Free Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury Page B

were born too early, their ears nothing but furry tabs. They looked more like rats than dogs. “Is there something wrong with them?”
    “Nah,” Grampa said. “They born blind … and deaf … but pretty soon eye come right, and ear.”
    “Got to build a fence, or something,” I said. “To protect them.”
    Grampa studied Lucky’s puppies a moment, his face soft and hard at the same time. He wasn’t very interested in animals as pets, but he was soft on any kind of babies. He even felt like that for baby chicks, even when he knew they would soon grow to be as cranky as he was.
    Grampa and I watched the puppies fumble around Lucky’s belly, trying to drink. Then we crawled out from under the house. The sky had changed, just barely, going from black to purple. Grampa’s rooster started to crow.
    Mama must have heard Lucky’s barking too. The light from the kitchen window spilled out over the grass. The cool scent of ginger from the jungle filled the air as Grampa and I clomped up the wooden steps.
    “Lucky had puppies,” I told Mama. The screen door slapped behind me and Mama scowled. She hated loud noises like that. “Sorry,” I said.
    Kimi was sitting at the kitchen table. “I want to see,” she said.
    “Later,” Mama said. “Too dark now.”
    “You got any extra chicken wire?” I asked Grampa. “I need to make a fence.”
    “No need fence,” he said. “No need dogs, confonnit. Take ’um on the boat … drown ’um.”
    I turned to Mama, and she raised her eyebrows. “Who can pay to feed dogs?”
    “I can ask the Wilsons for scraps, or the Davises.… I can get it.…”
    Mama studied me, considering it. “If you can feed ’um, you can keep ’um. But when they get little bit more old, you can only keep one. Give away the rest.”
    “Okay, okay.”
    “Who going drown them, anyway?” Mama said. “Not you. Not me, for goodness sakes. And not that poor old man sitting there looking mean.”
    Grampa humphed, then got up to go light some incense at the
butsudan
. And probably to consult Grandma about what should be done about Lucky’s puppies.
    When I came home from school later that day, I hurried under the house and found a perfectly squared chicken-wire fence around Lucky and her pups. It even had a gate to let Lucky in and out.
    “Grampa,” I said, when I found him and Kimi out by the chickens. “Who built that fence? Did
you
do that?”
    “Was my dogs, I drown ’um, you can bet.”
    I smiled. He was such a bad liar. “Thanks, Grampa.”
    “Watch out the damn mongoose,” he said, pushing past me, bumping my arm.
    •   •   •
    Billy came over later and stayed under our house practically all afternoon looking at Lucky’s pups. He went home and came back after dark to look some more.
    “That one is Red,” he finally said, touching a pale tan one with a white saddle on it. Lucky got nervous and growled a little. Billy moved his hand away and Lucky looked up at him with forgiving eyes. The puppy twitched in its sleep, the light from the lantern warm and yellow.
    “How come that one?”
    “It’s the smallest.”
    “Red Ruffing isn’t small.”
    “Yeah, but Red Ruffing would pick the small one if he was picking.… How could he help it? The small one needs you the most.”
    I shrugged. “Okay, it’s yours.”
    “What is it, anyway?” Billy asked. “Boy or girl?”
    “I don’t know. Take a look under its tail and see.”
    “What do you look for?” Billy said.
    “How should I know? Just look and see what you can see.”
    Billy picked up the puppy and lifted the tail. Then he looked under the tails of the rest of the pups. “They all look the same.”
    “All girls? Or boys?”
    “I don’t know,” Billy said.
    “Can’t you tell a boy from a girl?”
    “You try, then.”
    So I studied them carefully. Billy was right. “Well, anyway,” I said, “it’s your dog. Boy or girl.”
    We finally got back out from under the house. Billy had to get home. I walked