A Dog's Purpose (12 page)

“I live down the road. My mom made some brownies for your family. Uh,” the girl said, gesturing to her bicycle.

“Oh,” the boy said.

I kept my attention on the basket.

“So, um,” the girl said.

“I’ll get my grandma,” the boy said. He turned and walked inside the house, but I elected to stay with the girl and her dog biscuits.

“Hi, Bailey, are you a good dog? You’re a good dog,” the girl told me.

Good, but not so good as to get a dog biscuit, I discovered, even though after a minute I gave the basket a nudge with my
nose to remind her of the business at hand. Her hair was light colored and she brushed at it while she waited for Ethan to come back. She, too, seemed the tiniest bit afraid, though I could see nothing that would give anybody anxiety except a poor starving dog who needed a treat.

“Hannah!” Grandma said, coming out of the house. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Hi, Mrs. Morgan.”

“Come in, come in. What have you got there?”

“My mom made some brownies.”

“Well, isn’t that wonderful. Ethan, you probably don’t remember, but you and Hannah used to play together when you were just babies. She’s a little more than a year younger than you.”

“I don’t remember,” Ethan said, kicking at the carpet.

He was still acting oddly, but I felt duty bound to guard the basket of dog biscuits, which Grandma set on a side table. Grandpa was sitting in his chair holding a book, and now he reached into the basket, looking over the tops of his glasses.

“Do not spoil your dinner!” Grandma hissed at him. He snatched his hand back, and he and I exchanged grieving looks.

For the next several minutes nothing much happened, biscuit wise. Grandma did most of the talking while Ethan stood with his hands in his pockets and Hannah sat on the couch and didn’t look at him. Finally, Ethan asked Hannah if she wanted to see the flip, and at the sound of the dreaded word I whipped my head around and stared at him in disbelief. I had assumed we had ended that chapter of our lives.

The three of us went out into the yard. Ethan showed Hannah the flip, but when he threw it, it still fell to the ground like a dead bird.

“I need to make some design changes to it,” Ethan said.

I walked over to the flip but didn’t pick it up, hoping the boy would decide to end this embarrassment once and for all.

Hannah stayed for a while, going over to the pond to look at the stupid ducks, petting Flare on the nose, and taking a couple of turns with the flip. She got on her bicycle and as she steered down the driveway I trotted beside her, then when the boy whistled for me returned at a dead run.

Something told me we’d be seeing that girl again.

Later that summer, too early in the season to go back home and go to school, in my opinion, Mom packed up the car. Ethan and I stood next to it as Grandma and Grandpa eased into their seats.

“I’ll navigate,” Grandpa said.

“You’ll fall asleep before we cross the county line,” Grandma replied.

“Now, Ethan. You are a big boy. You be good. You call if you have any problems.”

Ethan squirmed under his mother’s hug. “I know,” he said.

“We’ll be back in two days. You need anything, you can ask Mr. Huntley next door. I made you a casserole.”

“I know!” Ethan said.

“Bailey, you take good care of Ethan, okay?”

I wagged my tail in cheerful noncomprehension. Were we going for a car ride or what?

“I stayed by myself all the time when I was his age,” Grandpa said. “This will be good for him.”

I could feel worry and hesitation in Mom, but eventually she got behind the wheel. “I love you, Ethan,” Mom said.

Ethan muttered something, kicking at the dirt.

The car rolled off down the driveway, and Ethan and I
solemnly watched it go. “Come on, Bailey!” he shouted when it was out of sight. We ran into the house.

Everything was suddenly more fun. The boy ate some lunch and when he was done he put the plate on the floor for me to lick! We went into the barn and he climbed up on the rafters while I barked, and when he jumped into a pile of hay I tackled him. An inky shadow from the corner told me the cat was watching all of this, but when I trotted over to investigate she slid off and vanished.

I became uneasy when Ethan unlocked the gun cabinet, something he had never done without Grandpa being there. Guns made me nervous; they reminded me of when Todd threw a firecracker and it banged so close to me I felt a percussion against my skin. But Ethan was so excited, I couldn’t help but prance around at his feet. He put some cans on a fence and shot the gun and the cans went flying. I couldn’t quite understand the connection between the cans and the loud bang of the gun but knew it was somehow all related and, judging from the boy’s reaction, gloriously fun. Flare snorted and trotted to the far end of her yard, distancing herself from all the commotion.

After that the boy made dinner by warming up some succulent chicken. We sat in the living room and he put on the television and ate off of a plate in his lap, tossing me pieces of skin. Now
this
kind of fun I understood!

At that moment, I didn’t care if Mom ever came back.

After I licked the plate, which the boy left on the floor, I decided to test the new rules and climbed up in Grandpa’s soft chair, looking over my shoulder to see if I’d draw the expected “Down!” command. The boy just stared at the television, so I curled up for a nap.

I drowsily registered the telephone ringing and heard the
boy say “bed,” but when he hung up he didn’t go to bed; he sat back down to watch more television.

I was in a solid sleep when a sudden sense of something wrong roused me with a jolt. The boy was sitting stiffly upright, his head cocked.

“Did you hear a noise?” he whispered at me.

I debated whether the urgency I sensed in his voice meant that my nap was over. I decided that what was needed was a calming influence, and lowered my head back on the soft cushion.

From within the house there was a light thump. “Bailey!” the boy hissed.

Okay, this was serious. I got off the chair, stretched, and looked at him expectantly. He reached down and touched my head, and his fear leaped from his skin. “Hello?” he called. “Is someone there?”

He froze, and I emulated his posture, on high alert. I wasn’t at all sure what was happening, but I knew there was a threat. When another thump caused him to jump, fright rippling over his skin, I prepared myself to face whatever or whoever was the problem. I could feel the fur rising on my back, and I gave a low growl of warning.

