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“If you made me happy, they wouldn’t care if you were the Elephant Man.”
“It sounds like you had good friends.”
Carly nodded and smiled, even though she felt tears sting her eyes. “I was picky about that, too. I miss them. I’ll always miss them. Did you have a lot of friends?”
“No, not really. I stayed in touch with a few guys from The Unit, but I was mostly a loner.”
That made sense. With the way he’d been uprooted so often as a child, Justin would have learned early not to get attached. “That sounds lonely.”
“Not really. You can be alone without being lonely; just the same as you can be lonely in a crowded room.”
Carly wanted to put her arms around him. “You’ll never be lonely again. I promise.”
His eyes were wary. “Carly, you can’t promise something like that. You don’t know what the future holds for us.”
“I know I like you, Justin. I don’t see why we couldn’t go on being friends even if we decided a relationship wasn’t what we wanted anymore.”
Justin shook his head. “No, Carly, I don’t think I could do that. I could let you go, if that’s what you wanted, but I couldn’t stay around and watch you with someone else.”
Carly had no idea how to answer that. Fortunately, Sam provided a distraction when a rabbit made a foolish dash across the road in front of them. With a joyous wag of his tail, he bolted off in chase. He returned, prancing, with a dead rabbit hanging from his jaws.
“I guess that’s our signal to break for lunch,” said Justin.
They pulled their bikes over to the side of the road. “I’ll go check Shadowfax’s hooves,” Carly said hastily as he took the rabbit from Sam. Shadowfax had lost one of her shoes, and Justin had removed the rest of them. Shadowfax walked mostly on the grass anyway, looking for yummy plants to snack on along the way. So far, she didn’t seem to be bothered by her shoeless state, but Carly checked her hooves every time they stopped, just to be sure.
“Not so fast, honey. It’s time you learned this.”
“Ugh. Do I have to?”
“Yes. It looks like Sam will keep you fed if something happens to me, but you need to know how to clean game so you can eat it.”
He took the knife from his belt and made a slit down the center of the rabbit’s torso. Carly gulped. She listened as he explained how to remove the organs without puncturing them and showed her how to skin the animal. He rinsed the body in clean water and then hooked its limbs together so it would hang over a spit. Carly looked over at the rabbit’s severed head. Its eyes were partially open and seemed to stare at her.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said. Sam trotted up and ate the organs in one gulp. He took the head with him and laid down for a satisfying chew. She blanched. “Should we let him have that?”
Justin washed his bloody hands with foaming antibacterial soap before rinsing them with bottled water. “He’s a wolf, Carly. It’s what he’d be eating in the wild. Wolves get most of their vegetation from the stomachs of the animals they eat.”
“Yeah, but what if he gets worms or something?” They both gathered branches and bits of wood from the patch of trees beside the road, putting together the beginnings of a fire.
“I’ll see if I can find some medications for him if we pass a veterinarian’s office or a pet store.”
Carly had never had a dog. Her mother was allergic, and when she’d been out on her own, her hours were irregular and she couldn’t have taken care of a pet. “Do you remember all the stuff he’ll need from back when you had your dog?”
“I think so.” Justin pulled the Zippo from his pocket and held it steady until the tinder caught.
“What kind of dog did you have?”
“A mutt.” Justin smiled at the memory, though the smile was tinged with sadness. “He was a stray I found in Darfur. I named him Winston.” At her questioning gaze, he shrugged. “It seemed to fit. He just looked like a ‘Winston’ to me. Great dog, not terribly bright, but very affectionate. He helped me through some tough times because I could talk to him the way I couldn’t talk to a human. And he’d sit there with this interested look on his face—like he’d been a shrink in a former life.”
“What happened to him?”
“Old age. He was probably already around six or seven when I found him, and he’d had a rough life from what the vet could determine. He got to the point where he didn’t want to get up off his dog bed anymore, and I knew it was time.”
“Oh, Justin, I’m sorry.”
“It’s part of having a pet, honey. We try to give them long and happy lives, but we also have the responsibility of easing their way when we know their lives aren’t healthy and happy any longer.”
Carly couldn’t bear to think of Sam as too old and miserable to get out of his bed. Like everyone who’s ever loved a pet, she hoped Sam would be healthy and vibrant up to his final day, when he would pass in his sleep.
