Smart Dog (5 page)

"I can see that," Mom said.

Amy figured it was time for her to jump in. "And he's smart," she said. "I saw that right away when he followed me home from school. Well behaved and smart."

"You can tell," Mom agreed, "just by looking at him."

Sherlock sat there doing his best to look irresistible.

"Sherlock," Amy commanded, "shake hands with my mother."

Sherlock offered his paw and Mom shook it.

Then Mom said, "I thought his name was Big Red."

Amy said, "Uh..."

Sean said, "It is. But..." He bit his lip, thinking.

"But I thought Sherlock fit better," Amy said. "Seeing as he isn't big. Or red." She finished lamely, "But he is smart."

"He's so smart," Sean said, "he knows when you're talking to him, no matter what you call him." He looked ready to burst into tears again. "If only I could find a good home for him."

"Hmmm," Mom said noncommittally, maybe even a bit suspiciously, despite the ingratiating way Sherlock was rolling on his back to expose his soft, white belly.

"Oh, please, Mom," Amy said.

"He's a good watchdog," Sean told Mom. "And he's loyal and trustworthy and obedient."

"Just like a Boy Scout," Mom said.

"Please," Amy begged. "Please, please. I get so lonely, home alone, waiting for you and Dad to get home from work, and sometimes it's scary."

Mom looked amazed to hear this never-before-mentioned news. She said, "He truly sounds like a wonderful dog, but I can't make a decision like that without talking it over with your father."

Dad, Amy figured, would be a pushover compared to Mom. "Could we try it," she asked, making her voice little, "if it's OK with Daddy, for a day or two? If it doesn't work out, we could always ... you know ... let the Humane Society kill him."

"Amy!" Mom gasped, with an anxious glance toward Sean, despite any doubts she may have had. She sighed. Loudly. Twice. Then she told Sean, "If it doesn't work out, we'll put an ad in the paper saying that he's free to a good home. No matter what, we can at least keep him that long."

"Thank you! Thank you!" Amy and Sean cried, dancing around with excitement. Sherlock gave a dog version of a happy dance.

"Hmmm," Mom said again. To Sean she added, "Well, if you don't need that ride, I'm going in to make dinner. Good luck in your new home."

It took Sean at least two seconds too long to remember. "Thanks," he said, making up in brightness what he lacked in promptness. He hugged Sherlock. "Good-bye, Big Red," he said. "I'll miss you, but I'm sure these people will grow to love you."

Sherlock licked his face and looked sad, but then he walked up to Amy's mom and wagged his tail.

"I'm sure," Mom repeated, without conviction. She went inside, but Amy and Sean and Sherlock didn't dare speak anymore.

Amy waved as Sean started pedaling down the sidewalk, until Mom must have reached the kitchen and noticed the remains of Sherlock's dinner in the family dinnerware.

"
Amy!
Get in here this minute!"

Amy told Sherlock, "We need to have you impress my father, so that he'll let me keep you."

Sherlock sat with his tongue hanging out and eagerly asked, "Would he be impressed by the eight times table?"

"Probably too impressed," Amy said. "We decided you shouldn't talk, remember? I was thinking more like you could bring him his newspaper when he comes home from work. Dogs in movies always fetch newspapers and slippers for the father when he comes home from work."

"Always?" Sherlock asked.

"Well, except, of course, for Lassie," Amy said. "She's too busy rescuing children who've fallen into abandoned wells to worry about stuff like fetching newspapers." Before he could ask, she added, "I don't know where there are any abandoned wells, with or without trapped children in them."

So she coached him in newspaper delivery.

As soon as Dad walked in the front door, a tail-wagging Sherlock thrust the newspaper into his hand while Amy explained—all in one breath so Dad wouldn't have a chance to say no—what a wonderful dog Sherlock was, and how overburdened the Humane Society was, and how the family didn't believe in capital punishment, and how that should certainly include innocent dogs as well as terrorists and murderers, and it was all right with Mom if it was all right with him—which wasn't exactly what Mom had said, but it was close.

"We'll see," Dad said, which Amy took as permission to tell Mom that Dad had said it was all right with him if it was all right with her.

But Dad just tossed the newspaper on the table by the front door without even looking at it, which kind of ruined the effect of Sherlock's having handed it to him. So Amy told Sherlock, "We'll try again later."

