A Dog's Journey

  “No thank you,” CJ said. “I just want coffee.”

  “Come on. What do you want, an omelet?”

  “I’m good.”

  “She’ll have a veggie omelet,” the nice man said to the woman who brought food.

  “I said I was fine,” CJ said as the woman left.

  “Hey, sorry, but you look like you’re hungry. You an actress? Model, you’re probably a model. You’re pretty enough. I’m Bart. My parents named me Bartholomew, I’m like, thanks for that. So I pick ‘Bart,’ but are you ready for it? My last name is Simpson. So yeah, I’m Bart Simpson. Doh! What’s your name?”

  “Wanda,” CJ said.

  “Hi, Wanda.”

  We all sat comfortably together for a few minutes, enjoying the smell of bacon coming from the kitchen.

  “So was I right? Modeling, that’s why you’re so thin,” the man said.

  “Actually, I’m thinking of becoming an actress.”

  “Well, good for you. I represent actresses; that’s what I do. I’m a talent agent. You have an agent?”

  I sat up because the woman brought out food and set it in front of CJ, who started to eat it but then stopped and gave me toast!

  “No, I’m good when it comes to representation, actually,” CJ said. “But thanks.”

  “What did I tell you? You were hungry. Look, I know what’s going on.”

  CJ stopped eating and looked at the man.

  “I go for a walk on the beach in the morning. I’ve seen you get out of your car, like you’re just pulling up, except I came down here the other night and I saw it parked there. You think you’re the first actor to sleep in a car? There’s no shame in it.”

  CJ started eating again, but more slowly. “I’m not ashamed,” she said softly. She tossed a piece of cheesy food at me and I expertly snagged it out of the air.

  “What you should do is come home with me, now.”

  “Oh. Like, as a reward for the omelet?” CJ said.

  The man laughed. “No, course not. I have more than one bedroom. Just until you’re on your feet.”

  “Actually, we’re on vacation and I have to leave tomorrow.”

  The man laughed again. “You really are an actress. What are you worried about, that you won’t be able to get what you need? Whatever it is, I can get it for you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m trying to protect you here, help you out. What’s with the hostility?”

  “Drugs? Is that what you’re talking about? I’m not on drugs.” I could feel CJ getting angry, but I didn’t know why.

  “Okay, my mistake. Most of the girls are, to tell you the truth; I mean, this is LA.”

  “Most of the girls. So you’ve got what, a harem? A stable?”

  “I said I represent—”

  CJ stood up. “I know what you represent. Bart. Come on, Molly.” She gathered my leash.

  “Hey, Wanda,” the man called after us. CJ did not stop walking. “You know you’re going to see me again, right? Right?”

  We spent that day sitting on a blanket on the sidewalk. There was a box on the blanket and every so often someone would stop and drop something in the box and nearly always they would talk to me. “Nice doggy,” they usually said. CJ would say, “Thank you.” I loved seeing all the people.

  We stayed on that blanket until the sun went down, and then CJ fed me. “I’ve got enough to get you some more food tomorrow, Molly,” she said. I wagged to show her that I’d heard my name and was happy I was eating.

  As we got back to the car, CJ slowed. “Oh no,” she said.

  The ground around the car was covered with small pebbles. Curious, I went to sniff them. They glinted in the light from the street lamps.

  “No, Molly, you’ll cut your feet!” CJ pulled the leash and I understood that I had done something wrong. I looked at her. “Sit,” she said. She tied the leash to a post so that I couldn’t follow her to the car. The windows were open, and she stuck her head in. I whined because if we were getting in the car I didn’t want to be forgotten.

  A car slowly approached us. A beam of light came from the side of it and landed on CJ, who whirled around to look at it.

  “Is that your car?” a woman said out of her window. CJ nodded. The woman got out of her side and a man got out of the other and I saw they were both police officers.

  “They take anything?” the policewoman asked.

  “I had clothes, stuff like that,” CJ answered.

  The policeman came over to pet my head. “Nice doggy,” he said. I wagged. His fingers smelled spicy.

