The Dog That Whispered by Jim Kraus Read Free Book Online Page B

crushing two packets of unsalted saltines into her soup. “And Thurman wouldn’t lie.”

    In a daze, Hazel waved as her last two customers left the garage sale, driving slowly, not taking chances with their new twenty-dollar desk. On autopilot, she pulled the GARAGE SALE sign from the parkway in front of the house and wandered, as if she had no specific destination in mind, to one end of the block and then the other, retrieving two other signs.
    Once back in the garage, she let the signs clatter to the concrete floor. She took her foldable chair and unfolded it, poured out another cup of coffee from her thermos, and sat with a world-weary sigh, holding the coffee in her left hand and the old photograph in her right.
    The brass key, which she assumed was for a safe-deposit box, was in the right front pocket of her jeans. She could feel the jagged edge against her thigh.
    She sipped at the coffee. It was no longer hot, but drinkable.
    She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and stared at the picture. The participants had not changed. Her mother was still there, looking very young, very angelic, and very hopeful. The soldier was still there, at her side, a little more distance between them than would be normal for most brides and grooms, but perhaps it was snapped just before they hugged.
    Or something like that.
    The soldier, whom Hazel assumed was in a uniform of the U.S. Army, remained enigmatic. Not happy. Not sad.
    Troubled, maybe.
    And her mother’s handwriting. Definitely her mother’s script.
    Our Wedding .
    A car slowly rolled past, perhaps looking for garage-sale leftovers to scavenge. There were none, none that Hazel wanted to deal with at this moment, so she did not look up.
    Looking up would have been an invitation of sorts, and Hazel wanted no one to intrude on this odd, disjointed moment.
    She stared at the photo.
    “She was never married. That’s what she told me,” she said aloud.
    She tilted her head and squinted, hoping the picture would reveal something to her, something hidden, something carefully placed out of view.
    It did not.
    “She said that I was born and that event was the result of a short affair,” Hazel said. “She always claimed that she did not know where my father went or where he might be. She wasn’t even positive of his last name.”
    She felt a tightness in her throat.
    “‘It was the seventies, dear,’ she’d said. ‘Things like that happened,’ she’d said. ‘I’m not proud of it,’ she’d said. ‘But it happened,’ she’d said. ‘And I had to deal with it,’ she’d said.”
    Hazel looked over the photo to the first reds of sunset.
    “She never once mentioned a wedding. Never. Not once.”

Chapter Nine
    W ILSON TOOK confident steps to the end of the walk. Then he stopped, and Thurman stopped. And then the dog sat and looked up at Wilson, as if trying to determine what rhythm a walk with this person might take.
    Thurman had walked with Gretna, and with her he’d paced so slowly that he could have navigated his way with eyes shut. In fact, he had tried that once, walking to the end of the block, trying to guess when they were close to the curb by the sound of traffic, judging the distance using Gretna’s shuffled steps as a measuring rod.
    Thurman had come close that day to counting it out exactly, opening his eyes only two small shuffle steps from the curb on Wilkins Avenue.
    But with this person, Thurman did not possess the same manner of assuredness.
    Wilson stopped. He looked both ways several times. He then looked down at Thurman and shrugged his shoulders.
    “I suspect it doesn’t matter which way we go, does it?”
    Thurman growled in response, not being able to shrug like a person, but almost saying that he wished he could. It often seemed like the most fitting gesture in certain circumstances, situations where there was no right or wrong but only equally vague choices.
    Wilson turned left, heading away from the house, heading