“You can come in.” Lucas backed away from the door and the man entered, glancing around. Lucas shut the door even though it meant choking off the glorious wave of outdoor odors that had been flooding in.
The man sat down on the couch. “Cute puppy.” He extended his fingers for me to sniff. “He a pit bull?”
“It’s a she. We don’t know. She was living under the house across the street.”
The man went still for a moment and I watched him curiously. Then he sat back. “Yeah, about that. So am I right about you feeding the cat over there?”
“That was me.”
“Okay, so that’s the irony here, don’t you think? I got a problem you caused. You put out bowls of cat food, you get cats. It’s a law of nature. And I’m right about you cutting my fence as well, aren’t I?”
Lucas didn’t reply.
“Look, I came here to talk reason with you. There’s a bigger picture I don’t think you get.”
I was impatient with them just sitting around. I attacked a fuzzy squeaky ball that was lying out on the floor. I couldn’t get my mouth around it, and when I tried it rolled away, so I dove on it, wrestling it into submission. I growled, feeling fierce and triumphant.
“I’m sorry Mr. uh…”
“Just call me Gunter. I’m trying to be friendly here.”
“Okay, Gunter,” Lucas agreed.
The smoky-meat man was Gunter.
“Well, I’m sorry, but no one on your crew cared when I told them there were cats under the house,” Lucas continued. “They were just going to tear the place down, even if it killed innocent animals.”
“Right, and then you called the animal revenge squad and they called the county and now my permit’s suspended. Which means it could be a couple of weeks before it is reinstated. Weeks, hell, they don’t do anything that doesn’t take more than a month—we’re looking at the end of the summer, now, probably longer. So I’m paying interest on my loan and I’m paying my crew and I’ve got equipment and it’s all costing me a ton. All of this for a damn cat. Which you know there’s no law says I can’t shoot the thing if I want.”
“There’s more than one cat. You really want to shoot them? That’s good publicity?”
“That’s why I’m here. I don’t want to do that. But you know damn well that the minute we start tearing down the place those cats are going to take off for the hills. No need to kill them. I just need you to not call the woman with the TV camera. Okay? They don’t care what the truth is, it’ll be all over the news that we got kittens dying, which is just stupid.”
“There won’t be any way to know they’ve all escaped. We need to catch them and then seal off the entrance,” Lucas said.
“No. What? That could take weeks. We need an immediate solution.” Gunter was silent for a moment. “Maybe we’re looking at this from the wrong angle. These units I’m building, they’re going to be real nice. Upscale counters, nice appliances. I’ll reserve one for you, two bedrooms. What are you here, one bed one bath? I know this complex, it was built in the seventies. No central air, window units only, cheap electric stovetop. Whole thing probably going to be torn down—everybody’s building, now that the new hospital is for sure going in.”
“We have two bedrooms. And our rent is subsidized. We can’t move.”
“That’s what I’m saying; I’ll subsidize you.”
“I don’t think that would work. It’s all tied into my mom’s VA benefits.”
“Dammit, kid, can you just help me out here? Okay, I’ll keep it simple. I’ll give you a thousand bucks, you stop talking to the animal rights people. Deal?”
“A thousand dollars to look away while you bring a house down on a family of cats.”
“Sometimes life’s like that. You got to look at cost benefit. Think of all the good you can do for Save the Cats or Greenpeace or whatever with a thousand dollars, versus the lives of a couple disease-ridden cats that’ll probably die this winter anyway.”
I yawned and scratched my ear. It didn’t matter if there were toys to chase and chew, people usually preferred to just sit.
“Five thousand,” Lucas said after a moment.
“What?” The man twisted suddenly, making a noise on the couch. I watched him curiously. “You’re seriously bargaining with me?”
“I’m just listening to you. You’re worried about months of delay. It could cost you a lot of money. Five thousand seems pretty cheap. Ten thousand, even.”
The man was silent for a minute, then laughed out loud. There was a harshness in his voice. “What do you do for a living, kid?”
“Mostly I’m a student. Next week I start a job at the VA hospital as an administrative assistant. It’s a good deal, because that’s where my mom gets treatment.”
I sprawled on the floor, bored.
“Well hooray for you. No, I offered you a good deal and you insulted me by extorting from me. So here’s what you get, a good lesson for you. Nothing. You could have had a grand. You think you can get by in this world as a contractor without making a few friends in the government? All I have to do is find an animal control officer who is willing to sign something saying no cats under the house. He’ll probably be a lot cheaper than a thousand dollars—I was trying to help you out. You clearly could use the money.”
“Actually, you insulted me first by telling me I should compromise for a few pieces of silver. We both know I wouldn’t take your money,” Lucas replied evenly. “And now you’re implying something about our standard of living.”
Gunter stood up. “You stay off my land. I catch you over there, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
“Appreciate you stopping by,” Lucas said dryly.
Sometimes people hug or briefly touch hands when they leave, but Gunter and Lucas did not do either.
“I’m not going to let them hurt the cats, Bella,” Lucas told me. I heard my name and wondered if it was time for dinner.
