How to Look for a Lost Dog (15 page)

I scramble into the truck with the garbage bag, the backpack, and my mother's box. My father is hurtling down the driveway before I have even closed my door. I'm still fastening my seat belt as we fly across the bridge and start down Hud Road. In the back of the truck things slide from side to side, bags, a suitcase, a cardboard box.

“Why are we going to Uncle Weldon's?” I ask.

My father doesn't answer. He's peering ahead through the windscreen at the rain, which is falling harder now. His face is like stone, not soft and slack like when he's been drinking. He doesn't turn to look at me. He drives straight and sure and carefully.

“Why are we going to Uncle Weldon's?” I ask again.

Once in music class, our teacher showed us a tuning fork. He struck it on the edge of a desk and let us take turns putting our hands on it to feel the vibrations. The air in the truck now is like the tuning fork, vibrating. It continues to vibrate after I ask my question the second time and still get no answer.

We ride in silence in the charged atmosphere, through the dark streets of Hatford, our headlights shining on the falling rain, the slick trees, and once, the eyes of a raccoon hesitating at the side of the road.

“Does Uncle Weldon know I'm coming?” I ask as we turn into his driveway.

My father brings the truck to a halt, but doesn't turn the engine off. He reaches across me and opens my door. “Go now,” he says. Then he does something he hasn't done in a long time. He gives me a hug, a quick hug.

When his cheek rests against mine I can feel wetness. He turns and faces front, his jaw working.

I climb out of the truck and pull my things after me. I run through the rain to Uncle Weldon's front porch. By the time I turn around, the tail lights of the truck are disappearing down the drive.

I ring my uncle's bell. I ring it again and again. The porch light comes on and I see Uncle Weldon's face in the window by the door. One second later the door is flung wide open.

“Rose!” he exclaims. “What on earth?”

I step towards him. “My father is gone,” I say.

Uncle Weldon and I sit on his front porch on a day that seems too hot for early June. There are still two more weeks of school, and every morning Mrs Kushel opens the windows in our classroom wide, even though bees and flies come in and hum around our heads all day long.

I jiggle my feet up and down and watch a hummingbird hover by a geranium plant.

It's Saturday morning. Uncle Weldon has just said, “Let's put on our thinking caps.”

I glance at him. “Why?”

“We need to figure out what to bring to your school party.”

We are going to have a party in Mrs Kushel's room to celebrate the last day of school.

“Cookies?” I suggest. “Chocolate chip cookies?”

Uncle Weldon smiles. “Good idea. We'll go to the store next week and buy the ingredients.”

We fall silent again. Sometimes Uncle Weldon and I just sit quietly for long periods of time. We like that. Sitting and thinking.

Every evening we make dinner together and every morning we talk about homonyms. On the weekends we go for rides in his truck – to the state park, to the museum in Ashford, to an outdoor music festival. When we were at the festival, we spread a blanket on the ground and lay on our backs, listening to an orchestra.

“Try to pick out the sounds each instrument makes,” Uncle Weldon said. “Listen for the violin, listen for the trombone, listen for the clarinet.”

The notes soared into the sky, up to the stars.

On this hot June morning, the hummingbird darting from one flower to another, I suddenly say, “Uncle Weldon, from my mother's perspective, when she went away, why do you think she left her memories behind?”

Uncle Weldon cocks his head at me the way Rain used to do. “What do you mean?” he asks.

I tell him about the box. “She left all her Rose things behind. Why didn't she take them with her? Didn't she want to remember me?”

Now my uncle frowns. “Rose,” he says, “do you think your mother walked away from you and your dad? Is that what your father told you?”

“Yes. Yes,” I say, since my uncle has asked me two questions in a row.

Uncle Weldon's face is soft and gentle. He reaches a hand towards me, touches my knee, pulls his hand back.

“Your mother didn't leave,” he says. “She died. When you were very young.”

“She's dead?”

“Yes.”

“How did she die?”

“She had an aneurysm in her heart. She died very quickly.”

“Why did my father tell me she left us?”

Uncle Weldon shakes his head. He sips his coffee.

“Maybe he was trying to shield you. Maybe he thought you would be too sad if you knew she had died.”

“But he let me think she
left
us. I thought she left because of me.”

Uncle Weldon touches my knee again, which is all right. It's just a little touch. “Your father didn't always make smart choices,” he says, “but he did try to do right by you.”

“Is that why
he
left?”

My uncle looks at the hummingbird. He shakes his head again. “I don't know. We didn't talk about it, your father and I, but I think he thought you'd be better off with me.”

“Was it hard for him to leave?”

“Yes, I think it was.”

So my father and I have something else in common.

We are both brave.

That summer is one of the hottest anyone can remember. Uncle Weldon buys a big wooden swing that we paint green before hanging it on the front porch. We sit on it every evening while we wait for the air to cool, Uncle Weldon rocking us lazily back and forth, back and forth, his foot pushing off from the geranium pot. We sit on the swing most mornings too, even weekday mornings before we leave for Uncle Weldon's day at work and my day at a programme called Summertime Academy, where I meet other kids with the official diagnosis of high-functioning autism.

