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  She hesitated to have Sam enter the little rental. She was suddenly jealous of his life, the completeness of it, of his wife and kids. He and Michelle had two young children and the addition on their house, although delayed, was due to be done by December. Rocky had turned down several invitations for dinner with them.

  “Let’s lift him down and see if he can make it in the house,” said Sam.

  Sam wrapped his arms around the dog’s rib cage and Rocky lent support to the rear end. When they set him on the ground, he limped five feet away and squatted slightly as he let loose with a stream of urine.

  “He’s not ready to stand on three legs yet,” Sam said.

  The three of them made it up the wooden steps that led to her deck. She unlocked the door and urged the dog in. Sam looked around with the quick eye of a medical assessment. “I used to live in a place like this in college, except there were four of us and one guy never washed his own dishes and finally the rest of us wouldn’t wash his dishes either, so we all used paper plates. It looks like you’re a lot neater.”

  No one else had been in the house, not even Tess. Just the cat, and she only stayed part of the time. Rocky had started to call her Peterson, after the guidebook.

  Rocky listened to Sam’s voice, and although she didn’t hear his words as such, she was measuring the level of her rapid breathing, and noted that since her breathing was not increasing in pace, a panic attack was less likely and she would not have to face the consequences of gasping for air in front of Sam. She was a four on a ten-point scale of anxiety and she could ride this out. She hadn’t had another panic attack after the first one, two months after Bob died. And although the sound of another person breathing in her house was now reaching tolerable levels, the thought of Sam and Michelle seeing inside her house made her want to throw up. Her blood noticed the threat and picked up the pace and her heart rate quickened. There was always flight; she could run away into the tangle of vines and rhododendrons that formed a thick boundary between her and the beach road. There was fight; she could rage, make a scene, wait for the hapless man to make a wrong move and seize on the moment to hurl him out. Or freeze, like the rabbit, the deer, or the lizard and keep Sam in her sight as he left damp trails on her linoleum floor. Her ancient brain came forward like a crocodile, eyes bulging, peeking over the surface of the water.

  “Do you have a water dish for the dog? If you are going to be the nursemaid for this guy, you might consider a way to feed him.”

  Sam looked too large in the house, too scruffy with his dark stubble blossoming from his face. The front part of her brain got up and bumped the old animal brain away. Taking a breath, she said, “There’s a pan under the stove, I’ll use that. Did you bring in the amoxicillin? Seven more days with the meds, right?”

  The dog, limping and exhausted from his ordeal at the clinic, the ferry ride, and the bumpy ride in the back of the truck, now slid to the floor and panted.

  Sam picked up Rocky’s phone and called his wife. “Yeah, it’s Isaiah’s rental, off Bracken Road. OK. See ya.” Sam leaned his backside against the chipped Formica of the counter. “She’ll be here in about twenty minutes, then we have to pick up the kids at day care.”

  Rocky uncovered the rectangular pan from beneath the stove. She tore open the top of the Science Diet bag of kibbles and scooped out a handful and let them chink into place. The dog picked up his head, looked at Rocky, and she thought he smiled. She knew Labs and retrievers always looked like they were smiling, putting them in the same category as panda bears and koalas, disarming all humans. She just couldn’t believe anyone could smile that much. Bob had disagreed with her. “No, Rocks, these dogs really are smiling. They are in a state of contentment,” Bob had said.

  By the time Michelle pulled up, Rocky had put the cap back on the adrenaline, but her armpits were drenched from the experience. She had not had a panic attack, but the effort of averting one had drained her. When the couple left, she was exhausted. Sam had been her first visitor. Isaiah and Charlotte didn’t count because they owned the place.

  She looked at the dog. “I’m no bargain, but I’m all you’ve got until we can find your owner. I’ll try to be a good host.”

  The cat had kicked up a royal fuss when Rocky let her inside, hissing and pushing her spine into a curve of hysteria, then fleeing for the dresser in Rocky’s bedroom. Both Rocky and the dog ignored the behavior and viewed the tabby as far down on the list of critically important dilemmas.

