The Summer of Riley (6 page)

I tapped my fingers on the table. “Are we sure that lawyer’s all that great? It doesn’t sound like it.”

“And here’s the very best part.” She touched the paper with her finger. “Stephen says when there’s an appeal, they usually give the dog more time because what if the appeal worked, but it was too late for the dog?”

“How awful!” Grace shuddered.

I couldn’t bear to think about it. I couldn’t.

“What was it you were supposed to tell me?” I asked. “Something else that Stephen said.”

“Oh, yes. He saw Riley this morning, and he’s fine and doesn’t look too unhappy.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know,” I said. “I bet nobody’s told him he only has four dog days left to live.” I felt like I was choking.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to know,” Grace said. She counted off on her fingers. “Four days from now is next Saturday. We’ve got to get started, William.”

“I’m going to call Mr. Bell right away,” Mom said.

We listened again while she talked to the lawyer.

“Absolutely,” she said, and waved for the paper and pencil. “Give me your e-mail address again, please. I’ll send the details right away. Thank you so much for taking us on.”

When she hung up she told us, “Mr. Bell has a son and a dog too. He says he knows how we feel. He’s going to get that appeal in as quickly as possible. It goes to the county commissioners.”

“Who the heck are they?” Grace asked.

Mom shrugged. “Officials. They kind of run the county. They’ll be the ones making the decision.”

That scared me just to think of it. A bunch of people who didn’t know us and didn’t know Riley having all that power.

Grace and I helped compose the e-mail letter.

“Tell the lawyer how unreasonable Peachie was,” I urged.

But Mom shook her head. “That’s not necessary, William. He just needs to have the facts.”

When she’d sent it, Grace and I went up to my room and I showed her my list.

I read it out loud:

‘“Number one. Write to the judge.’” I considered this. “Strike that. ‘Write to the county commissioners. Dear Sirs, et cetera, et cetera.”’

I continued. ‘“Number two. Grace and I both send e-mails to everybody we know and ask them to send e-mails to their friends about Riley and how he needs to have a full pardon.’ And tell them to write to the commissioners. You know, put on the pressure.”

Grace grinned. “Wow! Our own World Wide Web covering Planet Earth.”

‘“Number three. Grace and I make big signs and stand by the bank or by Jane’s Market….’ Somewhere busy, and we’ll have a clipboard and a petition and
we’ll get people to sign it. And then we can send all the names to those commissioner guys, too.”

“Perfect,” Grace said.

“And then …” I stopped. “This is a really great one. When Riley first came, Mom took some pictures of him and some of him and me. In the yard. The film’s still in her camera. Wouldn’t it be neat if I could rent a billboard? There’s one just where Third Street and Oak meet. There’s been nothing on it for ages. What if I could rent it, and get a big picture of Riley, and put it up there where everybody who drives along Third or Oak could see it? And underneath we’d print
DOES THIS DOG DESERVE TO DIE?
And tell them to write and say he should be let off.”

Grace doesn’t usually give me admiring looks, so I was pretty stoked to get this one. “You’re resourceful,” she said. “How did you think of that?”

“I don’t know.” But I did know. I just didn’t want to say. I’d sat on Peachie’s couch and the big beautiful picture of the Sultan of Kaboor had smiled down on me. I’d thought anybody would love that horse. Nobody would want to see it hurt. In the nighttime I’d remembered my Riley’s big soft eyes and floppy ears, and I’d thought anybody would love that dog. If
they could see him, nobody would want him hurt. That’s how I got the idea.

“We could do leaflets and stand in Monk’s Hill and give them out. We’d have Riley’s picture on those, too,” I added.

“Let’s get on
Oprah.”
Grace’s face glowed. “Or
Rosie O’Donnell.
Rosie loves sob stories. And I think she likes dogs.”

“Yeah!”

We gave each other a high ten, which we figure is twice as meaningful as a high five, and decided to go right away into town. We’d take Mom’s film to the photo shop and check out prices.

It was still raining a bit, but if you let the rain stop you in Oregon, you’ll never do anything. I felt pretty good. All this planning and figuring! It reminded me of when Grace ran for fifth-grade president; I was her manager and I’d thought up all this cool campaign stuff.

