Held against New Man’s chest, I couldn’t see Lacey and could barely smell her. I squirmed, and he patted me reassuringly. “Don’t you know?” New Man replied. “He’s one of the robo-farmers trying to put us out of business.”
The boy ran ahead to the side of a car. Inside the vehicle I could see another, younger boy, smiling at me.
“Wait!”
Little Ava was dashing up and New Man turned.
“I want to say goodbye to Bailey!”
I was lowered so that I was nose-to-nose with Ava. “I love you, Bailey. You are such a good puppy. We can’t keep every dog we rescue, because that would be foster failure, so we have to say goodbye, but I will always remember you. I hope I see you again sometime!” I wagged at my name, Bailey, and at the kiss Ava put on my nose.
Then I was in the car. Why? What were we doing? What happened to Lacey? The younger boy gathered me to him. He was essentially a smaller copy of the first boy—same dark hair and light eyes, same smell of bread and butter. I was so anxious I whimpered.
“Don’t worry, little guy, everything is okay,” the younger boy whispered. I was intimidated, but he rubbed his face on mine so fondly I was charmed into licking his cheeks.
Everyone was sliding into the car with me.
“Can I drive?” the older boy asked.
“Or maybe we should just try to survive the trip,” the younger boy replied.
“You can drive when the whole family’s not in the car, Grant,” New Man said.
“I don’t know why it’s called a learner’s permit when you won’t permit me to learn,” he complained.
The car started moving. “What was the deal with the Asian dude?” the older boy asked.
New Man shook his head. “That’s not the way to ask the question. His being Asian has nothing to do with it.”
“What happened?” The boy holding me wanted to know.
“Dad acted weird,” Older Boy explained.
“He was rude,” Mom interjected.
New Man sighed. “We have nothing against Chinese Americans. What we do have a problem with is where he works. They’re buying up the farms and replacing the workers with drone harvesters. They’re running down prices so that we can barely make a living. Meanwhile, workers who used to bring home a decent wage can’t feed their families.”
“Okay, I get it, sorry,” Older Boy mumbled, looking away.
“Your father isn’t angry at you, Grant. It’s the situation,” Mom said pointedly. “Isn’t that right, Chase?”
New Man grunted. The younger boy had me on my back and was tickling me and letting me bite his fingers. “I’m going to name him Cooper!” he announced.
“Dumb name,” Older Boy observed.
“That’s enough, Grant,” New Man said.
Older Boy’s name was Grant. That’s one of the things I learned over the next several days. His name was Grant, and the younger boy was Burke. The woman was mostly Grandma, so I stopped thinking of her as Mom. New Man, though, was more of a challenge because he couldn’t seem to get names straight. He called Grandma “Mom,” and she called him “Chase,” and then, most confusingly, the boys called him “Dad,” which was what Ava called Sam Dad. It was too much for a dog, so I began thinking of New Man as “Chase Dad.” Were all men “Dad”?
And everyone addressed me as “Cooper.” I had been Bailey when I was with Lacey, and now I was Cooper and was without her. I was happy to be surrounded by people who loved me, but a part of me was always waiting for Lacey to show up. Thinking of her made me feel oddly hungry, hungry even after I’d filled my belly with dinner. I was burdened with a persistent, empty ache.
When Burke wasn’t lying in bed, he was sitting in a chair that moved swiftly from place to place with thrusts of his hands on two wheels. Sometimes one of the other family members would stand behind Burke and push. Burke wanted me in his lap, and I discovered he really couldn’t touch me otherwise, though he would bend over and try, his fingers wagging in the air. He taught me to climb up on a low, soft stool and from there to leap into his lap. “Up, Cooper!” he called, slapping his thighs and laughing when I complied. Once I was there Burke would cuddle me and I could chew on his face, the same sort of affection flowing through my jaws as when I held Lacey’s leg in my mouth.
“If Cooper is Burke’s dog, how come I have to do the house training?” Grant asked one day.
“Why do you think?” Dad replied.
Several times a day Grant would take me outside, sometimes in a rush if I were about to squat in the house. He would feed me treats. “I’m the fun boy in the family. You’ll see. Burke says you’re a working dog, but when you’re older I’ll take you on hikes and throw the ball for you. You’ll see,” Grant whispered to me as he gave me a treat. I loved Grant.
Grant wasn’t always home, and neither was Chase Dad, but Grandma and Burke were. “School,” Grant would say, and then he’d be running out the door. I learned to expect that I’d be hearing “time to get to work” from Chase Dad, or something similar with the same tones in his voice, and then it would be just Grandma and Burke. “Let’s start with your French lesson,” Grandma might say, to Burke’s loud groans. I would roll on my back or jump on a toy or run around the room to make sure they knew there were plenty of alternatives to what they usually did, which was to sit quietly and gaze at an odorless, flickering object, and make small clicking noises by tapping their fingers, and generally ignore the fact that they had a dog in the house. They didn’t even get up to follow me when I pushed through the dog door and trotted down the ramp to sniff around and mark my territory outside.
I wondered where Lacey was. I did not understand how I could be so certain we would be together always and then see her pulled away from me by a little black-haired girl.
Gradually I came to understand that while I lived with everyone in the family, I had a special responsibility to Burke. It was Burke who fed me, setting my food bowl on a shelf he could reach from his chair and I could access by climbing up on a wooden box. I slept on Burke’s bed in a small downstairs room—Grandma had a bigger room downstairs, and Grant and Chase Dad had beds in rooms upstairs.
It was Burke who taught me to respond to commands. “Come. Sit. Stay. Lie down.”
Stay was the hardest.
Everyone in the family loved me and played with me, of course, but I had a sure sense that Burke needed me. He cared enough to teach me things. And being needed felt more important than anything, engendering a bond between us as strong as the attachment I felt to Lacey. Sometimes I would gaze at him in sheer wonder that I had my own boy. I loved everyone in the family, but within a very short time it was Burke who centered my world, Burke who was my purpose.
Where we lived was called the “farm.” There was a barn and a fenced-in area where an old goat named Judy chewed distractedly on grass but never threw up. I sometimes approached the fence, and Judy the old goat and I would stare at each other. I marked the fence, but the goat didn’t show me the courtesy of sniffing the area. I wasn’t sure what an old goat was good for. Grandma spent a lot of time speaking to her, but goats can’t talk any better than dogs. Judy was not invited into the house, so I decided I was the favorite. I was allowed to run around on the farm, but my sense of obligation to my boy kept me from going much past a large pond with worthless ducks swimming around in it. I just needed to know where he was at all times.