Hope In Every Raindrop (7 page)

"If it's all right with you," Katie added quickly. "I don't even need to do anything, just watch really."

Kyle looked back at her, his eyes digging into hers. "How do you expect to write about something you don't understand? And how do you expect to understand something by simply watching?"

She was so taken aback at his words that she didn’t know what to say or do.

She absolutely hated the way he looked at her. It was like his eyes judged her as a person even as his words judged her as a writer. But the truth was, he was partly right: how could she possibly write anything worth reading just by watching? She needed to be with the dogs, to be around them and interact with them. To understand their personalities, their strengths, their shortcomings. To find out the answer to the one question that kept repeating over and over in her mind.
What is so special about these dogs, anyway?

From somewhere behind them a phone rang, breaking the silence, and Doc walked quickly into the house—almost urgently, Katie thought. She could clearly make out his voice as it carried through the house and onto the front porch.

"Hello. Calm. Mr. Perry, calm. I will be there in fifteen minutes. Do nothing until I get there. Nothing."

Doc walked back out with a coat in one hand and a dark green battle bag in the other. There was a white circle with a red cross in the center on one side of the bag. It looked like a type of army medical bag. Doc looked at Kyle as he descended the steps. "Mrs. Perry is in labor. I’ll be back when I'm back. You’ll be cooking dinner for Miss Price tonight."

Katie went to tell him that wasn't necessary, but a quick glance from him stopped her. 

"Keep Miss Price with you while you finish your work. I'm sure she has lots of questions about the dogs." His tone was commanding and stopped the protest Katie was almost certain Kyle was on the verge of uttering.

Doc turned back to Katie. “There’s a sandwich and some lemonade in the fridge. Feel free to help yourself.”

With that, Doc hopped in his old blue and white short-wide GMC and drove off.

Chapter 9

The barn entrance consisted of heavy double doors on a rusted, sliding track. The wheels had dug a rut into the ground, which had the effect of causing the door to tilt and bow slightly. Each door was pulled wide open and secured to the wall with a latch.

Kyle was a few paces ahead of Katie when she reached the threshold. He peered into the barn and looked around momentarily, then spun quickly to face her.

He stared straight at her, so close and still that she could even make out the small hazel prisms in his brown eyes. He leaned in closer.

Katie jumped back. "Umm, what are you doing?"

"You smell," he said plainly.

"I what?" Katie asked, her face flushed with embarrassment and anger.

"Your perfume."

"Oh. Sorry, it’s a habit."

Kyle began to unfold a red bandana that wrapped around his wrist. He wiped the sweat from his face and neck with it and then folded it in half, so that it resembled a triangle.

"Turn around."

Katie was a little reluctant, but obliged. "You're not going to do anything weird are you?"

"Not any weirder than randomly driving across the country to write about dogs you hadn't even heard about till you met the local grocery clerk," he said.

She thought she could hear a smile in his words.

Before Katie could respond, Kyle wrapped his arms around her, draping the bandana in front of her like a necklace and tying it gently behind her neck. The small hairs on his arm brushed against her skin, giving her goose bumps.

"The dogs will know you first by scent. Even with this on you’ll smell...different. But it’s better that they recognize something familiar about you."

“That one black dog didn’t seem to mind the smell today.”

Kyle gently pressed his hands into her shoulders, spinning her back around. Katie fought to stay focused on something other than his firm touch as his fingers remained wrapped around her shoulders.

“He’s…different,” Kyle said.

Katie’s eyes followed his hands as they returned to his waist. She forced herself to look back at his face. "Well then, what about the buyers who come to look at the dogs? Doc mentioned something about them.”

"They never enter the barn. The dogs are only shown training in the field."

Kyle looked into the barn and then back to Katie. "Do not speak to the dogs. Do not touch the dogs, even if they approach."

"Are they dangerous?"

She thought she saw a playful spark in his eyes. “That will depend on you,” he said, reminding her of a comment Doc had made the day before.

Katie expected the barn to smell like wet dog, but it surprisingly had almost no aroma, save from a bit of freshly scattered hay on the ground. It was also a lot larger than it appeared from the outside. The horse stalls had been turned into makeshift dog pens, and it was probably over a hundred feet from one end of the structure to the other.

The door on the other side of the barn was wide open like the one she and Kyle had just walked through, and there was a narrow skylight that stretched the full span of the roof. This was enough to light the barn for the most part, but towards the back of each pen it was still dark.

Kyle motioned at Katie to follow him. They walked down one side of the barn and then down the other, ending up where they had originally entered.

Most of the dogs sat completely still in their pens, ears perked and their eyes focused on her—except for several of the younger ones, who couldn't have been more than six months old. They paced in their pens. Some even stood up on their hind legs, wrapping their front paws over the top board as Kyle and Katie passed. Kyle corrected each one with a single word: “Off.”

Katie tried to take in as much information as possible, but her mind was racing. It had been a long time since she had been this excited about a story.

First, she tried to get a rough count. She’d come up with twenty-three earlier in the field, but this time she only saw twenty-two, plus the five puppies.

She looked from dog to dog as quickly as she could. Each of their coats were made up of three different colors—predominately white with large black spots and ginger markings; black with white markings on the feet, forehead, or chest; and solid black.

She started to look at their fur, as some of them had short cropped coats, while others had longer fur. All the coats looked thick like that of a husky, but the texture looked different. It was like being in an art museum and not being able to touch the paintings. Katie wanted to reach out and touch one of the dogs, to feel their coarse coats. She was interrupted when Kyle came to her with a shovel and a bucket.

He held them out towards her and she took them, one in each hand, holding them away from her body as if they might try to bite her.

