Free Thank You for All Things by Sandra Kring Page A

hell we’re going to live while they gut our building.”
    “I know. But just a couple of days?”
    Mom doesn’t answer, but she gets up and I back out of the doorway to let them inside. “I’ll take care of yourgrandpa, children, but will you please go untie his dog from the clothesline and bring him in? His dishes too.”
    Milo stares after Oma as though she’s asked him to give up his studies to trim her hair or stitch a seam in her workout sweats. I grab his arm and tug him out the door.
    “I like it here, don’t you?” I ask Milo as we walk across the lawn.
    Milo has his pencil tucked behind his ear like a geek. “I don’t know,” he says.
    The dog hops on his back paws as we near, his tongue flapping. I pick up the dented metal dish that is tipped upside down, and Milo picks up the one that is crusty inside with bits of dried food. “Poor thing,” I say. “Aunt Jeana prechews her dog’s food but lets Grandpa’s dog’s dishes go empty.”
    I reach out to pet the dog and he leaps up, his toenails digging into my stomach. “Down!” I snap, and he instantly crouches to lie flat-bellied against the ground. His tongue and tail continue to wag. “Ouch, that hurt!” I tell him, rubbing my still-stinging stomach.
    Milo’s never petted a dog before. He reaches out, his hand flat, patting rhythmically on the top of the dog’s head, bouncing it as if it’s a basketball (not that he’d know how to handle one of those either). The dog tilts his head and slobbers Milo’s wrist with his tongue, getting a rare laugh in return.
    Milo reaches down to unfasten the chain at the dog’s collar, and as he does, a tin medallion in the shape of a bone dangling from his collar flutters against his hand. “Hey! It says
Feynman
and the address of this house.”
    “Must be his name,” I say, stating the obvious.
    Milo’s mouth is gaping, like he’s gone dumb.
    The second the dog’s loose, he starts running in circles around the yard, going so fast that you can hear his feet thumping the ground. “Come here, Feynman!” Milo shouts, and the dog stops, looks at us, then grabs a small branch from the grass and runs it back to us, dropping it at Milo’s feet.
    “He wants you to throw it,” I say.
    “Why?”
    “So he can fetch it, idiot. It’s what dogs do.”
    The minute Milo cocks his arm back, Feynman takes off at a good clip. He’s halfway across the yard before he realizes that the stick isn’t going that far. Feynman watches the branch go up in a tight arc and drop a mere fourteen or fifteen yards from Milo, then he comes back to fetch it. He drops it at Milo’s feet again, and Milo laughs. “I think he likes you,” I say, and I try hard to keep the jealousy I’m feeling out of my voice—not that Milo would have noticed even if I hadn’t.
    I’ve always wanted a dog. Not a dog like Aunt Jeana’s—the kind that yip nonstop and feel like dried-out buffalo wings to the touch—but a dog like Feynman, big and cuddly. And not so I could toss sticks to him but so that I could talk to him like a friend. A man down the street back home has a dog, a beagle. He lets me pet it when he comes past the stoop, and he is always whispering to it, and the dog’s eyes work like sponges, soaking up everything as though he understands. A dog would be the best listener, since they can’t repeat one single word said to them. It just figures then that, as much as I’d like a dog like Feynman to tell my secrets to, the dog likes Milo best.
    Milo runs toward the house, and Feynman tears after him—no doubt because he thinks Milo’s legs are two skinnysticks worth chasing—and beats him up the steps easily, then wags his butt until Milo opens the door. I pick up the empty dishes and take them inside.
    We stand watching Feynman as he first laps his water, then buries his muzzle in the food dish, saliva dripping as he crunches furiously. Oma enters the kitchen and drapes her arm around me as she watches Milo crouch down