The story is years’ old around here and it eventually has to be told, shared, so this is how I remember it, the way it came to me in pieces:

Ray Canfield, with one bad arm but at the wheel of a Rapid Transit bus for his twentieth year, and nursing a life-long love of dogs, saw the mutt down beside the Cliftondale bus shelter, in the lee of a strong, breezy November rain coming close to sleet. A sudden bang at his heart was as old as he could remember, and was a convincer of sorts. The temperature, having fallen in the last hour or so, and which he could fathom within a degree or two, was now, even before evening’s shadows, convincing water to harden on shallow, flat surfaces. Ray, sitting high in the driver’s seat, was thin in the hair, long-legged, and the creases in his pants, ironed tightly in place by his wife Ida, were extreme. Long and neat he was and easily pleasant about the face.

At first sight of the cowering mutt, the pain in Ray’s chest, angular and with a core of warmth was, he knew without a momentary doubt, a pang of pity for the dog. And at that pure moment of clarity he knew a kind of minor evolution: dog odor, the touch of a cool nose, the beat of chest at the end of a good run, followed by the slop of a friendly tongue talking of love and gratitude.

The bus door, at Ray’s command, slapped open, and he tossed one half of his lunch at the stray. The toss was underhanded, with his oddly-bent right arm, like a softball pitcher, almost naturally, as if he were in the seventh inning, in command of each delivery. Ray’s eyes caught the remnants of breeds in the mutt: terrier fur, Boxer chest, the girth of spaniel paws, all spelling gentle warmth and trust. With a sly, initially distrusting move, the dog ate the Spam and cheese sandwich, looked into Ray’s eyes, heard the kindness coming in the new voice, half shook the wetness off his back and climbed aboard. A real mutt, black and white in various degrees and geography, and not quite up to Ray’s knee, the mutt lay down behind Ray, out of the way. His paws were like baseball gloves, Ray thought, and the stubby tail, like a top at the end of its spin, had a few vigorous shakes as he settled down.

Ray was a stick-out on any of the Rapid Transit busses when making change for riders: his right arm refused to unbend completely at the elbow, nearly at a right angle, and had been locked that way since an accident at Sawyer’s icehouse when he was in high school. That time he could not avoid getting in the way of a wild-ass band saw loose in the locker where ice blocks were cut to neat rectangular shape for storage. Later, for nearly the three years of his army duty, nobody had questioned his short reach, so good and so complete was his masquerade of the impediment. Ray often said, “Whenever I touch an ice cube, I swear I can hear the twang and bang of that crazy saw as it cut loose, like a roomful of saws making crazy and threatening music.”

His wife Ida, “her only ruse in life being the blond tint of her hair,” as he’d often say, was prettier and shorter than him and slim as a whip. She loved him monumentally, and thought him a monumental man for having succeeded in the ploy that got him through the army. Time and again she extolled his good virtues by saying, “He’s worked practically every day since his separation from the service, and though we do not have much, the mortgage still a good dozen years from closure, I am totally and ever happy with him.” Occasionally she’d add, “And he has a great smile,” part telegrapher with her own eyes, dipping her head as if embarrassed by a small secret divulged.

Thus it was, at the end of his long day at the wheel, Ray, once a dog handler for most of his army days, climbed out of his pick-up truck in the driveway with the stray in his arms. One upstairs lamp, he noticed, was aglow in the house. It made him smile. Evening was setting in with a soft haze despite the cold. On the white pole the flag was crusted into deep folds and he hauled it down, to place it in the hallway to dry out. The small dog, an all-American breed for sure, was comfortable and now thoroughly dry.

Ida, a bride for nearly twenty years, saw the pair coming up the front steps, the dog’s head on her husband’s shoulder. Her kitchen, for all those years in rough weather, as well as the back porch in good weather, had often been a haven for strays. The count over the years escaped her, though she could remember three young pups in one winter. If they had had any children, perhaps the casual collection might not ever have happened. To some friends she had termed it, “Catch and Carry,” or “his salute to comrades.” But Ray loved dogs; and she in turn could tolerate them until things got chewed or got missing. She wondered about this new one, “Come to rest, and come to eat, no doubt,” she said to herself. There were few extras in their provisions. One time, however, she used to slip a few cans of dog food onto a cellar shelf, sort of insurance for the next stray. But the storage would soon get depleted.

The closest she had ever come to loving a stray was Theo, the all-everything breed Ray had brought home on a rainy night early in their marriage. It was the night before the Fourth of July and the constant fireworks seemed to have unnerved Theo. Ray hugged him all the way home, the dog’s heart beating wildly at Ray’s chest. Ida’s heart, in turn, had melted for that scraggly pup, until, well grown, he began to bring home other people’s laundry… right off their clotheslines… sheets and pillow cases and towels and reams of personal things, once white or pastel in colors, and clean, and then dragged through the streets and back yards for deposit at Ida and Ray’s back door. They had no clothes washer or dryer at that time, and that otherwise lovely mutt Theo had been put up for adoption. Charlie Anganis, an upcountry farming friend, had been swept up by Theo, Ray knowing the dog’s name had secured a new home for his mutt.