"The pups need their final deworming. I’ll take them to the house where we keep all the meds. They're not old enough yet to make it through the night without making a mess. Scoop it up and toss it in the bucket. Make sure you check along the back of the pen. They don't like to make a mess where they sleep, but occasionally it happens."

Katie looked down at the bucket and realized the brown spots scattered along the sides weren't dirt.

"You're kidding, right?"

"When you're done you can rake the hay out, as well."

Kyle walked across the barn and returned with a wheelbarrow and a rake. "Put it in here and I'll bring a new bale in to spread."

“You’re serious?”

Kyle didn’t say a word.

"I was kind of hoping to spend some time with the dogs. So that I could actually write about them.”

Kyle stood still for a moment in front of Katie, just looking at her. He rubbed his arm across his forehead, catching a few beads of sweat. He repeated what he had said earlier, but this time Katie didn’t feel like the words were meant to hurt her, but to help her understand. "How can you write about something you don't understand?"

"Well, I was kind of hoping I could learn from you. Maybe watch you with the dogs."

"You watched me with the dogs for hours earlier today. What do you think more watching is going to do?"

Katie hadn’t been sure that Kyle had seen her earlier, but now she found herself a little embarrassed. As if watching him play with the dogs was a secret ritual that she was never meant to see.

"Well, I figured I could watch them up close and really get to know them."

Kyle's hands went to his hips as he shook his head with disapproval. "Come with me," he said.

She followed him across the barn until they were standing in front of an empty pen. He unpinned the latch, opened it, and walked in.

"Tell me what you see."

Katie hesitated. The pen didn't look much different than any of the others. She looked around, knowing this must be some type of test.

There must be something about this pen.

"I don't know. There's no dog in this pen. It's empty."

Kyle walked out of the pen, latching it closed behind him, and stood directly in front of another.

"And what do you see here?"

Katie quickly walked over and stood next to him. There was a simple wooden name post nailed to the top board. It read, “Belle.”

In the back corner of the pen was a single dog. She had a shaggy white coat with large black spots. Her head was black as well, and accented with symmetrical tan markings on her eyebrows and jaw. Even lying down, Katie could see the bulge in her stomach.

"She's pregnant."

"Yes. She is. But what do you know about her?"

Katie thought to herself,
Well, I know she's pregnant...

"You know nothing about her. Understanding comes only through experience."

With that, Kyle walked back to the pen containing the five puppies and marched them out of the barn.

Katie just stood there silently. She looked at Belle until the dog finally lost interest and laid her head back on a patch of hay on the floor.

How is cleaning up dog poop going to help me understand these dogs?
 Nothing he said made any sense.

But what other options did she have? She looked down at the date on her watch. In less than three weeks she owed her agent a rough draft. She wanted to sit on a bench and write about each dog as Kyle trained them, not clean up after them. She picked up the shovel leaning against the top rail and the dirty bucket that lay next to it. At this point, she didn't really have a choice.

Chapter 10

After falling asleep immediately after dinner, the next morning Katie awoke with ease. Shoveling dog poop and raking hay may not be hard work for a lot of people, but it was the only work Katie had done besides write in years. Her arms and shoulders were sore and her feet still hurt from walking around the property. She raised her arms above her head to stretch and turned from side to side. Even that little motion caused pain in her sides.

She would have preferred to wake up to a nice hot bath, but she prepared herself for the shock of the cold water as she stepped into the shower. Unbelievably, the first drop of water against her skin was warm. Not hot, but definitely not cold, either.

As the warm water ran through her hair and down the small of her back, she almost forgot that she had gotten up early to see the dogs. She was hoping that Kyle would repay her hard work yesterday with a little bit of time to watch him train the dogs today, and maybe even answer some questions. A few minutes later, that hope was gone.

After she got dressed she made her way to the kitchen table, where she had begun to lay out her notes thus far for the story. Something caught her eye. As she walked past the front door she noticed a yellow piece of legal paper stuffed between the door and the doorjamb.

She opened the door and pulled the note inside. It was folded meticulously in three even halves and on one side, in all capital letters, was her full name:
Katherine Price
.

She unfolded the note, held it in front of her, and read:

November 5, 2007

I fixed the hot water.

Breakfast is wrapped in tinfoil and sitting in the oven.

I will be gone most of the day with the dogs.

Medicine chests are sitting on the steps. Please clean them out and inventory.

Rigging is hanging at the far end of the barn on hooks. Please clean and inventory.

Lunch is at noon. Dinner is at 6 p.m.

Doc will be gone again.

Katie groaned as she crumpled the paper in her hand and tossed it on the table with her other notes.

For the next two days, she woke up to find a new note on the door each morning.
Clean the nameplates, check the pens for any loose boards, prepare the food, clean out the water bowls, organize the files
. No matter how early she woke, a fresh piece of paper was there with a list of things to do for that day. None of which ever included spending any time with the dogs.

She had tried pleading with Doc, but since he was the only doctor in town, he was gone most of the time dealing with more important problems, especially since Mrs. Perry’s baby had been born. That left Katie to spend most of the days doing chores by herself. Well, not entirely by herself.

Belle was fifty-seven days into her gestation period, which Katie had learned from the scattered conversations she’d had with Kyle over the past few days. That meant she was due any day now. That also meant that Kyle had to leave Belle behind each morning when he left with the dogs.

Kyle had quarantined the dog, though, so it wasn’t like she was by Katie’s side. No one was to enter her pen, except Kyle. Period. 

Still, it was nice to feel Belle's presence whenever Katie had a chore in or around the barn. Every now and then she would stop outside Belle’s pen and just talk to the dog. Sometimes, she talked to her about the story and the progress she was making, or about potential plot lines. Other times, she asked Belle about Bishopville, or Doc, or the other dogs. Or occasionally Kyle.
All right, more than occasionally,
Katie thought grudgingly.