  Rocky was struck by how quickly the black dog had recovered from his injury. The gaping wound left by the broken shaft of the arrow drew together faster than she thought possible. In the first years of Bob’s vet practice, she sometimes helped him with late-night emergencies. She saw dogs and cats with legs pointing in the wrong direction, jagged skin flaps peeled off necks and shoulders, and crushed hindquarters. She learned that animals could survive the worst horrors, that skin grew back together and bones mended, and that dogs always acted with a sort of immortal grace.

  The dog looked at Rocky. She took the throw rug from the bedroom and bunched it up near him. He was her first save and she didn’t want this to go wrong. He slept in the kitchen on the first night, near the front door, like a shy houseguest not wanting to intrude.

  He had all the signs of depression: listlessness, lack of enjoyment in the things normally enjoyed, he even turned his black nose up at food. And his sleep was fitful, waking several times during the night. Being a dog, he couldn’t say things like, “It wouldn’t matter if I was gone, no one would notice.” But Rocky wondered if that was exactly what the Lab would say if he could. She did what she could for him in the first days of his foster care, postoperative life. She was assured that his recovery would not be a complicated one. Infection would be annihilated by the broad-spectrum antibiotic, he would be stiff and sore from the surgery, shocked by whatever happened to cause an arrow to be shot into his shoulder, but dogs were made of powerful stuff, especially his breed. Their drive to be with a pack, to be with another creature, either canine or human, was impossibly strong. Perhaps just being with him was the medicine that Rocky could offer.

  She let him figure her out slowly, smell her as much as he needed to, always offering her open hand slowly, letting him sniff. When he stood, she understood that he needed to make the compulsory crotch sniff. “Hope your memory is good; you only get one full, unfettered snoot there.” He raised his head and breathed in the scent glands that traveled easily to him through her jeans. She crouched to stroke his head, to find out what he liked. Was it under the chin, behind the ears?

  The dog was polite, he let her touch him, but he couldn’t tell her much because his heart wasn’t in it. “Take your time, big guy,” she said to him as she refreshed his water for the second time of the day, made sure that the few kibbles he had taken were replaced.

  Fussing over him would only wear him out. She settled into a chair to read one of the mainland newspapers that she had mostly avoided for months. She was instantly distracted by the thought of a person shooting a dog with a bow and arrow. She knew little about this sort of weaponry. To her it was an obscure art. Once while on vacation in San Francisco, she and Bob had seen an archery range in the Golden Gate Park. They stopped to watch an Asian woman preparing to shoot by going through tai chi motions, slowing herself to a point of stillness, then picking up the bow with exquisite grace, placing the arrow, and joining in a moment of perfection before she released the entire arrangement by simply letting go. Bob had turned to her and said, “Is it just me, an East Coast guy, or does everything out here look like sex?”

  She could not imagine the graceful woman ever doing anything as cruel as shooting a dog. She couldn’t picture any person who would.

  “Who in the world would do this to a dog?” asked Tess. She had come to stay with the dog while Rocky went to work. Sam had burst the membrane on her compound of isolation; letting Tess in had been easier. When Rocky came home, she found the older woman and the dog
sitting together on the floor, Tess with her back against the wall, her legs stuck out like a young girl. The dog, like all good dogs, kept himself between Tess and the door. When Rocky opened the door, he stood and she cringed to see him rise to a seated position.

  “Did you give him the antibiotics?”

  “Of course, an hour ago. He gets one more before you go to bed. I can stay the night you know.”

  “We’ll be all right. Well, maybe you should stay until I take him outside to pee. If he falls or something, it’s easier for two people to carry him.” Rocky knew the dog wouldn’t fall, but she did want Tess to stay a little longer. Something about her felt good.

