Free Just a Dog by Gerard Michael Bauer Page A

the toilet if he wanted to and to see if maybe he would go back to the laundry. He wouldn’t. Every time Dad started to go upstairs Mister Mosely tried to follow him. That made Dad a bit cross and he called Moe a ‘stubborn old coot’, but he carried him all the way back up to the porch just the same.
    That night Mum let me sit outside with Mister Mosely way past the time I usually went to bed. Moe didn’t look as big and strong as he used to. I guess I was getting bigger too. It was funny thinking how I could ride on his back when I was little and how he would drag me along on my cardboard sled. But he was still the same old Moe.I put my finger on the black tear spot under his eye and I traced around the wonky heart shape on his chest, the one that Mum said was there because Moe’s heart was too big to all fit on the inside.
    I stayed up so late I fell asleep on Mister Mosely and Mum had to wake me up to go to bed. I remember how I patted Moe and gave him a bit of a hug and how his big tail thumped a couple of times on the floor. I left him there waiting on the porch just like always.
    Only I found out it wasn’t any of us that Mister Mosely was waiting for this time.

25 Mister Mosely – Just a Dog
    When I woke up the next day the first thing I did was check on Mister Mosely. But the porch was empty. Then I saw Mum and Dad down in the backyard. Mum had her dressing gown on. Dad was beside her. Something was wrapped in a sheet on the ground between them.
    As soon as I got downstairs Mum came over and hugged me. She told me Mister Mosely had died during the night, only she said he’d ‘passed away’. She said she knew it was sad, but the good thing was, Moe wasn’t in pain any more. She said it was ‘for the best’. I didn’t believe her. I wanted to see Mister Mosely for myself, so Dad pulled back the sheet a bit. It looked like Moe was justasleep. But when I patted him he felt cold and he didn’t move.
    I didn’t want to cry, I really didn’t, but my eyes started stinging and something was sticking in my throat. I tried to think about those things Mum said. About how Mister Mosely wasn’t hurting any more and how it was sad but it was for the best. But I kept hoping none of it was true. I kept hoping that Mister Mosely was just trying to fool me like how I tried to fool him all those times when I came home from school and he was waiting for me. I wanted him to lift up his head and open his big eyes and start thumping his tail on the grass a million miles an hour the way he always did.
    Then Mum knelt down beside me and her face came right up close to mine. I could see her eyes were wet and she kept telling me how it was ‘all right’ and how Mister Mosely had a good life and how it was okay to feel sad, and I kept nodding and nodding and nodding because I knew it was all true, but mainly because I wanted her to stop saying those kinds of things so I could think about something else and about not crying.
    But I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t swallowand when I tried to, it sounded like I was choking and then I was making those noises little kids do when they cry and I tried even harder to stop but it just made it worse. Then Dad said, ‘All right, come on, that’s enough. It’s not the end of the world,’ and he was right too, but Mum looked all angry at him and told him to leave me alone and that I could cry if I wanted to cry and Dad said I wasn’t a baby any more, which I wasn’t either. I really wasn’t.
    I didn’t want Mum and Dad to fight. I didn’t want them to get angry with each other the way they did that time with Uncle Gavin when Mister Mosely changed into something scary. So I tried to tell them that I was all right, that I wasn’t a baby, that I knew Moe had to die. But I couldn’t breathe properly and I couldn’t make any words come out, only stupid choking hiccough noises