But when I rummaged in my closet for my rain slicker, I found Riley’s chewed-up tennis ball in the corner. He must have nosed it in here. I picked it up—it had Riley’s tooth marks on it and it was still damp from all his sucking at it. He’d even sleep sometimes with this ball in his mouth. My chest
started to ache as if someone had stuck a knife in it. “Are you coming?” Grace asked impatiently. “Yeah.” I set the ball on the closet shelf. What if none of this worked? What if, no matter what we did, Riley was gone forever? After all, I’d run a great campaign for Grace. And she still lost.

T
he appeal went in. Riley was given twenty-one days while those commissioners debated his fate. I wasn’t allowed to see him. That was part of the decision. It was a hard part, but still.

Mom and Grace and I were ecstatic. Even my dad seemed pleased when he called. Peachie had spoken to Mom. Mom said Peachie told her how sorry she was that I was upset. “But my horse is my only concern,” she’d said. “And that’s an end to it.”

“Well, it’s not an end to it,” I’d said to Mom, and I’d held my magazine in front of my face to show it didn’t matter to me what Peachie thought.

“And now,” I told Grace, “we have twenty-one days and a bunch of things to do.”

“Too bad about the billboard,” Grace said.

“Yeah, well, it figures. Who’d believe an insurance company would book it just when we wanted it?”

“Inevitable,” Grace agreed.

It was still raining, because once it starts in this part of the world, it takes its time stopping.

We didn’t care. We put on our slickers and cycled through puddles as big as lakes, trying to stay clear of the trucks and cars that sizzled past us, splashing us with muddy water.

We were in a good mood because now we had time, and we were beginning to feel that since we’d won the first battle, we’d for sure win the war. Especially with all our awesome ideas.

The pictures of Riley turned out to be stupendous, so perfect they made both of us choke up. It’s nice with Grace. I don’t have to worry about showing her my feelings, and it’s the same for her with me.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “Cry if you want.”

“It’s okay,” she told me. “Cry if
you
want.”

I asked Mr. Bingham, who owns the photo shop, how much it would cost to blow one up to poster size.

“Thirty-four dollars,” he said. “It takes about ten days.”

“Ten days! That’s cutting it awful close.” Grace subtracted out loud. “Ten from twenty-one leaves only eleven.”

“Can’t you hurry it up?” I asked.

“Uh’uh. They have to be sent in to Medford.”

“We’re working to save a dog’s life,” I told Mr. Bingham.

I wiped my wet hand on my dry shirt under the slicker and handed him one of the pictures.

He held it away from him and squinted down. “I get it. This is the dog that’s in trouble. I heard about him. A couple of women were talking about him in here this morning. People will have mixed feelings about what happened, William. There are two sides to everything, you know? And the side you’re on isn’t necessarily right.”

“But my dog’s innocent,” I said loudly. “Look at him.”

“I am looking.” Mr. Bingham stared long distance at Riley’s picture.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give them a call at the lab and ask them to put a rush on these for you. Want it for your room, do you?”

“Eventually.” Grace gave me a warning look. I guessed it was better not to broadcast our plans.

“I was very sorry about your grandpa,” Mr. Bingham said to me. “He was a nice man. We were in the same bowling league.”

I nodded. “Thursday nights. The Sunshine
Bowlers.” And I was remembering Grandpa in his yellow sweatshirt, heading out the door on Thursday nights, whistling. I had that empty feeling in my stomach again.

Mr. Bingham smiled and patted my shoulder. “I’m not going to charge you for the photos you got today. They’re on the house. I have a dog myself.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

We were just about to leave, still looking at the pictures, when the bell above the door rang and Ellis Porter and Duane Smith came in. Rain blew in with them. They pushed back the hoods of their jackets.

“What you got there?” Ellis asked in that nasty way he has. He and Duane are in high school now, but we know them from last year.

Before I could even speak, Duane snatched the pictures out of my hand.

“Here now, here now,” Mr. Bingham said anxiously.

“Aw, he’s got pretty dog pictures.” Duane held them high above his head. Duane’s as tall as a lamppost, so when I say high, I mean high.

Grace clawed at his arm. “Give them back, you dweeb!”

Duane squinted down at her and grinned. “This
your little friend’s killer dog?”

Ellis had taken some of the pictures from him, scowling at them and at us. “I hate dogs,” he said. “Dogs are vermin.”

