Nop's Trials

  Nop saw everything he could see through the narrow crack. It wasn’t much. Asphalt—the man’s right shoulder blade.

  “My master will come and bring me home,” the Setter said.

  The sun got up higher.

  Some air moved between the rear door and the vents, but not much. The stink got bad. Occasionally, Nop heard footsteps. The Setter’s tail would start to go; he would hesitate and he’d sigh and put his head on his paws.

  “Man, you only give me twenty dollars for these Lhasas? These are pure-bred dogs, man. Pure-bred. AKC.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d happen to have the papers.”

  “No, I don’t. But you can tell from looking at them. I mean these dogs are nicer’n what you find in a pet store.…”

  The door swung open and the Lhasas went into the cage. This time, when the skinny man closed the door, the crack was narrower, so Nop couldn’t see any part of him.

  Others arrived. A woman brought half a dozen dogs. “Don’t worry about these,” she said. “These are family dogs. They won’t bite.”

  “Good week, Hilda?”

  “Fair. I’d like to get a little more for the Cocker. I know you’re looking for Cockers.”

  “Forty dollars for the Cocker. Twenty apiece for the others.”

  “They closed down the Bendix plant. Whenever they start laying people off, there’s plenty ‘good home’ dogs.”

  People came with dogs. The skinny man passed out crisp new bills. Once, he went into Shakey’s and bought himself a slice of pizza. When he took up his post, Nop could smell it.

  “I am so hungry,” the Setter complained.

  The Irish Setter had been taken from a backyard in Dayton, three days ago. Though his owner had paid two hundred dollars for him as a pup, the White Truck had given thirty.

  Single dogs. Dogs in groups. Several more dogs were tossed into Nop’s cage: Beagles. They stayed together, shivering with fear.

  Promptly at noon, Skinny closed up shop and the White Truck moved to its afternoon location.

  The open door had provided some ventilation. Nop began to pant.

  The Irish Setter told Nop about his master, master’s wife, master’s children. The master’s cat hadn’t been stolen and the Setter resented that fact. “The cat will drink my water and eat my meat,” the Setter complained. “The cat will romp with the master’s children.”

  Nop said, “Masters take you up and then they leave. I have experienced this myself.”

  “My master will bring me home,” the Setter said stoutly.

  One of the Beagles threw up. Nop’s bowels were full but he didn’t want to go here. He’d hold it.

  The mesh was loose and clattered and several dogs whined and dogs in the next cage got in a fight, snarling and crashing against the plywood.

  Another two-hour stop in a vacant lot. More dogs. Twenty dogs in Nop’s cage, several sick, one or two crazy. When Nop moved at all, he moved on his tiptoes hoping not to offend these strange dogs and provoke a fight.

  At every stop, the door crack provided a little light but it was pitch dark on the road—the odors of the dogs, their hurried breathing.

  Skinny threw a Brittany bitch in. She’d been pulled off a litter of two-week-old puppies. She whined, searched the cage, gasped, licked her tight dugs, searched again.

  It was after dark when they drove around back of a small-town dog pound. Skinny had the keys to the pound, took three dogs and left money in the usual place.

  Badly embarrassed, Nop squatted to relieve himself.

  One more stop, another pound. The dog warden was working late and helped Skinny load. Sure he had a nice Cocker bitch but she’d been picked up that morning and her owner would probably be by for her. She had a collar and a name tag. The owner had simply forgotten to buy the county license.

  “We need seventy Cockers,” Skinny said. “National Institute of Health. Forty apiece. For all the owner knows, she wandered off and got run over.”

  The dog warden said no, he couldn’t do it. The township paid his salary, he said. Come back next week. He’d keep her in back where she wouldn’t get adopted, but he’d have her if the owner showed.

  “Next week we might not need Cockers,” Skinny warned darkly.

  Nop and the Setter were young enough and healthy enough to command some floor space to lie down, side by side, nose to nose. Other dogs piled up in the back of the cage. Dog noses went crazy. Dogs who didn’t like being touched lay under other dogs scarcely able to breathe.

  The White Truck headed out, trundling down the interstate, full of life.

