Chapter 4

The county clerk's office was in the old courthouse, second door on the left, and Nadine Purvis had worked that counter for thirty-one years.

"Appeal of impoundment," Ora Dell said. "I want to file one."

Nadine pulled a form out of a drawer. "Twenty-five dollars. Has to be in by four-thirty Friday."

Ora Dell counted out two tens and a five from her purse and pushed them across. Then she filled the form out in her own handwriting, printing slow, and at the bottom, on the line that said RELIEF REQUESTED, she wrote: I am asking that the animal be brought to the meeting and that the county run its own scanner on him.

Nadine read it and looked up. "You can ask for the animal. Write it down separate, in your own words. I'll attach it."

"Will they do it?"

"They'll do it or they won't." Nadine stapled the pages together. "Miss Ora Dell, you want my advice, you bring paper. They don't care about feelings in that room. They care about paper."

Ora Dell had paper. She just didn't know yet if it was the right paper.

From the courthouse she drove three blocks to the Ledger office, where Hoyt Pemberton was eating a pimento cheese sandwich at his desk with the police scanner turned down low.

"I want a correction," she said.

Hoyt wiped his hands. "It's a public notice. The county pays for the space. I print what they send me."

"It says I neglected my dog."

"I know what it says." He sighed and leaned back. "Miss Ora Dell, I've been running this paper since 1988 and I've never once printed a correction on a notice. But you bring me paper - real paper - and I'll put it on page one. That's a promise."

She left him her number.

Then she drove out Cutler Bend Road, past the water tower, until the pavement gave out and the gravel started.

Delbert Yancey's place was a single-wide with a tin shed and a dog lot out back. Duke was in the lot, lying against the fence with his ribs showing and his water bowl full and untouched.

He raised his head when he heard her car door, and then he got up, and then he came, and he put his whole weight against the wire and whined low in his throat.

Ora Dell crouched down and put her fingers through the fence and let him lick them.

"He won't eat for me," Delbert said, coming around the house. "I've tried everything. My brother-in-law Rufus was with me when I bought him and he'll tell you the same."

"I'll pay you back your seventy-five."

"I don't want your seventy-five." He hooked his thumbs in his belt. "I want you to have him. But I don't want the county on me either. I signed nothing, so I own nothing, and if I just hand him over, what's that make me?"

"A witness," Ora Dell said. "If you'd sign your name to what happened."

Delbert studied the dog a while.

"Bring me something to sign," he said. "I'll sign it."

She was almost home when her phone rang. She pulled over on the shoulder to answer it, because she didn't drive and talk.

"Miss Ora Dell." Marlon. He didn't say hello. "I hear you filed an appeal."

"I did."

"That's your right." A pause. "The Yancey dog's got no rabies certificate on file. That makes him a public health risk. I'm sending Officer Hollis out tomorrow morning to pick him up."

"You can't -"

"I can. Have a good evening."

The line went dead. Ora Dell sat on the gravel shoulder with the motor running and the sun going down behind the pines.