Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog (8 page)

Jack was waiting for an explanation.

Augusta knew
what
she was doing; what she didn’t know was
why.

He handed off the bags. “Everything you ordered.”

“I owe you, Jack.”

“I’ll put it on your bill.” He winked. “Or you could always make me a pot of that lobster chowder Albert always bragged about.”

Asparagus needed picking, dishes needed doing, laundry was piling up…

“How about tonight, around five?”

“Five it is.” Jack smiled.

After Jack left, Augusta waited on a cranky, finicky customer.

Did she look better in a v-neck or a cardigan? Younger in blue, or lavender? Finally, the customer rejected every sweater, leaving them in a heap.

“I can’t decide,” the customer said. “Maybe I’ll come back later.”

“Maybe you won’t,” Augusta muttered as the customer left.

As she loaded the candle-making supplies into a red coaster wagon, Augusta reminded herself to tell McKenna: “Lesson # 1: Tourists are mostly ‘just looking.’ Get used to it. Learn not to take it personally.”

As Augusta pulled the wagon down Main Street, she was surprised, and pleased, to see that Pup was trotting behind. Not only Pup, but also a slobbery, galumphing Newfoundland—twenty times bigger than Pup—named Maggie, who was eagerly sniffing below Pup’s tail.

“Shoo! Maggie, shoo!”

Good-naturedly, Maggie sauntered off.

The Enchanted Candles door was closed, but Augusta had a feeling that McKenna was inside.

Augusta knocked. No answer. Augusta knocked again.

“I’m not open,” the girl yelled. “Can’t you read?”

“It’s Augusta Smith. And Pup,” Augusta called.

McKenna opened the inner door. Scowling, she peered through the screen. Her eyes dropped to the red wagon. “What the—”

“I must apologize, Miss Skye,” explained Augusta, nervously. “You see, I’m not getting any younger, what with the pup and all, well…”

Augusta took a deep breath, upset that she was telling a fib. “What I’m trying to say is, I used to make candles.” Augusta felt her face redden. “It was a long time ago.”

Augusta regarded McKenna through the mesh screen. McKenna’s scowl neutralized, but she didn’t smile.

“These days,” Augusta admitted, “it seems like the more I remember, the more I forget.”

McKenna unlatched the screen door. “I don’t understand.”

Augusta pointed at the brown bags and large cardboard box in the wagon. “Candle-making equipment—with instructions. I believe it’s everything you’ll need. Candles aren’t that hard to make. As I recall, it takes more patience than skill.”

Disbelief flooded McKenna’s face. She came
outside, barefoot, her thin body drowning in a stained, man-size T-shirt.

“I cleaned off the counter and a few shelves in my old barn,” Augusta told her. “You’re welcome to work out there.”

McKenna raked her dark hair, knotting it at the nape of her neck.

“If you need—”

Augusta stopped herself before offering to teach McKenna how to make the candles. McKenna needed to learn to ask for help. No one walks alone.

Tears pooling in her dark gray eyes, McKenna dropped her chin and awkwardly stuck out her hand for a shake. “Hey, thanks a—”

Augusta’s wrinkled, veined hand enveloped McKenna’s trembling fingers. “You’re welcome, my dear.”

Looking embarrassed, McKenna dropped to her knees. She stroked Pup’s back, hand over hand, swimming across his fur.

“You got yourself a name yet, little dog?”

“Grrrrr … ruff!”

Tail erect, Pup broke away and leaped into the wagon bed.

McKenna threw back her head and laughed.

For a moment, Augusta glimpsed what McKenna—who was really quite pretty—may have looked like when she was a very little girl.

Augusta moved her eyes from girl to dog, from dog to girl. It seemed as if she’d started reading two books, both in the middle, without knowing how either story began.

Augusta gave the wagon a good tug.

Somehow, Pup managed to stay onboard until they got home.

A week later, at that precious moment between dusk and nightfall, when the sky was neither blue nor black, and the moon had not yet appeared, Beau Fox picked up Tango’s scent. Near the lighthouse, Beau found Tango gazing at the blinking beam on top of the square tapered structure.

“I want to go up there,” asserted Tango.

“I see. Your sister still calls to you in your dreams.”

“Maybe… anyhow, I’m tired of wishing. I’m tired of waiting. If Marcellina thinks I’m dead, then I’ll find my own way home.”

