Saints Among Us (8 page)

Alice nodded as she accepted the lead. “Okay, little man. I’m going to take good care of you.” She let the puppy sniff her hand, then gently petted it before leading it out the door and into the exercise area.

It was nine o’clock on their first night at Camp Compassion, and Alice felt as if she had been there for days already. She’d met at least a dozen people.

Now, as Alice and June stumbled along the path behind the beam of their flashlight, June sighed. “I’m hungry, but I might be too tired to eat.”

“Me too.” Alice put a hand to the small of her back and rubbed at the sore muscles. “I thought I was in reasonably good shape until we arrived here.”

June laughed. “I feel the same way. Guess we’ve been proven wrong.”

Back at the tent, the two women opened bottles of water and prepackaged meals, which they heated over a small Coleman stove while they washed up with baby wipes. After eating, they rolled down the window flaps and fastened the zipper door from the inside, then doused the lantern and changed out of their filthy clothing.

“Put your things in a trash bag and I’ll wash them while I’m doing towels tomorrow,” June suggested. “Good night.”

“Good night.” Alice lay down with a grateful sigh on her air mattress as June did the same.

“Lord,” said Alice quietly, “thank You for bringing us safely to this camp. Thank You for all these amazing people around us, for moving our hearts and spirits to care for Your creatures. Guide our hands to comfort and to heal. Give us renewed strength when we tire. We thank You for the many blessings You have bestowed on us. In the name of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”

She turned on her side…and slept.

Chapter Eight

A
 lice’s second day at Camp Compassion began just as the sky was growing light. The dogs, which had been quiet throughout the night, began to bark and pace as soon as they saw the first person walking through camp.

Alice staggered to her feet, unzipped the tent and stepped out into the fresh, cool air.

“Good morning!” At a pop-up camper next to the spot Alice and June’s tent was pitched, a dark-haired woman stood, twisting a single long braid up into an efficient bun atop her head. She was taller than Alice’s five-foot-six-inch height and strongly built. She stepped closer and extended a hand.

“Good morning.”

“I’m Ellen.”

“I’m Alice. My friend June and I just arrived yesterday.”

The woman gestured to her camper, from which the sounds of other people stirring could be heard. “My children and I have been here for three days. We’re from Chicago.”

“We’re from southern Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia. Is there anything we should do first, or do we just look for jobs that need to be done?”

“There are volunteers assigned to feeding and walking this morning. Afterward, we’ll all gather for the daily camp meeting. Where were you working yesterday?”

“I was in the critical care unit. June was doing laundry and helping with cats.”

“That’s where you probably should go if you’re ready to get to work. Ah, here they are.” Ellen grinned as two teenagers with dark, curly hair emerged from the camper. Both were tall, although the girl was built more delicately than either her mother or her strapping brother. “Royce, Miranda, this is Alice.”

“Hello, Alice,” they said in unison. Then they looked at each other and laughed. “You owe me a Coke,” said Miranda.

As tall as she was, her brother still topped her by several inches, but their resemblance was striking. “We’re twins,” she said when she saw Alice studying them. “We love animals and we thought this would be a cool thing to do.”

“Me too. But how did you get out of school?” Alice asked.

The boy said, “We’re high school seniors. We’ve already taken our SATs and submitted college applications’”

“So Mom thought we could afford to miss a week of school,” his sister finished.

“The principal didn’t have a problem with it,” Ellen told Alice. “He thought it would be a great learning experience.”

As the twins turned away to grab a bite of breakfast pastries, Alice said, “I can’t imagine how this experience would have affected me at their age. I might have wound up in animal care instead of nursing.”

“I know what you mean. I’m a legal secretary. But I swear to you, if I didn’t have two kids to support, I’d quit and go back to school to become a veterinary technician. I’ve been happy to pitch in, but I keep thinking I could be so much more useful if I knew more about treating animals.”

“I don’t know much either. I spent most of yesterday helping in the CCU, cleaning kennels and feeding. I didn’t mind though. Someone has to do it.”

“And there are plenty of us to share the load,” Miranda said. “I think it’s amazingly cool that all these people came down here to help.” She gestured around them.

