Twenty-Five

An expectant silence settled over everyone, and all eyes were on Ben, who fidgeted in front of the silver stick. He glanced over at Samantha and Mom, and Samantha gave him an encouraging nod. “Yah, so it seems like, in what everyone will probably agree is a terrible lapse of judgment, Lizzy Kidd has agreed to marry me.”

People made a lot of noise about that!

When they finally settled down, Ben talked some more. The woman who had spoken first put a loose collar around my neck, a collar with a very heavy dog tag that I immediately did not like. Then Ben and I went back to our seats. I settled down with a yawn, wondering what that had all been about.

“You’ve got a medal, Ripley! You’re a hero!” Samantha told me excitedly.

I yawned again.

The hairy-nosed man returned, and I was alerted to his wonderful bacon smells. “And now let’s get to the youngest person ever to receive the Citizen Hero award,” the man said, his bacon breath wafting over me. “Samantha Kidd was walking her dog”—he swiveled and smiled at us—“her dog Ripley…” He turned back as people chuckled. For a crowd of humans not giving treats to a good dog, they certainly were jolly.

“When she spotted a neighbor in distress,” the man went on. “We now know that Mrs. Astrid Larson, sixty-seven years old, suffered from a heart attack as she was sweeping her front steps. She arrested and was minutes away from perishing when Samantha came along, and it was Samantha who gave Mrs. Larson CPR.” Bacon Man smiled. “I’m pleased to tell all of you that Mrs. Larson is expected to make a full recovery.”

I was not surprised when everyone clapped hands again. This was a day of noisy hands and only the suggestion of bacon.

“Samantha is thirteen years old, a homeschooled eighth grader, and her bravery and quick thinking earns her the Citizen Hero award. Samantha, please come up to accept your certificate and medallion.”

I started to follow Samantha up to talk to Bacon Man, but Ben held me back. Bacon Man handed her a piece of paper and put a collar around her neck so that she could wear a dog tag like mine.

I had long ago stopped trying to figure out why humans do the things they do.

Bacon Man and a few other people wrestled with the stick then, and when they were finished playing with it, the thing was shorter, the top of it barely clearing Samantha’s chin.

“Hello,” she greeted nervously.

“Speak up, dear,” Bacon Man encouraged gently.

Samantha nodded. “Hello. My name is Samantha Kidd,” she told us all more loudly. She reached into her pocket and unfolded a piece of paper, which trembled in her hand.

I processed what I could sense were her anxious feelings. This was different from the many times she had been afraid before. This was nervousness, but it didn’t feel as if it were going to grow into a full-blown panic. Nonetheless, I remained focused on my girl, ready to drag Ben over to her if she needed me.

“I am an intern at Fire Station Five,” she continued in the same loud voice.

People liked this.

“Or, I guess I should say, I was an intern.”

People sitting in front of us glanced at one another.

“See, Captain Bee approved the program. That’s how I learned CPR. Roxie taught me as part of my training.”

In the audience, Roxie smiled and nodded.

“And I learned ropes, and I know how to stack hoses. I’m going to be a firefighter someday.”

People clapped so loudly it nearly hurt my ears.

“Which is why it’s such a shame that Captain Hutchins ended the intern program,” Samantha went on in her sweet, unnaturally loud voice. “Not just because of me, but because of all the kids who could benefit from training. I mean, if I hadn’t known CPR, I couldn’t have helped Mrs. Larson.”

People spoke to each other in low voices. I saw Bacon Man frowning, and he turned and said something to the woman who’d spoken first, who shook her head and looked puzzled.

“Another program that ended—the most important program—is the one that allowed Ripley to be trained as a fire station dog. He’s already saved at least one life. When he’s on the scene of a fire, he can search so much more quickly than a human, and his nose can find people our eyes can’t. Look what happened with Lieutenant—I mean Captain—Hutch! No one knew where he was, but Ripley did.”

Samantha looked at her paper, and then folded it and put it back into her pocket. “Ripley saved me, too,” she continued in a quieter voice. People leaned forward to listen.

