A Treatise on Shelling Beans Read Online Free PDF Page A

nothing’s been smashed or broken into. If something doesn’t look right I’ll go peek inside. Actually, the dogs are always the first to sense when something’s amiss. They run around each cabin and they give a short bark to say everything’s fine. Then they run to the next one. If there’s something wrong they wait for me, barking like there’s no tomorrow.
    And again in the evening. At that time I look in on every cabin, turn the lights on. Inside, on the deck. I leave the lights on and move to the next one. Cabin after cabin, it all gets brighter and brighter as I go. It’s like a chain of lights round the lake. The whole place glows, as if the lake was shining, and the sky aboveit, and the woods. You have no idea how much the dogs love it then. I’d never have imagined dogs could enjoy something so much. Most of the time they’re real quiet, alert, they don’t bark unless they have a reason. They never howl like some dogs do. Not even to the moon. Or one time someone died in one of the cabins, not even then. Unless they’re imagining something to themselves, when that’s the case there doesn’t even need to be anything happening. You wouldn’t believe what they’re capable of imagining. So maybe when all those lights are lit, they imagine it’s their paradise? I mean, dogs don’t have to see paradise as a flowering garden that contains everything there is. All that matters to them is that there aren’t any people. What about me? Maybe they think I’m the one that looks after paradise for them.
    Then we go back to the first cabin and switch off all the lights in each one in turn. What is it that you found surprising? About the dogs’ paradise? Well if you ask me, human beings are the worst creatures for dogs. I have my reasons for saying that. Rex there, I found him in the woods. He’d been tied to a tree with a steel cord. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed him, I was staring at the ground looking for wild strawberries, then all of a sudden I heard something whimpering like a child. It never even occurred to me it could be a dog. With a deer for instance, when it’s caught in a trap and dying, when you hear it you know right away it’s a deer. I’ve found dying deer like that once in a while. But this time it sounded like a kid. I stood still and held my breath. Could someone’s child have gotten lost in the woods? It must have been tiny, because only tiny ones whimper that way. Except that a baby couldn’t have made its way into the woods on its own. The sound stopped. I looked around, couldn’t see anything. I went back to looking for wild strawberries. Then a moment later I hear the whimpering again. It’s faint as anything, but I can hear it. I have good ears. There was this warehouse keeper used to teach me the saxophone, he’d always say, you’ve a long way to go with your playing, but you’ve got a good pair of ears. Just keep at it.
    I started wondering which of the people in the cabins could have a newbornbaby. Let me tell you, nothing could surprise me anymore, even if someone had left a baby in the woods. I started checking one bush after another, all the nearby trees. All at once I see him, Rex, under a beech tree. He must have smelled me and whined, even though he was half dead. You should know that the sense of smell is the last thing to go in a dog. When he saw me he even tried to get up from the ground. But he didn’t have the strength. Then he whimpered again like a baby. Are you going to make it or not, I started wondering. If not I’ll have to bring a spade and bury you. One more grave in the woods won’t make any difference. I repaint everyone’s nameplates, I can do yours too. That was when I gave him the name Rex. Here lies Rex. May he rest in peace just the same. I won’t put a cross up for you, though you deserve a cross after what you’ve been through. He tried again to get up. He scratched at the earth with his claws and looked at me like he was begging