Walter wasn’t looking forward to the walk. It was warm, very warm, and the moist air was thick. It would be raining soon. He hated walking in the rain—not so much walking in the rain but having to clean up afterwards. Maisie was a big girl and she had long hair that trapped all the wet and grit from the sidewalks and road, and it all had to be washed out before he let her back in the house.

They'd both come up with the name when they bought their first car together, a sporty, low budget Mazda. If you met it on the road it looked like it was smiling at you. 'Maisie' just seemed to fit. But Maisie didn't last too long. During a heavy early summer thunderstorm, an overhanging maple branch fell on her in the driveway. Totaled. Devastating. She'd been so much fun to drive, Walter kept saying, but Bob never liked driving a standard and was pleased they had an excuse to buy a new car—this time with an automatic transmission. It just made so much more sense, Bob said, when he was driving to work in stop-and-go traffic.

The new car was actually an old car—a Subaru. Walter hated it and refused to name it. He'd always named his cars—something he picked up from his granddaddy on his Mom's side. He'd always called his car 'Lizzy' no matter whether it was an Oldsmobile or a Toyota Corona hatchback. Said he'd always named his mules the same back when he farmed the red clay in Blue Springs. Walter had a different name for each car. There was Ethel (hardly original) and Gertrude (where'd that come from?) and then Lizzy (the little white Corolla, his 'toy motor' that reminded him of the old dark green Corona his granddaddy and Ralph used to take to the Fort Gaines Lake to go bass fishing. But this one went unnamed.

'Maisie' was the one name that he had really liked, and when they picked up their new little girl at the airport that name just seemed perfect. No matter that it was a hand-me-down. Maisie was part of a compromise. Bob got an automatic transmission and Walter got a puppy. Some people don't think dogs smile, but they don't know dogs. This little girl—only 15 pounds at the time—had the cutest, goofiest smile even at 10 weeks. Maisie . . . a perfect name.

Every rainy or soggy day was a full bath day, and that's what Walter dreaded. But that was part of the bargain, too. If there's to be a dog in the house, the dog's got to be clean.

Ever since the pandemic, Walter had been working from home, and now though his job had changed a couple of times, he was still working remotely. Taking care of Maisie would just never have been possible before.

Three years and 60 pounds later, she was still a handful—a Peter Pan puppy—and as an adult with a fully developed long nose and a long narrow pink tongue about six inches too long she'd crack you up with her smile. But things had changed at home. Bob had moved out.

Walter and Maisie kept their routine, but they got relaxed with it. Maisie didn't get full baths as often, and Walter didn't shave every day. On those days when he wasn't on camera, nobody even noticed.

In her fourth year, Maisie presented with horrible environmental allergies. Her paws were raw, itchy and red at their worst after walking outside. Walter tried a number of meds but nothing was working. That's when he had to step up and be Maisie's caregiver. He'd doctor her paws daily with diluted Chlorhexidine or give her a footbath in Epsom salts, rub coconut oil on the skin between her pads and toes and put socks on her overnight. This went on for six months—through the hot summer and a snowless fall and early winter. She was such a good patient, but he wasn't always the good doctor, and he always regretted it later. Once the ground was finally covered in snow in late January, the skin healed and the fur grew back in.

By the end of the following year, a new vet and a new treatment had brought Maisie's allergies under control. The verdict wasn't pronounced until the end of that summer, and it had been another long summer, as Walter had been doubtful that they’d ever find a long-term treatment.

By the time Walter and Maisie stepped off the driveway and onto the sidewalk, the rain started coming down in buckets. A full bath day for sure. No shortcuts today. The girl had to have her walkies. The ancient posties’ motto was his: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.” And so they went, through the park across to Sunset and back by way of Sawyer and Sandalwood. Only 45 minutes today, and she was on the deck getting a thorough down-to-the-skin bath with oatmeal shampoo. It was a three-towel job. Followed up by the hairdryer (set to cool) to dry between the toes and pads—a tip he’d picked up from another dog walker back during the bad days.

