Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog (3 page)

IS … My name is…

No longer able to bear the pain, Tango drifted into the dark, dreamy waters between life and death.
Inky purple jellyfish wound tentacles around his neck. He tried to speak his name, but bitter water filled his lungs. When he gagged, a school of glittery minnows, sputtering like sparks, came out of his mouth.

My name is Tango,
he gurgled.
My name is Tango.

Then everything turned black.

Twelve-year-old McKenna Skye stayed on the beach as Augusta Smith hustled up Main Street with the ratty-looking dog bundled into the folds of her sweater. McKenna watched until the gray-haired woman disappeared behind a barn red door on the water side of her green-shuttered house.

“Poor Miss Gustie. She’ll be sorry.” Priscilla clucked. “If that dog lives, it’ll be nothing but trouble, mark my words.”

Pastor MacDougal tightened his belt, turning to lead the small procession of well-wishers to the end of the wharf.

He motioned to McKenna. “You’re welcome to join us, Miss …”

McKenna, new to the village, and known only as Big Bart Cody’s niece, shook her head no. During the pastor’s blessing, she’d spied a glint of silver in the sand.

Once the villagers left the beach, McKenna looked around to see if anyone was watching.

To the north, the streets were empty. In the east, the rising sun striated the heavens with strands of gold. A pair of seals, their heads as black and shiny as a fisherman’s slicker, swam in unison in the tranquil waters of the bay.

McKenna kicked at the sand, exposing a chain of silver links. A bracelet, it seemed, with its clasp missing.

She paused. She had a feeling that someone was watching her.

When she looked up, a three-legged cat was perched atop an upside-down dinghy. Mostly black, the cat had white fur between his chest and chin, dotted by a tiny patch of black. Once, the cat might have been a handsome animal, but the beast seemed scarred—in more ways than one.

McKenna fingered the sand-covered links. At water’s edge, where the tide was going out, she dipped the silver links into a clear pool. Still seeing no one, she slipped the bracelet into the pocket of her jeans.

Near the end of the wharf, engines rumbled and diesel fumes rose in the mist. As the lobster boats pulled away, the villagers cheered, gulls cawed, and Priscilla waved a provincial flag.

McKenna ran her hand across the ridges the bracelet formed. Who would’ve lost it? The bracelet must’ve been pretty expensive… maybe it was her lucky day.

Talk about lucky—was the little dog still alive? She’d like to knock on the gray-haired woman’s door and ask, but McKenna didn’t think she would welcome the intrusion—especially from a girl she didn’t know.

Anyway, it was time to get to work.

Across the street, a clapboard building stood in the corner of the Codys’ backyard. The shed, Big Bart told McKenna, had originally been built—but never used—as a cure-shed for city people with tuberculosis. For the last decade or so, it had stood empty.

On the rainy night in April, a few weeks earlier, when McKenna had knocked on Big Bart’s door with nothing but a sleeping bag, a backpack, and an arm full of bad bruises, Big Bart had said, “Yeah, you can stay …”

He offhandedly added, “Might have to sleep in the shed, though.”

Big Bart Cody’s frame house was already stuffed with too many children. Five, at last count, as well as his wife, named Jeannie, who was none too happy about having one more mouth to feed—especially a “niece” who Jeannie never knew existed.

Big Bart didn’t ask McKenna what had driven her away from her foster home some forty miles north.

Had Big Bart asked, McKenna would’ve been honest: her foster father—whom McKenna called “Mr. Z.”—caught her stealing a five-dollar bill from his wallet. If Big Bart had pushed further, what would McKenna have said? That she was tired of living with strangers? Tired of being tossed around?

McKenna shrugged. She ground the toe of her black boot into the sand. That’s the way it was with her—always had been—trouble at school, trouble at home, as constant as the tides.

Now safe under Big Bart’s wing in Victoria-by-the-Sea, the idea of having her own place—even a run-down shed—stuck in McKenna’s mind. She didn’t give Big Bart any peace until he agreed to let her fix the place up and, at least for the summer, sleep out there.

