Chapter 7

The Car

The end of Tramp’s first summer with his family had arrived. Shannon and Colin stood on the corner all dressed up. Tramp hardly recognized them. It was a good thing he knew their smells, cinnamon and peanut butter, or he’d never have looked up. He was lying in the hosta plants, belly cool as could be when the wind brought a mix of familiar and unfamiliar scents to the fence. The long yellow bus had an awful smell, much worse than the blue Mustang car in the garage.

He heard laughing kids. Shannon and Colin got on the long yellow bus on the corner of Twenty-fourth and Sheridan, along with the other gazillion kids in the neighborhood. The bus pulled away.

Tramp squeezed under the fence and ran as fast as he could after them. This big yellow thing wasn’t the same as Big Bob’s truck, but Tramp thought for sure they had been taken and would soon find themselves in a pet store to be sold to new families. Tramp didn’t want to lose them. He didn’t know where they were being taken, but he wasn’t going to let them be stolen, not without a fight.

They got way ahead of him. He lost sight of them after three turns. But all he had to do was follow the greasy diesel smell. He crossed a lot of streets he had never crossed before and heard honks and yells. “Get home, you dumb dog,” someone yelled from a car.

The bus stopped in front of a big red-brick building. A very large woman with a yellow X across her chest and a long pole in her hand was standing on the corner, smiling. Maybe it wasn’t a pet store for humans, but Tramp could see a lot of kids were going into that building.

He flew across the street. He always flew crossing busy streets. He could get across four lanes in what felt like two leaps. His front paws reached out as his back legs pushed off. He was airborne for ten feet easy. Just a few of those flying leaps always got him from one curb to the other. Not on this day.

He was in mid-air on his second leap and heard a crack. He heard it before he felt it, but then he did feel it and let out a yelp that almost got to the kids as they went into the big red building. He saw Colin and Shannon go inside. But that meant they couldn’t help him, and he needed help.

But then he looked up into the most wrinkled human face, he had ever seen.

“Where did you come from, little guy?” the woman said. She had very kind eyes.

“She’s a good egg,” said a canary sitting on her shoulder.

“Who’s she and what’s your name?” Tramp asked the canary.

“My human, Mrs. Oliver. My name’s Buster. She’s taking me to the vet. I’m coughing and may have pneumonia,” he said. “We’re going for a check-up. I think she means to take you too.”

“No, no. I’m fine,” Tramp said. He tried to stand. The pain in his left rear leg hit hard.

“You’ll be fine, little one,” said the kindly woman. “You can come with us to the vet, just down the street. My son, Daniel, is the vet. He knows all there is to know about animals. The car that hit you didn’t even stop. Good thing Buster and I were on the corner,” Mrs. Oliver said.

Tramp looked back at the red building as the old woman scooped him up gently.