HeartStrings Page 8

  He loaded his cart, paid, and returned home, then started setting things up. It was the only thing in weeks that made him feel better. Partying, drinking, moping, even the thinking he'd done, didn't make things easier. He'd realized too many things about his life over the last few days. Too many things he'd never thought about, he'd just lived with.

  He'd seen the foster system’s file on him when he was ten. He'd learned the circumstances of his birth, and though none of it was about him, he couldn't change it. Though none of it was about him, it had dictated his life. Maybe it always would.

  But maybe it wouldn't.

  He was still awake at six forty-five when he threw on a jacket and headed out to his truck. When the animal shelter opened its doors, he was standing in the brisk wind, waiting, hands not in his pockets despite the morning chill. Because fuck them.

  "Can I help you?"

  "I'd like to adopt a dog." He frowned. Was that not the usual response here? He wasn't at the main metro center, he lived a bit out of town.

  "Oh good." The man perked up and Craig had to ask.

  "Is it unusual that people come here to adopt dogs?" Wasn't that what an animal shelter was for?

  "It’s not unusual, but sadly it’s not the bulk of our business." The man looked over his shoulder as he led Craig down a freshly painted cinderblock hallway. "We get way too many of drop-offs and doorstep creatures. A lot of the people who want to adopt go to private rescues. But we're here to help. What are you looking for?"

  "The right dog who needs a home."

  There was some back and forth as Craig explained his situation and the man from the shelter—the only one Craig saw on the job that morning—tried to assess what would make the best pet for a man who was sometimes on the road.

  "Is there someone available to watch the dog when you're gone? Or will the dog go with you? Would you prefer a cat?"

  The questions were far more than he'd expected and Craig took a moment to sort them out. He'd thought he would simply look at the dogs and then go home with one. This was far more than he'd bargained for.

  "No cats." He paused. "Can a nine-year-old look after a dog?" Maybe Daniel would like a job. Craig sure would have loved one at that age—and one with a dog. He surely could talk JD and Kelsey into letting the boy walk the eight blocks and watching the dog, couldn't he?

  "What's the boy like?" the man was tipping his head as though he'd asked the question before and Craig hadn't responded.

  "Oh, really good kid. Good parents. Mom would help, make certain he's on time. He'd play with the dog a lot, I'm sure. That's good, right?"

  "Have you ever had your own dog before?" The man looked again, checking Craig's face or his expression, assessing him more deeply than he was willing to be assessed.

  "No." He'd never had a dog at all. All those foster homes and the closest he'd gotten to a pet was the mouse he'd fed occasionally after finding it behind the washer and the stray cat he'd sometimes petted and given part of his baloney sandwich to on the way home from middle school. This was all new to him and the man was reading all that pretty clearly by the look on his face. The old anger rose again. He couldn't do things because he hadn't done them before. He couldn't have things because of the way he was born. He couldn't . . . "Is that a problem?"

  "No." This time the smile was genuine. "Honestly, we just attended a class on the fact that we aren't adopting out dogs fast enough. That we’ve maybe missed out on good families for our animals because they haven't had one before, or because they already have a dog."

  Craig looked at the paper he was filling out. At the bottom were a handful of questions just like the man was saying.

  "We just use those to help determine what kind of dog you should get, that's all."

  "I don't get to pick?" Craig frowned again. Really, he'd thought he'd walk in, look around and say "that one." He'd been here thirty minutes already and he barely had the preliminary paperwork filled out.

  "Yes, you get to pick. I'm just going to try to be helpful, that's all." Then his expression turned dark. "And I have to assess whether you're training fighting dogs or picking out bait dogs."

  "What!?" Craig felt his whole body pull back.

  "It's a problem around here. People come pick out puppies, then sell them to the fighting rings." Clearly, from the expression on his face, the man wasn't here for the paycheck and he wasn't even here to give Craig the run-around. For the first time it was obvious that the worker had one priority: the animals.

