Free The Dogs of Winter by Bobbie Pyron

under his hand. “Let me go!”
    He shook me harder.
    A low growl came from behind the doorman and then another. Smoke and Lucky stepped beside me. They pulled their lips back. Their long teeth gleamed in the winter sun. Smoke crouched as if to spring.
    â€œWhat the hell is this?” the doorman said, his eyes darting like rats from Smoke to Lucky. Lucky growled louder and stepped closer to the doorman.
    The doorman dropped his hands.
    I sprinted as fast as I could away from the angry doorman and his white gloves.
    â€œDon’t you ever come back here again,” the doorman called as we ran and ran and ran.
    Finally, we stopped on the other side of the great city square. My feet and my head and my stomach hurt, but I did not care. I held more money in my hand than I had ever seen in my life.
    â€œLook,” I said to Smoke and Lucky. “We can eat like kings! We can eat like kings and queens for the rest of the winter! I can buy shoes!” I tossed the rubles up in the air andlet them fall about me like snow. I laughed and laughed. Lucky yipped and nipped my sleeve. I chased him around the stone benches and statues. We rolled in the rubles. “I am a small, pathetic boy,” I said, laughing. Lucky squirmed on his back in the snow, waving his legs in the air.
    Smoke let out a low, gruff bark.
    I sat up and gathered the rubles off the ground. “Okay, okay,” I said.
    I soon discovered there were no carts with men who sold potatoes and sausages and sandwiches in the great town square with the red bricks and gold domes. A few stalls lined the low brick wall just outside the train station doors. There I could buy only bread. The other stalls sold cigarettes and magazines and cheap wooden dolls. I went to the bread stall and bought thick black bread.
    I had to visit the shops for anything else, and they were very expensive. One shop had strings of cooked sausages hanging in the window and jars of pickled eggs and bins of potatoes and cabbages. But I had no way to cook potatoes and cabbages.
    I counted on my fingers: Little Mother, Smoke, Lucky, Rip, and Grandmother. And me.
    â€œHow much for six sausages?” I asked the man behind the counter.
    â€œTwenty-five rubles,” he said.
    I counted my money. My heart sank. “I don’t have enough for six sausages,” I said.
    He took my money. He wrapped five sausages and two pickled eggs in brown paper.
    All my money was gone. There would be no new shoes today.
    That afternoon, it was black bread and pickled eggs for me and sausages for the dogs. Lucky and Smoke had left me as soon as the Glass House was within sight. I gave two sausages to Little Mother and one each to Rip and Grandmother. I put the remaining sausage away for Lucky and Smoke.
    I broke off pieces of black bread and fed it to the dogs.
    â€œI thought I had all the money in the world today.” I sighed.
    Grandmother licked my fingers in thanks. Then she curled up with a groan.
    â€œBut the food in shops costs so very much. We need more food and I need shoes.” A cold wind blew against the Glass House. A gap between the ground and the bottom of the Glass House welcomed the cold. Little Mother and Grandmother shivered.
    â€œSoon it will be much colder than this,” I said. I remembered my mother stuffing old newspapers and rags around our leaky window in the bedroom.
    â€œLet’s see what we can find,” I said to Rip.
    We found nothing but wet, crumpled newspapers and an old towel in the Glass House. The towel I stuffed in the gap, but it was not enough.
    â€œLet’s check that shed.”
    Rip followed me through the brambles and over the crumbling brick wall. The shed brooded in the weak afternoon light. It looked dark and like the kind of place a troll or an evil witch might live. I licked my lips. “I don’t know if we should go in there, Rip.”
    But Rip was already pushing his way through the sagging door, his stub of a