Dancing Dogs (21 page)

Laura found several tender bruises and many smaller cuts and scrapes and scabs around his body. His stool didn’t look right to her. One of his eyes was running, and looked red.

And she was falling in love.

Max also seemed to be attaching himself to her, and reveling in the attention and care. She knew if she didn’t get to the mall parking lot by nine, she’d never be able to let him go. She also knew Max wasn’t safe with her, since he was stolen. If he were found with her, he might have to be returned.

At eight forty-five
P.M.
, she pulled into an empty parking spot in front of the Home Depot and got out of the car with Max. She didn’t know who she was looking for, so she stood in front of the car with the dog.

Just before nine
P.M.
, a red minivan pulled alongside Laura’s car, and a heavyset woman with curly brown hair stepped out and offered her hand. Laura heard barking from inside the van. The woman wore a blue sweatshirt with “Rescue: Be Good to Your Dog” stenciled on the back.

“I got this call this afternoon, and the timing was lucky. I was actually coming through from Florida up to New Jersey with a couple of pickups along the way. This is our boy?”

She leaned down and looked Max over, offering him her hand. She handed him a liver treat. She spent several minutes just talking to him and letting him get comfortable with her.

He looked at Laura curiously, but she could not bear to look him in the eyes.

The woman nodded. “I’ll take him.” Laura handed over Max’s leash. The woman said, “Come on, boy,” but he stopped and glanced back at Laura, who looked away.

Max disappeared around the other side of the van, and then the woman came back and collected his food and toys. Laura also gave her $100, which she accepted gratefully. “For gas and food,” she said, then asked what would become of Max.

“He’s already got two possible homes up in the Northeast. We’ll check them out of course, although we know one—it’s a farm, and they’ve taken dogs before and they’re wonderful.”

Before that, Max would spend a week at a volunteer veterinary clinic in Virginia, where he would have tests for worms and parasites. “If he’s been tethered on a farm,” she said, “he’s a good bet for heartworm. He’ll be evaluated to make sure there’s no aggression or behavioral problems. Then onto his permanent home. If you want, we can e-mail you how he’s doing.”

Laura nodded. She felt sick, partly because Max was leaving and she would surely never see him again, and partly because of what she’d done.

The woman said good-bye, then turned and got into the van.

Over the next few weeks, Laura got a half dozen e-mails. There were no return e-mail addresses, only different names.
Max had made it to Virginia and been tested. He had severe heartworm, and the procedure to cure him was nearly fatal, but he came out of a coma and was fully recovered. He had kidney problems, and multiple contusions and bruises. The wounds on his neck were infected, and he had gum disease too.

One month after she left Max in the parking lot, she got a postcard from Rochester, New York. Max was on the front, standing in front of a barn, looking happy and proud, and behind him were at least a dozen sheep.

The postcard had a short message. “Max is great. He thanks you.”

Laura knew without being told that this was the final message. She was delighted and relieved that Max was doing so well. But the burden of what she had done weighed heavily on her conscience. She still drove by the farm every day, and most days she couldn’t bear to look at the tree. When she did, she saw the chain was still hanging off it, the water bowl upside down a few yards away.

One evening, she found herself pulling into the farmhouse driveway. She turned off the ignition, took a deep breath, and then walked up to the front door and slammed the knocker three times.

After a few minutes, she heard a noise inside the house, and then the door opened. Silhouetted in the hallway light was a thin, tall, ruddy-faced man who looked to be in his early sixties. He was wearing boots, jeans, and an old work shirt that was stained with what appeared to be sweat and grease marks. He had one- or two-day-old stubble on his chin. His face was sad, tired. But the shock of white hair hanging over his forehead made him look both handsome and dignified, like an old western sheriff in a TV movie.

“Mr. Patterson. My name is Laura.”

The old man nodded. “Laura Passerby.”

She was startled.

“That’s what you said in your note.”

Now that she was standing there in front of him, she wasn’t sure what she had come to say.

“You stole my dog, didn’t you,” the farmer said rather than asked.

