That night, long after bedtime, Keisha had the strangest dream, that the moon asked her what color puppy she wanted and she said that it didn’t matter as long as it didn’t frighten Razi. And then the moon asked, “Are you sure?” But the way he asked was so strange because he kept repeating himself in a very high voice and he drew the words out: “Are are are you shhhhhhuuuuurrrrr?”
Keisha sat up in bed. She was not afraid of the dark, but it was a little scary to hear the moon still asking his question when her eyes were open. Her dream was not completely a dream.
She put on her slippers, pulled her shawl around her and went out into the hall, following the noises, which led her to the back of the house. The sound got louder as she peered into the dark porch. Keisha thought it was a little like a police siren. But a siren always sounded the same—woowoowoowoo—while this noise was more like arrrrrrrrrooooooooooo. Sometimes, at the end, there was a long, drawn-out roorooroooooooo.
Keisha pulled her shawl tighter and stepped into the room. She was surprised to find Mama in the corner, looking out into the darkness.
“Ada,” Mama whispered. “Not all our neighbors like living so close to wild animals, even when they are in pens. Someone is going to call the police.”
Keisha slipped underneath Mama’s arm. “Is that the coyote puppy?”
“Yes. But he does not vocalize like any puppy I have ever known. And now we see why he got the name he did.”
Racket was an awful name for a puppy, but Keisha didn’t have time to think about puppy names. She had to think about solving this problem. Mama always said Daddy could sleep through a train wreck, and Grandma took a muscle-relaxer pill before she went to bed. This was Mama and Keisha’s problem.
“How big is he?” Keisha asked, thinking he must be quite big to make so much noise.
“He’s a tiny thing. He must be all lungs inside.” Just as Mama said that, the howling stopped. She sighed. “Maybe he’s giving up,” she said.
“Would he fit in the cat carrier?”
Mama touched the ends of her long fingers to her forehead. “Bob brought him over in one.”
“Well, then, let me bring him into my room. Maybe he’s just lonely.”
“Or maybe it’s the moon. Have you ever seen such a big moon? Let’s see if he’s finished first—”
Ar-ar-arrrrooooooo. The little guy must have paused to collect more night air because this howl seemed louder.
Mama gripped Keisha’s arm tight before she let go. “All right. I’ll bring him in. Go back to your room.”
Keisha ran back to her room on tiptoes, she was so excited. A real puppy in her room! What difference did it make what sort of puppy? Puppies were puppies. You could train a puppy to do just about anything. If you could train a puppy to shake your hand, Keisha bet she and Big Bob and the rest of the 4-H Wild 4-Ever Club could teach Racket not to howl at the moon.
Of course, the smart part of Keisha knew that howling at the moon was not the only thing that stood between her and her lifelong dream of owning her very own puppy, but “first things Fiorenza,” as Grandma always said.
“Here.” Mama swept in and put the cat carrier down. She had draped her own shawl over the opening, so Keisha couldn’t see the puppy.
“No need to get him excited now. He will smell you,” Mama whispered. “Keep this cover on and I’ll turn out the light. Maybe that will settle him. Good night, Ada.”
Mama closed the door behind her and Keisha kept very still for a moment, trying to think what to do next. Animals could sense fear, danger, aggression. She wanted this little puppy to sense warmth, comfort, peace.
He must have sensed something because, after a minute, he started to whimper. Keisha thought back to what she had read about coyotes in the animal files. She knew they were related to dogs and that the pups stayed with their mamas in dens for a long time … and that Mama caught food and stored it in her stomach and when she got back to the den, she threw it up.
Yuck. That was worse than cold toad-in-the-hole.
The pup yowled. If he made too much noise, Mama would come back in and take him away.
“Oh, don’t. Please!” Keisha pulled off the shawl and, for one startled moment, she and the puppy stared at one another. In the darkness, Keisha could just make out two glossy button eyes and one moist nose. She saw a ruff of furry hair and two ears that stuck up so pertly, they looked like the bow tie Grandpa Wally Pops used to wear when he took Grandma Alice out on a date.
Had a puppy ever been this cute?
She didn’t care if he was a coyote or a collie or a cross between the two. He was a baby. The cutest little baby she had ever seen.
Keisha had been longing to love a puppy for so many months that she forgot everything Mama told her except to get the pup to settle down.
“First a den nest.” Keisha jumped onto her bed, twirling and twisting the bedcovers into a swirl, the way she had seen a fox mama do once with an old sleeping bag.
Then she opened the crate. The puppy shrank back.
“No, sweet thing. I’m going to be your mama.” Keisha didn’t give the puppy a chance to decide if he wanted a mama. She scooped him up in her arms and took him into bed. She put the puppy in the center of the swirl, curled herself around him and pulled the cover partway over both of them.
