Roxie reached out and snagged the line Ben was holding, the one that led out to Hutch’s harness. The shorter strap, the one Roxie hadn’t grabbed, still ran from Hutch to the metal clip on the big rope, and the men were still dug in, leaning against the weight of the big rope, keeping it stiff.
I understood: the strap could slip along the big rope on its clip, and Ben and Roxie could pull Hutch to them like Ben reeling in my leash.
Clinging to the child in his arms, Hutch barely managed to stay on his feet as the current battered him. Roxie and Ben heaved, and their rope, attached to Hutch’s harness, whipped up out of the flood, pulling Hutch and the boy to the shore.
Hutch was afraid—I could see it in the rigidity in his muscles, and smell it on his breath—but the boy was worse, terrified, weak with it. The current was blasting at both of them, sending a geyser skyward, twisting them at the end of the strap. The boy buried his head in Hutch’s chest. Hutch gritted his teeth, fighting to stay upright in muddy water well above his hips.
“Come on, come on,” Ben urged. His feet were sliding as he battled to keep hauling Hutch in.
“You can do it, Lieutenant!” Alvis yelled.
Hutch stumbled, clutching the boy, and then fell. They both vanished underwater.
I couldn’t see them.
They were hiding.
Nobody gave me the right command: Search! But I still knew what to do.
I plunged into the water, my eyes on the spot where I’d seen Hutch and the boy fall. The deadly current tried to tear me away downstream, but I dug with all my strength, and when Hutch staggered upright out of the muddy water, I was right there. He snagged my harness with his hand, stumbling, thrusting me under as he searched for his own footing.
I remembered being underwater before. It was like wearing my mask. It was all right. It was part of Search.
I held my breath, the fierce rapids blinding me, filling my ears, numbing me. I took all of his weight—his weight and the boy’s. He was pushing me down so far my feet were actually on the bottom of the river.
I was doing what I do. I was helping. Search wasn’t finished until everybody was together. I had to bring Hutch and the frightened boy to Ben.
Pressure built in my lungs, and Hutch’s hand pressed down harder, his legs bumping into me as they fought for purchase.
Then I felt it, felt the moment when he could stand on his own again. When he released me, I raised my head and found air. Gulping and gagging, I tried to see the shore.
“Ripley!” Ben shouted.
Hutch was gritting his teeth and taking one slow step at a time as everyone else pulled their ropes. Suddenly the surface of the water was below his hips, then his thighs, letting go at last. I made for shore myself, weary, breathing raggedly, wanting nothing more than to get up out of this river. With every step forward, the waters clutched at me, pulling me back.
Hutch fell to his knees and everyone dropped their ropes and surged forward to help him. Finally, my strength all but gone, I clawed into the mud, weakly dragging myself away from the river. Roxie pulled the boy from Hutch’s grasp.
Ben knelt and held me. “Good dog. Such a good dog, Ripley,” he murmured.
The people were moving as quickly as they could through the mud, splashing through puddles, getting away from the river. Ben stood up too.
“Come, Ripley!” he called. Wearily, I shook as much water as I could from my fur and staggered after him. We joined Roxie, who was moving quickly, holding the boy in her arms.
“Hypothermia,” Roxie pronounced when we ran up.
“Let’s get him into the ambulance, warm him up. You’re going to be fine, son. You’re just cold. That’s all. You were very brave out there,” Ben panted to the boy.
When we arrived back at the vehicles, I was surprised to see that the water was much deeper than it had been when we had gotten out. I was panting, exhausted from both swims and from struggling back ashore.
I was also, I realized, very, very cold. Tremors shook my entire length and Ben had to lift me into Roxie’s big car—my legs were too numb to leap. Once I was clipped into my harness, I was grateful to feel warm air flooding over me from holes under the windshield.
“Captain Bee says that they called his parents. His name is Ben, just like mine. Hey, Ben, that’s my name too, don’tcha know. Ben,” Ben told the boy lying in Mom’s bed in the back. Roxie was driving and she was shivering as much as I was.
The boy blinked solemnly, his body quaking.
