Chapter Fifteen
A sher hadn’t thought he’d ever get Levi and Dana to go to the festival without him. But the very last thing he wanted to do was go down to the Square and deal with a shitload of people. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d have to talk to everyone he saw who’d known him from back in the day and who’d have heard about his military service and him losing his leg. He didn’t want to talk to anyone period. Much less about his service and his damn leg. Finally, he wasn’t up for dealing with uneven sidewalks with crutches and a prosthesis that he hadn’t quite mastered yet. And a wheelchair in that situation would be way too much trouble.
But the real reason he didn’t want to go was because he didn’t want to be around people. He could handle one or two at a time but no more. And he didn’t even like that.
Anyway, the pool was heated and Levi had bought a wheelchair for the pool before Asher even came home, so he figured he might as well use it. In fact, Levi wanted him to get a leg specifically for swimming but Asher resisted. Not because he didn’t want one, but because Levi was already doing more for him than he could ever repay. Not that Levi would accept monetary repayment anyway, but Asher didn’t want to take advantage of him. Which Levi would totally let him do.
He swam a little but soon gave up in favor of floating. He let himself sink to the bottom, imagined what it would be like to just…not come back up. To not have to deal with anything. No pain. No struggle. No memories screaming in his mind and waking him up sweating and agonized.
Giving up wasn’t in his nature. Even if the nightmares at times made his life hell, even if it seemed like the pain would never go away, he was too stubborn to quit. He came back up to the top. A dog was barking. None of Levi’s neighbors were close enough that you could hear their dog. What the hell?
Then he saw it in the gloom, a few feet away from the edge of the pool. He swam to the beach entry and got into the wheelchair. First he stopped to pick up a towel, then wheeled himself to the edge of the deck. He and the dog stared at each other. It had stopped barking but he heard it whimpering. Asher held his hand out. “C’mere. I won’t hurt you.” The dog came closer, enough he could see its color and physique better. It looked like some kind of golden retriever mix. It was a reddish brown color, and would probably be golden reddish if it hadn’t been filthy. And it was a female. Unless he was mistaken, he saw as it came close enough that he could see her teats hanging down, a female with puppies.
Cautiously, she approached him. He didn’t move but let her come to him, talking soothingly. Finally she came close enough to sniff his hand, quivering when he stroked her. She must have sensed he meant her no harm because she let him pet her, gradually relaxing and stopping her quivering. “Where are your babies, huh?”
She ran a little distance away and whined, her tail wagging. When he didn’t move she came back a few feet away and barked at him. “You want me to come with you?”
She ran back and forth barking. Clearly saying, “Well, duh.”
Deciding this called for his crutches, he went over to where he’d left them, dried off some more, pulled on his shirt and stuffed his cell phone in his shirt pocket. Meanwhile the dog whined, looking at him as if saying, “Hurry up!”
“I’m not very fast. You’ll have to deal,” Asher told her.
She led him to the edge of Levi’s property to an old potting shed that was falling apart. It took forever since Asher had to be very careful not to fall. If he did he wasn’t sure he could get up without help. The dog wiggled through a hole at the base of one side of the shed and disappeared inside. Asher took the more conventional route and came in through the door. Then he turned on his phone’s flashlight and shined it around. There, in a corner of the shed, lay the mother dog and…seven, no eight nursing puppies.
What the hell was he supposed to do with a stray dog with eight puppies?
*
“What’s that smell?” Levi asked as he and Dana entered the kitchen through the attached garage.
“I don’t know. It smells like—” Dana wrinkled her nose. “Poop?”
“Shit or something dead, I’d say. Wait a minute. Someone’s in the laundry room talking.” It had to be Asher, but what was he doing in the laundry room talking to himself? Had he fallen into something outside and come in to wash his clothes? Dead animal? Dog shit?
Levi went to the laundry room just off the kitchen, with Dana following. It was a large room. Levi had had it enlarged during his first remodeling of the house. Muriel had “requested” he do that. Actually, she’d said she was not washing clothes in a room that was dark as a dungeon and not big enough to turn around in. Since Levi had no desire to do all his own wash, he gave her what she wanted. On the threshold he stopped short. “What the hell?”
“Good, you’re home,” Asher said. His crutches leaned against the dryer and he wasn’t wearing his prosthesis. Asher sat on the floor with a large, really dirty dog and her God-knows-how-many puppies. “I need some help here.”
“Ya think?” Levi said. “What the hell is this?”
Shooting him an irritated glance, Asher said, “It’s a mother dog and her puppies. Obviously. I found a blanket but she really needs a box for her and the pups. ”
Levi looked at Dana, who was biting her lip trying not to laugh. “Has that dog been rolling in shit? It stinks to high heaven in here.”
“She, not it. You’d smell too if you hadn’t had a bath in God knows how long. I found some bowls and gave her water, but of course we don’t have any dog food. Poor baby was starving.” She lay stretched out with squirming puppies fighting for a place to eat. Asher stroked her head and she wagged her tail in response.
“What did you feed her?” He could tell there had been food in the other bowl, though it had been licked clean. “You didn’t—”
“There was a steak in the fridge. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Dana burst out laughing.
Levi glared at her. “Of course I don’t mind you feeding a stray dog—with eight puppies—my filet mignon. Take whatever you want,” Levi said sarcastically, waving a hand.
The gibe went right over Asher’s head. “Great, thanks. I thought about giving her some rice too but didn’t want to feed her too much at once. Plus I had no idea where you’d keep rice or even if you had any.”
Levi had no idea either.
Asher continued, “I was going to wait until tomorrow to bathe her but now that you’re here, why don’t you help me? She just nursed the puppies, so they ought to be okay for a while.” He held out his hand and Levi grasped it and put his other hand under his arm, helping him up.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask him how he’d planned to get up without help, but he squashed the question. Asher would have figured something out.