  Every human child must learn the universe fresh. Every stockdog pup carries the universe within him. Humans have externalized their wisdom—stored it in museums, libraries, the expertise of the learned. Dog wisdom is inside the blood and bones. Humans trace their ancestors through books and records. Nop’s ancestors were what he knew.

  Nop hadn’t lost his balance but his balance point had shifted, throwing everything out of proportion, and he no longer knew what to do.

  Whispers, stirrings in the bone, hints.

  In the far reaches of Nop’s brain there were memory traces from the old times: before dogs had names, when shepherds were rough and their dogs rougher, when the dogs lay outside stone hovels half buried in snow and God help the luckless intruder who stumbled upon them.

  He heard whispers in his blood.

  Further back before the Romans came to the island: back when dogs ran free.

  The Irish Setter described the bed he lay in every night. Folded blankets tucked inside a wooden crate, just outside the childrens’ bedroom door.

  “Long ago,” Nop said, “we made a covenant with man. We were the first animal to make covenant and brought him the cows, sheep, horses: all the others. We hunted his meat, guarded his flocks, his home and his children. On our bellies we went into narrow dens after creatures with sharp teeth. We have hunted foxes and wolves and bears and lions because he wished it. At his behest we have killed our own kind. We will die for him. Free dogs made covenant with man: we made him master.”

  The Setter said, “My master scratches my silky ears. Sometimes I chew his shoes because they smell so wonderfully of him. He punishes me for chewing his shoes. Am I here because I chewed his shoes?”

  “We made no food covenant,” Nop went on. “We are not woolies that would die without shepherds to tend them. Free dogs hunt their own meat. We only asked that the master keep us in his wonderful eyes. But masters no longer keep us. They have forgotten the old time when they were alone and terrified on the darkening plain. They have forgotten their first ally against the night. Oh, they are so foolish! Like young puppies turned loose with stock, they rush here and there, exciting themselves for no reason but excitement itself. Like puppies, they are hurtful one moment, forgetful the next. They do not keep us in their eyes. They do not trouble to see us.”

  The Setter nuzzled Nop’s ear. He said, “Do not forget how to love.”

  “I have no master,” Nop said. He lay still, but his muscles were cable taut and hard.

  The Setter babbled about his master, but more desperately now. The Britanny bitch still searched the cage for her missing puppies but less hopefully. Some dogs had become comatose. One of the dogs voided his bowels on the others piled beneath.

  The White Truck rolled down the interstate, beside families going on vacation, salesmen seeking a vacancy sign, eighteen-wheelers with their cargoes of foodstuffs and machinery. The White Truck slowed at an off ramp. A few minutes later, the floorboards rumbled and bounced above a dirt road.

  Skinny got out to unlock a gate and again to relock it behind him. A moment later, he cut the ignition and they could hear other dogs barking. A curse. A blow. After a couple of dogs were silenced, the others fell quiet.

  All in a rush, the rear doors were hurled open and the cage doors unlocked.

  “Come on out of there. Come out, sweet babies.”

  A bearded man and Skinny standin
g in the middle of a receiving pen. Nop lay still as a stream of dogs hurried out of the cages, some of them jumping right over him. Dogs landing on the ground. Small dogs hesitating to make the leap, pushed by those behind. “Hurry, sweet babies. I don’t have all damn night.” Spiky gray beard. Khaki shirt. Wide heavy belt buckle. In his right hand, an orange-colored stick.

  Several dogs made obeisance, groveling in the dirt. A Poodle sat up and begged. The Poodle wore a red ribbon behind her ear and a smear of fecal matter on one white flank.

  The Setter stepped up forthrightly and offered his paw. The big man ignored him. “How many Cockers?”

  “Fifteen, Mr. Ralston. The dog warden at Burnsville had a Cocker but wouldn’t let it go.”

  “Fifteen aren’t seventy.”

  “I can only buy what they bring me.”

  “I’m gonna have to get on the horn. If we don’t have the Cockers by next week, NIH is gonna start shopping around.”

  “There’s that dog auction in Pennsylvania.”

  “That’s Friday, a week. And everybody there bidding up Cockers because they know I’m stuck for the NIH contract. Harvard called yesterday. They’re looking for black Labs. Older animals: eight, nine years old. Aging research.”

  “We already got a couple Labradors.”

  “Uh-huh. Harvard’ll pay three hundred. Bitch or dog, no difference. We can give fifty for them.”

