Misplaced Innocence (2 page)

“What, what are you doing?”

“This here, ma’am, is a bona fide case of an overheated dog. Where were you going to take it?”

“Well, I don’t know. I thought I would put it in my truck and take it home.” The words sounded impossibly pathetic, even to her own ears. That was about as far as her plan had gotten. Then what? She asked herself, just wait for the thing to wake up and hoped it liked her? Hoped it liked Granny Smith apples and potatoes?

The man smiled again. “I have an idea. This dog’s never going to fit in the cab of your truck. Why don’t you go open the door to the backseat of my car and I’ll drive him to your place, show you how to get this dog awake.” He took in the damp tendrils of dark hair at her nape and her too pink skin. “Besides, I have air conditioning.”

“Does this happen often here? Dogs laying in the middle of the road?” Charisma tried not to look appalled. What if she hadn’t seen the dog in time? Of course, she rationalized; she’d have to be driving with her eyes closed to miss that giant of a dog lying in the middle of the road.

“Well,” he spoke slowly, exaggerating his words. “It is hot. And this one has all this fur. Looks like some kind of shepherd. It’s hot under there, you know.”

“It doesn’t look like a German Shepherd to me.”

The man gave her a funny look, but her eyes were so earnest he didn’t actually laugh. “No, I’d say not ma’am.”

She nodded like she’d figured something out. “Okay.” She stood up, brushed her hands over the front of her jeans and rushed across the street, as if another automobile might make its way toward her, and pulled open the door to his car. When she turned around he was right beside her, the dog hefted in his arms, its head hanging at a strange angle. Charisma reached out and lifted the dog’s head, so it was level with its neck. The man lowered the dog in the car, carefully and gently, the best he could with Charisma supporting its head. When it was in the car the man nodded at her.
 

“I’ll follow you.”

Charisma hurried back across the street and climbed up into the truck, praying it would start on the first try. For once, it did.
 

She worried about the dog the whole way to her house, which thankfully wasn’t that far. She parked in front of the door, in the place she considered her usual parking spot, although it was really hardly more than a plot of dirt. When she had bought the house it had seemed charming, and the price hadn’t depleted her meager earnings as an illustrator. It seemed to have so much potential. Now she saw, for as much time as she spent painting, the outside was dull and peeling, and there was nothing even close to a lawn or landscaping. The barn behind the house was empty. The fenced-in fields were empty. Everything was empty. Charisma flushed with embarrassment. She slammed the door shut, forgetting the bags of groceries, and hurried to the door, propping it open. She watched the man hoist the dog out of the car, as if it weighed nothing more than a puppy.

“Where’s your bathroom?”

“Don’t you want to take care of the dog first?”

His eyes twinkled. “It’s easiest in the bathroom.”

“Oh! Right. I’ve never had a dog,” she said, as if that explained why she couldn’t seem to string two logical thoughts together.
 

“Really? Never? That’s a long time.”

Charisma nodded, suddenly remembering that the man was standing in the mud room of her house, the dog in his arms. A half a dozen pairs of shoes littered the floor at his feet and Charisma prayed he wouldn’t trip over her mess. “The bathroom’s right through here.”

He followed her through the kitchen into a long hallway he suspected ended in the master bedroom. The first door they passed was home to a large table, several in fact, of different heights. On one was a large monitor, several scanners next to it. Along the walls were shelves and shelves of dead animals. Dead, stuffed, and mounted animals. Unusual, he thought, but not as alarming as it should have been.
 

The next door off the hallway was the bathroom, sorely in need of redecorating. He ignored the aquamarine tile and somehow managed to support the dog and turn the bathtub on all at the same time. He twisted the knob until the temperature was to his liking and lowered the dog into a thin layer of water, sloshing it up over its paws and belly.

“This is how dogs stay cool,” he explained, anticipating her confused look.

“In the bathtub?”

“Well, their cooling system is pretty complicated; this is the best we can do at this point.”

“Oh. It’s a good thing you came along.”

He wanted to agree and say it was a really good thing he’d come along, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Her heart had been in the right place, after all. Instead he checked the dog’s mouth again. “The dog looks better already. In a little while it’ll be back to normal.” He held the dog in the water a few minutes longer before laying it out on the cool tile floor, reaching up for some of Charisma’s clashing green hand towels and soaking them in water before laying them strategically on the dog. “Now, when she’s awake, you just want to make sure she stays nice and cool and has plenty of water. She’ll be fine in here.”

