A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray

  When Bone and I lived in the shed we woke slowly each morning as the rays of the sun crept through the windows and lightened our home. When I awoke in the laundry room I had no idea whether morning had come. The room was as black as midnight.

  I sat up in our stinky box and poked my nose into Bone. He whimpered and turned over. I heard a noise then, a small thump, and Marcy opened the door.

  “Morning, puppies,” she whispered. “I see you finally settled down.” Marcy reached into the box and was stroking me when Bone woke suddenly, saw the large hand on his sister’s back, darted forward, and bit the hand.

  “Ow! Stop it!” cried Marcy. She slapped Bone across his nose and stood up fast. Bone yelped.

  “Marcy? What is it?” called George.

  “The tan puppy just bit me.”

  George appeared in the doorway. “Okay. That does it. Those puppies go today. We don’t need this, Marcy.”

  “No, no, please. Just give them one more chance.”

  George scowled. “Forget it.”

  “No, really. One more chance.”

  George shook his head.

  Bone and I didn’t know what another chance was, but if we had, we wouldn’t have wanted it. In any case, we lost the chance. The moment Marcy carried us, very gingerly, back to the room where we had eaten our dinner of stolen scraps, Bone squirmed out of her grasp, tore across the floor to another pail of garbage, wrestled it over, and began tossing bits of food to me.

  Marcy looked helplessly at George and said, “I have to leave for work now.”

  “Great. So this is my mess to clean up?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I —”

  “Never mind. Just go.”

  Marcy looked at Bone and me, started to say something, then turned and left the room.

  As soon as my brother and I had stopped growling and eating, George stuffed us into a carton, smaller than the one we had spent the night in, tossed the carton onto the front seat of his car, started the engine with a roar, and drove away very fast.

  George drove so fast that when he turned corners I could hear the car squeal, and Bone and I would tumble against the sides of the box. My heart began to pound. I panted and licked my lips and tried to ignore the rolling in my stomach.

  Every now and then I could hear George mutter things like, “Blasted dogs” or “What was Marcy thinking?” or “… ought to have her head examined.”

  The car turned another corner and this time I could feel the box slide across the seat and into George’s side. He whacked it with the flat of his hand, catching Bone’s jaw from the other side and causing him to yelp.

  “Shut up, you little pills,” said George loudly, and he whacked the box again, this time knocking me in the head. I was too stunned to yelp. The whack sent me flying into a corner of the box, and I huddled there silently.

  Presently the car slowed down. I could hear sounds from George’s side of the seat, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. After a moment our box was opened roughly, and then … and then I watched as George, sweating, yanked Bone up by the scruff of his neck and tossed him through the open window of the car. No sooner had Bone disappeared from sight, than George grabbed me up in the same manner, threw me out the window, gunned the engine of his car, and sped away.

  Bone landed hard, his snout smashing against pavement, and he couldn’t help letting out another cry of pain. I landed a little distance away from him, on my shoulder, and I heard a small crack, but again I was too stunned to yelp. After a moment, I tried to stand, though. I staggered up on my hind legs first, then onto my uninjured front leg. But when I put weight on the other leg, it gave way and I sank down again.

  I looked at Bone. He was limping toward me, his nose bloody, and he had almost reached me when I heard someone cry, “Did you see that? Some guy threw those puppies out of a car!”

  “Are they all right?” asked someone else.

  I glanced around. Bone and I had landed on asphalt, like the Merrions’ lane, only this piece of asphalt was much, much bigger. And cars were lined up on it as far as I could see. Ahead of me was a row of buildings, which people kept hurrying in and out of.

  The people who had spotted Bone and me were two women, their arms loaded with heavy bags. They ran to us now, set the bags on the asphalt, and knelt down.

  “I think they’re going to be okay,” said one.

  “Look how cute this one is,” said the other, motioning to Bone. “The tan one. I always wanted a puppy. I’m going to take it home.”

  “What about the spotted one?”

  “Well, I don’t think I can manage two dogs, and that one isn’t as cute. I’ll just take this one.”

