How to Look for a Lost Dog (5 page)

Rain sits between Uncle Weldon and me while we ride to Hatford Elementary.

“Is ‘build' and ‘billed' on your homonyms list?” asks Uncle Weldon as we drive past The Coffee Cup on Route 28. “I thought of that one last night.”

“Yes,” I say. “I really like that pair.” Rain puts one of her paws in my lap and I stroke her toes. “What are you and Rain going to do today?”

“She can run around the yard while I stack firewood. Then maybe we'll go for a walk.”

“Okay.” Even though this is not the routine, I'm glad Rain will have a nice time with Uncle Weldon.

We reach School Lane and my uncle says, “I hope you have a good day, Rose. Rain and I will see you at 2.42.” He turns into the drop-off lane and reaches across my lap to open the door.

“Bye,” I say. Before I hop out, Uncle Weldon and I touch our hearts with our crossed fingers.

I run to Mrs Leibler, who is waiting for me at the front door.

“Good morning, Rose!” she says.

We hurry along side by side through the corridors to Mrs Kushel's room. I have already hung up my sweater and am taking my homework out of my backpack when Flo says, “Hey! A dog!”

Flo is pointing to the doorway, so I turn around and look at the doorway.

There's Rain, standing under the list of class rules.

“Rain!” I exclaim. “What are you doing here?”

“Is that your dog?” asks Josh Bartel.

Rain sees me and trots across the room to my desk.

“Yes,” I say.

“Is that the dog from your composition?” asks Anders.

“Yes,” I say.

“What's she doing here?” Flo wants to know.

I shake my head. “I guess she followed me.” Rain must have jumped out of the truck before Uncle Weldon could close the door.

“But how did she know where you were? You'd been here for, like, two minutes before she found our room,” points out a girl named Parvani.

“She followed me with her nose,” I tell her.

I sit on the floor and put my arms around Rain. She licks my forehead and then she sits down too.

“She's so cute!” cries Flo. She joins us on the floor.

“Can I pat her?”

“Yes.”

Flo runs her hand down Rain's back, and Rain makes her smiling face.

“How old is she?” asks Josh. He sits down with us, which makes three humans and one dog sitting on the floor of Mrs Kushel's room.

“I'm not sure. My father found her one night in the rain. We don't know how old she was then.”

“So she's a rescue dog?” asks Anders.

Before I can answer him, Parvani says, “How did she follow you with her nose?”

“She has a very sharp sense of smell. All dogs do. But I think Rain is special.”

Everyone is crowded around us now, even Mrs Leibler and Mrs Kushel. Five people are patting Rain at once.

This is when I hear Uncle Weldon say, “Excuse me?” and then, “Oh, thank goodness. Rain, there you are!”

My uncle is at the door of our classroom.

“She found me,” I say.

“Did she ever. She wanted to follow you after you got out of the truck. I held her back but when I finally let go of her to close the door she jumped out.” Uncle Weldon turns to Mrs Kushel. “Sorry about this,” he says. “My fault. I was the one who wanted to bring Rain along this morning.”

Mrs Kushel is smiling. “No harm done.”

“Rain has a smart nose,” says Flo, and she strokes Rain's nose.

“You're so lucky, Rose,” says Parvani.

Mrs Kushel lets everyone sit with Rain for 3.5 more minutes before she says, “All right, class. It's time to get to work. Say goodbye to Rain.”

Uncle Weldon has a leash in his pocket and he clips it to Rain's collar before he leads her out into the hall.

“Goodbye, Rain! Goodbye, Rain!” call my classmates.

In the cafeteria that day my Lunchroom Buddies and I have a lot to talk about.

Here are some more good homonyms:

grown/groan

fined/find

wrapped/rapped/rapt

patience/patients

One thing about the last pair of homonyms that is both interesting and boring is that you can use the nce/nts pattern to find other homonyms. For instance: independence/ independents, presence/presents, innocence/innocents. It's interesting because the pattern makes homonyms seem even more worthwhile, but it's boring because the pattern also makes finding new homonym pairs too easy.

But I still like all homonyms.

On school day #34 Josh Bartel says to me, “Rose, how come you go to the trouble of thinking up homonyms by yourself? You know, you can find hundreds of them by looking at Janice Joyner's List of Homonyms. All you have to do is Google ‘homonyms' and you'll get to the list. It goes on forever.”

I think about this. There are two problems with what Josh has said.

1. My father and I didn't have a computer before, when Josh suggested that I keep my list on a computer, and we still don't have one.

2. Another of my homonym rules is that I have to think of the homonyms myself. What is the point of looking at someone else's list and copying it? My list is original.

But what I say to Josh, as I stare into his eyes, is “I'm glad you're interested in homonyms.”

The routine for after school is that Uncle Weldon picks me up at 2.42 p.m. and drops me off at my house between 2.58 and 3.01. Rain always greets me by jumping up and down when I open the door, licking my hands and face, and sometimes barking. Usually after that, we sit on the porch for a while. But if it's rainy or chilly, then we do not sit on the porch. At the end of school day #35 we do not sit on the porch. It's foggy and cool so we take a walk that lasts only 6.5 minutes. Rain pulls at her leash when I try to turn her around, and I know she would like a longer walk, but it's too damp and muddy for that.

“I'm going to look through the box,” I say as Rain reluctantly follows me back to our yard.

On a shelf in the coat closet is a box, a hatbox. The top and bottom are held together by a white satin braid. The braid is fraying, which leads me to believe that the box and the braid are old. Also, the box used to be blue, but over the years the blue has faded to a lighter and lighter shade. Now it's pale grey.

