None of what he said made sense. “Where’s Girl?” I interrupted.

He froze then, patted his leg once, twice, but nothing came running toward him. “Gone. Gone. Government took her. When they took me. After I killed that boy.” He tapped the side of his head with his finger. Left a streak of something red. “Didn’t listen to me when I said the truth. Had to send him away. Keep him from getting harmed. Stan didn’t trust him.” He rubbed his pink eyes. “And then they turned me out. She wasn’t in the sunshine. Wasn’t snapping at the flies. Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t, urh, give her back when they turned me out, too. Don’t deserve her, they said. Don’t deserve her. All the metal bars and the fleas in the mattress and hair in the plastic glass of milk they gave me. And I don’t deserve her. Put her down, put her down. Government put her down.”

My throat got tight.

He knotted his swollen fingers, pushed them into his chest. “No protection from the Workers. No one, urh, watching out. Gone. Gone.”

Tears pooled in my eyes. “I’m sorry, Carl. Girl was a good dog.”

The man by the fire threw something heavy in among the flames. Sparks flew up. “Leave off!” he yelled again. “No-good bugger. Leave off, will you.”

The dull ache in my stomach spread. My skin was warm, but inside I was cold. Girl was gone. How could they take away the one thing that made him feel safe? Guarded him? Called him back when his mind traveled too far toward darkness? He seemed so much worse than he was before. Rambling and twitching his fingers. Blinking like there was salt in his eyes.

So much had happened to me, but so much had happened to Carl, too.

“I—I just came to see if you were here,” I said. “To say hello.”

“To say hello.”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m going to go now, okay, Carl?”

“Go.” He sat on the rocks, legs crossed, and wiped his hand underneath his nose. “Urh. Do you want to see your cards?”

“If it’s okay,” I said. I sat opposite him. In one of these fine chairs. “That’d be great.”

He dug his handkerchief out of his pocket and smoothed it on the ground. Then from another pocket he retrieved the cards. They were the same old ones. Faded and bent, the image of a woman in a flowing dress on the back. I chewed my lip. They’d destroyed his dog, but saved his deck of cards.

“Urh,” he said. He shuffled the pack, held it out to me, and I tapped it three times with my pointer finger. Then he began snapping cards down in a row. Four, then five.

“What do they say, Carl?”