It’s a test, he decides. Something to do with obedience training.

When the stranger comes back, he squats down and studies Bill for several seconds. “You’re a big dude, but your guy’s right. You’re a pussycat.”

The voice sounds calm, not angry. The man opens the cage and takes off the muzzle. Bill whines. This one’s smell is all wrong, but you have to trust people. Small, big, men or women, children—that’s how it is. Even here, in this place that just now is bringing to life unwanted memories and feelings from his first awful year, Bill stretches his head to be touched. This one scratches him under the chin, almost the right way. It’s reassuring, familiar. Except the smell—

And noise. A cloud of sensations crowds in from all directions. It sets Bill barking. He tries to shove out of the cage. “No, you don’t, sport—” The man pushes the cage door shut against the dog’s weight, holds it there with his hip until the catch is in place, then leaves. Bark, Bill thinks. That’s what you do here. What else is there? So, he barks, filling his big chest over and over, the sound joining others.

Loud and brittle in early-afternoon sun streaming through a skylight, the barking is not from pampered lap dogs meeting under a streetlamp as their owners debrief each other on the day’s golf or tennis game, this one’s cocktail party, that one’s grandchildren—the surgeries, the oxygen delivery man who always brings treats for dogs, the pretty pool girl all the wives voice sympathy for but actually prefer because she has a prosthetic leg.

No. Here, along with dogs whose owners have died or gone to nursing homes, or dogs who just wandered away and will likely be collected soon, are dogs either given up in the right way, or dumped on roads and at rest stops, at gas stations. Some were inconveniences, dogs that on second thought seemed a bad idea. Others threatened children and postal workers. Some dogs here have sent people to the hospital. Not the thief trying to remove the wall safe in Mel’s Marine, or the one who forgot his bolt cutter when he dropped himself inside the chain-link fence at the BMW dealership—other people. People just out walking, people delivering fliers or pizzas—people who couldn’t know that the dog in the too-small yard or all-wrong one-bedroom apartment was bred and then trained to patrol a perimeter, a territory. People who weren’t known pack members.

In their way, such dogs are no different from border collies or Labs or willful West Highland terriers digging for China in the garden. They are just fulfilling their mission, but a mission incompatible with circumstances. Such dogs belong on farms or ranches. Otherwise, their territories spread to include other yards and streets, even other neighborhoods. In the end, sometimes by owners as reluctant as Bill’s, they are brought here.

It’s a shelter, a good one. Vinyl called around to be sure. There was no question of anyone at Donegal taking the dog. Why ask? Even knowing better, some residents were still intimidated when Bill rounded the corner. So, an animal rescue shelter. It’s not a bad place, of its kind. But to Bill, barking hard in the strange crate, it comes too close to the past. The sound of it, the powerful odors cause him to lose control, defecating and peeing there in the box, something unthinkable in his own crate, empty and rattling in the back of the van as the Vinyls drive north in silence.

DURING THE AFTERNOON, people interested in adoption come to see the dogs. A couple stops to look in. “He’s a barker, isn’t he?” the woman says.

“We just got him. He’ll settle down.”

“What’s his name?”

“Just Bill.”

“Bill.”

“The owner said it had to do with a song.”

The woman keeps looking in. Her husband has moved on to the next cage. “That’s not very inspired,” she says. “I’d name a dog like that King or Titan.”

“He’s big, but his bio looks good.”

“Or Czar Nicholas. Something appropriate.”

“He belonged to a couple on a golf course.”

“You’re kidding. We live on a golf course. They’d never let anyone keep a dog like that. I bet that’s why they had to give him up.”

She moves on. Some time later, a different stranger brings food. It’s not his kind, but the bowl is Bill’s. The water dish, too. It confuses and elates him to eat and drink in this strange place from his own heavy stone bowls. The mister brought them from the lake, to replace the stainless steel bowls Bill kept tipping over.

The skylight softens. More people come. A woman interested only in “something that likes airplanes” shuffles down and back with a walker. Then another couple. “We want a real dog,” the man says stopping. “Like that. None of these little toy deals.”

“‘We.’ You mean ‘I.’ We have a new baby, now he wants a dog. It’s psychological, isn’t it? Do you see that happening? People have a baby and the man all at once wants a dog? I’d like to know.”

“Actually,” says the stranger who brought the food, “yes, we do. That one’s a nice dog. He was well treated and trained, but he’s probably not for you. He tipped over a cradle.”

It grows dark. A light bulb shines somewhere, but before him it is blue, from the moon. He can see eyes opposite, hear dogs sigh. It’s a test, he keeps thinking. Obedience training. But it’s time for the walk now. He’ll be here for that, he wouldn’t forget that, he never forgets. That’s our way, Bill thinks. That’s what we do, every night. Then we go back in the van. If there’s a storm, they won’t leave this time, they’ll stay and everything they want from the best dog—that’s what I’ll be.

“WE JUST CROSSED the state line. We’re in Georgia now. How long do you plan to keep the silent treatment going?”

Vinyl doesn’t answer. At the last stop, he removed the noisy crate and left it behind a gas station.

“We have to eat. Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you going to talk to me the whole way?”

When he still doesn’t answer, she reaches down to the bag of CDs. It’s how she’s dealt with the trip, filling up the silence. She straightens in her seat. They have already listened to the complete Golden Oldies anthology—five disks—and the first part of a Patricia Cornwell novel. The missus found the story boring and stopped it north of Gainesville.

“How long are you intending to punish me?”

“I’ll talk to you when I’m good and ready.”

Usually, they share the driving, alternating in two-hour shifts. Today he is doing it all. Somehow, it’s a matter of honor, male pride. He agreed to do something wrong, he betrayed a trust. The longer they’ve been on the road, the more convinced he’s become that his mistake reveals a profound falling off from his true self. At some point he thought of Cliff Gilmore. He felt ashamed, cowardly. Cliff would never have done it, Vinyl thought.

He has not actually felt old to himself until now. Older, yes. He is old. Let them talk all they want about this new diet, that vitamin supplement—sixty-eight is old. He pops Advil tablets like they’re peanuts, stuffs himself with oat and wheat bran. His prostate must be the size of a muskmelon. But he has not actually felt old until now. It’s Bill, he thinks. You betrayed him.

“We’ll get something else.” His wife says this in her kindest voice. “I understand, Fred. I really do. I know a dog’s important to you. But this was just not meant to be. We’ll get something smaller. A bichon.”

“So you can decorate it? Trick it out with little hats?”

After a moment, she turns away, looking out her side window.