she didn’t bother to get up. The sight made me uneasy—I hoped no one was planning to put one of those things on me again.
When it snowed Ethan and I played with sleds, and when the snow melted we played with bouncy balls. A couple of times the boy pulled the flip out of the closet and stared at it while I glanced away in dread. He’d hold it up and look it over, feeling its heft, and then put it away with a sigh.
That summer was another one without a Farm visit, and once again the boy cut grass with his friends—I would have thought he’d gotten it out of his system, but he apparently still enjoyed it. That year, Dad left for several days and while he was gone Grandpa and Grandma visited. Their car smelled like Flare and hay and the pond, and I stood and sniffed it for several minutes and raised my legs on the tires.
“My goodness, you are such a big boy!” Grandma told Ethan.
There was more football when the days turned cool, plus a wonderful surprise: Ethan could take his own car rides! This changed everything, because now I went almost everywhere with him, my nose out the window as I stood in the front seat, helping him drive. It turned out that the reason he stayed out so late was that he played football every night after school, leaving me tied up by the fence with a dish of water. It was boring, but at least I got to be with the boy.
Sometimes when Ethan took a car ride he forgot me, so I’d sit in the yard and yip for him to come back. Usually when this happened, Mom would come to see me.
“Want to go for a walk, Bailey?” she’d ask over and over until I was so excited I was dancing around in circles. She’d put the leash on my collar and we’d patrol the streets, stopping every few feet so I could mark the territory. Often we’d pass groups of children playing and I’d wonder why Ethan didn’t do that as much anymore. Mom sometimes unsnapped the leash and let me run with the children a little bit.
I liked Mom a lot. My only complaint was that when she exited the bathroom she would close the lid on my water bowl. Ethan always left the lid up for me.
When school ended that summer, Ethan and Mom took us on a car ride to the Farm. I was overjoyed to be back. Flare pretended not to recognize me and I wasn’t sure if they were the same ducks or different ones, but everything else seemed exactly the same.
Nearly every day Ethan would work with Grandpa and some men, hammering and sawing boards. I assumed at first that the boy was building another go-kart, but after a month or so it became clear that they were putting together a new barn, right next to the old one, which had a big hole in the roof.
I was the first one to spot the woman coming up the driveway, and ran down to enforce any needed security. When I got close enough to smell her I realized it was the girl, all grown up now. She remembered me, and I squirmed in pleasure as she scratched behind my ears.
“Hi there, Bailey; did you miss me? Good dog, Bailey.”
As the men noticed the girl they stopped working. Ethan was coming out of the old barn and stopped in surprise.
“Oh. Hi. Hannah?”
“Hi, Ethan.”
Grandpa and the other men were grinning at each other. Ethan looked over his shoulder at them and flushed, then came over to where Hannah and I were standing.
“So, hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
They looked away from each other. Hannah stopped scratching me and I gave her a little nudge to remind her to keep at it.
“Come on in the house,” Ethan said.
The rest of that summer, whenever I went for a car ride it smelled like the girl had been sitting in my seat. Sometimes she would come over and have dinner with us, and then she and Ethan would sit on the porch and talk and I would lie at their feet to give them something interesting to talk about.
One time I was awakened from a well-deserved nap by a little alarm coming off the both of them. They were sitting on the couch and their faces were really close together and their hearts were beating and I could sense fear and excitement. It sounded a little like they were eating, but I couldn’t smell any food. Not sure what was happening, I climbed up on the couch and forced my nose into the place where their heads were together, and they both burst out laughing at me.
The day Mom and Ethan drove back home for school, the smell of paint from the new barn was in the air and the girl came over and she and Ethan went down to the dock and sat with their feet in the water and talked. The girl cried, and they hugged a lot and didn’t throw sticks or do any of the things people normally do at a pond, so I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. There was more hugging at the car, and then we drove away, Ethan honking.
Things were different at home. For one thing, Dad had his own room now, with a new bed in it. He shared the bathroom with Ethan, and frankly, I didn’t like to go in there after Dad had been in it. For another, when Ethan wasn’t playing football with his friends he spent a lot of time in his room talking on the phone. He said the name Hannah often during these calls.
The leaves were falling from the trees on the day Ethan took me for a car ride to a place with big silver school buses full of people, and there, coming off of one of them, was the girl! I don’t know who was more happy to see her, me or the boy—I wanted to play with her, but all he wanted to do was hug. I was so excited at this development I didn’t mind that I was automatically a backseat dog for the return trip.
“Coach says there will be scouts from U of M and Michigan State tonight, to see me, Hannah,” the boy said. I understood the word “Hannah,” of course, but I also picked up a surge of fear and excitement from the boy. From Hannah there was happiness and pride. I looked out the window to see if I could figure out what was going on but didn’t see anything unusual.
That night, I was proud to stand with Hannah while Ethan played football with his friends. I felt fairly certain she had never been to such a place as wonderful as the big yard, and I led her over to where Mom usually took me and showed Hannah where to sit.
