Work Text:
Cindy walked alone beneath the heavy green shade of the maples, keeping to the firmer edge of the lane where the wheels of passing automobiles hadn’t ground the dry earth into powder. The afternoon heat had settled over Geneva without much wind to move it. Leaves hung almost still above her, turning their pale undersides only when a faint breath came across the open lots. Cicadas had begun their rough, steady calling from the trees, and somewhere behind a row of houses a woman shook a rug over a porch railing, sending a brown cloud into the sunlight.
The bundle under Cindy’s arm was wrapped in butcher paper and tied twice with string. She carried it carefully, one forearm pressed beneath it and her free hand resting over the top. Her mother had told her not to let the paper tear and not to stop anywhere unless she had to. The rice flour inside had come through a man in Cleveland who knew another man with access to things that didn’t often appear on the shelves in Geneva. It wasn’t much, but it had been waited for, paid for, and spoken about all week.
Cindy’s glasses had begun slipping down her nose in the heat. She pushed them back with one finger without shifting the bundle. Sweat had gathered beneath the frames and at the back of her collar, where her dark hair, pinned neatly before she left home, had begun to loosen in small damp wisps.
She had nearly reached the next crossing when something struck the road behind her with a skitter of claws.
Cindy stopped.
There came another scrape, then a quick thudding rush that was too irregular for a bicycle and too light for a horse. She turned carefully, keeping the bundle against her side.
A dog was bounding toward her.
He was large enough to make her hold still and young enough to have no idea what to do with the size of himself. His long legs seemed to land wherever they pleased, his ears flying back from his head as he ran. A narrow leather lead trailed behind him, jumping over the dust and catching briefly around a tuft of roadside grass before snapping free. He had his mouth open, tongue hanging to one side, and his whole face carried the bright, heedless interest of an animal who had discovered a new thing and meant to reach it before the world interfered.
Cindy glanced beyond him. The lane was empty except for a pale shape farther back near an open gate, then a girl hurrying into view.
The dog came on.
Cindy took one step toward the grass, not running, only putting a little space between herself and the middle of the lane. Her mother’s warnings rose together in her mind: strange dogs, loose dogs, dogs that might knock her down, dogs that might put their mouths on the paper parcel. The animal didn’t growl. He didn’t lower his head or fix his eyes on her in any threatening way. He seemed delighted simply because she was there.
When he was only several yards away, Cindy shifted the bundle more securely beneath her arm and lowered herself into a cautious crouch. She kept her body turned a little sideways and held out her free hand, palm down.
“Easy,” she said.
The dog’s front feet struck the dust together. His hindquarters nearly passed them before he recovered. He stumbled, came upright, and stopped in front of her with his ears swaying.
Cindy didn’t reach for him. She let her hand remain where it was.
The dog stretched his neck and sniffed her fingers. His nose was cool and wet. He drew another breath, then glanced with immediate interest at the paper bundle beneath her other arm.
“No,” Cindy told him gently. “That isn’t yours.”
His tail began to swing so hard that his rear feet shifted with it. He took one hopeful step toward the parcel.
Cindy moved it behind her shoulder. “You’re making trouble.”
At the sound of her voice, the dog looked directly into her face. His ears lifted as far as their soft weight allowed. Then, with no command given, he sat.
The motion was so sudden that his haunches struck the earth with a small puff of dust. He sat crookedly, one front paw farther forward than the other, his chest rising and falling from the run. His tail continued sweeping the road behind him.
Cindy’s mouth softened. She lowered her hand until her fingertips touched the short fur between his eyes.
“There,” she murmured. “That’s better.”
He leaned into her touch at once. There was no reserve in it. His head came beneath her palm as though her hand had always belonged there, and his eyes narrowed with pleasure. Cindy scratched carefully along the side of his face. His fur was warm from the sun. One of his long ears slipped over her knuckles.
The girl behind him called his name.
“Bart!”
The dog’s head came up. He looked over one shoulder, tail still moving, and then looked back at Cindy. Whatever choice he believed he had been given, he appeared to make it in Cindy’s favour.
“Bart, come here!”
