“In the meantime, this guy’s standing in the headlights. He’s got a rifle over his shoulder, and he’s doubled over laughing. Your father’s struggling to get out of the truck, but he’s too drunk to move fast, and he’s got a grown dog cowering in his lap. He throws Forte out of the truck. The dog no sooner touches the ground than he’s back in the cab, and they start all over again. Meanwhile, the mastiff is pulling me back toward its pen to gnaw on me for a good long while.
“Well, your dad finally gives up on Forte and falls out of the driver’s-side door, which would have been funny in any other situation, but right then I’m screaming for help. He gets up and grabs the gun out of the guy’s hand and runs over, jams the barrel of the rifle into the mastiff’s ribs, but it pays no mind. So he jabs it again. It finally notices him and it drops my leg. By the time I get on my feet, it’s got him backed up against the side of the shack and he’s shouting, ‘How do you call it off? How do you call it off?’ The man is still laughing. ‘I got no idea!’ he says, and then there’s a lunge and the gun goes off and before any of us know what’s happening, the mastiff is laid out on the ground.”
Edgar led the dog he’d been grooming back to the whelping room. When he returned, Claude stood waiting for him.
“So the guy’s mad now,” he continued. “He takes the gun from your father and says, ‘Get your dog out of that truck or I’ll shoot it where it sits,’ and it’s clear that he means it. Your father goes to the truck and pulls Forte out. You have to understand how angry he was at Forte for cowering in there. The man lifts up the rifle but your father says, ‘Wait.’ And here’s the strange part: he takes the gun away from the guy, easy as anything. They’re both real drunk, see, swaying in the headlights of the truck. But instead of punching the guy and pitching his gun into the weeds, he calls Forte out and shoots him himself. He shoots his own dog. And then he tosses the gun down and cold-cocks the guy.”
No, Edgar signed. I don’t believe you.
“I put Forte in the back of the truck and drove us out of there. I buried him in the woods across the road, right over there. Then I told your grandfather that Forte ran away, because your father was too sick from the drinking to come downstairs, much less explain what happened. Besides, he didn’t even remember. I had to tell him. He asked some questions at first—like, why didn’t he do this or that, but I think it finally came back. Then he just rolled over in bed and stopped talking. Stayed there for the better part of three days before he could finally face anyone.”
Edgar shook his head and pushed past Claude.
“So you see how it is?” Claude said to his back. “There’s no way he can do it now, even when it has to be done.”
Almondine followed Edgar to his room and they lay on the floor, paw-boxing. He tried to put Claude’s story out of his mind. It was a lie, though he couldn’t have said how he knew, or why Claude would tell him such a thing. When Almondine tired of their game, he looked out the window. Claude was sitting alone on the porch steps, smoking his cigarette and looking at the stars.
THEY COAXED THE STRAY up the path each day by refilling the bowl and moving it closer to the yard, just a few feet at first and then, as the days wore on, much farther. At least, they hoped it was the stray: the bowl was always licked clean. Finally, they staked it close enough to the house that Edgar could see the glint of metal behind the garden, and the next morning, for the first time, the kibble was untouched. At dinner, he suggested they add a generous portion of the roast they were eating, but his mother said they weren’t throwing away any more table food, that the time had come to stop the handouts.
In the morning he found a half-dozen black-fingered manikins sitting around the bowl, rolling chunks of kibble in their paws. He shooed them away and stalked to the workshop carrying the desecrated food. His father stood by the cabinets, filing breeding records he’d taken to the house.
Squirrels are getting the food, he signed, indignantly.
His father pushed his glasses up his nose and peered into the bowl. “I wondered when that would happen,” he said. “There’s no point in putting that out anymore. Once they’ve found it, they’ll never let it alone.”
The idea made Edgar wild with frustration. Isn’t there some way we could trap him? he signed. Trick him into a pen? He’d settle down once we worked with him, I know he would. I could do that.
His father gave him a long look. “We might, I suppose. But if we tricked him, he’d just run off again. You know that.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Every time I think about that dog, something your grandfather used to say comes to mind. He hated placing pups, really hated it. That’s why he started keeping them until they were yearlings—said most people had no idea how to handle a pup. Wrecked their dogs before they were six months old. I remember him taking the truck one night after he’d heard about a new owner holding back food to punish a pup. The next morning the pup was in the kennel again.”
Didn’t they argue with him about it?
His father grinned. “They thought it had run away. And that wasn’t the first one he took back, either. If they cared enough to call, he’d tell them it showed up out of nowhere, give them what for, and maybe let them have the dog back. Most of the time he just sent them a check and told them to get a beagle. Anyway, what I mean is, he hated having to choose where the dogs went. He thought it was pure guesswork. ‘We’ll know we’ve got it right when they choose for themselves,’ he used to say.”
That doesn’t make sense.
“That’s what I thought, too. I asked him what he meant, but he just shrugged. I don’t think he knew himself. But I keep thinking maybe that stray is making exactly the kind of choice he talked about. We’re talking about an adult dog, a dog that’s been out in the woods for a long time, trying to decide whether or not we can be trusted. Whether this is his place. And it matters to him—he’d rather starve than make the wrong decision.”
He’s just scared.
“No question about that. But he’s smart enough to get past that if he wants to.”
What if he does come in?
“Well, if he chooses to, then—maybe—we’d have a dog on our hands worth keeping. Even worth bringing into the line.”
You’d breed him if he came in?
“I don’t know. We’d have a lot of work to do first. Understand his temperament. See how he takes to training. Get to know him.”
But he’s not one of ours.
“How do you suppose our dogs got to be our dogs in the first place, Edgar?” his father said, grinning wickedly. “Your grandfather didn’t care about breeds. He always thought there was a better dog out there somewhere. The only place he was sure he wasn’t going to find it was in the show ring, so he spent most of his life talking with people about their dogs. Whenever he found one he liked—and it didn’t matter whether it was a dog he saw every day or one he heard about halfway across the state—he’d cut a deal to cross it into the line in exchange for one of the litter. He wasn’t above cheating a little now and then, either.”
Cheating? Like how?
Instead of answering, his father turned to the filing cabinets and began fingering through the records.
“Another time. Your grandfather had already stopped that kind of thing when I was a kid, but I do remember one or two new dogs. All I’m trying to say is, we’ve got to be patient. That dog’s going to have to decide on his own what he wants to do.”
Edgar nodded as if he agreed. But something his father had said had