Free The Poet's Dog by Patricia MacLachlan Page B

us,” he said.
    â€œChildren tell tiny truths,” Sylvan told me once. “Poets try to understand them.”
    It was Flora who told tiny truths. It was Nickel who found them hard to hear. Hedidn’t want to think of his mother leaving them for a long time in a fierce storm.
    A log crackled and sent sparks out past the stone hearth. Nickel swept them back.
    It was the way it used to be.
    Flora stared at me. Somehow I knew what she was thinking. It would be Flora who would ask the question.
    â€œSo where is he?” she asked. “Sylvan?”
    Her voice was soft. The question was not unkind. But I couldn’t answer. I walked to the window and looked out.
    Flora didn’t follow me.

CHAPTER THREE
The Way It Used to Be
    W e found cans of food: Sylvan’s favorite, baked beans with molasses, and chicken soup, and crackers. No milk.
    â€œI don’t like milk, anyway,” said Flora.
    The wind picked up suddenly, and the cracking and falling of tree limbs shookthe cabin. The lights flickered, and we found an oil lamp in case the power went out.
    â€œYou can sleep in Sylvan’s bed,” I said.
    â€œI want to sleep with you in front of the fire,” said Nickel.
    â€œMe, too,” said Flora.
    We gathered pillows and blankets and Sylvan’s old green sleeping bag.
    The wind grew stronger. A large thump of a big tree limb fell outside.
    The lights went off, then on, then off again.
    I lay on the red rug.
    Flora slept right away.
    After a while Nickel turned and put hisarm around me.
    The way it used to be.
    In the night I got up once to push up the door lever with my nose and go outside into the wind.
    Nickel raised his head.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    His voice sounded frightened.
    â€œI’m going to pee,” I said.
    I heard Flora’s sleepy, comforting voice in the dark.
    â€œHe’s a dog,” Flora said softly.
    â€œOh right,” said Nickel. “I keep forgetting that.”
    I came back to my red rug next to Nickel.
    His arm went around me again.
    â€œSometimes I forget, too,” I said to Nickel.

CHAPTER FOUR
Gray Cat Gone Away
    I n the morning the wind still howled. The snow was halfway up the windows on either side of the door, and still falling hard.
    When I opened the door to go outside, the snow was over my head. I couldn’t get through.
    Nickel had leaned the snow shovel inside the night before, and he shoveled a path through the drifts for me. I leaped through the snow.
    Back inside I shook the snow off on the rug by the door.
    â€œThank you, Nickel,” I said.
    His hair was plastered to his head. He looked the same way he had when I’d first found him.
    Flora still slept by the fire.
    â€œI found the weather box and listened,” he said. “The storm will last for days. No one is allowed on the roads. No phone service. No cell phone service working either.”
    â€œThe power went on and off all night,”I said. “We only lost power for hours once that I remember, though.”
    It is a windy afternoon storm. Sylvan’s class of poets sit in a group. There is a fire in the fireplace. I lie on the red rug, listening. The students who want to be poets are eager and fresh, like washed apples. Sylvan and I are the only ones with gray, grizzled hair.
    â€œThey know so little about life,” Sylvan whispers to me as he puts out plates of cookies and seltzer bottles.
    â€œMaybe they just don’t know what they know,” I say, making Sylvan smile.
    They all pat me. Students are always kind to their teachers’ pets Sylvan has told me.
    One young man reads a poem about a farmer walking his animal to town.
    I sit up. It sounds like Ox-Cart Man . Sylvan nods when he’s done reading.
    â€œWhat do you think, Teddy?” he asks.
    The students laugh.
    â€œShallow and derivative,” I say before I realize that I’m talking.
    No one but Sylvan hears me, of course.
    â€œIt has been