Carolyn McSparren - Over His Head

She gulped and grabbed Lancelot. She had to get away from that mirror before he caught her staring and turned around to see what had riveted her. “Lancelot belongs to the Halliburtons, the tenants you evicted,” she said. “The poor baby’s staying with me because they can’t have pets in the poky little apartment they’re stuck with in Collierville, while they try to find a house they can afford closer to Williamston. He just wanted to come home where his people loved him.” She hoped she was laying it on thick enough. Although she doubted he’d care.

She clipped the leash to Lancelot’s harness, stood and began to haul him toward the bedroom door. “It won’t happen again. I apologize for our intrusion.”

“No problem.”

Now she had to turn her back to him. She knew her shorts weren’t much less revealing of her backside than what she’d seen in the mirror of his.

“Do you always go barefoot?” he asked.

“In the summer, often. Seldom in January.” Better than bare-assed, she thought, and despite all her efforts, began to snicker. “Come on, Lancelot, bad pig,” she said and pulled on his leash. He squealed and yanked back.

She made it all the way to the back steps before uncontrollable laughter broke the surface. She sank onto the back steps, hugged Lancelot to her and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.

At the same moment that Nancy began to laugh, Tim dropped his sheet and turned around. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing in the full-length mirror—and to realize what Nancy Mayfield had been looking at for the past five minutes.

That’s when he heard her laughing.

NANCY HAD BARELY dragged Lancelot home and fed him and the cats when her doorbell rang. She froze. It had to be Tim Wainwright. No doubt infuriated. No doubt accusing her of burglary, being a Peeping Tom and assault with a deadly pig.

Might as well face him now. After all, he was supposed to drive her to the car rental agency. If he didn’t, she was stuck, and she needed to check on the mastiff and the Jack Russell at the clinic. Not to mention the usual Saturday grocery shopping. She opened the door prepared for a frontal assault, no pun intended.

The kid—Eddy, was it?—stood on the doorstep. He stared up at her with those blank, unblinking blue eyes. He was cradling something in his arms.

She caught her breath. All puppies looked pretty much alike at this age except in size, but this one had come from small parents and would probably stay small itself. Possibly some mixed variety that included Jack Russell terrier and dachshund.

Eddy held it out to her. “Please?” he said. His voice sounded rusty from disuse, deep and gravelly for a child his age.

She feared the pup was dead from the way it lay in the child’s arms, but when she took it, she felt the flutter of a small heart. And the warmth of blood on her palms. She turned and raced for her kitchen, as she called over her shoulder, “Come in, shut the door behind you tight so the animals don’t get out.”

She heard the sound of the lock clicking into place and then the patter of bare feet on her floorboards.

She grabbed a dry dish towel off the rack beside the sink and laid the pup on it. Poor little thing, it was too traumatized or too hurt to fight. “Hit by a car, probably,” she said as she gently lifted the satiny brown baby hair away from the place she had felt blood.

She gasped. The flesh was raw, the burns so deep she could see blistered muscle tissue. The pup wriggled and mewed more like a small kitten than a dog. Instantly Poddy jumped onto the drain board. “Down, Poddy, go ’way. I’m not hurting it.”

She felt rather than saw Eddy beside her. “Please,” he whispered again.

“Did you do this?” she asked sharply without taking her eyes off the pup. She ran cold water over a dish towel and, folding it, placed it over the wound, then turned to glare down at him.

He shook his head. Those blue eyes stared into hers, and for the first time she saw expression in him. A single tear ran down his cheek, cutting a swatch through the dirt. “I found him.” He reached out and touched the brown pup’s little skull tentatively. “Please don’t let him die.” Without warning, he began to shake his head fiercely and backed away from the sink. “Mustn’t die, mustn’t die!”

She caught his shoulder. He was thin, but wiry. He was as tense as a crossbow. Probably just as ready to snap. “I won’t lie. He’s in shock. Otherwise you’d never have been able to carry him. He’d have bitten you.”

She turned back to the sink. “Somebody’s poured lighter fluid or kerosene on him and lit it, but they did a lousy job. He must have broken loose and put out the fire in the damp grass. He’s brown. He wouldn’t have been easy to spot in the dark once the fire was out.”

“Somebody hurt him? On purpose?”

As she talked, she gently cleaned the debris and grass away, then placed a dry towel over the pup to keep him warm. “It’s nasty and deep, but you did the right thing bringing him to me. Let’s see what I can do.”

Her voice had gentled frightened animals for years. Let’s see if I can gentle this little Eddy beast, she thought as she went to get the first-aid case she kept at home. She was used to opening the door to neighbors with baby squirrels or birds that had fallen from nests, hurt cats and dogs, momma possums hit by cars with their bellies still full of their young—everything including snakes and cows…even the occasional fawn. So her kit was extensive.

By the time she came back, Poddy was sitting on the counter beside the pup. Wonder of wonders, Eddy was stroking him, not a liberty he allowed many people. Lancelot watched them from his basket. She didn’t think Eddy had noticed him yet. “Okay,” she said, “let’s spray a bit of painkiller over that wound, so we can clean it up and see what we’ve got.” She looked down at Eddy. “Won’t your father wonder where you are?”

He shook his head without taking his eyes off the pup or his grubby, small hand off Poddy. “He’s asleep.”

“I don’t think he is.” Probably calling the cops. “You sure you want to watch?” she asked. “Then we’ll call your father so he won’t worry.”

“Not watch. Help.”

She dealt frequently with people who didn’t want to watch or even to help when their animals were in pain, and many parents who felt junior’s tender sensibilities couldn’t take watching the birth of the kittens or the excision of a sarcoid tumor on a horse’s flank. As far as Nancy was concerned, if a child was old enough to ask to watch, he was old enough to know the truth about the event. She didn’t particularly enjoy children, considered herself hopeless with them, so she treated them like adults. It was all she knew to do.

“Okay,” she said. “Hold his jaws together gently. He’s warming up and really starting to hurt. He’s small, but he can still bite.” The pup had begun to whine and scrabble. She was afraid to give him a shot—any amount of sedative could kill him. She pulled on latex gloves and sprayed the wound with a solution that would deaden the tissue at once.

Eddy stood beside her with his fingers around the pup’s jaw. Without asking, he took the pup’s four legs in his other hand to keep the pup still, as Nancy clipped what remained of singed fur and trimmed off the seared skin around the deepest part of the burn.

Give the kid credit. He didn’t back off from the blood or the stench of burned hair and skin. On closer look, the blisters weren’t as deep as she’d thought. The actual muscles hadn’t been attacked, nor had any of the major blood vessels. She finished cleaning and treating the pup with antiburn salve, antibiotics and more painkiller, then bound the wound around the pup’s belly. “Okay, kid, that’s got it for the moment,” she said as she peeled off her gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket.