Business was in full-swing that hot Saturday morning in New Orleans. Just a few minutes past eight, it was too hot for early April and way too hot for so early in the day. With dripping humidity to boot. There was no explaining this – that time of year was supposed to be spring-mild and lovely. 

Throngs of New Orleanians, at least grateful for no rain on top of the freakish heat and humidity, had pulled on summer shorts and tank tops and headed for Uptown’s Crescent City Farmer’s Market, granddaddy of all the NOLA markets. Because of the heat they’d come early, but were happy to score the freshest of fresh produce, just-caught crawfish. And to get a jar of Tanta Florine’s green-bug jelly before it sold out .

On the market’s far edge, next to a couple briskly bundling and selling five kinds of lettuces out of the back of their van, a lone man stood his little patch of ground beside a cardboard box. Tucked into the shade of a live oak the lone man looked, if possible, at once both deeply forlorn and hopeful; in the box at his feet squirmed five puppies. Mongrels, defect-ugly, but cute too in the way all puppies, no matter how ugly, are cute. Standing up stave-straight, as if that would help his cause, the man held a carefully-lettered sign to his chest: Mom: a tramp. Three days on the loose: three dads. Three versions of FREE puppies: Take one (or two). Two of the little squirmers were yellowish and fuzzy-coated with ears jutting out on tilted planes, two others looked to become certain block-headed thugs, splotched brown and white. But the fifth, the smallest and maybe the ugliest of them, all black and slick-coated, contained every bit of the litter’s nobility.

Tess and Milo Corrigan, shopping for greens, strawberries and a couple of those just-caught crayfish, saw the box, paused for a look, then stooped to better see the little dogs.

The puppy man, who seemed to be holding his breath, did not acknowledge them; instead he kept his eyes straight ahead, aimed into the crowd. 

“Oh this black one.” There could not have been more tenderness to Tess as she reached to touch the small black head.

“Yeah.” Milo, crouched next to her, figured anyone could tell where this might go. But to the puppy he said anyway, tender too, “Hello, little guy.” Then he touched Tess’s knee. “You know we can’t.”

“I know.” She smiled, not at Milo but up at the puppy man. “Okay to hold one?”

The man did finally look down. “Of course.” 

She drew the black puppy up and to her, cuddled it into her chest. It’d been so long since she’d lived with a dog, years, since high school – somehow her mother’s standard poodle Félix just didn’t count. And she knew Milo, deprived, had never had a dog in his life. No pets in this house! had been his mother’s edict – he’d told her that once. But they talked about it, having one themselves, sooner rather than later, agreeing every time that ‘sooner’ had to wait. 

Today though, the thought flickered from the puppy’s beating heart into hers, the wait could be over. Wouldn’t Sooner be a good name for a dog?

Now she held the little thing up and away from her, looking into its homely face, then pointing it towards Milo. “This is a very sweet puppy,” she told him. And would grow into a very good dog; this, she knew.

“Someday a dog, Tessa.” Milo intended his tone to speak for their agreement. They didn’t have time for a dog – only six months married, she was just five months into her job, her big job with its long, energy-eating hours. He didn’t have much time either, between his five shifts at Neibur’s and the rest of his time in the studio – more time out there than in the house, working on his Celebrate New Orleans commission piece. A dog? In his studio? No way. In their lives? He couldn’t see it. 

Tess snuggled it into herself again, the puppy feeling like home, and looked over its head at Milo. She knew what he was saying was what they’d agreed to, was what she needed to pay attention to. There really was no time in their lives for having a dog, but still she said, “Something tells me this one’s going to be as good as Minnie.” The puppy rooted deeper. “Or almost anyway.” Never could there be another dog like her old Mineola. But still. 

“I know.” He didn’t know, not really. He’d heard all the stories of young Tess and her black Lab and their long, devoted attachment but, never having had a dog himself, the interior nature of all that was something of a mystery. He knew how much he loved his wife, definitely knew the interior nature of that love, but he doubted a comparison could be made with love for a dog. What wasn’t hard to imagine was what keeping a dog would likely mean in the everyday, and he doubted their married life, so full as it was, had room in it for what that would take. He watched her and the little round of black, though, and thought maybe his insides were absorbing something. “But when we do,” he said, aware of their still newlywed status and wanting to sound sensitive and supportive in a loving-husband way, “we’ll have a black one, yes? Just like Minnie?”

“Is there any other color?” There wasn’t, not in a dog, not for Tess. The puppy’s chin now was resting on her arm; it was asleep. She looked at the sleeping promise of this dog and said, “I still miss her, Mi.” She did.

He knew. That, he could feel and share with her, the longing for something lost. And he was beginning to be afraid this ugly puppy really might go home with them. He’d heard puppies chewed everything and shuddered to think of the studio and his work chewed through. “Well,” he told her, “but you’ve got me. And I’m devoted.” 

She knew that. “You are.” She still wasn’t looking up from the puppy.

“Counts for something, right, even if I don’t have a tail?” That last came out on its own, before any kind of rational editing. Soon he wouldn’t know what would spill out of his mouth. He wanted to call her away from the puppy and this vein of melancholy she’d opened for herself.

She looked up then, at him. “Counts for a lot.” But she wasn’t smiling.

“Just not quite yet, Tessa.” 

A ragged sigh and a nod. “Just not quite yet.” Putting the puppy back into the box felt like she was pulling the heart out of her chest. Someone good will take you, little Sooner, and you’ll have a wonderful life. Just won’t be with us. She drew a deep, deep breath. “I know,” she said to her husband, “we’ve got to be better settled.”

Without a dog in his history or heart, Milo couldn’t begin to identify the sadness he heard in her voice. It scared him. “Do you not think we’re settled?” He thought maybe he should change his mind, that they should take the ugly puppy.

“No, no. You know what I mean,” she said, more to the puppy man than to him, and stood up.

The puppy man nodded at her, straightened his shoulders and looked away, back out into the heat of the day and the throng of passersby.