“They were able to reach your mom. She’s going to meet you at the hospital. Are you okay, Ben? How do you feel?” Ben asked.
The boy’s teeth chattered as he answered, “I’m cold.”
I wondered why Ben kept saying his own name over and over.
“Yes, well, when you get to the hospital, they’re going to give you a nice warm bath and wrap you in warm blankets and let you take a nap,” Roxie said over her shoulder. “Does that sound all right?”
The boy nodded, trembling so violently his bones seemed to rattle. At the great big building, Roxie and Ben pulled him out of the back, and I watched them both bend in the rain as they trundled him in through the big glass doors.
When they slid back in the vehicle, Roxie said, “Five forty,” and then I heard squawking. She said, “We’re going to need to return to the station and go offline for a little bit, Captain. Ben and I both need a shower.”
“Ten-four, you’ve earned it,” something squawked. It sounded almost like a human voice. “Five forty is ten-seven.”
Back at Captain Bee’s house, Roxie went into her room and I followed Ben into the place where all the men liked to sleep and yell at Nance. Behind it was a tiled area, and Ben stood there and let hot water gush all over him, which was fine, but then he dragged me to him for a bath! As if I weren’t soaked enough already!
The combination of the cold water of the stream and then the warm drenching in the tile room somehow washed away all my feelings of exhaustion. As soon as Ben let me go, I raced manically around and around the big truck, stopping only to shake and shake to get rid of the water still clinging to my fur.
Alvis and his friends laughed at me while they washed the big truck. Apparently, when things get wet from rain or rivers, humans need to make them even wetter.
A few days later, the rain stopped. The massive puddles vanished and the air turned warm under a strong sun. Days filled with the sounds of bugs and birds singing and dogs barking, while cats remained silent.
A change had come over Captain Bee. He was always in his glassed-in room and seemed very happy. Many people were coming to visit him, and they would laugh and they would touch hands. Sometimes they would smile while somebody held a phone up in the air.
“Not too much longer,” Captain Bee often remarked to his visitors. His voice changed when he said this: sometimes he seemed a little sad, and sometimes excited, and sometimes somewhere between happy and sad.
Dogs can understand sad, but we’re not very good at it.
Long after we had gone swimming with the boy on the rock, on a fine, sunny day, several people dressed just like Captain Bee came over and stood next to him and smiled while Roxie held her phone into the air. The people all grabbed each other’s hands and tugged at them, and several nice people smiled at me. Samantha and Mom were both there, and I sat at their feet.
Captain Bee stepped forward, and everyone stood silently and listened to him talk.
I yawned drowsily. I raised my eyes at a surge of emotion in Captain Bee’s voice when he said, “Hard to believe this day is here. It’s been a long, wonderful career. I’m going to miss all of you very much.”
When he had finished talking, everybody slapped their hands together, which made more noise than you might expect. I looked around, startled, and shook my head. Even Samantha was doing it. “Congratulations, Captain,” Mom told Captain Bee.
“Good luck in retirement,” Samantha added.
Captain Bee smiled at them. All of his feelings—sad, happy, excited, nervous—swirled around him in a strong and mystifying scent.
Mom and Samantha took me home.
The next time Ben took me to Captain Bee’s house, I could smell that Captain Bee wasn’t there, and I noticed Hutch sitting in Captain Bee’s room. Hutch had changed his shirt so that it was white, just like the one Captain Bee had worn.
“A word, Ben, if you don’t mind,” Hutch called.
Ben gave me a grim look. “Oofda. I have a feeling I know what this is about,” he muttered to me.
He walked me into Captain Bee’s small room. Hutch leaned back in Captain Bee’s chair. “Ben, well, you knew this day was coming. It’s about the dog.”
“Yah, well, I was sort of hoping after what happened at the river with the boy, you might have changed your mind,” Ben answered.
Hutch gave him a cold smile. “I don’t know if you knew this, but my father was a fire captain, and my grandfather was chief of the fire department…”
Ben sighed.
Hutch went on talking.
“So I’ve got a long history, and I know how things should run. You guys with your new ideas, they don’t belong here. Not on my shift.” He looked down at me. “I’m going to give you a couple of hours. I’d like you to clear the dog out of here, and tell that little girl and her mother we’re ending the kiddy visitation program. We’re going to go back to being a full-time fire station with no distractions. Are we clear?”