Inside the box are things that belonged to my mother, before she left. My father doesn't care if I look through the things, so I look through them approximately every four months, which is three times a year. (4 × 3 = 12)

I drag a chair to the closet, reach up high for the box, and lift it down carefully. I set it on the kitchen table. Before I open the box I study the outside of it to see if I can find any clues to my mother. But there's nothing. The box always looks the same, except that the colour gets lighter and the braid gets fuzzier. I wish my mother had written something on the box, something like
These things are important to me
or
Gifts for Rose
or even just
Treasure
s. But there are no words or clues of any sort. I don't even know if the box belonged to my mother or if it's just some box my father found for storing her things. My father won't talk about the box or its contents any more.

I slide the braid aside, remove the top of the box, and look in at the familiar items. One by one, I take them out. I set them on the table in a row from left to right. I always start with the necklace that has a silver bird's nest hanging from it. Inside the nest are three pearls (purls) that are fake and are supposed to be birds' eggs. What does the necklace say about my mother? Maybe that she's a person who likes birds or birds' nests or birds' eggs.

Next I take out the seashell that looks like a pale brown cone and is called an auger. My mother must like augers too. She likes birds, birds' nests, birds' eggs and augers.

The third item I take out is a photo of a black cat. Written on the back of the photo is “Midnight”. I don't remember having a cat, or any pet before my father brought Rain home. I study the cat some more. My mother likes birds, birds' nests, birds' eggs, augers, photos and black cats named Midnight.

After the photo I examine two pins. The first is a little silver badge in the shape of
R
for Rose. I wonder why my mother didn't take that with her. But maybe she didn't want to be reminded of me. After all, she left my father and me, so why would she want to think about us? The second pin is the kind called a hatpin. I know these things about the pins because when I was very small sometimes my father would look through the box with me and tell me about the items in it. He won't do that now, but he used to, and that is how I know that the
R
stands for Rose and that the second pin is a hatpin. It looks like a very big needle, and attached to the end, where the head of a pin should be, is a tiny clock. The clock doesn't work; the hands are just painted on. They point to 7.15. Once I asked my father if there was any reason the clock reads 7.15. He said, “No.”

I wonder if my mother likes homonyms. I wonder if she likes prime numbers or rules or words. I wonder if she left because I like those things. The last items in the hatbox are a nickel with a buffalo on it, a tiny square of newspaper announcing that Elizabeth Parsons wed Wesley Howard in the First Presbyterian Church in Hatford, the hospital bracelet I wore when I was born, and a scarf with a picture of a rose on it.

I wish I knew (new, gnu) more about my mother. I do (dew, due) know (no) what she looks like. There are two pictures of her on the table by the couch. But I wish I knew something else besides the fact that she likes birds, birds' nests, birds' eggs, augers, photos, black cats named Midnight, pins, the letter
R
, clocks, 7.15, nickels, buffalos, her wedding announcement, my hospital bracelet, scarves and roses.

I look at the clock on the kitchen wall. I have three worksheets for homework tonight. It's time to start them and then start dinner. I put my mother's things back into the box in reverse order, starting with the scarf and ending with the necklace, and then I put the box back on the closet shelf.

It's later, when I'm adding Rain's My Pet dry food to her My Pet wet food, that I turn on the radio and hear the weather forecaster say, “…approaching storm. Hurricane Susan is expected to make landfall in three days” (daze), “and will be of epic proportions, a superstorm that could become the storm of the century.”

On the day I hear about Hurricane Susan, my father comes home from work at 5.43, which is an interesting time because the numbers are in reverse numerical order. Also, it's a good time because it means my father probably had only one drink at The Luck of the Irish after the J & R Garage closed.

For dinner I have cooked frozen chicken legs from a box, rice and milk. Rain has already eaten her My Pet dinner. My father and I sit down facing each other at the kitchen table. Rain squeezes herself under my chair. I look directly into my father's eyes and do not say a word about homonyms.

“Why are you staring at me, Rose?” he asks.

“A superstorm named Hurricane Susan is coming,” I tell him.

“Where did you hear this? From Weldon?”

“From the weather forecaster on WMHT-FM. 88.7 on your dial.”

My father shrugs.

“It will be a storm of epic proportions,” I add.

“And what are these epic proportions?”

I didn't hear the details, so I reply, “A superstorm that could become the storm of the century.”

My father shrugs again. “We live inland, Rose. Well inland. A hurricane isn't going to affect us. Hurricanes stick to the coast. Sometimes they never even get to the coast. They turn around and head back out to sea.”

I think for a moment. “88.7 on your dial is our local station.”

“Yeah?”

“Our local station is talking about the superstorm.”

Sometimes my father grunts. It sounds like
unh.
He grunts now. “Unh.” Then he takes a swallow of milk and says, “All right. We'll look at the Weather Channel later.”

As soon as we've finished dinner and I've washed the dishes, I turn on the television in the living room. I tune it to the prime number channel of 83, the Weather Channel. Two people are sitting at a desk. Their names are written on the screen: Monica Findley and Rex Caprisi. Monica and Rex have serious looks on their faces. Behind them is a map of the United States and to the right, swirling around in the Atlantic Ocean, is a big red-coloured ball that is supposed to be a picture of Hurricane Susan. It takes up a lot of the ocean.

Monica and Rex are shuffling through papers and talking to each other, and Rex turns around and points to the swirling red ball. Then a face pops up in a little box on the left-hand side of the screen and now Monica and Rex are talking to a third person whose name is Hammond Griffon. Hammond Griffon is a storm expert. A second map appears on the screen and now there's so much going on that I can't follow it all. I put my fingers over my eyes and stick my thumbs in my ears and this is when I hear, faintly, my father come into the room and say, “Rose, don't start. Just turn the TV off if it's bothering you.” Then he adds, “What's the matter?”