“Assist!”
I took a faltering step upward. Burke shoved himself with his free hand, grunting. “Assist!” he commanded when I stopped. This seemed wrong; Burke’s weight was dragging me back. Why didn’t Grant come down to help? “Let’s go, Cooper.”
I took another stair, then another. We developed a rhythm, moving more fluidly. Burke was breathing deeply. “Yes!” he whispered. “We’re doing it, Cooper!”
Grant had stopped grinning and had his arms folded again.
I smelled Dad but was focused on making it to the top. I did not know what would happen when we got there but hoped it would involve chicken.
“What’s going on here?” Dad asked behind us.
Both Burke and Grant went silent and tense the moment their father spoke. I didn’t wag so the boys would know that even though I didn’t understand, I was taking whatever was happening very seriously.
“You want to tell him, Grant?” Burke asked pleasantly.
Grant swallowed.
“I asked a question,” Chase Dad said. “What are you two doing?”
Burke was smiling at his brother. “I’m showing Grant how Cooper is helping me up the stairs.”
I heard my name, so I figured it was okay to wag now.
“Oh.” Chase Dad rubbed his face. “Okay, can he help you down?”
“Probably. We haven’t practiced that one yet,” Burke replied.
“Let me know if you need me to come get you,” Chase Dad advised. “Wet start to the summer, need the rain.” He turned toward the kitchen.
Grant blew out a breath.
Burke shook his head. “You couldn’t have looked more guilty if you had a smoking pistol in your hands. Why, do you think Dad would be angry if he knew you were torturing your brother?”
“Torturing,” Grant scoffed. “Anybody can crawl up the stairs using just their arms, plus you had a dog.”
“Try it.”
“You don’t think I can do it?”
“Nope,” Burke declared.
“Okay. Watch this.”
Grant folded Burke’s chair and clumped down the steps, snapping it back open and placing it at the bottom. Then he got on his hands and knees. I tensed—did he need Assist?
“No, you’re using your knees,” Burke objected.
“Am not.”
“Drag your legs.”
“I know!”
“Okay, that’s just one step and you used your legs.”
“This is stupid.”
“So you admit you can’t do it.”
“You know what?” Grant stood, jumped down past the bottom step, and savagely kicked the chair. It fell over with a crash.
“Hey!” Chase Dad yelled from the kitchen. He strode out, his shoes making angry-sounding impacts on the floor. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Grant stared stonily at the floor.
“Grant? What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I hate this stupid wheelchair!” he shouted.
Dad stared at him.
“Really?” Burke countered quietly from his perch next to me. “Because I love the thing.”
“We don’t abuse equipment around here, Grant. Understood?”
Grant wiped his eyes. I could smell his salty tears. Without another word he bolted for the front door.
Chase Dad’s mouth opened. “Grant!”
Burke cleared his throat. “Dad?”
Chase Dad had taken two steps to follow Grant, but now he paused, looking up at us.
“Would you carry me down, please?”
Chase Dad glanced back in the direction Grant had run.
“Let it go, Dad,” Burke whispered softly.
Chase Dad lifted Burke and put him in the rolling chair, even though I was right there and could have done Assist.
After several days we were outside playing a game of Get It. Burke scattered a few items—a shoe, a ball, a stick, a sock—and then told me to “Get It!” I had never heard the word before and, though I felt I probably was being asked to do something in the name of “training,” I didn’t really feel much like trying to figure things out that day. Instead, I pounced on the stick and gave it a good shaking.
“Leave It,” Burke commanded.
I stared at him in disbelief. Leave It a stick?
“Leave It,” he repeated.
So I dropped the stick. He pointed at the ball. “Get It!” I picked up the stick. “Leave It!”
I decided to lift my leg on a flower and hope Burke would Leave It this new game of Get It.
“Get the ball! Get It!”
The day was warm, the grasses so intoxicatingly fragrant I wanted to roll on my back and then probably nap, but Burke apparently did not want to celebrate with a fun stick. I went over to him and licked his fingers to let him know I still loved him despite his crazy behavior.
Chase Dad came walking up. “How is this going?”
Chase Dad smelled like mud—apparently he knew how to have fun on a day like this!
Burke sighed, a sad sound, and I went to him and did Sit attentively to cheer him up. “Not well. I think maybe I need to start by throwing things and pointing at them so he learns to follow my finger.”
“Nothing worth doing comes easy, Burke. You’re doing great with that animal. You’re a natural. But even a natural needs practice.”
“Like you and your guitar?” Burke probed shrewdly.
Chase Dad laughed. “People did say I was a natural. After twenty-five years of practice, I’m still only about as good as when I picked up the darn thing the first time.”
“But you never practice.”
“No, you’re wrong. I do when you and Grant are not here. I go out to the barn so as not to deafen your grandma.”
“How come you never play so we can hear you, Dad? Why can’t we ever come listen when you’re with your band?”
“The bar is only for adults over twenty-one, son.”
We all looked up as, down on the road, a long line of cars came trundling up, each almost on top of the other—huge, gleaming machines.
I had learned some things. Cars had more seats inside for people. Trucks often had fewer seats but more room for other things, like the loads of plants Chase Dad often drove with. Vans carried stacks of cages and were loaded with animal scents. Then there was the slow truck—a loud, rattling vehicle with a single seat perched high above the wheels. But these things on the road were very strange, enormous and nearly silent, following each other in tight, single-file formation.
I barked to let them know that whatever they were I had my eye on them and I was a dog.
“That’s right, Coop.” Chase Dad stooped and petted my head. “Those are the enemy.”
“Grandma calls them the future,” Burke replied.
“Yeah, well,” Chase Dad stood and swatted at his pants. “Hopefully not our future. Drone harvester-combines. Robo-farmers. You used to see twenty, thirty workers out on a day like this for every asparagus field; now there’s not a single person, just these things. Same with potatoes, same with everything.”
“Not us, though.”
“Right. I’ve got Grant out there right now, picking asparagus for the farmers’ market this Saturday.”