  “And leave the other one here?”

  “It’ll be all right. Someone else will come along and find it. That’s why they were dumped at the mall, you know.”

  The women gathered up their bags and walked off with a struggling, squirming Bone, wiping his nose with a Kleenex as they went.

  Bone was gone. I was separated from my brother. I tried to run after the women, but I couldn’t keep up with them. The pain in my shoulder made me sit down. I tipped my head back and let out a long low howl.

  For a while I rested on the asphalt, but it was sticky and hot and hard against my rump, and I didn’t like sitting among so many cars. Tentatively I stood up, keeping my injured leg off the ground. I found that I could move around on three legs, and I made my way off the asphalt to the shade of a tree on a little spit of grass with a lamppost planted in it. I rested again for a while, dozed off, and when I awoke I tried standing on all fours. It hurt, but I could do it. I could walk on my injured leg, too.

  I was thirsty, so I looked around for a brook or a stream. I didn’t see either one, but I found a puddle at the edge of the asphalt and had a drink from that.

  Mother had taught Bone and me to be wary of people. But I was also wary of cars now, and with so many of them around I was afraid to move. I returned to the tree and made myself very still and small under it.

  All afternoon I watched people and cars come and go. No one noticed me. The light began to fade, and I felt chilly. I was used to cuddling up with Bone for warmth, and now he was gone. I sidled over to the tree and tried cuddling up among its roots, but they were cool and rough and unyielding.

  I sat up and found that I was shivering. For a while, shaking, I watched the cars. I noticed that more were leaving than were arriving. The asphalt was becoming emptier and emptier. I noticed the quiet, too. At midday, with the sun high in the sky, the air had been filled with voices, the rustle of bags, the blare of car horns, and music floating through the open windows of some of those cars. Now I heard only occasional quiet voices as people left the row of buildings and drove away.

  By the time darkness fell, just a few cars were left, the asphalt stretching away from me like a great black pond. And still I sat shivering under the tree. I was cold, I was tired, my shoulder ached, and I was hungry. I was very, very hungry.

  With a sigh, wondering where Bone was, wondering where Mother was, I took another drink from the puddle. Mother was truly gone; I felt sure of that. Something had happened and she had died. That was the only reason she would have left Bone and me when we were so young. But Bone … Bone could be somewhere nearby. Maybe he had a home with the woman with all the bags; maybe he didn’t. After all, our first home with people hadn’t worked out. Maybe Bone had escaped from the woman and was looking for me right now. Maybe he was trying to make his way back to this place where we had been thrown away.

  I should wait for Bone, I thought, but I couldn’t stay here. The water in the puddle wouldn’t last, and I needed food. I looked all around me, straining my eyes to notice any movement, and saw the last car drive away. I sniffed the air. I smelled exhaust, car tires, the soles of people’s shoes, squirrel, mouse, insect, something like mouse but not exactly mouse, dog pee (not mine), and something sweet. I sat up as tall as I could and stretched my nose as high as it would go
.

  Sniff, sniff, sniff.

  Was that garbage I smelled? Cautiously, I stepped away from the tree, stepped off the spit of grass, and began to cross the asphalt. Garbage was my best chance for a meal.

  I followed my nose in and out of pools of light from the lampposts.

  Sniff, sniff, sniff.

  I came to a bit of hamburger bun and snapped it up. I came to a paper cup lying on its side and lapped up the white liquid that had run out of it. I came to some crunchy yellow bits and tasted them. Salty.

  This was fine, but I knew I smelled more garbage. Garbage like the Merrions’ garbage heap. Real garbage.

  I found it behind the buildings the people had been going in and out of. A whole row of garbage cans. Most of the lids were fastened tightly, but one can had been tipped over and its lid had popped off.

  Dinner!

  I dove into the can and was rooting through it, had just caught the scent of turkey, when I heard a low growl behind me. I backed out of the can and without even turning to see what was growling, I ran.

