The Truth of the Matter by Robb Forman Dew Page B

and then he remembered what they had been talking about. “Oh, he always went to Robert, of course. He was Robert’s dog. But with a dog for each boy . . .”
    “But, Warren, you can’t be sure with dogs. The dogs won’t know who they belong to. You might buy two children two horses. One for each so they could ride together. That would make sense. But no one can tell who a dog’s going to decide he belongs to. Well, at least if the dog has a choice,” Agnes said, but she objected softly, because Warren’s mind was made up.
    He remained pleased with his gift to the boys. Dwight and Claytor named the semi-hound Tunney and the collie mix Dempsey, and the boys played with them and fed them and cleaned up after those puppies for almost two weeks, which was much longer than Agnes had imagined they would remain interested. Eventually, of course, when the boys started school and Warren was traveling in the field, those two dogs followed Agnes everywhere. Sometimes it seemed to her that she spent most of the day rounding them up and getting them out of the house only to have someone let them in again. They nearly drove her crazy hustling one past the other alongside her as she went up the stairs, each dog trying to be first in such a tumble that Agnes had to hang on to the banister. But she didn’t really dislike them; she made sure they were fed and had water.
    The two dogs were an odd pair from the start—the bristly hound had a squared-off terrier’s head but with long, floppy ears, and the collie mix had stumpy legs that didn’t match his body. And just as Agnes had expected, as those dogs matured, they became obsessed with one single desire: each one was bent upon killing off the other. She had to keep them outside and apart all day long, and she was constantly rushing out and dashing a pail of cold water over their backs, which usually broke up a fight if she caught it at the beginning. Finally she had Harold Ostrander, who helped around Scofields at all sorts of odd jobs, build separate pens for them out of sight of each other. Even so, Tunney, the hound, eventually very nearly killed Dempsey in a terrible, bloody battle. Agnes had done everything she could think of to try and break it up, but it continued in a moving, snarling, muscular tumult, and it was clearly a fight to the death.
    The hair-raising yips and snarling that went on and on attracted everybody in the vicinity of Scofields, and Mr. Ostrander finally got the animals apart by smashing a wooden ladder down over their backs. Tunney let out a terrible sound—a dog shriek—and backed off but continued to circle Dempsey, who was down and bleeding. Harold Ostrander continued to yell at the dogs and wave the ladder at Tunney, so that his circle around Dempsey grew wider and wider until finally he raced out of the yard, crossing the street and then the park. The Scofields never saw him again, although when they came home from school Dwight and Claytor went out searching for him.
    Agnes nursed Dempsey back to health, but then he, too, simply took his leave one day. He adopted for himself an older couple who lived a few streets away. Agnes only discovered where he’d disappeared to when she was downtown one afternoon and saw the couple walking him on a very fine leash. Dempsey was glossy with good health and didn’t so much as glance her way; he seemed quite pleased with his situation.
    Dwight and Claytor didn’t appear to be unduly distressed over the abandonment, but Warren was amazed at such treachery. Agnes tried again and again to explain it to him, but he had never had a pet as a child, and this had happened before Agnes finally recognized a pattern to Warren’s moods. She hadn’t understood then that Warren’s initial enthusiasm about the whole business would have dissipated regardless of whatever happened to the dogs.
    During their childhoods Agnes hadn’t encouraged the children to have pets of any kind, although there was always some sort of