Still cradling the wet dog in her left arm, Augusta Smith opened the door of her cast-iron stove. She placed a log on top of the red coals and adjusted the flue. She moved the steaming tea kettle off the cook lid so the water would stay hot but not boil. With her right fist, she punched down the sweet dough for its second rising.
Were these small tasks so necessary, you ask, at the very moment when the little dog was teetering between life and death? Was Augusta stalling—afraid to face the fact that the dog in her arms might be dead?
One cautious step at a time, Augusta climbed the wooden staircase to the second-floor bathroom, where she pulled a fraying towel off the bar.
How foolish she’d been to hurry home, jostling the pup’s body as she had. But Ben Rafferty was a mean old cuss, the kind of man who just might have used the little dog for bait!
“No, you did the right thing,” Augusta assured herself.
She spread the towel over the calico quilt on her four-poster bed. Unrolling the folds of her sweater, she eased the limp dog’s body onto the towel.
Augusta laid her hands on his sand-crusted fur. His body was warmer than when she’d first touched him. A gash—raw, but not bleeding—slashed his left thigh. Welts formed an imperfect ring around his neck.
“Please let the little guy live,” she prayed aloud.
Gently patting the dog dry, Augusta contemplated some kind of bargain.
Lord, if you let him live, I promise I’ll …
Promise what? What was a fair exchange?
Augusta got down on her knees. She touched the pup’s button-size nose—it was dry—and, with her fingernail, brushed particles of sand out of his nostrils.
Was air moving in and out, or not? She couldn’t tell. Oh, and his body seemed so terribly, terribly lifeless. Augusta’s heart sank like an anchor heaved into the sea. Could she even dig a grave? It’d been a cold spring… was the ground soft enough?
Augusta shuddered. I won’t think about it, she decided. “Hang on there, little fellow. I’ll be right back.”
On the way to get a hot water bottle, Augusta stopped in front of her pine hope chest. Reverently, she lifted up a finely woven, crib-size blanket.
Had it really been over thirty years? Had it been that long since her dear Albert had drowned while laying lobster traps in a freak storm—like the one last night?
The blanket had been woven so that someday Augusta might wrap a baby of her own in it. But that day had never come.
Augusta pressed the baby blanket to her face. Her shoulders slumped.
No baby girl. No baby boy. And now?
Now, a dying dog.
Holding her breath, Augusta wrapped the injured animal in the blanket and laid the bundle next to the hot water bottle.
How had the little dog survived a beating by such a cruel sea? From where had he come? To whom did he belong?
It had been a long time since she’d felt so utterly helpless, so totally useless.
“I don’t know what else to do,” she said sadly. “So if it’s all the same to you, little dog, I think I’ll have my tea.”