“I have a … I suffer from an anxiety disorder. I get panic attacks. Until I met Ripley, they were getting worse and worse. But Ripley saves me. He listens to me. He takes care of me. With Ripley, the world isn’t so scary.”

Now people were turning around to look at me. I scratched at my ear and the tag on my new collar swung back and forth.

“But it’s more than that.” Samantha kept talking. “We all wanted more than anything for Ripley to become a fire station dog. To do that, he had to be trained. Then my mom broke her leg so I had to do it; I had to train him. And that meant confronting my anxious feelings about being out of the house. I had to do it for Ripley. So that’s another way he saved me. Saved me, saved Captain Hutchins, and there was a woman who’d breathed in carbon monoxide and a little boy who almost drowned—Ripley helped save them too.”

Samantha looked over the silent room, then turned her attention to the Bacon Man and the woman sitting next to him. “For a long time, I couldn’t imagine anything better than having Ripley be my dog and stay with me all the time. But now I know that isn’t enough—not for me. Not for Fire Station Five. And not for Ripley, either. Ripley’s a hero. Hasn’t he earned the right to be a fire station dog?”

There was a lot of noise after that. Samantha sat down again, and more people spoke in front of the stick, but the folks in the chairs were more interested in talking to each other than in listening to loud booming voices.

Finally there was food, including some very delicious sandwiches, which I did not turn down even after I’d had several. Bacon would have made them much better, but dogs don’t get to decide such things.

And we went home. Samantha finally took off my new collar, and I was grateful to her for that.

For some reason she gave me an extra-long hug. She wasn’t scared or anxious or having any of those feelings that would mean she needed me near, but she still wanted to hug me for a very long time. I stayed with her until she was ready to let me go.

---

I had just come to accept the new routine, the one where I lived with Samantha and Mom and did not go visit Captain Bee. And then the humans of course changed their minds about our daily schedule yet again.

I still slept with Samantha in our bed, but one day Ben arrived early and I was mystified to accompany him to his car and then back to Captain Bee’s house. This time, Ben wore a white shirt, and he sat in Captain Bee’s chair in the tiny room with the windows.

“Oofda. Lots of paperwork,” he complained, pushing stuff around on his desk. “Geez Louise.”

I was glad to be back to doing what we do, but I didn’t know why Ben wanted to play with paper instead of doing Search.

We spent the day there. At one point, Roxie and Nance jumped into her car and drove off, leaving Ben and me behind, which was strange. I certainly didn’t understand what was happening.

Every few days we returned to Captain Bee’s house so that Ben could push things around on the desk. A couple of times, when the tones chimed, everyone jumped on the big truck and I sat, harnessed, with Ben in a seat up front in the giant vehicle. That was fun and exciting, even if it was louder than I liked. Ben would shout things and everyone would run around.

People do the strangest stuff, sometimes.

We didn’t do Search, but even so, I felt satisfied. Anytime Ben wanted to do Search, I was ready. And we went home to Samantha every day, and that made me happy too.

One day, we had just finished lunch. (Something called Swedish meatballs. It was delicious.) We were in Captain Bee’s little room when I smelled someone familiar. I looked up, wagging uncertainly.

It was Hutch.

His arm was wearing an odd glove—slick, white, and rigid. It encased his arm from the wrist to his shoulder and was held in place by a cloth napkin.

“Acting captain, huh?” Hutch asked.

Ben raised his eyes. “Hey there, Captain. How’s the arm?”

“Hurts. Like my back. Like my head.”

“Did it maybe knock into your head the idea that when the whole squad’s on scene, you don’t need to fight the fire all by yourself?” Ben asked lightly.

Hutch thought about it. “You maybe got a point there, Acting Captain.”

Ben grinned. “Ouch, that had to hurt.”

Hutch lowered his gaze to me. “So, Acting Captain, looks like you’ve decided to reinstate canine rescue.”

“Long as I’m acting captain, you betcha, Hutch. Ripley’s going to be here.”

“Huh,” Hutch grunted. “So let me ask you something. Professional opinion. What would’ve happened if your dog hadn’t sniffed me out?”

