"Hey, boy," Kevin said. He stood in front of the dog house, a ratty tennis ball grasped in one hand, and looked down at the despondent sheepdog.
"Get up, boy," Kevin said. "We're going to play some fetch."
Jared groaned inwardly. "Please, not now," he thought to himself.
Unfortunately, Kevin could be single-minded when it came to getting what he wanted, and he began to wear down Jared's resistance. He dropped the yellow tennis ball on the ground in front of the sprawled mound of grey and white fur that made up the bulk of the sheepdog.
Jared sniffed at the ball, disinterested at first, but he recalled other games with Kevin. Catching a Frisbee in the park, jumping into a pile of raked leaves in a neighbor's yard, coming home to face Mom's wrath because the neighbor had called to complain about Kevin and his dog.
"Wait a minute," Jared corrected himself. "Those aren't my thoughts. Those are Shaggy's."
He struggled to unearth some of his submerged memories, such as tossing a baseball around to his younger brother and trying, in vain for the most part, to teach his sibling the finer points of simply tossing and catching a ball.
He remembered that Kevin had been very afraid of getting hit by the ball, so he had put an arm around the younger boy and helped him fit the catcher's mitt over his hand. Patiently, he demonstrated how Kevin shouldn't have to worry about getting hit once he mastered catching with the mitt. It took some time, but the kid had gotten less afraid as the evening had proceeded. To both their surprise, Kevin started liking the game. They had gotten so carried away that they had thrown the baseball back and forth to each other until the evening's first fireflies announced the coming of twilight on that summer evening a couple of years ago.
As they walked toward the house, Jared recalled putting an arm over his brother's shoulders and promising to teach him to become just as proficient with a bat. "We'll have you knocking it out of the park," he predicted.
Other things had gotten in the way. He had his own friends, who kept asking him to spend time with them. When the school year rolled around Jared found his schedule consumed by homework, friends, and his dedication to the baseball team, The urgency of teaching the younger Webster the finer points of the game of baseball had quickly faded.
"Come on, Shaggy. I'm trying to prove Jared's wrong about you."
Jared's ears picked up his name, and he raised his shaggy face. "He says you're a dumb dog that doesn't do anything all day but lay around like a big useless lump."
The comment, despite some accuracy, still burned Jared. His rage at the impostor who had so effortlessly slipped into his old life began to build. "I'll show him who's a dumb dog," Jared barked and leapt onto all four paws. He ducked down and snatched the ball into his jaws only to have Kevin reach for the old tennis ball and wrest it from him.
"You gotta wait 'til I toss it, boy," Kevin said. He took the ball and, Jared was pleased to see, remembered all the finer points he had taught him on how to throw a ball. Then, when the yellow ball sped across the yard, the emotion of his pride switched to something else. Without even thinking about doing it, he felt his body launch itself into a shambling run across the yard to fetch the ball. Once he scooped the ball into his jaws, he kept running with it. When Kevin closed in on him, he veered off and ran in the opposite direction.
"Shaggy!" Kevin objected. "That's not how you play fetch. You've got to bring the ball back to me."
Jared didn't want to give up the tennis ball. He kept it held in his mouth, which caused drool to seep from his semi-open jaws and leak onto his chin and drip onto the grass.
Kevin walked toward him, but he stifled Jared's urge to run off with the ball with a single word, pronounce firmly. "Stay!" Kevin commanded. Poor Shaggy had never been taught very many commands, but he knew that one.
Jared whined, but he stayed put while Kevin got close enough to wrest the ball from him.
"Look, Shaggy," Kevin reasoned with him. "Our objective is to prove that you are not too dumb to learn new tricks, OK?"
The whole time Kevin spoke to him, his hand holding the tennis ball swayed back and forth. Jared listened less to the words coming out of his young master's mouth and focused more on the appeal of the tennis ball.
"Ready, boy?" Kevin asked.
Jared shook his head. Kevin wasn't his master. They were brothers. They were...
Kevin tossed the ball and yelled "Fetch!"
Jared abandoned trying to reason out the true relationship between him and Kevin. Instead, he bounded across the yard and recovered the yellow ball.
Kevin, in a perfect stance for a baseball catcher, clapped his hands on the front of his pants. "Bring it here, boy. Bring it to me."
Pleasing Kevin crowded other considerations from his immediate thoughts. Jared walked the short distance and dropped the ball onto the grass next to Kevin's sneakers.
At that moment, the impostor walked out of the house, attired in Jared's baseball practice gear.
"I suppose you can teach him a thing or two," the impostor said as Kevin stooped to pick up the slimy tennis ball.
Kevin's other hand dropped down and scratched his dog right behind the ears. "I told you Shaggy's not dumb."
The impostor laughed. "Fetch hardly qualifies as an intelligence test."
The bliss induced by Kevin's scratching made it impossible to focus on anything. The fact that the impostor was heading off to practice Jared's beloved baseball among the camaraderie of his former teammates hardly fazed him.
"You wait and see," Kevin said, not stopping the scratching. "I am going to teach Shaggy lots of new tricks."
"Knock yourself out," the impostor said as he walked to Jared's car, got in, and drove away.
Kevin looked down at his maligned sheepdog and muttered, "Jared can be such a jerk."
Transported into sheer bliss by Kevin's magic fingers, Jared could not muster the will to disagree.