The Summer of Riley
Read The Summer of Riley Online
Authors: Eve Bunting
THE
S
UMMER
OF
R
ILEY
Eve Bunting
To the memory of Toby
Special thanks to Bob Bean, Horse Trainer,and to Carole Peggar.You helped.
Chapter 1
I
got my dog, Riley, exactly two months after my grandpa died. Grandpa lived with us and he was my best pal. To tell the truth, I think Mom let me get a dog so I’d start feeling better.
She drove Grace and me into Portland because it’s good to get an animal from the pound. You could be saving its life. I picked mine out from all the other dogs right away. A Lab, not quite purebred, but great- looking anyway. His coat was the color of a lion’s, but smooth and shiny.
“I’d say he’s got some collie in him, too,” the pound man told us.
“I thought you wanted a middle-sized dog,” Grace said.
“I
thought
I did.” I hugged Riley around his middle. “I changed.”
Grace nodded. “Cool!”
Grace is my best friend, even if she is a girl. I guess boys, or at least boys my age, which is eleven, are not supposed to even like girls. But I like Grace, and I don’t care what anybody thinks.
“Was he a stray?” Mom asked the pound man.
He shook his head. “He was turned in by his owners. That’s how come he has a name already.” He looked at me. “You can change it if you like.”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “Riley’s just fine.”.
Mom was frowning. “Why did his owners turn him in? He’s not a biter, is he?”
“No way.” The pound man put his hand under Riley’s chin. “Is this the face of a biter? I can spot one of those right away. They even smell bad tempered.”
He rubbed his knuckles up and down on Riley’s forehead, and Riley squirmed with joy.
Soon as he stopped rubbing, I started. “I’ll do this for you every day when we get home, Riley,” I whispered. “Okay?”
“I think his owners had to move and couldn’t take him,” the pound man told us. “It wasn’t that they didn’t want him.”
“I think we want him. Right, William?” Mom smiled at me.
The pound man looked at Mom. Grace gave me
a nudge. We always think it’s funny the way guys about drop dead over Mom.
“He likes her,” Grace whispered to me.
“At least he didn’t ask her if she’s my
sister,
” I whispered back.
While we were signing the papers and paying for all the things you have to pay for before you adopt a dog, we told everyone how Riley was going to love being with us, how we were going to take great care of him, and how we have a nice fenced yard that runs all the way round our house for him to play in. The yard’s a field, really, since where we live is almost in the country. Grace’s house is a half mile or so down the road, toward Monk’s Hill where we go to school, and there’s only Mrs. Peachwood’s little ranch in between.
“Sounds great,” the pound man said.
“He wishes
he
was coming with us,” Grace whispered.
Riley sat in the back of the station wagon with Grace and me. “You can tell he’s really smart,” Grace said. “Look at the way he sits up straight and looks out the window. Most dogs would be freaking all over the place.”
I patted his head. “I knew he was smart the
minute I saw him.” Actually I’d never thought about his smarts. I just loved his face, his velvety ears, the way he licked my face with slobbery kisses—the dog smell of him. I buried my nose in his neck and took a good sniff now.
Mom grinned at me in the rearview mirror. “I think it was love at first sight, right, William?”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, Mom!”
We let Grace off at her driveway because she goes to her flute lesson on Tuesdays.
“That’s Mrs. Peachwood’s house,” I told Riley, as we passed our next-door neighbor’s. “We usually call her Peachie. Most of the time she’s out in the front field there with her horse. His name is the Sultan of Kaboor. You’ll like him a lot. Right now the two of them have gone to Peachie’s sister’s up in Washington. They go every July. And over there is our house. Do you like it, Riley? It’s your house too now.” And I felt this great rush of happiness, the kind I hadn’t had since Grandpa died.
But when we turned into our long, dusty driveway, I couldn’t help thinking how great it would have been if Grandpa had been in the house, waiting for us. Close by the porch was the big hole he and I’d dug for the fishpond—and the humongous pile of earth
beside it. We were turning that into a rock garden. The pond was going to be two feet deep and ten by ten feet wide. At first we’d thought it would be round, but we’d decided on free-form instead. It’s easier.
We’d already been to Pete’s Hardware in Monk’s Hill and ordered the pump and filter for the pond. They were supposed to be delivered in two weeks from some place in California. They hadn’t come, and it had been two months. Maybe Mom had canceled them, or maybe Pete just knew that fishpond would never be finished and canceled them himself. The big roll of black butyl liner was still rolled up on the porch. There’d been days and nights of rain since Grandpa died, and our hole was a great muddy puddle with dead leaves floating in it. The mound of earth was solid mud.
“William?” Mom had said gently, about a week after Grandpa died. “How about us finishing that pond, you and I?”
“Uh-uh,” I’d said, tears swelling up behind my eyes. “Not without Grandpa.”
