Dorothy wanted to be good. That was why she worked so hard at her chores and her school exercises. She could sense goodness within her, like a pouch in her breast, to be opened. She wanted to love her aunty; it would be good to love her aunty. She loved Toto.
Toto was not good. He dug up the green shoots in Uncle Henry's fields. He tore down the washing from the clothesline into the mud. Once in the lane, he bit through the sleeve of Dorothy's only coat and tried to drag her with him, away.
"We can't go back, Toto," she said, stroking the rough gray hair of his terrier head.
She began to see him less and less. Sometimes he disappeared for days at a time.
Then one day, in late afternoon, Dorothy walked back from school hugging her books, head down. Aunty Em was at the stove, slamming pots, loud as she could.
"Good day, Dorothy?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"What did you study, child?"
"Sub… subtraction."
"Hmmm."
They heard a bark.
"That dog. Back again."
Aunty Em wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door.
The earth was soft, muddy, thawed. It was about four-thirty in the afternoon in late March, what had been a nice day, a sunset blur of orange and blue across a flat and featureless sky. Toto the dog sat waiting.
"We'll have to try to catch him," said Aunty Em. She swept her coat on in one motion and put on gloves and took a rope. Dorothy followed, not wanting Toto hurt.
They opened the door again, and Toto had not run away. He was still there, at the end of the yard, waiting beside one of Aunty Em's dead flowerbeds. He barked as if to say: Here.
"What's he brought with him this time?" said Aunty Em, striding.
He had dug something up. He waited over it, eyes fixed on Aunty Em.
Aunty Em suddenly gave a kind of coughing, stricken cry. Her hand went to her throat, and she dropped the rope. Dorothy knew then that Toto had done something terrible.
Aunty Em broke into a run. "Horrible, horrible animal! Horrible, horrible dog!" she said, sounding as if she were coughing. She ran toward him, trying to pick up a handful of mud, to throw at him. She slipped onto her knees and kept sliding toward the thing from out of the ground.
"Rob Roy," cried Aunty Em, sobbing. "Oh, Robbie! Rob Roy!"
Toto barked at her, just out of reach. He ran around her, bouncing furiously.
Toto had dug up the corpse of another dog. Dorothy walked up next to her aunt and stood watching.
"Toto, stop," she said weakly.
There was bone with some wet and bedraggled fur still clinging to it, and hollow eyes, and a doggy smile full of teeth, a large skeleton with some skin still attached, a long, big corpse of a huge long-haired animal.
Aunty Em knelt in the mud, sobbing, covering her face.
Raf raf, raf raf, said Toto. He came hopping toward Emma. He was small and fierce and full of hate. You see, you see? Toto seemed to say. You had one too.
"Toto. Leave her alone," whispered Dorothy.
Aunty Em spun around and grabbed Dorothy and shook her, thick spittle clogging her lips, gray eyes wild. "Look at it! Look at it!" she demanded. "See it? See it? That's death. That's what your mother looks like now, in the ground."
Dorothy looked and saw the hollow eyes, the somewhat surprised and empty face that seemed to ask what had happened to itself. Where had it gone? Dorothy knew it was the truth. Her mother had no flesh now, or eyes, in the ground. Aunty Em wept, and Toto trotted back away, revenge taken. Dorothy saw him go, his tiny legs strutting across the gray mud, between the rounded gray humps.
Uncle Henry kept a shotgun leaning in the corner.
Toto did not show up for a day or two. Dorothy knew enough not to mention him. She thought he was hiding, keeping low for a while. He was such a clever dog.
But how low can you keep without disappearing, until you fade into less than a memory? When almost a week had passed, Dorothy asked if Aunty Em had seen Toto while she was away at school.
Aunty Em was scrubbing. "No, I haven't," she said, lightly.
"He's been gone a long time."
"I expect he's gone away," said Aunty Em, not looking at her.
"He wouldn't do that," said Dorothy.
"Well, he kept staying away for longer and longer," said Aunty Em.
But he wouldn't leave her, he wouldn't leave Dorothy, she knew that.
"Why would he run away?"
"Guess he didn't like it here."
Dorothy slumped down onto her mattress. Aunty Em couldn't stand it when anyone else cried. If anyone had a right to cry, it was Aunty Em. She looked around the edge of the blanket.
"There's no point going against the will of God, if that's what He's decided," said Aunty Em. Aunty Em looked at the good little girl who was so unhappy and relented a bit.
"Toto wasn't happy here, Dorothy. That's why he kept barking all the time and running off and did all those terrible things. So, I reckon he's gone off to find somewhere happier. Maybe he's gone off to find your old house in St. Louis. Maybe he thinks your mama's there. He's a dog and doesn't know any better."
"He wouldn't leave me!" said Dorothy.
"Well he has, and there's no way around it but to get used to it," said Aunty Em. Dorothy heard her boots on the floor as she walked away.
Dorothy waited for Toto to come back. Maybe he had gone away because he knew he was bad and would come back when he thought he had been forgiven. Maybe you could find out you were bad, and go away from shame and come back when you were good again.
Every day after school, when she came to the track that led to the farm, she would expect to see him again. Maybe this time, maybe this time, she thought every day all through the rest of that March, into April, into the fullness of the Kansas spring. From time to time, she would call his name, expecting to find him lying close to the ground, ready to spring up and run yipping to her.
She knew just how she would feel when that happened. She knew there would be a leaping up of joy inside her, and she would say "Good Toto, good boy, good Toto," and he would roll over and over and over, like he always did when he was especially glad to see her. That would happen, and everything would be all right.
Whenever she heard a dog barking at night, the sound coming across the Kansas hills, she thought it was Toto. She would get up.
"Dorothy. Where are you going?" demanded the voice in the darkness.
"I think it's Toto," she would reply. "I think he's come back."