  “We’ll take a report,” the policewoman said. “Insurance will pay for the glass and maybe the contents, too. Depends on your deductible, and the like.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  “No problem,” the policewoman said. “See some ID?”

  CJ handed something to the policewoman. The policeman stood up and took whatever it was and went back to sit in his car. CJ came over to me. “Good dog, Molly,” she said. She seemed a little afraid, for some reason.

  The policewoman was walking around the car. CJ unclipped my leash. The policeman stood up. “She’s in the system,” he said.

  The policewoman looked at CJ, and CJ turned and ran! I didn’t know what we were doing, but I was more than happy to gallop along beside her.

  We hadn’t gone very far before I heard footsteps behind us. It was the policeman. He caught up to us. “How long you want to do this?” he asked as he ran next to us.

  CJ faltered, then stopped. She put her hands on her knees and I licked her face, ready to take off again.

  “I’m doing a 10K this weekend, so I appreciated the opportunity to do a quick wind sprint,” the policeman told her. He reached down to pet me and I wagged. “Want to tell me why you took off like that?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to go to jail,” CJ said.

  “You’re not going to jail; we don’t put people in jail for running away from home. But you’re a minor and you’re in our system, so you’re going to have to come with us.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I know it looks that way now, but believe me, you don’t want to be a street person. What do they call you?”

  “CJ.”

  “Well, CJ, I am going to have to cuff you because you took off on us like that.”

  “What about Molly?”

  “We’ll call Animal Control.”

  “No!”

  “Don’t worry; nothing’s going to happen to her. They’ll hold her until you can pick her up. Okay?”

  We went back to the car and the people stood around and talked. Eventually a truck came with a cage on the back. I didn’t want to go for a car ride in that cage, and shrank to the ground when a man got out of the truck with a pole that had a loop on the end.

  “No, wait, it’s okay. Molly, come here,” my girl said. I dutifully went to her. She knelt down and took my head in her hands. “Molly, you’re going to have to go to the shelter for a few days, but I will come get you. I promise, Molly. Okay? Good dog.”

  CJ seemed sad. She led me over to the truck, and the man with the pole opened the cage door. I looked up at her. Really?

  “Come on, Molly. Up!” CJ said. I jumped up into the cage, then turned around. CJ put her face next to mine and I licked the salty tears on her face. “You’ll be okay, Molly. I promise.”

  The car ride in the cage was not fun. When the truck stopped, the man opened the cage and slipped the loop at the end of his pole over my neck and we went into a building.

  I smelled them and heard them before he even opened the door: dogs. Inside the building the floor was slick and I couldn’t get a good purchase on it and the barking was so loud I couldn’t hear my nails as they scrabbled for traction. The din was amazing, an absolute riot of dogs. He took me back into a room and had me walk up a ramp until I was on a metal table. Two other men were there and they held me.

  “She’s friendly,” said the man with
the pole.

  I felt a hand grab the fur behind my head and then there was a small, sharp pain. I wagged, my ears low, to let them know that though they had hurt me, it was okay.

  “So that’s the first thing we do, is inoculate them. Won’t hurt them if it’s redundant, and that way we avoid a distemper epidemic,” one of the men said. Because it was so loud, he had to shout. “So that’ll be your job as part of the induction process.”

  “Got it,” said the third man.

  “The owner’s over at the women’s shelter. She’s a minor,” said the man with the pole.

  “Yeah, well, she’s got four days.”

  I was led down a narrow corridor. The floor here was just as slippery—it was very unnerving. The hall was lined with cages and every one of them had a dog in it. Some of them were barking and some of them were crying. Some of them were at the gate and some of them were cowering in the back. The place stank with fear.

  I had been in places full of barking dogs before but never as loud as this.

  A strong chemical smell wafted on the air. It smelled like the machine in the basement where CJ liked to put her clothes to get them wet. And I could smell cats, too, though I couldn’t hear any because of all the noise from the dogs.

