The Dogs of Christmas (12 page)

“Cody! Come here, baby!” Kerri got down on her knees on the rug, clapping her hands. The puppies in their box squealed, trying to climb out to get to her, stepping on each other’s heads in the process.

Cody took a few hesitant steps in Kerri’s general direction, but not in a straight line. She reached her hand out, but Cody didn’t react to it. Kerri leaned forward, waving her hand. “Cody?”

Cody, sniffing, touched his nose to her hand. Instantly he was wagging his tail, going down on his belly and licking her fingers.

“He can’t see,” Josh proclaimed.

“Oh, poor little guy,” Kerri murmured. She swept Cody up into her arms. “We should get him to the vet to make sure, though. Maybe there’s something that can be done.”

“Okay, but there’s no rule or anything, right? I mean, you can keep a dog even if he’s blind.”

“Right, no, of course. They’re harder to place, but we’ll find someone.”

“Or I’ll keep him,” Josh volunteered spontaneously.

Kerri lifted her eyebrows.

“What?” Josh responded a little defensively.

“You’ve never had a dog before. Seems like having a sightless one would be a lot harder.”

But I’ll have you around to help,
he almost said. “I’m sure I could manage.”

“Let’s talk about it after the vet. I mean, just so you know, I hate it when people get a dog on impulse. It’s a huge commitment. One of the reasons there are so many homeless animals is that people buy a cute puppy and then when it gets to be big and too much to handle they just dump it.”

“Okay, but I would never do that.”

She smiled at him. “I know.” She held him in place with that smile for a long moment, his pulse bounding around like the puppies reacting to the cat.

They let Lucy out of the bedroom and she came out with her fur raised, obviously well aware that Waldo had been distressing the puppies. The cat just looked at the big dog, totally unafraid. Eventually Lucy decided to be magnanimous and forgive the trespass, though she shot Josh a surly look, clearly understanding that he’d been complicit in the insulting intrusion.

He walked with Kerri to her car. She put Waldo in the collapsing crate and then gave him her best knee-weakening smile, so that he had to lean on the vehicle for support. He was wondering if it would be okay to kiss her now, since they were right there at her getaway vehicle, but she surprised him by stepping forward for a hug. He pressed his cheek against hers and briefly smelled her hair before they broke apart. “Thanksgiving,” he finally managed to murmur.

“Oh,” she corrected lightly, “I’ll see you before then, I’m sure.”

Yes!

“We’ve got a new Jack Russell named Radar who just runs and runs. I want to bring him out—he’s about the same size as your puppies, though he’s maybe two years old.”

“Okay.” So that was it, he was going to see her because of the dog socialization program, not because he was wearing his best sweater and pressed pants. She was smiling at him. “What?” he asked her.

“Oh, nothing.” What was she thinking? What was he missing?

After she left, it was a nice enough day for the puppies to play outside, Josh decided. It wouldn’t be too long before winter socked the area with a big dump of snow and then the little guys would be confined to the indoors. He let Lucy out of the bedroom and picked up the puppies and carried them out to be with her.

“You’re a good dog, Lucy,” he told her. She gave him a cross look, still unhappy about the cat incident.

The phone rang and he dashed up the steps to get it. It was not, sorry to say, Kerri, but rather his buddy Wayne.

“Dude, I left you a voice mail,” Wayne complained.

“Oh. You know that I don’t really get cell up here.”

“Can’t believe such a high tech guy and you’re still using a landline like it’s nineteen-sixty.”

“Maybe if you told me what your message was about,” Josh suggested.

“Look, I know what you’re going to say, but Leigh’s got this friend from her yoga class.”

“No.”

“Dude.”

Lucy started barking, barking in a way Josh had never heard before—there was something like anger in it, a ferocious growl. Wayne was still talking, but Josh was staring at the open door, not listening.

“Hang … hang on,” Josh interrupted. He dropped the phone and went to the front window.

He gasped in horror when he saw why Lucy was barking. The dogs were under attack.

Canis latrans.

Coyotes.

TWELVE

It took Josh only a moment to take in the entire scene as it was unfolding.

