A Dog's Purpose (14 page)

Finally the boy opened the garage door, sat on the go-kart, and rode it like a sled down the short driveway. I trotted beside him, thinking we’d both been through a lot of bother for such a pointless ending, but when the go-kart reached the bottom of the driveway he picked it up and carried it back into the garage to play with it some more!

At least with the flip you had something you could chew on.

On a sunny day when there was no school, all of the kids in the neighborhood took their go-karts to a long, steep street several blocks away. Duchess was too young to accompany the procession, but I went along with my boy, though I had no enthusiasm for his initial idea that he should sit in the go-kart and I should pull him down the street by a leash.

Todd and his older brother, Drake, were among the kids and laughed and said things about Chelsea’s go-kart, and I could sense that her feelings were hurt. When they lined up the go-karts at the top of the hill, Todd’s was next to Ethan’s.

I was not at all prepared for what happened next: someone yelled, “Go!” and then the go-karts were off, rolling down the hill, gathering speed. Drake ran up behind Todd and gave his go-kart a big push, and it leaped ahead.

“Cheating!” Chelsea yelled. Her go-kart was moving very slowly, but Ethan’s was gaining speed and soon I had to run to
keep up. The other go-karts fell away, and after a little bit it was just Ethan’s go-kart, steadily closing in on Todd’s.

I ran with abandonment, an exuberant freedom, galloping down the hill after my boy. At the bottom a boy named Billy stood with a flag on a stick, and I sensed that he was somehow part of what was happening. Ethan was hunched over, his head low, and it was all so much fun I decided I wanted to be on the go-kart with him. I put on an extra burst of speed and leaped through the air, landing on the back of his go-kart and nearly toppling off again.

The force of my impact threw us forward, so that we were now passing Todd! Billy waved his stick and I could hear yelling and cheering behind us as the go-kart, now on the flat part of the road, rolled to a stop.

“Good dog, Bailey,” the boy told me, chuckling.

All the other go-karts rolled up behind us, followed by the rest of the children, who were all yelling and laughing. Billy came over and held Ethan’s hand up into the air, dropping his stick with the flag on it. I picked up the stick and pranced around with it, daring someone to try to take it and have some real fun.

“Not fair, not fair!” Todd shouted.

The crowd of children grew quiet. A hot fury poured off of Todd, who stood facing Ethan.

“The damn dog jumped on the kart; that’s why you won. You’re disqualified,” Drake said, standing behind his brother.

“Well, you pushed your brother!” Chelsea shouted.

“So?”

“I would have caught you anyway,” Ethan said.

“Everyone who says Todd’s right, say ‘aye!’ ” Billy called.

Todd and his brother shouted, “Aye!”

“Everyone who says Ethan won, say ‘nay.’ ”

“Nay!” all of the other children shouted. I was so startled at this loud outburst, I dropped my stick.

Todd took a step forward and hit Ethan, who ducked and tackled Todd. They both fell to the ground.

“Fight!” Billy yelled.

I started to surge forward to protect my boy, but Chelsea put a firm hand on my collar. “No, Bailey. Stay.”

The boys rolled around, the two of them tied together in a tight knot of anger. I twisted around, trying to slip my collar, but Chelsea held fast. Frustrated, I barked.

Ethan was soon sitting up on top of Todd. Both boys were panting. “You give?” Ethan demanded.

Todd looked away, his eyes squeezed shut. Humiliation and hate wafted off of him in equal amounts. Finally, he nodded. The boys stood up warily, beating at the dirt on their pants.

I felt the sudden rage from Drake at the exact moment he lunged forward, slamming Ethan with both hands. Ethan rocked back but didn’t fall.

“Come on, Ethan. Come on,” Drake snarled.

There was a long pause while Ethan stood looking up at the older boy, and then Billy stepped forward. “No,” Billy said.

“No,” Chelsea said.

“No,” some of the other children said. “No.”

Drake looked at us all for a minute, and then he spat on the ground and picked up the go-kart. Without a word, the two brothers walked away.

“Well, we sure showed everybody today, didn’t we, Bailey?” Ethan said to me. Everyone hauled their go-karts to the top of the hill and rolled them back down, all day long. Ethan allowed Chelsea to ride his go-kart, since hers had lost a wheel, and she had me ride behind her every time.

That night Ethan was excited at dinner, talking rapidly to Mom and Dad, who smiled as they listened. It took the boy a long time to fall asleep, and after he did so his restlessness made me slide off the bed and lie on the floor. This meant I wasn’t really asleep when I heard a huge crash from downstairs.

“What was that?” the boy asked me, sitting bolt upright in bed. He jumped down onto the floor as the lights came on in the hallway.

“Ethan, stay in your room,” Dad told him. He was tense, angry, and afraid. “Bailey, come.”

I obediently eased down the stairs with Dad, who moved cautiously and turned on the lights in the living room. “Who’s there?” he asked loudly.

Wind blew the curtains on the front window—a window that was normally never opened. “Don’t come down with bare feet!” Dad shouted.

“What is it?” Mom asked.

“Someone threw a rock through our window. Stay back, Bailey.”

I sensed Dad’s concern and sniffed around the room at all the glass. On the floor was a rock, little shards of the window clinging to it. When I put my nose to it, I instantly recognized the smell.

Todd.

A year or so later, in the spring, Smokey the cat got sick. He lay around moaning and didn’t protest when I put my nose down in his face to investigate this new behavior. Mom became very worried and took Smokey for a car ride. When Mom came home, she was sad, probably because cats are no fun in a car.

A week or so later, Smokey died. After dinner the family went into the backyard, where Ethan had excavated a big hole, and they wrapped Smokey’s body in a blanket and put it in the hole and covered it with dirt. Ethan hammered a piece of wood into the soil next to the mound of wet dirt, and he and Mom cried a little. I nuzzled them both to remind them that there was really no need to grieve, since I was okay and really a much better pet than Smokey ever was.