Charisma offered him a misshapen Tupperware bowl. “Will this work?”

“That’ll be fine.”

Charisma filled the bowl with water and placed it near the dog’s head.

“That’s it,” he said, standing. “You let me know how it goes.” From somewhere he produced a business card. “Call the cell number.” He looked chagrined. “These are old cards; the office number’s outdated.

“I’ll do that.” She took the card from his hand. “Thank you again.”

He nodded and made his way back toward the mudroom on his own. “You’re very welcome.”

She watched him pull out of the driveway. It wasn’t until he was gone that she realized she’d never even introduced herself, and that she didn’t know his name. Charisma suddenly remembered the card, and pulled it out of her pocket.

Jared Williams, D.V.M. was printed in bold, clear letters.

Of course. That was just her luck. The Jared that Bill had been so anxious to talk about, coming across her, bent over a dog in the middle of the street like a freak without a clue what to do, just happened to be a veterinarian. It would have been nice if Bill had mentioned that, too. Charisma sighed and tossed the card on the counter before heading outside to get her groceries.

Charisma stared at the dog. The massive black form had appeared out of nowhere, its big tongue hanging out of its mouth, saliva dripping slowly onto her pants. She had been minding her own business, studying a stuffed duckling and it had just walked right in and propped its head on her lap.

“Well, now what do I do with you?” she asked, reaching out a tentative hand to ruffle the thick dark hair that flopped over its head and then pushed the muzzle gently away from the growing puddle of drool on her pants.
 

The dog stared up at her, but didn’t offer any information.

“Are you hungry?” Charisma checked her watch. “It’s almost dinner time. What do you say? You want some rice?” Charisma paused, as if waiting for the dog to respond. No such response was offered. “Why don’t we see what else we have to eat.” She pushed back the chair and stood up, finally disturbing the dog enough to lift its heavy head. “Well, come on,” she said when the dog made no move to follow her out of the room. The dog hesitated, then padded after her, its toenails tapping on the linoleum kitchen floor. Charisma searched the nearly empty cupboards. “I didn’t plan on having company,” she joked as she pulled out a pot and pan.

She gave the dog a heaping portion of rice and scrambled eggs and filled a new bowl with water. While she forked bits of egg and rice into her mouth, Charisma watched the dog inhale the poor excuse for a meal. The dog was eating like it hadn’t seen food in days. For the first time, she gave the bushy dog a serious once over and wondered how thin it was underneath all that dark hair.

“So,” she began, and had the fleeting, disturbing, thought that maybe she was going crazy. After all, it wasn’t every day she repeatedly initiated conversation with an animal. Although, maybe this could be considered progress. At least this one was real, and not one of the two-dimensional sketches on paper, or a glowing image from the computer monitor. “What do they call you anyway?”

The dog took one last, thorough lick of the plate, the bottom of the old stoneware scraping across the linoleum, then looked up at her with big brown eyes. Soulful eyes. That’s what her mother used to say about animals with eyes like that. Charisma thought about them a lot when she was drawing, about how much soul you could see in a pair of eyes. “I mean, I know you aren’t really mine and I’m going to make some flyers for you and how do I know, you might not even like living with me. But, I have to call you something!”

The dog sat down, settling comfortably onto the cool floor, as if it knew Charisma would go on for a while.

“For starters. Why don’t you tell me if I’m dealing with a girl dog or a boy dog here. That Jared character everyone seems so fond of called you a he. How do you feel about this?” Charisma wondered if it would be rude to push the dog over and take a gander for herself. As if the dog were reading her mind, it heaved a sigh and lowered itself to the ground, flopping over onto its side and stretching out long legs. Charisma reached over to scratch the dog’s belly, taking a quick inventory of anatomical parts. “Girl it is, then.”

The dog closed her eyes and in a few minutes Charisma was sure she had fallen asleep. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically and the whiskers on her narrow nose twitched restlessly as she dreamed. As quietly as she could, Charisma got up, stepped around the dog and retrieved a sketchpad.
 