There were two of them, young, lean, and hungry, hunting the puppies together. God, they were cunning. One of them was on the left, out of the trees, taunting Lucy, pacing back and forth just out of reach. Lucy was lunging toward this one, her face fierce, her lips drawn back, her shoulders hunched and her fur up. With every feint Lucy made, the predator would dance back, tantalizing, drawing Lucy farther and farther from her frightened brood, who were huddled together where Josh had left them. Lucy was drooling, her eyes wild, her teeth snapping.

The coyote who was goading Lucy with its taunts had an evil calculation in its eyes as it drew the dog forward, because the other hunter was in the tree line, circling stealthily to the right, waiting for Lucy to be lured just a few more feet before it darted out to steal a puppy.

Next to the door was the shotgun with the salt load. Josh grabbed it and racked in a shell as he ran out the door.

Lucy couldn’t help herself. Enraged, she was charging the coyote on the left and the one on the right was making its move, darting out of the trees, mouth open in anticipation, ready to snatch a baby. “Hey!” Josh yelled. He leaped off his deck and stumbled. The coyote was almost to the puppies.

Josh fired a round into the air and the loud noise changed everything. The coyote on the right flinched, broke off its attack, and raced for the trees just as the other one fled from Lucy. Lucy went after it.

“Lucy! Come back!” Josh shouted, standing over the puppies. He racked in another shell. Coyotes were lurkers—they might appear to be in full retreat but they’d soon circle back for another look. “Lucy! Come!” Josh fired into the woods, the salt snapping at the trees.

Lucy came galloping back, panting. Josh doubted she’d caught up with the coyotes; they were consummate escape artists.

“Good dog, Lucy. Stay here,” Josh told her. Lucy came to him, her wet nose touching his hand, the puppies squealing at their feet. Josh bent to them and that’s when he noticed that there were only three.

Lola, Oliver, and Sophie were all swarming Lucy, seeking solace. Rufus and Cody were missing.

They were gone.

Josh gave into a heedless rage and plunged into the woods after the coyotes. He ran downhill, his vision clouded with fury and his face hot. He jacked in another shell, holding the gun across his chest like a charging soldier. He wanted to shoot the predators; he wanted to hurt them, beat them, kill them.

Fifty feet from the house he was in the thick of his lodgepole pine forest, unable to run as fast because he literally needed to dodge trees. Looking down slope he could see well into the woods, though, and wasn’t able to spot any sign of the coyotes or the missing puppies. He halted, panting.

Then he felt a shock of fear. What was he doing? This was exactly what the coyotes had been trying to do with Lucy; draw off the guardian and leave the family unprotected.

He turned and ran back uphill, his heart pounding, gasping for breath. When he burst out of the trees he saw that Lucy had Oliver in her mouth, carrying the puppy by the loose flap of skin behind his neck. Oliver looked cowed; his ears drooped and his little tail was curved up between his legs.

There was no sign of the other pups.

“Lucy! What happened?” Josh shouted in anguish.
No
. Had the coyotes returned and made off with Lola and Sophie, too?

The run back up the hill had exhausted Josh but he kept moving, up the steps and through the open door to his house. Lucy was just vanishing down the hallway and Josh pursued. The three puppies were all in the box; Lucy had taken them to the safest place she knew.

Josh shuddered to think about the puppies waiting out in the open, totally exposed, as Lucy carried them one at a time back into the house, but they were okay. Probably the gunshots had frightened the coyotes too much for them to circle back.

“You stay with the puppies, Lucy,” Josh instructed her between pants. Oliver, Lola, and Sophie were all pressing anxiously against Lucy’s side, maybe seeking solace as much as a meal. Josh shut the bedroom door.

He strode over to the gun rack and reloaded his shotgun, wishing he had something besides salt to shoot at the predators. Then he went back out into the front yard, stopping where the puppies had been huddled at Lucy’s feet.

He couldn’t believe he had done that—left the dogs out here by themselves, where besides coyotes there were foxes and even cougars, so that he could take Wayne’s phone call. What had he been thinking?

He thought of little Rufus, the brown spot over his one eye, and Cody, blind and terrified, as the two little dogs were carried off by the vicious coyotes. The pain was almost more than he could bear. He sank to his knees, setting his gun aside, and put his hands to his face and choked out his grief in anguished sobs. It was his fault, all his fault. He was stupid, stupid, stupid.

