The Dogs of Christmas Read online

  Josh caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The puppies had decided they needed to roll up the living room rug. They had seized a corner of it and were all tugging in different directions, growling at each other.

  “You know, things are great,” Josh replied without irony.

  A few days later a huge SUV bounced up his driveway, springs sagging. Josh went to the window and recognized the driver as one of the dads from the ice rink, and when the back door popped open, one of the hockey boys and the little girl ice dancer tumbled out.

  “Could we see the puppies?” the little girl asked. She looked as if she’d spent the morning being tuned up at the cuteness factory, with light brown curls, huge brown eyes, and cheeks red from the cold and her excitement. Her brother, a few years older and twice as big, was going to be as huge as the father—both were large, fleshy males, plenty of muscle on the dad, while the boy’s bulk was mostly unrealized potential that needed a few years of athletics to shape up.

  Josh could not have refused that little girl if she were there asking to burn down his house. He brought the puppies out and when they spotted the children they went from sleep to manic energy in just seconds.

  The girl’s name was Juliet and the boy was Chuck. The father was Matt. The man’s hands were rough and chapped when he and Josh shook, but his smile was a blazing white against his leathery skin, like a cowboy hired to smile in a TV commercial.

  The puppies played and tumbled, Cody following Rufus’s lead and seizing Chuck’s mitten in his little mouth and shaking it with tiny growls. Chuck dropped a rubber ball on the ground and Sophie pounced on it joyously, running off with it. For Sophie, the best thing about new toys was that they were new.

  The puppies loved the children—no worries about socializing these little guys—but it was Lola, though, who seemed most smitten with Juliet, climbing in the little girl’s lap and licking her into giggles.

  “All Juliet’s been talking about is the brown dog with the short ears,” Matt said after refusing an offer of coffee. Josh knew what was coming. “Was thinking maybe you’d let me buy her. Time we had a dog and, well, when Juliet sets her mind to something…” Matt gave him a rueful grin, those white teeth of his nearly blinding Josh.

  “I don’t know,” Josh said uncomfortably.

  Matt sensed something, so he didn’t push it. The two men sat in the living room for an hour, watching the children and the puppies play. Chuck rolled around on the floor and let the puppies climb on him like Lilliputians mounting an assault on Gulliver, but for Juliet there was only Lola; the two of them focused completely on each other. When Lola fell asleep in Juliet’s arms, it was as an infant, all four limbs pointed slackly up in the air. The expression on Juliet’s face was pure bliss.

  She handed Lola over without protest, though, when Matt said it was time to go. Josh got the sense that in their family, when the father spoke, the kids did what they were told.

  Matt handed Josh a card with a phone number. It said that Matt was a mechanic. “Case you change your mind. Merry Christmas,” Matt the mechanic said.

  As the SUV drove away, Juliet waved to Josh, smiling. Maybe she was dying of disappointment inside, but her face betrayed nothing but gratitude that she’d had a short time with Lola. Celebrating, and then moving on, Kerri would probably point out if she were standing there. The lesson of the dogs.

  When he called the shelter Kerri couldn’t come to the phone. Josh left a message. When he called the shelter again and it rolled to voice mail even though it was during operating hours—he pictured Kerri working there by herself, seeing the caller ID, and deciding not to answer.

  The window of the shelter was decorated with amateurish but charming paintings of snowmen and holly. Josh peered inside but there was no one at the counter. He opened the door and the same bell jangled.

  Kerri’s face dropped when she came out of the back room. “Josh,” she said. He hated the way his name sounded coming out of her mouth, like it gave her a bad taste.

  “Hi, Kerri.”

  They looked at each other for a moment. She shrugged uncomfortably.

  “There’s this little girl named Juliet. I want her family to have Lola. You said you guys would handle the adoption.”

  SIXTEEN

  Kerri stared at him for a long moment, her face troubled. What? Josh wanted to shout at her. What else do you want me to do?