* * *
Sometimes Lucas and Mom left me alone. The first time this happened I was very upset and chewed things I knew I shouldn’t—papers and shoes, items that I was not given by Lucas’s hand and that were always snagged out of my mouth when I was caught with them. Mom and Lucas were angry when they got home. They shook a shoe in my face and yelled “No!”
I knew the word “no” and was learning not to like it. The next time they left me I chewed my toys and just one shoe. I understood they were angry again but I did not understand why they left me alone. That seemed to me to be the important issue.
When I was with Lucas the world was a wonderful place and when he was gone it was like hiding with my mother in the crack in the back wall of the den, where everything was dark and frightening. I did not understand what I had done and just needed Lucas to come home and reassure me he still loved me. Whenever he said “No!” I cowered and waited for him to stop being angry over whatever the problem was.
My favorite thing to do was go with Lucas to feed the cats. I was always thrilled at the sound and fragrances of the bag of food, though so far he had not let me have any. We would cross the street and Lucas would push through the flap in the fence. I wanted very badly to follow him to the den so I could play, but Lucas would tie me to a tree on the street side of the fence so that I couldn’t. I could smell three felines in there, now. Mother Cat never came close enough to the hole to be seen, but the other two sometimes were in the light.
“I can’t be here all the time, I have a job now,” Lucas said to the cats as he stood at the hole. “I’ll try to protect you, but if the machines come you’re going to have to run away.” Sometimes Lucas would wriggle into the den and I would whimper in distress until he returned.
One night we returned home and Mom and Lucas sat at the table and ate chicken! I sat patiently, waiting for a little morsel, and wasn’t disappointed—Lucas’s hand came down with a tiny piece of skin that I quickly took from his fingers. I loved chicken and anything else that came from his hand. “There are at least
three of them now, maybe four. It’s hard to tell.”
“How do they get past the fence?” Mom wanted to know.
“Oh, there are plenty of places where a cat could squeeze through. Bella spends a lot of time sniffing at a gap in the back under the bottom frame—I think maybe that’s where they are getting in and out.”
I looked at him expectantly when he said my name. Treat? Go for a walk? More chicken?
“Any chance of luring them out?” Mom asked.
“No, they’re pretty spooked. Especially the black female—she’s oddly the most brave and will walk right up to the hole, but I can tell she’ll never come out while I’m there.”
“What about the woman from animal rescue? Wendy?”
“Audrey. Yeah, I talked to her. She says they’ll try to come back out, but they’re really swamped right now,” Lucas replied.
“She was cute.”
“She has a boyfriend.”
“Well … sometimes they’ll say that, but…”
“Mom.”
She laughed. “Okay. So what is the plan?”
“We’re at an impasse until Audrey can come. But I’m not going to let him kill the cats.”
“What if he sets out poison?”
“I’ve been watching for that. He hasn’t tried it yet. I think he’s trying to find somebody to bribe at the sheriff’s department to say the cats have all left.”
Mom was quiet for a moment. “Lucas…”
“Yeah?”
“Why is this so important to you? Not that I don’t love animals, but for you it seems, I don’t know, more than that.”
Lucas shifted in his chair. “I guess it’s because they’re all alone in the world.”
I glanced over at Mom as she sat back, crossing her ankles. “You feel like you need to protect them because they’re abandoned. The way you once felt you, yourself, needed to be protected, when you were abandoned.”
“Your group therapy is making it almost impossible to have a normal conversation with you.”
“I’m serious.”
“Couldn’t it just be that I feel responsible for them?”
“Why? Why do you feel responsible for everything all the time? It’s as if you’ve been a grown-up since you were five years old. Is it…”
They were quiet for a moment. I sniffed carefully at the floor in front of his feet, hoping for a morsel I might have missed.
“Is it what?”
“You’re the only child of an alcoholic.”
“Can you let this one go, Mom? Sometimes I do things for no reason I can name, okay?”
“I just think it would be a good idea to take a look at it.”
“Mom, they’re cats. Can we just maybe say that’s all there is to it? I honestly don’t go through life blaming you every day, or thinking about all the things that happened. I know that’s important for you, but I’m just glad things are finally back to normal. All right? And I think it’s normal to want to stop some builder from bringing a house down on some helpless cats.”
“Okay, Lucas. Okay.”
* * *
Lucas and I played and played. He liked to say, “Do your business.” This meant that when we were outside he would sometimes give me a treat, but most of the time not. He also could put his fingers in his mouth and let loose with a shrill, piercing noise that scared me at first but then became a signal to run to him for a little snack of some kind, so that I became excited whenever he raised his hands to his mouth.
My least favorite item in the house was the “crate.” Mom and Lucas sounded very excited when they introduced me to the thing, but it was built from thin metal bars and was not chewable. They put a soft pillow in it and taught me “Go to Your Crate,” which meant that I would go inside it and lie on the pillow and they would give me a treat. Then they suddenly changed the game: we did Go to Your Crate and they gave me a treat and then left me alone in the house!
There was nothing to chew but the pillow. Once I had shredded that (it was not too tasty) I was very lonely. I missed Lucas so much I barked the whole time he was gone.
