Dedicated to Loren Moore: Another Buck Story

This story was originally published in my e-zine Storytime Tapestry and gather.com

Loren Moore was an Internet writer and friend of mine. He was read worldwide. When he was still living he created a series about his dog, Buck. He wrote many of these stories; and many of his Buck stories were contributions from his Internet friends. This is my contribution to the Buck series. Though fictional, I am sure you will enjoy it.

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The strange man knocked on the door of the second story flat on a snowy
Montreal morning in early January.

"Who is it?" yelled the grandmother but no answer came.

The incessant knocking continued. There was no getting around it: this
stranger was not going away. Slowly the grandmother walked to the door
with caution. As an older woman living alone with her granddaughter she
knew she was a prime target for criminals who prey on the innocent.

"Who is it?" she asked one more time as she approached the door.

"Listen lady," said the voice from the exterior, "I don't have much time I

have other deliveries to make, you know."

Now totally bewildered, the grandmother opened the door just wide
enough for the deliveryman to push a paper on a clipboard through the crack.

"Sign here," he commanded. She obliged and passed the clipboard back to
him. "Wait here as I go to the truck and get your package madame. Sure is a bitter cold morning, ain't it?"

Package; what package? Who could be sending her a package and why, she wondered. "I wonder if my granddaughter had anything to do with this one," she pondered. But she would have to wait another three hours before the granddaughter came home from school to quiz her about it.

The deliveryman returned to the door and handed her a large, cold steel
chain, which happened to be attached to a big, black, goofy lab and off he
went.

By this time her own dogs, a German shepherd, and a cocker spaniel, were
barking their fool heads off. The goofy looking lab sat on the top step and
refused to budge. Try as she might she couldn't get the lab to come into the house. Yet she couldn't leave him on the stairs that she shared with her
neighbour, either.