One Sunday morning we're on the swing and I'm looking across a dusty golden field and through some trees to a road that, if you followed it for 2.3 miles, would lead to Hud. Uncle Weldon and I visited my old house several days ago. We looked through the windows at the empty rooms. Uncle Weldon ran his hand thoughtfully over the foreclosure notice tacked to the front door. We haven't heard from my father since the night he left me with Uncle Weldon, so we were the ones who cleared the house out last month. I didn't want to keep anything except Rain's belongings – her leash and bowl and toys. I put them in a bag under my bed.

We are just swinging quietly on this Sunday when Uncle Weldon says to me, “When should we visit Happy Tails again?”

I glance at him. “Well…”

“Don't you think it's time for another visit? There are probably some new dogs up for adoption.”

“I don't know.”

“Come on.” Uncle Weldon smiles at me. “Just another look? A little peek? Wouldn't it be nice to sit out here with a dog between us?”

“A dog on a swing?” Now I smile. “Maybe we could go next weekend.”

Uncle Weldon holds out his hand and I shake it.

We have made a deal.

“I thought of a new homonym last night,” I say. “It's a good one: ‘weighed' and ‘wade'.”

“That
is
a good one,” my uncle agrees. “Was there room on your list?”

“Yes. You know who else has a homonyms list now?”

“No. Who?”

“Parvani. I'm going to call her and tell her about ‘weighed' and ‘wade'.”

Uncle Weldon brings the swing to a stop and we cross our fingers and touch our hearts.

I look across the field again and then up to the sky, which is a vast pale blue. I remember the music festival, and the notes that soared above our heads. I think about the homonyms
soared
and
sword.
They're an interesting pair, because
soared
is a very nice word, especially when you imagine musical notes swooshing through the evening air, but
sword
indicates weaponry, so that isn't a nice word at all. That's one of the many things I like about homonyms. Most of them seem unrelated, some seem to be opposites, like
soared
and
sword
, but a few make lovely connections if you're open to changing your perspective when you think about them.

I stand up, then squint my eyes shut for (fore/four) a moment, remembering the night (knight) with Uncle Weldon when the music soared (sword) through (threw) the air (heir), and the notes and the sky and our (hour) hearts were one (won).

The tale of Rose and Rain began in 2011 after Hurricane Irene swept up the East Coast of the United States and made an unexpected inland turn. After the storm I walked along my road in upstate New York, day after day, watching as downed trees were cleared from yards, roofs were reshingled, and washed-out bridges and stone walls were rebuilt. My dog, Sadie, was at my side and I thought about pets who had become separated from their owners during the storm. I began to spin a tale about a lost dog.

At the same time, Rose began to make her presence known to me. She was a young girl on the autism spectrum; a girl who's verbal and bright and whose dog is the centre of her baffling and sometimes unpleasant world. Slowly the elements of the story – Rose, Rain and the storm – came together.

Writing can be a solitary business, but most stories are a group effort. Many thanks to my editors, Liz Szabla and Jean Feiwel, for their insights, their patience, and their faith, and for encouraging me to dig deeper. And thank you to my friend Jamey Wolff, co-founder and Programme Director of the Centre for Spectrum Services in New York's Hudson Valley. The Centre serves students on the Autism Spectrum. Jamey graciously allowed me to spend a morning at the school in Kingston, talking with students, observing the interaction between students and teachers, and asking Jamey question after question. When the rough draft of the story was finished, Jamey was one of the first to read it. Her help was invaluable.

Finally, thank you to sweet Sadie, who introduced me to the world of dogs, and whose behaviour I observed every day of her fifteen years. She was by my side as I wrote the story, and was a daily inspiration.

I hope these calculations will help you work out what these would be in metric units.

1 inch = 2.54 centimetres

Rain's back is 18 inches long

18 x 2.54 = 45.72

Rain's back is 45.72 centimetres long

12 inches = 1 foot

Josh Bartel is 4' 10” tall, or 4 feet, 10 inches

(12 x 4) + 10 = 58

Josh Bartel is 58 inches tall

58 x 2.54 = 147.32

Josh Bartel is 147.32 centimetres tall

1 mile = 1.6 kilometres

Uncle Weldon lives 3.4 miles away

3.4 x 1.6 = 5.44

Uncle Weldon lives 5.44 kilometres away

1lb/pound = 0.4536 kilograms

Rain weighs 23 pounds

23 x 0.4536 = 10.4328

Rain weighs 10.4328 kilograms

0 degrees Fahrenheit = -17.77778 degrees Celsius

Temperature in Celsius = (Temperature in Fahrenheit-32) x 5/9

Convert 59 degrees Fahrenheit into degrees Celsius

(59-32) x 5/9 = 15 degrees Celsius

This ebook edition first published in the UK in 2016 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England.
www.usborne.com

Text © Ann M. Martin, 2014

The right of Ann M. Martin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Cover illustration by Antonia Miller.

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