Just a Dog (5 page)

Mister Mosely looked just the same when he came home after being gone all that time, but there were two things different about him.

One was that he had three little red flowers stuck in the holes of his collar. They were made of plastic. Dad said they were poppies. The second thing was tied to his name tag. I was the one who spotted it first. It was a shiny ring with jewels on it. They were all different colours. Mum said they wouldn't be real jewels, just glass.

We couldn't figure out what the flowers and the fake ring were all about and we couldn't figure out where Mister Mosely had got to. First we thought maybe he'd been sick or hurt and someone had been taking care of him, but when we checked
him over he didn't have any cuts or marks on him or anything. And Mum reckoned Moe hadn't lost any weight either and he was as healthy as ever.

Dad said he'd read these stories about dogs being kidnapped and taken hundreds of miles away from where they lived, then escaping somehow and finding their way back home. But that couldn't have happened with Mister Mosely because his feet would have been all cut up and wrecked and they were the same as when he left.

Dad's other idea was that maybe he'd gone off with a female dog and maybe they had puppies somewhere. Mum didn't think that was right. She said if that was true Mister Mosely still would have come home sometimes, and if there were puppies, he would still be going back there, which he wasn't. ‘Moe'd never run out on anyone,' Mum reckoned.

In the end Dad said, ‘Maybe he just got sick of our ugly mugs and decided to try another family for a while – one that could give him a decent feed of caviar and steak every day.' We all laughed at that because at least we knew that wasn't true.

It drove me nuts not knowing where Mister Mosely had gone. Mum called it ‘Moe's lost
fortnight'. I used to make up stupid stories about it, mostly when I was lying in bed at night. Stories like how Moe was captured by a gang of crooks but escaped and then went and got the police to arrest them. Or how he discovered a secret terrorist plot and had to stop it. Or how aliens zapped him up but he outsmarted them and found his way back to earth somehow. Or how he was really a secret agent dog and he'd been away working undercover on a top-secret spy mission. I know all those stories are pretty stupid, because Mister Mosely was just a normal dog and couldn't have done any of those things. But I still liked making them up anyway.

If you really want to know what I think happened to Mister Mosely I'll tell you. I think he was helping someone somehow. Like maybe there was somebody who needed him for those two weeks more than we did and that's why he stayed away. Maybe someone who was hurt or sick or someone who'd lost their memory or was in some kind of trouble. I can't say for sure if that's right or not, but I hope so. It's the kind of thing I think Moe would do.

In the end I guess it didn't really matter why
Mister Mosely went away that time. It only mattered that he came back.

But I still haven't told you the best part of the Mister Mosely's Mystery story. The best part is how Mum took that ring I found on Moe's name tag to a jewellery shop ‘just in case' and found out that it wasn't a fake at all. The jewellery shop man said it was made of real pure white gold and it had real diamonds and rubies and sapphires in it. It was worth a lot of money. Dad wanted to keep it because we really needed the money on account of how his work was being cut back. But Mum said we couldn't because it didn't belong to us and it wouldn't be right. Mum won. She took the ring to the police and told them all about how Moe brought it home.

Then one day, when we'd forgotten all about it, the police rang Mum and told her that nobody had come to get the ring, so it was hers. We all went crazy when we heard that. Mum ended up selling it to the jeweller. She said the money was a ‘godsend'. She said without it we would have lost our house for sure. That was because Dad had lost his job selling TVs and stuff and he still hadn't found a new one. Mum called Mister
Mosely our ‘guardian angel'. She said he was definitely looking after us.

We never did find out where Moe went to that time. That's why I called this story Mister Mosely's Mystery. It's one of the worst Mister Mosely stories because of how bad it was when we thought he was gone for good. But it's one of the best ones too because of how Moe came home and because of the ring and everything.

Some stories are like that.

One of the best things about Mister Mosely was how he used to wait out the front of our house every day for me to come home from school.

He started doing that when I was in Grade Three. That's when Mum stopped picking me up from school because she had to work at the supermarket while Dad was trying to find another job. I didn't mind walking home. It was just a couple of streets away and besides, I wasn't a little kid any more. Mum still gave me a million instructions but and kept on telling me over and over to be careful and not to do anything stupid.

