quick squeeze, and then lets her go. “Ican see you worried over telling me. I’m happy for you, couldn’t you have guessed I would be?”
Later in the chain-link yard, Lynn pets each dog first a good long while before kneeling beside it and hugging it around the neck with her arm with the loops for a hand. She has the open flea-treatment vials set standing up in the hollows of a partitioned liquor carton beside her, and she takes them out one at a time, spilling it into the fur between each dog’s shoulder blades. It takes a long time. When she is finished she takes a break, standing in the kitchen doorway watching them, clasping a plastic hummus tub in the metal loops and dipping a piece of bread into it with her hand while the sun sinks lower in the sky. Her eyes drift off toward the distant barn and its long shadow, and her face dulls, but then some of the dogs come up and sniff the air beneath her snack, and she smiles and shakes her head, chewing. One sets a paw gently on her boot. She laughs and wipes her lips with the back of her wrist. “You’re next.” Her voice is high and loose again. “You’re next I promise, sweet sillies, do I ever forget about you?”
And she doesn’t. Over the next hour, she rolls the cans out into the turnaround in the failing light—big cans, the size of cooking pots—and makes a line of twenty bowls, and as night begins to fall she takes a little flashlight from her coat pocket and holds it between her teeth.
It is fully dark when she slips into the cab of her truck. She is still wearing her work clothes, and when she starts the engine, the light from the dashboard reveals the sleeves of her coat to be streaked with something dark. She reaches across herself to pull the door shut with her good hand and heads down her long gravel drive and out through the empty land along the state highway toward the town lights in the distance. It is not a big town. She pulls into a full lot next to a gas station and a building beside it with a high sign above that says COPLEY’S . Inside next to a single cash register are a few rows of grocery items and then some diner booths beyond with a sizzling kitchen on the way other side. Lynn goes to the chip aisle and grabs two shallow pull-top cans of black bean dip.
The woman at the register has an updo of hair dyed the buff color ofbandaids, and she sits on a stool filing her nails. There is a bulletin board behind her fringed with notes and flyers and a few canceled checks, and on the counter next to the register sit a bowl of peppermint candies, a March of Dimes donation can, and a rack of
People
magazines, the one with mothers and children on the cover.
“Got something for your board, Ruth Ann,” Lynn says. She sets down the bean dip and takes an index card and pen from her tote.
Ruth Ann looks up from her nails to watch her write.
Room and all meals (vegetarian) daily in exchange for
light work. Three Paws Dog Rescue
.
Ruth Ann says, “Lord—one of your girls ever last longer than three months?”
“Only in the bruise on my ass.”
Ruth Ann snorts. She punches the keys on the register, holding a bean can up and away from her eyes. “Not a bit in your heart too, though?”
“Nah.”
“I don’t believe it. All that time you spend together?”
Lynn is still looking down, adding her phone number to the card. “Trick is to keep it simple. Bringing up poop duty nips most any serious conversation in the bud.”
“Tch!”
She bats a hand. “I don’t believe you for an instant.”
“—Who’s got fleas and who’s off his food. Tough to knit a sweater out of snippets.” She straightens and hands her the card.
“Nonsense. Those girls love you.”
“Like a bag of chips, maybe.”
“They love you every bit as much as the boys your folks took in for the milking season loved the two of them.”
“Well, that’s just stretching things and you know it. My folks were the best there was. Either one of them was worth six of
Later in the chain-link yard, Lynn pets each dog first a good long while before kneeling beside it and hugging it around the neck with her arm with the loops for a hand. She has the open flea-treatment vials set standing up in the hollows of a partitioned liquor carton beside her, and she takes them out one at a time, spilling it into the fur between each dog’s shoulder blades. It takes a long time. When she is finished she takes a break, standing in the kitchen doorway watching them, clasping a plastic hummus tub in the metal loops and dipping a piece of bread into it with her hand while the sun sinks lower in the sky. Her eyes drift off toward the distant barn and its long shadow, and her face dulls, but then some of the dogs come up and sniff the air beneath her snack, and she smiles and shakes her head, chewing. One sets a paw gently on her boot. She laughs and wipes her lips with the back of her wrist. “You’re next.” Her voice is high and loose again. “You’re next I promise, sweet sillies, do I ever forget about you?”
And she doesn’t. Over the next hour, she rolls the cans out into the turnaround in the failing light—big cans, the size of cooking pots—and makes a line of twenty bowls, and as night begins to fall she takes a little flashlight from her coat pocket and holds it between her teeth.
It is fully dark when she slips into the cab of her truck. She is still wearing her work clothes, and when she starts the engine, the light from the dashboard reveals the sleeves of her coat to be streaked with something dark. She reaches across herself to pull the door shut with her good hand and heads down her long gravel drive and out through the empty land along the state highway toward the town lights in the distance. It is not a big town. She pulls into a full lot next to a gas station and a building beside it with a high sign above that says COPLEY’S . Inside next to a single cash register are a few rows of grocery items and then some diner booths beyond with a sizzling kitchen on the way other side. Lynn goes to the chip aisle and grabs two shallow pull-top cans of black bean dip.
The woman at the register has an updo of hair dyed the buff color ofbandaids, and she sits on a stool filing her nails. There is a bulletin board behind her fringed with notes and flyers and a few canceled checks, and on the counter next to the register sit a bowl of peppermint candies, a March of Dimes donation can, and a rack of
People
magazines, the one with mothers and children on the cover.
“Got something for your board, Ruth Ann,” Lynn says. She sets down the bean dip and takes an index card and pen from her tote.
Ruth Ann looks up from her nails to watch her write.
Room and all meals (vegetarian) daily in exchange for
light work. Three Paws Dog Rescue
.
Ruth Ann says, “Lord—one of your girls ever last longer than three months?”
“Only in the bruise on my ass.”
Ruth Ann snorts. She punches the keys on the register, holding a bean can up and away from her eyes. “Not a bit in your heart too, though?”
“Nah.”
“I don’t believe it. All that time you spend together?”
Lynn is still looking down, adding her phone number to the card. “Trick is to keep it simple. Bringing up poop duty nips most any serious conversation in the bud.”
“Tch!”
She bats a hand. “I don’t believe you for an instant.”
“—Who’s got fleas and who’s off his food. Tough to knit a sweater out of snippets.” She straightens and hands her the card.
“Nonsense. Those girls love you.”
“Like a bag of chips, maybe.”
“They love you every bit as much as the boys your folks took in for the milking season loved the two of them.”
“Well, that’s just stretching things and you know it. My folks were the best there was. Either one of them was worth six of
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