“Nothing out of the ordinary, then? Because it looks spooky.”
I opened my mouth to say the TV was from before the days of cable, let alone streaming, then closed it again. It occurred to me that Harriman had progressed from picture-taking to interviewing. Trying to, at least; as a newbie, he wasn’t exactly subtle.
“Nope, it’s just a house. I better get going.”
“Will you be taking care of the dog until Mr. Bowditch gets out of the hospital?”
This time I was the one who stuck out my hand. Radar didn’t growl but watched closely for any funny business. “Hope the pictures are okay. Come on, Radar.”
I started toward the house. When I looked back, Harriman was crossing the street to talk to Mrs. Richland. There was nothing I could do about that, so I went around back with Radar coming along at my heel. I noticed that after walking for a bit, she limbered up.
I put the ladder under the back porch, where there was also a snow shovel and a big old pair of gardening shears that looked as rusty as the bolt on the gate and would probably be just as hard to operate. Radar peered down at me from halfway up the steps, which was cute enough for me to take another picture. I was getting foolish about her. I knew it and didn’t mind owning it.
There were cleaning products under the kitchen sink, and a neat pile of paper grocery bags with the Tiller logo on them. There were also rubber gloves. I put them on, took a bag, and went on poop patrol. Got plenty, too.
On Sunday I put Radar on her leash again and walked her down the hill to our house. She moved slowly at first, both because of her arthritic hips and because she clearly wasn’t used to being away from home. She kept looking at me for reassurance, which touched my heart. After awhile, though, she began to make her way more easily and confidently, stopping to sniff telephone poles and to squat here and there, so other passing dogs would know that Radar of Bowditch had been there.
Dad was home. Radar initially shrank back from him, growling, but when Dad held out his hand, she came forward enough to sniff it. Half a slice of bologna sealed the deal. We stayed for an hour or so. Dad quizzed me about my photo shoot and laughed when I told him how Harriman had tried to interview me about the inside of the house, and how I’d shut him down.
“He’ll get better if he sticks with the news business,” Dad said. “The Weekly Sun is just the place where he starts building his clipbook.”
By then Radar was snoozing beside the couch where Dad had once passed out drunk. He bent down and ruffled her fur. “I bet she was an engine when she was in her prime.”
I thought of Andy’s story about the terrifying beast he had encountered four or five years earlier and agreed.
“You should see if he has any dog meds for her arthritis. And probably she should have a tablet for heartworm.”
“I’ll check around.” I had taken off her leash, but now I clipped it to her collar. She raised her head. “We should go back.”
“Don’t want to keep her here for the day? She looks pretty comfortable.”
“No, I should take her back.”
If he asked why, I’d tell him the truth: because I didn’t think Howard Bowditch would like it. He didn’t ask. “Okay. Want a ride?”
“That’s all right. I think she’ll be fine if we go slow.”
And she was. On the way back up the hill, she seemed glad to be sniffing grass that wasn’t her own.
6
On Monday afternoon a neat little green van with TILLER & SONS painted on the side （in gold, no less） pulled up. The driver asked me where Mr. Bowditch was. I told him and he handed the bags to me over the gate as if that were the usual thing, so I guess it was. I filled in the amount on the blank check Dad had signed—pretty horrified at the idea of a hundred and five scoots for three bags of groceries—and handed it back. There were lamb chops and ground sirloin, which I put in the freezer. I wasn’t going to eat his food （cookies excepted）， but I wasn’t going to let it go to waste, either.
With that taken care of I went down cellar, closing the door behind me so Radar wouldn’t try to follow. It wasn’t the least bit serial-killerish, only musty and dusty, as if nobody had been down there for a long time. The overhead lights were fluorescent bars, one of them flickery and half-dead. The floor was rough cement. There were tools on pegs, including the scythe, which looked like the kind of thing Old Man Death carries in the cartoons.
In the center of the room was a worktable covered by a dropcloth. I lifted it for a peek and saw a partially assembled jigsaw puzzle that appeared to have a zillion pieces. From what I could see （there was no box to check it against）， it was meant to be a mountain meadow with the Rockies in the background. There was a folding chair set up at one end of the table, where most of the remaining pieces were spread out. The seat was dusty, from which I deduced that Mr. Bowditch hadn’t been working his puzzle for quite some time. Maybe he’d given up. I know I would have; a lot of what was left to be assembled was plain old blue sky without even a single cloud to break the monotony. I’m talking about this at more length than it deserves, maybe… but then again maybe not. There was something sad about it. I couldn’t express the reason for that sadness then, but I’m older now and think I can. It was about the jigsaw, but it was also the antique TV and the Hall of Old Reading Matter. It was about an elderly man’s solitary pursuits, and the dust—on the folding chair, on the books and magazines—suggested that even those were winding down. The only things in the cellar that looked like they were used regularly were the washer and dryer.