Penny (2 page)

I settled down to read the previous day's
New York Times
. It comes by rural mail delivery around noon, gets a quick front-page glance and is left till the next morning for a real reading. News is news, I say, until I have heard or read it. I was back to the first sports page when the dog demanded further attention. She whined, and when that got no results she barked discreetly. Finally she barked insistently, and I let her into the kitchen and told her to shut up. She did shut up, but her spirits weren't so easily dampened. She frisked and pranced and did her best to entertain me. I wasn't in need of entertainment at that time of day and told her so rather firmly. She stopped prancing, and I returned to the library and my newspaper. She evidently explored the living room, found nothing there to amuse or entertain and finally came and lay down at my feet under the library table. What she wanted, apparently, was human company, and I couldn't begrudge her that. She lay quietly and I read my newspaper.

When Barbara came downstairs soon after six she got an even more eager welcome than I had. The dog danced on her hind legs, pawing at Barbara with those big forefeet. She had to be scolded down. “No! Not in this house. No! We don't like dogs who jump on people!” The dog seemed to understand. She stopped jumping and began playing cat—she rubbed Barbara's ankles, then slapped her legs with her tail,
whack-whack-whack
, until Barbara stopped
that
. And the dog sat down with a baffled, forlorn look, so sad that Barbara laughed at her. The laughter only inspired more prancing, though at a little distance, and a series of barks. Her voice was surprisingly low in pitch and full in volume, the bark of a dog twice as big. So that was one reason for that deep, broad chest—big lungs for a lot of voice.

She got another breakfast. Barbara fed her corn flakes before I knew she was doing it, and the dog lapped them up. Then she was put outdoors. She wallowed in the snow, shook herself and went out into the road. Then she vanished. I thought she was really gone this time, but half an hour later there she was at the door, whining to be let in.

As soon as it was a decent country hour to call people, eight-thirty around here, we began phoning again. I called my friend Morris, a fox hunter and hound-dog man who knows every dog for miles around. No, Morris said, he didn't know of anyone with a basset. Oh, wait a minute. A man over near Norfolk used to have one, but that was five or six years ago and the dog was an old dog then. No, he didn't know anyone with a young basset. Then he said, with a chuckle, “Maybe you've got yourself a rabbit hound again.” He has been at me for five years to get another hound.

Barbara called the dog warden in the next village to the east, but he had no record of a missing basset. Then she called the postmaster in Ashley Falls, just over the line in Massachusetts. Christine is a personal friend, and she knows everybody in that area. Finally Barbara said, “Say that again.” She listened, then she laughed, and she turned to me and said, “Try calling her Hannah.”

“Calling who Hannah?”

“The dog!”

I tried. “Here, Hannah. Come, Hannah. Hannah, Hannah!” No response whatever.

Barbara said to Christine, “She doesn't seem to respond at all. Thanks anyway. 'Bye.” And she turned to me. “Are you sure she doesn't know the name Hannah?”

“You try,” I said.

Barbara tried. No reaction except a polite show of attention. Then I said, “Mary!” and the dog looked at me. I said, “Jane!” and got exactly the same response. Barbara said, “Hannah!” again, and we knew it was no use. Then Barbara told me about Hannah.

“The folks who live in the old Hardy place used to have a basset, but she wouldn't stay home. So they gave her to the cleaning woman who worked for them. She lives away over on Clayton Road, but the dog comes back to the Hardy place now and then, and of course that's only about three miles up the road from here. And,” she finished the recital, “that dog is named Hannah.”

“Good try,” I said. “But I don't think we've got Hannah. Do you?”

“No.”

Back to the phone. Barbara called all the neighbors. Nobody had—or knew anybody who had—a basset. But one neighbor said he had heard a missing-dog report on the Barrington radio that morning. A black and tan she-dog, as he called her, named Susie. We tried Susie on the dog in our living room. She wasn't Susie either, or if she was she wasn't admitting it.

So Barbara called the Barrington radio station, but the girl who answered said the missing-dog announcer had left the studio, she didn't know when he would be back and she didn't have his phone number. She was very sorry not to be of more assistance.