“Indeed…”

“You see, Beau, there’s this building in Manhattan, so-o-o high, you can see the whole island—parks, rivers, bridges, boats—everything! Once I get to the top of this lighthouse, I’ll know where I am. I’ll know which way is home.”

“Impossible,” Beau observed. “Inside, the steel staircase is circular and steep.”

“Without hope, nothing is possible.”

The fire in Tango’s eyes surprised Beau. The night was long. Dinner could wait.

Besides, it wasn’t safe for Tango to be out alone at night. Those feral wharf cats had taken to hunting as a pack. But the cats were hunting more for sport than to satisfy their hunger—violating every code of conduct within the animal community.

Beau shuddered. No, Tango had no idea of the dangers that lurked in the animal world. “There is a way to get in,” Beau told Tango. “A tight squeeze for me. For you, it should be no problem.”

“Let’s go!”

With Tango at his heels, Beau took a path through the wild rose patch, across a row of sandstone boulders, and into a muddy gully. Beau scratched at a river of dirt left by recent rains, exposing a hole in a rotting board in the base.

Beau pricked his ears and sniffed the air. No sounds, except for the squeak and chatter of bats leaving their roosts. No recent animal smells, but the odor of humans, who often visited the lighthouse, was thick.

“Before we go in, I must tell you,” Beau said. “Wild animals sometimes use this lighthouse as
shelter. Unsavory types, like Nigel Stump, scavenge here as well.”

Tango acted as if he hadn’t heard. “Come on, Beau!”

Once inside, Tango’s eyes widened at the sight of the almost-vertical staircase.

“That’s more like a ladder. You said there were stairs.”

“I warned you.”

His one-inch tail held high, Tango raked the floor with his feet. “I’ve been to the top of the Empire State Building, and I can get to the top of this lighthouse.”

The distance between steps was greater than the distance between the pads of Tango’s feet and the tips of his ears. Climb to the top? Never, Beau concluded.

Tango appeared undaunted. The little dog squatted underneath the first stair. “Too close,” he decided, taking a few steps back. “Here I go!”

Much to Beau’s surprise, Tango sprang up, and, for a brief moment balanced on the first step. A split second later, he slipped and tumbled to the floor.

Beau, often burdened by sadness, felt a smile cross his face. By the time Tango plummeted for the fourth time, Beau’s skinny old body shook with amusement.

Tango glared at Beau. “You think I can’t do this? I’ll show you!”

This time, Tango positioned himself even farther back, and, before springing, took a slight running start. Landing on the first step, Tango teetered, quickly adjusted his weight, and stabilized.

“Bravo,” Beau said in earnest.

Tango’s eyes moved up and down, as if calculating his next maneuver.

Above the whistling of the wind, Beau heard a
tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap,
like a tree branch scraping the lighthouse, or claws scratching wood. Beau’s eyes shifted, alert to every possibility of danger in this confined space: sprayed by a surprised skunk, slashed by a hostile raccoon.

Beau paced back and forth. “Tango, please, we must leave.”

The terrier would not give up, and Beau was loath to leave him alone and unprotected.

Tango made countless unsuccessful attempts. Yet each time he leaped, he took less of a running start, coming closer and closer to the first step until he’d perfected an almost vertical jump. Using the same technique, Tango conquered the second step.

As Tango struggled with the third, Beau lay at the bottom of the staircase, where he remained long into the night, his tired, old body breaking Tango’s falls.

After a day and a night of steady rain, Nigel Stump was lying across a flat rock near the water’s edge, covered by a heavy blanket of sunshine. He felt as if he’d never get up again.

Scavenging until dawn had taken its toll. More than ever—and particularly since he’d overheard his friends ridiculing him—Nigel wished that he’d never left home. Hadn’t his mother warned him?

“Nigel, you’re just like your father,” his mother lamented. “One of these days you’ll stray too far from home. You’ll be sorry. Mark my words.”

Earlier, Nigel had tried to sleep in the clubhouse, but a gnawing, sawing sound underneath the Pitiful Place got on his nerves. The huge white rat named Malachi was up to something. If he wasn’t chewing on the roof, he was chewing on the stilts. If he
wasn’t chewing on the ceiling, he was chewing on the floor.

A few days ago, Nigel caught Malachi scurrying up and down the fireplace chimney. “The Pitiful Place is mine to avenge. I will repay,” the crazy rodent ranted before it skittered out of sight. How many times had Axel told that rat to stay on the second floor, where he belonged?

