“Basically, because we have a dog, we’re in violation of our lease. We’ve got three days before they call animal control and start eviction proceedings.” Lucas sounded gloomy. I wanted to go to him to provide comfort but I also wanted to remain so Mom would keep petting me.
Mom put her hands on her hips. “I’ve seen other dogs here.”
“Right. You can have a dog visit, but I guess somebody told them Bella’s been barking a lot for a couple of weeks.”
“Who?”
“They didn’t say.”
“I don’t know why, if we’re all trying to be good neighbors, they didn’t just come to talk to us.”
“Well, you can be a little intimidating sometimes, Mom.”
They were silent for a moment. I nuzzled her hand when it stopped stroking me. “We can’t move, Lucas,” Mom said softly.
“I know.”
“It’s perfect that you can walk to work here. And to switch my housing benefit, that’s not something we can do in just a few days. Plus this was the only place we found that we could remotely afford. Where would we even get the money for a security deposit?”
“That was before I got a job, though. Maybe we could afford to pay a higher rent.”
“I want you saving that money for college,” she replied.
“I am. I am saving. But this is what savings are for—emergencies.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
They were quiet again. I went over to Lucas—I could sense that he was troubled, though I did not know why since we were all home together at last. I curled up at his feet.
“What are we going to do, Lucas?”
“I’ll think of something,” Lucas said.
* * *
The day after Mom came home, she pressed the phone to her cheek while Lucas watched and I chewed a rubber stick called a “bone.” There were other things called bones that I liked a lot better.
“That’s what I am trying to tell you. This notice is a mistake. I do not have a dog,” she said.
I looked up at the word “dog.” What was she trying to tell me? I looked to Lucas, but he was still focused on Mom.
“I had a puppy visiting but I do not personally own a dog.” I looked back at Mom at the word “dog.” “That’s correct. Yes. Thanks very much. No, I appreciate it.” She put the phone down. “I didn’t lie. I don’t personally own a dog. Bella is your dog.”
I brought the bone to Mom, thinking she was saying she wanted to throw it down the stairs for me to do Good Exercise.
Lucas grinned. “It’s an excellent legal argument.”
Mom made no move to take the bone.
“But that’s not going to make our problem go away. Sooner or later they’re going to catch us.”
“Maybe not. I’ll take Bella out only before dawn or after sunset. There’s no staff working at those hours. I’m sure the neighbors don’t care as long as she’s quiet. And once we hit the street, who is to say I live in the complex? I could just as easily be walking my dog past the building as coming from it.”
I did not know what they were saying, but I liked the repetition of my name and the word “dog.”
“But what if I have to go in to the clinic? You can’t take off work every time that happens. I can do my meetings at night, but that’s it.”
“Maybe we could send Bella with a dog sitter.”
“And give up what, food?”
“Mom.”
“I’m just saying we can’t afford that.”
“Okay.”
I sighed with contentment.
“I’m sorry. I just don’t know how this is going to work. One of these days, probably pretty soon, she’s going to have to be left alone, and when she is, she’ll bark.”
Six
Over the next several days, we played two new games. One was “no barks.” My job had always been to alert everyone whenever I detected there was a person at the door. Under the right circumstances, I would hear or smell someone even before the bell rang, and would bark out my knowledge to the benefit of everyone who was home. Sometimes Lucas or Mom would join their voices with mine, shouting their own warnings. “Stop it!” they would yell. “Quiet!” But with No Barks, Lucas would stand in the open doorway and reach outside and the bell would ring and then he would sternly say “No Barks” and hold my snout. I did not like this game, but we played it over and over again. Then Mom went outside and Lucas sat in the living room and Mom rapped her knuckles on the door, which was outside the pattern but Lucas still said No Barks. It was as if they didn’t want me to do my job!
No Barks was a lot like Stay, another game I did not like. When Lucas said “Stay,” I was to sit and not move until he came back and said “okay!” Sometimes he gave me a treat and said “good Stay,” and I liked that part, but otherwise Stay took concentration and was fatiguing and boring. Humans seem to have no sense of the passage of time, of how much fun they are missing when a dog is doing Stay and has to sit and sit and not play. The same thing was true of No Barks: Lucas expected that once he told me No Barks, I was only a good dog if I remembered it as something like a permanent state of being. When someone rang the bell and I did No Barks Lucas might give me a treat, or he might not. It was exhausting. I kept hoping he would forget all about No Barks, but he repeated it constantly, and so did Mom.
Much, much more fun was “Go Home.” Go Home meant Lucas would unsnap my leash and I was to run back to our house and curl up by the front door. Lucas was very particular about where I was supposed to lie down. “No, you have to be here, Bella. Here, where no one from the street can see you. Okay?” He patted on the cement until I lay down and then he gave me a treat. When we did Go Home, I was a good dog who was given food. When we did No Barks, I did not feel like a good dog, even if he gave me a treat.
“She picked right up on it. If I ever need her to, she will just come right home and lie by the wall under the hedge, completely hidden from view,” Lucas told Mom.
Mom petted my head. “She’s a good dog.”
I wagged.
“Still having trouble with No Barks, though,” Lucas said.