“They are not.” I jumped, trying to get at the pictures, which wasn’t easy because Ellis is just about as tall as Duane, only wider.

Mr. Bingham had come around the counter, small and neat in his tweed jacket. He held out his hand. “Let’s have the pictures. Right now. I mean it.”

Ellis let them slide from his grasp, and as soon as he did, Duane did, too. They fanned out all over the floor.

“Oops,”
Ellis said, and Duane gave this hideous guffaw.

Riley’s face smiled up at me, from the floor, all doggy grin and wet, pink tongue. If anybody stepped on him, I’d …

“Did you ever hear about my cat?” Ellis asked, and he wasn’t guffawing like Duane or even smiling. He looked like a giant standing there, his legs spread apart, glaring down at us where we groveled on the floor, picking up one picture after another.

“Your cat?” Grace asked.

“Yeah, my cat.”

I squinted up at him.

His voice was so cold and deadly it fluttered shivers along my spine.

“My cat’s name was Josephine. I had her since first grade.”

Ellis stopped, and it was suddenly so quiet I could hear a faucet drip, drip, dripping somewhere in the back of the shop. Or maybe it was a rain gutter outside in the alley.

“Josephine was lying on the roof of my dad’s truck, sleeping, when these three dogs came along the street, no leashes, no nothing.”

Something awful was coming next. I could feel it slither between us.

“Riley was always on a leash,” I whispered.

Duane nodded. “Sure, sure. He was on a leash when he attacked that poor old lady’s horse.”

“She’s not a poor old lady,” Grace said. “Don’t be so insulting when you don’t even know her.”

“Oh, so sorry,” Duane whimpered.

“My cat was old, all right,” Ellis said. “She was sound asleep when those dogs went after her. They pulled her down off the truck. They played with her like she was some kind of stuffed toy. When they left, she was dead.”

I was frozen there on the floor. The faucet still
dripped, big fat drops. I wished Mr. Bingham would go make it stop. Of course, if it was the gutter running, he couldn’t make it stop.

I managed to stand. My shoes squelched water. I hadn’t noticed how wet they were, and the bottom of my jeans, too.

“That was awful about your cat,” I said. “But you can’t judge all dogs by—”

“I can judge yours,” Ellis said. “He would have likely torn that horse apart except it was too big for him.”

“That horse probably kicked him good,” Duane added.

“Please leave.” Mr. Bingham looked puny next to Ellis.

“For all I know, that killer of yours could have been one of the three that got Josephine,” Ellis said.

I glared at him. “He wasn’t.”

“Riley has a sweet disposition and temperament,” Grace said, and Duane gave that awful guffaw again.

“Temperament and disposition? You swallow a dictionary or something?”

I hated that guffaw. It sounded like a sick donkey braying.

Mr. Bingham had gone around the counter and
picked up his phone. “Leave right now or I’m calling the police.”

“We’re going, we’re going,” Duane said. “Hold on to your hair.”

Ellis was watching me closely. “How long have you had that dog?” He touched the white scar above his lip, the one Grace says gives him that “evil Ellis look.”

“I’ve had him long enough,” I said.

“Yeah? Was he a stray?”

“No, but …” I stopped.

He was thinking ahead of me. “You got him in the pound, I bet. Over in Portland. Why do you think somebody took him there in the first place? Not because he was an angel, that’s for sure.”

“They were moving,” I began.

“Sure, sure.”

Mr. Bingham gestured with the phone. “I’m going to count to ten,” he said. “One. Two …”

The bell above the door rang, and Mrs. Upton, who goes to our church, came in. Mrs. Upton’s really nice. She brings candy every year on the Sunday before Halloween and hands it out to the kids. Good stuff, too. Mars Bars. Milky Ways.

“Hello, William,” she said, chirpy as a bird. “Enjoying your vacation?” She put her big umbrella
behind the door and took a scarf off her hair. “A great day for ducks.”

“C’mon.” Ellis humped his big shoulders, and he and Duane moved toward the door. “I’m glad the old lady’s getting your dog killed,” he said back at me. “The sooner the better.”

Mrs. Upton was making little horrified clucking noises.

“You’re a jerk and you know it,” I said too loudly. I wasn’t feeling sorry for him anymore. I stuck out my lower lip, which I do when I’m really mad, and which Grace says makes me look fierce. “It’s not going to happen.”