Connections Read Online Free PDF Page A

the woman. She finally let the old lady rub her head, massage her neck, or scratch her ears, which brought peaceful memories of being loved back to her. Now, feeling secure in her presence, she crept under the bench, its seat cutting the heat of the sun from her back, and slept. A sound or a smell or a disturbance in the air startled her awake. Her eyes opened on two legs in front of her snout. She looked up through the slats, just as a young man grabbed the woman’s purse off her lap, turned on his sneakers, and ran. She screamed. It took a few seconds for the dog to scramble out, because she could not stand to her full height under the bench. By then, the boy was several yards away. She leapt onto his back without once touching the ground. Her weight, sprung from such a distance, knocked him down, and she barked against his ear, baring her teeth, racing around him in close circles. The old lady screamed again. The dog picked up the purse, her eyetooth puncturing the vinyl, and carried it back to her, dropping it at her feet.
    The old woman fell to her knees, sobbing into the dog’s neck, and hugged her. It was sort of an unspoken agreement that they would go home together. The woman didn’t have much income besides her Social Security, but she shared whatever she had. She wanted to call the dog Protector or Lifesaver or Savior but thought it would be too embarrassing to both of them. When she looked into her warm, loving eyes, she said softly, “You’re my little heroine, aren’t you. Heroine. Roine. Roine, that’s it.” She filled out the application for a license, because she didn’t want anybody to take her dog away because she hadn’t obeyed the law, and spelled it as Rowan to make it easier for the people who processed the papers to pronounce it.
    The old lady didn’t play too much, but it didn’t matter. Because Rowan was no longer a puppy; she had matured into an intelligent, warm companion. They answered a want in each other that made them inseparable for a little over a year. Until one afternoon when Rowan nudged the woman’s back with her paw to remind her to feed her and licked her ear and saw there was no flutter of an eyelid. She knew, with her distant wolf and coyote ancestors’ instinct for the way of life, that the old lady was no more. She sat beside her bed and howled her grief through the night.
    By sunrise, several neighbors had called the police. When the super unlocked the door to let them in, Rowan was lying on top of her. But they took her anyway. She followed the stretcher to the street and after they slid it into the back of the ambulance and she tried to jump in, they slammed the doors. Someone said, “What about the dog?” And someone else said, “Aw, someone will take it in.”
    Rowan knew it was useless to try to follow the woman. Forlorn, she ran through the streets, whimpering. After two months, she joined a pack of vicious dogs that plagued the Bronx, and became as mean as they were. Eventually, her twisted front paw, hurt in a fight, slowed her down. So she was the only one of the pack picked up by Animal Care & Control when they ran out of an abandoned building.
    Now, at five years old, she had lived a lifetime. Slightly lame and filthy dirty, Kid-Beauty-Damn Mutt-Rowan still showed an arrogance and spirit as she stood in her metal cage, her head slightly stooped because of its ceiling. Doomed to die in thirteen hours.

Chapter 12
    Rosa sipped her glass of red wine, wishing she could go across the hall for a chat like she used to. She shook her head sadly, trying to get Marliese Vilmer out of her mind. She thought about her a lot. Today, Marliese crept into Rosa’s thoughts constantly. But Rosa didn’t want to face her or think about what happened to her.
    “Wonder how Marliese is, bambina.” She stroked Princess and considered calling Martin. But she wouldn’t know what to say, how to ask if she was still alive. Rosa used to speak to Marliese’s son regularly during