would he want to close the border?”
“Matty?”
“What?”
“Has Mentor traded, do you know?”
Matty thought about it. “It’s school vacation now, so I don’t see him as often. But I stop by his homeplace now and then …” He didn’t mention Jean, the widowed schoolteacher’s daughter. “I haven’t noticed anything different in his household.
“No Gaming Machine,” he added, laughing a little.
But the blind man didn’t chuckle in reply. He sat thinking for a moment. Then he said, in a worried voice, “It’s much more than just a Gaming Machine.”
THE SCHOOLTEACHER’S DAUGHTER told me that her dog has three puppies. I can have one when it’s big enough, if I like.”
“Isn’t she the one who promised you a kiss? Now a dog as well? I’d settle for the kiss if I were you, Matty.” The blind man smiled, loosened a beet from the earth, and placed it in the basket of vegetables. They were in the garden together.
“I miss my dog. He wasn’t any trouble.” Matty glanced over to the corner of their homeplace’s plot of land, beyond the garden, to the small grave where they had buried Branch two years before.
“You’re right, Matty. Your little dog was a good companion for many years. It would be fun to have a puppy around.” The blind man’s voice was gentle.
“I could train a dog to lead you.”
“I don’t need leading. Could you train a dog to cook?”
“Anything but beets,” Matty said, making a face as he threw another into the basket.
* * *
But when he went in the afternoon to the schoolteacher’s homeplace, Matty found Jean distraught. “Two died last night,” she said. “They took sick. Now there’s only one puppy left, and it’s sick, and the mother as well.”
“How have you tended them?”
Jean shook her head in despair. “Same as I would for my father or myself. Infusion of white willow bark. But the puppy’s too little to drink, and the mother’s too sick. She lapped a bit and then just put her head down.”
“Will you take me to see them?”
Jean led him into the small house, and though he was concerned for the dogs, Matty found himself looking around as they walked through, remembering what the blind man had asked. He noticed the sturdy furniture, neatly arranged, and the bookcases filled with Mentor’s books. In the kitchen, Jean’s baking pans, and the bowls in which she mixed dough, were set out, ready for her wonderful breads to be made.
He saw nothing that hinted of a trade. Nothing silly like a Gaming Machine, nothing frivolous like the soft upholstered furniture decorated with fringe that a foolish young couple down the road had traded for.
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