  Rocky and Tess put on their coats and coaxed the big dog outside. The wind came in surges, just like the surf of the ocean. The dog gratefully peed, wisely not trying to lift a hind leg, but squatting like a puppy. She was called into service to help with the black dog when Rocky brought him home. The sight of the wound on his shoulder made Tess wince and imagine the blasts of red and orange that the dog had endured before Rocky had found him.

  “You can’t keep calling him Black Dog. That’s like calling someone Furrowed Brow or Capped Tooth,” said Tess as she and Rocky sat once again in the dog warden’s kitchen.

  Rocky reached over and patted the dog. “Somewhere that dog has an owner and he has a name. I just can’t change his name. That’s horrible to think about, being hurt and lost and no one knows your name and suddenly you are called Roberta or Ethel,” said Rocky.

  “No one is called Ethel anymore. I suspect there is no danger there.” The wind swooped down on the house, seeming to come straight down in a vertical stab from the sky rather than across the ocean.

  “I want to wait. I’ve got calls in to the animal shelters and dog wardens on the mainland. I called in an ad to the newspaper. I already know that he doesn’t belong to anyone on the island. And this dog had no computer chip on the back of his neck.”

  “Good for you,” said Tess to the dog. “I don’t plan on getting a chip either. He needs a strong name, one with deep, mellow tones to match his voice. And a name with an eccentric sense of dignity. He is one of the most dignified dogs I have ever seen. He looks like an ambassador. Who knows, we might come up with his real name.” Tess squatted down by the dog and looked into his dark eyes. “Lloyd. Lloyd!” she said. The dog lifted one ear up.

  “That could make him seem like a criminal. Don’t people named Lloyd end up robbing banks?”

  “No, that’s Wayne and only when it’s the middle name,” said Tess.

  As a temporary name, they decided it would do.

  It was bad enough that the dog was injured and was now recovering from surgery, but something else was really wrong with him, something that Rocky had seen in his eyes on the day she found him. He had lost someone and it was horrible for the dog. Rocky knew that food, a warm bed, lots of water, and encouraging words would not be enough. He longed for someone.

  She tried to picture what might have happened, how a big dog like this would have gotten separated from his owner and then shot with an arrow. Maybe it was the owner who hurt him, a deranged, despicable person, the kind of person one reads about in the grocery store tabloids. But no, this dog would be different if that was the case, he’d be shy, passive, hide his tail between his legs. Or he would be aggressive and in a state of constant vigilance. That wasn’t it. Maybe someone stole him from his really loving owner who was grievously worried and had put up lost-dog posters in the hometown of someplace like Oklahoma.

  After Tess reluctantly left, Rocky squatted by the Lab. “I’d sure like to hear your story.”

  Chapter 7

  No one on the island, except for Isaiah, knew she was a psychologist. Not that being a psychologist was so extraordinary, but it was what she had been and now she was nothing that she had been before. Here, the work was cleaner. Relocate the raccoons, the skunks. Capture dogs abandoned by the summer people, the new litters of kittens destined to become feral. Pick up the dead seagulls. Report on beach erosion. The beach erosion part was extra, not a part of her original job description, and the first time that she gave Isaiah a report on changes along the beach after a storm, he told her that the animal warden’s job had obviously expanded.

  “Don’t go writing yourself a new job description. All we’re paying you for is animal control,” said Isaiah as he leafed through a three-page document.

  “You’re the one who suggested it. I’m just trying to systematize things, to help the next person on the job. I’ve put some beach markers along the shore, and measured the distance to water at high tide and low tide. Nothing fancy,” she said as she leaned back in one of his straight-back chairs.

  On her own accord, she added other duties to her job. Walk on the cliffs, look official. Clean up litter that she couldn’t stand to look at any longer. Here the work had a beginning and an end, like house painting or carpentry, and if she didn’t want to talk to anyone, she didn’t have to. She filed weekly reports for Isaiah and left them in his mailbox if he wasn’t around.

  She had been slow to get to know people other than her boss and Tess. But she had a neighbor, Elaine, a teacher at the island grade school. They had passed each other on the dirt road for months, their cars kicking up spirals of dust. When she saw Elaine at the grocery store, her arms filled with white plastic bags, struggling to get out the door, Rocky had an impulse to turn her head and pretend she didn’t recognize the woman, but it was too late.

