“Let's go get the dog,” Mom said. “We'll take him back right now.”
Wendy had to stay home with her dad even though she pitched a fit because she wanted to go along. “Not this time,” Mrs. Pinella said.
That was the only good thing that came out of the whole discussion.
Mrs. Pinella, Andrew, and I followed Mom out to the car and got in. She drove to our street and parked in front of the greenbelt. Then we all trooped through the trees to the fort and unlocked the door. Ra wagged his tail and did his happy dance, the way he always does when we come. He had no way to know that this time we were not going for a walk or out to play a game of fetch.
I snapped the leash on his collar. Mrs. Pinella let him sniff her hand, and then she petted him.
“He's a beautiful dog,” she said. “I can see why you like him.”
“He's a great dog! ” I said. “It isn't just his looks. He's smart and friendly and loyal. He loves to play and . . .” All of a sudden, I started to cry. I couldn't help it. I stood there in the fort and bawled worse than Wendy the Whiner.
“Oh, Rusty,” Mom said. “He
is
a fine dogâbut he isn't
your
dog. It wouldn't be right to keep him.”
“It isn't right to take him back to someone who doesn't feed him properly and leaves him chained to a tree all day, and hurts him,” I replied. “A dog is a living being, not a piece of property. It would be different if I'd taken a computer or a jacket. Then you'd be right to make me return it. But a dog has feelings. He gets hungry and cold and scared.”
Mrs. Pinella had tears in her eyes, and so did Andrew. To be fair about it, Mom looked none too happy herself. I don't think she really wanted to take the dog back, either, but she felt obligated to teach me not to steal.
“Let's get this over with,” Mom said. She held the door of the fort open while Mrs. Pinella and Andrew went out. I followed with Ra. Mom closed the door behind us.
I didn't put the padlock on the door. Why bother? The only thing I cared about from the fort wasn't inside. He was on a leash, walking toward trouble.
CHAPTER TEN
A
s we approached the car, the collie's ghost materialized in front of us. She stood between me and the car door, as if trying to block my way. I looked at Andrew, who appeared not to notice anything unusual. I watched as Mrs. Pinella walked right through the ghost in order to open the front passenger door.
Andrew went around to the other side of the car and got in. Ra, who had been acting uncertain, stepped ahead of me with his tail wagging, and sniffed noses with the collie.
Good,
I thought.
I'm not completely crazy if Ra can see the ghost, too.
Still, I wasn't sure what would happen when Ra and I got in the car. Would the collie's ghost try to prevent that? Did she sense where we were going and was trying to stop us?
“Get in, Rusty,” Mom said.
I reached for the door handle. The collie's ghost eased out of the way. I let Ra jump in first, then I followed him and closed the door. I looked out to see what the collie did, but she had disappeared.
Ra seemed excited about going for a ride. He kept poking his nose at the window, leaving smear marks, and his tail waved back and forth.
I told Mom which way to drive. When we turned onto the street where Ra had lived, he quit wagging his tail and began to tremble. He left my lap and went to stand on Andrew's lap, then immediately came back to me. He started panting, his sides heaving in and out as if he'd just run a race.
“He's scared,” I said. “He can smell where we are, and he's afraid.”
“It's the house on the right,” Andrew said. “The one back in the bushes.” Mom slowed the car and turned into the driveway. Ra began to whimper.
“Look!” I said. “They got another dog!”
Mom stopped the car, and we stared out the window. A black Lab, about six months old, was chained to the tree where Ra had been chained. The puppy's fur was dirty. He watched us, but he didn't act happy to see us. He was listless, lying in the dirt.
As I looked at him, I froze. The puppy was not alone. Beside him, barely visible, was the collie's ghost. The ghost looked at us, alertly watching. I wondered what she would do if we got out of the car and approached.
“He doesn't have any food,” Andrew said. “Just like Ra.”
“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Pinella.
“There's no water, either,” Andrew said.
