Stay!: Keeper's Story Read Online Free PDF

apart."
    He pulled the ragged overcoat around his shoulders and shifted on the hard ground, trying to get comfortable. I snuggled closer, to warm him. We dogs do not suffer much from the elements, furred and sturdy as we are. But the weather was turning colder now, and Jack seemed frail and easily chilled.
    I wondered what his dumb mistake might have been. It could not have been worse than my own. I was haunted by the fact that, like a coward, I had concealed myself on that fateful day when my own family had disappeared. Every day I remembered and mourned my small sister, Wispy. I could still see the look in her brown eyes as she peered down uncomprehending from the arms of the man who had said he would arrange for her to be put to sleep.
    I hoped her sleep, wherever it was, was comfortable and that she had someone who cared for her with the same tender concern I felt from the man who called me Lucky.
    My own sleep was often interrupted. The place that Jack had chosen for a home, though scenic, with the river nearby, and convenient to the busy streets where he made his uncertain living, was not at all safe.
    Among the persistent and irritating dangers were the rats. I knew about rats from the alley that had been my first home. They had been a constant source of concern for Mother when we were small, for the rats that had frequented the alley were actually larger than new puppies and might even have viewed us as food. Mother always growled and lunged ferociously into the dark corners before she settled us for sleep. Sometimes we would see one flee, its thin naked tail scuttling away in response to Mothers threat.
    Once when Mother was away, I had actually rescued Wispy from a confrontation with a rat. The creature had advanced with stealth and taken my sister by surprise, cornering her. By the time I noticed the event unfolding, Wispy was paralyzed with fear and it appeared that the rat was about to pounce upon her and bite. I was still young, but I simply mimicked my mother, growling as ferociously as I could and lunging toward the yellow-eyed rodent. Fortunately, he was

    taken by surprise and fled, for I do not know if I could, at that young age, have beaten him in a fight.
    Now, of course, I was much larger. But the waterfront rats were larger, too. Jack laughed at them and shook the tin roof to make a rattling, thunderous noise, which startled them away. But they always waited, there in the distance immediately past the light of our evening fire, which reflected their eyes in the darkness. The empty unwashed cans from our dinners attracted them with the smell of food. Sometimes, while Jack slept, I would hear the clink of the metal containers as rodent life licked and bit at what few rotting morsels were left.
    I stayed vigilant, even while sleeping, and the slightest noise startled me awake. Again and again, without his knowledge, I protected Jack as the rats approached in the dark. A menacing growl, I found, kept them at bay. But they were always there, waiting, and nighttime became an ongoing battleground.
    Though my growth to adulthood enabled me to protect Jack from the rats, it meant that I was no longer as reliable a source of income for him. My puppy fluff coarsened into thick adult fur which was not as soft to touch, though it was handsome fur in its own right, I felt, much like my mothers. My legs, once stubby, grew long, and rather than stumbling cutely over my large feet, I had grown to fit them and taken on the stance and gait of a mature dog. My repertoire of cute puppy mannerisms, like the small frightened yip and the tiny playful growl, no longer attracted passersby to smile at me and drop quarters into the hat.
    But Jack was clever. One morning he carefully straightened the bent earpiece of a pair of sunglasses he found in a trash can. He added a cane to his costume, and when we took our place on the street, he changed his chant. No longer "Food for a hungry puppy," now his appeal was "Feed my guide dog,