Without warning the floor fell away beneath me, and in complete darkness I rolled and bounced—the smaller tunnel had joined a much larger one, the water deeper, the sounds louder. I zeroed in on Geoffrey’s scent, swimming strongly. Though I couldn’t see him, he was just a few yards in front of me.
A second before he went under I knew what was going to happen—how many times had Ethan pulled this same stunt on me, waiting until I was close before dropping down into the pond? And, just as I always knew where to find the boy in the dark depths, I now had a clear sense of Geoffrey, tumbling just below me. I dove, straining, my mouth open, blinded and battered by the rushing waters, and then I had his hood in my mouth. Together, we burst through to the surface.
There was no way to go in any direction except the way the water was taking us. I concentrated on holding Geoffrey’s head out of the water, pulling back on the hood. He was alive, but he had stopped kicking.
Some weak light from up ahead flickered on the wet cement walls—the tunnel we were in was square and six feet across, with no way out. How was I going to save Geoffrey?
The light grew stronger, and as it did my ears filled with a loud roar, echoing back toward us. The current seemed to be accelerating. I kept my grip on Geoffrey’s hood, sensing that something was about to happen.
We burst into daylight, tumbling down a cement chute and landing with a splash in a swift-flowing river. I struggled to keep us both on the churning surface, battered by the waves. The banks of the river were lined with cement, but as I tugged Geoffrey toward the nearest one, the current fought me, trying to suck us back. Exhaustedly, my jaw and neck aching from the effort, I dragged Geoffrey toward the bank, swimming as hard as I could.
Flashing lights caught my eye, and I saw men in raincoats downstream from me, running toward the bank. I would be swept past them before I could get Geoffrey to safety.
Two of the men plunged into the water. They were tied together, and the rope went back to all the other men, who braced themselves. The two men stood hip high, straining their hands out to catch us, and I put everything I had into aiming for their arms.
“Gotcha!” one of the men shouted as Geoffrey and I slammed into them. He grabbed my collar as the other man hoisted Geoffrey into the air. The rope went taut and we all thrashed our way through the water to safety.
Once I was on land, the man released me and knelt down over Geoffrey. They squeezed his little body and he vomited up a gush of brown water, coughing and crying. I limped over to Geoffrey, and as his fear drained out of him it took mine with it. He was going to be okay.
The men ripped Geoffrey’s clothing off him and wrapped him in blankets. “You’ll be okay, boy; you’ll be okay. Is this your doggy? She saved your life.” Geoffrey didn’t answer, but he looked briefly into my eyes.
“Let’s go!” one of the men shouted, and they ran Geoffrey up the hill and into a truck, which took off with its siren screaming.
I lay down in the mud. My limbs were shaking violently, and I, too, vomited, a clean pain slicing through me. I was so weak I couldn’t really even see. The cold rain pelted me and I just lay there.
A police car pulled up, cutting its sirens as it did so. I heard doors slam. “Ellie!” Maya screamed from the road. I raised my head, too tired to even wag my tail. She frantically ran down the bank, wiping at her tears. She was soaking wet, but I could feel her warmth and love as she hugged me to her chest. “You are a good dog, Ellie. You saved Geoffrey. You are such a good dog. Oh God, I thought I’d lost you, Ellie.”
I spent the night at the vet’s, and for the next several days I was so stiff I could barely move. Then Maya and I did school, only this one was all adults her age. We sat with lights in our eyes while a man talked in a loud voice, and then he came over and put a silly collar around my neck while even brighter lights, the ones like silent lightning, popped on and off all around us, the way they did when I was with Mom, after the fire that hurt Ethan’s leg. The man also pinned something on Maya’s uniform, and everybody clapped. I felt pride and love coming off of Maya, and when she whispered to me that I was a good dog I felt proud, too.
Not long after that, a new mood swept through the house. Maya and Al were excited and nervous and spent a lot of time having conversations at the table.
“If it is a boy, why can’t it be Albert?” Al asked. “That’s a good name.”
