Owen Hart was rinsing his only coffee cup when Judith Sloan called to say the last papers had cleared. He shut off the faucet with his wrist and listened. For the first time in years, there was somewhere he could go without first asking a stranger how much the deposit would be.
“The cabin, the shed, the road,” Judith said. “All of it is yours now.”
He looked at the unopened moving boxes beside his apartment door. “I’ll need to fix the fences. Probably get a dog.”
“You’ll need somebody to look at the house before you sleep in it.”
Three days later she handed him the keys and an envelope of property documents outside the county records office. At sixty-one, Judith had a way of waiting through an evasive answer that reminded him why his grandfather had trusted her. She waited now while Owen examined the survey.
“It’s been standing empty almost eight years,” she said. “A roof can look perfectly decent from the road.”
“Does this one?”
“No.”
He folded the map along its worn creases. The hill lay outside Alder Creek, in the wooded country of eastern Washington, with one neighboring farm below its southern side. He remembered summer visits, a kitchen pump, his grandfather’s enormous boots. He remembered very little about the roof.
Judith gave him a wooden box, its small key, and a brass compass in a cloth pouch. Samuel Hart’s initials were burned into the lid; a brass repair crossed one corner. Old property papers were inside, she said, along with personal things she had left for him.
Owen put the compass in his jacket and the box on the passenger floor.
“You can call me when you’ve seen it,” Judith said.
He promised nothing. At fifty-six he could still carry roofing sheets, repair engines, and work a night shift without much conversation. The Navy had given him other skills. None had made it easier to tell somebody where he expected to be tomorrow.
By late afternoon he needed fuel. He pulled into a feed store with a pump beside the gravel lot, paid inside, and bought coffee too weak to justify the lid. He was walking back to his pickup when something rattled under the awning.
Three German shepherds occupied separate transport crates beside a stack of grain sacks. A cardboard sign offered working dogs to a suitable home. The man beside it had a white mustache, a hickory cane, and one hand resting on his hip as though he had forgotten, briefly, that somebody might see.
The largest dog sat without touching the wire. Copper fur showed beneath an irregular black saddle; one ear stood squarely, while the tip of the other curved toward his head. He watched Owen set his cup on the truck.
The female waited at the back of the middle crate. She was finer through the shoulders, with pale gold on her cheeks and dark, watchful eyes. In the last crate, a smaller male turned around, bumped his folded ear against the roof, and presented his nose again. His tail struck the plastic wall.
“Looking?” the man asked.
“One dog. For a place I’m fixing up.”
“Russ Barlow.” He shifted the cane into his other hand. “These are a year old. Brothers and sister. There’s paperwork if you want to see it.”
Owen did. Russ opened a folder on the feed sacks, keeping a thumb against the pages when the breeze lifted them. Vaccinations, examinations, dates, three sets of records. Owen read each line instead of glancing at the signatures.
“They’ve been around stock?” he asked.
“Barns and sheep since they could get under a fence. That doesn’t mean you can turn them loose with a flock. Somebody still has to teach them.”
“I’m thinking of a few sheep eventually.”
Russ regarded the pickup, which contained tools, water jugs, and almost nothing that looked like a household. “Get yourself settled first.”
Owen put the papers down. It was reasonable advice, delivered without enough ceremony for him to object to it. He crouched several feet from the large male’s door and let his hands rest where the dog could see them.
“Boone,” Russ said. “He’ll take a minute.”
Boone brought his nose forward. Owen smelled the warm, slightly sour bedding in the crate and the grain dust coming off the sacks. He held still while the dog sampled his knuckles through the bars, then sat back on his heels when Boone withdrew.
No barking, no frantic scrabbling. Owen liked that. He had lived in enough rooms where a slammed door could lift him out of his chair before he knew he had moved.
The female had come forward too. She stopped when Owen noticed her.
“That’s Fern,” Russ said. “Let her decide when she’s ready.”
“And him?”
“Tucker.”
Tucker pushed a paw against his water bowl, making it ring. Russ nudged the outside of the crate with the end of his cane. The dog abandoned the bowl and sat, although the sitting required considerable movement.
Owen almost smiled. Then he straightened, feeling the miles in his back.
“Why are you selling?”
“My hip’s finished with the farm.” Russ spoke toward the folder. “I kept thinking another season would sort it out. It didn’t. The sheep are spoken for, and I’ve got to be somewhere I can manage.”
Owen looked at the cane. Sixty-eight, Russ had told him while they examined the records. The man’s grip tightened when he took the weight off his bad side.
“You had them from puppies?”
Russ rubbed a crease out of the top sheet with his thumb. “I was there when their mother started. Didn’t get much sleep that night.”
He did not offer a photograph or describe what wonderful dogs they were. Owen found himself grateful for that. He knew what to do with records and an honest account of work still needed; he had less practice with somebody trusting him to understand a loss.
He returned to Boone’s crate.
“This one,” he said.
Russ took a lead from the folder’s handle. He attached it before opening the door, and Boone stepped down onto the gravel with the careful stretch of an animal confined too long. Owen took the lead. The dog stood beside his leg, solid and quiet, and for a moment the decision felt finished.
He could buy one more bowl. He could put a mat near the cabin door. One dog would fit into the life he had pictured during the drive.
They had gone only a few steps when Tucker’s claws scraped behind them.
Owen looked back. The smaller dog had worked one forepaw through the space below his door and was reaching along the ground. He could not reach Boone. He kept extending the paw anyway, pressing his shoulder into the crate until Russ said his name.
Fern was at the wire now. Wind had blown dust under the awning, and moisture darkened one side of her muzzle. Owen could not know whether her wet eye meant anything beyond irritation. The low sound she made when Boone took another step needed no such explanation.
Boone stopped.
Owen felt the lead come tight, then slacken as the dog turned toward the crates. Nothing else happened. A customer loaded sacks at the far end of the lot; the pump clicked off beside a minivan. Owen stood with his hand closed around the lead and could not make himself take the next ordinary step.
For an instant he remembered another departure: a vehicle filling, a hurried count, a face left on the far side of blowing dirt. He pushed the memory away before it acquired words. His thumb had gone numb against the webbing.
“Have they been apart much?”
“Just for examinations. A few minutes.”
“You were going to let me take him.”
“I need homes for them.” Russ bent to retrieve a paper the wind had lifted. The effort showed in his face. “I can’t make a man take on more than he came for.”
Owen looked at the empty truck bed. Three dogs would use the money he had set aside for lumber before he had even found out how much lumber the house needed. There would be three appetites, three sets of mistakes, three animals listening when he woke in the dark.
Tucker’s paw was still outside the crate.
Russ slid Boone’s vaccination record out of the folder and started to put the rest away. Owen caught the edge of the two remaining packets. “Leave those out. They’re coming, too.”
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