The next morning I woke as the smell of perking coffee needled the house. Pap snored in the next room and Mam sang country in the shower. I pulled on my overalls and raced to the shop.
Sable met me at the door, wagging her tail and sniffing my hands. “Good girl,” I said, checking for messes and not finding any. I hugged her and led her outside.
“Want some breakfast?” I asked.
Sable sat on the back porch in the frosty morning, watching me through the storm door while I soaked some bread in milk.
She bolted down the soggy bread and sat waiting for more.
How could I leave her and go off to school? I wouldn’t mind staying home. But I knew Mam and Pap wouldn’t let me. Sometimes Pap took me along when he delivered a job out of town. He’d let me skip school for that, but not for a dog.
I looked at Sable and considered tying her. If I tied her, she’d surely be waiting for me when I got home. But then I thought about Raye Cather’s dogs. Those dogs lay in their own mess, day in, day out. I couldn’t do that to Sable.
“Don’t run off while I’m gone today,” I told her as we walked down the drive to the bus stop. “I’ll be back at three. I promise.”
Sable wagged her tail in the crinkly leaves, looking right at me. “When I get home, Sable, I’ll feed you dog food from a can, and I’ll teach you to sit.”
Sable already sat pretty well on her own, but only when she felt like sitting.
The bus screeched to a stop in front of the driveway. Sable sat, watching, as I climbed the steps.
“Got yourself a dog?” the driver asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
I hurried down the aisle to the back of the bus so I could see Sable out the rear window. Just before we turned the bend in front of the Cobbs’, Sable lay down in the dust of our driveway, resting her head on her paws.
I couldn’t stay fixed on my schoolwork that day, wondering if I’d find her when I got home. During recess I worked it out with Tom. I’d dust and sweep the store in exchange for dog food. Now, at least, I’d be able to feed Sable.
On the way home I strained my neck, trying to see our driveway as we came around the corner. If hoping could make a thing happen, Sable would surely be there. And then she was there, waiting at the bus stop for me, just where I’d left her.
She waited for me that first day. And the second too. She waited the whole first week. She was always there, sitting in the middle of our driveway, watching the bus pull up, wagging her tail.
I almost stopped worrying about her running off when one morning, after she’d been with us a few weeks, instead of lying down like she usually did, Sable started running after the bus, trying to catch up. I watched, helpless, from the rear window as she sprinted down the road. She stayed close behind us, too, until we turned onto Route 30 and picked up speed.
I never was the best student to begin with. But that day I couldn’t keep my mind on anything, knowing she might get hit by a car. Or wander so far she couldn’t find her way back.
When I got home that afternoon, Sable wasn’t at the bus stop to meet me. The sky hung low over the valley, heavy with snow. She might die, lost outside in the harsh weather.
I searched for her in Pap’s shop, and at the secret place. I searched along the road, and down the river. My voice nearly gave out from calling her.
She came home, finally, when she was good and ready, after I’d wound myself tighter than a rope swing. She showed up at dusk, wagging her tail in a big circle, carrying an old rubber boot between her teeth.
I told her “no” and threw the boot into the woods. She started chasing after it, but I called her back and fed her supper.
I’d hoped that would end her wandering, but it didn’t. She kept it up almost every day, taking off for hours, dragging junk home with her when she returned.
Once she brought a frozen wedge of chocolate cake. With the big chunk hanging from her mouth, she pranced into the yard, leaving a trail of dog prints in the fresh snow.
At first I laughed, watching her with that huge piece of cake hanging from her face.
Then I saw Mam.
Mam yelled out the storm door at Sable, and Sable took off, heading up the path toward the secret place. I ran after her.
“Sable,” I said. “You’ve got to stop this.”
Sable bowed down on her front legs and dropped the cake. She barked, her rear end wagging up high in the icy air. She wanted to play.
“No, Sable,” I said.
I called her over to where I sat on the stone foundation, the cold stabbing up through my bottom. Sable trotted over and rested her head on my leg.
