The Trouble with Tuck: Chapters 11–17

Tuck started off as he did on any other morning, loping down the driveway, but less than ten seconds had passed when Mother heard the sickening screech of car brakes and a muffled yelp.

Blood was oozing from it, and the yellow hair was already matted.

Finally the doctor did come out, saying, “He’s bruised mostly, and I had to do some stitchwork. He now has a crown of sutures.”

“Sure, he’ll live. You can pick him up tomorrow. I put him under, of course. He’ll be groggy for the rest of the day. I want to watch him for a while.”

He was still very sore and tender.

On Sunday morning he apparently felt well enough to jump the fence and take his usual prowl of the neighborhood, even with the black curlicue stitch ends still crowning his stubborn head.

I found him, all right, ambling without concern along Wickenham, as if cars had never been invented, as if he didn’t have an ugly scar on his half-bald head.

Only a few frayed feet remained on his collar. He’d chewed through it.

Tuck would now have to spend most of the day locked up in the house, to which he’d never been confined.

That day his tail wagged vigorously all right but I knew something was wrong the moment the door swung open.

The rope had been bad enough, but now to have Tuck shackled to steel was almost more than I could bear, or watch, despite all the problems.

He went to the chain’s full length and pulled against it, as if he were pulling a sled. Or he’d turn the other way, rearing on his hind legs the way a wild stallion fights a rope in a corral.

Stricken with grief, I ran from the room.

He fought the chain valiantly, even wearing all the grass away.

But, at last, we have subdued him, and none of us is proud.

I had a dollar and forty cents in my top bureau drawer and stuffed that into my pocket.

I took one look back at 911 West Cheltenham, wavered a moment, and pressed on.

He knew that a canine intruder was on his front porch, and he set up a din in the backyard, straining at the very end of his chain.

My mother said, “That’s the most sedate, serene dog I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

When I returned to the living room, my mother was saying, “I’m worried that Tuck might resent her. Plain jealousy. Listen to him now.”

By bedtime, when Mother came into my room, Tuck was in his usual place on the rug beside me, and Daisy had taken up a neutral position in the middle of the floor.

Whether he understood or not, he began to display almost every bad trait there is. Selfishness, jealousy, anger, pettiness.

I then led Daisy up to his side, positioning her so that his big ears were about opposite her ample rump.

Daisy had been trained to resist attack by remaining completely passive, and she stood quietly with her front paws on the steps, looking away from him as if to say, I will not allow you to upset me.

I remember I was holding Daisy’s collar in my left hand and Tuck’s in my right, positioning myself on Daisy’s right flank, to walk them around the lot, which had some gravel scattered here and there.

Maybe if she towed him along, he’d get the idea of what it was all about. But when I attempted to lead her away, Tuck promptly backed up and sat down, donkey-style.

Yet I hadn’t hit Tuck for years, for anything, and here I was, feeling terrible remorse. Kneeling down, I said, “I’m sorry, Tuck. I didn’t mean to do that.”

By now, however, I wouldn’t discuss with anyone anything I was going to try. They were all defeatists, except Mr. Ishihara.

I went into Luke’s room to ask casually, “Don’t you have a book on elephants?”

To keep prying, snoopy eyes out of my dog business, I went to the very end of the park, over where Wickenham takes the long curve toward Wilshire.

He was in the back storage room, which always had a dozen good pungent smells wafting around it.

“He likes to sleep on my dirty shirts. I think he likes to smell me.”
My own dainty Rachel had never done that, to my knowledge.

Running over, I hugged them both and gave them their due biscuit rewards. I felt giddy, like telling the whole world, but I said to them, “We’ll not tell a soul until we’re ready.”

He now seemed content to trot along with her, his left ear rubbing conveniently against her flank, listening to her bell as if it were a symphony.

Those sightless eyes were riveted on me, and I think he understood.