The voice was closer now, breathless but not angry. Cindy rose from her crouch and reached for the trailing lead before the dog could decide to run again. She put one shoe lightly over it, then bent and gathered the leather into her fingers.
Bart stood, shook himself from nose to tail, and circled Cindy once. The lead passed behind her ankles. She stepped over it, still guarding the parcel, and turned as the other girl reached them.
She was very small. That was Cindy’s first clear thought, because the voice and the hurried stride had made her expect somebody larger. The girl’s bright blonde hair had been drawn back, though most of it was working loose now. A braid lay over one shoulder, untidy at its end, and fine strands clung to her flushed cheeks and forehead. She wore a light cotton blouse tucked into a plain skirt, both serviceable and carefully mended. Dust marked her shoes and the hem near one knee.
She stopped beside Bart and bent forward with her hands resting briefly above her knees, trying to bring her breathing under control.
“Thank you,” she managed. “I didn’t fasten the gate right.”
Bart pushed his muzzle against her arm. The girl straightened and placed one hand firmly on his collar before taking the lead from Cindy.
“He found the loose place and shoved until it opened,” she said. Her voice was high and soft, made thinner by the run. “I thought I’d got it shut.”
Cindy looked back along the lane. The open gate stood some distance away between a low hedge and a weathered fence. Beyond it, a second dog had appeared. This one hadn’t followed the runaway’s course directly. She was coming along at an even pace, stopping now and then to look toward the houses before continuing.
“He didn’t go far,” Cindy said.
“He went far enough.”
The girl crouched beside Bart and checked his collar with both hands. There was no sharpness in the movement. She ran her fingers beneath the leather, making sure it hadn’t twisted or tightened during his flight, then looked over his legs and paws. Bart tried to lick her chin. She turned her face aside and received the kiss against her cheek instead.
“You’re all right,” she said. “You scared me, though.”
Bart panted happily.
The girl looked up at Cindy. Her eyes were clear blue beneath pale brows, and her face was still pink from running. “He thinks being chased is a game.”
“I thought he might run past me.”
“He usually notices everything.”
Bart had returned his attention to the paper bundle. His nose worked earnestly as he leaned toward it.
The girl drew him back. “That doesn’t mean everything belongs to you.”
“It’s rice flour,” Cindy said.
Bart looked at her as if this confirmed his interest.
The blonde girl’s hand rested over his chest. “He doesn’t know what that is.”
“He’d eat it anyhow.”
“He tried to eat a piece of soap yesterday.”
Cindy glanced down at Bart. There was nothing in his open, cheerful face to suggest he regretted the attempt. A small laugh escaped her before she could decide whether to let it. She lowered her chin, but the sound had already reached the other girl.
The blonde girl smiled, not broadly and not as though she had won anything from Cindy. She merely looked pleased that Bart had done some good while causing trouble.
“He didn’t get much of it,” she said. “Mama caught him.”
“Did it make him sick?”
“No. He carried it under the table and licked it twice. Then he sneezed and left it there.”
Cindy’s laugh came again, a little more freely. Bart wagged at the sound and stepped toward her, tugging the lead through the girl’s hands. She shortened it without yanking.
“He likes you,” she said.
“He doesn’t know me.”
“He didn’t know the mailman either. He liked him right off.”
Cindy studied Bart’s face. “Does he like everybody?”
“Most everybody. He barked at a washtub this morning.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It was upside down.”
Cindy touched the bridge of her glasses. “Maybe he thought it shouldn’t be.”
The blonde girl considered the suggestion with complete seriousness. “That might’ve been it.”
Bart had begun pawing lightly at the earth. Each scrape sent dust over the toe of the girl’s shoe. She moved her foot, and he followed it as if the shoe itself had invited him to play.
The second dog reached them without announcing herself. Cindy noticed her first as a patch of moving grey beside the hedge, then as a quiet form coming into the lane. She was smaller than Bart, though more settled in her body, with thick fur in mixed shades of blue-grey, silver, white and faint brown. Where Bart’s ears and feet seemed to act before the rest of him, everything about this dog moved together. She crossed the final stretch slowly and stopped beside the blonde girl.
“There you are,” the girl said.
The grey dog looked at Bart, then at the trailing portion of his lead, then up at the girl. She pressed her shoulder lightly against the girl’s leg.
