The Long Good Boy Read Online Free PDF

was no one around, at least not that I could see. I placed the box next to the far, inner leg of the bridge, standing it on its side to give it more height, then gingerly testing it out. I was still short of where I could reach the top and hoist myself up. Then I got a better idea.
    Like all the bull and terrier dogs, Dashiell can scale a nearly perpendicular wall and leap astonishing heights, even without a running start; the muscles he sports are not just for show. I remember once hiking with him on a steep mountain trail, astonished at how fast and graceful he was, moving up the mountain not on the zigzagging path the way I did, slow and unsure of my footing, but by going straight up like a mountain goat, his mouth open in a grin, happy to be using those powerful muscles on something that actually required them.
    I pulled the box way back, found some boards and concrete blocks, and made a sort of platform a few feet back from the bridge. Then, leaving Dashiell’s leash attached to his collar but dropping the handle, I backed him partway down the block and told him to wait. Next I got between the platform I’d created and the bridge, bending slightly forward to round my back, hoping like hell Dashiell would understand what I had in mind for him. I told him hup , and he took off, barely touching the platform as he ran. I heard the board creak, then he was on me, his back feet digging into my waist, his front paws lightly on my shoulders. I never even had the chance to wince at the thought of what those nails would do to me when he took off, it was all so quick. But the sheepskin coat was thick enough to protect me. He seemed to fly over my head, and then the bridge sighed, arcing slightly under his weight, dust and bits of mortar and God knows what else falling to the garbage-covered sidewalk beneath. When I looked up, he barked once. He was peering over the edge, his flews hanging down, his forehead creased, impatient for me to join him. I was comforted by his approval of my plan, even knowing that no one but a dog would think I was doing a wise thing.
    Moving the box close again, I stood on it and reached for Dash’s leash. With one hand finding purchase in the structure and the other on the leash, I told him to back up; between us, me climbing, Dashiell pulling, I was lifted up to the top of the bridge. It moaned, and held.
    After checking the surface out to make sure that none of the boards was broken, and brushing off as much of the debris as I could, using one of my gloves as a whisk broom, we lay side by side, facing Keller’s, and began what I now hoped would be a fruitful vigil.
    He showed up at ten to four, parking and reparking his car to get it exactly where he wanted it, a case of obsessive-compulsive disorder if ever I’d seen one, then whistling as he unlocked and removed the padlock from the door, locking it back onto one of the handles, then disappearing inside. At first nothing happened. We waited. A light went on upstairs. We waited some more.
    I heard Clint before I saw her. As she passed under the bridge, picking her way through the trash, the dachshund began to growl, then bark. Dashiell stood, sending a shower of dust and small stones down between the slats. I signaled him to stay and held my breath, hoping this wasn’t all for nothing, hoping she wouldn’t look up and see us through the openings between the boards that made up the floor of the bridge, wonder what I was doing there, and abort her current project.
    I heard Chi Chi shush her dog. Moments later she stepped out from under the bridge, tiptoeing through the parking area out front as if there might be someone around who shouldn’t hear her, Clint still grumbling deep in his throat, Dashiell’s tail stirring the air behind us as he stood next to where I was lying, still as ice.
    I watched her stop at the door to fix her hair, running the fingers of one hand through that big, near-white mop of pu-bic-like