A Christmas Home: A Novel (2 page)

Late in the afternoon the back gate opened and a man with a camera began taking pictures and measurements of the yard. Gracie slowly opened her eyes and watched the man as if she were in a dream. The man coughed and the dog jumped, now alert. With all the energy she could muster, she hunched low into a submissive position and walked toward the stranger. The man was startled but quickly put his camera on the ground and brushed the dog’s head with his hand
.

“Another one abandoned,” he muttered to himself. While petting her, he found the paper tied to the dog’s collar. Carefully he undid the red ribbon knot, unfolded the note, and read it
.

The man stared at the note and then looked into the dog’s eyes. “Sorry, Gracie,” he said. “The world is upside down right now.”

The man took the dog’s bucket and walked over to a spigot on the side of the house. He turned it and nothing happened
. They shut the water off,
he thought. Looking around he saw a hose on the other side of the fence. He left the dog, opened the gate, and quickly stole across the neighbor’s driveway, turned on the spigot, and filled the dog’s bucket. He sighed. “So close and yet so far away,” he murmured
.

The man walked back and put the bucket in front of the dog. Without hesitation, Gracie’s tongue touched the clear liquid and at first it stung, but then the feeling of pain turned to joy and the dog lapped for a very long time. “This is happening a lot, old girl,” the man said. “Houses being foreclosed, families forced out, beautiful animals like you being left behind. I kind of hate my job sometimes.”

The local animal shelter where he brought these abandoned pets called them foreclosure dogs and gave them a host of names that reflected their owner’s plight, like Past Due, ARM, and Subprime. Many of the owners reasoned that the bank, a neighbor, the police—surely someone—would come and care for
their pet. “Let me just take some pictures, girl, and I’ll help you out, okay?” He watched her drink deeply and ran his fingers through her long white coat. The dog looked sad but smelled clean. “You’re a beautiful dog, aren’t you? If I wasn’t struggling myself, I’d take you home with me right now.”

When she finished drinking, Gracie nuzzled the man’s wrist appreciatively. The man stood and fumbled in his pocket for the keys to the house. He pulled them out, unlocked the back door, and entered to take measurements and pictures and complete his report so the bank could market the foreclosed property. In thirty minutes he was finished and returned to check on the dog. She was not where he had left her. He searched about the yard, but she was nowhere to be seen
.

“Oh, shoot,” he said, catching sight of the wide-open gate that he’d forgotten to latch. Perhaps the dog had just now escaped, and he moved quickly to the front yard hoping to find her there. He looked down the narrow street lined with modest homes, many also for sale, and spotted her at the far end of the block. He yelled to get her attention and began to follow her. “Here girl. Come on back!” He put his fingers to his mouth and let out a loud whistle
.

The dog was meandering down the middle of the road but ignored his pleas to return
.

“Come on back!” he shouted again, but it was too late
.

A car came around the corner and its horn issued a shrill warning. Startled, the dog reflexively bolted straight into the path of the car. Tires screeched. Impact. The retriever was tossed
to the side of the road. Stunned and frightened, she struggled to get up, but it was not possible. She breathed deeply and her heart raced out of fear. Confused and hurt, she tried to crawl further off the road to safety
.

As the man from the bank trotted toward Gracie, car doors slammed and two people emerged from the car before he could reach her. The young female driver immediately began to wail, “Oh, Mom, I hit her! I didn’t even see her!”

“Laura,” her mother said, reaching out and wrapping her hand around the thin arm of her fair-haired daughter. “It wasn’t your fault. The dog ran out in front of you.”

Still frightened but trying to regain her composure, the girl clutched her mother’s elbow. “We have to … try … to help.” She stepped slowly closer, holding her mother’s arm for support, and desperately hoping that the retriever was not dead. The dog lifted her head but didn’t move
.

Stunned, like any injured animal, the dog sensed her own vulnerability. She growled, warning the two women to keep their distance
.

“What should we do?” the mother asked
.

Laura reached down and tried to comfort the dog, but Gracie growled again, so she backed away. She thought a moment and got the words straight in her head before speaking. “I’ll call Todd.” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and hit his number on her speed dial
.

PEOPLE WOULD
look at the old black Lab and say, “Christmas. That’s an unusual name for a dog.” In the beginning, George would explain how the Lab was supposed to have been a temporary holiday guest, a brief fostering project to help out the local animal shelter. His youngest son, Todd, thought the name Christmas was a good fit. Now, nearly four years later, the dog had found a permanent home with the McCray family, and George was inclined to lean down, hug his canine friend around the neck, and say, “Best Christmas present I ever got!”

Christmas was resting his head on Todd’s lap in the backseat of the car as they drove down Main Street that evening. George’s wife, Mary Ann, and Todd chatted back and forth about the weather—lightly falling snow, smoky gray skies, and a low howling northwest wind. George, a pragmatic sort, smiled at the notion, but wondered if
they shouldn’t have named the lab Elmer, like the glue. The dog bound and knitted his family together.