A chill wind whipped her jacket and blew her hair across her face. He looked at her closely, and then beckoned for her to step into the hallway, out of the wind.

“Yes, I did. I took him, sir,” she said, as she stepped inside. “He’s up in the Northeast, on a farm with sheep. He’s loved and happy.”

The farmer’s eyes blazed. “He’ll do well then. He knows how to work sheep,” the old man said. “He worked sheep here until last year.”

“Well, he was suffering. He had heartworm, and his neck was infected.”

The farmer just looked her. “I brought him in for a couple of days after I got your notes. He jumped out of the second-story window, and then through the screen on the kitchen window and banged himself up. You couldn’t ever leave him anywhere that he couldn’t get out of. Except that tree.”

Harold Patterson crossed his arms. “Listen, Laura Passerby. Max was my dog. He is a good boy. And I cared for him a good deal. The farm is up for sale. My wife passed two years ago. My boys won’t work on the farm, and I can’t make it work anymore. Tried long enough. The milk prices are so low I had to let the dairy cows go, and then I sold off the
sheep to pay the taxes—you see all the development around here. I’m the last to go. I’ve been cleaning up the fields so I can sell them, and I’m going to need all the money from the farm to pay off my loans and debts. I’m moving to South Carolina where my two boys live. Max was coming with me.”

This was not what she’d expected.

“I’ll own up to neglecting him a bit lately,” he said. “I’ve got some health issues myself now, and Max is clever and kept getting out of the house and running into the road. Was going to get himself killed. He kept chewing through the collars so I put out a chain to hold him. My grandfather tethered his dog, and so did my father. Just so he could be outside and not cooped up in the house, or running under the tractor wheels. I knew about the neck. I couldn’t do the vet bills right now—I can’t do the mortgage either. But I would have found a way to take care of him.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I was saving the dog. I still think so.”

The farmer stepped outside and motioned for her to follow. “Maybe you did save the dog. It probably was a good decision, Laura Passerby. It probably was. I appreciate your coming here. I was worried about Max. I called the police and told them the dog was missing. A neighbor got your license one morning when you were snooping around here. But I didn’t give it to them. I figured he probably went to a good place.”

She nodded.

“Max was well fed and loved and he slept on the foot of my bed every night of his life. He had shelter from the rain and cold, and until a year or so ago he had a lot of good work to do and he did it. Maybe you think I’m an evil man for
tying him up to that tree, and maybe I am. But maybe it’s just a way of life you don’t understand, and you have no right to judge it or to take my dog from me.”

Laura could see how embarrassed the farmer was over his inability to take care of his dog. Everyone she knew told her that she’d done the right thing. And maybe she had. But looking into this man’s eyes, it was hard to know for sure.

The farmer looked up at the sky, and then turned to her. The wind blew through the farm and the old house groaned and creaked.

“I’m glad he’s in a better place,” he said. “I am glad of that.” Then he started to turn back to the house. “I’ll say good-bye now. It took courage for you to come here, young lady. But don’t steal things anymore, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

S
TACY SIPPED FROM HER
D
UNKIN
’ D
ONUTS COFFEE CUP AND LOOKED
over at the mediator for some guidance. He was sipping his own coffee and sorting through some papers.

More than anything, she wanted to get out of there. She hated this room, a spare, empty conference room with bare white walls and two small windows looking out over an enormous mall parking lot. There was an anemic pale cactus in the middle of the table. Why would you have a cactus in a conference room in Sandusky, Ohio?

There were two photographs on the walls, a stock shot of some horses in a field from the Saratoga racetrack in upstate New York (about as relevant to Sandusky as cactus), and a shot of one of the roller coasters from the nearby Cedar Point Amusement Park, where Stacy had worked part-time the summer she was sixteen, and where she had met Jamie, the bored, sad-looking young man sitting across from her, staring out the window.

The first two mediation sessions had been awful—tears, yelling, fury. Then, in the third, things settled down and they finally reached an agreement. Until Jamie broke it.

The end of her twelve-year marriage deserved a better room, she thought. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just right.