“It is, indeed.” Alice turned to duck back into her tent. “It’s lovely to meet all of you. I’m sure I’ll see you again later.”

“Who was that?” June was just crawling out of her sleeping bag.

“Our next-door neighbors. A mom with two high school students. They’re from Chicago.”

“The lady in charge of the cat room is from Montana.”

“Montana! That makes me feel as if we didn’t have a long trip at all.”

June paused in the act of shaking out her sleeping bag. “I wonder what we should do this morning.”

“Ellen from next door said to do the same thing you did yesterday. There is a camp meeting every morning and I suppose assignments are given there.”

The two women tidied up their tent and ate boxes of raisins and donuts they had purchased before they left what Alice thought of as “civilization.” Then they walked up to the little white house that served as the center of operations. Alice headed for the CCU while June went to start yet another load of soiled towels and begin feeding cats.

“Good morning, Alice.” Gina, the perky, pretty vet tech with whom Alice had enjoyed working the day before, already was hard at work.

“Good morning. What would you like me to do?”

Gina gestured to a bank of kennels along the far wall. “Start walking those guys, especially the ones whose cages are still clean and dry. I’ll clean out each kennel while you’re outside.”

Alice reached for a slip lead. The first dog she took out was a young white pit bull. He sat in the back corner of his cage eyeing her mournfully. Alice said a quick prayer for safety and took a deep breath. “Hi, baby boy. Remember me? I’m your friend Alice and I’m going to take you outside now.” She moved toward the dog, slipped the lead over his head and took in the slack. The dog slowly rose to his feet and came listlessly to the door of the kennel, where Alice lifted him down. He promptly leaned against her legs. He was so thin she could see every rib along his side. “You’re going to feel better soon,” she promised him, stroking his broad head. “A day or so of good meals and you’ll get your bounce back.”

An hour later, all the dogs had been cared for.

“Good work, Alice,” Gina said. “You’re a natural with these dogs.”

“They’re just patients in need,” Alice said, embarrassed by the praise.

“Mark tells me you two have known each other a long time.” Gina’s knowing smile made Alice chuckle.

“We’ve been friends since college.” She emphasized the
friends
part. “How do you know him?”

“I work for a veterinary dental specialist who cares for the zoo’s animals occasionally. I knew Mark slightly, and when I heard he was going to bring a clinic down, I jumped at the chance to come along.” Gina checked her watch. “We’d better get outside. There’s a staff meeting in front of the cleaning canopy at nine.”

More than two dozen people were milling around near the canopy where the bowls and kennels were cleaned. Alice spotted June chatting with the twins’ mother Ellen, and moved through the group to their side just as Joe climbed atop a sturdy wooden box and began to speak.

“Good morning, people. It’s another beautiful autumn day and we’ve got a lot to do: dogs to walk, cats to cuddle, friends to make.” He had such a surfeit of energy that a ripple of laughter ran through the crowd. “We have two new faces in the crowd this morning. Alice and June from Pennsylvania, raise your hands.”

The two women smiled and raised their hands in a wave at those around them.

“Don’t forget your name tags, everyone. Hanna’s handing them around.” Joe said, gesturing at a short brunette going from person to person with a marker. Each person wrote his or her name on a sticky tag, which was plastered to the front of his or her T-shirt.

Joe glanced down at his clipboard, which Alice was beginning to suspect he clutched in one hand even while sleeping. “Today we say farewell to the Brinkleys. What time are you guys taking off?”

“As soon as the meeting’s over,” said a burly man in overalls and a wide straw hat. The woman beside him had tears running down her cheeks.

“You know we don’t want to go,” she said, “but our grandkids are taking care of our own animals while we’re down here, and we can’t ask them to stay any longer. As it is, they won’t let us pay them.”

“Please extend our thanks to them for freeing you to join us,” Joe said. “You two have been fantastic.” He consulted his clipboard. “Let’s start with housekeeping business. A rottweiler rescue group from New Jersey is coming today. They’re taking the two males with yellow tags in the main kennels. There also are two male rotties with red tags. Those are owned and may not be moved from this site. Their owners are being contacted. Let’s not have any mix-ups, folks. There’s also a shelter in Tennessee sending down an air-conditioned RV with ten kennels in it. They’ll take some of the dogs and a few cats back with them.”

