living room.
“Naw, she’s upstairs, taking a nap.” He pointed at the mudroom ceiling. “I’ve been watching Power Rangers. Wanna see it? Louie’s over at a friend’s house.”
“Okay.” I breathed out. Things were going my way. “Where’s Bradley?”
“He’s—” And just then the dog padded into the room, as if by thought command. When he saw me, he wuffed once, and leaped up and put his front paws on my shoulders and began licking me on the face. It was just demonstrably what I needed. Passionate dog kisses were better than none at all, and were in fact more sincere than quite a few of the human variety I had been getting lately. Dogs don’t kiss you in public just for the sake of appearances. “There he is,” Tom said, with a child’s delight in noting the obvious.
I thought for a moment. I would have to explain a delicate matter to my nephew, whom I loved. And I decided that I would have to tell him the truth. I was on a rash mission, but I was probably not a despicable person, and I was not about to lie to a child, at least one who was my relative.
“Tom,” I said, “I have to have Bradley back.” I explained how Kathryn and I had found him in the Humane Society, how she had left me sad and alone, how she and I were getting a divorce, how I was feeling so awful that I couldn’t sleep at night, and that Bradley had always been my dog, because I had found him in the Humane Society, and that he had been boarding up here at Five Oaks for a few weeks, but now, I really really really needed to have him back.
“But he’s our dog now!” Tom said tearfully, and I felt my chance slipping away.
“You can get another dog,” I said.
“Where?”
“They have places,” I said, “right here in Five Oaks, Humane Society places where they have every kind of dog, especially sad homeless dogs. They’re in prison there. They cry all night. They want homes.”
“But they’ll be expensive!” he said. “We caaaaan’t do that!”
“Not that expensive.”
“Oh, yes, I know they will be.”
I took out my wallet and opened it. I showed him the money inside. “How expensive do you think another dog would be?” I took out a five-dollar bill. “Five dollars, you think?” I put it into his hand.
He gave me a measuring look. “More than that.”
I took out a ten-dollar bill. “Fifteen dollars?”
“That says ten on it.”
“But you already have a five. Five and ten is fifteen.”
“Oh. No, more than that, I would just betcha.”
I took out a twenty from my wallet and pressed it into his little child’s palm. “This much?” I asked. In the background I heard the Power Rangers killing something that sounded like a giant worm equipped with buzzers. “Think this is enough?” I wouldn’t do any more arithmetic to confuse him.
“Maybe a little more.”
I took out another five. “How about this?” He grabbed at it. “A five, and a ten, and a twenty, and another five. You could certainly buy a dog for that.”
“Not as good a dog as Bradley,” he said.
“Oh, better, Tommy, much better. Besides, that’s all the money I have. They have golden dogs, dogs who wait for you while you’re at school, and dogs that fetch the paper, and dogs that sleep with you at night and watch television with you, any show you want, and dogs that’ll sit at your feet at the dinner table and eat the food you can’t stand to eat. You can just buy a wonderful do-everything dog now.”
“Bradley does all that.”
“Listen,” I said. “You just go ahead and stuff that money into your pockets and then hide it and be sure not to let your mom put those trousers into the washing machine until you’ve taken the money out, and don’t tell your mom or anybody else that I’ve been here until she wakes up, and I’ll take Bradley with me, and he’ll make me happy again, and then you and Louie can go down to the Humane Society and pick out a dog of your own with that money I just gave you. No more blue Monday ever again. Okay?”
“Okay. I guess.” He scooped up all the bills and stashed them in his pockets, as I had instructed him. “Can I kiss Bradley goodbye?”
“Sure.”
Bradley sat with me in the front seat all the way down to Ann Arbor. I drove the legal limit. It isn’t every day that a toad can free up a dog. We listened to the jazz station from Detroit, and when he stood on his four legs on the passenger side, he smiled at me with his big dopey face, as friendly and as unsubtle as a billboard. His tail wagged, but not in time to the music. Let’s not get sentimental. That dog never had an ear for jazz.
SHE CALLED ME at dinnertime, as I knew she would.
“I cannot believe you did what you did!” she shouted. I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. Enraged spittle was teleported over the phone lines and was spattering out of the earpiece. “You stole the dog! Damn you, Bradley. What is the matter with you?”
“Watch your language. You have children. I didn’t steal him,” I told her. “I bought him back. It was Dog Liberation Day.”
“You bribed Tommy. Who would do that to a child? You are a monster. I am truly, truly angry at you.”
“Uh, no. I didn’t bribe your son. He shook me down.”
“You paid him fifteen dollars for Bradley? That’s a rotten trick. Goddamn you!”
“Honor is such a guy thing,” I said. “Uh, what did you just say?”
“I said you paid him fifteen dollars. That’s low. That’s the lowest you’ve ever gone.”
“Fifteen dollars, eh?” My nephew was a child of deep cunning, I was discovering. “You get what you pay for. What was Harold’s reaction?”
“You called him at the barbershop! You brainwashed him. He’s changed his tune. He never liked this dog anyway, he says. And now Louie is saying that he never liked the dog either. I think Tommy paid him off to say that. Only me! I was the only loving one! You guys are ganging up against me. You’re all against me!”
“Now you’re self-dramatizing,” I said coolly. She slammed the phone down.
THE UPSHOT OF IT WAS, I kept Bradley. I fed him and petted him and I built him a doghouse and called his name when I came home, and in return he loved me. My sister and brother-in-law found another dog, as I knew they would. Whom they also named Bradley. Now there are three Bradleys. Their Bradley is smarter than this Bradley, but I don’t care about that at all, not really, because at least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.