He didn’t track how long he wallowed in his agony. When he finally brought himself under control he wiped his wet hands on his pants. He knew something now. He wasn’t going to give up the puppies for adoption—they were his dogs, and he would never abandon them again. It hurt too much to lose them. He just couldn’t bear it.

He wondered what he was going to say to Kerri. Something told him she wasn’t going to be happy with this choice.

But ultimately, Kerri would agree with his decision, wouldn’t she? No, not easily. Josh knew she wouldn’t accept it without argument, but he had to do it. He had to.

For some reason he found himself thinking of Amanda, and a strong anger coursed through him. “It’s no one’s fault,” she’d explained lamely as she packed her belongings into her car. As if the choice were made for her, as if her decisions were out of her hands.

Yes it is. It is someone’s fault, it’s your fault, Amanda.

Things were usually someone’s fault. This, leaving the puppies to the coyotes, was his.

Just as quickly as it had come, the rage left, like a storm cloud that stabbed a single hot bolt of lightning at the ground before passing over the ridge and out of sight. His thoughts returned to Kerri, and he decided that for now, he wouldn’t tell her anything about keeping the remaining puppies for himself.

Josh took in a deep breath, looking around at the yellow grass and sparse shrubbery that bordered his property. He’d have to build a pen for his dogs, one with a roof on it—mountain lions could leap over even a high fence.

When he heard the small squeak, Josh turned his head. It had been an animal sound, a little squeal. There it was again.

Josh’s eyes widened. Could it be? He thought it had come from under his deck. Stooping down, he peered into the cramped, dark space, trying to see.

He spotted Rufus’s tail first, the little white spot catching his eye and leading him to see the white face at the other end. “Hey!” Josh yelled, exultant.
They were alive!

A man could crawl under there, and that’s what he did next, his palms registering the rocky, cold ground. The puppies stiffened at his approach, Cody picking up on Rufus’s agitation and sniffing frantically for a clue as to what this new threat was.

“Hey, Cody! Rufus! Come here, little guys.” Josh gathered the dogs to his chest and wriggled his way back out. They weighed close to ten pounds apiece, now. Once he could stand back up he held them together up to his face and kissed them over and over. “Oh, you guys, I’m so glad you’re okay!” he cried, dangerously close to tears. They seemed as intimidated as Oliver had been in Lucy’s mouth, but Cody braved a little lick on Josh’s nose.

When he opened the door to the back bedroom Lucy stood up and the puppies at her teats broke from her and fell away, squealing in protest. They immediately started lunging to reattach themselves, but Lucy stepped out of the box and went up to Josh to examine Rufus and Cody. She sniffed them up and down and they squirmed, their little tails wagging like crazy. The look she gave Josh seemed full of relief and gratitude.

Josh put the two wayward puppies in the box, but Lucy didn’t seem to want to return. “I’ll fix you some food,” Josh promised the puppies. They started to squall as Josh headed into the kitchen, Lucy trotting at his heels. He petted the mommy dog and she licked his hand. Josh had a sense that there was a bond between them of shared adversity, of having been through something profound together.

The puppies attacked the soft food without any of their previous hesitation. It was as if, having survived a dangerous adult experience, they saw themselves as grown-up dogs now.

The phone was still dangling from its coiled wire, the connection dead. He fed the puppies first, and then called Wayne back. Leigh, his wife, answered instead.

“Did you need to hang up so you could come up with excuses?” she demanded lightly.

“No, I had a thing happen. Did Wayne tell you I’ve got puppies?”

“Yes! Can we bring Isabella over to see them?”

“Yeah. I’d like that.”
I do know some children.

“Maybe we could get together after Thanksgiving.”

“Um…”

“Or, I know! Do you have plans for Thanksgiving?”

“Actually—”

“It would be really fun if you came over.”

“I was actually sort of—”

“There’s someone I want you to meet. Thanksgiving would be perfect.”

“Leigh—”

“I know what you’re going to say, Josh, but come on,” Leigh admonished. “You can’t just sit around for the rest of your life, waiting for, for … I don’t know. You need to
move on.
I hate how you do this, sometimes.”