-two years.

My heart almost thumps through my chest as I glance at Cub, who is making himself as tall as a short kid can while stuffing the bottom of his oversized T-shirt into his shorts. Mrs. Bayer has trained her boys to always look neat and be respectful around adults. The world could be ending, but they'd be tucked, buttoned, and zipped.

I look back at my granddad, and try to force a return smile. “Not doing much of anything,” I squeak.

Already Cub's cheeks are giving us away, turning blotchy red, the way they do whenever he gets to feeling guilty.

G.D. follows his cane into the shade. “Was on my way to the garden when I heard you two out here.” He says he can hear me from anywhere.
This comes from you and me being closer than two tomatoes on the same vine,
he's told me more than once. “Seeing what you weasels were up to seemed like a better idea than pulling up weeds.” He chuckles at calling us weasels, but his grin dries up quick. “Why are you tugging on your braids, girl?” He squints hard at me. “What are you nervous about?”

Dead End whines and scratches. I slam my back into the stall door to hush him.

G.D.'s expression flattens. “What's going on here?”

Dead End whimpers and scratches some more, spattering dirt out from under the stall door and onto my riding boots.

“What the…” Stiffer than rusted metal, G.D. hobbles over to me. “Step aside, girl.”

“Party's over,” Cub mutters under his breath.

My heart pounds hard enough to bust a rib, but I do what G.D. tells me to do.

When he peers into the stall, his eyes go wide. “Well, dress me in a gown and call me Cinderella. What's my favorite dog doing out here? And what in all of creation has he rolled in?” The latch scrapes as G.D. works it. The minute the door swings open, Dead End jumps out as if he has springs in his legs, his tail swinging like a furry windshield wiper. Grinning, his nose caked in dirt, he leaps in circles around G.D., the happiest pooch in the world. Even the shade of the cowboy hat can't hide the way G.D.'s face crinkles into a laughing grin.

Cub steps back to keep from getting plowed. “Dead End sure is glad to see you, Sir.”

“He's my buddy.” G.D. leans on the cane to lower into a squat. Then he strokes the dog's face, slow and tender, and wipes dirt off the pooch's nose, the black of it worn pink down the middle. G.D. says this scrape shows the dog has dug himself out of more than a few places in his time—before Mom taught him how to be a good dog.

G.D. straightens. “Where's he been?”

I hesitate, not sure how to answer.

“He's been gone since yesterday morning, Sir,” Cub says, opening his big trap.

“What?” G.D. turns to us, his face holding his question. “I wondered why I didn't see him nosing around at dinner last night. When did he come back?”

I shrug, grab Dead End's leash. “About an hour ago.”

G.D. blinks back his shock and surprise. “Does your pop know about this?”

“Lyon's been coming home too late to notice anything,” I mutter.
And he's been leaving before the sun comes up,
I don't add because we both know this well enough.

G.D. shakes his head. “Taking off. Sounds bad, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it.” He bends over, runs his palm down Dead End's back. “Hope so, anyway. Your pop won't tolerate this dog running around and pestering folks again.”

“He's only run a few times since…” I stop, refusing to speak any words that fire up the hurt I've been keeping inside—a pain big enough to suffocate me. Instead, I imagine stuffing all my ache and sadness into one of the canning jars that Mom used to put cucumbers in to make her famous bread and butter pickles. I picture my hands screwing the jar lid tight the way she'd taught me to do, then storing the container down deep inside myself the way we'd put those pickle jars in the basement, to ferment.

G.D. tips his head from side to side, studying the dog. “Where'd these stains come from? What he's been doing?”

Cub pulls his T-shirt back over his nose. “He stinks bad.”

“Manure.” G.D. squints at the greenish brown–soaked fur. “Cow or sheep.”

Cub pokes an index finger at the sticky, darker stains under Dead End's chin and on his muzzle. “That isn't any kind of manure that I've ever seen.”

The pooch drops his head, guilt in his eyes as he turns his face away from us. Mom always swore the dog could understand simple English.

Sadness settles like dust from the garden in the wrinkles of G.D.'s face. “Blood. Those dark stains are blood.”

“Ahh—gross!” Cub smacks a hand over his T-shirt-covered nose. “I might throw up.”

Maybe a some-day veterinarian shouldn't get so sour at the sight and smell of blood, but the raw stench coming off Dead End does seem ten times more disgusting once labeled. Even I stagger back from the dog. “Bet he got into a deer carcass in the woods,” I say.

“Better hope so.” G.D. turns and hobbles back toward the barn door. “Because bloodstains are a bad sign. They tell me…” He stops short, winces and grips his left leg.

“G.D.!” The alarm in my voice bounces off the barn walls.

Cub leaps at him.

G.D. waves him off. “I'm all right.” He rubs his left thigh. “Dang leg.”

Dead End whines and pulls to get to G.D., but I keep our dog close. Cub looks at me with question.
Leave him
, I mouth. G.D. asks for help when he needs it.

At the doorway, he glances over his shoulder at me. “I hope Dead End isn't going back to his old wandering ways because of your mama's…”

“STOP! Don't say it!” I stare at my riding boots, my words hanging in the steamy air.

G.D.'s thin lips press together. His eyes turn watery. The missing-Mom look I've been getting to know. “It's been three months, girl. Time for you to start talking about what happened.”

But I can't.

*   *   *

After G.D. leaves us, Cub goes to the barn door, begins looping twine around its latch to hold it closed, all the while keeping his eyes off mine. G.D. says Cub has horse sense, meaning he knows when to leave me be. I say he'd freeze like a deer caught in headlight beams if I let go any tears. Because he knows what I fear most: that if I start crying, I might not stop.