“She didn’t run,” Cindy said.
“No. Nicola stays near me.”
The name was spoken carefully, with the small emphasis of something recently chosen and still cherished. Nicola’s ears shifted at the sound. She didn’t wag as Bart did. She remained close against the girl’s leg and watched Cindy.
Cindy looked from one dog to the other. “They’re very different.”
“They are.” The girl slipped her hand over Nicola’s head. “Bart gets someplace first and wonders about it after. Nicola thinks before she moves.”
Bart had become interested in a beetle making its way across the road. He lowered his nose until it nearly touched the insect, following its slow progress with the intense concentration of a scientist. When the beetle opened its wings, Bart sprang backward, startled, then lunged after it as it flew into the weeds.
The lead tightened.
The girl caught it in both hands and dug her heels into the dust. Bart reached the grass but no farther. Nicola stepped aside before he could blunder into her.
“Bart,” the girl said, drawing him back. “Leave it be.”
He came reluctantly, turning his head several times toward the place where the beetle had vanished. The girl wound the lead once around her wrist and kept him nearer.
Cindy shifted the parcel under her arm. She ought to continue home. The flour had been gone after carefully, and her mother would notice each passing minute. Yet the lane remained empty, the sun warm across the grass, and neither the girl nor the dogs had begun to leave.
“I’m Cindy,” she said.
The blonde girl’s expression changed only a little, but her attention settled fully on Cindy. “I’m Jennifer.”
Cindy had heard the name in town before, though she couldn’t place where. Geneva wasn’t large, and faces usually came with family names, streets, churches or schoolrooms attached to them. Jennifer appeared near enough to Cindy’s own age that they might have shared a classroom. Cindy looked at the bright hair, the slight shoulders and the careful repairs in her clothes, trying to remember a desk, a corridor, a school gathering, any place where she might have seen her.
Nothing came.
“Do you live near here?” Cindy asked.
Jennifer turned and pointed back toward the gate. “That’s our house there. The pale green one behind the trees.”
Cindy had passed it before. She knew the porch and the narrow garden beside it, though she hadn’t known who lived there.
“My house is past the Methodist church,” Cindy said. “Then down the road on the other side.”
“I know where that is.”
“You do?”
“I go by there when Mama sends me for thread.”
Cindy nodded. The shops Jennifer would visit lay beyond the turn near Cindy’s street. They might have passed one another without noticing, though Cindy didn’t think so. Jennifer was too small, too fair and too distinct to disappear easily into a line of other girls.
“Which school do you go to?” Cindy asked.
Jennifer glanced down at Bart as he nosed the edge of her skirt. “I don’t.”
Cindy waited, wondering whether she had misunderstood.
“Mama and Papa teach me at home,” Jennifer added. She said it plainly, without lowering her voice or preparing to defend it. “We do lessons in the morning unless there’s work that has to be finished first.”
“Oh.”
The answer fitted into the blank place at once. Cindy pushed her glasses up again, looking toward the open gate and the house beyond it. She could imagine a kitchen table with books laid over one end and someone’s sewing occupying the other. There was no reason to ask more. Jennifer had answered what Cindy wanted to know.
“My school’s a couple towns over,” Cindy said. “I ride there.”
“Is it a long ride?”
“It feels longer in winter.”
“I expect it would.”
“The windows don’t close all the way on the bus.”
Jennifer’s face showed quiet sympathy. “That must be cold.”
“It is. We keep our coats on.”
Bart suddenly sat on Jennifer’s shoe. She looked down, but didn’t move him. He tipped his head back to see her and opened his mouth in a broad pant.
“Have you had them long?” Cindy asked.
“Only some weeks.”
“Both at once?”
Jennifer nodded. Her fingers moved through Nicola’s thick ruff while Bart remained planted over her toes. “They were together at the shelter. Not born together, but they stayed together there. Bart noticed me first. Then he wouldn’t leave Nicola behind.”
Cindy looked at the dogs again. She could see the shape of it without needing further explanation. Bart’s restless body had settled only because Jennifer held his lead, while Nicola stood close enough for her fur to brush Jennifer’s skirt. Bart might have run alone, but Nicola had come after him with the certainty that the place to return to was wherever Jennifer happened to be.