Lucas was very upset that he had left me alone all day, though I was in such a frenzy of joy when he returned I raced around the living room, jumping on the furniture and rolling on the carpet and licking his face. He seemed unhappy that I had strewn pillow stuffing all over the place, but what else was there to do with it? He didn’t taste it himself and did not know how unappetizing it was. I certainly wasn’t going to eat it.
“I have an old towel you can put in there,” Mom said.
“You shouldn’t rip up your dog bed, Bella,” Lucas told me.
I wagged.
“Maybe put her ball in with her next time,” Mom observed.
I stared at her alertly. Ball? I knew that word—the ball was the most wonderful toy in the house. When Lucas threw it, it would bounce away and I would chase it and catch it and bring it back to do it again.
Sometimes Lucas took the ball with us on a walk. There was a wide open place with grass where Lucas would let me off the leash—a “park”—and he would toss the ball over and over again. The ball never got away from me.
I loved chasing the ball and I loved bringing it back and I loved when Lucas told me I was a good dog. Sometimes there were other dogs and they chased other balls, pretending they didn’t wish they were chasing a ball thrown by Lucas.
He was my person. I wanted nothing more in life than to be with him every day. Well, that and treats. “Do your business,” he’d say. Treat! Then, “Do your business.” No treat. It was not the best game.
Then I understood: Do Your Business referred to squatting and peeing, which I had come to prefer to do outside. Lucas radiated such approval, giving me a treat when we were in the grass, that I realized what Do Your Business was all about. We went to the park and I did Do Your Business and got a treat and Lucas was so excited he threw the ball and it bounced over to where children sometimes played on swings. I was right behind it, gaining ground, and when it bounced onto a plastic ramp and rolled to the top I followed, my nails digging for purchase on the slippery surface. At the top of the ramp the ball kept going and so did I, jumping off and catching the ball after it hit the ground and bounded up to mouth-level.
“Bella!” Lucas called. “You ran up the slide! Good dog, Bella!”
Lucas was pleased with me. He led me over to the ramp. “Okay, chase the ball up the slide, Bella!”
We played that game over and over. The ball went up the “slide” and I jumped off after it and caught it and took it back to him. Sometimes I caught the ball in the air on the other side of the slide, right after it bounced off the ground. Lucas would laugh in delight when I did this.
Later he gave me water and we sprawled in the grass. The air was cool and the sun was bright in the sky. I put my head on his legs and he stroked my head. Whenever his hand stopped I nuzzled it, wanting more.
“I am so sorry I have to leave you for work. I love my job, though. I have a desk but I’m hardly ever there; mostly I’m running all over the place assisting my managers with their cases. It’s fun but I do miss you, Bella.”
I loved it when he said my name.
“Did you hear Mom walking around last night? She’s back to not sleeping. I don’t know what to do if she is going back into one of her cycles. God, I wish they could just fix her.”
A sad feeling came off of him, so I climbed on his chest. That worked: he laughed and pushed me off. “You are such a silly dog, Bella!”
Any time I was with Lucas, I was happy. I loved Mom, but what I felt toward Lucas was as compelling as hunger, and often when I was sleeping I would dream that he and I were together, feeding the cats or playing ball-up-the-slide.
I did not like the phrase “go to work” because when Lucas said it, he meant he was going to leave me for a long, long time. “I’m going to go to work,” he would say to Mom, and then I would be alone with her. I could not imagine why he would do Go to Work. Wasn’t I a
good dog?
Mom would play with me during the day, and take me for short walks on the leash, but we did not feed the cats and did not go to the park.
When it was time for Lucas to stop doing Go to Work I could feel him coming home. I knew without smelling him that he was walking down the street toward the house, and I would go to the door and sit, waiting for him. When I felt him right there, I would start wagging, and a moment later I would smell him and hear his steps on the walk.
“I don’t know how, but she knows when you’re coming home,” Mom told Lucas. “She goes to the door and whimpers.”
“She probably just has my schedule memorized.”
“Honey, you don’t have your schedule memorized. You get out of work at a different time every day. No, she has a sixth sense about it.”
“Bella, the psychic dog of Denver,” Lucas said. I looked at him but saw no sign that him saying my name was going to lead to any treats.
* * *
Lucas was doing Go to Work and Mom was resting on the couch. Some days she moved around and took me for walks, and she would sing, her voice rising and falling in a way that was entirely different from talking. Recently, though, she did not do much more than lie on the couch. I would cuddle with her, feeling her love, but also some sadness.
I heard someone come up the front steps, though I smelled that it wasn’t anyone I had ever met. I could tell it was a man. I barked.
“No, Bella!” Mom scolded.
No? I did not understand the use of that word in this context.
I heard the high, clear chime of the bell that rang when someone was on the front porch. My job was to alert everyone that I had heard it, so I barked again.
“Bella! No! Bad dog.”
I regarded her in guilty dismay. Bad dog? What had I done?
Mom opened the door slightly and I pressed my nose to the crack, sniffing and wagging my tail.
“Hey, babe.” A large man stood on the steps. His breath smelled of a strong chemical that stung my eyes a little, plus there was a nice bread odor clinging to his clothing.
I sensed Mom feeling unhappy, so I stopped wagging my tail so enthusiastically.