excerpt
Summers, he stopped at parks when they were full of children at play.
Children flocked around him, jabbering, listening to him jabber.
Poodie felt a tapping on his knee and awoke from his nap on the
grass behind the big rock fireplace in the park. Four brown eyes
peered at him, small ones atop a suggestion of a nose and lips
drawn taut in seriousness, a big pair above a shiny black nose and a
tongue dripping out of a panting mouth. The dog was sitting, the
boy standing, his head no higher than his companion’s, his arm
around its shoulder, his thumb hooked through its collar. “Ride,”
Poodie saw the child say as he pointed at the wagon. He sat up
stretching, and put on his straw hat. The boy tottered over and
began removing bottles one at a time, setting them on the grass.
Poodie hefted a stack of newspapers, put them by the bottles, lifted
the boy into the wagon and helped the dog scramble aboard. He
placed the boy’s hands, one on a stake, the other on the dog’s collar,
and walked forward to the handle. “Ready?” he grunted. “Ride,”
the child said, “ride,” and Poodie pulled away slowly toward the
bushy margin between the main park and the ball field. Around
the end of the bushes they went, southward behind the backstop
and the bench where ballplayers sat intent on the game, the boy
waving and telling the dog to look at the ball game, the dog barking.
They passed the merry-go-round, the swings, the slide, went
between the rest rooms, up the hill back into the grassy part of the
park, around the drinking fountain, past the wading pool full of
splashers, around the pool, Poodie and the child waving to the
young mothers watching, under the chinup bar by the huge Chinese
elm, around the tree, onto the sidewalk, the dog barking, the
boy singing and laughing, Poodie pulling backward now, watching
his passengers, smiling, making noises that might have been singing,
his face and chest moist in the summer heat, his bare belly
framed by his open Hawaiian shirt ragged and covered with faded
birds and flowers, back to the fireplace and a line of children
waiting their turn.
In spring, when the fruit trees were in bloom, he pulled his
wagon into the hills beyond the orchards, took it off the roads
Libros Libertad 