Then I took over, called the Barrington police department and got a sergeant there who evidently read my books. He listened to my questions, said, “Nope, no lost dogs of any breed. You've got a basset, they're a good dog. Keep her. Maybe you've got a dog to take old Pat's place.” And that was that.

By then it was midmorning, and the dog decided she wanted to go out again. I opened the front door; she went out onto the front porch and stood there nosing the air. She went down the front steps, down the front walk, turned and looked at the house, then trotted up the road. We waited half an hour, but she didn't come back. Finally we got lunch and ate, and still there was no sign of the dog. Midafternoon and we went for a walk, up the road that winds beside the river. No sign of the basset, either on the road or at the house when we returned.

“Well,” Barbara said, “I guess that is that. Just a transient who stopped in for a meal and a bed and didn't even say thank you.”

“Easy come,” I said, “easy go.”

“All I wish,” Barbara said, “is that we'd been able to find her owner. Somebody loves her. She has a home somewhere. I hate to see a nice dog like that, just go off like a common tramp dog. I'll bet some child is out looking for her right this minute.”

“Yeah. Some child up in New Hampshire, probably. Or Canada. Nobody around here seems to have heard of her. She's a real wanderer, a
far
wanderer, that dog.”

“She was well behaved. Somebody taught her manners.”

We spent most of the evening listening for her at the door, though neither of us would have admitted it if we had been asked. But she evidently had gone her own way, and we didn't regret her going. We agreed on that, to each other. We weren't going to have another Pat on our hands.

Two

Pat adopted us the first winter we lived here, almost twenty years ago. He and another dog simply arrived, total strangers to the area, and after a trial period—we, not the dogs, were on trial—they settled down to stay. Eventually we had to give the other dog away; he was a mischief-maker and a deer-chaser. But Pat stayed on, became a part of the family and, eventually, canine king of the valley. We never learned where he came from or what were his antecedents, but he apparently was a beagle-foxhound cross. He was the best rabbit dog anywhere around. He was a demon woodchuck hunter. He was in every sense an individual, a character. Eventually I wrote a book about him,
The Dog Who Came to Stay
, and Pat became a minor celebrity. Letters came for him and about him from all over this country and Europe. Mail meant nothing to him, of course, but visitors did, and readers from halfway across the continent came past just to see him. Pat became an absolute ham, lying on the front steps, waiting for the inevitable car to come drifting past. If someone shouted, “There he is! There's Pat!” he would look up and preen. If the car stopped he would stand up and pose. If someone produced a camera he would even strut down toward the car and allow his picture to be taken.

We never knew just how old he was, but we guessed he was at least twelve, maybe fourteen, when his book was published. He lived another year and a half, wearing his age like a badge, gray around the face, stiff in all the joints every morning, but never admitting, if he ever knew, that he was an old dog. Active till the end, he died peacefully, and we knew what a privilege it had been to know him. But we had no intention of ever having another dog. Our lives involve occasional trips, usually on business, and Pat hated to be left behind, disliked even the best of kennel keepers. Besides, we didn't think it would be fair either to us or to another dog to compare the new dog with Pat, as we inevitably would. So we said a firm no to those who insisted we must get a dog to replace Pat. But it took some time to make our friends and quite a few friendly but unknown readers accept our decision and stop urging very special puppies on us.

That is why we were not really disappointed when the basset walked off and left us without so much as a farewell. We didn't want to become involved simply by doing a good turn for a lost dog.

She left us on a Friday. Saturday was bright and sunny, and the snow in our dooryard began to melt, at last. I went for a long walk, looking for migrant birds, and didn't see one. It was still too wintery, too cold and too much snow, for the robins or even the redwings to arrive. Sunday was sunny too, and we drove past Twin Lakes and down to Lake Wononscopomuc, where we have a small camp. But the ice hadn't even begun to break up on the lakes. It would be another two months, six weeks at least, before I could put my boat in the water. Monday we went to Pittsfield and were caught in snow flurries. Winter just wouldn't let go. Tuesday was warm again, and for the first time since December the ice began to break up on the river. A channel of open water had cleared by early afternoon. The next day was Barbara's birthday, so when I went to the village to have the car greased that morning I bought a toy stuffed dog as a gag present for her. It wasn't a basset, but it did have long, floppy ears and I thought it would give her a laugh. Soon after I got home the florist delivered the bunch of violets she always gets from me, and I decided to add the laughs ahead of time. I gave her the toy dog. She was properly amused, said it was more welcome than its live counterpart because it didn't have to be fed and it never would bark in the night. “This is exactly the kind of dog I wanted.”