“Dill, what if G.D. tells Lyon that Dead End's been takin' off again?”

My belly rolls over at the possibility. “I don't know, Cub. I really don't know.”

CHAPTER 2

GONE

“The second you finish mucking the stalls and I finish riding, we'll give Dead End that bath. In this heat, he'll dry and be back inside the ranch before Lyon misses him,” I say, as Cub and I step into Ms. Tucker Hunter's riding stable. Already Crossfire is nickering, and pushing at his stall door, tossing his head. I love this spunky liver-chestnut horse with the white stripe dribbling down his face, maybe because I ride him in shows or maybe because I always rode him when Mom, Lyon, and I took horses out on the trails. Those were happy Saturday mornings filled with Mom's laughing and Lyon's whistling.

“Crossfire knows we're late,” Cub says, an edge to his tone because he hates being late.

“Or he smells the carrots you brought.” Cub always brings garden vegetables for Ms. Hunter's horses and goats. Not because he rides. Cub has zero interest in climbing up and onto a horse. He simply adores animals and likes to spoil them. He'd work here for free just to be near them.

“Hey! What're you two doing?”

The loud and too familiar high-pitched demand freezes Cub in the middle of pulling a carrot from his back pocket. Crossfire throws his head up, spooked. Jerry Smoothers, the best riding instructor at Ms. Hunter's stable, but also the grumpiest, stands at the end of the aisle with his hands on his hips. Ms. Hunter told me once that the accident that ended his career as a jockey had soured him.
Too much disappointment in one lifetime,
she'd said.
But he's not as mean as he seems,
she'd added.
Did you know that he spends his free time trying to find homes for lame and retired racehorses?
According to Ms. Hunter, no one loves and understands horses better than Jerry Smoothers. He just loses his patience with people.

And there's plenty of that impatience coming off him now. His tight-lipped frown and dark, slicked-back hair highlight his mean streak. Mom used to peg him as a rat, but I've always seen him as pure snake.

His riding boots stomp in uneven steps right up to Cub. Jerry's anger, like his limp, is a kind of scar. “Dameon Thornburn is missing his crop.”

My jaw tightens as I struggle to keep from saying
And he's blaming Cub and me for taking it, right?
Because Dameon Thornburn lives to get us in trouble. Six months ago, he blamed Cub for cutting up some new saddle. But since everyone knows Cub wouldn't slice an apple that didn't belong to him, this led to nothing but Dameon's parents buying him another saddle and Jerry Smoothers holding tight to a fistful of doubts about all of us. The man doesn't trust anyone between the ages of five and twenty.

Truth is, Dameon sliced his own saddle. Because he got a bur in his briefs over Cub and I not including him in our hayloft jump, when Cub hung a rope from the rafters in the stable loft and I showed everyone interested how to swing out and drop into the hay. The kind of fun that scares the pants off Dameon. And when this kid gets scared, he goes whining to his mother. This always lands Cub and me in a pile of trouble with Jerry, who ends up having to calm Mrs. Thornburn—a woman who shrieks when she gets mad.

The fact that Ms. Hunter likes Cub and me and lets me ride her horses in shows—not to mention how I always place higher than Dameon in them even though his parents bought him one of the finest horses in the state of Virginia—established his sour attitude toward us long ago. Cub says Dameon thinks he's entitled to friends and blue ribbons simply because his family has more money than the earth has dirt.

Also, Cub nicknaming Dameon
Skeeter,
short for
Mosquito,
annoys the spit out of him. Apparently, Dameon doesn't agree that he can be more irritating than fifty of those insects plus ten.
He thinks people were put on this earth to serve him,
Cub is always telling me.

Cub's dad, the minister, says Dameon is jealous of our friendship. The minister thinks we should reach out to the Mosquito. Cub says he'd reach out to a rattlesnake first. Mom used to describe Skeeter as insecure. I describe him as a flat-out jerk.

Jerry whips a stiff finger at Cub's nose. “Why does Dameon think you two took his crop?”

Because he's a freak,
I itch to point out. “Don't know,” I do say, trying to sound sweet and innocent. Ms. Hunter listens to Jerry. Getting on his bad side means risking my job and all that goes with it: the pay, the free riding lessons, the horse shows.

“If we find that crop, we'll be sure to tell you or Ms. Hunter.” I pour on the sugar.

By some miracle, Cub doesn't choke on this.

Jerry squints hard, looking from Cub to me. “I've seen how you and Dameon Thornburn treat each other—mean.” He grunts, sounding disgusted. “You kids got no idea how to treat others. No respect.”

“Yes, Sir,” Cub mumbles.

But Jerry keeps scowling at us. “You two better not let me catch you with that crop. The minute you cause trouble, I'll smell it. I promise you that.”

Twisting the bottom of his T-shirt into a rope, Cub focuses on his crusty, unlaced work boots with the hole wearing through the right toe. “Yes, Sir. I mean, no, Sir. I mean, you won't catch us doing anything, Sir.… I mean, other than work.”

Jerry leans toward me, his eyes still slits. He aims his rigid pointing finger at my face. “One wrong move, Dylan MacGregor, and I'll make sure you don't ride Crossfire or any of Ms. Hunter's horses in the regional show.”

“Of course,” I say, knowing Jerry Smoothers is as good as his threat.

Even after he snarls something about snot-nosed kids and stomps off, Cub and I stand still as stones for a minute that feels like a millennium.