“It’s a great name, honey, but then what do we call him? You are my Albert, my Al.”
“We could call him Bert.”
“Oh, honey.”
“Well, what are we going to call him, then? Your family has so many people in it, you’ve used up every name there is. We can’t call him Carlos, Diego, Francisco, Ricardo—”
“What about Angel?”
“Angel? You want my son to be named Angel? I think maybe we shouldn’t trust the naming of this child to a woman who named her cat Tinkerbell.”
The cat, who was sleeping against me, didn’t even raise her head at the sound of her name. Cats are like that; you can’t get their attention unless they want to give it to you.
Maya was laughing. “How about Charles?”
“Charley? No, my first boss was named Charley,” Al objected.
“Anthony?”
“Don’t you have a cousin named Anthony?”
“His name is Antonio,” Maya corrected.
“Well, I don’t like him. His mustache looks silly.”
Maya collapsed into giggles at this. I thumped my tail once in recognition of all the hilarity. “George?”
“No.”
“Raul?”
“No.”
“Jeremy?”
“Of course not.”
“Ethan?”
I jumped up, and Al and Maya stared at me in surprise. “I guess Ellie likes it,” Al said.
I cocked my head at them, uncertain. Tinkerbell was giving me a surly look. I trotted over to the door, lifting my nose.
“What is it, Ellie?” Maya asked.
There was no sign of the boy, and I was no longer sure I had heard right. Outside, some children rode past on bicycles, but none of them were Ethan. What was I thinking, that Ethan, like Jakob, would suddenly reappear in my life? I knew instinctively something like that would never happen to a dog. Still, Maya had said the boy’s name, hadn’t she? Why would she do that?
I went to Maya for reassurance, then eased down with a sigh. Tinkerbell trotted over and pressed up against me, and I glanced away from Al’s knowing look, a little embarrassed.
Before long we had a new person in the house: little Gabriella, who smelled like sour milk and seemed even less useful than the cat. When she first brought the child home, Maya carefully held Gabriella for me to sniff, but I wasn’t too impressed. From that moment on, Maya would get up frequently during the night and I would go with her and she would clutch Gabriella to her chest while I lay at her feet. The unrestrained love flowing from Maya during those moments always nudged me into a deep, peaceful sleep.
The aches in my bones were familiar to me; I’d felt the same way when I was Bailey and spent most of my time helping Grandpa do chores. Sights and sounds became dim, and this, too, was familiar.
I wondered if Maya knew that the day was soon coming when I would no longer be with them. It only stood to reason that I would die, the way Emmet and Stella died, because that was what happened. When I was Toby, when I was Bailey, it was the same thing.
As I lay in a patch of sun, pondering this, I realized that I had spent my life as a good dog. What I had learned from my first mother had led me to Ethan, and what I had learned from Ethan had enabled me to dive into those black waters and find Geoffrey. Along the way, Jakob had taught me to Find and Show and I had helped save many people.
This had to be why, when I left Ethan, I was reborn as Ellie—everything that I had done, everything that I had ever learned, had been leading up to being a good dog who saved people. It wasn’t as much fun as being a doodle dog, but I now knew w
hy these creatures, these human beings, had so fascinated me from the moment I saw them. It was because my fate was inextricably linked with theirs. Especially Ethan—that was the bond of a lifetime.
Now that I had fulfilled my purpose, I felt sure I was at the end, that there would be no rebirth after this, and I was at peace with that. As wonderful as being a puppy could be, I wouldn’t want to share it with anyone but the boy. Maya and Al had little Gabriella to distract them, making me sort of an afterthought in the family, except, of course, for Tinkerbell, who thought I was the family.
I wondered briefly if cats also came back after death, then dismissed the thought because as far as I had ever been able to tell, cats do not have a purpose.
Embarrassingly, I had started to have trouble containing myself in time to make it outside and was more and more frequently leaving messes in the house. Even worse, Gabriella had the same problem, so that the trash can often contained both of our bowel movements.
