Wendi’s love for me was instant but confusing, a jumble of emotions that I didn’t understand. Over the next several days she named me Pooh-Bear, Google, Snoopdog, Leno, and Pistachio. Then I was Pooh-Bear again, though she soon just stuck with Bear and its variations: Barry-Boo, Bear-Bear, Honey-woney Bear, Cuddle Bear, and Wonder Bear. She would hold me down and kiss me all over and squeeze me as if she couldn’t get enough of me, and then the phone would ring and she’d drop me to the floor to answer it.
Every morning Wendi rummaged through her belongings, her feelings wrapped up in a roiling panic, saying, “I’m late! I’m late!” She would bang out the door and then I’d be alone all day, bored silly.
She put newspapers on the floor, but I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to pee on them or avoid them, so I did a little of both. My teeth were so sore my mouth was watering, so I wound up chewing on a couple of shoes, which sent Wendi into a screaming fit when she saw it. Sometimes she forgot to feed me and then I had no choice but to dive into the trash can for something, and this, too, caused screaming.
As far as I could see, life with Wendi had no purpose whatsoever. We didn’t train together; we didn’t even walk together much—she would open the door and let me run around in the yard at night, but hardly ever during the day, and only then with an odd, furtive fear, as if we were doing something wrong. I became so frustrated, so full of pent-up energy, that I wound up barking, sometimes for hours straight, my voice ringing off the walls and back at me.
One day there was a loud knock on the door. “Bear! Come here!” Wendi hissed at me. She locked me in her bedroom, but I could easily hear a man speaking to her. He sounded mad.
“Not allowed to have a dog! It’s in your lease!” I cocked my head at the word “dog,” wondering if I might be the source of the man’s anger. I hadn’t, as far as I knew, done anything wrong, but all the rules were different at this crazy place, so who could say?
The next time Wendi left for work she broke the pattern, calling me over and sitting me down. She seemed completely unimpressed that I knew how to sit on command without being taught. “Look, Bear-Bear, you can’t bark while I’m gone, okay? I’ll get in trouble with the neighbors. No barking, okay?”
I could feel sadness at the edges of her feelings and wondered what it was all about. Perhaps she was bored all day, too. Why didn’t she just take me with her? I loved car rides! I barked out my pent-up energy all afternoon, but I didn’t chew any shoes.
A day or so later, Wendi opened the door with one hand and pulled a piece of paper off the outside of the door with another. I raced over to her, my bladder bursting, but she didn’t let me out. Instead she looked at the paper and then started shouting angrily. I had no choice but to squat on the kitchen floor, and she smacked me on the bottom with an open palm and then opened the door.
“Here, you might as well go out; everybody knows you’re here anyway,” she muttered. I finished my business in the yard. I was sorry I had made the mess in the kitchen, but I simply hadn’t had an option.
The next day, Wendi slept in late and then we got in the car and went for a long, long car ride. I was a backseat dog because of all the things piled on the front seat, but she did lower the window so I could poke my nose out it. We pulled up in the driveway of a small house with several vehicles in the yard—I could tell by the smell of them that they hadn’t moved in a long time. I lifted my leg on one of them.
An older woman opened the door.
“Hi, Mom,” Wendi said.
“Is that it? It’s huge. You said it was a puppy.”
“Well, I named him Bear; what did you think?”
“This isn’t going to work.”
“Mom! I have no choice! I got an eviction notice!” Wendi yelled angrily.
“Well, what in the world were you thinking, anyway?”
“He was a gift from Derek! What was I supposed to do, take him back?”
“Why would he get you a dog when you can’t have dogs in the apartment?”
“Because I said I wanted him, too, okay, Mom? Are you happy? I said I wanted a dog. God.”
The feelings the two women had toward each other were so complex, there was no way I could sort them out. Wendi and I spent the night in the tiny home, both of us a little afraid: there was a man named Victor who came home when it was dark, and he was so full of rage it made everything feel dangerous and crazy. While Wendi and I slept in a narrow bed in a cramped back room, Victor yelled in another part of the house.