“Did you choose their names?” Cindy asked.
“Yes.”
“Why Bart?”
Jennifer glanced at her, seeming to consider how much answer the question needed. “He was called Charlie at the shelter. Bart suits him better.”
Bart’s tail struck the ground at the sound of his name.
“And Nicola?”
“She was Rue before.” Jennifer bent slightly and stroked the white mark along Nicola’s muzzle. “Nicola suits her.”
Cindy suspected there was more in the names, but Jennifer didn’t offer it, and Cindy didn’t press. She knew what it was to have a name that required more care than strangers usually gave it. Some names were for answering quickly. Others belonged closer to the house.
“Nicola’s beautiful,” Cindy said.
Jennifer’s face warmed. “She is.”
Nicola looked toward Cindy at the sound of her name, her amber eyes steady behind the veil of grey fur around her face. Cindy had seen dogs that wriggled and begged, dogs that barked from porches until their throats grew rough, dogs that strained against chains in bare yards. Nicola did none of those things. She watched.
Cindy lowered the parcel from beneath her arm and held it with both hands in front of her, easing the pressure from her elbow. The flour shifted softly inside its paper.
Bart rose from Jennifer’s shoe and approached again. His nose touched one corner of the package.
“No,” Cindy said, moving it aside.
Jennifer pulled gently on his lead. “Come away from there.”
“He’s only smelling.”
“He’ll put his teeth through the paper if I let him.”
Cindy believed it. Bart’s nose followed the bundle even while his body was guided back. Jennifer placed herself between him and the parcel, one hand on his shoulder.
“He hasn’t learned much yet,” Jennifer said. “He knows sit sometimes.”
“He sat for me.”
Jennifer looked up. “Did he?”
“I didn’t tell him to. He ran up, smelled my hand and sat down.”
Bart turned toward Cindy at the sound of her voice.
Jennifer watched him for a moment. “Would you hold this?”
She offered the loop of his lead.
Cindy looked at it before taking it. The request was made without ceremony, as though it were natural to place the dog in her hands. She shifted the parcel back under one arm and closed her fingers around the worn leather.
Bart came to her immediately. He didn’t pull. He stood close enough for his shoulder to touch her knee and looked up, waiting for whatever might happen next.
Jennifer knelt and examined the gate end of the lead, where the metal catch had picked up dirt during Bart’s run. She rubbed it clean with the edge of her skirt, opened and shut it twice, then checked the ring on his collar.
“It didn’t break,” Cindy said.
“No. I wanted to make sure.”
“You look after them carefully.”
Jennifer kept her head bent. “They’re mine.”
There wasn’t pride in the words so much as certainty. She pressed the clasp closed and tugged it once. Bart lowered his head to sniff her hair.
Cindy ran her thumb along the edge of the leather loop. It had been softened from use, though not much use yet. Her family couldn’t keep a dog. There wasn’t enough room in the yard, and food was measured too closely for another mouth, even an animal’s. She’d learned not to ask after the first time she understood the answer. That hadn’t stopped her looking at dogs whenever one passed, or noticing which houses let them sleep inside.
Bart leaned more of his weight against her leg.
Cindy adjusted her stance to hold him. “He’s strong.”
“He doesn’t know it.”
Jennifer stood again and brushed the dust from her knees. She reached for the lead, then paused when she saw Bart settled against Cindy.
“You can keep hold of him a minute,” she said.
Cindy looked down at the dog. “Won’t he run?”
“Not while he’s looking at you.”
Bart’s eyes had fixed on her face. His tail moved slowly now, brushing the earth with each pass. Cindy rested one hand on the top of his head. He shut his eyes.
Jennifer watched them without hovering. Nicola remained beside her, quiet and close, her gaze moving from Cindy’s hand to Bart’s face.
“Were you going home?” Jennifer asked.
“Yes. My mother’s waiting for this.”
She touched the parcel lightly.
“You shouldn’t be late.”
“No.”
Neither girl moved.
A screen door opened across the lane. An older man stepped onto his porch with a newspaper folded beneath one arm and glanced in their direction before sitting. The sound of a radio drifted from the house behind him, a man’s voice blurred by distance and static. Farther off, a truck changed gears on the main road. Dust hung above the hedges for a moment after it passed.