Moe was waiting for me on the very first day I walked home. When I turned into our street there he was sitting on the footpath in front of
our house. And he was there every time after that. Mrs Nguyen who lives across the road told Mum that Moe sat for hours in the afternoon waiting for me. She said he was like ‘a big white sphinx', which I thought was a pretty good way to describe him.

But the best thing about Moe waiting for me was what he did when he saw me coming. First of all his tail would start wagging and then it would get faster and faster till you'd think it was going to come off. Then he'd start dancing around in a bit of a circle because our house was way down the end of the street and he wouldn't be sure if it was really me or not. When I got closer and he knew it was me he'd come charging up the road and jump all over me and whip me with his tail and slobber me half to death.

No one was ever as happy to see me as Mister Mosely was. He always made me feel good. Even if I got into trouble at school or lost something or some kids were being idiots and saying or doing stuff, it didn't make any difference to Moe. He just went nuts every time like I was some kind of a hero or a movie star or the most important person in the world. And that's sort of how I felt.

Sometimes just for fun I'd play this game with Mister Mosely. I'd pretend I was a spy or a special agent or something and our house was a secret enemy hideaway that Moe was guarding. My mission was to see how close I could get to the house before Moe figured out it was really me. What I'd do is, I'd keep my school hat pulled right down and I wouldn't look up at him or smile or call out or anything. I'd just keep walking slowly down the street making out I was some stranger.

That would get Moe confused straight away. I'd watch him from under my hat. Pretty soon he'd start to think he'd got it wrong and that maybe it wasn't really me and he'd stop jumping around. Then his tail would stop wagging. The closer I got the funnier it was. Moe would start sniffing the air and his tail would wind up again. Then he'd come up the street a little bit but he'd stop and turn round. Sometimes he'd go round and round in circles and I'd have to try really hard to stop myself from bursting out laughing. Laughing was a BIG mistake. As soon as I laughed, I'd give myself away and Mister Mosely would charge at me and be so psycho with happiness he'd almost kill me.

The best one I ever did was this time when I pulled my hat really low and I walked down the street sort of mumbling in the deepest fake voice I could do. That totally fooled old Moe. I got so close I could have almost reached out and patted him. But I didn't. I just stood there. I could see Moe's feet dancing around and I could hear him whining like crazy. He was going totally nuts because he was ninety-nine per cent sure it was me but still one per cent thinking maybe it wasn't. When I finally took my hat off he was so happy he knocked me down and gave me the biggest slobbering ever. It was pretty horrible but it was still worth it.

I stopped playing those kinds of tricks on Mister Mosely because of the day it all went wrong. That's going to be my next story. It's one of the ones I wish wasn't true.

One day when I was coming home from school I thought of a trick I could do to fool Mister Mosely. I figured it would be really funny. It wasn't. And it was the last trick I ever played on him.

It was the day we got to bring home the masks we'd been making all week in Miss Digby's art class. I couldn't wait to show mine to Mum and Dad. It looked a bit like the Joker from
Batman
, only better and scarier and with a lot more colours on it. I thought it would be pretty funny to fool Mister Mosely with it.

When I got to the top of our street I hid behind the big fence there and checked around the corner. Mister Mosely was waiting in his usual spot.
I put on my mask and I pulled my hat down really low and walked towards our house.

When Moe saw me coming he started getting excited the same as he always did. I waited till I got about halfway down our street then I waved and called out to him. As soon as he heard my voice and saw me waving, he came galloping up at me, which is exactly what I knew he would do. That's when I did this really stupid thing.

When Mister Mosely got close, I lifted up my head so he could see the mask and I stuck out my arms and growled at him all at the same time. I guess it was a bit of a mean thing for me to do, on account of Mister Mosely being so happy to see me and everything. But I was only doing it as a joke and I never thought anything bad would happen. I just thought Moe would get a bit of a fright and it would be funny. But it didn't end up being funny.

When Mister Mosely saw the scary mask and heard me growl, he got a fright all right, a giant one. He tried to stop dead on the spot but his long legs got all tangled up and he almost crashed over. Then he sort of swerved really fast to run away from me. I started to laugh because he looked so
hilarious and because I'd fooled him so bad. But when Moe swerved to get away from me, he ran straight out on to the road.