Asher picked up his crutches and started out the door, calling to the dog. “Come on, girl.” She shook off the pups and followed him as if she’d been obeying him for months. Over his shoulder, he said, “Better get some old towels too. I’ll just use my shampoo this time.”
This time? Meaning he meant to do it more than once?
“You help Asher. I’ll stay with the puppies,” Dana said, with barely a quiver to her voice.
Levi shot her a sharp glance, but she looked suitably solemn. “I don’t have any old towels.”
She sat on the floor with the pups. “Look in the cupboard above the washer and dryer. There are probably some in there.”
There were. “How did you know that there would be towels there?”
“Because that’s where I keep mine.”
He took some, then remembering how dirty the dog was, and the amount of hair it had, took some more.
“The puppies can’t be very old,” Dana said. “Their eyes are still closed.”
Levi squatted down to look at them more closely. “I haven’t seen Asher this animated since he was shipped home.”
“I’ve sure never heard him talk this much. I wasn’t sure he could.”
“He hasn’t. Not in a long time.” He leaned over and kissed her. “I’d better go help him. I’ll be back. Sometime.”
By the time Levi reached Asher’s bathroom, Asher had the dog in the shower and was sitting on the shower stool without his shirt, wearing his bathing suit and holding the detachable showerhead.
“I suppose you had to use the blanket from your bed?”
Asher grinned. “Sorry about that. But it was handy.”
Levi stripped down to his jeans and rolled up the pants legs. Thankfully, the dog was very patient, and with Asher talking soothingly to her, she let them lather and rinse her several times.
“She’s going to need to be brushed,” Levi said. “Or more likely, shaved. God knows it will be impossible to get those mats out without shaving her.”
“I don’t suppose you have a dog brush?”
“No, but I don’t think you can brush her until her fur is dry.”
“Okay, we’ll dry her off as much as possible and in the morning we’ll pick up supplies. There’s bound to be a Walmart somewhere that’s open on Sunday morning.”
“Maybe,” Levi said. “But we’ll figure it out. I think I should go to the convenience store after we finish bathing her and buy some dog food, at least. I don’t have any more steak,” he added dryly.
Asher looked up at his comment. “Are you pissed about the steak?”
“No, I just like to give you shit.” It made him feel like things were going to be okay to be able to treat Asher as he normally would have.
“I wondered if you were ever going to stop treating me like I’d break if you spoke to me harshly.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Yeah, you do. Most of the time. I mean, you did yell when I talked about moving out, but mainly you’ve been so careful I wanted to punch you.”
Levi laughed. “Duly noted. I won’t be nice anymore.”
Asher simply grinned. It took them a while but they finally finished washing the dog. Before Levi could grab a towel or four, she shook off, spraying water everywhere.
“That’s a good girl, Maggie,” Asher said. “She looks a lot better, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, she does.” She’d probably be pretty when she was dry and with her hair brushed and de-matted. Or even if she was shaved. Her fur was now a golden red, which would probably be even lighter when dry. Levi tossed a towel to Asher and took one for himself. Naturally, Asher gave him the rear end. He went to work. “Maggie?”
“There was an MWD I met during my second tour. In Afghanistan. She reminds me of her.”
“MWD?”
“Military working dog.”
“Did she—” He broke off, deciding there were probably questions better unasked.
“No, she retired,” Asher said, answering the unasked question. “Minus a leg, actually. She was lucky. She got to go home with her handler. Not all of them do.”
He left it at that and Levi didn’t ask any more. He’d read about K9s being classified as equipment and being abandoned in the country they served in rather than brought home. Which in his opinion was a damn crime. In fact he donated regularly to some charities that brought the dogs back home.
“Can you take me and the dogs to the vet Monday?” Asher asked him. “I don’t think I can manage Maggie and the puppies on my own. I can call Stewart if you can’t.”
Stewart was the college kid Asher had hired to drive him around until he felt comfortable driving and found doctors nearby. “No, I can do it. Do you think she’s been microchipped?”
“I don’t know. If she is she’s been missing quite a while.”
Levi watched Asher petting the dog. He suspected he knew the answer, but still asked him, “What are you going to do if she’s a stray?”
“Unless you object, keep them until the puppies are old enough to be weaned and then find them homes.”
“That’s fine. What about Maggie?”
Asher looked at the dog and then at Levi. There was more emotion in his expression than Levi had seen since he’d been shipped home. “Would you mind if I kept her? ”
“Not even a little. This is your home too, Asher. If you want a dog, then get a dog. Or keep her, in this case.”
“Thanks. I—Thanks. I’d better take her out and then get her back to her pups.” He reached for the crutches he’d leaned against the wall and stood.
“How did you find her, anyway?” Levi asked as they walked back through the kitchen to the back door.
“She found me. I was…swimming.”
Why the hesitation? Levi wondered. “I kinda figured that since you were wearing your bathing suit.”
Asher opened the back door and let Maggie out, following her outside. “You know that old potting shed on the edge of your property? That’s where she had her puppies.”
“The potting shed? That place is in a jungle. You got out there in your chair?”
“No, my crutches. I’d taken off my leg to swim and didn’t take the time to go get it. Besides, the ground was pretty uneven. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be more stable with or without it over that terrain but I made it.”
“Good God. How did you get there?” The area where the shed was had gone wild, with trees, vines, underbrush, uneven ground and rocks.
“It wasn’t easy.”
“I don’t imagine it was. How did you bring her and all the puppies inside? I’d think that was impossible on crutches.”
“Green Beret, remember?” He whistled for the dog who came right back to him.
Levi laughed. “And Green Berets can do anything, right?”
“Pretty near,” Asher agreed.