The story so far:

James Dunning worked for the Record for more than 20 years. When his job was eliminated, he and his wife were forced to move in with her mother, who is allergic to dogs. James had no choice but to leave his mostly blind lhasa apso, Zoe, at the shelter. He didn’t have the heart to do it in the daytime, so he brought Zoe there before dawn and tied her to the entry gate.

By Carrie Jacobson

Zoe listens as the car pulls away. She knows the sound, she’s heard it all her life. But usually, she’s inside when the car leaves. Now, she’s outside, but she’s in her little bed, and she has her leash and collar on, and so she curls up and falls asleep.

The night grows cold around her, and the chill awakens her. She hears noises she doesn’t know. A bird calls. Tree frogs make their noises. Something rustles in the bushes and Zoe is up now, and growling.

She’s been nearly blind for so long that she doesn’t even think about it any more. Day and night look pretty much the same. She can see big shapes, and she can see movement, and she can usually tell light spaces from dark ones. In these years, though, her hearing has sharpened, and her sense of smell has become acute, and now, she knows, there’s something out there.

She growls again, a low, throaty, vicious growl. Her chest swells and her muscles tighten. But what can she do, really, if something happens? She’s a blind 12-pound dog tied to a fence. If something comes at her, if something wants to hurt her, she doesn’t have a chance.

It begins to rain then, a cold, drenching rain that comes with the wind. It splatters on the rain, and on the concrete, and on the little dog tied to the fend. Zoe’s growl turns to a whimper. She listens hard, but whatever was rustling seems to have stopped, and so she curls into a tight ball and falls asleep again.

Hours later, she awakens with a start. The rain has stopped, and the clouds have cleared, and something is watching her.

The smallest of growls escapes her throat. She knows she should be quiet, but she’s scared. The hair on her neck stands up, and she stares into the darkness, and sniffs the air, pulling it into her lungs. She smells pine needles and dirt, and something that she thinks is a big animal. She smells rain. She smells things she’s never smelled before. She homes in on the big animal. Maybe it’s a coyote, or a fox. It has a strong smell.

Something rustles in the bushes, and she growls again, though she knows she should keep quiet. Something is staring at her. She can feel it. She can almost see an outline, something lighter than the woods. Something walking across the clearing. A smell getting stronger and stronger.

Zoe is trembling now, and growling, and pulling at the leash that’s tied to the fence. Pulling and pulling, but it doesn’t want to come loose. She can’t get free from the leash or the collar or the fence, and whatever it is, it’s coming closer, and she can smell it now, a rank stink, like it’s rolled in something dead.

She’s whining now, and growling, too, and shaking with terror. The thing eyes her and makes a huge, awful growling noise, and reaches one enormous paw toward her –

And out of nowhere comes a barking, baying, snarling bolt of red dog. It launches itself at the monster, biting and growling, gnashing out with its teeth, and the coyote – for that’s what it was – backs up and backs up again and then turns and runs into the woods.

The huge red dog stands there then, panting, and then looks at Zoe, and for a moment, Zoe is sure that this is the end. But then the dog wags her big, feathery tail, and Zoe knows she’s been saved.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

By Carrie Jacobson

James turns off the highway and onto Route 6. The pavement looks soft and blue in the moonlight. Zoe feels the change in speed and lifts her head. She looks toward him even though, he knows, she can’t see him.

He pats her head, strokes her fur, and she nestles in again.

They’ve been together for a long time, James and Zoe. They’ve been together longer than he and Susan have been together, and not for the first time, James thinks that he and Zoe should just take off. He could get back on 84, they could head west and see if there’s a new life out there. A grammarian and a scruffy, blind, old dog, yeah, right.

He remembers seeing Zoe for the first time. It was about 1 in the morning, and he was at work. The first editions were out, and he was leafing through the feature pages, looking for must-repair typos, when he saw the Pets of the Week page. There was Zoe. She was just a pup, but she’d been abused. She already was blind in one eye, and the shelter workers thought she was deaf in one ear. She couldn’t be around other dogs or young children. Her hair stuck up wildly. She’d been beaten and mistreated, ignored and abused, and yet, she was defiant, and this touched James. He woke up early, headed to the shelter in Sullivan County, and claimed Zoe the next morning.

On the ride home, she sat in the passenger seat, trembling and growling. He let her out of the car at his house, walked her up and down the street, let her do her business, and then unlocked the door to his little house. She looked at the step and the hallway inside, she looked at him and then she walked in and wagged her tail for the very first time.

Their relationship did not develop overnight. Zoe, James realized, might be a mutt, but she was mostly a lhasa apso, with all that that implied. She was loyal and protective, a fierce watchdog with an explosive attacking style. It had taken a lot of training before James could even begin to control her. But as they worked together, she began to trust him. The first time she jumped up into his lap, he’d stayed still for hours, until both legs fell asleep.

