Jan Alexander

Duke the Magic Beagle rode the back seat with me. Wet nose tickling my thigh, making me giggle. It was almost July Fourth, and I was seven.

“Did I ever tell you about how he saved my life in Medellin?” Uncle Martin asked. He was riding shotgun—I loved to think of it that way—next to my father.

“Me-de-yeen,” I repeated. Such a tangy new name.

“Going too far…” My father, driving, shook his head. Dad was always telling Uncle Martin he was going too far. Martin was my father’s youngest brother. He had a silky ponytail and silver rings, and no one in his life but Duke. He was always going to South America.

“Two robbers were running after me. And Duke. They cornered us and he jumped on them.”

“That’s enough,” my father warned.

“If Duke were my dog, I wouldn’t even need Mom and Dad,” I said.

“Wouldn’t you miss us?” My father’s voice had something in it like the way he made the car keys jangle when he was trying to get us all to hurry.

I stroked Duke’s floppy ears. The thing was, I did want him as my own—more than I wanted a father and mother.

A sky-blue car just behind us moved into the right lane. I liked the color. Cars usually speed up ahead of you, I thought. Duke shifted, and his ears spread across my lap.

“Can’t you go faster?” Uncle Martin asked. He was looking out the mirror on the right, the blue car on our tail.

My father said nothing. He didn’t speed up. I could see his neck glowing red.

“You’re brave even when you’re afraid,” I whispered to Duke.

Uncle Martin must have heard me. “Jessie Lala, I’ll bet you can get Duke to swim this year.” The “Lala” was his name for me, and it always felt like a kiss on the cheek. Duke was afraid of water, afraid to go in our lake. Uncle Martin had taught me how to wash him with a can of dry shampoo for dogs.

“Were you near the beach when the robbers came after you?” I needed to figure that out.

I spotted the same blue car, pacing just behind us, as if letting us win a race.

“You bet. They were diver robbers looking for buried treasure and Duke chased them right out of the ocean.”

“I love Duke,” I said aloud. Sometimes if you loved something enough, like more cake or a sparkly tee-shirt, grownups would give it to you.

But Uncle Martin just said, “Duke loves you.”

My father said nothing; instead he slapped the steering wheel, the way he always did when he made that right turn to the road through the woods, as he were announcing I’m coming home. He cut off the blue car. I saw it slow down then keep going. I saw Uncle Martin twist one silver ring and then another and another. Then he turned and looked at me.

“Jessie Lala,” he said, “if anything ever happens to me, Duke is yours.”

“Really?” My voice came out like a high note in a song. Then I remembered, it would be terrible if something happened to Uncle Martin. I wondered if I should apologize, but Dad and Uncle Martin were busy waving to my big sister Natalie. She’d come ahead with Mom the day before, and now she was running down the road toward us. Showing off her new red satin gym shorts, which I figured was why she was coming to meet us.

“I love Duke more than Natalie,” I said but no one was listening. Natalie was eleven, and she wasn’t interested in dogs. She’d made a coconut pie, she’d rowed the canoe to the other side of the lake, she’d aired out the guesthouse for Martin and “him,” she said, pointing to Duke.

“He could be mine,” I told her before dinner, forgetting again. Natalie looked at me the way a grownup would if I’d said the wrong thing.

Late that night I held my stuffed beagle, the one they’d brought me last year when Duke and Martin left. A lifeless substitute for Duke the Hero. I listened to the chirp of the treefrogs. Downstairs, my parents were up and talking.

“Martin’s dealing again,” I heard my father say. “Someone followed him. He’s got to leave tomorrow, we can’t have him here with the girls.”

“Are you out of your mind? Get him out of here now!” Mom’s voice rattled like a broken window in a storm. And I wondered, wouldn’t Duke protect Uncle Martin?

“I’ll stay up and keep an eye out,” my father said. “I’ll tell him first thing in the morning, I promise.”

I didn’t think I was afraid. It was more like watching a movie, knowing by the dark forest and the drumbeats that something might happen. No sound except the treefrogs chirping and a thump-stop-thump-stop-thump. My heartbeat was the drum.

Then I thought I heard footsteps in the distance. I ran into Natalie’s room.