Joe cleared his throat. “We had no intake last night because we were too full. But now that we have a few vacancies, the teams will go out today, and we’ll be working tonight. We also have a new vet arriving so there will be two stations. And there’s a groomer coming by today to shave down that big red chow. Maybe it will improve her disposition. The dog’s, not the groomer’s,” he added as people chuckled. “Any questions or comments?”

A redheaded woman near the back raised a hand. “Joe, please remind people to be sure the lids are on the garbage cans tightly. I know summer’s over, but it’s awfully warm. There are still flies, which mean maggots.”

“Good reminder. Anything else?”

Gina spoke up. “Joe, the air-conditioning in the critical care unit does not seem to be cooling very well.”

Joe pointed at a lean, balding man. “See Shel.”

“Shel is our fix-it king,” Gina murmured to Alice. “He can repair anything.”

Joe pointed to Hanna again after a short silence. “That’s it, people. See Hanna for daily assignments and be sure you know what station you’ll be manning this evening. Keep up the good work.”

As the crowd dispersed, Alice joined the group around Hanna. “Kennel cleaning: Foster and Aidan. Clean team: Edith, Jacqui and Mike. Cat room: Jules and June. June, are you still helping with laundry?”

“I sure am,” said June.

“Thanks.”

“Do you have an assignment for me?” Alice asked.

Hanna consulted her list. “Alice, right?”

“Yes, from Pennsylvania.”

The girl laughed. She was probably in her early twenties, but she looked much younger. Damp ringlets of shining brown hair curling around her face framed her wide blue eyes and sweet smile. “Alice from Pennsylvania…let’s see. Oh, here you are. Mark and Gina want you in CCU again today, and Joe would like you to be on call for any human medical problems.”

“Thank you. Where are you from?”

“Nowhere. I mean, I’m from right here. I’m the executive director of this humane society, the Gulf Coast Animal Protection Team. When Riley lost his building, I invited him to bring his animals here. He kept going back to rescue others, and word got around that we were taking animals. Things got crazy around here. I realized we couldn’t handle an operation this big, so I called HOUS for national assistance. That’s when Joe came in.”

“I see. That was wise of you.”

Hanna smiled wryly. “It was self-protection. I was totally overwhelmed. The place was a madhouse. Joe, with his gift for organization, was a gift from heaven.”

Alice smiled. “I’ve seen a lot of those around here since I arrived.”

Hanna nodded her head. “So have I.

That evening, Ellen invited Alice and June to have dinner with the twins and her.

Alice had three bananas and June brought cookies, and fruit juice in single-serving boxes. To their surprise, Ellen had two box mixes of noodles with Alfredo sauce, which she managed to cook for thirty minutes on a Coleman stove a great deal more sophisticated than June’s.

“This was an excellent meal,” Alice said. “Thank you so much for inviting us.”

“Teenagers,” Ellen said. “I know they require a lot of fuel, so I stocked up on anything I thought I could manage to cook on this stove.”

“You’re certainly more adventurous than I am.” June tore open the package of cookies. “I’m happy if I can boil water for rice or instant oatmeal on mine.”

Ellen chuckled. “I’ll have to teach you some of my tricks while we’re here.”

“Mom can do amazing things with a camp stove,” Miranda chimed in.

“So tell us about yourselves,” Alice said to the twins. “You said you have applied to colleges, but you didn’t mention where.”

“I just received my acceptance to the University of Michigan,” Miranda said promptly. “And Royce already has been accepted at schools in Florida and Massachusetts. He wants to be a marine biologist.”

“And you?” Alice had already learned that Miranda did most of the talking for the pair. Royce was pleasant, courteous and seemed quite happy to sit back and let his sister occupy the limelight.

“Music,” Miranda said. “I sing and play French horn. I don’t know if I want to teach or perform, but I know I want to continue music studies.”