"When?" Sherlock asked.

"Soon," she told him.

But what happened soon was that midway through preparing dinner Mom yelled, "Help!" It sounded much more serious than when she simply needed an extra pair of hands.

Amy and Sherlock came dashing in from setting the dining-room table. Dad, who'd been halfway up the stairs to change out of his business clothes, ran back down.

In the kitchen, the water that was supposed to be going down the drain was instead pouring out of the pipe under the sink. Dad got under there in a hurry, despite the fact that he was still wearing his good clothes.

"Wrench!" he yelled.

Mom headed for the basement to get him one.

"Bucket!" he yelled.

Amy opened the broom closet.

"Paper!"

It was, Amy thought, a natural mistake.

How was an eager-to-please dog waiting for a signal to deliver the newspaper to know that Dad meant paper towels to mop up the spill?

Amy turned from the cupboard in time to see Sherlock come running, the newspaper between his teeth, and go into a skid on the wet kitchen floor. Toenails clicking on the tiles, he tried to backpedal. No use. He slid into Dad's back, Dad jumped and smacked his head on the bottom of the sink, and the two ends of pipe he had been holding together twisted, sending another gush of sudsy water onto him and the floor.

Amy put a finger to her lips because Sherlock looked so upset she was sure he was going to forget himself and apologize. Hurriedly, she apologized for him. "Sorry, sorry," she told Dad, handing him both a bucket and the roll of paper towels. She figured the apology would be appropriate whether he knew it was her dog who had run into him, or if he thought she was the one. He looked a little bit stunned and may well not have known what had hit him. She made a quick get-out-of-here motion with her hand, and Sherlock slunk out of the kitchen, head and tail drooping.

Eventually the sink was fixed, the mess cleaned up, dinner eaten.

The third time Sherlock gave Dad the newspaper—when Dad was sitting in the living room, looking exhausted—it worked. "Thanks," Dad told Sherlock, and patted him on the head.

Amy breathed a sigh of relief.

Still, she whispered to Sherlock, "Let's play outside," because she didn't want her parents to think they were underfoot. And because she didn't want Sherlock to be there when Dad tried to unstick the damp pages from each other.

Amy found a Frisbee in the garage in a box of summer stuff. "Here we go!" she called, tossing it across the front lawn.

Sherlock wasn't exactly a natural, but he did eventually get the hang of it. Then he found that sometimes he could have more fun if he didn't hand the Frisbee right back to Amy but made her chase him for it.

"Enough!" Amy finally said. "You've worn me out." She held her hand out for the Frisbee, but Sherlock wouldn't give it back. He kept running around her, still holding the Frisbee in his mouth. At first Amy laughed that he was so excited he didn't want to stop, but after a few more moments she said, "Come on, now, really. It's beginning to get dark out, and chilly."

Sherlock dropped the Frisbee, but only long enough to bark at her. When she leaned to pick it up, he snatched it away and even growled at her.

"Be like that, then," she said, and took a step toward the house. Sherlock ran into her, so that she almost fell. "Sherlock!" she said.

But then he dropped the Frisbee and ran to the edge of the lawn, where he started barking and barking at someone who was approaching.

Finally Amy noticed the young woman who was walking along the sidewalk, stopping occasionally to tack some sort of flier to telephone poles.

Finally Amy caught on.

She went to stand next to Sherlock and pretended that she was there to hold on to his collar. "Someone you know?" she whispered.

Sherlock's head dipped in a nod while he continued barking.

Amy raised her voice to say, "Come on, you dumb dog!" She tugged on the collar Sean had provided them with.

The young woman with the fliers hesitated at the edge of the yard. Too young to be a professor, Amy guessed: more likely one of the college students.

"Don't worry," Amy assured her. "He's noisy and he doesn't obey, but he doesn't bite." She turned her attention back to Sherlock. "Come on, Big Red," she said, figuring
Sherlock
was obviously the name of a smart dog, and she didn't want this woman realizing he was a smart dog. "Knock it off before the neighbors complain again." Subtle hint for a clever college student that he'd been with the family for a while.

Any sensible passerby would have kept on moving, but the young woman stopped. "Hi," she said. "Your dog looks like quite a handful."

"He is," Amy told her. "He never listens."

The front door opened and Amy's dad leaned out just long enough to yell, "Amy! Control that dog of yours!"