  I ran and ran, across the empty stretch of asphalt, in and out of the lamplight, past puddles, past tempting mouthfuls of food. I ran until the asphalt ended and I crossed a stretch of grass. Then I screeched to a stop. Before me was a line of whizzing, whooshing cars, all with two bright eyes shining on their fronts, and I remembered Bone and the busy road the day before.

  Panting, I glanced over my shoulder. I saw no growling thing, but I wasn’t eager to turn back. I looked at the cars again.

  WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH. This road was different from the other one, though. It wasn’t busy all the time. Cars would speed by, then the street would become dark and silent. No cars. Then WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH again. I waited. The next time the whooshing stopped and I couldn’t see any car eyes, I tore across the road. On the other side I found more grass. And then I found trees. Lots of trees. A little woods.

  When I turned around and peered through the trees, I could just make out the eyes on the cars. When I looked in the other direction, I saw only woods. I could have been behind the Merrions’ house. I made my way through the darkness, listening to familiar sounds — to crickets, to the small chirpings of birds, to a pair of owls calling to each other.

  I fell asleep that night on a nest of dry leaves, my stomach mostly empty, my mouth dry, my shoulder throbbing. I wished for our old bed in the wheelbarrow, wished for Bone, wished to hear Mother’s heartbeat.

  The woods became my home. I stayed there for a long time — for as long as it takes the leaves on the trees to turn from green (a color I can’t see, but I have heard Susan and other people talk of green leaves and green grass and other things that are green) to yellow, then drop off; for the snows to fall, then melt; and for my legs to grow long. Since I was still a puppy, all those things were new to me. I didn’t know that the leaves would fall off the trees as the air grew colder. I didn’t know that in the coldest weather of all snow would fall instead of leaves, covering the ground and making food harder to find. I didn’t know that as the air warmed again the leaves would return, green like caterpillars. And I hadn’t realized I was growing. I knew only that everything was new to me, and that being an independent puppy was difficult.

  I was very, very lonely.

  On that first night in the woods, the first night without Bone at my side, I slept fitfully in the leaf nest. I was afraid to fall too soundly asleep. In our shed I had felt safe, protected from the likes of Mine or coyotes. But here in the woods I was exposed, and I didn’t know what kinds of animals might be about. A strange dog had once wandered onto the Merrions’ property, and Mother hadn’t trusted it any more than she had trusted Mine. I remembered the growling thing at the garbage cans. What had that been? A dog?

  But the night passed quietly and in the morning I explored my woods. They were small, but big enough so that I could retreat from the sight of the traffic and the mall. I found a stream with clear water in it. And on the other side of the woods, a good walk from the side that bordered the busy road, I discovered houses — set close together like the ones where George and Marcy lived. The woods faced the backs of the houses, and behind many of them were … garbage pails. Raiding them might be difficult, but I was glad to know they were there. I could reach them without crossing a busy road.

  On that first day I nosed around the woods enough to gain an understanding of this new neighborhood. It was similar to the forest neighborhood at the edge of the Merrions’ property. I discovered squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, skunks, and many small rodents. I saw owls’ nests and crows’ nests and heard hawks and jays and chickadees and cardinals and sparrows and swallows. I saw several does, three large fawns who hadn’t lost their spots yet, and a mother turkey and her half-grown chicks. I didn’t see any cats, though, and found myself wishing for Yellow Man. I also didn’t see any animals that might prey on me. If these woods were to be my home, they weren’t bad. I missed Bone, but I felt fairly safe now and I could find food and water.

  So I began my new life. I made a more protected den in the shelter of two large fir trees whose trunks grew so close together that they might have been a single tree, and whose branches spread wide and low, and shielded me from rain as the shed roof had done. Every morning I hunted. I drank from the stream and from puddles. Occasionally I made trips to the garbage cans behind the humans’ houses. If I was lucky, a lid might be left off. Once, I saw a large dog digging through an overturned can. I waited until he left, then ate the scraps he didn’t want.