It was nice to have a subject that was alive, for once, and the sketch quickly took on a remarkable resemblance to the dog lying on her kitchen floor. She would scan this into the computer and make flyers for the lost dog. She’d take a photo, too. Someone had to be missing her; she seemed like a nice enough dog.

Charisma snorted. As if she knew anything about dogs anyway. When she was finished with the drawing she set it aside, and wondered what she should call the dog. It didn’t even have any white marks, so she couldn’t even come up with something descriptive, like Star, or Socks, or Diamond, as appealing as those names were. Charisma briefly considered Blackie, but decided even she couldn’t sink to such a depressing level.
 

“Ebony?” she asked. The dog opened one eye, startled from her sleep, but didn’t move, and after a moment her eye drifted back closed. “I see your point,” Charisma said. “That just isn’t very original. You’d never know I was an artist. What about Stinky?” this time, the dog didn’t open her eyes at all. “Well, I don’t even know why I’m trying, you’re just a scruffy little lost dog anyway.”

The dog heaved herself to her feet and padded over to Charisma, resting her head patiently on Charisma’s thigh and waiting for a good scratching behind the ears. “Little scruffy lost dog. Not so little, I guess. Giant is a better word. Come on, scruffy, let’s go get some flyers of you printed out.”

The dog followed her out of the kitchen and into her office, sitting beside her when Charisma sat at her computer. She closed the drawing software she had been working on and pulled up a word document.

“Found: Lost Dog,” she typed across the top of the blank screen.

That was about as far as she got. “It’s a good thing I draw, and don’t write,” she said dryly to the dog. Black, she typed next. Then she deleted it. Large black female. Long hair. “I think that’s as good as it’s going to get,” she said to the dog while she reached across the desk for her digital camera. “Smile, scruffy.” Charisma snapped a series of shots of the dog and loaded them onto the computer.

Before long she had several different flyers, all with the same description, some with the drawing she had done earlier as the picture and some with the different photos she had taken. She tagged her phone number at the bottom of the flyer.

The dog had long since settled into a tight little ball, belying her size, beneath the desk when Charisma finished printing out the flyers. “Tomorrow I’ll drive into town and post these. I’ll get you some real food, too. Don’t worry, before you know it everything will be back to normal.”

~*~

“Hey, Bill,” Jared said as he sauntered into the grocery store. Bill tossed down the paper Jared was sure he’d finished hours ago and had started to read again.

“Jared.” Bill nodded at him. “What you up to this hot day?”

“Oh you know, the usual. It’s like I never even left. Some little colt up at Doorman’s had a rough delivery. As much as I’m suddenly needed around here, I can’t imagine how anything got done while I was gone.”

“Yeah. It was tough,” Bill drawled. “Don’t know how we ever managed with you gone and all.”

Jared snorted. “Very funny.”

“’Sides, was probably Doorman’s little Jenny who wanted you to come out to the farm. She talk you into tea afterward?”

Jared had the grace to look away, red seeping into his tanned cheeks. He recalled her pleading eyes, that pitiful way she wrung her hands together. It was just a cup of tea. He’d thought she was only worried about her mare. He sighed a heavy sigh.

“It’s hard to say no to that one.” Bill nodded wisely, as if he had been in the same position numerous times. “Always been that way. Even when she was just a little bit, she’d come in here and look at me with those huge blue eyes and I’d give her some candy. Boy, she learned that trick early, didn’t she? It’s a shame things didn’t work out with her and that boy from school. I always thought she’d be married early, have little bits of her own with big blue eyes…”

Jared let the old man ramble on about his predictions for the future and wandered toward the refrigerated section, hoping he could find a pre-made sandwich.

“You met that Charisma yet?”

“What Charisma is that?” Jared asked from his place by the wilting sandwiches.

“She’s a real sweet thing. Has dark hair and eyes. Skinny. Looks hungry all the time. She comes in here once a week and buys the strangest things. She has this old blue truck. A Ford. You know, with the white lettering across the tailgate. I bet that tailgate don’t even work anymore, it’s so old. Every time she comes in I think it’s a miracle when the thing starts up and gets her all the way back to her house. ‘Bout thirty minutes out. Told me today she’d repaint my sign out front.” Bill nodded, the proud peacock.