Work Text:
“Darlin’, it is a possum. A little bald possum whose had a bad damn day. Or, well, I hope to Christ that it is a possum. Because it ain’t a dog. I had a dog, he was a good damn dog, his name was Chip. If the thing you found by the side'a the road was a dog, I might walk him. What the hell. S'only four in the morning, I was gonna get up an’ go for a run in another three hours anyway. Be nice to go for a run with a dog. Dogs’re nice, I’m wild about dogs. But it ain’t a dog. An’ it hates me.”
“He can’t help that he needs looking after.” She glared at him. She was feeding the thing milk from a bottle, like it was a baby. Terrifyingly, if he’d had to say whether it was closer to a dog or a baby, right at the moment he would have had to say baby. She was going to get rabies. Oh, Jesus, and then she’d bite him and he’d get rabies and they’d both need to be taken out behind a barn and shot. Like Chip. He had been damn lucky not to be bitten by Chip, his ma had had to shoot Chip, and it’d been probably the worst thing that had ever happened. “Poor Raffles. I don’t think he could walk very far anyway.”
“Oh my god, you named it. You ain’t supposed to name ‘em, that means you’re attached.” Scout paused. “And that is a terrible name.”
“Do you want to sleep in the yard?”
“Are you gonna keep that thing in here?” he countered, on the backfoot, losing already anyway. “What the hell, gimme my pillow, yeah I’ll sleep in the damn yard. I’ll see you an' your screwed up mystery rodent in the morning.”
She had a way of looking at him, when she was mad but knew she was wrong. And she wasn’t mad at him, but mad about being wrong. “Well, I don’t think he’s going to make it 'til morning. I thought it would be nice if he got to have a name.” A little catch in her voice now. “I didn’t think he’d want to spend the last little while in here.”
Aw, god. “…well. I’d like it if we called him Chip. And I guess--well, if it's that important to you...I guess all three of us'll go sit in the yard.”
They sat together for a long time, after the poor little thing had died. The sun came up, took some of the chill out of the air. Miss Pauling sniffled, rubbed her eyes, coughed. “If we got a dog, we could call him Chip.”
Scout cleared his throat, pretended his nose was just running from the cold. “Nah. I think Chip’d be a tough act to follow.”