Al took me on several front-seat dog car rides to see the vet, who petted me all over while I groaned with pleasure. “You’re a good dog; you’re just getting old,” Al said. I wagged at being a good dog. Maya was very busy with Gabriella, so more and more it was just me and Al, which was okay by me. I could feel his tender affection every time he helped me up so we could take a car ride together.
One day Al had to carry me out into the yard to do my business and I felt the sadness in him break sharply as he came to terms with what this meant. I licked his face in reassurance and put my head in his lap when he sat on the ground to cry.
When Maya came home she brought the baby outside and we all sat together. “You’ve been such a good dog, Ellie,” Maya said over and over. “You’re a hero dog. You saved lives. You saved that little boy Geoffrey.”
A neighbor lady came over and picked up Gabriella. Maya bent over her child, loving her, whispering something in her ear. “Bye-bye, Ellie,” Gabriella said. She held out her hand and the lady stooped so I could lick it.
“Say ‘bye-bye,’ ” the woman said.
“Bye-bye,” Gabriella said again. The lady took Gabriella into the house.
“This is so hard, Al.” Maya sighed.
“I know. If you want, I will do it for you, Maya,” Al said.
“No, no. I need to be there for Ellie.”
Al gingerly picked me up and carried me to the car. Maya got in the backseat with me.
I knew where we were going on this car ride. Groaning with all my aches, I collapsed on the seat, my head in Maya’s lap. I knew where we were going and was looking forward to the peace it would bring me. Maya stroked my head, and I closed my eyes. I wondered if there were anything I would have wanted to do one more time—Find? Swim in the ocean? Stick my head out the car window? These were all wonderful things—I had done them all, though, and that was enough.
I wagged my tail when they laid me on the familiar steel table. Maya was crying, whispering, “You’re a good dog,” over and over, and it was her words, and the sense of her love, that I took with me when I felt the tiny prick by my neck and then was washed away by the wonderfully warm ocean waters.
{ TWENTY-SIX }
My new mother had a big, black face and a warm pink tongue. I stared up at her numbly the first time I realized it was all happening again—it didn’t seem possible, not after being Ellie.
I had eight other brothers and sisters, all of them black, all of them healthy and full of play. For the most part, though, I preferred to wander off by myself and ponder what it meant that I was a puppy once more.
It made no sense. I understood how I would never have been with Ethan if, as Toby, I hadn’t learned how to open a gate, and from my days in the culvert learned that there was nothing to fear on the other side of the fence. With Ethan I learned about love and companionship, and felt I was truly accomplishing my purpose, just by accompanying him on his daily adventures. But Ethan also taught me how to rescue from the pond, and so when I was Ellie and learned how to Find and Show I was able to save the little boy from the tunnel of water. I would not have been so good at work if I hadn’t had the experience of being Ethan’s dog—Jakob’s cold distance would have been incomprehensible and painful to me.
But now what? What could possibly happen now that would justify my rebirth as a puppy?
We were in a well-kept kennel with a cement floor, and twice a day a man came in and cleaned it out and took us out into a yard to romp in the grass. Other men and women spent time with us, lifting us and looking at our paws, and while I felt joy coming from them, none radiated that special love that I’d had with Ethan and with Maya and Al.
“Congratulations, you’ve got a fine litter here, Colonel,” one of them said, holding me up in the air as he spoke. “Fetch top dollar.”
“I’m worried about that one you’ve got in your hands, there,” another man replied. He smelled like smoke, and the way my new mother responded to him when he came into the kennel let me know he was her owner. “Doesn’t seem to have much energy.”
“You have the vet look at him?” The man holding me flipped me over, running his thumbs under my lips to expose my teeth. I passively allowed this; I just wanted to be left alone.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. He just goes off by himself and sleeps,” the one called Colonel replied.
“Well, they can’t all be champions,” the first man said, setting me down.