“No place for him to sleep,” I added. “No doghouse for when it snows.”
Ra sat on my lap. He kept shaking. He panted so hard that his tongue hung out of his mouth as he stared out the window.
“Look at Ra, Mom,” I said.
Mom and Mrs. Pinella both turned in their seats.
“The poor thing is scared to death,” Mrs. Pinella said. “I don't think we should make him get out of the car here.”
“You want proof he was mistreated? ” Andrew said. “Here's the proof.”
I had my arms around Ra, trying to calm him, but he was beyond comfort.
Mom shifted the car into reverse
.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We'll keep Ra,” she said, “until I can call animal control and discuss the situation with them. I'll ask if there have been any complaints about this address.”
“Even if there haven't been any,” Mrs. Pinella said, “I'll make a complaint about the dog that's here now.”
“It's okay, Ra,” I said. “You don't have to go back.”
“I'm not saying you can keep him,” Mom said. “All I'm saying is that I'll look into the matter before we decide what to do.”
As Mom began backing out of the driveway, an old clunker car came down the street. Dull blue patches, some dark and some light, shared space with reddish-brown rust spots on the car's exterior. The colors were uneven and random, like a tie-dyed shirt.
Mom waited for it to pass but it stopped and a man stepped out. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that had not recently been inside a washing machine. A tattoo of a snake curled around one bicep. When he started toward the car, Ra's lip curled back, baring his teeth. A low growl rumbled in his throat.
“Hey! ” the man called as he pointed at Ra. “That's my dog!”
“Don't stop,” Mrs. Pinella said. “Keep going.”
Mom backed into the street, shifted into drive, and drove off.
“Hey, you!” The man ran after us. “Wait!”
Mom sped down the street. Andrew and I looked out the rear window as the man got back in his car.
“He's going to follow us!” I said.
Mom turned the corner, accelerated, turned again at the next corner. We made it back to Andrew's house without seeing the old blue car again.
“I didn't like the looks of that man,” Mrs. Pinella said. “I'm glad we
didn't
knock on his door.”
My heart was hammering as if I'd run down the street instead of riding in a car. “He's bad,” I said. “You saw how Ra acted. That man has been mean to him.”
“Yes,” Mom said, surprising me. “I think you're right, but that doesn't alter the fact that you went on his property and took something that belonged to him. Personal property laws protect everyone, whether they're nice people or not.”
I didn't reply. Sometimes it's best to keep my mouth shut and let Mom think things over. If I argued now, she might feel compelled to defend her original position, but if she had time to ponder the problem, she might decide that there are degrees of right and wrong.
Mom dropped Mrs. Pinella at her house, but Andrew came home with me. We abandoned our skateboarding plan and spent the rest of the day with Ra. We wanted to make up for taking him to his old house and scaring him. We threw the ball; we gave him extra treats; we brushed him and petted him. We had always liked our time with Ra, but it seemed even sweeter now that we knew we might not be able to keep him. We wanted to make him as happy as we could, in case we had to give him up.
“What will you do if your mom says you have to take him back?” Andrew asked.
My stomach tied itself in knots when I thought about that possibility. “I don't know. I guess I'd have to do it. Either that or take Ra and run away, but I don't have anywhere to go.”
“I think my parents would let me keep him,” Andrew said. “Maybe they'll convince your mom to let us do that.”
What I really wanted was for Ra to stay with me but if that wasn't a choice, I'd rather have him be Andrew's dog than to go anywhere else.
“Did you see the collie's ghost?” I asked.
“No! Where was it?”
“First she was here, next to the car before we got in. It was as if she didn't want us to go. Then when we got to Mean Man's house, the ghost was standing by the new dog.”
Andrew gave me his laser look. “Are you pulling my leg? ” he asked.
“Honest, I saw the collie's ghost while we were walking to the car.”
“Why didn't you tell me when you saw her so I could look, too?”
“In front of our mothers?”
