Sandy gave a big sniff and blinked. “I know how awful I’d feel if something happened to Harold—I think we have to give Kadjo another chance.”
Lucy added the stroke to the nays instead.
“What about you, Collier?” asked the chairman. “Are you voting to put the dog down?”
“Wh-a?” Bud Collier blinked.
“You moved to put the dog down. Is that how you’re voting?”
“I moved to put the dog down?” Collier scratched his head. “I must have been mistaken. She says the dog’s an old fellow who wouldn’t dream of biting anybody. I don’t want to put him down. I vote no.”
Lucy let out a big sigh of relief and put another stroke with the nays.
White threw his hands up in the air. “That’s three nos. The motion doesn’t pass.”
Nolan stepped forward to retrieve the photograph of Kadjo.
“Not so fast,” said White, shaking a finger at him. “Be warned: The board won’t be as lenient next time. You can be sure of that.”
Nolan didn’t respond, but Lucy noticed he had clenched his fists. Ellie Martin reached out to touch his sleeve and he suddenly grabbed the picture and marched out of the hearing room. Ellie hurried after him.
“Meeting adjourned!” declared White, banging down the gavel.
Adjourned for now, thought Lucy, as she closed her notebook and tucked it into her purse, but she’d be awfully surprised if this was the end of the matter. She had a feeling the board would be seeing a lot more of Curt Nolan.
And maybe, she thought, as she crossed the town hall parking lot to her car, just maybe, it was time Pennysaver readers learned exactly how their board of selectmen actually operated.
CHAPTER 2
Next morning, at the Pennysaver office, Lucy stared at the blank screen of the computer. Somehow, writing about the dog hearing wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be.
Yesterday, as she had driven home in a fury of righteous indignation, the words and phrases had flown through her head and she’d practically had the whole story written when she pulled into the driveway of the restored farmhouse on Red Top Road she shared with her husband, Bill, and their three daughters. Toby, her oldest and the only boy, was a freshman at Coburn University in New Hampshire.
At dinner, Bill and the girls had laughed when she described the meeting.
“You should have seen the look on Howard White’s face when Bud Collier changed his mind,” she’d told them as she dished out the ravioli. “I’ve never seen anybody look so furious.”
“What does Kadjo look like, Mom?” asked Zoe, who was in first grade and could almost read all by herself, even though it was only November. At the library, she always went for the dog stories.
“Kind of like Old Yeller in the movie,” said Lucy.
“Old Yeller died.” Zoe sighed and picked up her fork.
“I can’t believe they were really going to kill Kadjo,” said Sara, who was in fifth grade and was a member of Friends of Animals. Last summer she had volunteered at their shelter, caring for orphaned baby birds and other injured wildlife.
“If you ask me, maybe they should have,” declared Elizabeth, who was a senior in high school and a contrarian on principle. She speared a chunk of lettuce with her fork and took a tiny bite. “He killed twelve chickens, after all. What about them?”
“Killing the dog wouldn’t bring back the chickens, would it, Mom?” Sara’s round face was flushed with the effort of reaching across the table for the breadbasket. “It would just be killing another helpless, innocent animal. And Kadjo is a special dog, an endangered breed.”
“I don’t know if endangered is the right word,” said Bill, giving Sara a pointed glance as he passed her the bread. “If they’ve survived all these years, they’re hardly in danger.”
“Just because they’ve done okay up to now doesn’t mean they’re not endangered,” insisted Sara, holding out her plate for seconds. “They’re losing habitat. People are building houses where there weren’t any—there’s less and less room for wild animals.”
“There’s going to be less and less room for the rest of us if you don’t stop eating like that,” said Elizabeth, who had limited herself to four raviolis and a large helping of salad. “You’re going to get fat, like that man on TV last night.”
“He weighed 1100 pounds,” said Sara, defending herself. “I only weigh one tenth of that.”
“Right,” said Elizabeth, rolling her eyes in disbelief.
“That’s enough.” Lucy then repeated what had become her mealtime mantra: “It doesn’t matter how much you weigh—what’s important is feeling healthy and having enough energy.”
* * *
“Hey, Lucy, how’s that story coming?” demanded Ted Stillings, editor and publisher of the Pennysaver and her boss, intruding on her thoughts and snapping her back to the present.
Lucy shook her head, to clear her mind, and looked at the computer screen. It was still blank. As much she wanted to write the truth about the meeting, she was finding it hard to overcome her old habit of reticence. “Discretion is the better part of valor” had been one of her mother’s favorite expressions, and Lucy had grown up believing that, if you couldn’t say something nice about someone, you didn’t say anything at all.
But she was a reporter, she reminded herself. She had an obligation to tell the truth. She straightened her back and took a deep breath, as if she were preparing to dive off the high board into a deep pool. Then she began tapping at the keys, picking up speed as she went and quickly filling up the screen.
Kadjo, a Native American dog, narrowly escaped the fate that overtook his human companions when Selectmen voted 3:2 to spare his life.
“Lucy, I think you need to tone this down a little bit,” suggested Ted, after she had sent the story to him for editing.
“No way, Ted.” Having taken the plunge, Lucy was in no mood to compromise.
