“You’re the one who froze the pile. Come on, Edgar, what’s it gonna be?”

Wait, he signed, one-handed.

“See there. Now, what’s that mean?”

“It means he can’t decide what to discard.”

Edgar pondered. He slapped his thigh and Almondine sauntered over and he held out his two cards, facedown. Could be either one of these, he signed. She scented one, then the other. She nosed the first. He placed a ten of hearts on the discard pile.

“Okay, nice. You’ve got the dog scouting cards. Remind me to lower my cards when she’s behind me. Pass the popcorn. I need to think.”

Claude chewed a kernel and looked across the table at Edgar’s father. On the wall, the telephone buzzed quietly, the sound like a june bug at a window screen.

“What was that?” Claude said.

“Oh, I don’t even hear that anymore. When they converted us off the party line it half-rings like that once in a while, but when you pick it up, it’s just dial tone. We call, they say it’s fixed, then it buzzes again.”

“Hmmm. You ever going to put a phone in the barn?”

“No. Quit stalling.”

Claude counted his cards.

“Oh lord, here we go,” his mother said.

“Next game I want to switch partners. My brother’s run out of luck. All he knows how to do is start melds. Besides, with Edgar on my team, I get two for one.”

“You can’t have him. Edgar and I are always partners. Another black three? How many of those do you have?”

“That’s what you’re going to find out. All good things come to those who wait, and I intend to make you wait. Edgar, listen to your poor old uncle Claude. You can get anything you want in this world if you’re willing to go slow enough. Remember that. Words of wisdom.”

“Did you just call yourself slow?”

“A smart kind of slow.”

His father discarded a queen of clubs and looked at Edgar over his glasses. “If you’re the good son I raised you to be, you won’t pick that up.”

Edgar held two cards, neither of them queens. He smiled and pulled a queen off the deck and flipped the new card back onto the discard pile. Claude drew off the deck and tapped the new card on the table and then it disappeared into the mass of cards feathered out in his hand. He looked at Edgar’s father.

“If I’m so slow, then how could I know that’s the sixth queen in that pile? Which is why I can drop this lovely lady and break Trudy’s heart.”

He snapped another queen onto the discards and grinned.

Edgar’s mother pulled out a pair of queens and laid them on the table.

“I’ll be god-damned,” Claude said.

“We don’t use that kind of language around here,” she said, mock-primly, while raking the discard pile over.

“It was for cause. I guess I might as well stretch my legs.”

She parceled out the bounty, folding up two of her melds and tossing a set of cards over to Edgar.

“Partner, may I go out?” she said.

“Look at that. Your own wife did that.”

“It did seem unnecessary, didn’t it?” his father said, but he was grinning.

His mother looked back and forth between them. “All’s fair in love and canasta,” she said.

Claude counted his cards.

“You were holding two hundred twenty points?” his father said.

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t seem like it paid off, does it?”

“You just play your old farmer way and I’ll be in charge of showing some style.”

“A fine proposition if you weren’t my partner.”

“I’ll make it up to you, brother. Haven’t I always?”

To this his father said nothing. He counted out cards from his melds to offset Claude’s loss, then picked up the pad of paper and noted the results. The phone buzzed again. Claude shook his head and shoveled the cards together and began to shuffle.

EDGAR TOOK ALMONDINE with him to the kennel. At four months old, his pups were clumsy, happy beasts with overlong legs and narrow chests. Their ears flopped over except when they looked intently at something. It had taken Edgar almost two weeks to select names from the dictionary, sampling and rejecting possibilities, sleeping with them held in his mind, and still, the morning after deciding, he’d woken filled with regrets. Now it was as though the pups had been born with names already cast and all he’d done was thrash about until they were revealed.

baboo, babu, n. A Hindu title of respect paid to gentlemen, equivalent to master, sir.-babu. Babu-English. The broken English of Bengal.

essay, v.t. [Fr. Essayer. ASSAY.] To exert one’s power or facilities on; to make an effort to perform; to try; to attempt; to endeavor to do; to make experiment of.-n. An effort made for the performance of anything; a trial, attempt, or endeavor; a test or experiment; a literary composition intended to prove some particular point or illustrate a particular subject, not having the importance of a regular treatise; a short disquisition on a subject of taste, philosophy, or common life.

finch, n. [A. Sax. finc = G. Dan. And Sw. fink, finke, Gr. spiza.] A large family (Fringillidae) of small song-birds, including the bunting, sparrow, and goldfinch, having a small conical beak adapted to cracking seeds.

pout, v.i. [From W. pwtiaw, to push, or from dial Fr. pout, potte, Pr. pot, the lip.] To thrust out the lips, as in sullenness, contempt, or displeasure; hence, to look sullen; to swell out, as the lips; to be prominent.

opal, n. [L. opalus, Gr. opallios, an opal; comp. Skr. upala, a precious stone.] A precious stone of various colors and varieties, the finest characterized by its iridescent reflection of light, and formerly believed to possess magical virtues.

tinder, n. [A. Sax. tynder, tender, from tyndan, tendan, to kindle (Dan. taende, G. züden) = Sw. and L. G. tunder, Icel. Tundr, D. tonder, G. zunder, tinder.] An inflammable substance generally composed of partially burned linen, used for kindling fire from a spark struck with a steel and flint.

umbra, n. [L., a shadow.] The total shadow of the earth or moon in an eclipse, or the dark cone projected from a planet or satellite on the side opposite to the sun, as contrasted with the penumbra; the dark, central portion of a sunspot surrounded by a brighter, annular portion.

After deciding, he’d turned to each entry in The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language and penciled the dog’s number, litter number, and birth date in the margin:

D 1114

L 171

6/3/72

The margins were small and filled with annotations, and he had to write carefully, sideways when the word appeared in the middle of the three columns of definitions. After he’d finished, he’d returned the dictionary to its place on the filing cabinets next to the master litter book.

Baboo was the largest of the litter. He could set his front paws on Edgar’s shoulders and lick his face with ease. Essay, the wild one, and the leader, liked to play tricks. Tinder flung himself on any sibling he found asleep, growling them into a wrestling match; only Opal could back him into a corner. Pout was thoughtful, sober, and cautious, Finch, a study in earnest impulsiveness. Umbra, black from head to toe, was a watcher, a retreater to corners. They were all ferociously undisciplined and forgetful, but good-natured, too, and sweet to look at. And-for short periods, at least-they reveled in the training.

THE BARN ROOF HAD LONG been completed and another litter whelped and named. As part of his work as the medicine man of the kennel (as Trudy started calling him), Claude took the newest litters of pups under his care. Edgar’s father used the extra time to place yearlings and plan litters, spending days on the telephone and writing letters and poring over records. But no sooner did this arrangement seem comfortable than arguments between his father and Claude began to erupt.