“Roorooroo,” she said over and over, running her hand over the puppy’s back. He stretched out his legs and looked at her with his sparkly eyes. Then he licked her hand.
Keisha was not certain who fell asleep first. Before she knew it, Razi’s voice shouting, “No, bad doggy!” ended her sweet slumber.
The poor pup was so surprised, he dove under the covers.
“I was going to crawl into bed with you,” Razi said, pouting.
“Razi Carter, I have had it with you!” Keisha sat up and tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes. “The poor little pup was scared half to death last night when Big Bob brought him to this strange place, and for all I know, you scared him whole to death. Out! Now.”
“You can’t make me because I’m going by myself!” Razi answered. Keisha could already see the tears. It served him right. She lifted up the covers and tried to see where the pup had burrowed.
“Keisha, baby, I need your help.” While Keisha’s head was under the covers, Grandma came in. “I can’t find my glasses!”
Keisha poked her head out just in time to see Grandma sit down on the end of the bed.
“It’s this ring Bob gave me. I think it got small overnight, but I can’t see.”
“Where did you leave your glasses?”
“I thought you would know.”
Keisha looked for a bulge in Grandma’s bathrobe pocket, but the glasses obviously weren’t there. “I’m kinda busy right now, Grandma.”
“Well, just have a look at my foot. I can’t find the ring.”
“Grandma, what happened? Your foot is swollen.”
Grandma leaned back so she could bring her foot up high enough for Keisha to see. She must have put her hand on the poor little puppy because Keisha heard a squealing, then watched the covers move and the little pup dart out from under the bedclothes and out of the room.
“Grandma! Big Bob’s ring is stuck tighter than your guardian angel. And on top of that, now we have a loose coyote pup.”
Keisha rushed out the door before Grandma could get herself back up.
For the second time in as many days, Keisha ran into Mama and baby Paulo in the hall.
“Just what do you think you’re doing tearing around in your pajamas, miss?”
“I can’t explain it now, Mama. Did you by chance see anything small and furry run by here?”
“Don’t tell me you opened the door to that crate.”
“I promise I won’t tell a lie,” Keisha answered. “Um … have you seen Razi?” she asked, trying to look into his bedroom. But Mama was blocking her view.
“Ada, tell me what happened to that pup.”
“Well …” Keisha looked at baby Paulo for some inspiration, but all he did was drool and chew on his keys. “The little puppy started to moan and then it started to howl. It was just a little roorooroo, but I knew that if it got any louder, you would hear and do something else with it. So I tookitoutofthecrateandsleptwithitinmybed.” Keisha hustled that part right along because that was what would get her in hot water. “Anyway, it was fine, but then Razi came in and started yelling and then the puppy dove to the end of the bed and then Grandma came in and sat on it.”
“We may need to have another talk about the right way to handle wild animals,” Mama said, giving Keisha her serious look.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I guess I was exploring the gray area.” Daddy liked the gray area more than Mama. It wasn’t right; it wasn’t wrong. It was a creative solution somewhere in between. “Can I be the one to find him?” Keisha begged. “Please?”
“I think we may have to amputate here unless I get some assistance!” Grandma called from Keisha’s bedroom. “I got my foot close enough to my eyes to see that my toe is purple!”
Mama’s lips were pressed together in a way that no member of the Carter family liked to see. She preferred mornings to be peaceful, especially before she had her coffee. She held up four fingers. “One, I will see to Grandma; two, you will find your father; three, we will find the pup; and four, we’ll all do what we’re supposed to do first thing in the morning, and that is get ready for school.”
Keisha knew there was no use arguing. And she knew where to find Daddy, so that wouldn’t take much time. She ran back to her room. Grandma was lying on Keisha’s bed with her feet up in the air. Normally, she called this her L-takes-a-nap pose, but she didn’t have the happy expression she usually did when she was doing her gentle yoga poses.
“I’m draining the blood out of my legs to reduce the possibility of digit loss,” Grandma said. Keisha grabbed her shawl off the peg and went to the window to look for Daddy. There he was out back doing his morning check. At the moment, there was an eastern screech owl that had gotten tangled in a barbed wire fence, the skinny bunnies and a pigeon that couldn’t fly. Keisha tugged on her slippers and ran downstairs, out the back door and down the steps to the wildlife pens.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Daddy said. “Still in your pajamas? Don’t tell me you’re chasing a loose coyote pup, because I seem to be missing one here.”
Keisha jumped into Daddy’s arms. Even though she was practically grown, he could still hold her the way he did when they used to play rescue-the-princess-from-the-fire-breathing-dragon. “Daddy, I explored the gray area.”