“Well, then, how about filling it in?” she’d asked me twice. “We can’t just leave it,” she’d begged. The second time she’d said, “We could call Dad. He’d help you. The two of you could work together.”
For a minute I’d been tempted. I had high hopes that one day Dad would come back and decide to stay. And it would take time for us to fill in the pond and even more if we decided to finish it. Lots of things could happen. But in the end I knew I didn’t want anybody, even Dad, working on the pond that was Grandpa’s and mine.
The tears had spilled over just thinking about it, and Mom had hugged me against her and said, “Okay. Let’s not talk about it anymore for now.”
And we didn’t.
It was funny about the fishpond. While it lay there, waiting, it was as if Grandpa would come back and I’d see him standing in it, his glasses all muddy, his baseball cap so dirty you could hardly see what color it was. And he’d be shouting, “Come on, William. No slacking. We got work to do.”
I blinked. He wasn’t there leaning on his spade, waiting for me. Not today.
I opened the door of the station wagon, and Riley scrambled over my legs and bounded out. He raced round and round the yard, making his own path through the long grass. He dashed through the rhododendron bushes, knocking off some of the big flowers, stopped to spray the trunk of every single pine
tree, then rushed toward the hole. He paused at its edge and looked back at me. Did he understand?
“He
is
smart,” Mom said. “A lot of dogs would just have jumped in there and wallowed in all that mud. Then what a mess we would have had.” She spoke uncertainly, the way she does now every time she mentions the pond.
“Let’s take a few pictures,” she said. “Stand close to Riley.” She took lots of him and me, and me and him, and I swear that dog stood absolutely still and just about smiled for the camera.
“I think Riley is the perfect dog,” I said.
And that’s what I thought, then.
I
showed Riley our house. He walked sedately around with me, checking out the furniture, getting acquainted. He didn’t try to pee anywhere, and I thought that was a good sign of his house manners.
Afterward, I took him outside. Our yard was filled with late afternoon sunshine. Hundreds of gnat-catchers twittered through the air. In the far distance I could see the mountains. Once Dad took me hiking up there and we saw a humongous bear. Fortunately, it didn’t see us.
Riley and I played Frisbee and catch and running games all afternoon. When Mom told us to come in for dinner, he stayed beside me on the braided rug and didn’t even whine for food.
“Somebody taught that dog to be polite,” Mom said.
Grace called at about seven for a report. I told her
Riley was the best dog ever.
“Can he sit up and beg?” she asked.
“Give me a break,” I said. “This dog has dignity. This dog doesn’t beg.”
Later I called Dad and left a message on his answering machine. “I got a dog today,” I told him. “Can you come see him?”
I put the receiver back real quietly, and I tried not to wonder where Dad was. It was 9:30. I always try not to wonder where he is when I call at night and he isn’t home. There’s a commercial, I guess it’s a commercial, on TV where this guy says, “It’s after midnight. Do you know where your children are?” Change that to “your dad.” Of course, it wasn’t after midnight yet. And he was probably still at work. I was sure that’s where he was.
Riley slept with me, warm and solid, his big head taking up most of my pillow.
“Just this one night,” Mom told us both. “So he’ll feel welcome.”
“Sure, just this one night,” I repeated, and I winked at Riley. I thought he winked back.
When she put out the light, we talked. I tell you, if you were a scaredy-baby kind of kid, you’d never be scared if you had Riley in bed with you. He could
fend off monsters or robbers or anything else that happened to drop by. I explained to him about Dad.
“They used to get along great, he and Mom,” I whispered, my mouth close to his ear. “I can’t figure why they didn’t try harder to stay together. I mean, he has this apartment over in Cave Junction now, and we live here. It’s nuts if you ask me. Mom says there are things between them that can’t be fixed and they’re happier apart. But what about me? Am I supposed to be happier without a dad?” I could tell Riley was listening. “And then there’s Grandpa,” I said, blinking away tears. “I miss him a lot,” I said. “A lot,” I repeated.
Riley snuggled closer.
I found the place on his forehead between his eyes and gave him a knuckle rub.
Grace came over the next day and we took Riley on a run. That was the beginning of the things we all did together. He went swimming with us in Chiltern Dam, his head slick and smooth as a seal’s above the water. Sometimes we hitched my skateboard to him and he pulled us each in turn.
“I wish I had a dog instead of two brothers,” Grace said.
My grandpa had bad allergies. That’s why we couldn’t have a dog before. But I’d rather have a grandpa, even though I loved Riley already.
Sometimes I took Riley out by myself. Once a little bitsy rat of a dog came pattering right over to us and I was nervous.
The little dog wasn’t on a leash and Riley could have swallowed him in one bite.
“Be good, Riley,” I whispered, holding tight to his collar.
But Riley just nuzzled the little guy, friendly as could be.
“What a nice dog,” the lady owner said, panting to a stop beside us. I could tell she was as nervous as I’d been.