The elder McCray tried to park in the small municipal lot that flanked the west side of Crossing Trails Town Hall, but it was already jammed with cars. The turnout for that night’s town hall meeting was going to be huge, particularly for a town of less than two thousand residents. So much was hanging in the balance.

George turned back onto Main Street and drove north for two more blocks before finding a space in front of what had been the barbershop but was now a Dollar General Store—a sign of the times. Though many older businesses like the hardware store and the diner had managed to hang on, the growing number of discount stores suggested that the town’s better days were visible only in the rearview mirror. Once within this tiny six-block area they still called “downtown” there had been a bakery, a movie theater, clothing stores, a Ford dealership, a furniture shop, and much more. Still, the Crossing Trails Chamber of Commerce boasted thirty-four members. The town just
had
to survive, George thought.
Right
? Any other answer seemed inconceivable.

Many of the original stately brick buildings had survived, but there were also plenty of newer, cheaper-looking steel-and-concrete structures, quite a few sporting
FOR RENT OR SALE
signs. George was continually amazed at the way the town had changed, particularly in the last several years as the exodus of young people from the rural
farming community continued. At least his children, all living within driving distance, had not strayed too far from the McCray homestead. Todd was closest of all.

“Looks like a good turnout for the meeting,” George observed.

“As it should be. People are worried.” Mary Ann buttoned up her coat and collected her purse from the floor of the car. She turned around and poked at her son’s knee. “Let’s go.”

Todd undid his seat belt and started to get out of the backseat with his headphones still attached and his iPod playing a Scotty McCreery tune that he did his best to adopt as his own. Once completely out of the car, he broke out with the chorus, “I love you
this
big!” As Todd stretched out his arms, Mary Ann stepped into his embrace, and they repeated the lyrics together. Mary Ann smiled at life. Being a music teacher and having a tone-deaf son was beyond ironic.

George opened the other rear passenger door. When Christmas jumped out, he snapped a leash on the dog’s collar and gave him a gentle pat on the head. “Good boy. You’ve got work to do tonight, don’t you?”

There was an unusual urgency to that night’s town hall meeting. Earlier in the week
The Prairie Star
—Crossing
Trail’s newspaper, once daily, but now weekly—had reported that the mayor would discuss the town’s latest economic setback. After fifty years, Midwest Trailer and Hitch had officially called it quits. Horse ownership was at an all-time low, as were trailer sales, and the town’s largest employer was going out of business.

The survival of Crossing Trails was being threatened by a combination of factors that could be overcome only by an intense collaborative effort. Severe cost-cutting measures were inevitable, and everyone knew it. The lead story in
The Prairie Star
indicated that services that had once been taken for granted were now at risk. Like a virus at a day care, the rumors spread up and down Main Street in the close-knit town. People had moved right past worried and were dashing toward panicked.

The McCrays and other families had watched as smaller rural communities in the surrounding counties had eliminated or consolidated fire and police departments, closed schools and libraries, shut hospitals, and all but died. They couldn’t help wondering if the same spiral had been set in motion in their town.

George, Todd, and Mary Ann walked south down Main Street as a light fog settled in. Christmas loitered, sniffing at the occasional fire hydrant. The outside temperature on this early December evening was warmer than the snow-covered ground. The slushy sidewalk was dangerously slick and uneven in places, so they walked carefully, with Todd
in the middle, holding on to his parents’ hands with a firm, youthful grip that kept them from slipping.

Mary Ann liked it that her adult son would still hold his parents’ hands. For some it might be considered a sign of his disability, but for her it meant so much more. When he was little, he held her hand for physical support; when he was older, he did it for emotional reassurance. It was his way of checking to make sure that his mother was there for him as he navigated through a world that did not always make sense to him. Later still, holding his parents’ hands became a simple and honest way to show his unabashed love. While his grip still sent some of these ancient family messages, it was not lost on her that there was something new going on. Todd was using his strength to hold
them
up. She wondered if George was having anywhere near the same thought, or if Todd had an inkling of how the roles of parent and child were constantly being renegotiated with the passage of time.

In the storefront windows many of the merchants had made some effort to showcase their Christmas goods. Green holly and blinking white lights hung from the wood poles and brass rings that previous generations had used to tie off their horses. Falling under the dim light, cast by the old-fashioned streetlights, were little bits of intermittent snow blowing through the dark night sky.

With his jet-black coat, Christmas was hard to see as he tagged along, content, with his family.

The dog was a local legend in Crossing Trails. It was hard to know where the truth about Christmas ended and the exaggeration began; both George and Todd were inclined to embellish his exploits. Whether Christmas had really taken on a mountain lion and won, understood more than fifty words, or could read your thoughts didn’t matter to most people. What they loved most about the dog was the joy he brought to the McCray family and every other human he met. That was magic enough.

Both Todd and George described Christmas as “my dog.” However convenient, this was not entirely accurate. Like blue skies, small children, and the air we breathe, dogs can be shared, loved, and enjoyed but not owned. Partnership, yes. Ownership, no. That’s the way it has always been between dogs and humans.