“Oh. Dear,” Ida said, as she saw the latest Catch and Carry in his arms, “I suppose we have to feed him now. It won’t be easy, Ray.” Her evening apron, a light shade of blue, was in place for the supper meal. A bare hint of lipstick, pale as if not even there, caught a sheer reflection of moisture. The lamp in the upstairs window was a reflecting match with Ida’s lipstick, and Ray warmed again, all over, with her subtle messages. He was the luckiest man in the world, and he had a new pup in the measure.

When Ray, hugging Ida with the mutt still in his arms, said, “Well, Hon, we can’t take it with us,” he began to laugh and laughed for half an hour, and often again through the night, when Ida said, “Take what?” He measured his successes repeatedly during the night.

In the morning, Ida scrounged up enough food for the dog that they simply called “Mutt,” and Ray said, “I’ll take him for a ride with me, Hon, and see what the day brings. Though he has no collar tag, someone might recognize him.”

Off went the favored pair.

It was later on that day, as it has come back to me, that Ray approached the old high school near the start of lunch sessions. One of his stops was just above Pop Bradley’s house, directly across from the high school grounds. Pop, in retirement from his diner, had rigged up an old baby carriage, stripped the top, mounted a plywood panel to the chassis, and toted hot dogs, soda pop and candy across the street for sale to the kids at lunchtime. His hot dogs were famous, doused heavily with mustard, and sold for a dime a piece. Every day, for a couple of years, Pop had sold every hot dog he’d cooked up in his small cellar kitchen.

Ray could smell the pungent hot dogs as the cool wind came up the street to him, and Mutt brought himself fully erect behind Ray’s seat.

One of the kids at lunch, with hot dog in hand, had told his father, who later told me, “I was standing there, talking to Pop Bradley, and suddenly, like blazes, there comes a dog off the bus. He runs down the street toward us. He’s really moving and I’m staring at him, wondering how he got on the bus, did he pay his fare, why’s he moving so fast. Anyway, he comes nearer me, and something tells me he’s got his eye on my hot dog. I start to hold it up, away from me, and he leaps in the air and nabs it right out of my hand. In about three seconds the whole hot dog is gone, and this speedy little mongrel, I suppose that’s what he is, turns around and looks at us. And he’s about ninety feet down the street from us, pawing the ground, hey, like one of those bulls you see in the movies about bullfights. And his face is all covered with mustard. He’s got mustard all over his face. The kids were screaming and laughing. Just going bananas about him.”

“Pete Chalkis, laughing in that way he has, like everything in life is beautiful or funny, walks toward the dog with his own hot dog and holds it out, away from him just like I did, but only higher. Kind of like a dare or a taunt. That little mutt, speedy as ever makes a run at Pete, all ninety feet or so, leaping even higher, and nabs the dog. I swear, during that lunch period the dog ate about a buck’s worth of hot dogs. Maybe more. The kids in school heard all about it, a buzz going on up and down the corridors and in all the classrooms the whole rest of the day.”

Ray, they say, was charmed at Mutt’s acrobatics and menu selection, his instincts for survival, so the next day, at lunch, along came the bus, a full lunch session later than the first one, and Mutt, catching Pop Bradley’s hot dogs riding the air waves, comes to attention behind Ray’s seat, and leaps out when the bus door opens. Clustered near Pop’s open-air market on a buggy, is a new group of kids. About nine of them are holding hot dogs in the air as Mutt comes sprinting down the sidewalk, selects his target, spins in the air away from one kid and grabs the hot dog in the hands of another kid who stands stunned, his lunch gone. Mutt put on another buck’s worth or so of acrobatic leaps, the kids all laughing and screaming, Mutt with mustard all over his face, and Pop sold out again.

Things get spoiled, you know, by the way things are when something’s bizarre but really nice. The dog-snatching went on that way for almost a couple of weeks until some parent complained, Ray’s boss gave him hell, and Mutt was not allowed on the bus anymore. Mutt stayed at home with Ida, who fed him what she could from the sparse larder.

But word had spread all over town about Mutt’s gymnastics and his mustard face. People talked about it at Town Hall, at some football games at Stackpole Field, at a couple of playgrounds the fire department flooded where kids were waiting for ice to come so they could get in a skate after school. Winter was on the way.

It was another bus driver, Charlie Davis, who provided the last chapter of Mutt’s story.

“I was parked just above the high school, having my own lunch, the chill really in the air, when I saw Mutt sprint across the street from behind Pop Bradley’s house, kids suddenly and obviously alert and buzzing about Mutt’s sudden appearance, and Mutt, at full speed, runs right into the front of a car. He never makes it to the other side, just sprawls in the street with a spasm and one wild and mournful yelp. Pop Bradley leaves his baby carriage open-air market and picks up Mutt. He walks back to his house. Some of the kids said he buried Mutt behind his house right there on the corner of Vermont Avenue. It’s blue to this day, that house, where Chuckie Lovett lives. Somebody else said Ray, sad as hell, came by a couple of times to see Pop, I guess to thank Pop and pay last respects to the acrobat, and Ida did too, a few weeks later.

And the strange thing about all of it is that Pop Bradley didn’t come back to get his baby carriage until nearly dark that sad day, and no one, not one soul among all those kids, took so much as a candy bar off the carriage.