I knew it bothered Andrew that I could see the collie's ghost and he couldn't, but I wasn't so sure that the ability to see a ghost was a good thing. I wasn't scared of the ghost, but I didn't understand why she kept appearing to me, either. I was already doing everything I could to help Ra. I had not wanted to put Ra in the car, even before the collie tried to prevent me from doing so.
Mom had called the city offices as soon as we got home but because it was Saturday, no one in the animal control department was available. Mom couldn't talk to anyone about Mean Man and the dogs until Monday.
That was fine with me. The longer we put it off, the better.
When Mom got home from work on Monday, she told me that she had called on her lunch hour and talked to someone in the city's animal control department. “They had a complaint for that address a few months ago,” she told me. “A neighbor said a dog was left chained up with no food for days on end but when the animal control officer went to investigate, there wasn't any dog there. She contacted the person who had filed the complaint and learned that the dog had died the day before. She remembered the incident clearly because the woman who had called was so upset. She said it was a beautiful collie, and she blamed herself for not interfering sooner.”
A collie. Mean Man had let a collie starve to death in his yard. Was that collie the ghost? Why would it stay around a place where it had been so unhappy? I didn't want to tell Mom about the dog ghost so I said, “Now what happens?”
“The animal control officer will go there and take a look at the conditions and decide if the Labrador puppy is being mistreated. She told me it is not against the law here to keep an animal chained for long periods of time, as long as it has food, water, and shelter.”
“The puppy doesn't have any of those,” I said.
“I told her that, and she promised to check it out.” Mom heated some leftover enchiladas while we talked. I tossed a salad.
“Did you tell her about Ra?”
“No. I'm going to wait to see what she says after she's been to the property. It may be a day or two before I hear anything. City officials are not known for their speed.”
“Andrew thinks his parents would let him keep Ra,” I said.
“One step at a time,” Mom said.
While we ate, Mom told me she had a Friends of the Library meeting that night. “You can come along, if you like,” she said, “and do your homework at the library.”
I shook my head no. “I'm almost done with my homework,” I said. “I'd rather stay home and watch the football game.”
“I won't be late,” Mom said.
“Could I bring Ra inside?” I asked.
Mom hesitated. “I don't want you getting overly attached to him,” she said. “If he doesn't go back to the man who owned him, he'll go to a shelter and be put up for adoption, or maybe he'll go to Andrew's house.”
“He'd be company for me tonight while you're gone,” I said. “We can watch the ball game together, and then he can sleep on the floor in my room. Only for tonight. Please?”
Mom sighed. “All right. Just for tonight.”
“Thanks, Mom!”
I went out to the fort and snapped the leash on Ra. I walked him all the way around the block, to be sure he was empty. The last thing I wanted was for him to have an accident in the house.
I gathered up his blanket, his dishes, and his food. Then I led him through the trees and across my back lawn and into the house. As soon as I unhooked the leash, Ra began exploring. He sniffed everywhere. He found a stale piece of popcorn under an end table and ate it.
I filled his water bowl and put it in a corner of the laundry room where it wasn't likely to get accidentally kicked over. I showed him where it was, but he was more interested in smelling the rest of the house. When he got to my bedroom, he jumped up on the bed, turned in a circle, and plopped down. I swear he grinned at me, as if to say, “Finally! I'm where I belong!”
“You'd better not let Mom catch you there,” I said.
I finished my homework and then went downstairs and turned on the ball game. Ra followed, and settled beside me on the sofa.
I was watching the instant replay of a missed field goal when I felt a blast of cold air. The ghost dog materialized in front of me. Ra lifted his head and then put it back on my leg. The collie acted upset. She paced over to the window, then returned to the sofa.
As I got up to go look out the window, the doorbell rang. When I walked to the door, Ra followed me. The collie quickly positioned herself between us and door, the same way she had when I was leading Ra to the car. I knew she did not want me to open the door.