Inside were filthy rags, soaked through, and a sheet of dirty plastic. When Frank peeled back the layers with fingers shaking from cold and adrenaline, his chest tightened.
Lying there was a tiny newborn puppy, some mixed-breed little thing, dumped to die in the river. It was skin and bones under its wet fur, barely hanging on.
Its eyes were sealed shut, and its small body shook nonstop from the cold. The poor little animal could hardly breathe and opened its mouth now and then in a soundless cry.
Frank sank down into the mud, stunned by the meanness it must have taken to do something like this. He lifted the puppy carefully into his broad, work-worn hands.
He tucked it under his wool sweater against his chest and headed straight for home. He wasn’t thinking ahead. He was just doing the next right thing.
His own troubles, the grief, the long spell of numbness—all of it dropped to the background in the face of that one fading little life. Back at the house, he didn’t even stop to change out of his soaked pants.
First he got the woodstove going, feeding it dry birch logs until the fire caught and the room began to warm. The sound of the draft in the stove pipe and the growing heat brought the place back to life.
Frank wrapped the shivering puppy in an old shearling coat and laid it near the stove. Then he warmed a little fresh milk in a small metal pot, milk he’d bought the day before from a neighbor down the road.
Using a teaspoon, he carefully dripped the warm milk into the puppy’s mouth. At first there was no response, but then the little thing moved its tongue and swallowed.
It took more than an hour to get enough into him. After that, the exhausted puppy finally fell asleep in the folds of the coat. That night Frank barely slept, listening for any sound from the spot beside the stove.