“That Malachi is up to no good,” Nigel grumbled to Axel.

“He’s harmless,” Axel replied. “Ugly, maybe, but harmless.”

Nigel didn’t agree. Malachi was living proof of scientific experimentation gone haywire. Not only was Malachi’s body deformed, but his mind was demented. Bottom line: the rat was crazy. Why wouldn’t Axel listen?

Now, tiny stones sprayed Nigel’s body. “Wake up, Stump.”

It was Leftie. Flint was by his side.

Leftie’s hazel eyes sparked. “Axel is miffed you weren’t around this morning. He told us to round you up. He has an assignment for you.”

“Orders from headquarters,” said Flint. “Phase Two of the Scram Plan.”

A new assignment? Nigel already had two jobs: chief scavenger and night watchman! The other
cats, able-bodied, did nothing but eat and sleep—oh, and try to prove how tough they were, hoping that Briar would take notice.

What was Phase One of the Scram Plan? Oh, yeah, THAT.

Lately, the cat pack had been hunting small animals for sport, often not eating their prey. Animals new to the village were their target—easier to catch because they’d had less time to develop a network of secure hiding places and alternate escape routes.

Nigel had been excluded. Pack-hunting required speed; he couldn’t keep up with the others. But he also found it despicable. He didn’t like outsiders, but hunting for sport went against everything his mother had ever taught him.

Flint interrupted Nigel’s thoughts. “Still too much riffraff around this village.”

“Way too much,” Leftie agreed. “Right, Stump?”

Whiskers twitching, Nigel rose to his feet.

“Here’s what you gotta do,” said Flint.

Leftie and Flint might be setting him up. Nigel wasn’t sure that he trusted them anymore. “Shouldn’t I talk to Axel first?”

“Here’s the deal,” said Flint. “Hunting as a pack isn’t as much fun as it used to be.”

Leftie rolled his eyes and faked a yawn. “Yeah, been there, done that.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“It’s got everything to do with you,” snapped Flint. “Your job is to set up some… entertainment. Round up pairs of animals—pick two about the same size—and tell them to report to Axel pronto, or else. Axel tells them: ‘Either you fight each other, right here, right now, on the clubhouse floor, or you both go down.’ “

“We plan to start small,” Flint added. “Moles. Chipmunks. A couple of squirrels.”

“We take bets on who’s going to win.” Leftie grinned. “Humans have been doing it for years.”

“We pit them against one another?” Nigel’s stomach tightened. “Brother against brother? Sister against sister?”

“A fight to the finish,” Flint said proudly. “The winner finishes off the loser, and WE finish off the winner.”

“Great fun,” Leftie agreed. “Don’t you get it?”

Nigel felt a chill from the tips of his black ears to the white at the end of his tail. “I get it.”

“Start at the bottom of the barrel.”

“With who?” Nigel asked.

“The dull, the small, the weak, the stupid, the ugly, the deformed,” Flint clarified.

Leftie sneered. “Oh, and don’t forget the crippled.”

Nigel winced.

“Aw, Stump, Leftie didn’t mean it,” Flint said. “No, really, skip the crippled. Line up some of these outsiders—you know, the ones who are invading our village.”

Leftie stifled a chuckle. “The ones who are invading our shores.”

“Like Rat-Boy.” Flint snickered.

Leftie must have seen something like doubt cross Nigel’s face. Leftie’s eyes bored into him. “Unless you can’t handle it.”

Nigel looked off to the side. Sure, Nigel could handle it, but did he want to? Yeah, Nigel admitted, he’d hoped to encourage animals like Beau Fox and Rat-Boy to find new territory—you know, a couple of pranks, a little bullying, ridicule, that sort of thing—
that’s
what Nigel had in mind.

“After all, it
was
your idea,” Flint noted. “And, I might add, a big step up for you, Stumpy-Boy.”

Maybe Leftie was right. Maybe this was his big break. Do the job right, who knows where this might lead?

“Axel wants the fights to start soon,” Flint said.

Leftie swished his tail, impatiently waiting for an answer. “Well…?”

Ultimately, Nigel’s ego got the best of him. “No problem.” He smirked.

Heads up, tails upright, Leftie and Flint took off.

Now that Nigel saw a better future for himself within the pack, his spirits lifted.

Mole versus mole. Chipmunk versus chipmunk. Squirrel against squirrel.

It was just a game, wasn’t it?