Free The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter Page B

security and the light of settled domesticity. It glowed in a way to break your heart. So after I had walked around the house twice, my spirit sinking, I saw Tom, my nephew, looking out the kitchen window quizzically at me. His scrubbed, freckled face appeared to float above a pot of dusty African violets on the sill. When he saw me, he smiled and waved. His hands had smears of dried chocolate pudding on them. I pointed at the back door. He ran back to let me in.
    In the mudroom, he gave me a hug, God bless him.
    “Hi, Uncle Bradley,” he said. “What’re you doing here? Did they invite you?”
    “Is your mother around?” I asked. I heard the sound of the TV set in the living room.
    “Naw, she’s upstairs, taking a nap.” He pointed at the mudroom ceiling. “I’ve been watching Power Rangers. Wanna see it? Louie’s over at a friend’s house.”
    “Okay.” I breathed out. Things were going my way. “Where’s Bradley?”
    “He’s —” And just then the dog padded into the room, as if by thought command. When he saw me, he wuffed once, and leaped up and put his front paws on my shoulders and began licking me on the face. It was just demonstrably what I needed. Passionate dog kisses were better than none at all, and were in fact more sincere than quite a few of the human variety I had been getting lately. Dogs don’t kiss you in public just for the sake of appearances. “ There he is,” Tom said, with a child’s delight in noting the obvious.
    I thought for a moment. I would have to explain a delicate matter to my nephew, whom I loved. And I decided that I would have to tell him the truth. I was on a rash mission, but I was probably not a despicable person, and I was not about to lie to a child, at least one who was my relative.
    “Tom,” I said, “I have to have Bradley back.” I explained how Kathryn and I had found him in the Humane Society, how she had left me sad and alone, how she and I were getting a divorce, how I was feeling so awful that I couldn’t sleep at night, and that Bradley had always been my dog, because I had found him in the Humane Society, and that he had been boarding up here at Five Oaks for a few weeks, but now, I really really really needed to have him back.
    “But he’s our dog now!” Tom said tearfully, and I felt my chance slipping away.
    “You can get another dog,” I said.
    “Where?”
    “They have places,” I said, “right here in Five Oaks, Humane Society places where they have every kind of dog, especially sad homeless dogs. They’re in prison there. They cry all night. They want homes.”
    “But they’ll be expensive!” he said. “We caaaaan’t do that!”
    “Not that expensive.”
    “Oh, yes, I know they will be.”
    I took out my wallet and opened it. I showed him the money inside. “How expensive do you think another dog would be?” I took out a five-dollar bill. “Five dollars, you think?” I put it into his hand.
    He gave me a measuring look. “More than that.”
    I took out a ten-dollar bill. “Fifteen dollars?”
    “That says ten on it.”
    “But you already have a five. Five and ten is fifteen.”
    “Oh. No, more than that, I would just betcha.”
    I took out a twenty from my wallet and pressed it into his little child’s palm. “This much?” I asked. In the background I heard the Power Rangers killing something that sounded like a giant worm equipped with buzzers. “Think this is enough?” I wouldn’t do any more arithmetic to confuse him.
    “Maybe a little more.”
    I took out another five. “How about this?” He grabbed at it. “A five, and a ten, and a twenty, and another five. You could certainly buy a dog for that.”
    “Not as good a dog as Bradley,” he said.
    “Oh, better, Tommy, much better. Besides, that’s all the money I have. They have golden dogs, dogs who wait for you while you’re at school, and dogs that fetch the paper, and dogs that sleep with you at night and watch television with you, any show you