The next day, after Mom and the boy left for school, I went out into the yard and dug Smokey back up, figuring they couldn’t have meant to bury a perfectly good dead cat.

That summer we didn’t go to the Farm at all. Ethan and some friends in the neighborhood would get up every day and go to people’s houses and cut grass with loud lawn mowers. The boy would take me along with him but always tied me to a tree. I loved the smell of the newly cut grass, but I did not care for lawn mowing in general and felt this activity was somehow involved in us not visiting the Farm. Grandpa and Grandma did drive in for a week, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun, especially when Dad and Grandpa exchanged some harsh words when they were alone in the backyard peeling husks off of corn. I felt the anger in both of them and wondered if it was a reaction to the fact that the corn husks were inedible, something I’d verified by both smelling and chewing. After that day, Dad and Grandpa were very uneasy in each other’s company.

When school started again, several things were different. The boy no longer went to Chelsea’s house when he got home—in fact, he usually was the last one to arrive, smelling of dirt, grass, and sweat as he raced up the driveway after a car dropped him off in the street. And some nights we’d go on a car ride to what I came to understand was a football game, where I would sit on a leash at the end of a long yard next to Mom and people would yell and scream for no reason. Boys wrestled and threw a ball to each other, sometimes running down close to where I was standing and other times playing all the way at the far end of the big yard.

I could smell Ethan in the group of boys sometimes. It was a little frustrating to just sit there and not go out and enhance the game—at home, I’d learned to get my mouth around a football.
One time I was playing with the boy and I bit too hard and the football collapsed until it was a saggy flat wad of leather, sort of like the flip. After that, Ethan didn’t want me chewing on footballs, but I was still allowed to play with them as long as I was careful. Mom didn’t know this and held me tight by the leash. I knew if she would just let me go get the football, the boys would have a lot more fun chasing me than each other, because I was faster than any of them.

Chelsea’s puppy, Duchess, grew up, and we became good friends, once I demonstrated to her how she was to behave around me. One day when the gate was open I trotted over to see her and she was wearing a plastic cone around her neck and seemed very out of sorts. She thumped her tail a little when she saw me outside her cage, but she didn’t bother to get up. The sight made me uneasy—I hoped no one was planning to put one of those things on me again.

When it snowed Ethan and I played with sleds, and when the snow melted we played with bouncy balls. A couple of times the boy pulled the flip out of the closet and stared at it while I glanced away in dread. He’d hold it up and look it over, feeling its heft, and then put it away with a sigh.

That summer was another one without a Farm visit, and once again the boy cut grass with his friends—I would have thought he’d gotten it out of his system, but he apparently still enjoyed it. That year, Dad left for several days and while he was gone Grandpa and Grandma visited. Their car smelled like Flare and hay and the pond, and I stood and sniffed it for several minutes and raised my legs on the tires.

“My goodness, you are such a big boy!” Grandma told Ethan.

There was more football when the days turned cool, plus a wonderful surprise: Ethan could take his own car rides! This
changed everything, because now I went almost everywhere with him, my nose out the window as I stood in the front seat, helping him drive. It turned out that the reason he stayed out so late was that he played football every night after school, leaving me tied up by the fence with a dish of water. It was boring, but at least I got to be with the boy.

Sometimes when Ethan took a car ride he forgot me, so I’d sit in the yard and yip for him to come back. Usually when this happened, Mom would come to see me.

“Want to go for a walk, Bailey?” she’d ask over and over until I was so excited I was dancing around in circles. She’d put the leash on my collar and we’d patrol the streets, stopping every few feet so I could mark the territory. Often we’d pass groups of children playing and I’d wonder why Ethan didn’t do that as much anymore. Mom sometimes unsnapped the leash and let me run with the children a little bit.

I liked Mom a lot. My only complaint was that when she exited the bathroom she would close the lid on my water bowl. Ethan always left the lid up for me.

When school ended that summer, Ethan and Mom took us on a car ride to the Farm. I was overjoyed to be back. Flare pretended not to recognize me and I wasn’t sure if they were the same ducks or different ones, but everything else seemed exactly the same.

Nearly every day Ethan would work with Grandpa and some men, hammering and sawing boards. I assumed at first that the boy was building another go-kart, but after a month or so it became clear that they were putting together a new barn, right next to the old one, which had a big hole in the roof.

I was the first one to spot the woman coming up the driveway, and ran down to enforce any needed security. When I got
close enough to smell her I realized it was the girl, all grown up now. She remembered me, and I squirmed in pleasure as she scratched behind my ears.

“Hi there, Bailey; did you miss me? Good dog, Bailey.”

As the men noticed the girl they stopped working. Ethan was coming out of the old barn and stopped in surprise.

“Oh. Hi. Hannah?”

“Hi, Ethan.”

Grandpa and the other men were grinning at each other. Ethan looked over his shoulder at them and flushed, then came over to where Hannah and I were standing.

“So, hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

They looked away from each other. Hannah stopped scratching me and I gave her a little nudge to remind her to keep at it.

“Come on in the house,” Ethan said.

The rest of that summer, whenever I went for a car ride it smelled like the girl had been sitting in my seat. Sometimes she would come over and have dinner with us, and then she and Ethan would sit on the porch and talk and I would lie at their feet to give them something interesting to talk about.

One time I was awakened from a well-deserved nap by a little alarm coming off the both of them. They were sitting on the couch and their faces were really close together and their hearts were beating and I could sense fear and excitement. It sounded a little like they were eating, but I couldn’t smell any food. Not sure what was happening, I climbed up on the couch and forced my nose into the place where their heads were together, and they both burst out laughing at me.