That afternoon we went for a walk up the road beside the river and found the first signs of spring—the red osiers were blood red, the riverbank willows were quickening, their withes almost amber in color, and the buds on the shadbush were very fat, getting ready to burst into foamy white blossoms. We walked, and we talked of spring, of bluets and anemones, and of scallions and dandelion greens. We came back down the road, home. And here, sitting on the front steps just as though she belonged here, was the basset. Waiting for us. Expecting us to return and welcome her with open arms. She stood up as we started up the walk, wagged her tail slowly, confidently, watched us with that “Here I am, you lucky people” look again. And Barbara exlaimed, “Well, look who's here!” And then, “She came back for my birthday!”

The dog greeted us with happy but restrained little barks, danced but remembered not to leap at Barbara, and was at the door before we were. She came in ahead of us, romped through the living room and into the kitchen, where she waited expectantly at the refrigerator. Barbara warmed milk, gave her a bowl of corn flakes. While the dog was gulping that down Barbara decided it was meager fare and certainly not in keeping with a birthday, so she opened a can of corned beef hash. That, the dog made it quite clear, was more like living. That was something that would stick to the ribs. She finished the corned beef hash and clearly indicated that she could eat another can of it, maybe two more. But Barbara, the commissary department, decided that one was plenty.

When she had eaten, I put the dog outdoors. She was back within five minutes, ready for more food. She didn't get it and went to the living room, to her chosen place beneath the bench. She made it quite clear that she felt she had come home. We left her there and went to the library and started a game of Scrabble. Within fifteen minutes, here came the dog, obviously wanting to be with people. She looked things over and lay down beside Barbara's chair. Five minutes and Barbara sniffed and asked, “What smells?” I couldn't smell anything special. But she sniffed again and announced, “It's the dog. She gets a bath tomorrow.” And she sent the dog back to the living room and closed the door.

Suppertime came and, to my surprise, the dog stayed in the living room. No nosing around the kitchen begging for a snack while Barbara was cooking, and no begging at the table while we ate. I chalked up a couple of good-conduct marks for her.

After supper Barbara phoned Morris, told him the dog had come back and asked what he knew about bassets. Even from where I sat I could hear his laugh. Barbara hung up and said, “He's coming over. He wants to see her.”

When Morris arrived the dog looked up at the sound of his car in the driveway. When he slammed the car door she got up and was all attention. When he came up onto the porch she barked, a remarkably deep, thoroughly challenging bark. Morris came in and she was there in the hallway, demanding to know who he was and why he was intruding. He laughed at her and I said, “It's all right. He's a friend,” and she calmed down.

“Hey,” Morris said, “you've got yourselves a watchdog. As well as a rabbit hound!”

We went into the living room and the dog went to Morris, sniffed. She smelled dog on him, his own foxhound, Lady. He squatted down and rubbed her ears, let her put her forefeet on his knee, inspected her broad chest, her short, stocky legs, her big feet. “Nice dog,” he announced. He ran his hand over her sleek skin and felt something in her right flank. I looked and saw that the hair was shorter there, and when he parted the hair there was a scar and the mark of several stitches. She had had a gash several inches long, and somebody had thought enough of her to take her to a vet and have the wound taken care of properly. Morris examined it and said, “I wonder if Dr. Vince did this job. I'm going to find out.” He went to the phone and called his neighbor in the village, a veterinarian, but there was no answer. Dr. Vince was out. I said we would call him in the morning, and we went back to the living room and talked dogs for another half hour. Morris agreed that the basset was probably pedigreed, certainly of excellent blood, and was young enough to train as a rabbit dog. “You won't even have to train her,” he said. “Just take her up on the mountain and let her go. She'll put up a rabbit and away she'll go. Second nature to a basset.”