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I worked at the clinic all day Monday, going with Mr. Barnett on his call to a dairy farm and then stopping at Blue Fence Farms so we could check on Persephone and Tyche. I felt less awkward chatting with Paul Dixon out on the farm than I did when trying to be polite among the Sunday morning crowd. I fell in love with gentle Tyche immediately.
When we returned to the clinic, Buster was waiting outside the farmhouse. He had followed me across the street when I’d left Pop’s apartment in the morning, and I’d had to haul him home. Now he was back again. I could have tied him up behind the garage, but I was afraid he would bark and howl all day if I did.
“Let him stay here, Peggy,” Mr. Barnett said when he saw me grabbing Buster’s collar to drag him back across the street. “He’s not hurting anything. I think it’s nice to have a friendly dog to welcome people to the clinic. Besides,” he said, his voice going soft, “he reminds me that healing miracles can happen.”
When Buster and I finally walked home late that afternoon, Pop called to me from the garage before I had a chance to go upstairs to the apartment. I was afraid he was going to ask me where Joe was and say something about how unreliable he was for disappearing all the time, but Pop surprised me with a question. “You still want a used car?”
“Um, yes.”
He closed the hood of the car he’d been working on and picked up a rag to wipe grease off his hands. “How much you thinking to spend?”
“I don’t know. I have a little saved up from working at IBM, but I don’t want to use all of it.”
“Well, I found a car,” he said, tossing the rag into the work sink. “A 1939 Ford Deluxe. Runs real good. But Donna says she’d like to have it.”
I lifted my arms and let them drop again. I had no idea how to respond or why he was telling me this. It was getting harder and harder not to resent Donna. “So what are you saying?” I finally asked.
“Give me fifty dollars for her old car and we’ll call it even.”
“Her old car? You mean the car I used to drive before Donna quit working at the Crow Bar and started using it all the time? That car?”
“Right.” Pop didn’t seem to notice my sarcasm or see the irony in asking me to pay him for a car that had practically been mine. “Donna says that car stinks from hauling your dog all over the countryside.”
I exhaled and counted to ten. “Fine. The bank is closed for the day, but I’ll go there tomorrow on my lunch hour and withdraw fifty dollars.” I hurried away before I said something I shouldn’t. Pop might not have realized how much he hurt me when he took Donna’s side against me. It was time for me to move out of the apartment before the two of them broke my heart for good. I could do it now that I had a car and a full-time job.
I walked to the bank on my lunch break the following day and withdrew one hundred dollars. I would give half of it to Pop for the car and use the other half to find a place to live. A widow named Mrs. Jenkins who attended my church operated a guesthouse on the other side of town, a roomy Victorian home with a tower and lead glass windows. She didn’t have regular boarders, just weekend visitors who came up from New York City to spend time in the mountains. I walked there after going to the bank, hoping she would let me board until I could find a permanent place. Mrs. Jenkins didn’t ask any questions as she showed me a large room on the second floor facing Main Street. The simple space was plain but clean, with twin beds and a dresser and a shared bathroom down the hall with a large tub.
“There’s no one staying here at the moment,” she said, “so you’ll have the place to yourself. But I’m expecting people from the city this weekend.” I gave her enough money to stay for a week, including my evening meals, and told her I would be back later with my things. I paid Pop fifty dollars before returning to work, and the old car was mine. Since Buster was already making himself at home at the Barnetts’ house, I summoned my courage to ask if I could board him in the clinic’s kennels at night.
“Pop’s girlfriend hates him,” I explained. “I know he’ll be happier here, since she doesn’t want him around, and then I won’t have to worry about him crossing the road all the time.”
“Of course, Peggy,” Mr. Barnett said. “Is... um... everything all right?” I could tell by his concerned expression that he didn’t understand what had changed back home. I wasn’t sure I did, either. After all, Donna had moved in with us more than four years ago.
“I don’t think it will be for very long,” I said quickly. “I’m planning to find a place of my own now that I have a full-time job.”
“Buster is welcome for as long as you need. And let me know if I can help in any way.”
Buster followed me home to Pop’s apartment after work, unaware that it would be for the last time. He came up to my bedroom with me and watched as I packed a suitcase with enough clothes for a week and stuffed everything else that I owned into grocery bags. They could stay in the trunk of my car for now. Donna saw me making trips up and down the stairs with the bags and loading them into my car, but she didn’t say a word. When my bedroom was empty, I took Buster across the street to feed him his dinner and lock him inside the kennel. We were both brokenhearted. I couldn’t remember ever being apart from him overnight. And he had never been locked inside a cage before.
“I’m sorry, Buster. I’m so sorry,” I said as I knelt and hugged him. “This is only temporary. I’ll find us a place to live—I promise.” I heard him whine as I hurried away and tried with all my heart not to hate Donna. A desert began to grow inside me as I drove across town to my lonely room in the guesthouse. Grief howled through my heart like a savage wind. I hadn’t felt this bad since Mama and our baby died. It was one thing to leave home voluntarily and quite another to be pushed out of the only home I’d ever known. I felt unloved. Unworthy of love.
“I kept your dinner warm in the oven, dear,” Mrs. Jenkins said when I arrived. “I hope you like chicken and dumplings.”
“Yes, thank you so much.” I had no appetite, but she’d gone to so much trouble. I ate at her kitchen table while she bustled around, washing dishes and scouring the sink with Dutch cleanser. I knew that the polite thing to do would be to make conversation but I felt too desolate to try.
“You’re welcome to use the parlor anytime, to read or listen to the radio, if you’d like,” she told me.
“Thank you. But I think I’ll just get settled in my room for the night.” I wondered if I would be able to sleep.
I set Mama’s crucifix on the bureau as I filled the empty drawers with my things. The little wooden cross brought back another memory of Jimmy, and for a moment, it was as if he had come to sit alongside me and console me in my grief. “It doesn’t matter what other people think of you, Peggety; the important truth is what God thinks. And you are His daughter. His beloved child.”
On the day that he’d spoken those words, I had taken the path from the road down to the river to be alone, upset by something that had happened at school. But Jimmy was already sitting on a rock beside the river, tossing pebbles into the water. I quickly turned back, thinking he probably wanted to be alone, too. But Buster bounded over to him with his crazy, three-legged gallop, and gave me away.
“Hey, don’t go,” Jimmy had called. “Come sit for a while.” I wiped my tears on my sleeve and tried to keep my head lowered so he wouldn’t see that I’d been crying. But Jimmy knew. He always knew. “What’s wrong, Peggety?” he asked after we’d sat there for a while. I was a freshman in high school at the time and Jimmy must have been home from college for the weekend. The war hadn’t started yet.
I swallowed a sob and told him how there was a sock hop at the school that night, and the other girls had been whispering and giggling all day about what they were going to wear and which boys they hoped to dance with. A bunch of these girls were also having a pajama party afterwards, and it sounded like so much fun—but of course they would never invite someone like me. “They make me feel so worthless. Like there’s something wrong with me. That I’m not like everyone else.”
We sat side by side for the next hour while Jimmy patiently explained that I had been made in God’s image. I had value and worth in His eyes. God loved me with a passionate love that made Him grieve when I was mistreated. He had stroked Buster’s head and said, “The fierce, protective love that you feel for Buster is only a fraction of the love God feels for you. You don’t care that Buster isn’t like other dogs, do you?”