I was still laughing when the car hit him.

I didn't want to write any more of that story yesterday. It made me feel bad. But a story doesn't go away or stop being true just because you stop telling it. So this is what happened next.

Mister Mosely ran out on to the road and all of a sudden there was a car and there were tyres screeching and the car was thumping into Moe and he was yelping and rolling over and over and over. Then he sort of stopped and stayed still and everything went quiet. I couldn't breathe and all my insides froze up.

What I remember most is the burnt rubber smell from the tyres and the lady in the car just sitting there with her hands over her mouth and her face all white and Mister Mosely finally
getting up and limping down the road into our yard all sort of crumpled up and broken-looking. I stopped being frozen then. I threw my mask away and ran after him.

Lucky for me, Dad was home early from job hunting. He must have heard the squealing from the tyres and everything because he came running down the driveway just when I was coming up. I tried to tell him about Mister Mosely but he just wanted to know if I was all right. When I told him I was, he squeezed me so tight I thought I'd bust for sure.

Pretty soon the lady from the car was there too and she was really upset and saying how sorry she was and that she didn't see Mister Mosely and how he ran right in front of her and there was no way she could stop in time. Dad kept telling her it was all right and that it wasn't her fault but I could see she still felt pretty bad. Then we all started looking around for Moe but we couldn't find him anywhere. He wasn't in his bed on the porch and he wasn't under the house and we couldn't see him anywhere around the backyard.

Where we found him was under the garage. He used to crawl under there on really hot days.
Sometimes I went under there looking for lizards or ant lion nests. It was a pretty good place to hide too, but you couldn't go that far under because the ground sloped up. If you went too far, you got all squashed under the floor and you'd bump your head all the time and get spider's web stuck in your hair.

It was dark under the garage but we spotted Moe when Dad saw his eyes shining a bit. We tried to reach him but he was too far back and he wouldn't come when we called. There was only one way we could get Moe out of there. Dad had to back the car from the garage and rip up some of the floorboards with his crowbar.

When enough of the floorboards were out Dad knelt down beside the hole and leaned right in and lifted Mister Mosely out. I didn't think he would be strong enough to do that, but he did, even though his face went really red and sweaty and he swore a bit, but not very loud because the lady from the car was still there.

While Dad was lifting him out Mister Mosely didn't make any sound at all. He just shook like he was freezing to death. He was still shaking when Dad put him down on the floor of the garage. He
looked so bad. His legs were all twitchy and he had big bumps on him and there was all this blood on his side and big patches of hair on his legs and head were rubbed off. When I saw him I felt like I did the day I found Goblin on the bottom of his tank with all the ants on him, only worse. I just kept saying over and over to myself, ‘Please don't let him die. Please don't let him die.'

Moe didn't die, but the vet said if he wasn't so big and strong it might have been a lot different. He was still hurt pretty bad. He had three broken ribs and some other bad cuts and bruises, so he had to stay at the vet's for a while. Dad said he had no idea how we were going to pay for it because we had ‘nothing in the bank'. But the vet said that Moe was good company and there was no hurry and we could pay her back when Dad was working again. Mum cried and hugged the vet when she said that.

When Mister Mosely was strong enough to come home he had to wear another bucket-thing. That was because he had lots of stitches in his side. They were in a big ‘V' shape and all the hair around them was shaved off. And he had blobs of orangey-yellow stuff painted all over his white
body to help the other cuts heal up. Mum said the vet had turned poor old Moe into one of those albino tigers. Dad said more like an albino tiger that had been ‘caught in a blender'.

We had to move Mister Mosely's bed downstairs in the laundry until he got better, because there was no way he could make it all the way to the porch. Mum said Moe was a good patient because he just rested and waited and didn't try to do too much before he was ready for it. ‘Unlike your father,' was what Mum said. When he did get better we put Moe's bed back on the porch and after a while he started fetching the paper and waiting for me out the front of the house same as always.

The only other thing I remember about the day Mister Mosely got hit was how the lady in the car gave my mask back to me. She must have found it on the footpath. I waited till she left and then I ripped it up into little pieces and threw it in the rubbish bin.