The Old Collie in the Vet Clinic Lot

It was short. He thanked the Lord for the food and for Doc Pruett and for the dog, and then he said amen and passed the potatoes.

After supper I went in the front room and lifted the lid of Mom’s piano bench, just to see.

The old hymnals were still in there, and the flat envelope she had folded on Sunday. I set the bank envelope beside it and closed the lid.

Mom saw me do it from the kitchen doorway. She did not say anything.

She just nodded once, and I knew she would put it in her own envelope later, and I knew she would try to pay me back out of the egg money, and I knew I would let her try.

The next morning Arliss drove over to Cyril’s place and sold him back the rifle.

Cyril called Mom that afternoon, Mom told me later, and said Arliss had stood in his yard for twenty minutes talking about a blue heeler named Pete.

That Friday, there were four hundred dollars back in my mother’s piano bench, in her own white envelope, in twenties.

She showed me on the phone. She said Arliss had put it there himself and then come and told her where it was, so she would not have to look.

Rhett came down on Saturday like he said he would, with a load of scrap two-by-sixes and a sheet of old plywood and his buddy’s saw.

He spent all morning building a ramp off the side of Mom’s porch for Sadie, with little cleats screwed across it so she would not slip.

Arliss came out and watched him for a while. Then he went to the shop and came back with his own drill and a box of deck screws, and the two of them finished it together.

I watched them from the kitchen window. They did not talk much. They did not have to.

It was a good ramp. Rhett was proud of it. Arliss told him it was better than the one on the loading chute at the sale barn, and Rhett grinned all the way back to Great Falls.

Sadie never used it once.

On Sunday afternoon, the sun out and the wind down, Mom let her out on the porch for some air.

Sadie went down the steps slow and careful to do her business in the yard. Then she turned around, looked at that brand-new ramp, and ignored it completely.

She walked to the bottom of the porch steps. She put one front foot up, then the other.

Then that bad back leg, the one with the stitches, came up under her clean and straight, the way it had not in months.

Mom was standing at the top with her hand over her mouth. Arliss was standing beside her, and I saw him reach over and take her other hand, and hold onto it.

One step. Two. Three. Sadie got to the top and stood there a second, looking pleased with herself, the way collies do.

Then she walked right past both of them and through the screen door to her rug, and lay down, and went to sleep.

Mom laughed. Arliss laughed. I stood in the yard below them with tears running down my face and did not care who saw.

Sadie walked up the porch steps on her own four legs by Sunday.