Ben pushed some of his papers away from him and looked at Hutch.

“Yah, I can’t say for sure, but here’s what I know. The ceiling fell right on top of you. We had no idea you were under all that rubble. Maybe we would have found you eventually, but you had a compound fracture. That means the bone had broken the skin.”

“I know what it means.”

“All right. Did you know the bone pierced your brachial artery, the one that delivers most of the blood in your arm? It wasn’t completely severed, but too close for comfort. Probably we had five minutes to spare.”

Hutch nodded coldly. “Pretty sure the men would have found me in time.”

“Men and women,” Ben agreed pleasantly.

“That’s what I meant.”

There was a long silence. “Don’t see how a citizen’s award can be given to a dog. A dog’s not a citizen,” Hutch finally muttered.

“Sorry,” Ben replied sunnily.

Hutch glowered at him. “I’ve been a firefighter my whole adult life. My father was a firefighter, and my grandfather was a firefighter…”

Ben sighed.

Hutch kept talking. “And, yeah, I hope someday my kid will carry on that tradition. He’s … well, he’s sort of got a mind of his own. Wants to be an engineer. Design things.”

“Did you always want to be a firefighter?” Ben probed curiously.

“Of course,” Hutch replied tersely. Then he shook his head. “Things change. I get it. The world that my grandfather was in never even considered allowing women to serve. Now there are women in every department in the city.”

Ben shook his head and looked down at the papers again. I had no idea what he found so interesting about them.

“Is this a social visit, Hutch?” Ben asked. “I’m trying to figure out the vacation schedule that you always put off doing.”

Hutch grunted. “Got something to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“Chief called me. A courtesy, he said. He offered to tell you himself, but I said no, I’d do it.”

Ben looked wary. “Tell me what, exactly?”

“It’s about the dog.”

Ben waited.

Hutch sighed and looked away, his lips pressed together in a thin line. “I guess you went over my head, talked to the chief and that lady from the mayor’s office.”

“I did no such thing, Hutch. It was Samantha, the day she was given the Citizen Hero award. She just explained what was going on, that Ripley saved your life, and how dogs represent an exciting opportunity for our fire department.”

“And that I killed the program.”

“Ope. Yah, she did sort of mention that,” Ben admitted.

“You know, the shift captain is supposed to have complete authority over the crew. That’s how it’s always been.”

“And?”

“We don’t want top-level interference in the operation,” Hutch went on. “We need to decide things here. That’s why we’re so good in a fire—we don’t have to call the boss for decisions. We make them on the spot.”

“And?”

“You know the and. The chief says the dog stays. Permanently, or at least until he screws up so bad I can get rid of him.”

Ben grinned. “Ripley won’t screw up.”

I wagged for my name. Could we play a more interesting game than Push Paper Around? Maybe Hutch wanted to go hide under a lot of wood and tiles again so I could do Search?

Hutch snorted. “We’ll see.” He narrowed his eyes at Ben, then looked down at me. I wagged a little more, hoping he’d figure out that he should go find somewhere else to hide.

Hutch did not figure it out. He just looked at me for a moment more, shook his head, then turned and left. I glanced up at Ben, not sure if there was something I was supposed to be doing. But he smiled at me. “Everything’s great, Ripley.”

He rubbed my ears, and I settled down by his desk until he was done with the Pushing Papers game and we went to try Beg Nance for Some Chicken. I was very good at that one.

Not long after, Ben and Mom and Samantha moved with me into a new house so that we could all be together. Ben and I still went on our visits to Captain Bee’s house. I was glad to see Ben had finally figured out that pushing papers around was no kind of game. Hutch still seemed to think it was fun, but that was Hutch for you. He didn’t understand how to enjoy himself.

I stayed by Ben’s side, went on rides with him and Roxie, and sometimes we even did Search. At night we both slept in the room where Nance made the men angry.

When we weren’t visiting Captain Bee’s house, I stayed home with my girl.

I loved both places. I was doing what I do. I had a great life.

I was a dog with a purpose.