“I knew something was topsy-turvy. When the animals get loose, they don’t usually take the crates with them.”
“Plus Grandma’s toe is purple—the one she put Big Bob’s ring on—and Mama wants you to come right now.”
“Well, the patients won’t be happy about waiting for breakfast, but I guess rescuing Grandma’s toe takes priority.” Daddy started walking toward the house with Keisha still in his arms. “Whew. This is hard work. Is it warmer than normal or have you grown again?”
Keisha thought about that. She didn’t always like being the second-tallest girl in the class. “It’s still warm,” she said. “For October.”
“Well, there’s a cold front coming, according to the weather satellite. We’ll have to make sure the pens are snug.”
They climbed up the back steps, and Daddy set his eldest child on her feet before opening the door.
“Daddy …” Keisha stood inside the house but held her father back from entering. “I think there’s more Canis Major than Canis latrans in that little puppy. Coyotes are wild animals, but he was happy to sleep in my bed. And that’s what domesticated dogs like to do.” She stepped aside so Daddy could come in the door, too. “But still, I don’t think we should take him back to the Humane Society yet.”
“I agree that he has some of the characteristics of a domestic dog, but who’s going to want a puppy that howls at the moon? This problem bears further study.”
Keisha nodded. Daddy had told her he used that sentence when he wanted to buy time to think things over. Keisha hoped he was thinking along the same lines as she was: a half-wild puppy might be just right for the Carter family.
Upstairs, the baby was rolling around on the bed while Mama examined Grandma’s foot.
“Whoa, your foot really is swollen, Mom,” Daddy said.
“I think my blood pressure medication needs to be checked again,” Grandma said. “My feet are always bigger in the morning.”
“But now this ring is stuck tight. Let’s keep your foot up, Alice.” Mama turned to Daddy. “Fred, will you get me an ice pack? Maybe if we bring a little of the swelling down, we can get it off.”
The baby grabbed his own toes, rolling back and forth and giggling.
“Show-off,” Grandma said. “I can do the happy baby pose, too, when I’m not injured. Fayola, do you think we can save this toe?”
“I think we can save your toe and this pretty ring,” Mama said, piling up pillows so Grandma’s foot stayed elevated. “Now, Keisha, it is time for number three. Search every room on this floor. I don’t know where your brother has disappeared to, but tell him to bring me the liquid soap from the bathroom. Maybe we can get Grandma’s toe slippery enough to slide off the ring.”
Keisha walked slowly down the hall, peering first into the bathroom and Paulo’s dark room before she looked into Razi’s.
“Razi, you need to help Ma—” Keisha stopped short in the doorway. There was Razi sitting on the bed and holding Racket out at arm’s length.
“I found your puppy, Key,” he said.
Keisha rushed over. You held a puppy so that his hind feet were supported. Dangling in the air like that made an animal feel vulnerable. Keisha took Racket into her arms like a baby and cooed to him. He licked her face.
“Razi, how—”
“I was under the bed and then I felt something. I thought it was you because you’re the only one who fits under there, too. And then I got some wet on my neck and then I said, ‘Key, uck, don’t kiss me,’ and then I turned around and it was your puppy. I started to say, ‘Bad doggy,’ and then before I did he licked my nose.” Razi smiled at the memory. “And then he licked all over my face!”
“See, Razi? Every dog is not a bad dog.”
Keisha and Razi looked at the puppy. One of his ears flopped forward. His little tongue lolled out at the side. He was the opposite of bad doggy. He was adorable doggy. Keisha turned him over and placed him on her lap.
“Do you want to pet him?”
Razi sat on his hands, all of a sudden remembering his fear of dogs. He shook his head.
“Do you want to watch me pet him?”
Razi nodded yes.
After a moment of serious stroking, Racket stretched out again. Keisha tickled her fingers behind his ears. Before long, one hand crept out from beneath Razi’s thigh, and he began making little taps on Racket’s behind.
Keisha heard Daddy coming up the stairs with the ice pack. Razi shouted: “Daddy, come see. I’m petting the doggy. I’m not afraid!”
The sound of Daddy’s work boots clomping on the wood floor, combined with Razi’s shouting, startled Racket. He wriggled out of Keisha’s hands and dove under the bed again.
“What a scaredy-coyote,” Keisha said. She got down on her hands and knees to search for the puppy.
“So we’ve found our little runaway?” Keisha heard Daddy’s voice behind her.
“We did, but then the sound of your footsteps scared him,” she said.
“That’s our second D.I.D. this week.”
Keisha thought for a moment. “Oh, right. Dog in Distress. Don’t forget our G.I.D.”
Daddy held up the ice pack. “Right. I’m on my way to our Grandma in Distress.”