Chapter 3

That winter Buster died. He was curled up in his dog bed, and looked like he was still sleeping, but he was gone. He was old. They'd gotten him for Jill when she was four so he was old, but everybody kind of expected he had a couple more years left in him.

I was the one who noticed, because he always lifted his head and wagged his tail when I walked into the mud room, where his bed was. When he didn't, I investigated. I admit I freaked out a little bit. I'd never had a pet, and I'd never lost one.

But my freak-out was as nothing compared to Jill, who sobbed. I ended up holding her AND Lynne, who was also crying. We had a group hug for a good half hour. Then I disengaged myself and went about getting a grave dug. We had a little impromptu memorial service, where the women remembered things he'd done and talked about it and cried some more, but those were slightly happier tears. He'd been a good dog.

I lost it when I covered him up with dirt, and then it was the women holding me.

By this time I was a fairly accomplished mechanic, electrician and plumber. My tax business had expanded significantly. Agricultural operations are quite complicated when it comes to the tax code, and there weren't all that many people who wanted to specialize in that kind of service. The way I did things, I had my forty-seven agricultural clients give all their receipts and records to me and I kept them up to snuff so that when tax season got there the next year filing the return would be a piece of cake. I only had to spend maybe an hour a night keeping things up to date in the books I kept for them.

It was because of my contacts through taxes that I happened upon what I thought was the perfect birthday present for Jill. Her birthday fell right in the middle of apple harvest, which made it hard to give her a special day. Harvest took all our resources and we still had tons - literally - of waste. I kept thinking I should do some research into marketing the apples further out than we were, but I'd never gotten around to it.

Anyway, I was picking up receipts from one of my tax customers when I was almost bowled over by a very friendly black Labrador, who jumped up on me and left three bright red stripes of blood on my left arm, like I'd been attacked by that comic book character Wolverine.

"Damn dog!" yelled Don Rigsby, who ran the local co-op feed store. "I can't get him to settle down for shit! Everybody told me he'd be fine in a couple of years, but he's three now and I swear he acts more like a puppy every day. I can't spend the time with him it would take to train him up right." He looked at my arm, concerned. "Let me get you something to clean that up."

"It will stop eventually," I said. I'd been cut, scraped, nicked and bruised countless times by now. I rarely put anything on an injury. I might wash it off, but that was about it. The dog sat, tongue lolling from his mouth, bright eyes on me. Then he started jumping up on me again. It was almost like he had waited for me to pet him, but I took too long, so he reminded me again.

"I'm really sorry," said Don. "If he keeps that up I'm gonna have to put him down. I can't have him hurting customers."

"You can't kill him just because he wants attention," I objected.

"I can't leave him alive if he's going to get me sued," he said. "He needs to be out somewhere where he can run some of that energy off."

And that comment was what got me thinking about Jill, and her birthday, which was about two months away.

Which is how coincidence brought me to end up with a black Lab named Duke in the back seat of my car when I left the feed store. Once Don got the chance to get rid of a problem dog, he wouldn't wait for her birthday to get closer. He even threw in a hundred pounds of dog food in the bargain. Duke the black Lab would end up being an important mover and shaker in our lives, but I'll go into that later.

By this time I was making what for me was a comfortable living on my tax business.

Which is why, after the apple harvest was over that year and things settled down, I tried to pay Lynne rent one day. It happened to be just before breakfast. Why that was important will be explained later.

"You don't owe me rent," said Lynne.

"But I live here," I said, needlessly.

"For which you pay me by working," she said. "If anything, I should be paying YOU. Your labor is worth a lot more than just room and board."

"Nonsense," I snorted. "I'm homeless, and you're being kind."

She snorted. "If I didn't know better I'd SWEAR you were trying to get me in bed, Bob MacAllister."

That was out of the blue, until I remembered another time when she'd said something like that. That time I had stuck my foot in my mouth and she hadn't talked to me for a couple of days. Jill had patched things over, though. So I probably should have just smiled mysteriously or something and left it at that. But oh no ... I just had to try to tease her.

"You sure do talk about sex a lot," I said.

"I do not!" she snapped.

"This isn't the first time you've accused me of trying to get in your jeans," I said confidently. I thought we had the kind of friendship by now that could sustain this kind of give and take. Guys do it all the time, and I felt like one of the guys, you know?

"That's not what I meant and you know it!" she said, her voice rising. "Besides, that was ... FOREVER ago!"

"It was just last year if I recall," I said, smiling.

This, gentlemen, is where a lot of men go wrong. They think they're being clever and witty and, if they actually WERE talking to another man, they might BE clever and witty. But I wasn't talking to a man, no matter how much I thought of her as one of the guys. And what a WOMAN hears in that situation is: "I remember you talking about having sex with me, and it sticks out in my mind enough that I think of it often. That should be obvious since I just brought it up."

And yes, I know she brought it up. But there's no traction in pointing that out, boys. Believe me. I know.

In other words, her comment, which was designed (by a woman) to put me in my place, was responded to by my comment (designed to put her in her place) which meant I was interested in having sex with her.

She blinked at me and her cheeks got darker. Her mouth opened and then closed, and then she licked her lips like they were dry or something. I remember all this now, but it didn't mean anything to me then.