* * *

Rarely was there anything unusual, let alone exciting, going on during their walks. Dog walking banter is inescapable and often painfully drawn out—much more for Walter than Maisie for whom most of the chatter meant absolutely nothing. However, squirrels in the park, and their constant chatter were always exciting for Maisie. Seventy-five pounds of solid muscle could yank your limbs out of joint if you were caught daydreaming. And it also happened more than a few times with little yappy dogs and the occasional off-leash dog—sometimes with and sometimes without the owner—but mostly with the ubiquitous Golden Retrievers.

Around the corner, a new 4,000 square-footer was going up. Madame Merde’s house knocked down and carried off in bits in just two days. Kind of ironic to see a colossus being raised on the grounds that were home to someone for more than 40 years. A grand monument to some new homeowners’ forever dream . . . maybe. Two houses down in the opposite direction, is the first big box house in the area. This is the gas house, so monikered because the first owners were executives with a giant engineering firm. That was only 10 years back and there’ve since been four different sets of owners, and none of them REITs.

The sound of Spanish marked this new build on Madame Merde’s ruins. Lately the government had been mining human resources in Central America on behalf of the booming housing industry. There’s a seemingly endless supply of cheap and disposable labour that can be flown in and out on an as needed basis. Once in a while, and then only for a day or so, you might see a union organizer’s information notice posted in multiple languages on a construction fence. These notices never made to the litter stage as so much else did.

Just as Walter and Maisie were turning the corner, the guys, six of them, were raising the first wall. For no particular reason other than idle curiosity, Walter stopped to watch. The wall was slowly and steadily raised to about 60 degrees . . . then it abruptly went in reverse slipping on the concrete foundation and crashing down. Five guys were left standing there, dazed. One guy pulled out a cell phone and was talking to someone—more with his hands than his voice it seemed. The others had moved to the far side of the house and were looking down at something.

It was the sixth man. He was down. Not moving. The Spanish grew louder and frantic. Walter yelled across, holding up his cell phone, asking if they needed help. The guy on the phone ran over and said, “Please, please,” as he passed the phone over to Walter. It was the 9-1-1 operator on the line. Walter finished the call. He had virtually no Spanish—just one year in junior high school—so to make up for it he spoke in a louder voice, letting them know the police, fire and EMTs would be there in ‘minutos.’ And they were. The injured worker had blood on his forehead but he was conscious and was able to walk to the ambulance without assistance.

The police shut down the site for two weeks. The same guys came back but this time with bright yellow hard hats and work boots, and there was now a crane on site to position the walls. Walter had waved a couple of times to the guys when passing the site. It had only taken them about a week-and-a-half to finish framing the entire massive structure—nail guns and power saws running without pause. Then, it was off to build another big box house.

He wished he had checked to see if the injured man had returned, and couldn’t understand why he hadn’t asked. He’d been pleased enough with himself for stepping in to make the 9-1-1 call, so why hadn’t he show any concern? That kind of flattened him. He wondered what the men must have thought of him, a white guy, probably rich and comfortable, who didn’t have time or thought for migrant labourers. He decided it was best not to tell anyone about making the 9-1-1 call. Better to forget about the whole thing. No credit but no blame.

It nagged at him for the next several days. “What kind of person am I?”, he asked. “What must others think? Am I passing people every day without leaving a trace?”

“Good morning!”

“Who said that?” said Walter to himself as he looked around. He and Maisie were halfway up Sunset.

“Over here.”

“Oh, hello.” Walter pretended to recognize the little old man. He wasn’t sure that he did. He thought he’d seen him before sitting out on his front porch squeezed between two largish pots of red geraniums. But he seemed to recall that there’d been a couple.

Maisie smiled up at him. And she must have been really happy, because it was as if she had two tails.