“Listen to me, Sable,” I said, chewing on my lip. “Mam’s not crazy about you to begin with. If you’re not perfect, absolutely perfect, I don’t know what she’ll do.” I ran my gloved hand over Sable’s head and down her ears. “Sable, you’ve got to be good.”
Sable’s eyes searched my face. She panted softly.
“What’s the matter, girl?” I asked. “Don’t I feed you right? Don’t I take good care of you?”
Sable wagged her tail so hard her whole back end wagged with it. She looked at me with those dark eyes, her fuzzy brows rippling.
She didn’t mean any harm. All she was doing, really, was bringing us presents.
But Mam didn’t see it that way.
When I came back to the house after putting Sable in the shop for the night, Mam served up a lecture. She’d been simmering it all afternoon.
“I don’t know why I let you keep that dog in the first place,” she said. “She’s nothing but trouble. Imagine, stealing good food.”
I sat at the kitchen table, chasing a crumb around with my fingertip.
“If you can’t break her stealing, Tate,” Mam said, “she has to go.”
“No!” I cried.
Pap said, “Why don’t you tie her, Tate?”
“Pap! We can’t tie her. Sable’s not like Raye Cather’s dogs.”
“Then teach her to stay,” Pap said.
* * *
All my spare time I worked with Sable. I filled my coat pockets with Mam’s sparkle cookies. If Sable did good, she got a piece of cookie right then and there.
But it took a whole day teaching her to stay behind the house while I went around front. And she never really learned that right.
“Stay, Sable,” I commanded, in a voice as firm as Mam’s.
“Stay,” I repeated, walking backward around the side of the house.
Sable would stay for a minute, maybe. Then, all of a sudden, she’d burst around the corner of the house. As soon as she caught sight of me, she started jumping and barking and wagging her tail. She snuffled inside my pockets.
“No treat, Sable!” I cried, refusing to give her a cookie. “It doesn’t count unless you stay till you’re called.”
Sable cocked her head to one side, sort of smiling at me, green sparkles on her nose and crumbs in her whiskers.
“Oh, all right,” I said, giving in and feeding her a cookie. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
But I couldn’t be with her all the time. I had homework and my chores. And then there was the dusting and stuff I did for Tom at the general store to pay Sable’s keep.
I couldn’t expect Mam to keep track of her. Sable didn’t scare Mam so much anymore. Mam just plain didn’t like her. And she didn’t like my working at the general store, either. She said, “You’re up there cleaning for Tom, but you don’t lift a finger to help me.”
I don’t know what Mam needed my help for. She did fine on her own. Besides, I didn’t like Mam’s work. I liked Pap’s work.
I considered asking Pap if he’d watch Sable. But Pap was already doing plenty, just letting Sable stay in the shop with him at night. He had a ton of orders to fill over the winter. Long after I fell into bed, I would gaze across the yard at the shop window. Pap moved in and out of view, working late.
The light from Pap’s window soothed the dark. It spilled, warm and bright, across the silent, snowy yard. I imagined Sable twitching in her box, dreaming her dog dreams. After a while, Pap’s machines always sang me to sleep.
* * *
“I’m taking Sable up to the secret place,” I told Mam after school one frigid day in February.
Mam said, “It’s too cold out there today, Tate. I want you to stay in.”
“I’m dressed warm,” I said, stepping onto the porch.
I caught sight of a garden basket with a broken handle at the edge of the yard. It didn’t belong to us. I moved it before Mam saw it, too.
The cold pinched my nose and made my eyes crinkle when I blinked. Before Sable, I would have stayed inside on a day like this, but I had too much fun outside with Sable to let a little cold stop me.
The thick layers of snow clothes slowed me down as I plowed my way through the newest drifts. Sable raced far ahead of me, then doubled back, spraying snow in my face as she slid to a stop.
She ran circles around me, barking so much the echo brought snow down off the pine trees. Sable chased the snow as it fell, barking like a hammer blow, making more snow come down.
“Sable,” I said, “you make winter perfect.”
Except when you disappear, I thought. And drag trash back from half the valley.