  Something pushed inside his chest.

  These abandoned dogs and cats had something more than the kids in the L.A. system had. They had someone fighting for them. Craig pushed back, ignoring the pressure inside him. He was getting ready to open his mouth when the man asked, "Do you want to see the dogs?"

  "Yes." Now he was getting somewhere.

  The kennels were noisy, the cinderblock walls echoing the sounds, making it louder and sadder. Craig's entrance set off a cacophony of barking that threatened to shatter his ears. Looking at the shelter worker, who didn't even flinch, he decided this must be pretty normal.

  He was looking at the slightly older dogs, the ones who hadn't been adopted yet. Craig didn't have to look very far to find his motives there, so he didn't. A bell sounded loud enough to be clear over the barking and it set off another round.

  "I have to go check that. Don't put your fingers through the cages. I'll be back." The man disappeared around a corner in a different direction from where they came in and Craig was left with more dogs than should ever be in one place barking at him from behind chain link. He walked the aisle and tried to make a decision.

  Five minutes later the man came back. "I'm sorry. That was a drop-off. Or an abandonment, however you want to call it. Twelve puppies. At least he drove them here."

  The man looked both irritated and relieved. Craig frowned. "I don't understand."

  "They're pit mixes. The man was from Metro Nashville, and like a lot of other big cities, Metro puts down pit bulls as soon as they come in."

  "Even the puppies!?" Craig was appalled.

  There was a grim nod. "Even the puppies. They don't get adopted out, nothing. Just euthanized."

  "Why?"

  "The breed has an undeserved bad rep. And there is a lot of dog fighting. But I think it just perpetuates the problem to put the dogs down. They're actually really sweet."

  "Pit bulls?" Craig frowned again. The only one he'd ever known was down the street from foster home number ten, and it had barked and yanked his chain and generally scared the crap out of a small Craig as he walked to school each morning.

  "Exactly!" Said the man as he led Craig down the hall and turned the corner to another full set of kennels Craig hadn't realized were there. So many dogs.

  "See these two?" The man pointed to two brown and black fuzzballs who looked at his pointing finger and sauntered over. "Seven weeks old, ready to go home. Pit/Rottweiler mixes. There were three of them and one got adopted."

  "Only three?" Sounded like a small litter to him, but what did he know? He was thinking he should have kept his mouth shut when the man responded.

  "Yeah, there were more but they didn't make it. They were dumped on the side of the freeway, most of the puppies and the mother were killed."

  And that was it. Craig only looked down to see the two now-round puppies toddling toward him. Their black and brown coats gleaming despite some of the dust they'd rolled in at the back of their cage. On his knees with his fingers between the chain links before he even realized what he was doing, Craig found himself getting his fingers licked and even gnawed on just a little. One of the puppies made a plasticky noise in the back of his throat as he tried to get through the fencing and out to Craig.

  He sat like that, leaning on his heels, his hands pressed through the links to try to scratch behind ears or feel soft fur.

  "Hold on. I have to go settle the dogs I just checked in."

  But instead of leaving Craig alone, the man ope
ned the gate, expertly scooped a puppy under the belly in each hand then walked down the hall as they hung squirming from his grip.

  "Open the door for me?"

  Craig obediently turned the knob on the unmarked door revealing a small square room with several large square cushions on the floor.

  "Sit." The man said, gesturing with a small dog now hanging limp in his grip.

  Craig wondered if he was going to get told to “stay.” But he lowered himself to one of the cushions and waited to see what would happen. It went like he expected, with the man setting the two puppies into Craig's lap and grinning. Next he turned and went out the door. Right before he closed it he said, "I'll be back."

  Then Craig was alone in the tiny box of a room with two squirming puppies who were trying to lick his chin and crawl on him like a jungle gym.

  It must have been ten minutes or so later that the man came back and opened the door unexpectedly to find Craig laid out on the floor. Puppies scampered over him like an obstacle course, his own laughter barely contained.

