Year of the Dog by Shelby Hearon Read Free Book Online

“I’ve had something of a shock. Perhaps you saw in the paper? Where the police it seems, not here at any rate, but in a large city, have had titanium teeth installed in their German shepherd attack dogs. Bert has been most upset—it’s quite got me out of my usual routine. Some other day, then?”
    â€œSure,” I said, “gosh, that’s awful.” And it made me wonder if Mr. Greenwood did really live with her or if they were just close and he came over when he got upset about something that might end up in one of his stories.
    So when, a couple of days later, the phone rang and it was James from the Dog Park I was really glad to hear from him.“Uh,” he said, so I knew right away it was him, “you want to come over and see my place, maybe? We could go eat or something? I mean sometime? This afternoon? You could bring your dog. If you want to.”
    And that made me feel grateful toward him, his knowing that my good puppy needed to have outings and see people, the same as I did. So I said, “Sure,” and got out my map.
    Burlington was shaped like a boomerang, opening out onto Lake Champlain, the north end of town curving around Appletree Bay, the south end around Burlington Bay, with five green and public parks scattered along the irregular length of the waterfront. The streets, as I knew from finding Aunt May’s house, were heavy on the names of trees—Linden, Oak, Cherry, Walnut, Aspen, Hawthorn, Maple, Tamarack, Chestnut, Butternut, Willow, Birch, Poplar, Elm, Hickory—most of which I still couldn’t identify.
    It felt good to be driving again, since I didn’t do that much up here, unless we were going to the park to play with other dogs, or I was going to the market I’d found that had free-range fresh chickens and Carolina peaches. I went South on Pine, and, after a ways, turned west on Butternut, which took me into a small industrial area that led to a neighborhood cut off from the rest of town by railroad tracks and by fields on either side. Going up a rise, I blinked to see the road appear to run right into the lake, with nothing, not even a fence, between me and the blue Adirondack across the water. And when I stopped the car to stare, no one honked at me, since there was not another car in sight.
    Turning onto Hackberry, I crawled along checking the house numbers on old two-story and one-story shingled homes, rundown, with patched roofs, small yards, porches blooming with planters and window boxes, all facing an empty grassy public playground with a slide and tire swing and a lot of space to play ball. It looked for all the world likea company town, like this was where factory workers had once lived a century ago, when this was a lumber port. I was thinking that I must be turned around, that maybe I headed the wrong way off Pine, when I saw James in the yard of a freshly-painted, robin’s-egg blue cottage.
    â€œHi,” I said, a little nervous, getting Beulah out on her loose leash and waiting with her at the curb. I’d brushed my hair straight, and worn my new red hoodie with a white tee and cropped white pants, and tried to fix up a bit. But I hadn’t been on a date, if that’s what this was, in what seemed like forever, and never on one with somebody I hadn’t known since grade school.
    â€œHey,” James said, giving Beulah a greeting and outstretched palm. “You found it.”
    â€œI didn’t know this area was here—.” Past his house, I could see a narrow yard, sloping to the lake, grown up in wild grass.
    â€œPete and I found it, or I did. On my bike. I’d started riding at the Dog Park and I followed the bike path to see where it went, over that wooden bridge, you know, past those condos and docks? Then I ended up here. Pete wanted the place in back, it used to be a garage. We fixed it up, did I say that? It took a lot of work.”
    He wiped his forehead, then smiled, as if he