All That Is Left Behind

Chapter 2

I took my dog in my arms, and I made my way to the boy. I was no older than four of five, and there was absolute distress written all over his face.

I made sure to have a good grip on my dog as he could get exited easily, and I knew a lot of people, including children, are easily intimidated by dogs, especially the overly expressive ones.

“Hey there,” I said.

The boy didn’t even look at me.

“Are you lost?” I asked him.

He didn’t turn around, but I knew he heard and understood me as he pointedly put his back to mine. There were silent tears in his eyes, but contrary to most children I’ve encountered, he wasn’t expressing his sadness very openly, which I found quite strange.

“You see,” I began. “My dog is named Miki, and he kept asking me to come around here. I really don’t know why. Do you? Maybe there’s a tennis ball hidden here somewhere. Would you help me look?”

He finally turned around, but his eyes were automatically drawn to Miki.

Miki gave him a doggy grin and waved his tail so hard, his little booty went side to side in my arms.

The boy had brown hair and gorgeous large brown eyes. He was wearing good clean clothes too that fit him perfectly. And he looked at the dog, hypnotized.

“Do you want to pet him?” I asked.

He said nothing, but I knew he heard me. He didn’t look at me, still glued to Miki.

“Here, let me show you how.” Then I spent the next minute showing the boy how to pet a dog.

“Do you want to try?” I asked him.

He finally dared look at me. It was brief, and he returned his gaze automatically to Miki. It gave me the strange vibe you get with autistic children. He had problems looking in my eyes, but clearly none in looking in a dog’s eyes, so I used this to try to open a channel of communication.

It took him a few minutes, and we finally both sat on the grass, I sat Miki in between us, keeping my hand on him to make sure he would not get too close to the kid and spook him, whom eventually caved and gave the first pet. It was short and just one finger on the forehead for maybe two seconds, then he pressed his hands together on his chest and kept looking at the dog. © 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

I repeated the exercise a few times, and he did more and more every time.

I wanted to question him more about his parents or why he was alone, but I wasn’t even sure he talked, and given how he ignored me when I started with this line of questioning, I decided not to push on too quickly as I feared he’d stopped communicating altogether.

Granted this communication method was pretty rudimentary, but at least it was one.

He was not crying either, and as minutes went by and he interacted more and more with the dog, his expression slowly melted into one of pure childish glee.

“What is your name?” I asked him.

His smiled disappeared as he looked briefly at me.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m Mila. I live with Miki not far from here. Miki loves parks very much, so we came here for a bit of fun.”

I thought that if I shared information first it could make me sound more trustworthy, but I wasn’t sure if this technique worked with children.

I dug into my bag, and next to my drawing pad, I found a little bag.

Miki realised right away what was going on, and suddenly ignore the kid and turned to me.

I took a treat out slowly, making him sit.

Miki could hardly contain his excitement and sat, shaking his weight from his left paw to his right.

I held the treat above his head and made him lie down. I had to say it twice until, his desire for the biscuit overcame his excitement and then I gave it to him.

The child looked at this scene in pure fascination.

“Do you want to try it?” I asked.

He nodded.

I did an internal ‘yoop’ as I managed to make the kid say something. Silently, but still, it’s an achievement.

“You have to tell him to sit though,” I said as Miki was now back on his paws going in circles and then sitting, but going back up and putting his paws on my legs to tell me he was still down for more treats.

It took a lot of coaxing out of me to finally make the kid talk. I guessed that if he was more interested in the dog than me that he might be more willing to talk to him rather than me.

It took a few minutes for him to get the gist of what had to be done, but he worked it out faster than I expected. So the kid was intelligent enough.

He ended up feeding five treats in a row to Miki.

I would normally not encourage so much feeding, but it was working really well, and I had heard the boy say at least four words now, and they were not as hard to get out of him than they had been at first.

Once the treats were all gone, he looked at me expectantly.

“Do you know what Miki loves?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“He loves to hear stories.”

Which wasn’t untrue. The moment you talk to a dog, the moment he realises he’s the center of attention, it’s like the greatest moment of his life, or at least, this is how my dog rolls.

“You can tell him about your day if you want,” I said.

He hesitated, probably too shy, and I went ahead and demonstrated how it’s done. I began by telling Miki what I had been doing today and how I was doing, looking at him and giving him all my attention, which he craved and got overly joyful. So much so that I had to tell him off a few times so that he would not lick my face.

It made the boy laugh every time.

It took a few times, but eventually he began talking.

At first it was disjointed words, that, out of context, made no sense to me. But it slowly grew into coherence.

He was here with his father. He didn’t mention his mother, so she was probably not here with him. He said his father travels, so I considered that maybe he’s from out of town. He mentioned a few places that I couldn’t pinpoint, and then he turned his attention to me.

“Pee,” he said.

“You need to pee?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Do you want to come to my and Miki’s house to go to the bathroom?”

He nodded again, moving his weight around, clearly struggling with his bladder.

“Okay,” I said.

I took one of my earpods out and put it in my ears, signalled 911, put the phone in my bag, then grabbed the leash in one hand, and the kids hand in my other and we walked to my place.