I groaned.
I craved nothing more than having Lucas tell me I was a good dog—that, and “Tiny Piece of Cheese,” which meant Lucas loved me and gave me a wonderful treat.
Several times Lucas put me in my crate and set his phone down in front of it. I had no interest in the phone. “No Barks,” he said crossly. Then he and Mom went out the door. I got lonely and barked and Lucas came running in the house, which was what I had wanted! But he was angry at me and told me “No Barks” several times without letting me out or even petting me, despite how overjoyed I was to see him.
I decided No Barks was even less fun when it involved the crate.
“I don’t think she’s getting it,” Lucas told Mom one night. We had gone to the park and played ball and I was deliciously drowsy.
“She doesn’t bark at the doorbell anymore,” Mom replied.
“No, that’s true. Bella’s a good dog for the doorbell now.”
I sleepily thumped my tail. Yes, I was a good dog.
“I have my appointment with the neurologist tomorrow,” Mom said.
“Maybe I’ll call in sick. We can’t risk leaving her here.”
“No. You can’t do that, Lucas.”
I wagged my tail at the word “Lucas,” easing to my feet in case a walk was coming.
“I don’t know what the alternatives are,” he said somberly. “You can’t miss that appointment; the waiting times are impossible.”
I sat up and gazed at Lucas, my person, coming alert despite my fatigue. Something was going on—he and Mom were very, very tense.
I did Sit, being a good dog doing No Barks, but it didn’t seem to help.
* * *
Early the next morning, right around the time that Lucas normally would do Go to Work, the three of us took a walk. I loved when we all walked together!
We crossed
the street the moment we were out the front door, just as we always did. I smelled Mother Cat in the den.
“See?” Lucas said. “It’s a new fence. Now there’s this nylon draping on both sides. No way for me to get a foothold. And the links are heavy gauge and connect directly to the posts. It would take a pair of industrial bolt cutters to get through them.”
Mom frowned. “Wait, you’ve been cutting the fence?”
“No. Gunter said I did, but I never had to. I just used pliers to unwind the loops of wire.”
“I’m glad to hear that. How about if you leapt up and grabbed the top rail, could you haul yourself over?”
“Maybe.” Lucas nodded. “But Bella would still be on the street side of the fence. I need her to go into the crawl space to flush the cats into my net.”
“What if you went in yourself, could you catch them in the net?”
“Possibly. I could try.”
“What if I went with you?”
Lucas grinned at Mom. “It’s pretty disgusting under there.”
“Oh, I imagine I’ve seen worse,” she said.
“Probably have.”
“Can the cats even get out of the yard?” Mom felt the cloth that was on the fence. “I guess they could climb this.”
“I guess they could, but in the back they dug out the dirt under the frame where the old fence was bent, so they’ve probably been getting in and out through that hole.”
“Why did he put up the new fence, do you suppose?” Mom asked.
“Honestly, I think he wants to prevent me from catching the rest of the cats. He’s making a point—he can do this and I can’t stop him.”
“What a nice guy.”
We went up the street together. Soon we came to a road where there were a lot of cars driving quickly past. Each one dragged different scents in its wake, and there were wonderful fragrances on the lawns and bushes I kept pausing to appreciate. A white dog barked at me from behind a fence and I wanted to go sniff him but I was on the leash.
At a big building, Mom walked away in a different direction. I kept stopping and turning to look at her, but she continued going without glancing back. It was very distressing. What had started as a wonderful family walk had somehow broken apart. I did not understand. We were supposed to be together! A nervous whine rose in my throat.
“Come on, Bella. She’s just going to her appointment. She’ll come find you once she’s finished. I have to go to work.”
I was confused that he was talking about Go to Work, which was when he left me at home alone with Mom. We were out on a walk.
Lucas led me to a door that beeped when he opened it. He stepped in, looked cautiously around, and then pulled me after him. The floor was very slick and smelled of chemicals and a lot of different people, though I couldn’t see anyone. This was a fun new place, especially when Lucas ran me down the hall! Lucas closed us in a small room with an even stronger chemical odor. He knelt down. I wagged excitedly. “Okay, listen. You’re not supposed to be here in the hospital. If they catch you, I’ll be in real trouble. I could get fired. This is just for while Mom is having her appointment. I have to go to work. I can come back by here as soon as I check in for my shift. Please, No Barks, Bella. Please.”
Not that again. He grabbed my snout and shook it. “No Barks.”
I wasn’t barking.
I was mystified when he walked out the door, shutting it behind him. Now what?
I wondered if this was the version of No Barks where when I barked Lucas would open the door. Even if he were cross with me, it would be better than being left by myself in the strange place. I did not smell him standing on the other side of the door, though I could still sense that he was close by. It was similar to the growing sensation of his nearing presence when he was coming home from Go to Work. So even though he had left me, he was still in the building or close to it. But where? Where was Mom? I whimpered. They could not have meant to leave me alone in this room! Something was wrong!
I did Sit like a good dog, staring at the door, willing it to open. I could not hear anything at all on the other side of it. Finally, unable to stand it another second, I barked.