  I was put in a small cage. There was no doghouse, but there was a small towel on the slick floor. The man shut the cage door. There was a drain in the floor and I sniffed it. Many dogs had marked it with their scent. I chose not to do so at that time.

  Across the hall from me, a large black dog was throwing himself at his cage door and growling. When he saw me he met my eyes and snarled. He was a bad dog.

  I curled up around the towel. I missed CJ. The heartbroken barking and crying and howling went on and on.

  After a while, my voice joined theirs. I couldn’t help it.

  EIGHTEEN

  I was scared and, despite the constant din from all the dogs, I had never felt so alone. I curled up on the towel on the floor in as tight a ball as I could manage. I was given food and water, served in paper bowls. The dog in the cage across from me ripped up his bowl, but I did not.

  After a long time had passed, a man came to get me. He led me out of the cage and put straps on my face so that I could only open my jaws a small amount. He took me into a cold room with the same slippery floor. It was quieter in there, but I could still hear barking.

  I could smell many dogs in the room, and their scent carried with it fear and pain and death. This was a place where dogs had died. The man led me over to a hole that was covered with a metal grate. I stood, my legs trembling. I tried to press into the man for comfort, but he backed away from me.

  I recognized the scent of the other man—he had been in the room the day before. I wagged my tail at him a little, but he did not say my name.

  “Okay, this the first time you’ve been in here?” the man who had led me in said.

  “No, I loaded out the bodies of the ones we euthanized yesterday,” the man I knew said.

  “Okay, well, this is the aggression test. They fail this, they’re short-tracked. That means they only get the four days before we put them down. Otherwise, we give them longer if we’re not crowded.”

  “Are you ever not crowded?”

  “Ha, yeah, you’re catching on. Sometimes we’re not completely packed, but usually it’s like this.” The other man went to a counter and grabbed a bowl full of food. “What I’m going to do, here, is let her smell this and get used to the idea that it’s her food. Then I start to pull it away using this plastic hand. Okay? If she turns to snap at the hand, that’s aggression. If she growls, that’s aggression.”

  “How does the dog know it is a hand?”

  “It’s shaped like a hand and it’s kinda flesh colored. It’s a hand.”

  “Well, all right. Looks more like just a wedge of white plastic to me.”

  “So growl at it.”

  Both men laughed.

  I did not know what was happening, but I had never felt so miserable. The man in front set the food down in front of me. I started to salivate—were they planning to feed me? I was hungry. I put my nose down and the man came at me with a big stick.

  I’d learned from being with CJ in the car that when times were scary sticks could be bad, so as the man poked the stick at my nose I growled, too frightened to do anything else.

  “Okay, that’s it,” the man with the food said. “Aggressive. Short track.”

  “But the owner said she was coming back,” the other man objected.

  “They all say that. Helps them to feel better when they’re dropping off Fido. But you know what? They never do.”

  “Still…”

  “Hey, I know you’re new, but you’re going to have to get used to it real fast or you’re not going to last. It’s an aggressive dog. So, that’s it.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  I was led back to my cage. I curled up, my eyes closed. After a time I was able to fall asleep, despite the physical assault of the barking.

  A day went by, and then another. I felt anxious and sick. I was becoming accustomed to the noise and the smells but never to being without my girl. When I barked, it was with the pain of separation.

  Another day went by and this one was the worst one because it really did seem as though my girl had forgotten all about me. I needed CJ to come get me now.

  The din was so loud that I sensed the presence of a woman outside my cage door without hearing her. She opened the door and patted her knees. Slowly, unsure, I approached her, my ears down, wagging. She hooked a leash onto my collar and led me past the other cages, the dogs howling and barking and snarling and whimpering at me.

  The woman took me to a door and when it opened CJ was there. Sobbing, I jumped up, trying to lick her face.

  “Molly!” she said. “Oh, Molly, Molly, are you okay? I am so sorry; Molly, are you okay?”

  For several minutes we hugged and kissed each other. My girl. She hadn’t forgotten about me after all. I felt the love pouring out of her and it made my heart soar.

