Chase

Sixteen

Aunt Flo had been furious when Jeff got back to the camp.

“Where have you been?” she demanded to know when he came through the door of her house.

“Just out,” he said. “I wasn’t gone all that long.”

“Really? Really?” She’d made her hands into fists and had them jabbed into her hips, elbows out. It was her favourite stance. She was leaning against the kitchen counter in front of the sink. A lock of hair had slipped free of one of her bobby pins and was hanging across one eye. “I want you to come with me,” she said.

Aunt Flo went to grab for Jeff’s arm but he headed for the door too quickly for her. If there was something she wanted him to see, fine, but he wasn’t going to let her physically drag him to it.

“This way!” she said. “If you hadn’t been goofing off, you’d have known what was going on here.”

She led him to the roofless enclosure where all the cans of garbage were kept, and filled, before they were taken to the dump. She opened the slatted wood door and said, “Behold.”

Oh, wow.

Three of the trash cans had been tipped over, the lids removed, and the green bags dragged out and torn open. Food scraps and dirty napkins and all sorts of other disgusting things were spread across the ground.

“Uh oh,” Jeff said.

“Uh oh, indeed,” Aunt Flo said. “Looks like somebody forgot to snap the lids on tight. You’ve turned this into a raccoon restaurant.”

Jeff had to admit it was possible. The raccoons around here were pretty smart, no doubt about that. They were like safecrackers when it came to getting into garbage cans.

“Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Aunt Flo said, then turned around and walked back to the house.

There were a lot of disgusting things in the world, but few were as disgusting as the guts of a garbage bag. As Jeff got closer he could see chicken bones and fish heads and coffee grounds and something oozy leaking out of one of the torn bags that looked like it could be blood from some kind of alien.

Jeff thought he might puke.

But somehow he kept the contents of his stomach in place while he shoveled all the mess into brand new trash bags. Then he went and got Aunt Flo’s old pickup truck so that he could load everything into the back.

And then he was off to the dump.

Even though he’d already made dozens of trips down this road without any problems, Jeff still worried that one of these days he would be stopped by the police and arrested for driving without a license. He thought Aunt Flo didn’t worry about his being arrested mainly because it wouldn’t be happening to her.

Jeff remembered what his father used to say about his older sister, Flo. How when they were growing up, she was always talking him into doing things she considered too risky to tackle herself. If her kite were stuck in a tree, she’d send her little brother up the trunk to retrieve it. Same thing when her Frisbee landed on the roof. Once, she talked him into stealing a bag of Fritos from the corner store when she was consumed with a junk food craving, and had no money.

So during the drive to the dump, Jeff kept glancing into the rear-view mirror, expecting to see a flashing red light accompanied by the whoop of a siren. He wondered whether some jail time wouldn’t be just the rest he needed. Sitting behind bars might be a heck of a lot nicer than living under Aunt Flo’s roof.

At least for a while.

The truck rumbled along the gravel road to the dump, dust stirring up behind it. Jeff fiddled with the radio — the truck was so old that there were actual push buttons for the individual stations — in a vain attempt to find something good to listen to. None of the buttons had been set to anything he liked — Aunt Flo was a country and western fan — so he had to turn the knob manually to find anything someone under a hundred might listen to.

Between glancing at the radio and checking his mirror for the police, Jeff didn’t have his eyes on the actual road as much as he should.

He had just landed on a station playing something with a really good beat to it and was tapping his fingers on the top of the steering wheel when he saw something suddenly dart in front of the truck.

It had come out of the tall grasses on the right shoulder. Something black, with some white in it.

He thumped the horn as he moved his foot from the gas to the brake. He’d slammed it so hard he thought he’d snap the pedal off. The truck skidded to a halt on the gravel, back end fishtailing, the dust trail enveloping the vehicle and wafting in through the windows. Jeff coughed a couple of times as he waved away the dust in front of his face.

He had no idea what he’d hit, or if he’d actually hit anything at all. But that combination of black and white fur had given him a start. What if he’d run over a skunk? What if it was about to unleash the biggest fart the Canfield area had ever smelled? If Aunt Flo thought the garbage was a stinky mess, just wait till he brought her truck back reeking of skunk juice.

But no, what he’d seen was not a skunk. He’d seen it only for a fraction of a second, but it was way too big to be a skunk.

Jeff was going to have to screw up his courage and check out what it was.

He opened the door, stepped out of the truck, and came around the front very slowly.

His heart sank.

It was a dog.

Not just any dog, but a dog that looked a lot like Pepper. It wasn’t Pepper — he could tell that right away from the black and white markings, but it was the same kind of dog.

A border collie, mostly black, with a bit of white fur on his snout and under his neck and on his legs. Or hers. He didn’t know if it was a he or a she.

“Oh man, I’m so sorry!” he said to the dog.

The dog was lying on his side, and Jeff thought maybe he was dead because his eyes were closed, but then he saw his chest pump up and down. He was still breathing!

Jeff knelt down and gently lay his hand on his side. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “You’re going to be all right!”

Of course, Jeff knew no such thing, but what else was he going to say? He continued moving his hand over him, tentatively checking to see whether anything was broken. There was no blood, and nothing about the dog looked bent out of shape. Jeff looked at the bumper of the pickup, and while there was no blood, there was a tiny wisp of black fur stuck to it. So the truck must have hit him, but maybe it had been nothing more than a nudge, not a serious blow. Jeff had hit those brakes fast and hard.

Jeff got his face right up next to the dog’s, but struggled to focus as he found himself blinking away tears.

“Please don’t die,” Jeff said as a tear rolled down his cheek. “Please be okay.”

The dog’s chest continued to go up and down, but other than that there was no sign of life.

Jeff started crying harder. This dog reminded him so much of Pepper. The dog he’d loved with all his heart that had been taken away from him, and if that weren’t bad enough, now it looked like maybe he was going to be a dog murderer.

A tear dropped from his cheek and landed on the dog’s black nose.

And it twitched.

“Hey,” Jeff said, and sniffed.

The nose twitched some more. Jeff stroked the dog’s side soothingly.

And then, one eye fluttered open.

“Yes!” Jeff said. “You’re alive! You got hit. You ran across the road and I almost ran you right over. I hit the brakes. I hit ’em fast as I could. But you can’t run into the road like that!”

The open eye blinked.

“Does anything hurt? Did anything get broken? Huh? Whose dog are you, anyway?”

Jeff felt around under the dog’s jaw, looking for tags. He found a collar under the fur, but no tags.

“I’m going to try and lift you up, okay?” Jeff said. “You shout out if it starts to hurt.”

Jeff slipped his arms under the dog and ever so slowly lifted him off the gravel. If anything hurt, he wasn’t showing it. He was limp in the boy’s arms.

“Gonna take care of you,” Jeff said. “I’m going to make sure you’re okay. And I’ll find your owner. We’re going to make it okay.”

Jeff came around the passenger side of the truck, managed to open the door, and carefully set the dog on the passenger seat.

The dog made a small whimpering sound as Jeff slipped his arms out from under him.

“You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

Jeff closed the door and ran around to the other side of the truck. He had to take this dog someplace where he could look after him, but he couldn’t take him home. Aunt Flo hated dogs.

At that moment, Jeff thought of Emily’s train station.

That was perfect! He would take the dog there.

“I know where I can take you,” Jeff said. “I know a safe place.”