Yesterday, McKenna had painted the boards on the east side of the shed sea green. Today, given the promise of sunshine in the eastern sky, maybe she could finish painting another side.

From his post atop an upside-down dinghy, a three-legged cat named Nigel Stump observed the morning’s goings-on. He was beside himself…

A dog that looked like a rat!
Pfff!

In a lobster trap?
Pfff!

A half-dead stranger taken in by a villager?
Pfff!

Nigel recalled what it was like last winter when he hobbled into Victoria looking for food and shelter. No one gave him as much as an empty tuna can to lick.

Nigel stared at the raven-haired girl on the beach. What was
she
doing on
his
beach, staring at the sand?

Matters such as these were of grave concern to Nigel, as well they should be. He was night watchman and chief scavenger for the pack of cats that ruled the wharf. The minute he’d wandered into their territory, Nigel heard that the wharf cats were a
bunch of garbage-eating, bone-splitting, nest-robbing varmints despised by every self-respecting animal in the village.

But what choice did a crippled cat from the country have? At least he had a roof over his head.

Nigel watched the girl pluck something shiny out of the sand—a keeper, it seemed.
Rats, rats, double-rats,
he thought as the girl slipped whatever it was into the pocket of her jeans.

Once the coast was clear, Nigel jumped off the dinghy.

Whiskers twitching, he circled the lobster trap.

The cat pack didn’t take kindly to strange animals—especially dogs—invading their territory. Victoria-by-the-Sea was a village where everyone knew their place; the cats meant to keep it that way.

Nigel warmed at the thought of meeting up with the little dog—if it wasn’t dead by now—on some dark and stormy night. He’d show the rat-boy who ruled.

Then he remembered his missing leg, severed by the teeth of a steel trap in Ben Rafferty’s woods. Nigel corrected himself:
We’ll
show him who ruled.

Nigel sniffed the girl’s footprints. He wrinkled his nose. The soles of her boots left a pungent odor.

An outsider—and a female at that—beat him to a treasure. Just his luck…

Disheartened, Nigel scratched at the sand and squatted.

Suddenly, he glimpsed a slim rim of silver.

He pounced.

He scored!

Using his paw, he brushed grains of sand off the object’s shiny surface.

Hmm… a charm… a heart-shaped charm …. The silver heart had a row of big letters on one side and three rows of letters and numbers on the other.

Nigel purred with glee. Humans
hated
losing anything with letters or numbers.

Overhead, a squad of screeching seagulls soared. Feeling uneasy, Nigel glanced around. Crouched in a cover of wild rose bushes was a bone-thin, dull-coated red fox—an outsider who’d appeared in Victoria-by-the-Sea on the very same day as the black-haired girl.

Nigel spat. What was this village coming to?

The fox emerged from the bushes with his yellow eyes fixed on Nigel. Then he bared his teeth and hissed.

That was enough for Nigel. The fox looked old, mean, and ready to go down fighting.

Nigel picked up the charm in his teeth and fled to safety.

Still cradling the wet dog in her left arm, Augusta Smith opened the door of her cast-iron stove. She placed a log on top of the red coals and adjusted the flue. She moved the steaming tea kettle off the cook lid so the water would stay hot but not boil. With her right fist, she punched down the sweet dough for its second rising.

Were these small tasks so necessary, you ask, at the very moment when the little dog was teetering between life and death? Was Augusta stalling—afraid to face the fact that the dog in her arms might be dead?

One cautious step at a time, Augusta climbed the wooden staircase to the second-floor bathroom, where she pulled a fraying towel off the bar.

How foolish she’d been to hurry home, jostling the pup’s body as she had. But Ben Rafferty was a
mean old cuss, the kind of man who just might have used the little dog for bait!

“No, you did the right thing,” Augusta assured herself.

