A Dog Called Homeless

Mrs. Cooper helps Sam get through an asthma attack by giving him his inhaler and holding him in her lap. She says the attacks have been happening more frequently. Once he recovers, Mrs. Cooper spends hours with them looking over the “laminated sheet that [has] pictures of hands showing” how to use the deafblind alphabet (128). It takes Cally a while to figure out how to communicate that way, but Sam is patient with her.

Finally, Sam asks Cally why she doesn’t speak. She taps out that she doesn’t want to, and Sam tells her he doesn’t want to be deaf and blind. He then tells her the story of a brave mouse. Through this tale, he encourages his friend to have courage, too.

A few days later, Cally asks Mrs. Cooper if she and Sam can go to the common. When they get to the ruins of Swan Lake, Cally sees graffiti along the wall where Jed usually sleeps. Cally hears a noise from the woods. Homeless walks out, his head “hanging down, his fur murky, dried blood around a big scratch across his nose” (132). Cally looks around, worried that Jed might be hurt somewhere, too.

Cally cleans up Homeless in the lake, and then she and Sam sit with him by the edge of the water. Cally momentarily sees Mom and then returns her focus to Sam and Homeless, spelling out everything she sees with the deafblind alphabet. Sam spells to her that she must find a way to keep Homeless. Cally feels their friendship growing, and they both know Cally will eventually have to tell him about everything, including everything about Mom.

Cally shows Sam the shed where she stored all the stuff Dad tried to pack away. Sam finds Dad’s guitar, and in the case is a guitar pick snapped in half so that it’s shaped like a broken heart. Cally takes Sam’s hand and spells out a question for him. She asks what he thinks is out there, in space.

Sam thinks about it for a minute and then turns the question back on Cally. He spells, “You must have an idea, or you wouldn’t ask me” (136). Cally tells him she thinks that there might be people out there. She thinks to herself, “[M]aybe the distant stars were the people gone from earth. Maybe that was what a ghost was, one of our stars come to visit us” (136-37). She’s learning to trust Sam and hopes that he won’t laugh at her when she spells out her secret.

To Cally’s surprise, Sam doesn’t tease her. Instead, he asks if anyone else can see her mom. Cally thinks for a moment and then replies that Jed might see her.

Dad leaves a tape recorder on Cally’s bed for her to find. She plays the message on it, which is a recording of Dad saying, “You can say anything you like into this recorder. And if you want, you can let anyone you like listen to it. But if you want to record something and don’t want anyone to listen to it, that’s all right too” (139). Cally plays the message back again, and Dad comes to sit on the bed next to her.

He tells her that the recorder was Dr. Colborn’s idea. Dad tries to be silly with her for a moment, recording new messages about making up her bed and painting her room. Finally, he turns more serious and tells Cally she must go through her stuff and unpack the boxes. He reminds her what Mom used to say when he rambled on about something: “Play us a tune or sing us a song, but for heaven’s sake stop going on” (143). This elicits no response from Cally, and Dad wishes out loud that Mom was here to help.

At Sam’s apartment, Cally can’t stop thinking about her mom. She remembers how, the day she died, the house still smelled like the pancakes she cooked for Dad’s birthday that morning. Cally thinks about the undecorated cake Mom left behind. She thinks Mom “must have forgotten something, because she’d driven the car out of town. She was coming back but…there was a crash” (146). Sam asks Cally if she can phone ghosts. Cally initially says no, but Sam insists that she try. Cally squeezes her eyes shut and tries to remember Mom.

Eventually, Mom comes to her. Cally asks her if she’s a ghost, a star, or an angel. Mom replies that she’s none of those things: She’s her mom. Then, she tells Cally to listen carefully. She says that the old clock that was painted with the earth in the middle is similar to her situation. Mom says, “What you think is on the outside is in the middle” (148). Then, Cally thinks to herself, “I [feel] her in the middle of me. That’s when I notic[e] my belly [doesn’t] hurt anymore. I’d gotten so used to aching” (148). When Cally opens her eyes, Sam smiles, knowing that she successfully called her mom.

Cally and Dad have another appointment at the school to discuss her not talking. The teachers tell Dad that Dr. Colborn wants to come to the school and observe Cally for a day. Cally is annoyed by the way everyone “talk[s] like [she’s] not here. Discussing the best way forward, useful suggestions, long-term strategies” (151). They tell Dad that Dr. Colborn will come to observe Cally next week.

At the end of the meeting, one of the teachers stops Dad before he leaves. She asks Dad if he knows about the gray Irish wolfhound that’s been hanging around the school and causing a scene. Cally listens harder, realizing that they’re talking about Homeless. When Dad says the dog doesn’t belong to them, one of the teachers tells him that the dogcatcher will come during the next concert practice to take the dog away.

The next day, a long, loud howl interrupts concert practice. Cally leaves practice to quiet Homeless down, hoping to keep him away from the dogcatcher. She ignores Mrs. Brooks, who is tapping on the window at her to get away from the dog. They run “across the playing field, heading for somewhere far away from everyone” (156), but they’re too late: Before they get out of the schoolyard, the dogcatchers come, carrying long sticks with loops on the ends. Homeless dodges them for a while, but they eventually lure him closer with food and catch him.

Cally, still heartbroken over Homeless being captured, is hiding in the shed when Sam and Jed knock on the door. Sam shows Jed in and then returns to the apartment for some cards to show him. Jed looks around at all the photographs and drawings that Cally has hung up on the walls. He looks “closer at one photograph, […] the only one with Mom in her red raincoat” (159). He tells Cally she has her mother’s eyes.

Sam returns to the shed with a plan. He spells to Cally that he asked his mom how to get a dog back from the pound, and she said you had to prove the dog belonged to you and pay around a hundred dollars. He hands Jed some cards that read “Big, Dog, Gone, Van, and Money” (160). Jed, smiling through his tears, tells the kids they’re going to get Homeless back.