Chapter 14

This morning, when the man comes in, there are three of them curled together in the barn.

"Oh, no," he says. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

Zoe looks up, and the cat looks up, but the new dog doesn't.  She is a pretty dog, red with a dark muzzle, like a red German shepherd, maybe an Irish setter/shepherd cross, or a chow/shepherd cross.

"You," the man says. "Hey, you!"

Nothing.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, I hope you're not dead," the man says, and he pushes the big dog lightly with the toe of his boot.

Nothing.

He pushes again, and this time, she looks up, her face still crooked and bleary with sleep.

"Well, you're alive, that's something," he says, and he goes to the storage room in the back of the barn and gets a third bowl, a big one.

"You need a bath," Phil says to the big dog. She doesn't look at him. Just keeps eating.

Phil watches the three of them eat. The new dog has trouble somewhere, maybe her neck. Getting her head down to the bowl seems to hurt her. He watches her as she eats, slowly, deliberately. In the end, she lays down to get at the final morsels.

He has been behind her the whole time, and he speaks to her now, in a soft voice.  She doesn't turn.

"Hey, you!" he says, pretty loudly. Zoe turns and looks at him. The new dog does nothing.

"HEY! YOU!" he shouts. He is very close to her now. The cat runs from the barn. The new dog turns and looks at him. Clearly, she's as deaf as a stump. Great, he thinks, as he heads toward the office. A blind one and now a deaf one. Just what we need.

The old dog joins Zoe and Diana in the sun on the east side of the barn. She walks slowly, and has trouble getting up and down, but she is still strong. She might not hear so well, but she can see fine, and she can walk the whole day, she tells them, as long as she can stop to rest every now and then.

She had a good home, a wonderful home with a lady who loved her, a thin lady with white hair and soft, soft hands. The lady had found her in the shelter when she was a puppy, and had brought her home, and they'd lived together ever since. For years and years and years, they had lived together in a little house near the ocean.

But then the lady went away, in a big truck with flashing lights. Men put her on some kind of bed, and put her in the truck, and she went away, and never came back. The lady's son came back the next day, and put Kaya in the garage, with the door open, so she could come and go as she pleased. He left her with food and water, and he came every couple days, but the lady never came back, and after a while, Kaya just left.

There was nothing for her there.

I've walked for days, she tells them. Days and days.

Maybe my lady is out there somewhere. Maybe your little girl is, too, she says to Zoe. And you, she says to the cat, you… you are a cat. But maybe there is someone out there for you, too.

So I will put it to you, my new friends: Shall we stay? Or shall we go?