  “Hello, neighbor. Can you get the door for me? I feel like a pack mule with all this stuff,” Elaine said with a broad smile.

  Rocky accepted the invitation to dinner because she was out of practice at declining. How had she and Bob said no before? “Let me get back to you after I check at home.” That’s right, that’s what it had been like. Having a partner was a buffer, an excuse to contemplate, and a reason to say no. Without him, she didn’t know what to say. Later she realized she could have used the dog as an excuse; he was perfect.

  Elaine had one of the houses on the island that was not quaint or dripping with gingerbread bric a brac. It was a 1950’s ranch-style house and someone had attached a second story to it. Rocky arrived with a bottle of wine and seltzer water, even after Elaine had said, “No, this is my welcome to you. I’m already guilty of bad manners for letting you be here for months before I invited you in. Maybe I’m that way because of all the summer people; there’s too many of them to get to know.”

  Fresh tomato sauce filled the house with an abundant smell that drenched Rocky with sharp images of Bob eating more pasta than humanly possible and suffering with burps that smelled like compost. Rocky suddenly remembered that she liked pasta and bread and butter, but she couldn’t remember the last time that she prepared it. She handed over her offerings to Elaine.

  Elaine turned her head to the door leading into the living room and Rocky remembered what her college roommate said about the fundamental difference in facial features. Some faces were destined to be finely chiseled in marble; others were best described in soft clay. Elaine was in the clay category, soft round cheeks, the start of a furrow between her eyebrows.

  “Honey, it’s dinner,” said Elaine to the open doorway. Rocky had not seen anyone else with Elaine when they passed each other on the dirt road. She waited to see who honey was.

  A young girl appeared, with her hair pulled back tight, her ears sticking out like a mouse. She wore bulky sweatpants, running shoes, and a T-shirt with a partially zipped-up sweatshirt.

  “Melissa, this is our neighbor, Rocky. This is my daughter.”

  Rocky felt the hit first in her solar plexus, where she always felt it. She put her hand out to Melissa and got back not a solid athlete’s grasp but a cold, dry reluctant hand. Even as the two hands touched, Melissa offered a profound determination to pull away. The skin on Melissa’s face was tight, but because she was young, no one was yet alarmed. Before Rocky could stop herself, she said, “Track or cross-country? Let me guess, you
do both.”

  Elaine, who was taking the cork out of the wine bottle, stopped in mid pull. “How did you know?”

  Rocky flicked a glance at the girl. “I’ve known a few cross-country people. Really, it was the shoes. You wear them only if you really mean business.”

  Elaine asked her the sort of questions that she dreaded: where did she came from, what did she do before being an animal control warden. She had settled on a stock answer. “No children, used to work in child care, not married, just coming out of a relationship, and trying out the island.” She was surprised at how well her answers worked, how easy it was to change who she was. Rocky was more comfortable asking the questions and quickly turned it to Melissa.

  “I haven’t seen you with your mother before,” said Rocky.

  “I stay at my Dad’s in Portland some of the time. Every other weekend. Sometimes more if I have school stuff.”

  Elaine’s mouth tightened up as if she had set her teeth together. “We’ve done it for so long, I sort of forget that it must sound strange. We’ve been divorced since Melissa was eight.”

  Rocky didn’t have to watch long to see what Melissa was doing with her dinner. The girl patted her stomach and said, “I’m so full from eating after I ran, I don’t know how much I can eat.” She put lettuce, sprouts, and cucumber slices on her plate. She went to the fridge and got a lemon, and squeezed it on her salad. Then she put a golfball-sized portion of spaghetti on her plate with a tablespoon of sauce. She elaborately sliced the cucumber into eight pieces like a pie. The spaghetti was pushed around and rearranged without one strand going into her mouth. She ate a mushroom from the sauce and suddenly stopped.