Roxanne Rustand - A Temporary Arrangement

Keifer held out his hands, palms up. “He never said anything to me.”

“I think I’d better check.” Abby searched the floor with her flashlight.

Uneasy, Keifer looked over his shoulder at the darkness outside. Anything could be out there. Watching. Waiting. Back at home, he never slept without a night-light in his room and the hallway light on. Here, everything was darker. Lonelier. A lot more scary.

“Oh, dear,” Abby called. “Two. Three. Four, five, six…I think there’s seven, and they’re all huddled together on an old burlap sack. I’ll bet the mom wants to take them someplace else.”

“The kitchen, maybe? We could make a bed there, and I could stay with them all night.” Abby didn’t say anything for a moment, and he started to worry. “Are you still here?”

She reappeared with a small cardboard box filled with squirming puppies. Rufus whined and nosed through them, as if she was counting. “I was just thinking. You know, your dad’s kitchen is awfully clean and tidy. I’m not sure he’d want dogs in there.”

“Sure he would!”

“But I didn’t see any dog dishes. I’ll bet this gal is an outside dog, don’t you think?”

“He has her inside, too, sometimes. Honest.” Abby still looked doubtful. “Really. She’s in the house all the time, and he just lets her outside a lot. I’m sure of it.”

Rufus gently released the pup in her mouth. She licked it from head to tail, the puppy rolling over with each sweep of her tongue.

“Well…if you’re sure.” Abby frowned down at the pups in the box. They were shivering and squirming over each other as though trying to get warm. “Let’s bring them in tonight, anyway. It’s awfully chilly out here.”

Rufus followed them anxiously to the house. When they reached the porch, Abby put the box down and held on to Rufus’s collar. “You go on in and close the door to the living room, okay? And bring me an old towel so I can wipe the mom’s feet.”

In twenty minutes the pups and Rufus were settled into a corner of the kitchen in a big cardboard box cushioned with an old blanket Abby had found in the basement.

Keifer had found a sleeping bag upstairs and rolled it out next to the puppy’s box. He’d brought in a stack of books, too. With the thunder rolling outside and the glow of light from the kerosene lantern on the kitchen table, it almost seemed like camping.

“I’m going to work on that fireplace,” Abby said. “I think we’ll want a little heat tonight…and the extra light would be nice. Maybe we can warm something up for supper, too. Like a campfire. Does your dad have any hot dogs? Marshmallows?”

Keifer hadn’t seen anything in the bare refrigerator that looked as good as that, but he just shrugged and stared at the faint, muddy paw prints circling the kitchen.

Rufus had brushed up against the white cupboards, too.

He tried to imagine what Dad would say.

He sure didn’t have to imagine Mom’s response—she’d be totally freaked out. Anything involving dirt, animals, blood or sweat freaked her out. Which is why he’d never had any real pets. Only some dumb fish that couldn’t do anything but swim in circles.

After Abby left the room he stretched out in his sleeping bag, propped his chin on his palms and listened to the tiny squeaks and squeals from the puppy box.

He’d counted the days until coming here, but the first morning had been scary. And now Dad wasn’t even here and a stranger had taken his place.

But Abby said he’d probably be back tomorrow, and the puppies… He squirmed caterpillarlike in his sleeping bag until he could see over the top of the box and count them all over again.

The empty feeling in his chest eased as he watched Rufus lick and nudge her pups. Even if Dad wouldn’t be able to do all the fun things he’d promised, there’d still be puppies to play with, and Keifer wasn’t going to be homesick for Mom and all his friends back home.

He backhanded a hot tear before it had a chance to fall. Nope, he wasn’t going to miss them.

Not much at all.

AFTER A SLEEPLESS NIGHT on the sofa, Abby cracked an eye open to look at her wristwatch. She flopped back against the cushions and pulled the afghan up over her shoulders. Five o’clock.

When had she last been awake at five?

The storm had finally passed, but Rufus had barked anxiously at the door at least three times. She’d blearily shuffled out to the kitchen and then had stood on the chilly porch until the dog returned. Amazingly enough, Keifer had barely stirred.

Drifting and dreaming, only half awake, Abby snuggled deeper under the afghan, thankful for the marshmallow-soft sofa.

It was so peaceful here, the silence of the forest broken only by the distant hoot of an owl, a chorus of coyotes…gentle mooing….

She sat bolt upright. Mooing?

Throwing back the afghan, she hurried barefoot across the cold hardwood floor to the window and squinted out at the gray predawn landscape. Heavy fog hung low to the ground, leaving the tops of fence posts and bushes hovering weightless several feet above the ground.

Farther away, large dark shapes drifted past like ungainly rowboats floating on a sea of fog. Very oddly shaped boats. One of them mooed.

Keifer pushed open the kitchen door and stood next to her, his hair tousled. “Weird,” he observed after a loud yawn. “So, are you gonna do chores?”

Chores. Interesting concept, that. What, exactly, did chores entail? She rubbed her upper arms and considered. “I don’t suppose your dad has a list?”

Keifer looked at her with the patience of a person dealing with the mentally incompetent. “He just does them. Why would he need a list?”

Lists were comforting. It was fun, making lists of things to do and crossing off each success. Without a list…on foreign ground…she was at a complete loss.

She crossed her arms and tapped her fingers on the bulky sleeves of the sweatshirt she’d borrowed. “If there’s no list, have you seen him do chores? I assume those cows get food. And what about the horse and those goats you mentioned yesterday?”

“I don’t know. I just got here.” Keifer shrugged. “Their food’s probably in the barn.”

“I’m sure it is, but I don’t know how much or what kind to give them.” She had an unsettling thought. “Um, he doesn’t milk those cows, does he?”

Keifer rolled his eyes. “They’re the beef kind, but he doesn’t eat them. He says, ‘Anything that dies here, dies of old age.’ He gave them all names.”

“Names?”

“Yeah. He was gonna raise cattle for money, but then they all sorta got to be pets. So now he says they’re the lawnmowers for his meadow.”

Feeling more and more like Alice after she’d tumbled down the rabbit hole, Abby sighed. “So, this mowing crew of his, have you ever seen your dad feed them?”

Keifer shrugged.

“Maybe we’d better try contacting him. He probably had his arm fixed last night, and he might even be on his way home. If I can track him down, maybe he’ll tell us what he wants done.”

Far more confident now, she tousled Keifer’s hair and went to the phone in the kitchen. In the far corner, Rufus raised her head over the box, then dropped back down, clearly occupied with her new family.

The line was dead.

Abby reached for her purse and rummaged for her cell phone. Her hope faded at the words No Service.

No way to contact the outside world.

No car—because hers was still mired in the road.

And, she remembered with a heavy heart, she’d promised to contact the animal shelter this morning about that poor dog on death row.

But surely the shelter wasn’t open to the public on Sundays, anyway. And surely the staff scheduled to feed the animals wouldn’t actually euthanize anything today…would they?