  The change in the weather happened so slowly that at first I didn’t notice it. Then late one afternoon as the sun slunk out of the sky I realized how chilly the air was. I looked above me at the leafy canopy and saw that it was now many hues, instead of the one humans would call green. And I could see more sky than before. The nights seemed to have grown longer and the days shorter. Sometimes my breath turned to mist in the air.

  One morning I took a walk to a large puddle that had formed during a rainstorm and found that overnight it had become hard. I didn’t know what ice was, and I licked at it. It was cold. And to my surprise, slippery. I couldn’t drink from it, and I was relieved to discover that the stream was still running, although the water in it was frigid.

  Time passed and soon there were no leaves at all on the trees. The branches of the pines that sheltered my den were dense and sweeping, but the branches of the other trees lay stark against the sky, like the skeleton of a fawn I had once found in the woods near the Merrions’ house. On the day snow began to fall I first watched in amazement, then ran into the flakes to play. Bone would have loved the snow, and I wished I could have played in it with him instead of alone. Still … I ran, I pounced, I leapt. It was only later that I discovered how difficult hunting and finding food became in the snow. And exactly how cold my outdoor bed could be.

  But I survived the winter, my first winter, and was just as surprised to feel the air warm and to see the leaves return as I had been to feel the air cool and to watch the leaves fall. The snow melted, and the ice at the edges of the stream broke away and was carried off in the currents and rivulets. A young doe gave birth to two fawns. The birds built nests and laid eggs. It was a time of sunlight and babies and newness and rich smells from the damp earth.

  I was hungry, though. I was lean after the long winter, I was still growing, and lately I hadn’t had much luck hunting. There came a time when I had caught nothing in two days. I began prowling around behind the houses, eyeing the garbage cans, but once a man had run outside, yelling at me and waving his arms. And twice I had seen the big dog, so I had retreated quietly into the shadows of the woods.

  On the evening of the fourth day with no food, an evening when the air was particularly warm, I ventured to the other side of my woods. I hadn’t been to the mall since the day Bone and I were thrown away there, but at certain times, and when the wind blew in a certain direction, I could smell the garbage from the pails there. The busy road lay bet
ween me and all that garbage, but I didn’t care. I was so hungry that my insides felt as though they were shriveling up. If I waited until full dark maybe I could have one good meal from the garbage, then return to my woods and try hunting again.

  I stood by the side of the road, watching the cars with their bright eyes stream by. WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH.

  My stomach growled.

  I turned and watched the road in one direction for a while. No eyes were coming. I looked in the other direction, and that was when I noticed another dog, also standing at the edge of the road watching the eyes, concentrating on the traffic. I was about to turn and run when I saw that the dog was the same shade of color as Bone, had Bone’s face, was Bone grown up, although he was smaller than I, his proud tail — now fat and fluffy — held high in the air.

  I crept toward him, then let out a yip of joy.

  At my yip, the dog turned quickly, but didn’t bark, just watched my approach. And I could tell, from several feet away, that this wasn’t Bone at all. This dog was a female.

  I jumped back. I let out a growl and my lip curled into a snarl. But the small dog wagged her tail at me and put her rump in the air, chest and front legs on the ground. Then she dropped her rump and crawled toward me on her belly.

  I approached her again slowly. I sniffed at her snout, and my own tail began to wag.

  My new friend was named Moon, and she did look very much like Bone, or at least the way Bone might look now that he was grown. Moon and I never did cross the road that night. Instead, feeling braver with a companion at my side, I led Moon through the woods to the row of houses and we raided the garbage cans there after all. It was a gloomy, overcast night, and by now it was very late, so not many lights were on at the houses. We crept across the yard of the darkest house to find two cans with loose lids.

  After a huge feast of scraps and spoiled fruit, my stomach swollen with food, I returned to my den under the fir trees. Moon followed me. She followed me onto the leaf bed, too, and when I curled up, she curled around me, her snout and front paws resting on my back. We slept that way all night, and I dreamed of Mother and Bone and the wheelbarrow.