  “I’m sorting through some stuff that was donated, would you be willing to help?” Kerri inquired, diffusing the tension a little. Josh nodded mutely and followed her to a back room, where several cardboard boxes gaped open. Kerri told him where to put things: canned food, bagged food, pet toys, “just new toys, not the ones that are chewed and disgusting that people think we’d want.” Josh bent down into a box and pulled out what looked like a football uniform for a Chihuahua, complete with shoulder pads and a helmet. “Right, not that, either,” Kerri said.

  Josh tossed the uniform in the discard pile. He liked that they were doing this simple task and not talking about anything of substance, though as the silence stretched on, he found himself glancing over at Kerri, who was wearing her tight jeans, her brown hair spilling forward as she read the ingredients on a bag of dog food. She eventually decided the food was acceptable.

  “So tell me, what changed your mind?” she asked as she put the bag on a shelf.

  “A little girl came over.”

  “And? That’s it?”

  “Just seeing them together. It’s like what you said in your speech about adopting dogs.”

  “You’re telling me I was right,” Kerri teased mildly.

  “I’m trying not to tell you you were right.”

  “Ahh. Such a guy.”

  “Plus, well, maybe this seems silly, but it’s what Lola wants.”

  Kerri smiled at him. “And whatever Lola wants,” she agreed meaningfully.

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t know it? It’s a song.” Kerri sang a few verses, waiting for him to get it.

  “Um, My Fair Lady?”

  “My Fair Lady!” Kerri laughed. “No, Damn Yankees. You so live in a cabin in the mountains.”

  “Well at least I knew it was a movie.”

  That made her smile. “The song has been stuck in my head ever since you named her Lola.”

  “I’ve been singing ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.’”

  That one actually got her to laugh. “Anyway…” Kerri said. “Look, the puppies are technically your dogs, but there’s a process we do here to make sure adopters will make good dog owners. This time of year, a lot of people give dogs as gifts, which we like because it makes room in the shelters, but hate because some people think raising puppies is easy.”

  Josh nodded. “Yeah, some people can be like that.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kerri dead-panned. “So is it fine with you if these people do an application? I want to make sure all of your puppies wind up in a good home.”

  “Sure,” Josh agreed, not addressing the “all of your puppies” statement. Kneeling, he reached into a box of what looked like six-inch dried snake skins, but were stiff and hard. “What are these?”

  “Bison tracheas,” Kerri responded simply.

  Josh dropped it back into the box. “Yuck.”

  “The older dogs love ’em. Hey, Josh?”

  He looked at her and her blue eyes were serious. “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  “Right. You told me not to call.”

  “I’m really glad to see you, though. I can’t help it.”

  She was all the way across the room, and Josh just didn’t see how he could climb to his feet and get to her, jumping over boxes on the way, without the moment passing. “Me, too,” he finally said inadequately.

  “I was going to call you, actually,” Kerri informed him.

  He liked that. “Really?”

  She was regarding him carefully. “Yes, because we have a family for Cody.”


  “Oh.”

  “There’s a family whose dog went blind at six months, and they lost her about a year ago at age fourteen. They know all about how it is to live with a sightless dog, what you need to do. They’ve had years and years of practice, and they decided they want to adopt a blind dog, to put their skills to good use. Rescue a dog no one else would want, I mean. It’s a wonderful opportunity, Josh. Completely unexpected. They saw Cody on the website, they applied, and I interviewed them yesterday. Josh … can we give Cody a home? There’s a ten-year-old boy, a fenced-in backyard, and a family just waiting to give him love.”

  They looked at each other, still absurdly all the way across the room from each other. Her smile was warm and sympathetic and he knew he was going to do whatever she wanted. “Yes,” he assented, taking in a deep breath and letting it out. “Okay.”

  A woman named Madelyn showed up to relieve Kerri. Without even realizing he was going to do it, Josh asked if maybe Kerri would like to get something to eat and the two of them drove in separate vehicles to the Evergreen Inn for some Mexican food. They sat in a booth across from each other, the table wide between them. Why did it seem like there was always some barrier in the way?