Cindy looked toward Jennifer’s gate. “How did he open it?”
“There’s a board that’s loose near the bottom. He pushed his nose under it, then got his shoulder through. I’d latched it, but not all the way.” Jennifer nodded toward Bart. “He kept working at it.”
“He must’ve wanted out badly.”
“He wanted to see what was on the other side.”
Bart opened his eyes when she spoke, as though he understood that the conversation had returned to him.
“Nicola didn’t go with him,” Cindy said.
“No. She came to get me.”
Cindy looked at the sheepdog. Nicola’s body remained pressed against Jennifer’s leg, but her eyes hadn’t left Bart.
“She told you?”
“She stood at the kitchen door and looked out. Then she came to me and went back again.” Jennifer reached down and touched the top of Nicola’s head. “I heard Bart’s lead scraping after that.”
Nicola accepted the touch without lifting her face toward it.
“She’s clever,” Cindy said.
“Yes.”
Bart shifted and put one paw on Cindy’s shoe. She glanced down at it.
“Is that what he does when he wants something?”
“He does that when he has something.”
“What does he have?”
“You.”
Cindy looked at Jennifer quickly. There was no teasing in the girl’s face. Jennifer had only described what she saw.
Bart’s paw remained on Cindy’s shoe. His nails were dusty, and a burr had caught in the fur near his ankle. Cindy bent and picked it free. Bart watched her fingers closely, then tried to smell the burr after she tossed it into the grass.
“He’s friendly,” Cindy said.
“He’s glad.”
“About what?”
“Everything, most of the time.”
Cindy’s mouth curved. She could believe that too.
Jennifer reached for the lead again, and Cindy gave it back. Their fingers touched briefly around the leather. Jennifer wound the loop around her wrist more securely than before, then drew Bart to her side.
“I’m sorry he frightened you,” she said.
“He didn’t.”
“He might’ve knocked you down.”
“He stopped.”
Jennifer looked at Cindy for a moment, then nodded, accepting the correction.
Cindy shifted the flour parcel and took a step nearer Nicola. The sheepdog didn’t retreat, but her body changed subtly. Her head lifted. One ear angled forward while the other remained turned toward Jennifer.
“Does she let people pet her?” Cindy asked.
“Sometimes.”
Cindy looked at Nicola rather than Jennifer. “What should I do?”
“Let her smell you. Don’t reach over her head.”
Cindy moved the package under her left arm and extended her right hand. She stopped well before Nicola’s nose, leaving the distance for the dog to close.
Nicola watched her.
Bart gave a small whine, eager to take part, but Jennifer kept him beside her. She laid a calming hand against his chest and said his name softly. He quieted, though his tail continued moving.
Cindy kept her hand still.
The heat pressed around them, close and sleepy. A fly circled the paper parcel and moved on. The cicadas rose together in the nearest tree until their sound filled the lane, then faded as one rough body of noise. Cindy felt sweat slip slowly from her temple toward the arm of her glasses. She didn’t lift her other hand to wipe it away.
Nicola took one step.
Her paws made almost no sound in the dust. She stretched her neck and breathed against Cindy’s fingers. The first touch of her nose was so light that Cindy wasn’t sure it had happened. She smelled again, longer this time, moving from Cindy’s fingertips to the side of her hand.
Cindy didn’t turn her palm upward. She waited.
Nicola’s eyes lifted to hers. They were darker at their edges than Cindy had first noticed, amber deepening toward brown. There was nothing timid in them. The dog seemed to be making a quiet decision.
Jennifer’s hand remained on Bart. She didn’t urge Nicola forward or tell Cindy that everything was all right. She watched with the same patience as the dog.
Nicola breathed out through her nose.
Then she stepped closer.
Her shoulder passed beneath Cindy’s waiting hand, offering the thick fur along the side of her neck. Cindy let her fingers settle there. She didn’t stroke immediately. She rested her palm against the warmth of the dog’s body and felt Nicola standing steady beneath it.
After a moment, Cindy moved her hand once along the soft grey ruff.
Nicola leaned gently into her touch.