At the sound of my growl, the boy moved soundlessly across the room. I shuffled after him, still alert, and watched as he opened the gun cabinet for the second time that day.

Holding Grandpa’s rifle in his trembling hands, the boy crept up the stairs, down the hall, and into Mom’s bedroom. I was right on his heels. Ethan checked her bathroom and under the bed, and when he whipped the closet door open he yelled, “Ha!” scaring me half to death. We repeated this examination in the boy’s room, Grandma and Grandpa’s room, and the small room with the couch where Grandma slept when Grandpa made his loud rumbling noises at night. Before leaving on the car ride, Grandma had been in this room doing more work on the flip, trying to fix it at Ethan’s direction, and it was called the sewing room.

The boy checked the whole house, Grandpa’s gun out in front of him, and he rattled every knob and tested every window. Passing through the living room, I walked hopefully over
to Grandpa’s chair, but the boy still wanted to explore the house, so with a weary sigh I accompanied him on a check of the shower curtains.

Finally he returned to Mom’s room. He worked the doorknob, and then he dragged her dresser over in front of the door. He set the rifle down next to the bed and called me up to lie with him. When he clung to me, I was reminded of how he sometimes came out to the doghouse in the garage when Mom and Dad were shouting. He felt full of the same lonely terror. I licked him as comfortingly as I knew how—we were together; how could anything be wrong?

The next morning we slept in and then had a fabulous breakfast. I ate toast crusts and licked scrambled eggs and finished his milk for him. What a great day! Ethan put more food in a bag, along with a bottle that he filled with water, and slid the whole thing in his backpack. Were we going for a walk? Sometimes Ethan and I would go for a walk and he’d take sandwiches for us to share. Lately, his walks always seemed to take us down by where the girl lived; I could smell her scent on the mailbox. The boy would stand and look at the house, and then we’d turn around and go back home.

The fear from the night before was totally gone. Whistling, the boy went out to take care of Flare, who wandered over to eat the bucket of dry, tasteless seeds or whatever they were that she munched on when she wasn’t trying to make herself sick with grass.

I was surprised, though, when the boy fetched a blanket and a shiny leather saddle from the barn and affixed them to the horse’s back. We’d done this a few times before, with Ethan climbing up to sit high on Flare’s back, but always with Grandpa there, and always with the gate to Flare’s yard firmly closed.
Now, though, the boy opened the gate, hoisting himself up with a grin.

“Let’s go, Bailey!” he called down to me.

I followed, feeling surly. I didn’t like that Flare suddenly was getting all the attention and that I was so far away from the boy, forced to walk beside the huge creature, who I had come to conclude was just as dumb as the ducks. I especially didn’t appreciate it when, with a flick of her tail, Flare dropped a smelly pile of poo on the road, narrowly missing me. I lifted my leg on it because it now, after all, belonged to me, but I felt fairly certain the horse had meant the thing as an insult.

Soon we were off-road, in the woods, walking along a trail. I chased down a rabbit and would have caught it if it hadn’t cheated by suddenly changing direction. I smelled more than one skunk and haughtily refused to take even a single step in that direction. We stopped at a small pool and Flare and I drank, and later the boy ate his sandwich, tossing me the crusts.

“Isn’t this great, Bailey? Are you having a good time?”

I watched his hands, wondering if his questioning tone indicated he was going to feed me some more sandwich.

Aside from the fact that we had Flare with us, I was really enjoying myself. Of course, just getting away from the stupid flip was reason in and of itself to celebrate, but after several hours we were so far from home I could no longer smell any sign of it.

I could tell that Flare was getting weary, but from the boy’s attitude I concluded we still had a way to go to reach our destination. At one point, Ethan said, “Do we go this way? Or that way? Do you remember, Bailey? Do you know where we are?”

I looked up at him expectantly, and, after a moment, we continued on, picking up a trail that had many, many animal scents on it.

I’d marked so much territory my leg was sore from being lifted into the air. Flare stopped and let loose with a huge gush of urine, which I felt was entirely inappropriate behavior, since her scent would obliterate mine and I was the dog. I wandered up ahead to clear the smell from my nose.

I topped a small rise and that’s when I saw the snake. It was coiled in a patch of sun, sticking its tongue out rhythmically, and I stopped dead, fascinated. I’d never seen one before.

I barked, which caused no reaction whatsoever. I trotted back to the boy, who had Flare underway again.

“What is it, Bailey? What did you see?”

I decided that whatever the boy was saying, it wasn’t
go bite the snake.
I slid in next to Flare, who was plodding along expressionlessly, and wondered how she would react when she saw the snake curled up in front of her.

At first she
didn’t
see it, but then as she approached, the snake suddenly pulled back, lifting its head, and that’s when Flare screamed. Her front legs came off the ground and she spun, kicking, and the boy went flying off her back. I ran to him at once, of course, but he was okay. He jumped to his feet. “Flare!” he shouted.

I watched sourly as the horse retreated at a full gallop, her hooves pounding the dirt. When the boy took off running I understood what was needed and ran ahead in hot pursuit, but the horse kept going and soon the gap between me and my boy was too great and I turned back to be with him.

“Oh no!” the boy was saying, but the “no” wasn’t for me. “Oh God. What are we going to do, Bailey?”

To my utter dismay, the boy started crying. He did this less and less as he had gotten older, which made it all the more
upsetting now. I could feel his utter despair, and I shoved my face into his hands, trying to comfort him. The best thing, I decided, would be for us to go home and eat more chicken.

The boy eventually stopped crying, looking blankly around the woods. “We’re lost, Bailey.” He took a drink of water. “Well, okay. Come on.”

Apparently the walk wasn’t over, because we set out in an entirely new direction, not at all the way from which we’d come.