  CJ led me over to a car and I joyously followed. She opened the back door, but I was so happy to be leaving I sailed inside and then I got to see why I wasn’t going to get to be a front-seat dog—Gloria was there, sitting in my usual spot. She looked at me and I wagged because I was even glad to see her, so elated was I to be leaving the place of barking dogs.

  “Good dog, good dog,” CJ said as she slipped behind the wheel and started the car.

  We drove to a place that was every bit as loud as the place with all the dogs, but these were all people noises. I heard cars and busses and shouting and other sounds and every so often a giant thundering noise that would seem to shake the very air.

  CJ got a box out of the trunk and opened a metal mesh door at one end of it. “Go into the crate, Molly.” I looked at her questioningly. “Crate,” she repeated. I lowered my head and went inside. “Good dog, Molly. This is your crate.”

  When I was inside I could see out through the metal grate, but the rest of the crate was solid. “You’re going to go for a plane ride, Molly. It will be okay.” CJ poked her fingers through the grate.

  It was one of the strangest days of my life. Several times the crate was tilted one way or another, and eventually I was put in a room and there was another dog in it I could smell but not see. The dog started barking, but I was all barked out and just wanted to sleep, though a teeth-rattling roar soon filled the room, vibrating my crate and making my body feel heavy, as if I were on a car ride. The dog barked and barked and barked, but I had heard worse recently and wasn’t annoyed. The vibrations seemed to drive fatigue into my bones and I was soon asleep.

  After some more tilting and moving, I was in a place with a lot of people and the same loud noises. CJ appeared and opened the crate and I bounded out, shaking myself off and ready to have fun. She led me outside to a patch of grass to do my business, and the combination of scents floating on the cold air told me we were now close t
o home. I wagged with happiness.

  A man gave us a car ride. Gloria sat up next to him and CJ sat with me. I wanted to sit in CJ’s lap, I was so glad to be with her again, but when I tried she laughed and pushed me away.

  When we got home, Trent was there and so was Rocky! I bounded out of the car and ran to my brother and he sniffed me up and down, no doubt smelling all the dogs and people I’d met since I’d seen him last. Then we wrestled and played in the snow, but I was still feeling insecure and didn’t let Rocky pull me more than a few feet away from CJ’s feet as she sat on the steps with Trent.

  “It was … an adventure, that’s for sure,” CJ said. “I have to say, next time I go to California I want to stay in a place with a shower. The Ford didn’t have one.”

  “What happened to the Ford?”

  “God, Gloria made me sell it. Supposedly, I had too much independence—that’s the new theory, that I ran off because of independence. Also, she wants me to see a shrink. She’s convinced that anyone who wouldn’t want to live with her has to be crazy.”

  “How was it? Having her show up, I mean.”

  “You want to know what? It was pure, unadulterated Gloria. She comes to this women’s shelter and she’s saying, ‘Thank God, thank God,’ and she tells the staff thank you for taking care of her ‘little girl.’ I think maybe she thought they were going to give her an award or something. Mother of the Year. And then when we get in the car she asks me if I want to go on a tour with her to see celebrities’ houses.”

  Rocky had tried several times to get me to chase him around the yard and now gave up, rolling on his back and baring his throat for me to chew. CJ reached out and petted me. It felt so good to be home.

  “So then she gives me this lecture and tells me she’s already arranged for a broker to sell the car, which is in Impound, I guess. And then we go out to eat at the Ivy, which is this restaurant where you’re supposed to be able to see all these movie stars. She tells me she’s disappointed in me and that she loved her mother, which is this thing she always says, that her mother was worse and yet Gloria still loved her, so that makes me, I don’t know, weak or something. So I’m trying to talk to her about it, about why I ran away, I mean, and she interrupts me to ask if I want to try her wine because in California the wine is as good as in France. In a restaurant, she wants to give a minor wine. And then we pick up Molly and fly first class and she flirts with the flight attendant the whole way—she thinks that because he kept asking if she wanted more wine he must have had a crush on her, though he was like twenty-five years old and obviously not into women, if you know what I mean.”