Dog On It by Spencer Quinn

Author:Spencer Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2008-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

The phone was ringing when we went inside. Suzie’s voice came over the answering machine. “Hi,” she said. “Nothing important—just wondering how Chet was doing.”

Bernie ran for the phone, sliding a bit on one of my toys—a favorite, actually, bone-shaped, made of a nicely chewy but firm rubber—and losing the manila envelope. As he skidded to a stop—a stiff-legged skid almost as good as one of mine—the knife flew out of the envelope and stuck point first in the floor, the handle quivering.

“Hello?” Bernie said. “Chet! Knock it off!” He listened for a moment, said, “He’s, um, fine, his usual—Chet!”

But I couldn’t help it. The knife—that knife!—sticking in the floor, vibrating in my ears with this throom throom throom: You’d be jumping up and down, too, count on it. Bernie grabbed the rubber bone and flung it through the open window. I dove out after the bone, raced across the backyard, snagged it, spun around, and jumped back inside. A new game, and what a game, indoors and outdoors, running and leaping—this one had it all.

“Chet!” Bernie grabbed my collar. “Calm down.” I tried to calm down, tried to keep a grip on the rubber bone, tried to pant, all at the same time: way too much for me. I barely noticed that Bernie was no longer on the phone. “For God’s sake, Chet—she’s coming over for dinner. The place is a shambles.”

Uh-oh. Shambles. I wasn’t sure what that was, only knew it meant the vacuum cleaner, and I couldn’t be in the house during vacuuming, we knew that from experience. Bernie got to work. I went into the backyard, checked the gate first thing—closed, too bad—and buried the rubber bone in the far corner. I sniffed around for a bit, detected the recent presence of a lizard, probably one of those tiny-eyed ones with a flickering tongue, but nothing else new, and dug up the rubber bone. I lay down and chewed it till my jaw got tired and buried it again, digging a real deep hole this time, one of my very deepest. It took a long time to shove the dirt all back in, get everything packed down the way I like, but it sure felt good, doing things right. That was one of Bernie’s sayings: A job worth doing is worth doing well. I lay down for a spell, thought about nothing. The sun felt good. I decided to dig up the rubber bone again. I’d only scratched the surface when I heard Iggy barking next door.

I barked back. Iggy barked. I went over to the side fence, peered through a space between the slats. There was Iggy in a side window at his place, peering out. I barked. Iggy’s head snapped around toward the fence. Could he see me? Why not? I could see him. He barked. I barked. And then, from far away, came that she-bark again. I got a funny feeling down my spine. We went quiet, Iggy and I, listening for that she-bark to come again.

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