Bailey's Story (8 page)

I was outside waiting when the bus arrived. Chelsea and Todd both got off, but there was no sign of the boy. That meant he would be arriving later, with Mom. I went back into the house, wandered upstairs, and pulled a few shoes out of Mom's closet. I didn't chew on them too much, though. I was feeling full from all of my snacks, and kind of sleepy.

I carried the shoes down with me to the living room in case I wanted them later, and stood for a while, trying to decide if I wanted another nap on the couch (but the sun wasn't shining on it anymore) or in a patch of sun on the carpet (but it wasn't as soft as the couch). With a sigh, I chose the carpet and lay down restlessly. I wasn't quite sure it had been the right choice.

When Mom's car door slammed, I was awake in an instant. I tore through the house, into the garage, out the dog door, and into the backyard, so that nobody would know about my wonderful day inside the house. Ethan ran straight to the backyard to play with me. Mom went up the front walk, her shoes clicking.

“I missed you, Bailey! Did you have fun today?” the boy asked me, scratching under my chin.

“Ethan! Come and look at what Bailey did!”

At the sound of my name, said in such a stern voice, my ears fell.

Ethan and I went into the house, and I came up to Mom, wagging my tail as hard as I could so that she would be happy again. She was holding something in her hand—one of the shredded plastic bags I had left on the kitchen floor.

“The door to the garage was open. Look at this!” Mom said. “The cinnamon rolls, the potato chips, a loaf of bread, everything in the garbage … Bailey, you are a bad, bad dog.”

I hung my head. I hadn't done anything wrong, surely, but I could tell that Mom was mad at me. Ethan was, too, especially after Mom told him to pick up all the bits of plastic off the floor.

“How in the world did he even get up on the counter? He must have jumped,” Mom said.

“You are a bad dog, a bad, bad, dog, Bailey,” Ethan told me again.

Smokey strolled into the kitchen, blinking his wide, dark eyes and leaping easily up onto the counter. And no one said a word to him! Mom even gave him a fresh bowl of cat food. Then she pushed a mop around on the floor, and the boy carried a bag of trash out to the garage.

“Bailey, that was bad,” the boy whispered to me again. Why was everybody still so upset? I looked up at Smokey, who was daintily picking at his dinner, away up on the counter where I couldn't reach. He was a bad, bad cat, and nobody even seemed to know it.

“Bailey!” Mom shrieked from the living room.

I guessed she had found her shoes.

*   *   *

After that day, whenever I was left in the garage, I tried the doorknob again. But the door never opened a second time. I spent my days in the backyard, waiting for my boy. In the afternoons and on the days he didn't have to go to school, we got to be together.

On many days, we also got to spend time with the other neighborhood kids. But I noticed that none of them ever went to knock on the door of Todd's house. Sometimes I saw him walking down the street, but nobody called out to him. Most days he didn't come up to the group of kids, either. He'd duck inside his house or head for the woods and the creek, alone.

Those times he did come over to the other kids, something strange would happen. The children grew quieter and more excited at the same time. There was a nervousness about them, and it made me nervous, too. Marshmallow seemed to feel the same way. She would stick close to Chelsea's side whenever Todd was nearby.

Ethan didn't go to Todd's house anymore, but Todd still came to ours now and then, usually when Ethan and I were out in the yard together. One day he hurried up to the gate, calling Ethan's name. “Come out! I got something,” he said.

Ethan went through the gate, and I went with him. Todd was carrying a bag, and he opened it up to let Ethan peek inside. “Eggs? What's the big deal about a carton of eggs?” Ethan asked.

Todd grinned and nodded across the street, where a bunch of small girls were playing a hopping game, jumping over and around some chalked lines on the sidewalk.

“Let's get them,” Todd said, grinning.

Ethan looked over at the girls and back at Todd. “What? You mean, like … throw the eggs?”

“Yeah! Of course!” Todd's grin grew wider, and I could tell that his heart was beating faster.

“That's…” Ethan hesitated. “No way, Todd. Geez. Linda's over there!”

Linda's dark pigtails flew as she jumped. She looked much happier than the last time I'd seen her, inside her house.

“So what?” Todd's grin was fading. A sneer was taking his place. “She's a little crybaby. Are you going to be a baby, too? What's the big deal?”

Ethan shook his head. “I just don't want to. You're the one making a big deal.”

I didn't like the surge of rage that came off Todd, the way a whoosh of steam and smell would come out of a pot in the kitchen when Mom lifted the lid. He snatched the carton of eggs out of the bag and took a step away from Ethan. Suddenly he threw the carton hard at Ethan's feet.

Ethan jumped back, and I did, too, but I came forward again at once. Rich yellow yolks and slippery whites were oozing from the broken carton and sliding all over the driveway. Clearly, this was a job for me. I went to work.

“Crybaby,” I heard Todd mutter, but I was too busy licking to look up and watch him go.

Ethan rubbed my head for a minute and then went into our backyard. He came back with a hose and sprayed what was left of the broken eggs down the driveway and into the gutter. He picked up the remains of the carton and threw them in the garbage.

After that, Todd didn't come over to our house anymore.

Not during the day, anyway. But once, after the snow and the cold weather came again, I was out in the backyard before bed, finding the right spot to use, when I smelled Todd on the other side of the fence. His smell was strong. He must have been there for quite a while. I let out a warning bark and was pretty pleased when I heard him turn around and run away.

 

11

I waited patiently for school to be over and done with. And finally it happened—the snow melted, the warm weather came, and one day Ethan jumped off the bus with extra excitement. A few days later, we were off to the farm.