  "So you'll take one of them?" The man asked, his grin a bit knowing but Craig didn't care. He'd been suckered, but he wasn't upset about it.

  "Both."

  Chapter 14

  Craig woke to the sound of small, pitiful whines.

  Despite the very early morning trip to the store, he hadn't been ready.

  It had taken another hour to get out of the shelter, to sign the paperwork and finish his background check. He then waited while a vet in the back did a preliminary checkup for the two little fuzzballs without names but with energy to spare. In a fit of good feeling, Craig asked about making a donation and drastically over-paid the double adoption fee.

  He'd been sent to a pet store nearby, which was open now because things took so long at the shelter. The two small dogs sauntered in the door he opened for them, tugging at the leashes looped around startlingly tiny necks. He'd been told they'd likely each top sixty pounds before they were done growing.

  Though he'd gotten food and a bed at four a.m., the bed was too big and the food was made for an older dog. A pair of very nice teenagers in smocks and pet store name tags swarmed the puppies as they entered. The young workers’ expressions changing from put-out at having to be up early on a Saturday morning to being completely enamored with his two tiny dogs.

  Despite being young, the kids knew far more than he did. They bombarded him with questions, then with sales, probably racking up a huge commission as they went. They even helped him load the car, the tiny no-name dogs thanking the kids with yips and licks.

  He'd intended to get a dog. He'd gotten food and a dog bed the night before, holding off on a collar because he didn't know the size. Now he had two puppies—unwanted because of their breed. He had food bowls and a mat for the food bowls. He had toys and a bin for the toys. Toys that squeaked, toys that crackled, toys that held hidden treats. He had a dog crate and book about training the dogs for the crate. He had collars and harnesses and an understanding that he'd probably have to install a dog door soon.

  He'd been saving to pay off his house. While the other band members had spent some of their future money, he hadn't. JD bought his wife a classic Ford Mustang, and TJ bought himself a flashy new car. They'd all gotten houses, but Craig's was the least expensive, the least showy, the smallest, and the least mortgaged.

  Wilder was growing in fame, and they'd hit the big time, but the fame came faster than the money, and Craig lived with the knowledge that shooting stars sometimes burned out. He didn't want to be working mall security as he got older. He'd scraped his savings. He was close to paying off the relatively small, cheap house.

  But that morning he'd blown a small stash of his savings. On a whim. He knew was going to continue to spend as he took the dogs to the vet, repeatedly, as he shored up the fence so they didn't get out as they got older. He was going to go nearly broke feeding them, he'd surmised after watching them scarf down the first bowls of puppy food he'd placed in front of them. They had terrible table manners, too.

  Eventually, they'd eaten, made messes in the backyard while he waited in the warming air, and he'd put them in their crate, as the book told him to do. They whined for a moment then settled into a tiny puppy ball together. Pulling a pillow from the secondhand couch he called his own, he'd curled up on the floor to watch them, only to find out he'd fallen asleep himself.

  Metallic noises indicated tiny paws were raking at the crate and he blinked himself awake, remembering what he'd done.

  The clock on the wall suggested they'd all managed four hours of sleep. Though the puppies may have slept through the night before, Craig hadn't. He'd been awake, full of his crazy get-a-dog scheme, and now it was staring him in the face. Four deep brown eyes watched him with curiosity.

  He'd done it; he was stuck with his decision. But he wouldn't go back. He didn't believe in returning animals to the shelter because things didn't work out. While he might not sleep until the dogs were older, it was nothing worse than what he'd been through before. This time for a much better cause. Lifting the latch, he watched as the two tumbled out, unconcerned with any etiquette or hurting themselves or each other.

  He stretched himself up, barely managing to catch the scampering critters and click huge leash clips onto tiny collars. Then he led the puppies out the back door before they could start sniffing around inside the house. Four hours with no accidents was making him happy. After two tiny puddles were made, he led the now quarreling pair back inside and looked again at the clock.

