My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) Read Online Free Page B

the Alaskan Wild
would imagine.
    This dog walked slowly, head down, to the gap in the fence. His right ear was ripped in half, the torn edges scabbed with dried blood. The dog’s back was gashed; I recognized strikes from a belt buckle. A bit of chain hung from his neck, but I couldn’t see the collar; it was lost in the dog’s matted and patchy fur.
    Will fell to his knees by the gap in the fence, reached a hand through, and petted him, saying, “Trusty, don’t you worry. We’ll go to Alaska, take you back where you belong. I’m going to get my one square inch, and then more and more square inches, and you and I will live there.” The dog nuzzled his hand.
    I grabbed Will’s shoulder. Even though I knew the dog couldn’t understand him, I was suddenly angry for Trusty. I shouted, “Will, stop it!” He was making promises that he couldn’t keep.
    Will ignored me, picked up the dripping Marvel Puffs box, and eased it through the fence. He turned the box upside down and poured out the burned toast and cereal. Trusty gobbled up the food as it poured out, and then snagged the box from Will and started eating it, too.
    When the dog finished, he looked up at me. I stared into his runny, ice-blue eyes. Groverton, Ohio, was a place of beagles and German shepherds and mutts, not huskies that looked like wolves.
    I felt so sorry for the dog that I reached for him—wanting to undo the collar, unmat the fur. But at the first flicker of my hand, the dog lunged, spit flying from his snarling jowls.As I stumbled back, my heart pounding, the dog’s mouth moved as if he were barking, but no sound came out. He had gone mute.
    I shouted for Will to come away from the fence, reached for him, but before I could grab him, I felt a hand on my back.
    “Honey, if that dog really wanted to get out at you, or out for any reason at all, it would get through that gap, even if it tore its body up even worse. Mr. Stedman’s been beating the poor dog because he stopped barking,” said the old woman.
    I stared past the junk to the ramshackle building that was both Mr. Stedman’s business headquarters and his home.
    “Don’t worry—he’s not there. I’ve been a-staying with my daughter and her young’uns the past few days—my Mary, she’s laid up with a pulled back so I brought my poultices to her—and I saw him leave last night, but he hasn’t come back.”
    The dog—Trusty—finished gobbling the Marvel Puffs, box and all, and thrust his snout as far as he dared through the fence, sniffing at Will. Seeking more food? But no. Now that his hunger was sated, the dog gazed up at my brother, Trusty’s icy eyes turned soft with soulful concern. I told myself I must be imagining this, but it felt as real, as palpable, as the tension in the very air of the neighborhood.
    “Oh,” I said. “Thank you for telling us. I’m Donna Lane. Nice to meet you Mrs.—” I held out my hand.
    The old woman took my hand in a grip that was far firmer than her thin, twisted hand belied. “Just call me MayJune. I don’t need any other name. Will’s told me all about you.”
    I looked at Will stroking the wild dog’s head. I wasn’t the only one with secrets. Will must have been going tovisit Trusty—and, I guessed, MayJune—pretty often. Enough to make the wounded, wild animal trust and care about him. Enough to befriend the oddly named woman and talk with her about me.
    I took another look at her. MayJune was wearing mismatched, worn clothes—an old pink flowered blouse, a checkered blue and red skirt, a green sweater with frayed cuffs shoved up to her knobby elbows, a brown scarf tied over her head. Tufts of coarse gray hair poked out here and there from under her scarf. Her potato brown skin hung loose and wrinkled.
    I felt my lips pulling together in a taut knot—and then I looked away. I was judging MayJune as surely as Mrs. Baker judged me.
    She put her hand on my arm and her scent—something herblike that I couldn’t quite place,