Jamie, her soon-to-be ex, was yawning. He seemed distracted, eager to go home. He told the lawyer that his hours had been cut back at the Lobster Den and he was looking to sell his truck and find a cheaper apartment. Maybe even move the hell out of Ohio and go south where there might be some work. In the meantime, he had no money for Stacy.

Jamie was allergic to jobs. And he would never move, Stacy knew, especially as long as his mother was alive and getting her pension from GM.

The mediator collected his papers and handed them to her. He told her again that she didn’t have to forgive the nine grand, that a judge would make him pay her the money. She didn’t care. She just wanted to be free of him. She signed the papers.

Stacy looked at her watch. She had just thirty minutes to get back to the nursing home and her job as a physical-therapy aide, helping the disabled elderly recover from and deal with strokes, accidents, surgeries, their own failing bodies. She loved the job, loved the feeling of really helping people, even if the ending was always the same. It was a lot of loss and suffering for $9 an hour, the same money her friend Sandra made working the fries boiler at McDonald’s. People in America obviously care a lot more about their fast food than their sick old people.

Back in her car, alone, she felt a flash of rage at Jamie. He’d been to Florida twice with his new girlfriend, gotten that new truck, a big flat-screen TV. And here she was living
month to month, close to maxing out her credit card, looking for a part-time weekend job. He didn’t give a shit. She saw now that he never had.

Maybe she would never have another relationship. Maybe she was destined to not have a family, never be a mother. Jamie wasn’t the only jerk she had encountered. Since they’d separated, there had been a whole string of them. One dumped her, and she dumped two. The one she liked had turned out to be gay. Sitting in the car, she resolved that she was over men, and a profound sense of loneliness swept over her.

S
TACY LATER SAID
an invisible hand had taken control of her.

She found herself driving south on Route 9. Her job was in the opposite direction. So was her apartment. There was nothing in this direction but the new county prison and the Northern Ohio Animal Rescue League.

Stacy speed-dialed her boss and left a message saying she was tied up at the doctor’s office and would be a half hour late.

She walked into the main lobby of the shelter and signed in at the visitors’ desk. It was not the first time she’d been there. Several years earlier, she’d come by to get a puppy to surprise Jamie, but he wasn’t interested in taking care of a dog, he said, and claimed he was allergic to animals with fur. She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t think it was fair to the puppy to keep him, so she returned the dog. One other time, she’d come by just to look at the dogs and cats up for adoption, but she hadn’t even tried to bring one home.

“I’m here to look at the dogs up for adoption,” she said, once inside the lobby, and the woman smiled and handed
her a form to fill out. The county wasn’t as touchy or demanding as some of the private rescue groups. They had a lot of dogs coming through there, and they had to put a lot of them down. There weren’t any home inspections.

Stacy was ushered into the back by a staffer named Judith and a volunteer named Marge and shown into the “Get Acquainted room” where people and dogs got to meet and check each other out. There were seven new dogs in the kennel. Two seemed to be lost pets—a black Lab and a poodle—and there would be a thirty-day hold on them in case their owners came looking for them, which was often the case with purebred, well-cared-for dogs. Another, a sad-eyed Boston terrier, was found in an apartment with his owner who had been dead for several days.

A Rottweiler and a mixed-breed were still in quarantine until their health and temperament could be evaluated. The sixth was a terrier who had been injured—hit by a car or motorcyle, they thought, and brought in by the police. They weren’t sure he would make it.

“And the seventh?” Stacy asked. Judith and Marge looked at each other.

“That’s Dolly.” Marge paused. “She’s a big dog. A Rottweiler-pit mix, we think.”

Stacy waited.

Judith looked at her paperwork. “She’s a powerful dog and somewhat intimidating.”

Stacy smiled. “That’s a good start,” she said. “What’s the downside?”

Judith smiled. “Nothing that we’ve seen. She’s housebroken, easy with people, a real sweetie.”

“Is she really housebroken?”

“Yes,” said Marge, looking through her notes. “She’s
well-trained, knows basic obedience commands, and is very healthy and strong.” She added: “We don’t want her to just go anyplace. Whoever adopts her has to understand the situation.”