  "Oh shit."

  He must have said it out loud, because two small sets of eyes looked up at them, and one planted his—her?—butt on the ground as though on command. He was about to be late for practice.

  The garage yielded a cardboard box that he thought was big enough to hold puppies. The bathroom gave up an old towel, not that he had any new ones. Making them comfortable and throwing in a few toys, he stashed the box in the passenger seat and made it halfway to practice before he nearly died.

  When the trio walked in the door of the studio he was greeted with a variety of welcomes.

  "Oh wow. Who are they?" from TJ, who immediately leaned down and started rubbing bellies.

  "Don't let Olivia see them. She'll squeal and Bridget will get her one." From Alex.

  "Man, you look white as a sheet." It made sense that JD was the only one actually paying attention to him despite the adorable distractions he'd brought in.

  Craig gathered his breath, seeing that the puppies were safe for the moment. "I didn't know they could get out of the box, and I didn't know they could fit under the brake pedal." He was still breathing heavy. "I couldn't get him out of there, and I couldn't stop the car without squishing him! Her? I don't know which one."

  JD only nodded as though Craig's brush with near-certain death was nothing of real importance.

  His next words made it more clear. "You're a parent now. Your kids are fuzzy and will grow a lot faster than mine and Alex's, but welcome to the club."

  Craig proceeded to look at his guitarist and sometime co-writer as though JD was batshit crazy. Then he tried to get to work.

  The puppies interrupted everything. Craig worried that he'd ruined practice. Then he worried that the dogs would chew a cord and electrocute themselves. He didn't even know where the nearest vet was. Alex and JD exchanged knowing smirks while Craig scrambled.

  He took TJ and the guys through a few chord changes he'd decided to add to Sand. They listened to a new one JD had that was only an outline. Then one of the producers came in and asked them to both sell a song to an upcoming band who wanted to cover one of their non-singles from the first album and to do a quick run of a song the company had purchased and wanted to know if they wanted to record it. By the time they finished the four-hour set, Craig was exhausted again. And he wasn't done.

  His first stop was another pet store, this one on the way to the vet he'd looked up. Three times on the drive there, he pulled over and picked
up one puppy or another—jeez he was going to have to learn to tell them apart!—and scooped them into the small backseat of the truck. Each time he told them "No!" using his best harsh voice, but it was difficult. They were adorable and weren't trying to be mean. They just wanted to get into the front seat with him. He wasn't sure his heart could take the beating.

  He purchased car harnesses and strapped them into the backseat, increasing the volume on their little wails and howls. A carrier crate went into the truck bed and it only took ten minutes to get them both inside at the same time to go into the vet's office and wait for about thirty minutes because he didn't have an appointment.

  He paid for two initial check-ups to find out that the shelter had indeed taken very good care of them and no one appeared to have any congenital problems. Then Craig realized it wasn't a girl who was slipping through his fingers like sand, it was his money. But he couldn't—wouldn't—change it.

  Back in the car, with everyone harnessed in, Craig climbed into the driver's seat, realizing he was keeping up a constant chatter to the dogs, who couldn't really respond. No one climbed into his lap and he sat with the key in the ignition and his heart in his throat.

  Why had he done this?

  It had been a whim. But the kid who'd been shuffled from house to house and had never belonged to anyone really wasn't able to turn a puppy away when it wanted his lap, his attention, his time. He didn't want to tell them no, and he was suddenly petrified that something would happen to these little dogs he'd had for less than twenty-four hours. What would he do? How would he handle it?

  He wouldn't. That's what.

  So he had to keep them safe. That was the only option. Though the vet had chided him for being too soft—which Craig wondered how that was possible since they were puppies—he fought the urge to let them out of the harnesses. Other people got dogs and left them in the yard. They didn't get vet check-ups or worry like this. But some switch had been flipped and he'd become both fierce and weak.