Fall Guy

out. It wouldn't get dark until after eight this time of the year. The air had started to cool off a little, but the temperature must have still been in the high eighties. Under the bridge, it was permanently evening. The opaque plastic meant to protect the lower-floor windows made the house look haunted instead of temporarily vacated, and the plastic sheets that hung down from the sidewalk bridge made the sidewalk into a gritty tunnel for the length of the house.
    Dashiell was finishing the last planted tree pit before the construction. I waited, wishing I had those teeth in my pocket so that I could give him a successful find for his trouble. But when we walked under the bridge, everything changed.
    Dashiell stopped at the side of the huge Dumpster and froze, his head up, his tail out and rigid like a rudder, the muscles in his back tense beneath his short white fur. There was a sound next, not the single bark he used to signal a find. This was something Dashiell did when he felt it was imperative to get my attention, something he did when my mind was elsewhere, when I wasn't getting it. It was a song of sorts from deep in his chest, halfway between a moan and a bark. When I looked at him, he held my eyes, then turned to look at the top of the Dumpster, then back at me again.
    It might have been anything, I thought. After all, I hadn't asked him to search. I'd only assumed he was doing what we'd just done the other day on this very block. There might have been the remains of the workers' lunches in the Dumpster—leftover pizza, chicken bones. People tossed all kinds of things into the Dumpsters, sometimes trash that was too big to put out for normal collection, furniture they no longer wanted or an old shopping cart with a missing wheel. People parked and cleaned up their cars, tossing everything in with the construction debris. Or they tossed in the dirty diaper they had been carrying in the pocket of their stroller since leaving the playground, having waited for just such a golden opportunity.
    There might have been, in fact, rodents in the huge bin. It was a construction site and this was New York City. I listened for their sound but heard nothing. Still Dashiell was insistent. He approached the Dumpster now, smelling along the seam nearest us, then along the side, the sound of his breathing audible and strong. When he sneezed, he was so close to the Dumpster I could see dust blossom out in front of him. He stood on his hind legs, his front paws against the Dumpster, head up, mouth open, eating the air. He was totally absorbed, but I had left Maggie alone, promising I wouldn't be long. I was just about to ask him to move along when he sat, turned to look at me and barked.
    I know I shouldn't have, but I tugged the leash and called him to come along. Dashiell wouldn't budge. Again, he looked at the Dumpster, his nose in the air, pointing toward the top of it and he barked once more, his front legs coming off the ground, the sound thundering down the deserted street.
    The last thing I wanted to do was to climb up on something and peer inside. And then what? If there were rodents in there, or sandwiches, they wouldn't be sitting neatly on top. In order to be a good trainer, would I have to go Dumpster-diving, the way the homeless did? On the other hand, I didn't want to mess up Dash's training. I looked around, wanting to make sure no one was nearby, figuring I could stand on the bumper of the car parked behind the Dumpster and take a look inside. But Dashiell moved first. From a standstill, he landed on the hood of the car, but he didn't stay there. He barely glanced it and then he was in the Dumpster. I could see his back rounded, his shoulders moving. He was digging. Then he looked over the edge, his brow crushed with concern, and he began to whine, not stopping until I'd grabbed the end of the Dumpster and stood on the bumper of the car behind it so that I, too, could see what had gotten him so excited.
    And a moment later I did. Dashiell's digging had bunched up a piece of the plastic sheeting, pulling it from what it had been covering. He was sitting close to the feet of a well-dressed man in his forties whose head was at an unfortunate angle and whose chest was no longer moving. I was about to hoist myself up to the Dumpster to see if there was any identification in his pockets when that became no longer necessary. As I reached for the edge of the Dumpster, I noticed something across the street that made me