  He leaned over, peering at the bundles still in the truck. “I told you once, I told you a hundred times, this trip’s a stress on dogs. When you buy unhealthy dogs, they don’t make it. I see, three, no four, ain’t moving and one of them’s a Cocker. That’s a hundred bucks worth of dead dog you hauled back here.”

  Skinny set his mouth hard but didn’t say anything.

  Nop lay just as still as the dead Cocker. Give him an opening and he meant to take it. Dogs swirled around the two men, some squatting to relieve themselves in the dirt. A few cowered against the farthest corner of the pen. The truck was backed into an old milk barn. The central aisles were open and the old stalls were covered with wire mesh. A jumble of old corn planters lay in one corner. Cobwebs connected wooden beams.

  Elite Kennels could house three hundred and fifty dogs in the converted barn. When the barn was full up, they locked dogs outside in an old metal corncrib.

  The bearded man took an involuntary step backward. “Hey! This bastard’s alive!”

  “Which?”

  “This one. Black-and-white Border Collie.” He held his orange-colored stick like a weapon. “Troublesome, cunning beasts. Come out of there, sweet baby, or I’ll tickle you.”

  Nop bared his teeth soundlessly. He couldn’t see any opening in the pen. Wire higher than he could jump. Wire overhead.

  The stick just touched him. Terrible. The shock from the cattle prod knocked the wind right out of him. The bearded man touched him again (Terrible) with the rod designed to move a full-grown bull. “You ticklish, sweet baby? You want to bite old Chipper?”

  Chip Ralston grabbed Nop by one leg and hurled him into the dirt, scattering the other dogs. Nop’s tongue lolled out of his mouth and his near legs twitched spasmodically. He wanted to rise to his feet. Oh, how he wanted to.

  Ralston took a deliberate step forward, cattle prod extended like a sword. “I hate a vicious dog,” Ralston said. He patted the wire pliers in his hip pocket. “Dog tries to use his teeth on me, I’ll have his teeth, or I’ll tickle them until they don’t get up no more. Sweet baby.” The prod paused a half inch from Nop’s skull, then withdrew. Ralston’s big chest heaved. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Mercy,” he said. “I can’t lose my temper like that. Old blood pressure goes straight to hell. I want that dog on the first truck going out. Junior’s taking a load to Detweiler Labs in the morning. If I see that dog again, I’ll lose my temper and Detweiler won’t pay two hundred dollars for no dead dog.”

  Nop’s coat was covered with dust and dog droppings. Skinny dragged him into a big cage, next to the receiving pen, with the thirty other dogs scheduled to go out at 3 A.M.

  The two men sorted dogs. They had a pen for Cockers, another pen for purebred bitches of breeding age. A few young, fashionable dogs were put aside for the pet stores. Most, like Nop, would go to research. The Britanny went in Nop’s pen.

  “What about this one?”

  Ralston ran his hand through the Setter’s lustrous red fur. The Setter wagged. “He’s got a nice pelt on him. Put him out in the corncrib with the bunch for the furriers.”

  Nop’s left side was paralyzed. The other dogs in the pen didn’t have anything to say. They knew they were going to die and what more can a dog say than that?

  Skinny fed and watered the other dogs but didn’t bother with Nop’s bunch. He cut all the lights when he left the barn. In the dark the steady pulsation of dog hearts, dog brains, dog breathing.

  Bit by bit, the feeling returned to Nop’s legs and as soon as he could hobble, he prowled the pen seeking an opening. His pen mates didn’t object. They’d seen others make that tour before.

  After three, a camper-bodied pickup backed into the barn and the lights came on again, making the farthest reaches of the barn bright as day. The driver wasn’t anyone Nop had seen before. He kept the orange electric prod in his hand until the dogs climbed aboard the truck.

  The truck rolled south. Each dog was alone with its thoughts. They made one brief stop at a vet’s office to collect health certificates for interstate travel. Since the vet who signed the papers didn’t inspect the dogs, the stop didn’t take long.

  The dogs were silent. Nop’s ancestors were silent. Nop had found his new balance point. He was a free dog: without covenant.

