Read Online Paintings from the Cave by Gary Paulsen - Free Book Online

perfect.”
    “Dogs always are.”
    “It’s the best present I’ve ever gotten,” Rose said.
    It was the only gift Jo had ever given anyone.
    They sat, turning their faces up to the sun and breathing in the yellow warmth together.
    “Is it hard to understand your dogs?” Rose asked.
    “If you don’t know each one well, it probably is.”
    “Can you help me know them like you do?” Rose took off her cap and studied the picture of the Border collie.
    “I think so.”
    “What do I do?”
    “You have to learn how to see them.”
    Rose laughed. “That’s not hard; they’re right in front of me.”
    “No. Really see them, how they are.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Close your eyes.”
    “Why?”
    “Close your eyes to see better.” Rose smiled, and so did Jo. “Close them tight.”
    Rose closed her eyes and Jo noticed again how dark and smudgy Rose’s eyelids were compared to the paleness of her cheeks. Jo wanted to reach out and touch her. She raised a hand, but pulled back. Mike, who had been watching, put his paw on Rose’s leg.
    “Now tell me how the dogs look, what you see when you think of them.”
    “One is black-and-white and one is brown and one is almost all white.…”
    “More.”
    “Um … Mike is the small mutt, Carter is the brown one, and Betty is the black-and-white Border collie.”
    “And?”
    “Betty has one ear that sticks up and the other flops down, but wait, no, it’s more like it goes straight out. The little guy, Mike, has a lower jaw that kind of juts out so that he looks like he might bite. And Carter, the brown one, has a triangular-shaped head with a flat top. Oh! And Betty has a bump that sticks up in the middleof her head. And Carter has gray hairs around his muzzle like a beard, and Mike’s toenails are different colors, some are brown and some are white …”
    She went on as memory fed on memory and the speckled light shone down through the tree branches, bathing Rose’s face in soft green from the leaves.
    Jo said, “Open your eyes. Touch the tops of their noses now. Run your hand back toward their eyes. When you do that they know you love them and want to know them. Now tell me how their fur feels, how each dog feels different from the other.”
    “Their ears are softer than the rest of their fur,” Rose said. “Their noses are cold and wet and I think it tickles them when I touch their whiskers. My fingers go
bump-bump
along their ribs and I can feel how the sides of their chests dip into the tucks of their flanks just in front of their legs. They all have four toenails on their back feet, and four together but one higher up on their front paws.”
    Rose pictured more details about the dogs as her hands roamed their fur. “Mike lowers his right shoulder and whines when he wants your attention. Carter has short or long tail wags, depending on whether or not he can see you. Betty is the loudest; she has rumbly growls and quick barks and grunty sighs and low howls, depending on what she’s trying to tell you.”
    Rose talked until the sun started down, and Jo satwith her eyes closed, seeing what Rose was imagining. They breathed together, the girls and the dogs. Jo wondered if all of their hearts were beating in time too.
    When at last Rose stopped talking and opened her eyes, the dogs were lying between the girls, their backs against Jo, touching her legs but looking at Rose, listening.
    Hearing her.
    Knowing
her.
    Loving her
.

“ I have leukemia.”
    Rose’s words turned everything dark. They were walking near the edge of the woods toward Rose’s house in the late afternoon after she’d seen the dogs with her memory.
    “I didn’t know how to tell you. I’m sorry it came out so sudden.” Rose talked very fast. “It’s hard to say. For the longest time I thought if I didn’t say anything, it would just go away.”
    No, Jo thought. What she just said, that ugly word, doesn’t exist, isn’t true.
    “I’m going to have to go in again, soon,