I thought it was the television at home. My mother always left it on Channel 5 for him, and in the afternoons there were soap operas and game shows and commercials, and dogs barked in commercials all the time. I didn't think about it. I had no reason to.
That was the same Thursday Ingot started barking at the backpack.
For twelve days she would not let it alone.
The firemen had theories. Firemen always have theories. They spend a lot of time sitting around a kitchen table waiting for a bell, and a theory is something to do with your mouth besides eat.
Chuy's theory was food. He was convinced I had something in there, a bologna sandwich gone bad in the bottom, an orange I'd forgotten about. On the second day he asked if he could look, and I said no too fast, and he put up both hands and said, "Okay, okay, man, it's your business, you got your love letters in there, I respect it," and the other men laughed, and I felt my face go hot, and Ingot barked three times and stopped.
Hank's theory was that dogs could hear things people couldn't, which was true, and which frightened me more than anything Chuy said. "That's what a Dalmatian's for," he said, leaning down with a Milk-Bone that Ingot ignored, which she had never done in her life. "Back in the horse days she'd run ahead of the engine and clear the road, and keep the horses calm at the fire, and guard the rig while the men were inside. She hears a wheel squeak a block away. She hears a horse throw a shoe. She hears things, Eloy. You got a wristwatch in there? One of those digital ones? Some of them make a whine. My grandson's makes a whine. Drives my wife nuts."
I said I didn't have a watch. I didn't. I had a nursery monitor, turned down to two, with my grandfather snoring in it.