  A Christmas tree adorned a far corner, tight packages in a small pile underneath the blinking lights. Josh wondered if they were empty boxes the owners put out every year. It was a good idea; his own tree always looked forlornly sparse, with just his and Amanda’s gifts under it.

  Not Amanda, not anymore, he reminded himself.

  “We have this thing, a program at the shelter,” Kerri told him after they’d ordered. “Basically we suspend adoptions in December until the twenty-third, and then we send every dog to his new forever home with a Christmas collar on. We call it the Dogs of Christmas. It sounds silly, but it really raises some interest in our rescues. We do the Cats of Christmas, too, but we gave up trying to make them wear Christmas collars.”

  “I thought you said you hated it when people bought dogs as gifts.”

  “Yes, I do, personally, but the director likes the program.”

  “Whatever Lola wants,” Josh speculated.

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, Dogs of Christmas,” Josh nodded noncommittally.

  “What I was thinking was, we should do that with your dogs. That gives you until the twenty-third, Josh. More than two weeks.” Kerri reached out and took his hand. “Will that work for you?”

  Josh studied the checkerboard tablecloth. Kerri withdrew her touch when the food arrived, and the cool, lonely feeling in his hand felt portentous—a lot, he knew, was riding on his answer. It wasn’t fair, but the choice he was making was pretty clear.

  “Fine,” he agreed. He reached for the hot sauce, glancing up at her as he did so. She was smiling, and it made his heart soar.

  When they walked to the parking lot after dinner, it was starting to snow. The flakes danced in the multicolored lights in the shop windows, swirling in the light breeze and starting to build on the rooftops. From somewhere unseen speakers quietly played “Frosty the Snowman.” For a moment Josh was transported back in time and was a child, thrilled at the decorations, walking this same sidewalk, hearing the same music from probably the same hidden speakers. And then he was back, strolling next to this woman, equally as captivated now as he had been then.

  “A white Christmas!” Kerri exclaimed, holding her tongue out to catch a snowflake.

  “Maybe. Or maybe tomorrow it’s eighty degrees,” Josh speculated.

  “Always looking on the bright side,” Kerri responded playfully. She pushed against him and, in the process, slipped her arm through his.

  They stopped at her car. “Could I maybe come out for Cody Wednesday? I’ll call the family tomorrow.”

  “You said the twenty-third,” Josh objected.

  “Right, I did say that, but for Cody I don’t think it makes any sense to wait, do you? The sooner he gets used to his new home, the better.”

  “I guess. Sure. Yes.” Josh had made his decision, but hadn’t been prepared for the reality of Wednesday. The day before Christmas Eve still felt far enough away to him as to be nearly forever, though it was only fifteen days.

  “You’re doing the right thing, Josh, and it’s the hard thing and I’m proud of you.” Kerri reached up and touched his face, and he kissed her, and this, too, was a complete surprise. The way she clutched him in the parking lot, the snow in her hair turning to water under his hand, warmed him through his whole body. When their lips broke apart, they were both smiling, though her teeth were chattering a little.

  “You’re cold,” he declared.

  “Freezing,” she admitted.

  “Okay, go, get warm.”

  “Right.” She kissed him again, a quick one, then jumped into her car. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she said.

  “Tomorrow? What’s tomorrow?”

  “When you call me,” she said brightly. She shut her car door and drove off.

  Josh was vibrating with a new, unnamed energy that made him want to do something impulsive, like go into a bar and shout that he was buying a round of drinks for the house. “Merry Christmas!” he boisterously greeted people walking in downtown Evergreen. He passed a flower shop and wondered if now would be a good time for roses, then decided to hit a gift shop instead, feeling as generous as Scrooge buying a goose for the Cratchit family. Would Kerri like a basket filled with teas and cookies? A music box shaped like an old phonograph player? A mouse that played a few stanzas of “O Christmas Tree” when you squeezed his nose?

  He decided maybe just a card. The one he picked had a poem on the front that he’d first read in high school. Josh remembered that all the girls liked it because they said it was about someone looking for love and finally finding it.

