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toward him, leaned forward, and began to call him. “Walker. Walker. Here Walker. Come here boy.”
    Like Walker, Carla was much thinner than she should be, and I worried that she might be anorexic. She had a new boyfriend, and lately she had been far more withdrawn, far less confiding, far more self-conscious.
    I ducked back into the trailer and grabbed some sandwich meat from the refrigerator. When I joined Carla in the yard I knelt down on the ground and held out the meat. Walker barked at me but refused to come close enough to take the meat from my outstretched hand. I broke off a little piece of the meat the threw it to him. He jerked back from the meat and ran away a few steps before coming back and inhaling it.
    “He’s been getting into the garbage behind the diner,” she said. “I’m afraid Rudy’s gonna shoot him.”
    “He’d have to have good aim,” I said.
    She laughed.
    I held out the meat again and though he didn’t want to come close to me his hunger got the better of him and he slowly and warily walked over. As he ate the meat from one hand, I slowly raised my other one to pet him. He cowered and crouched down, wetting the ground beneath him as he did.
    “It’s okay,” I said, in that silly voice humans use to talk to animals and babies. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
    Walker was mostly white with two large black spots on his back and sides and brown around his face and ears. He had short hair, a long narrow tail, brandy-brown eyes, and was of indeterminate breed.
    “Obviously he was abused before he was abandoned,” she said. “Son of a bitch. Most rednecks are better to their hunting dogs than their kids. Not this bastard.”
    “You got a particular bastard in mind?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “Plenty enough around.”
    “He’ll probably come looking for him when hunting season starts,” I said.
    “But he won’t recognize him all filled out and healthy, with his shiny new coat and collar that says ‘Walker Jordan.’”
    I laughed.
    “Besides,” she said, “you get him fixed he won’t want him.”
    “You know I may have a few plans of my own between now and hunting season,” I said.
    “What?” she said. “Reading a bunch of books? Hanging out at the diner at night? Dreaming about Anna? What?”
    “That all you think I do?”
    “I guess occasionally you teach somebody something about God or solve a murder, but those things don’t take up enough of your time. You need a hobby.”
    “So really when you think about it,” I said, “you’re doing me a favor.”
    “It’s what I do,” she said. “Spread sunshine. Give help to the hopeless. Shit like that.”
    Finished with the meat, Walker stuck out his right paw to me and I took it. When I let go, he darted away, circling us and barking.
    As I stood, I could see Merrill pulling up on the other side of Rudy’s truck, his new black BMW shining in the sun the way his skin did when he got out.
    Walker ran toward him barking but stopped long before he reached him and ran back, then repeated the same process several times as Merrill walked over to us.
    “He’s not barking at you because you’re black,” I said.
    “That’s a relief,” he said. “Thought I’s gonna have to cap his ass.”
    When Walker risked coming over to us again, he stood on his back legs and extended his right paw again, exposing his erect penis and the urine it was squirting.
    “Damn,” Merrill said.
    “He’s had a hard life,” Carla said.
    “So have I,” Merrill said. “But you don’t see me flashing my credentials around and pissin’ on everybody.”
    I laughed. “Everybody deals with trauma in their own way.”
    “Speaking of which,” Carla said, “I better get Dad’s truck back before he realizes it’s gone.”
    She started moving toward the truck slowly, head down, shoulders hunched, as if expecting to be called back.
    “I’m gonna need some help with the mutt,” I said. “Being a single parent and all.”
    She