Sherlock gave one more bark, but he didn't dare get on Dad's bad side, so he stopped.

The woman said, "I'm looking for a dog like yours."

Amy hoped her voice didn't give her away as she asked, "What? One that doesn't behave?"

The woman laughed. "No, actually the dog I'm looking for is very well behaved. But he looks just like your dog." She put her hand out and Sherlock let her set her hand on his head, but only for an instant. He backed away before she could actually pet him. The woman held out her stack of fliers. "Take one," she said.

Amy did because it would have looked suspicious to refuse. There, under big letters saying
LOST
, was a picture of Sherlock.

"The dog I'm looking for belongs to the college," the woman said as Amy read about the missing dog.

Amy gave a snort of scorn. "College?" she repeated. "Big Red flunked out of obedience school."

The woman laughed again. She didn't look mean. Amy wouldn't have picked her out as someone who would murder intelligent dogs just to study their brains. "Big Red," the woman said. She moved closer again, and Sherlock let her scratch under his jaw, near where the dog tag Sean had given them dangled from the collar. Amy couldn't tell if she actually checked. "Big Red," the woman repeated, still sounding friendly, but perhaps a bit too interested. "Odd name for a small brown dog."

"He's named after someone," Amy said, the only thing she could think of.

"Oh, yes?" the woman answered in a noncommittal tone.

And, because that seemed to require something more, Amy said, "My grandfather."

The woman looked startled, but all she said was, "The dog I'm looking for answers to the name F-32. He's a very valuable animal. There'll be a reward. The phone number is on the flier."

"OK," Amy said.

The woman continued walking, occasionally stopping to fish a thumbtack out of her pocket to put fliers up on the telephone poles. Amy and Sherlock stood silently watching her, but Amy felt Sherlock tremble under her hand. The woman was too far away before Amy thought of what she should have said. She should have said, "F-32? Who's
he
named after?"

In school the next day, Amy didn't have a chance to talk to Sean all morning. So, as they were going into the cafeteria, she abruptly walked away from her friends, including Andrea, who was in the middle of a funny story, and she cut in line in front of Sean.

"Hey!" Sean's friend Chris complained.

"Oh, hush," Amy told him.

This was so unlike Amy, Chris hushed. And when they'd gotten their food and Amy said, "Sean and I need to talk—alone," Chris left them alone, though it was almost unheard of for fifth-grade boys and girls to sit together. Sometimes they shared a table—there were almost always boys, for example, wherever Kaitlyn Walker sat—but even then the girls clustered at one end and the boys at the other.

But Amy directed Sean to one of the tiny tables in the corner that only sat three or four.

Several of their classmates gave them knowing looks, and the kissy lips started again.

"Here." Amy reached into her pocket to get the dog tag that said
BIG RED
. She also handed him a fistful of change, her entire savings, because she wasn't good at saving. "Will this be enough for you to get another collar for your dog?"

Sean shrugged. "Yeah, sure," he said in a way that made Amy suspect that collars were probably more expensive than she would have guessed. "Thanks for the tag back," Sean said. "My parents haven't noticed yet about the collar being gone, but with the tag, I can get a new collar at the mall and just say I thought it was time for a different one. Good thinking."

Amy refused to take credit where it wasn't due. "No," she admitted, "I haven't been thinking well." She leaned in closer. "Some girl, a student from the college, was putting up fliers in our neighborhood, and there I was in the front yard playing with Sherlock, for all the world to see."

Sean waved away someone who looked ready to come sit with them. He lowered his voice. "Did she recognize him?"

"Sherlock isn't sure." Amy lowered her voice, too. "He said that this girl—her name is Rachel—was one of the nicest ones there, but I figure she can't be all that nice if she's helping this Dr. Boden track him down."

"Maybe Dr. Boden has made it a class requirement," Sean said. "You know: 'If you want to pass, hand out these fliers ...'"

Amy liked that Sean seemed willing to believe the best about people. Still, she shrugged. "Anyway, she kept saying how much Sherlock looked like the dog she was searching for, and then right before she left, she goes like this to him"—Amy gestured to show scratching under a dog's chin—"which apparently is something Sherlock likes. Sherlock says he tried not to wag his tail, but even from where I was standing, I could tell he liked it. The thing is, we don't know if this Rachel does that to all dogs."