  The Penny

  I tossed a penny into the well

  And for quite some the copper fell

  Without a sound returned to ear

  And just when I’d begun to fear

  Such small impact I’d never hear

  A tiny call from down below

  Announced arrival of my throw.

  Looking for love? As far as Josh could tell the poem was about somebody dropping a penny into a well. Kerri was a woman, though, and they saw the hidden meaning in stuff like this. He bought the card and took it home and put Kerri’s name on the envelope. It was the kind of card with all the words on the front—inside the card, fresh, cream-colored paper waited blankly for him to write something profound.

  Two hours later and the inside of the card was still blank.

  The next morning the snow was a four-inch layer on the ground, some of the driest, fluffiest powder Josh had ever seen. He opened the back door for the puppies and they stopped as dead as if they’d just spotted Waldo the cat, the white blanket an intimidating mystery.

  For Lucy, though, it was a joyous transformation. She leaped over the puppies like a steeplechase horse, landing in an explosion of white and going down on one shoulder to drive herself like a snowplow across the yard. Her puppies, following the when in doubt stick with Mom dictum, took a few tentative steps. They were shocked and intimidated as their paws sank into the snow, but the magnetic properties of Lucy’s maternal pull overcame their apprehension. Testing it like people checking the temperature of bath water, they cautiously went out into the white stuff, sniffing suspiciously. Lucy was spinning and leaping: Come on, this is what dogs do in these situations! They scampered after her, more and more emboldened, each discovering the delights of snow on his and her own, rolling and tumbling in ecstasy. Cody romped, too, Rufus close, not to guide him, but just to be nearby while Cody went as crazy as everyone else.

  Josh brushed the snow off his steps with a broom and sat with a cup of coffee, more happy than he’d been in a long time. From time to time one of the dogs would break away and run over to him as if to say, Isn’t this the best stuff ever? Lucy climbed into the dog pile to be with them and they all went after her. Her teats were dry an
d withdrawn, now, so it was just play they were interested in, biting at their mommy as if Lucy were a chew toy. She expertly flipped them on their backs in the snow, and then they’d be on their feet, coming right back at their mommy dog, their little tails wagging.

  As if a signal had been passed between them, they all calmed down at about the same time, panting and sprawling in the snow, chewing at it, raising their heads drowsily when Josh came for them. As he moved Lola and Sophie into the house, their brothers roused themselves and followed of their own volition, clambering awkwardly up the stairs and bounding in pursuit of Josh down the hall, feet leaving tiny puddles of melt water that glittered on the floor like jewels.

  They settled without protest into their box. Lucy took up her favorite position in the living room.

  “They went berserk,” Josh told Kerri on the phone. “You should have seen it.”

  As he said it, he caught himself wondering, yeah, why weren’t you here to see it?

  How could he entice Kerri to be here more often, to stay with him longer when she did come? A review of their relationship thus far consisted mostly of the two of them saying good-bye to each other.

  Kerri said she’d be out the next morning. “I’ll see you then!” she said gaily before they hung up.

  Why aren’t I seeing you tonight? Josh wondered. Why didn’t he think to ask her to dinner?

  Because, he knew, he’d put a lot of thought into inviting her over for dinner the last time and she’d immediately bolted across the state line. Wyoming. What kind of signal did it send that her excuse was Wyoming?

  He pulled out the card he’d bought. Still blank. Why hadn’t he bought one that had words on the inside, too? Dear Kerri, he could write. Please don’t go to Wyoming again. Or, better: Don’t go to Wyoming without me.

  He put the card away, knowing nothing would occur to him. Maybe he’d use it on Mother’s Day or something.

  A low fog hung in the trees the next morning, as if clouds, caught sleeping on the ground, had gotten trapped in the branches as they tried to rise back up to the sky. Josh had been awake for hours and had showered and shaved and was wearing a pair of jeans to be casual but they were clean and new and looked, he hoped, nice. His long-sleeved shirt had a software company logo because he wanted her to remember he had a good job. Well, usually, anyway. Kerri’s car pulled into his driveway and Lucy gave a lazy “wuff,” just one, as if to say, I could scare her off if I wanted to.