{ THIRTY-TWO }

After that day, I saw Hannah and Carly a lot. They came to the Farm to play more and more frequently, which was fine by me. Carly understood that the Farm was my territory, something she could hardly fail to recognize, since I’d lifted my leg on every tree on the place. I was the Top Dog, and she didn’t try to challenge me, though she was irritatingly oblivious to the benefits that the natural order bestowed upon our admittedly small pack. Mostly, she just acted like we were playmates and nothing more.

She was, I concluded, just not very bright. Carly seemed to think that she could catch the ducks if she just crept up on them slowly enough, which was an exercise in pure stupidity. I would watch in utter disgust as she would slink through the grass, her belly in the dirt, moving just inches at a time, while all the while the mother duck watched her with an unblinking eye. Then a quick lunge, a huge splash, and the ducks would be airborne for a few feet, landing just ahead of Carly in the pond. She’d swim for about fifteen minutes, working so hard her body would nearly be lifted out of the water, and would bark in frustration whenever she felt she was within biting distance and the ducks flapped their wings and jumped through the air a few feet out ahead. When Carly finally gave up, the ducks would determinedly swim after her, quacking, and sometimes Carly would spin around and head back out, thinking she had the ducks fooled. I had no patience with any of it.

Ethan and I occasionally went to Carly’s house, too, but this wasn’t as fun, as all there was to do was play in the backyard.

The next summer, dozens of people assembled at the Farm, sitting in folding chairs to watch me perform a trick I’d first perfected with Maya and Al, which was to walk between the chairs at a slow, dignified pace, this time up to where Ethan had built some raised wooden steps so everyone could see me. He untied something from my back, and he and Hannah talked and kissed and everyone laughed and applauded at me.

After that, Hannah lived with us on the Farm. The place was transformed so that it was almost like Maya’s mama’s house, with people arriving for visits all the time. Ethan brought home a couple more horses to join Troy in the yard, smaller ones, and the children who came to visit loved to ride them, even though, in my opinion, horses are unreliable creatures who will leave you stranded in the forest at the first sign of a snake.

Carly’s owner, Rachel, soon showed up with a tiny baby named Chase, a little boy who loved to climb on me and grab my fur and giggle. I lay still when this happened, just as I had when Maya and I did school. I was a good dog; everyone said so.

Hannah had three daughters, and each of them had children, too, so that at any given time I might have more playmates than I could count.

When there were no visitors, Ethan and Hannah often sat out on the front porch, holding hands while the evening air turned cool. I lay at their feet, sighing with contentment. The pain in my boy was gone, replaced by a serene, uplifting happiness. The children who came to visit called him Granddaddy, and each one made his heart soar when they did so. Hannah called him “my love” and darling as well as just plain Ethan.

About the only thing involved with the new arrangement that was less than perfect was the fact that when Hannah started sleeping with Ethan I was summarily dismissed from the bed. At first I assumed this was a mistake—there was, after all, plenty of room for me between them, which was where I preferred to lie. But Ethan ordered me off onto the floor, even though there was nothing wrong with the bed upstairs and the girl could just as easily sleep there. In fact, after I performed my trick in the yard for all the people to see, Ethan had beds put in all the upstairs rooms, even Grandma’s sewing room, but apparently none of them were good enough for Hannah.

Just to test it, though, every single night I put my paws on the bed and slowly raised myself up like Carly inching through the weeds toward the ducks. And every night Ethan and Hannah would laugh.

“No, Buddy, you get down,” Ethan would say.

“You can’t blame him for trying,” Hannah often replied.

When the snow fell, Hannah and Ethan would put a blanket over themselves and sit and talk in front of the fire. When it was Happy Thanksgiving or Merry Christmas, the house would be so full of people I often felt in danger of being stepped on, and I could have my pick of beds where the children were delighted to have me sleep with them. My favorite child was Rachel’s boy, Chase, who reminded me a little of Ethan, the way he hugged me and loved me. When Chase stopped trying to walk on all fours like a dog and started running on two legs, he liked to explore the Farm with me while Carly fruitlessly hunted ducks.

I was a good dog. I had fulfilled my purpose. Lessons I had learned from being feral had taught me how to escape and how to hide from people when it was necessary, scavenging for food from trash containers. Being with Ethan had taught me love and had taught me my most important purpose, which was taking care of my boy. Jakob and Maya had taught me Find, Show, and, most important of all, how to save people, and it was all of these things, everything I had learned as a dog, that had led me to find Ethan and Hannah and to bring them both together. I understood it now, why I had lived so many times. I had to learn a lot of important skills and lessons, so that when the time came I could rescue Ethan, not from the pond but from the sinking despair of his own life.

The boy and I still walked around the Farm in the evenings, usually with Hannah, but not always. I craved the alone time with Ethan, when he would talk to me, his gait slow and careful on the uneven path. “What a great time we all had this week; didn’t you have fun, Buddy?” Sometimes he used his cane to smack the ball down the driveway and I would joyously tear after it, chewing it a little before dropping it at his feet for another whack.

“You’re such a great dog, Buddy, I don’t know what I would do without you,” Ethan said on one such evening. He took a deep breath, turning to survey the Farm, waving at a picnic table full of children, who waved back.

“Hi, Granddaddy!” they shouted.

His sheer enjoyment, his love of life, made me bark with delight. He turned back to me, laughing.

“Ready for another one, Buddy?” he asked me, raising his cane to hit the ball again.

Chase wasn’t the last baby to join the family; they just kept coming. Chase was about the age Ethan had been when I first met him when his mother, Rachel, brought home a little girl they variously called the Surprise, the Last One for Sure, and Kearsten. As usual, they held the baby down for me to sniff, and as usual, I tried to be appreciative—I never knew what they expected from me under these circumstances.

