I was still looking at the picture. “She is a cute little thing,” I said and handed it back to her. “She wasn’t very big, was she?”

“I could carry Taco in my jacket pocket. We didn’t name her Taco. We got her from a man in California that named her that,” she said, as if she could see herself that the dog didn’t come through in the picture. As if, had she named the dog herself, it would have been different. Then the name would have been a more real name, and Taco would have, by default, become more real as well. As if a name could convey what the picture didn’t—all the things the little dog did and was and meant to her.

Names don’t do it either, of course. I had named Aberfan myself. The vet’s assistant, when he heard it, typed it in as Abraham.

“Age?” he had said calmly, even though he had no business typing all this into a computer, he should have been in the operating room with the vet.

“You’ve got that in there, damn it,” I shouted.

He looked calmly puzzled. “I don’t know any Abraham …”

“Aberfan, damn it. Aberfan!”

“Here it is,” the assistant said imperturbably. Katie, standing across the desk, looked up from the screen. “He had the newparvo and lived through it?” she said bleakly.

“He had the newparvo and lived through it,” I said, “until you came along.”

“I had an Australian shepherd,” I told Mrs. Ambler.

Jake came into the Winnebago, carrying the plastic bucket. “Well, it’s about time,” Mrs. Ambler said, “Your coffee’s getting cold.”

“I was just going to finish washing off Winnie,” he said. He wedged the bucket into the tiny sink and began pumping vigorously with the heel of his hand. “She got mighty dusty coming down through all that sand.”

“I was telling Mr. McCombe here about Taco,” she said, getting up and taking him the cup and saucer. “Here, drink your coffee before it gets cold.”