All Shots

shouldn’t Mellie have known the term? What right did I have to be surprised? But I was. When she’d finished reciting the names of all the dogs, she addressed Rowdy, who was still on leash. “And you’re a good dog, too,” she said. “Rowdy, you want a cookie?”
    Instead of pinching the treat between her fingers to offer it to him, she placed it on her flat palm, and when he scoured her whole hand with his tongue, she laughed so raucously that a tense dog might have been startled. Then she clapped the same moist hand over her mouth. “Bad! Be quiet!” In a near whisper, she said, “Good dog.”
    “Mellie, as long as you sound happy, he doesn’t mind if you laugh. Or even if you yell.”
    “Don’t yell!” she protested in a near yell before adding softly, as if repeating an oft-repeated phrase, “Pretty voice.” Someone had obviously tried to teach Mellie to modulate her voice. A special education teacher? A speech therapist? Interestingly, although she sometimes lost control of her volume and had changed an unfamiliar name to familiar words, she’d mastered hip dysplasia and, even more strikingly, had used the dog trainer’s term cookie in place of dog biscuit.
    When we were seated at the table drinking our coffee, 1 reluctantly raised the topic of Strike. “Mellie, it’s possible that she’s gone home. Where is that?”
    “Here.”
    “But when she isn’t here. She’s staying with you, but she belongs to someone else. Who is her owner?”
    Mellie’s face shut down.
    “It’s one thing if your own dog gets loose,” I said, “but when it’s someone else’s dog? It’s easy to feel really guilty about that, even though it’s not your fault.” For all I knew, Strike’s escape was Mellie’s fault, of course, but I had no intention of saying so.
    Mellie’s jaw was locked.
    “This probably isn’t the first time Strike has escaped from somewhere. Siberian huskies are escape artists. Some of them climb fences. They squeeze out under fences. Strike’s owner has probably been through this before. Does Strike live near here?” Feeling increasingly like an interrogator, I continued to press Mellie. How long had Strike been with Mellie? Awhile. Was her owner a man or a woman? A girl. A nice girl. Yes, Strike was wearing a collar.
    “With tags?” I made the mistake of calling Rowdy to me and showing Mellie the ID attached to his rolled leather collar. “Like these?”
    “Like Rowdy,” she agreed.
    I had the frustrating impression that she was responding mainly to my suggestion; in reality, Strike might or might not have been wearing tags.
    The only other piece of information I elicited was that Strike had arrived sometime after August 24, and I got that date by accident. Having abandoned my direct questioning about Strike, I gently asked Mellie about her own dog. Mellie produced a sheaf of snapshots that showed an adorable Boston terrier. Her name was Lily, and Mellie went on and on about her. Lily, I learned, had lived to fifteen and had gone to heaven. Father McArdle had said so. Mellie then produced a card with a picture of the Virgin Mary. In clear script, someone had written Lily’s name on it, together with the dates of her birth and death. Lily had died on August 24.
    “Were Lily and Strike friends?” I asked. “Did they play together?”
    Mellie looked confused. Then, having apparently decided that I’d said something silly, she declared with a hint of scorn, “Lily was in heaven.”
    “So Lily went to heaven, and then, after that, Strike got here.”
    Mellie’s response was loud and emphatic: “Of course!”
    I gave up. Mellie and I then took a look at her backyard, which had a five-foot-high chain-link fence and a chain-link gate secured with a snap bolt. Either the missing Strike or another dog, perhaps many others, had dug holes in what remained of the grass, but some forsythia and a mock orange tree had survived. Visible at the rear of the fence was evidence of Strike’s means of escape. The earth by the fence showed the signs of recent digging. Right under the fence itself was a small depression.
    “Under and out,” I said.
    Mellie repeated the phrase.
    “When we find Strike, I’ll fix this for you,” I promised.
    Before Rowdy and I left, I wrote my name and phone number on a pad of paper next to Mellie’s phone. Whether or not she could read, the information was worth leaving. Mellie had people to help her, and one of them would presumably read my number