Read Online The Truth of the Matter by Robb Forman Dew - Free Book Online

creature in residence. Ernie Mullins’s dog, though, was the first pet Agnes had ever chosen on her own. He came right along into the kitchen with her and briefly investigated the downstairs rooms, and she fed him the rest of the sardines mashed with some saltines and an egg.
    About nine o’clock she put him outside, but ten minutes later he gave out one quick, anxious bark at the back door, and she let him in again. When she went upstairs to bed, he followed tentatively but determinedly behind her in an odd sort of crouch and with hesitant, nervous footing. Agnes watched him take the last two stairs up the staircase and was surprised that his effort left her choked up and teary-eyed. In all probability, she realized, he had never been up a staircase before, but she was baffled to find that idea touched off such an emotional response on her part. She left her door ajar, but after standing at the threshold for a moment and wagging his tail, Pup had the good manners to choose Claytor’s room just across the hall. He stretched out full length on the single bed against the wall.

Chapter Three
    I
N THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Agnes was both embarrassed and irritated by the consternation awakened on her behalf because of the company of the dog. One evening Robert came over after supper to drop off the newspaper and her mail, and the dog stood between the two of them, canted across the sill as Agnes greeted Robert at the door.
    “Move away, now, Pup!” Agnes admonished but without any spirit of command, and the dog stood his ground.
    “I have to say, Agnes, that appears to be a mighty fine dog. He’s not going to let any strangers walk into this house.” Agnes relaxed her tense hold of the door and swung it wide to invite Robert in, and as soon as she gave an indication of welcome, the dog eased back and lay down in the hallway with his chin between his paws.
    “Can you come in for a cup of coffee, Robert? I’ve just made some. Or would you like a drink?”
    “I’d like that. A glass of that good sherry.”
    “I’ve got Scotch and bourbon, too. Will brought it back from Cleveland.”
    “Bourbon, then. Bourbon and just a splash of water. With ice if it’s not any trouble.” Robert handed her the paper and mail and a package wrapped in butcher paper.
    Agnes led the way through the house with Pup close behind. “Lily’s off to her Ladies Aid meeting,” he said, “but she sent along what she tells me are very good soup bones she thought the dog might like.”
    “She won’t want them herself? For soup?”
    “Oh, I imagine Lily was very glad not to tackle it.”
    Robert and Agnes smiled in mutual acknowledgment of Lily’s grudging, harried attitude toward cooking, for which, in fact, she had developed a real talent over the years of her marriage. “My mother always told me that a person would love the things he did well,” Lily had once said to Agnes, when they were putting up preserves in Lily’s steamy kitchen. “But it’s not true! It’s never been true for me, anyway. Not with mathematics and not with cooking.”
    Robert took his place where he always sat, in the brown velvet curved-back rocking chair next to the radio, both of which Agnes had moved into the kitchen once she occupied all the rooms of the house by herself. She gave Robert his drink and poured another cup of coffee for herself. It was laced with chicory because of the shortages, and it was pungently acrid, but she had developed a passion for it, and it was all she could get, anyway. She savored the dry, clean, ashy feel of her mouth after she swallowed. Robert went through the little ritual of filling and lighting his pipe and settled back comfortably.
    He shifted in the rocker as he reached for his drink and studied it a moment before he took a sip. “Lily and I have been wondering if it might not be hard for you to keep a dog with the food shortages. The rationing and so forth? It’s pretty safe around here, I believe. I wouldn’t think