“I don’t want a dog here!”
“Well, it’s my place and I’ll do what I want!”
“What are we supposed to do with a dog?”
“That’s a stupid question; what does anyone do with a dog?”
“Shut up, Lisa; just shut up.”
“It will be okay, Barry-Boo. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” Wendi whispered to me. She was so sad I licked her hand in reassurance, but that just made her cry.
The next morning, the two women stood outside and talked next to the car. I sniffed along the door’s edge, waiting to be let inside. The sooner Wendi and I left this place, the better.
“God, Mom, how can you put up with him?” Wendi said.
“He’s not so bad. He’s better than your father.”
“Oh, don’t start.”
They stood silently for a minute. I gave the air a sniff—it carried with it the sour fragrance of the garbage stacked up next to the house, which, frankly, smelled delightful. I wouldn’t mind digging around in there, someday.
“Well, call me when you get home,” the older woman finally said.
“I will, Mom. Take good care of Bear.”
“Yeah.” The woman put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it, blowing smoke out sharply.
Wendi knelt beside me, and her sadness was so strong and familiar I knew what was coming. She stroked my face and told me I was a good dog, and then opened the door and slid inside without letting me in. I watched the car drive away without surprise, though I wasn’t at all sure what I had done. If I was such a good dog, why was I being abandoned by my owner?
“Now what?” the woman standing next to me muttered, puffing her cigarette.
{ TWENTY-SEVEN }
Over the next several weeks, I learned to stay away from Victor. Most of the time this was easy, as I was chained to a post in the backyard and Victor never approached me. Often I could see him, though, sitting by a window in the kitchen, smoking and drinking. Sometimes at night he would come out into the backyard to urinate, and that was about the only time he talked to me. “Whatcha looking at, dog?” he’d shout at me. There was never any happiness in his laughter.
The days grew warmer, so for shade I dug out a scoop of earth between the sagging back fence and a machine that sat in the sun.
“Dog got dirt all over my snowmobile!” Victor yelled when he saw what I had done.
“Thing hasn’t run in two years!” the woman, Lisa, screamed back. They yelled at each other a lot. It reminded me a little of when Mom and Dad would get angry and shout, except that at this house I’d sometimes hear a thud and a cry of pain, usually accompanied by the sound of bottles knocking together and falling to the floor.
A nice old lady lived in a place behind the rotten wooden fence, and she started coming over to talk to me through the gaps and holes in the boards. “Such a nice doggy, do you have water today?” she whispered the first really hot morning. She left and soon reappeared with a pitcher, from which she poured a cool stream of water into my dirty bowl. I lapped it up gratefully and licked the thin, shaking hand she extended through the fence hole.
The flies buzzing around my stools landed on my lips and eyes, driving me a little crazy, but mostly I didn’t mind lying in the backyard as long as I could be away from Victor. He scared me; the malevolence flowing from him communicated a real sense of danger. I was reminded of Todd, and the man with the gun who hurt Jakob. I’d bitten both men; did that mean I would someday be biting Victo
r?
I simply could not believe that my purpose in this life was to attack humans. It was beyond unacceptable. The mere thought made me sick.
When Victor was not home I would bark and Lisa would come out and feed me and let me off the chain a little bit, but I never once barked when he was in the house.
The lady on the other side of the fence brought me little pieces of meat, which she poked through the hole. When I caught the meat as it fell through the air, she laughed with real delight, as if I had performed an amazing trick. It seemed the only purpose I really had, bringing a little bit of joy to a mysterious woman whose face I couldn’t quite see.
“This is a shame, a real shame. They can’t do this to an animal. I’m going to call somebody,” she’d say. I could feel how much she cared about me, though it was strange, because she never came into the yard to play.