I felt unhappiness from Colonel as he watched me trot away. I didn’t know what I could have done wrong, but I imagined I wouldn’t be here long anyway. If previous experience had taught me anything, it was that people who had a litter of puppies liked them, but not enough to keep them.
I was wrong, though. A few weeks later, most of my brothers and sisters were taken away by people, leaving just three of us left. I felt a sad resignation from my new mother, who had stopped nursing us but who still lowered her nose affectionately when any of us approached her to lick her face. She had apparently been through this before.
Over the next several days, people came to visit us and play games, like putting us in pillowcases, jangling keys in front of us, and tossing a ball past our noses to see what we would do. None of this struck me as a very rational way to behave around puppies, but everyone seemed very serious about the whole thing.
“Lot of money for one so small,” a man remarked to Colonel.
“Sire’s a two-time national field champion; mother’s placed in state six years in a row, won twice. I think you’ll get your money’s worth,” Colonel said.
They shook hands and then it was just my mother and a sister I’d named Pounce because she always leaped on me as if I couldn’t see it coming. With her other brother gone, Pounce was on me relentlessly, and I found myself wrestling with her in self-defense. Colonel took note of my more active relationship, and I felt something like relief coming off him.
Then Pounce was taken away by a woman who smelled like horses and I was all alone, which I have to admit was how I preferred it.
“Have to lower the price, I guess,” Colonel remarked a few days later. “Shame, that.” I didn’t even raise my head or run over to him to try to convince him not to be disappointed in me, which he apparently was.
In truth, I was feeling heartsick. I just couldn’t understand what was happening to me, why I was a puppy again. The idea of going through training, of learning Find with someone other than Maya or Jakob, of living another life, simply defeated me. I felt like a bad dog.
I didn’t race over to the fence to see people when they visited, not even when they had children—I didn’t want to do that again, either. Ethan was the only child I would ever be interested in.
“What’s wrong with him? Is he ill?” I heard a man ask one day.
“No. He just prefers to be off by himself,” Colonel answered.
The man came into the kennel and picked me up. He had light blue eyes and regarded me kindly. “You’re just a mellow fellow, is that it?” he asked me. I sens
ed an eagerness inside him, and somehow knew I would be leaving the kennel with him that day. I wandered over to my new mother and gave her a farewell lick on the face. She seemed to know it, too, and nuzzled me in return.
“Give you two fifty,” the man with the blue eyes said. I felt a sharp surprise in Colonel.
“What? Sir, this dog’s paternity—”
“Yeah, I read the ad. Look, it’s for my girlfriend. She’s not going to take him hunting; she just wants a dog. You said you’d make a deal. Now, I have to figure, if you’ve got a three-month-old puppy and breeding dogs is what you do, there’s some reason people don’t want this one. I don’t think you want this one, either. So I can go on-line and adopt a Lab for nothing. I figure, this one has all the papers and the pedigree, I’ll go two hundred and fifty bucks. Anybody else lining up to buy this dog? I don’t think so.”
A little while later, the man was loading me into the backseat of his car. He shook hands with Colonel, who was letting me leave without so much as a farewell pat on the head. The man handed Colonel a small piece of paper. “If you are ever looking for a good deal on a luxury automobile, give me a call,” the man said cheerfully.
I sized up my new owner. I liked that he was letting me be a front-seat dog, but when he gazed over at me I felt nothing like affection coming from him but rather a complete indifference.
I soon found out why: I would not be living with the man, whose name turned out to be Derek. My new home was with a woman named Wendi, who screamed and jumped up and down when Derek brought me into the house. Wendi and Derek immediately started wrestling together, so I found myself exploring the apartment in which I now lived. There were shoes and clothes scattered everywhere, and boxes with dried food stuck to the insides sitting out on a low table in front of the couch. I licked these clean.
Derek didn’t radiate any particular affection toward Wendi, either, even though he hugged her as he was walking out the door. Whenever Al used to leave the house, the quick rush of love he felt toward Maya always made me wag my tail, but this man wasn’t like that at all.