“Yah. I understand. I think you’re making a mistake, Hutch.”
“My mistake to make,” Hutch replied.
Roxie and Ben clicked me into my harness and drove me to Samantha’s house. I was glad to be there, but I didn’t really understand. This was a complete break in the pattern. When I went to Captain Bee’s house with Ben, we stayed there and played Search and slept in the big room. We didn’t leave right away to go back to Samantha. It was not what we did.
Ben let me out and stood in the yard to speak to Samantha and Mom. Then he knelt and took my head in his hands. “Ripley, you were absolutely the best fire station dog there could be. I am so proud of the work that you’ve done, and what Samantha and Lizzy have done in training you, but this is how things go, don’tcha know. I’m outranked—the only one with more authority is the chief, and he’s more a politician than a firefighter. Can’t see him getting involved. So this is it. You and Captain Bee are both retired. Thank you for your service, Ripley.”
Ben climbed back in next to Roxie and stared at me a moment before her car backed up. I had a real sense that he was going back to Captain Bee’s house without me.
Had I been a bad dog? I didn’t understand.
Ben came over fairly regularly after that, and I could smell that he’d been at Captain Bee’s house, but he never took me with him. I loved sleeping with my girl every night, but even so, I missed hearing Nance snore and seeing long, tall Willets and Alvis and Roxie and the rest.
One time Ben arrived at Samantha’s with his clothes reeking of smoke. Had he done Search without me? Had he found a hiding person? I didn’t know why he’d do that, and it made me restless. I paced around the house until Mom sent me out into the yard.
I wasn’t sad, exactly, because I was with Samantha, but I was about as close to sad as a dog can get.
The days were very warm, and the nights were, too. I saw all sorts of birds. Samantha and I cuddled and walked together to say hi to Mrs. Larson, and every now and then some children came over to play with my girl, and I played as well. But life was completely different.
“Ripley’s so much calmer now,” Mom said to Samantha one day. She was standing at the sink in the kitchen, splashing water with her hands, while Samantha sat at the table making marks on a piece of paper.
“He hasn’t run off with the TV remote in weeks!” Mom continued. “Or chewed the rug, or gotten muddy footprints on anybody’s bed. Honestly, Samantha, he’s a completely different dog.”
Samantha looked away from her paper to study me. I was lying on my side under the table, and I didn’t even have the energy to raise my head to return my girl’s gaze.
“You’re right,” she said to Mom. “He really is different.”
One afternoon, Ben came and picked up Samantha and me, but not Mom. Mom waved out the front window. Samantha sat up front next to Ben. I had my attention focused on Samantha, who was tapping her foot nervously.
“This’ll be fun. A lot of the firefighters have kids, plenty of children your age,” Ben told her.
“Okay,” Samantha replied softly.
Ben glanced at her. “What’s wrong, Sammie?”
“It’s just hard to go someplace new. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“You’re right,” Ben answered slowly. “I don’t really understand. Do you want to try to explain it to me?”
Samantha shook her head. “I can’t. It’s just a bad feeling.”
“Does it help that Ripley’s with you?”
Samantha nodded vigorously. She glanced back at me and I leaned forward to lick her hand. “Ripley’s the best,” she said simply.
“Is this the first time you’ve done this? Gone to a park, met kids your age?”
Samantha lowered her eyes and nodded. “Since my dad died.”
Ben’s gaze was warm and caring. “Then I’m honored you agreed to go with me, Sammie.”
Her return smile trembled a little. “Will there be fireworks?”
“Not the fun kind. Nothing that goes bang. Illegal, don’tcha know.”
Samantha inhaled deeply and seemed to hold it in.
“You okay?”
“I’m just … I’m worried I’ll have a panic attack in front of everyone. Like at the mall.”
“Sammie … if you feel something like that coming on, you tell me, okay? We’ll leave immediately.”
Samantha nodded and swallowed.
“I won’t let you down,” Ben promised gravely. “And neither will Ripley.”