“Don’t be stupid. It’s just your imagination.” But she moved over and let me in her bed. “Where’s Fake Duke?

I’d left my dumb stuffed dog behind. We lay there listening to the treefrogs. We must have fallen asleep, but the next thing I heard was a roar – and a long howl.

“Duke!” Iwent to the window and saw licks of fire swallowing the guesthouse.

I shook Natalie awake. We ran out in our nightgowns. This was like Me-de-yeen, I thought, and the way my heart was pounding I was terrified it would leap right out of my chest.

“Go back to bed!” my father yelled when he saw us. He was aiming the garden hose at the flames.

But I heard more howling, and I ran toward the howls.

I found Duke down by the lake, shivering in the sand.

I held him tight and we both listened to the sirens, the clatter of firemen arriving.

And then they were calling me. “Jessica? Jessica?” My mom’s voice was frightened.

“Arrrrr arrrr arrr!!!” Duke answered.

The voices got closer, and someone in a firefighter hat swooped me up. Duke was in someone’s big arms too, howling in a way that sounded like a question.

Where was Uncle Martin?

The firemen found him later.

“Duke will come with us,” my father told me. He was sobbing. That was when I learned you don’t grow up and stop feeling sad.

We left the lake house before the sun came up because my father didn’t want to be there. I rode in his car, in Martin’s seat next to the driver, Duke sprawled across my lap.

“He’s yours,” said Dad.”He’s sad too, so you have to give him extra love.”

I saw a dark blue car ahead of us, then a royal blue one passing on the left. I stroked Duke’s head and scratched his throat. I didn’t want to think it, but I knew. That moment yesterday, a million years ago, I’d wanted something to happen to my uncle.

Dad reached over and held my hand. He knows too, I thought.

At home the next morning, Duke got up from the floor beside me and nuzzled me awake with his chilly nose. It felt good. Then remembered I didn’t deserve him.

It was hot at home. Natalie came to breakfast in her bathing suit. “Let’s hose each other,” she said.

Duke followed us to the yard. But when my sister turned the hose on, he walked backwards, looking like he was shrinking.

I held the hose over Natalie. She jumped and shrieked and let me get her soaking wet, splashing mud from the lawn so that her legs had black streaks.

“Whoever gets the muddiest wins,” she announced. “Your turn.”

I fought the blast of cold until I got used to it, then I let my feet sink into the mud. It almost seemed like happiness still existed.

“Duke’s turn!” Natalie called out, the jet spray muffling her voice. Before I realized what she’d said, she had the water blasting him.

“No!” I yelled.

“Ohhh—I forgot!” She put the hose down but it was too late.

Duke cried out and tackled me, and we both rolled in the wet muddy grass. If only I could ride him and we could gallop away, that’s what I was wishing. Except I didn’t deserve a magic dog.

“I’m no good, I can’t protect you,” I said—and then he tore out through the gate I’d forgotten to close.

We heard a screech, we heard him scream for help, and we found him on the curb. A car was there, a beige car this time and the driver had stopped. A man with a big round face was leaning over Duke. “I’m so sorry girls, I’m so so sorry.”

The man even picked him up and drove him, with Mom and me, to the dog hospital.

Duke had a broken leg. They were going to keep him a few nights, but they said he’d be fine when it healed.

While he was in the hospital, I said I don’t want him anymore and I kicked things so that I wouldn’t be a coward and cry, all alone without the dog I didn’t deserve.

Mom and Dad gave him away, to some other kids, because whoever they were they must have done something right.

• • •

Jan Alexander is the author of Ms. Ming’s Guide to Civilization (Regal House Publishing), a utopian novel that was a Leap Frog Fiction Prize semi-finalist. My flash fiction has received honorable mentions from Flash Fiction magazine and Women on Writing, as well as a Pushcart nomination. Her fiction and reviews have also appeared in Atticus, the Chicago Tribune, The Ekphrastic Review, Everyday Fiction, Guernica, and 34th Parallel, with a new story coming out in The Santa Fe Literary Review in August 2026. She lives in New York and co-produces a regular series of author readings in the nearby Hudson Valley.