  When the sun came up, the driver stopped for breakfast. Out of habit he parked in the very back of the lot. Thirty minutes later, still sucking bits of Egg McMuffin through his teeth, he backed up to the loading dock of Detweiler Labs: Quality Pharmaceuticals.

  Though Detweiler did manufacture some pharmaceuticals, its principal business was testing other manufacturers’ products, especially products suspected of being carcinogenic.

  A large steel cage stood on the south end of the concrete platform and the pickup camper backed right up to the sliding gate with no gap, not the tiniest. Dispiritedly, the dogs came out. When the kennel truck pulled away, they were quite alone.

  Some dogs stretched. Some yawned. Some shivered. Nop prowled. Experimentally, he gnawed the mesh, but it was much harder than his teeth.

  The rush of trucks grumbled on the nearby highway. A few cars rolled by in front of the low brick building; birds woke in the dewy grasses and sang their cheerful songs. A dog scratched his fleas. Another took up the thumping beat.

  A golden light lay over the fields behind the lab.

  At 7:30 Detweiler’s lowest paid workers started arriving. They hurried up the concrete steps at the far end of the dock and were buzzed inside. Though there were thirty dogs, just a few feet away, no worker spared them a glance.

  Lewis fought his fight just before three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon in June. Just a hundred miles south, that weekend, they were to run the 24th annual Kentucky Bluegrass Open Sheep Dog Trials, but Lewis wasn’t thinking about that. He just wanted to get his dog back.

  Stiff from travel, he and Mark climbed out of the VW. “That’s his car,” Lewis said. “That De Lorean sportscar.”

  “I guess Whitenaur’s home.”

  “I surely hope so. Once we have Nop safe, I mean to give that gentleman a piece of my mind.”

  But nobody answered the doorbell. Nobody answered when they pounded either. Mark put his head against the door to listen. “If he’s in there, he’s awful quiet.”

  “That’s his car parked in the driveway. Of course he’s here.” And Lewis rang the doorbell with no better luck than Mark had. A curtain fluttered in the house next door. In this neighborhood, years could go by without neighbors talking to each other, but they shared a common fear of burglars.

/>   “Nop’ll be in the kennels. I believe we’ll just go back there and liberate him.” Lewis liked the word and repeated it. “Yes. We’ll liberate Nop.”

  Mark said that they’d need something to bust into the kennels. He got his hardened-steel fence pliers from the VW. They could snip their way in or, failing that, use the hammer face to shatter the lock.

  The neighbor’s curtain fluttered again as the two men started around the side of the house.

  Hack and Sandy were waiting for them, Sandy with a dog lead wrapped around his knuckles. Hack carried no weapon except his hands and his rage.

  “My name is Lewis Burkholder,” Lewis began. “Mr. Whitenaur has my dog. Nop is a black-and-white Border Collie with a patch of brown behind …”

  “Wow,” Sandy said, stretching the word until it wobbled.

  Hack’s hands hung at his sides like live animals taking their last precious seconds of rest. His eyes had a funny, blank shine.

  Lewis took a breath and began again. “My dog, Nop, is in the kennels here. I intend to examine those kennels and take my dog home and if you interfere with me, it will go hard with you.”

  Lewis’s body was settling and he was swelling and growing squat as his center of gravity dropped.

  “You ain’t goin’ anywhere, hayseed. Mr. D says he don’t want you comin’ ’round no more. He is sick of your face.” For emphasis, Sandy smacked his mailed fist into his palm. It sounded like a cleaver hitting a carcass. Hack glided forward, intent on Mark.

  “I shan’t be turned away,” Lewis said.

  “Makes no difference,” Sandy grinned. “Your dog is dead. Right now that mutt is lifting his leg in dog heaven.”

  Lewis grew still. Sandy cocked his fist and showed all his teeth.

  “Good,” Hack grunted and broke Mark’s nose. Mark windmilled at him and the dark-haired man stepped back out of range and jabbed at Mark’s ribs.

  Every year, Lewis had to upend his rams for the sheep shearer. His rams averaged close to three hundred pounds. While Sandy’s punch whistled by overhead, Lewis reached down, grabbed behind Sandy’s leg and jerked it out from under him. His free hand lifted Sandy’s rib cage and Lewis’s shoulder was behind the shove. Sandy’s ankle twisted as he fell and his wind whooshed out of him.