His name was Ned Hanson, Ray and Estelle’s next door neighbor — although when you live out in the country ‘neighbor’ means the person whose property abuts yours, even if their house is on the other side of the woods and across the bridge, three miles away. I’d seen him a few times before at Ray’s barn. Usually with a wrench or two hanging out of his front overalls pocket and an oily rag dangling from the back one. He always had scruff on his chin, never a full beard and never clean shaven. Then there was that baseball cap. Always the same one, green with the threads on the logo on the front so worn and smudged you could no longer make out what it had once said. He wore it over a full mop of greasy blond hair, no matter whether it was a hundred degrees out or like an icebox. Which was what it was the day he came for Bit and me. Cold. Bitterly, bone-biting cold. The moment I saw him, the hair on the back of my neck bristled. He’d never paid us dogs much heed, not even Slick, but I didn’t mind that.