She spread the towel over the calico quilt on her four-poster bed. Unrolling the folds of her sweater, she eased the limp dog’s body onto the towel.

Augusta laid her hands on his sand-crusted fur. His body was warmer than when she’d first touched him. A gash—raw, but not bleeding—slashed his left thigh. Welts formed an imperfect ring around his neck.

“Please let the little guy live,” she prayed aloud.

Gently patting the dog dry, Augusta contemplated some kind of bargain.

Lord, if you let him live, I promise I’ll …

Promise what? What was a fair exchange?

Augusta got down on her knees. She touched the pup’s button-size nose—it was dry—and, with her fingernail, brushed particles of sand out of his nostrils.

Was air moving in and out, or not? She couldn’t tell. Oh, and his body seemed so terribly, terribly lifeless. Augusta’s heart sank like an anchor heaved into the sea. Could she even dig a grave? It’d been a cold spring… was the ground soft enough?

Augusta shuddered. I won’t think about it, she
decided. “Hang on there, little fellow. I’ll be right back.”

On the way to get a hot water bottle, Augusta stopped in front of her pine hope chest. Reverently, she lifted up a finely woven, crib-size blanket.

Had it really been over thirty years? Had it been that long since her dear Albert had drowned while laying lobster traps in a freak storm—like the one last night?

The blanket had been woven so that someday Augusta might wrap a baby of her own in it. But that day had never come.

Augusta pressed the baby blanket to her face. Her shoulders slumped.

No baby girl. No baby boy. And now?

Now, a dying dog.

Holding her breath, Augusta wrapped the injured animal in the blanket and laid the bundle next to the hot water bottle.

How had the little dog survived a beating by such a cruel sea? From where had he come? To whom did he belong?

It had been a long time since she’d felt so utterly helpless, so totally useless.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she said sadly. “So if it’s all the same to you, little dog, I think I’ll have my tea.”

Tango swam in a sea of stormy nightmares, thrashing his legs, desperately trying to stay afloat in swirling waters. Suddenly, a school of jellyfish formed a squishy raft beneath his flailing body. Caged by wavy tentacles, his weak limbs stuck in iridescent pools of goo.

Inside the folds of a soft blanket, Tango awoke in a cold sweat. Where was he? Not a single picture formed in his mind.

Tango opened his eyes, but his sliver of sight was clouded. His snout was being stroked—by someone who smelled woolly, like the sheep on Mr. Bailey’s farm.

A door creaked. “Gustie?” a man’s voice called. “Gustie, are you up there?”

“We are,” a woman answered.

It was not Marcellina. This woman’s voice was
deep and low. Marcellina’s voice was high and sweet, like the sound of a piccolo.

“It’s Jack. Jack Tucker.”

Jack? Gustie? Who
were
these people?

“Better than another hot dish,” the woman named Gustie called back as the footsteps grew closer.

Little did Tango know that his miraculous rescue was the biggest news in the village since Priscilla’s grandfather had celebrated his one hundredth birthday. For hours, a parade of well-wishers had been dropping by Augusta’s house with food: corn relish, clam chowder, strawberry-rhubarb pie, raspberry-rhubarb pie, blueberry-rhubarb pie, baking powder biscuits, a bag of mussels, live lobsters packed on ice.

“I’m beginning to feel like the guest of honor at my own funeral.”

The man named Jack laughed. “So, where’s the lucky rat—I mean, dog—that I’ve heard so much about?”

“He’s right here.”

Lucky? Rat?

Tango was so confused. His head was pounding, as if someone wearing spike heels were stepping on his skull, pressing his eyelids shut, forcing him back into darkness.

When he opened his eyes, Tango thought that he’d been asleep for days. In fact, it had been only a few minutes. In the dim room, the murky outline of a tall man loomed over him.

Diego! It must be Diego!

He’s here with Marcellina. They’ve come to take me home!

Tango sniffed. No… it wasn’t Diego. He sniffed again. This man’s hands smelled like medicine and sheep manure.