“Let’s go play ball, Buddy!” Chase suggested. Now that I could respond to!

One beautiful spring day I was home alone with Ethan, napping drowsily while he read a book in the warm sunlight streaming through the picture window. Hannah had just left in the car, and, at that particular moment, our home was uncharacteristically empty of visiting family members. Suddenly my eyes snapped open. I turned and looked at Ethan, who met my gaze curiously. “What did you hear, Buddy?” he asked me. “Did a car pull up?”

There was something wrong with the boy; I could sense it. With a slight whimper, I got to my feet. Anxiety washed through me. He’d gone back to his book but laughed in surprise when I put my paws on the couch, as if to climb on top of him. “Whoa, Buddy, what are you doing?”

The sense of impending disaster increased. I barked helplessly.

“Are you okay? Do you need to go out?” He gestured toward the dog door, then pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “Whew. Little dizzy, there.”

I sat. He blinked, looking off into the distance. “Tell you what, old boy, let’s you and me go back and take a nap.” He got to his feet, swaying unsteadily. Panting nervously, I followed him back to the bedroom. He sat on the bed and groaned. “Oh,” he said.

Something tore inside of his head; I could feel it. He sank back, sucking in a deep breath. I jumped on top of the bed, but he didn’t say anything, just stared at me, glassy-eyed.

There was nothing for me to do. I nuzzled his slack hand, fearfully conscious of the strange forces loose inside him. His breathing was shallow, shuddering.

After an hour, he stirred. Something was still really wrong with him, but I could feel him gathering his resources, struggling to break free of whatever gripped him the way I had once struggled to find the surface of the cold water from the storm drain, when I had the little boy Geoffrey in my teeth.

“Oh,” Ethan panted. “Oh. Hannah.”

More time passed. I whined softly, feeling the fight continue within him. Then his eyes opened. At first they were unfocused, confused, and then they lit upon me, widening.

“Why, hello, Bailey,” he shocked me by saying. “How have you been? I’ve missed you, dog.” His hand groped for my fur. “Good dog, Bailey,” he said.

It wasn’t a mistake. Somehow, he knew. These magnificent creatures, with their complex minds, were capable of so much more than a dog, and the sure conviction coming from him now let me know that he had put it all together. He was looking at me and seeing Bailey.

“How about the day of the go-karts, eh, Bailey? We sure did show them, that day. We sure did.”

I wanted to let him know that yes, I was Bailey, I was his one and only dog, and that I understood that whatever was happening inside him was letting him see me as I truly was. It dawned on me how I might do this, and in a flash I was off the bed and down the hall. I reached up and grabbed the knob to the closet just the way my first mother had taught me, and the old mechanism turned easily in my mouth, the door popping open. I nosed it aside and dove into the pile of musty things at the bottom, tossing aside boots and umbrellas until I had it in my mouth: the flip.

When I jumped back on the bed and dropped the thing in his hand, Ethan started as if I had just awakened him. “Wow! Bailey, you found the flip; where did you get this, boy?”

I licked his face.

“Well now. Let’s just see.”

What he did next was the last thing I wanted. His body trembling with the effort, he hauled himself over to the window, which had been cranked open to admit the fresh air. “Okay, Bailey. Get the flip!” he called. With an awkward motion he managed to fumble the flip onto the windowsill and push it outside.

I didn’t want to leave his side, not even for a second, but I couldn’t disobey him when he repeated his command. My toenails scrabbling on the carpet, I bounded across the living room floor and out the dog door, peeling around the side of the house and scooping the flip up from the bushes where it had fallen. I spun and raced back to the house, resenting every second the stupid flip was keeping me apart from my boy.

When I returned to the bedroom, I saw that things had taken a turn for the worse. Ethan had sat on the floor where he had been standing, and his eyes were unfocused, his breathing labored. I spat out the object I’d brought him—the time for that had passed. Carefully, so as not to hurt him, I crept forward, putting my head in his lap.

He would be leaving me soon; I could hear it in the slowing of his raspy breathing. My boy was dying.

I could not join him on his journey and did not know where it would lead him. People are vastly more complicated than dogs and served a much more important purpose. The job of a good dog was ultimately to be with them, remaining by their sides no matter what course their lives might take. All I could do now was offer him comfort, the assurance that as he left this life he was not alone but rather was tended by the dog who loved him more than anything in the whole world.

His hand, weak and trembling, touched the fur above my neck. “I will miss you, doodle dog,” Ethan said to me.

I put my face to his, I felt his breath and tenderly licked his face while he struggled to focus his gaze on me. Eventually, he gave up, his eyes sliding away. I didn’t know if he saw me now as Bailey or Buddy, but it didn’t matter. I was his dog, and he was my boy.

I felt the consciousness ebb from him as gradually as daylight leaves the sky after sunset. There was no pain, no fear, nothing but the sense that my brave boy was going where he was supposed to go. Through it all, I could feel him aware of me lying in his lap until, with one last, shuddering breath, he was aware of nothing at all.

I lay there quietly with my boy in the stillness of that spring afternoon, the house silent and empty. Soon the girl would be home, and, remembering how hard it had been for everyone to say good-bye to Bailey and Ellie and even the cats, I knew she would need my help to face life without the boy.

As for me: I loyally remained right where I was, remembering the very first time I had ever seen the boy and then just now, the very last time—and all the times in between. The deep aching grief I knew I would feel would come soon enough, but at that moment mostly what I felt was peace, secure in the knowledge that by living my life the way I had, everything had come down to this moment.

I had fulfilled my purpose.