Hot Spot by Charles Williams

small cake inside, not much bigger than an overgrown cupcake, covered with white frosting and dotted with what looked like round sections cut out of dates.
    “They’re instead of candles,” she said.
    “Twenty-two?” I asked.
    She smiled and shook her head. “You remembered, didn’t you? But it’s twenty-one. I mean, when you asked me, it was so near—”
    “Child,” I said. “Twenty-and-a-half years old.”
    I must have looked disappointed, or something. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Did you want me to be twenty-two?”
    “No,” I said. “That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes,” she answered quietly. “Wouldn’t it?”
    “I’m thirty.”
    “Well, have a sandwich, you poor old man, to keep up your strength.”
    “Wait,” I said. “We can’t eat sandwiches until we drink a toast.” I opened one of the Thermos jugs and filled two aluminium cups. It was iced tea.
    “To Gloria,” I said, “who is twenty-one all the time and beautiful in the moonlight.”
    I don’t know what happened to the rest of the afternoon. We ate the lunch, and then she worked some more on the picture. We couldn’t go swimming because neither of us had brought a suit, but we took off our shoes and went wading out on the sandbar. Sometime during the afternoon a big swamp rabbit came bounding downriver with Spunky yelping along in his wake and falling farther behind at every jump, and then the next thing we knew the sun was gone. It had dropped out of sight behind the timber and the shadows were long and growing darker out across the bottom.
    “I had no idea it was so late,” she said. “We’ll have to go. I promised I’d stay with Gloria Two while they went to Bible Class.”
    We gathered up the painting equipment and the lunch box and stowed them in the car, and it wasn’t until we were almost ready to get in ourselves that we realized Spunky was missing. Neither of us could recall seeing him since he’d gone past chasing the rabbit.
    We began calling him, but he didn’t come. I walked upriver a few hundred yards, and then down, calling and whistling, but there was no sign of him. When I got back to the car it was growing dark, and I could see she was worried and a little frightened. I could have kicked myself for what I’d said about the wild hogs.
    “Harry, do you suppose something has happened to him?” she asked anxiously.
    “He’ll show up,” I said. “He’s all right.”
    “But it’s getting dark. I’m scared for him.”
    “He can follow his own backtrail. I’m not concerned about that. But I’ve got to take you home. Your family’ll be worried about you.”
    “But we can’t just go off and leave poor Spunky down here alone—”
    “I’ll find him,” I said. “You just get in the car. And then give me your shoes.”
    She looked at me wonderingly. “My shoes? But why?”
    I grinned. “I want something you’re wearing, and I can’t think of anything else you can spare without starting a riot.”
    “Oh,” she said. She sat down on the seat and slipped off the wedgies. They had grass straps, and it suddenly occurred to me they were the same as the ones Dolores Harshaw wore. I took them back and put them down on the sand where we’d eaten lunch, and then got in the car.
    “We’re just going to leave them there?” she asked, puzzled.
    “Yes. And when I get back, Spunky should be asleep with his head on them. It’s an old trick. When you lose a dog, leave something he knows is yours at the last place he saw you. When he comes back he’ll wait by it.”
    I wasn’t nearly as optimistic about it as I pretended, but there was nothing else we could do at the moment. My experience when I was a boy had been with hunting dogs—bird dogs and hounds—and as far as I knew these house-bred fluffballs like Spunky might be as helpless in the woods as bubble-dancers.
    She was very quiet as we drove back to town. They were waiting on the front porch and you could see they had