* * *
Lucas opened the door after a long, long time—a time of many, many barks. Before he did so I could smell him and another person, and when he came into the room a woman followed. She had a flowery scent combined with something nice and nutty. I was overjoyed to see Lucas and jumped on him, putting my paws on him and trying to get him to bend over so I could kiss his face. My person was back! Now we could get out of this tiny room and maybe go to the park and have treats.
“See?” Lucas said to the woman.
“You told me it was a puppy! She’s full grown.” The woman stooped down and held out her hand, which had a sugary residue on it. I licked it tenderly, liking her immensely for having such sweet fingers.
“No, she’s still a puppy, maybe eight months old. The vet says she was born sometime in March or early April.”
The woman rubbed behind my ears. “You know, having a puppy really works on chicks.” I leaned into her hand.
“I’ve heard that.”
The woman stood up. “Not on me though.”
“Really? Because the whole reason I adopted Bella was to impress Olivia from the maintenance department.”
“That seems to be your motivation for everything lately, I’ve noticed.”
“Must be working if you’ve been doing all this noticing.”
“I also noticed that the trash chute is backed up again. That’s kind of my biggest priority, in the noticing department.”
“Good to know where I stand.”
“So what’s your plan? You know if you get caught with a dog in here you’ll be fired. Dr. Gann’s e-mail of the two zillion things employees must never do kind of had take-your-dog-to-work day near the top of the list.”
“I was thinking, you’re in maintenance, this is a maintenance closet, maybe you could clean it up or something for an hour. Just to keep Bella company so she won’t bark.”
“Really. And why do I owe you any favors at all?”
“Not me. Do it for the dog.”
“Bella,” the woman said, stroking my head, “your daddy is such a dork.”
“You called me a nerd. I don’t think you can have it both ways.”
“Oh, they make an exception for people like you.”
“So now you’re calling me exceptional?”
The woman laughed. “There is absolutely nothing about you I find exceptional. Or surprising. Or interesting.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, because I’m actually very surprising.”
“Really.”
“I promise.”
“Tell me one thing about you that I might be surprised by.”
“Okay.” Lucas was silent for a moment.
“See?”
“Okay, how about this: I live across the street from a cat house.”
“What?” the woman laughed.
“Told you. Full of surprises.”
“Right, well, I still can’t spend an hour in here. I’m not like you; I don’t have a job where I run around doing nothing all the time. I have a boss and she’s probably wondering where I am right now.”
“But that was the bet! I surprise you, and you watch my dog.”
“There was no bet. I don’t bet.”
“Please?”
“No. Anyway, if I get caught with a dog, we’ll both be fired.”
There was a knock on the door. These seemed like circumstances where No Barks did not apply, so I let Lucas know there was someone there. He and the woman stood staring at each other.
* * *
When Lucas opened the door there was a thin man standing there. His shoes smelled of dirt and grass, and he had long hair and a hairy face. I pressed forward to greet him, but was blocked by Lucas, who moved in front of me.
“Hope I’m not interrupting something,” the man said wryly.
“He wishes,” the woman replied. “It’s all he thinks about.”
Lucas laughed. “Hi, Ty. Olivia pulled me into the closet. You came just in time to save me.”
“So what’s this I hear about barking down this hallway?” The man squatted and I went to him, wagging. “Could there be a dog in the VA hospital? Surely not.” His hands were gentle and smelled of people and coffee.
Lucas raised his hands and then let them drop. “We can’t leave her home alone. She barks, and the leasing company said if they catch us with a dog they’ll evict us and send Bella to the pound. I know it’s against the rules, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“So his big plan was for me to babysit Bella in this closet,” the woman added.
“Just until my mother is finished with her appointment.”
“He panics a lot,” the woman said. “He’s two years older but I’m the mature one.”
“Well, I think I’ve got a solution to our little problem, here,” the man declared. “I’ll just take Bella to the ward with me.”
“What if Dr. Gann hears about it?” Lucas asked anxiously.
“Dr. Gann is running this whole hospital on a reduced budget and doesn’t have time to hunt down a visiting dog. Besides, I imagine we’ll be able to keep Bella under wraps for a couple of hours.”
The man took my leash and led me to some new rooms. The floor here had a firm carpet and several chairs with people sitting in them. I could smell people and chemicals and food in that carpet, but no dogs. I did not like being away from Lucas, but everyone loved me and petted me and called out my name. Many of the people were old, but not every one of them, and all were glad to see me. The chairs were soft when I put my head on them so that people could stroke my ears.
I learned that the man who took me was named Ty. He was very nice to me and fed me some chicken and some bread and some egg. One woman, Layla, had trembling hands as she smoothed down the fur on my head. “Good dog,” she murmured into my ear.
A man gave me a spoonful of gravy so delicious it made me want to wriggle on the floor. “Don’t feed her pudding, Steve,” Ty said.
The man dug for another helping. “It’s vanilla.” The gravy was in a small plastic container on a table next to his soft chair, and a lamp on that table heated the food so that a sweet odor rose into the air. I watched his hand as intently as I would focus on a Tiny Piece of Cheese. The spoon descended and I licked my lips, holding myself back until I could gently take it from him.