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    Yellow Dog
    Yellow Dog
    Yellow Dog
    Ebook39 pages31 minutes

    Yellow Dog

    By Charles de Lint

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    About this ebook

    Yellow Dog is a short story set near de Lint's fictional desert town of Santo del Vado Viejo, where his novels The Mystery of Grace and The Painted Boy take place, and where some of his recent short fiction has been set.
    Ernie Grant is a decent guy, a bit of a desert rat who works at a scrap yard where he has to put up with racist comments from his crass, bullish boss. The boss works by night as a self-proclaimed Minuteman protecting the U.S. borders from the influx of illegal Mexicans. Ernie and his friend Salvador also search the desert at night, but they carry food, water and blankets to help the same travellers in the unforgiving desert.
    One day a mysterious stranger shows up at the scrap yard, unable to speak, but willing to help in more ways than one.
    Yellow Dog first appeared in 2007 as one of Charles de Lint's personal chapbooks that he gave to family and friends. It was reprinted the following year as a limited edition chapbook from Subterranean Press. This is its first worldwide release in an inexpensive format.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles de Lint
    Release dateMay 18, 2013
    ISBN9780920623213
    Yellow Dog
    Author

    Charles de Lint

    Charles de Lint and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, and The Onion Girl, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.

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      Book preview

      Yellow Dog - Charles de Lint

      Yellow Dog

      A short story by

      Charles de Lint

      Copyright 2007 by Charles de Lint

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      - 1. -

      Yellow Dog has lived in the desert for so long that he’s forgotten how to use words—the shape and taste of them, and how they can be thrown into the air and caught by another’s ear. But he knows he needs them, because there’s a story he has to tell. It isn’t his story, but the seed of it fell onto him last night while he was listening to music coming down from a ridge above him. It might have been someone playing a flute, it might have been the wind, but that story came riding the music and slipped inside him, worrying its way under his skin, and now he’s swollen with the need to get it out.

      Ramona once told him that words are just the bones of a story. The heart of what’s being told lies in between the lines, where you can’t see it. You can only feel it. But if you can connect to it, if you feel it just right, for that small piece of time your hearts can beat as one, and how often does that happen in anyone’s life?

      He doesn’t know whose story it is that he’s got stuck inside him, just like he doesn’t know who was up there in the rocks that night among the cholla and mesquite. But he knows the smell of the music. It’s like creosote and dust, like the hot coals of a campfire and the scent of moonlight on an owl’s tail feathers.

      All wrapped up in a story that he can’t tell.

      But Yellow Dog’s always been one for getting past a problem. Setting a puzzle in front of him’s like putting a spark to paper. It just has to burn. So he’s got this story, and when he finds the words to tell it, he’ll know what the music means and who was playing it.

      And maybe, for one moment, his heart will echo to the beat of another’s.

      - 2. -

      When I was a kid just getting out of college, I had a different

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