And now, old girl, now I’m about to abandon you. My friend, my little guardian, my  true-hearted little dog, I’m going to leave you behind. You’d never do this to me, he thinks, and the tears fill his eyes, and Zoe looks up at him again, cocks her head, puts one paw on his leg, and James nearly loses it.

I can’t do this, he thinks. I can’t.

But what choice do I have? Dear God, what choice do I have?

He turns in to the road to the shelter, and he has to pull over, he’s crying so hard. He picks Zoe up, pulls her to him, buries his nose in her rough dry fur and hugs her to him. She licks his face, licks the tears from his cheeks, and this brings a whole new wave of grief, and James just hates himself, hates himself more than he ever has – but he has no choice, he tells himself, for the thousandth time. They have no place to live if they don’t live with Susan’s mother. They will lose everything, everything.

And so he starts the car, drives down the road to the shelter in Shohola, and stops the car by the gate.

The night is warm and clear, and James is thankful for that. He clips Zoe’s leash to her collar, and they get out. He unloads her dog bed and her blanket and her favorite rubber chew toy. He makes sure the note he’s written is still attached to her collar.

“My name is Zoe,” it reads. “I am 12 years old, and blind, and deaf in my left ear.  My owner has lost everything and can’t keep me. I am a good dog. Please find me a good home.”

He puts her dog bed right up beside the gate, and puts her in it. He  covers her with the blanket, and ties her leash to the gate itself. Daylight is not too far off. There’s no other way to do this. James can’t hand her over in person. He can’t do it. This, this horrible thing, this is the best he can do.

He pats her one last time, and as he drives away, tears streaming down his face, he pretends he can’t hear her barking for him to come back.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

Author’s note: “Friends to the End” is a fictional serial. Though it takes place in the Mid-Hudson, and many of the places are identifiable, the story and the characters in it are fully fictional. Any resemblance to real-life people, events or businesses is purely coincidental.

CHAPTER 1

James Dunning pulls onto I-84 and headed west. Beside him, Zoe stares blindly into the night, makes a little whimper, then curls into a tight ball and snuggles against his thigh. In a moment, she is asleep.

James runs his hand along her back, feeling her rough coat and the dog warmth just beneath it. He is close to tears. But he’s volunteered to do this. He has to be the one to do it, and he knows that. Susan could never have handled it. She’d be crying so hard right now she’d drive off the road.

There was no choice, that was the worst thing. There was just nothing else they could do. The Record had cut his job and kicked him out, just like that, after more than 20 years. Kicked him out and by now, kicked out more people than he could list.

Susan’s hours at the college had been cut, too, and this had come as a complete shock, because more people were going to school, and from what James can see, about 90 percent of them are completely nuts, completely in need of counseling, and since Sue works part-time and gets no benefits, it seems to him that she should be the one to get more hours, not fewer.

But that’s not how it’s turned out.

Sue’s hours are down, and James has simply not been able to get a job. Hell, all he knows is how to write and edit, and who needs those skills these days? Who cares about those skills? Who even knows that people have those skills, or cares that there’s a difference between a good sentence and a bad one, or that “eager”means one thing and “anxious” means something else?

James has been looking for work. He’s applied at Shop-Rite and McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. He’s applied at Gander Mountain and Panera Bread and Home Depot and Lowe’s. He’s applied to Orange County tourism, Sullivan County tourism, the new hospital, the old hospital, Bethel Woods, every marketing firm around, and every government job he could conceivably accomplish. He’s applied to every newspaper in the area, all the papers in the City, and every magazine within 100 miles of their home in Mamakating.

He’s gotten nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. The papers and magazines aen’t hiring. The chains see him as overqualified and destined to be unhappy with the salary they could pay him. And the others, the marketing groups and tourism people and county governments, they just don’t respond. For weeks, he’s chased them down by phone and in person, trying to find someone, anyone who would interview him – if he could just get an interview, he’s sure he could get a job – but finally, broken and exhausted, feeling like a stalker, he’s stopped.

And now, he and Susan have gone through nearly all their savings. They can keep up with the car payments, and they’ve nearly paid off the credit cards, but they can’t keep the house and live in it, too. Their only hope is to move in with Susan’s mother, and she’s happy to have them (happy, really, to have her daughter and granddaughter living under her roof, James thinks, and willing to take him in trade).

If they lived with her, they could rent out their house, and in a year or two,  move back in and resume their lives. The renters are scheduled to move in tomorrow, and so, there is just this one thing between them and safety.

This one warm, soft, mostly blind little thing, sleeping soundly on the seat beside him.