The Dog That Looked Like Blinker

ByBEN HUR LAMPMAN

HIM and her wasn’t on speaking terms that time, neither, on account of they had been a-jowering and a-jawing at one another after supper. He taken a hand at drying the dishes, whilst she washed them, like always—but nary a word between them. A man disremembers what them two had been fussing about — they was at it the whole eternal time — but anyways it was just after their old dog, Blinker, took mighty sick and crawled under the house, and didn’t budge till the old man drug him out with the rake. Him and her taken the old flog, gray as a badger and cold as a stone, and they buried him back of the hen house under the honeysuckle — both of them crying — and they sang a hymn there together.

But whatever ’twas got them edgeways again, there the two old fools was, him on one side of the kitchen, his chair tilted, sitting smoking; her at the table on t’other side, clicking her knitting needles. Like I told you before, she always knit his socks for him. And every once in a while she would sniff, kind of, and then the old man he would snort like and bite hard at his pipestem. The old clock with the flowers on the glass kept swinging and ticking, anti now and then bonging, and it was getting on toward their bedtime. Him and her was like that many the evening.

The entire trouble, as a body could see, was that him and her was alone together too much, the way it sometimes is with folks in a farmhouse — the children growed up, and everything. They taken to getting mad at one another, the fact is because it was more companionable.

She kept a mighty cozy kitchen, his old woman did, with never no ashes in front of the stove, and with the lamp chimney always polished, and a red cloth on the table, and a geranium alongside the south window. The neighbors used to say you could eat a meal offen her kitchen floor, she kept it that scrubbed. The old man was equal to it, likewise, on account of he always kept the woodbox filled and heaping.

Well, like I say, there him and her was a-sitting. and never expecting to say another word before sunup, when both of them heard something scratch at the door like, and both of them stiffened to hearken. First it scratched, then it whined, and he was a-looking across the kitchen at her, and she was a-looking at him — pop-eyed they was looking.

“Be you deef!” his old woman snapped. “Stop gawking and let Blinker in! 1 hen she stared at him more pop-eyed than ever, and he lei Ids pipe drop from his mouth. For hoth of t hem t wo t bought that it was Blinker asking in, yet they knowed it couldn’t never be the old dog, and him back of the hen house under the honeysuckle. “God ’s sake, old woman!” he says, and got up and opened the door.

Of course the dog that come in, with burrs in his tail, and limping and gant come sidling in with a glance first at her, then at him—-wasn’t Blinker. But that there clog, if he got a mite more of meat on his ribs, would favor Blinker considerable. That dog looked enough like old Blinker to been one of Blinker’s own get — but him and her never set eyes on the critter before. Well, the old woman she fed him in the yellow bowl that had been Blinker’s, and the old man stepped into the shed and fetched the old overcoat that had been Blinkers bed, and spread it back of the stove. But blessed if the dog would lie down there. No, sir, he slumped down between them, in the middle of the floor, his chin in his paws — and him and her wasn ’t speaking any more.

Only sound there was then was the clock and the fire, and a body would have thought the dog would be sleepy, for the weather was nippy outside. But he never closed an eye. He just laid there on the floor watching first one and then t’ other of them. He would lift one of them brown crescents over his eye, the same marks that Blinker had, and roll his eyes at her and grin; and then after a spell, he would lift t’other one, and roll his eyes toward the old man, and grin some more. And he’d give three thumps with his tail. The old woman, she smashed her knitting clown on the table, so hard the lamp jiggled, and she got up and opened the door.

“Get along out with you!” she says. “I can’t abide being stared at!” The old dog quit smiling, and he begged, hard with his eyes, but he put his tail ’t wixt his legs and he crept out. She clicked her false teeth and sal down to her knitting. But it wasn’t no time at all before he scratched at the door again, and whined. " Hell’s fire!” the old man snorted, and got up and let the dog in a second lime. She never said nothing she just clicked her teeth at him and went on a-knitting.

And that dod-gasted dog, blamed if he didn’t flop clown in the middle of the kitchen, like before, and start lifting t hem crescents, and rolling his eyes, first at him, then at her, and laughing and thumping his tail, all over again. What he was trying to say to them, naturally, wasn’t only that he was glad to be indoors. Me was trying to ask them why they was mad at one another. He was sort of suggesting to them that they had a nice warm kitchen, and things to eat, and they had him, of course, and they had one another and why on earth was they mad? But except for the clock, and the fire, and Mis tail, vou could have stirred the stillness like porridge. That 1 here1 dog must have thought them two never would understand him. So of a sudden he got to Ins feet, his eyes rolling and laughing, and them brown crescents twitching — he got to his feet though it might mean she’d put him outside again and he barked and hi’ barked, just like Blinker used to.

Him and her knowed it, all right — they knowed all the time what he meant. They looked across the kitchen and grinned, and then they bust out alaughing. And the dog was barking and they was a-laughing till there was tears in their eyes and her calling him an old fool and him calling her another. Well, they taken to talking about what they would plant come spring but the dog yawned and went back of the stove to the old coat. The clock whirred and struck nine before ever they shut off the stove, and taken the lamp and went into their bedroom, him and her.