There was Mr. Boppit’s body to deal with, lying in the driveway behind the car’s rear wheels, and I couldn’t bear it. I left the bedroom with its dangerous view of Snyder and Mom and I got Lilly, who is good in messy situations. I led her to Mr. Boppit’s stiffening side and we wrapped him up in my sweater and an old quilt. Lilly threw him in the trunk of the car and told me to get in but I just could not. She told me to get away if I couldn’t do what had to be done and she climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine. Off she went. To this day I do not know what happened to the body of Mr. Boppit.
But I know what happened to his reputation. That afternoon Lilly and I sat down with Jane and explained that Mr. Boppit had volunteered for the army dog corps and that he had shipped out for training that morning. She cried, but she was proud. She’d seen the newsreels of Dogs for Defense. All through the war she told everyone about Mr. Boppit’s contribution to the Allied forces, the sacrifices he was making for our freedom. I began to believe it myself. We imagined Mr. Boppit on patrol, his nose to the wind to capture the smell of Nazis, saving the sleeping soldiers whose lives he tirelessly protected. We could see Mr. Boppit sniffing for bombs and carrying medical supplies to men so deep in the thick of combat that other soldiers could not penetrate the rain of bullets keeping them from hurt buddies. But Mr. Boppit could.
Lilly and I didn’t know she’d written off to the United States Army Dogs for Defense program to ask after Mr. Boppit’s assignment because she’d gone to Snyder for help and he gave it to her, keeping Mr. Boppit’s real fate from her for sake of her feelings. He wrote the letter with her but thought if he only gave her money for the stamp or an address to mail it to, that the letter would sit in her bedroom until the war was over. But our mailman loved Jane and helped her get the address. I don’t know how she got the envelope and the price of the stamp, but she did. And she made her way, all alone, to post the letter.
Snyder was the one who answered the telephone when the apologetic lieutenant called, saying the army had no record of a canine Mr. Boppit Terhune’s service. Snyder made a decision on the spot—he laid it all out for the man. The lieutenant’s name was Jerry Hall. He listened carefully and said that he had a little sister himself. Then he wrote a letter to Jane on official army stationery, describing the heroism of Mr. Boppit and the gratitude our country felt toward him for locating over forty bombs before one detonated and did the courageous Mr. Boppit in at last. Janey sat right down and cried. So did I.
Jane wrote a three-page description of the life and death of Mr. Boppit and mailed it off to the Herald. She included a picture of her and Bop on our front steps, the dog with what looked like a grin on his face and Jane draped over his unprotesting head. It ran on page one over the line “Mr. Boppit, Wonder Dog.” The AP wires picked it up and it ran all over the country. Letters and offers of new puppies came at us from all directions for weeks—people telling us about their own dogs, many of whom had actually served overseas.
Daddy put the kibosh on the idea of a new puppy so that was that. Jane was unhappy about this, but in the end she accepted his decision with a lot more dignity than I could have mustered. She was content with the glory that she’d managed to secure for Mr. Boppit.
LILLY
Cape Ann. High Tide. Goodbye, Dog.
You try lifting a fifty-pound mutt and dumping him over the side of a slimy dock. His head was still bleeding when I got to the back of the car and saw the body, so I pulled Neave’s sweater right off her back and wrapped him in that. It wasn’t her best sweater but I probably would have wrapped the bloody dog in it even if the thing were spun from gold. She just stood there and let me wind it around him. I could have told her to chop off her hair and wrap the dog in that, and she would’ve run for the scissors. So there I am, holding a dead dog wrapped up in a pilly sweater because Neave and Snyder were no use at all, thank you very much. Neave at least should be on this work detail but no, that wasn’t gonna happen. I stuffed him in the trunk and climbed into the driver’s seat. I was going to have to deal with the dog alone. I backed out of the driveway looking back at Neave’s poor face. That chuckleheaded dog and her were each other’s best company.
I myself am not charmed by dogs. They smell. They shed. They pee on stuff and they find ways to break into your closet and, if they’re this particular dog, they chew your shoes. I didn’t expect to feel so strange, sliding the body into the water an hour after I drove away from our house. Just for a tiny little window I felt like everything good and beautiful had gone dark and something black was drifting over me. I looked down and there were his furry legs still looking like he was running in the water even though he was definitely dead, and the way his one remaining eye looked up at me—like he was really seeing me. I didn’t like it.
I sat there for a while after he floated off. Then I got up and walked back down the stone quay to the car. I wadded Neave’s bloody sweater up and pitched it into the nearest trash can. I thought that was the end of my relationship with Mr. Boppit, the dog who jumped behind a moving car because he didn’t have the good sense God gave turnips.
But it wasn’t the end of my relationship with Boppit. He was here when I got to Where I Am Now. I recognized him right off even though he wasn’t, strictly speaking, a dog—slurpy thing going on with the tongue, goofy cocked ears, a rear end that looked like it was wagging even though there wasn’t a tail. He was dressed in navy whites, which seemed right. So did his high heels. Here’s the surprising thing—it was like we’d had this meeting between our two dead selves a dozen times before, only we’d been different on the other occasions. We knew each other.
“Well. Finally,” he greeted me.
The thought that I should be frightened drifted by, but it was distant—a balloon thought floating over my head. I wasn’t frightened. “I’m dead?”
“You are.”
“And you’re dead?”
“You dropped me over the side into the water yourself. So I’d say yes. I am.”
I’d always thought that the one way to find out where you go after you die would just be to die, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Here I was, dead, and still I had no idea what was going on. Nothing around me was clear except Boppit. There was no horizon or foreground, no gravity.
“It’ll clear,” he said, watching me look around. “Be patient.”
A chair materialized behind me and I sat down. I stopped squinting and the air around me started to take on different thicknesses. Now there was a marble floor under my feet, and then a counter, a table, a row of shining spring sandals.
“See it now?” Bop asked.
I did! “Filene’s! We’re in Filene’s third-floor shoe department!”
“Isn’t it beautiful?” A chair had popped into being behind Bop as well as me, and he sat down. “It’s a dream setting, my dear, a dream that you and I both share and cherish. Call it common ground. That’s why we find ourselves in it now when we’re first getting acquainted. You know it from firsthand experience. I’d only heard of it but I always knew it was here! I should tell you that I don’t think this little scene is going to last for long. Enjoy it while we’re here.”
“It isn’t real?”