Summer of the Gypsy Moths by Sara Pennypacker Page B

behind me. We got into his truck, and I tapped the horn and waved.
    George turned on Louise’s kitchen step, his hand raised to knock, looking torn. There wasn’t much he could do, though, with two girls parked in his truck like eager puppies, ready to go for a ride. He shook his head and came back across the yard. The driver’s door opened with a creaky sigh, and Treb jumped onto the bench and wriggled himself in between Angel and me. Then George heaved himself in with his own creaky sigh and cranked up the engine.
    â€œHow long she going to be laid up?” he asked, squinting up at the house as we backed past it. “Couldn’t be worse timing. I got a boat to run, codfish to chase, a crew to pay. They depend on me—Johnny Baker’s wife just delivered twins—and it’s a short season. Boat’s been hauled out a week, so we’re already behind. I miss a single day in summer—a single day—and we all suffer come February, let me tell you. She can’t be calling me every ten minutes to come replace a screen, pick up charcoal, that kinda thing.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” Angel said. “She won’t be calling you.”
    I kicked Angel’s ankle, and she kicked me back. “As long as she can’t walk, we’ll take care of things for her,” she assured George. She started messing around in the glove compartment, as if that was the end of that discussion. Suddenly she yelped and pulled her hand out with a wounded look.
    George reached over and closed the glove compartment. “Sorry. I throw my hooks in there. You all right?” he asked.
    â€œOh, sure,” Angel said, sucking the tip of her finger. “Fine.”
    â€œYou and Treb.” George chuckled. “That’s how he got his name, you know. Came up to me on the beach one day, just a puppy, a stray if I ever saw one.”
    â€œThis dog?” I threw my arm around Treb. “This dog was a stray?”
    â€œThis is a great dog,” Angel said—the first time we had agreed about anything.
    Treb lifted his head as though he knew we were admiring him. Angel scratched his ruff. “Who wouldn’t want him?”
    â€œHappens all the time on Cape Cod,” George said. “People get a puppy while they’re on vacation, seems like a good idea. Then by the time they leave for home, they realize they don’t want the responsibility. So they just leave it behind when they pack up. Terrible. The way I see it, whoever let this dog go didn’t deserve him.
    â€œAnyway, I was bluefishing, and he came up and sat down behind me, waiting for me to turn around. I finally did, and that’s when I saw: He had a big treble hook lure hanging from his lip. All three hooks, clean through. Don’tknow how he managed that. But he sat still and let me snip off the barbs and then pull them through—musta hurt something awful—and he never flinched. This dog hasn’t left my side since.”
    The truck bounced, its engine a gentle growl. It was good riding up high—it made me feel like a little kid somehow. I grew excited: Maybe I’d ridden like this with my father, up high in a truck. I didn’t remember it, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. I was only two when he left. Memories could be locked down deep with little kids. Sometimes you had to dig them out.
    Maybe my father had driven me around in a rumbling truck like this back in New Orleans, trombone behind the seat, radio on, singing along with it to his little girl. Maybe he’d pulled over to a club he used to play in, brought me in on his shoulders, introduced me around. I would have been shy, but he would have said, “This is my little girl, my little Stella by Starlight. She sweet or what?”
    â€œHey.” Angel’s elbow jab interrupted my thoughts. “You just going to sit in here?”
    We were there, at the far end of the Mill River Beach