One day a truck pulled into the driveway and a woman got out dressed just the way Maya used to dress, so I knew she was a police officer. For a moment it felt as if she had come to fetch me to Find, because she stood at the gate to the backyard and stared at me, writing something down. That didn’t really make sense, though, and when Lisa came outside, her hands on her hips, I lay down. The police officer handed Lisa a piece of paper.
“The dog’s just fine!” Lisa shouted at her, really angry. I sensed the old lady standing behind me, just on the other side of the fence. She was breathing quietly while Lisa raged.
That night Victor yelled about me even more than usual, the word “dog” popping up every few seconds.
“Why don’t we just shoot the damn dog?” he yelled. “Fifty dollars? For what? We’re not doing anything wrong!” Something crashed in the house, a violent noise that made me cower.
“We have to get a longer chain, and clean up all the crap in the yard. Read the ticket!” Lisa shouted back.
“I don’t have to read the ticket! They can’t make us do a damn thing! It’s our property!”
That night, when Victor came out into the yard to urinate, he put his hand out to steady himself against the house and missed, tumbling to the ground. “What are you starin’ at, stupid mutt,” he mumbled at me. “Take care of you tomorrow. Not payin’ any fifty bucks.”
I slunk down low against the fence, not even daring to look back at him.
The next day my focus was distracted by a butterfly who was flittering around in front of my face, so I was startled when Victor suddenly appeared before me.
“You want to go for a car ride?” Victor crooned at me. I didn’t wag at the words; somehow, he made it sound like a threat instead of a treat. No, I thought, I do not want to go for a car ride with you.
“It’ll be fun. See the world,” he said, his laugh turning into a cough that caused him to turn and spit on the ground. He un-clipped my chain from the post and led me to his car, yanking me around to the back of it when I stopped at the door. He inserted his key and the trunk popped open. “In ya go,” he said. I sensed his anticipation and waited for a command I understood. “Hokay,” he said. He reached down and gripped me in the loose skin at the back of my neck and above my tail. There was a quick flash of pain as he hoisted me up and then I was in the trunk, sliding on some greasy papers. He unsnapped my leash and let it pool on the floor in front of me. The lid slammed down, and I was in near-total darkness.
I was lying on some smelly, oily rags that reminded me of the night of the fire, when Ethan hurt his legs, and some cold metal tools, so it was hard to get comfortable. One of the tools was easily identifiable as a gun; the acrid fragrance was unmistakable. I turned away from it, trying to ignore the sharp smells.
I lay in a half crouch, my nails extended in a hopeless attempt to keep from slipping from one side to the other in the narrow trunk as the car bounced and swayed.
It was the strangest car ride I’d ever had, and the only one I could remember that wasn’t any fun. Still, car rides always resulted in a new place, and new places were always fun to explore. Maybe there would be other dogs, or maybe I was going back to live with Wendi.
The cramped, dark space soon became quite warm, and I found myself thinking of the room I’d been placed in with Spike, back when my name was Toby and I was taken from the senora. I hadn’t thought about that scary moment in a long time. So much had happened since then. I was a completely different dog now, a good dog who had saved people.
After I spent a long, miserable time in that trunk, the car began to vibrate and ping and dust rose up in the air, a thick, choking cloud. I sneezed, shaking my head. Then the car braked to a sudden halt, sending me crashing against the inside of the trunk. The motor didn’t shut off, though, and we sat for a minute.
Oddly, as soon as we stopped, I could sense Victor inside the car on the other side of the trunk, feel his presence. I had the distinct sense that he was trying to make up his mind about something—there was a feeling of indecisiveness. Then he said something sharply, a word that was muffled, and I heard the front door open. Victor’s feet crunched on gravel as he came around to where I lay cringing, and I smelled him before the trunk popped open and cool air whooshed in around me.
He stared down at me. Blinking, I raised my eyes to his, then looked away so he wouldn’t think I was challenging him.
“All right.” He reached down and twisted at my collar. I expected him to attach my leash, so I was surprised when the collar itself fell away, leaving behind it an odd sensation, as if I were still wearing a collar, only one light as air. “Get on out of there, now.”