The second that the car stopped, I leaped out, racing around the yard, quickly marking my territory in case any other dogs had gotten the wrong idea while I'd been gone. I greeted Flare and barked at the black cat in the barn and the ducks by the pond. They'd produced another batch of ducklings, although I could not imagine why. I raced into the woods, got a whiff of the skunk, and raced back out again. If she wanted to play, she knew where to find me.

I loved it at the farm, and I loved the happiness that poured out of Ethan when we were there. That second summer, there was one particular night Ethan was happier, more excited, and more anxious than usual. When it was bedtime, he didn't head for the sleeping porch as he usually did. Mom and Grandpa and Grandma didn't go upstairs, either. Instead, they all gathered in the living room. I stayed close. They might need my help.

Everybody stared at the television, although I couldn't see or smell anything interesting in the small, flickering images. Ethan's excitement spiraled up and up. Mom and Grandma and Grandpa were excited, too, and scared as well. Pretty soon I was going to have to bark, just to share in the feelings.

Then suddenly, all four of them yelled and cheered, and I did bark, and nobody told me not to do it inside the house. Then Ethan took me out into the yard, and we sat down and looked up at the moon.

“There's a man up there right now, Bailey,” Ethan told me. “See the moon? Someday I'll go there, too.”

He was so happy that I ran off and got a stick for him to throw for me. He laughed.

“Don't worry, Bailey. I'll take you with me when I go.”

Most days on the farm we did just what we had done the last year—fished in the pond or played Rescue Me, and wandered in the woods, and I did my tasting jobs in the kitchen. Sometimes Grandpa would drive into town, and he'd ask Ethan if he wanted to go. The boy would say yes, and I'd jump into the car with him.

Grandpa liked to go to a place where he sat in a chair and a man played with his hair. There were not enough other boys or dogs there, and Ethan would get bored. We'd wind up walking up and down the streets, looking at windows and hoping to find some friends for me to sniff.

The best place to find other dogs was in the park. There was a big grassy area, and a pond, although we never played Rescue Me there. One day we spotted an older boy and his dog. The dog was a female, short, black, and all business. When I trotted up to sniff her, she didn't even glance at me. Her eyes were on the thin plastic disk the boy was holding in his hand.

Then the boy threw it.

The dog raced and leaped and caught the disk before it even hit the ground. Pretty impressive, I suppose. If you like that sort of thing.

“What do you think, Bailey? Do you want to do that, boy?” Ethan asked, his eyes shining.

I found a stick to chew. I bet it tasted better than that plastic thing, anyway. When we got home, Ethan went right up to his room and got busy making something he called the flip.

“It's like a cross between a boomerang, a Frisbee, and a baseball,” he told Grandpa when he was finished. “It will fly twice as far, because the ball gives it weight, see?”

I sniffed at the thing in his hand, which had been a perfectly good football before Ethan cut it up and asked Grandma to put some new stitches in it. “Come on, Bailey!” Ethan shouted, running outside. Grandpa and I followed.

“How much money can you make on an invention like this?” Ethan asked eagerly.

“Let's just see how she flies,” Grandpa said.

“Okay, ready, Bailey? Ready?”

I figured something was about to happen and stood alertly, my ears pricked to catch all sounds, my tail beating steadily. The boy cranked his arm back and flung the flip into the air, where it twisted and fell from the sky as if it had hit something.

I trotted over to sniff at it.

“Bring the flip, Bailey!” the boy called.

Gingerly, I picked the thing up. I remembered the short black dog chasing the plastic disk in the park and felt a little jealous. That disk had soared, and the dog had soared up to meet it. This thing—well, it didn't soar.

I took it back over to where the boy was standing and spat it out.

“Not aerodynamic,” Grandpa was saying. “Too much resistance. It has to sort of slice through the air.”

“I just need to throw it right,” the boy insisted.

Grandpa went back inside, and for the next hour the boy threw the flip again. And again. And again.

I could sense frustration building in him, so after then tenth throw I left the flip where it had fallen and brought back a stick instead. I figured it would be more fun to throw, and it would definitely be more fun for me to catch.

“No, Bailey,” he said sadly. “The flip. Get the flip!”

I barked, wagging, trying to get him to see how much fun the stick would be if he just gave it a chance.

“Bailey! The flip!”

And then someone said, “Hi.” Ethan's head jerked around. The person who had spoken was a girl, about Ethan's age, I'd guess, standing next to a bicycle. I trotted over, wagging, and she patted my head.

In one hand she had a basket with something inside it that smelled sweet and dark and rich. I knew that smell; it was called chocolate. But I'd never been allowed to eat any. I sat down, trying hard to look as nice as possible, so she'd hand the basket over to me.

“What's your name, girl?” she asked me.

“He's a boy,” Ethan said. “His name is Bailey.”

I looked over at the boy, because he'd said my name. I noticed something odd about him. It was almost as if he were afraid, but not exactly, even though he'd taken half a step backward when he saw the girl. I looked back at the girl. I liked her and her chocolate smell. I wagged.

“I live down the road. My mom made some brownies for your family. Uh,” the girl said, gesturing at her basket with her free hand.

“Oh,” the boy said.

I kept my attention on the basket.

“So, um…,” the girl said.

“I'll get my grandmother,” the boy said. He turned and walked inside the house, but I decided to stay with the basket. And the girl, of course.

“Hi, Bailey, are you a good dog? You're a good dog,” the girl told me.

Good, but not good enough to get some chocolate, I discovered, even when I gave the basket a nudge with my nose so she'd get the hint. She just laughed and shook her head. Her hair was light-colored and long enough to wave back and forth when she did that. She, too, seemed the tiniest bit afraid. Of what? The only thing around here that might make anyone anxious was a poor starving dog who needed a treat.