My legs were cramped as I stood up. I recognized his hand gestures and jumped out of the car, landing awkwardly. We were on a dirt road, long green grass waving in the sun from both shoulders. Grit from the road painted the insides of my nose and settled on my tongue. I lifted my leg, looking over at him. What now?
Victor got back in his car and the engine made a loud noise. I stared at him in confusion as his tires bit at the road, spitting rocks. He turned the car around, pointing it in the opposite direction. Then he rolled down his window.
“I’m doing you a favor. You’re free, now. Go catch some rabbits or somethin’.” He grinned at me and took off, the car kicking up a huge cloud of dirt behind it.
Baffled, I watched it go. What sort of game was this? Hesitantly, I followed, easily tracking the dust as it drifted through the air.
I knew from my many years of Find that I was quickly losing the scent—Victor must be driving very fast. I gamely picked up the pace, no longer following the dust cloud but focusing instead on the signature smells from the back of his car, where I’d just spent so much time.
I was able to track him when he turned onto a paved road, but when another turn took me to a highway, with cars flashing past at amazing speeds, I knew I’d lost him. So many cars were whizzing by, each one with smells similar to (though not exactly like) Victor’s. Picking out the one scent on which I was doing Find was impossible.
The highway was intimidating; I turned from it and headed back the direction I’d come. With nothing else to do I backtracked along the same scent trail, now faint in the late afternoon breezes. When I came to the dirt road, though, I passed it and kept heading aimlessly up the pavement.
I remembered when I used the trick my very first mother had taught me and escaped from the kennel when I was a puppy the second time, how it seemed like such an adventure to run out in the open, free and full of life. Then the man found me and named me Fella, and then Mom came and took me to Ethan.
This was nothing like that. I didn’t feel free; I didn’t feel full of life. I felt guilty and sad. I had no purpose, no direction. I would not be able to make my way home from here. It was like when Colonel turned away from me, the day Derek took me to live with Wendi—though no feelings came from Colonel, it was nonetheless good-bye. Victor had just done the same thing, except he had handed me to nobody.
The dust and heat made me pant, my thirst itching at my mouth. When I picked up the faint scent of water, it was the most natu
ral thing in the world to turn in that direction, leaving the road and walking through high grasses that tossed themselves back and forth in the breeze.
The smell of water grew stronger, more tantalizing, drawing me through a stand of trees and down a steep bank to a river. I waded in to my chest, biting at the water, lapping it up. It felt glorious.
With my urgent thirst no longer my only concern, I allowed myself to open my senses to my surroundings. The river filled my nose with its wonderful damp smell, and along with the gurgle of the waters I could hear, very faintly, a duck squawking over some imagined outrage. I padded along the bank, my feet sinking into the soft soil.
And then it came to me with such a jolt I lifted my head in surprise, my eyes wide open.
I knew where I was.
{ TWENTY-EIGHT }
Along, long time ago I had stood on the banks of this very river, perhaps on this very spot, when Ethan and I had gone for our long walk after Flare, the dumb horse, abandoned us. The scent was unmistakable—doing Find all those years had taught me how to separate out odors, categorize and store them in memory, so that now I could instantly remember this place. It helped that it was summer, the same time of year, and that I was young and my nose so sharp.
I couldn’t possibly fathom how Victor might have known this, or what it meant that he had released me so that I would find the place. I had no sense as to what he wanted me to do. Lacking any better idea, I turned downstream and started trotting, retracing the very same steps Ethan and I had taken, those many years ago.
By the end of the day I was hungrier than I could remember ever being, so hungry my stomach cramped. Wistfully I thought of the old woman’s pale hand poking through the fence and dropping little pieces of meat for me to snatch out of midair; the memory made me drool. The riverbank was choked with vegetation and made for slow going, and it seemed that the hungrier I became, the less certain I was of my course of action. Was this really what I should do, follow this stream? Why?