A Dog's Purpose (9 page)

I barked, trying to make sense of it all. Was it because I’d chewed up my dog bed? I never slept in the thing anyway; it was just for show. Did they really expect me to remain outside in the garage all night? No, that couldn’t be it.

Could it?

I was so distressed, I couldn’t help but whimper. The thought of the boy lying in bed without me, all alone, made me so sad I wanted to chew shoes. My cries grew louder, my heartbreak unrestrained.

After ten or fifteen minutes of relentless grief, the garage door cracked. “Bailey,” the boy whispered.

I ran to him in relief. He eased out, carrying a blanket and a pillow. “Okay. Doghouse, Doghouse,” he told me. He crept over to the doghouse and arranged the blanket on the thin pad inside. I climbed in next to him—we both had two feet sticking out the door. I put my head on his chest, sighing, while he stroked my ears.

“Good dog, Bailey,” he murmured.

A little while later, Mom and Dad opened the door from the house and stood there, watching us. I flapped my tail but didn’t get up, not wanting to wake the boy. Finally, Dad came out and picked up Ethan and Mom gestured to me and the two of us were put to bed inside the house.

The next day, as if we hadn’t learned anything from our mistakes, I was out in the garage again! This time there was far less for me to do, though I did, with some effort, manage to tear the pad out of the doghouse and shred it up pretty well. I knocked over the trash container but couldn’t get the lid off. Nothing on the shelves was chewable—nothing I could reach, anyway.

At one point I went over and assaulted the flap over the dog door, my nose picking up the rich scent of an oncoming rainstorm. Compared to the Yard, where a dry, sandy dust had coated our parched tongues every day, the place the boy lived was wetter and colder, and I loved the way scents would blur together and re-form when it rained. Wonderful trees, laden with leaves, sheltered the ground everywhere we went, and they would harbor raindrops and release them later when tossed by breezes. It was all so deliciously moist—even the hottest days were usually broken by cooler air at night.

The tantalizing odors drew my head farther and farther through the dog door until suddenly, quite by accident, I was out in the yard, without the boy having to push me!

Delighted, I tore around the backyard, barking. It was as if the dog door had been put there to let me out into the backyard from the garage! I squatted and relieved myself—I was finding I much preferred doing my business outdoors instead of in the house, and not just because of the lack of drama. I liked to wipe my paws on the lawn after I went, trailing the scent from the sweat on my pads onto the blades of grass. It was also much more gratifying to lift my leg and mark the edge of the yard than, say, the corner of the couch.

Later, when the cold rain turned from mist to serious drops, I discovered the dog door worked both ways! I wished the boy were home so he could see what I had taught myself.

After the rain ended, I dug a hole, chewed the hose, and barked at Smokey, who sat in the window and pretended not to hear me. When a large yellow bus pulled up in front of the house and disgorged the boy and Chelsea and a bunch of other kids from the neighborhood, I was in the backyard, my paws up on the fence, and the boy ran up to me, laughing.

I didn’t really go into the doghouse after that, except when Mom and Dad yelled at each other. Ethan would come out into the garage and get into the doghouse with me and put his arms around me, and I would sit perfectly still for however long he wanted me to. This was, I decided, my purpose as a dog, to comfort the boy whenever he needed me.

Sometimes families would leave the neighborhood and new families would arrive, so when Drake and Todd moved in a few houses down I considered it nothing but good news—and not just because Mom made delicious cookies to take to the new neighbors, feeding me a couple as a reward for keeping her company in the kitchen. New boys meant more children to play with.

Drake was older and bigger than Ethan, but Todd was the same age and he and Ethan became fast friends. Todd and Drake had a sister named Linda who was even younger; she fed me sugary treats when no one was watching.

Todd was different from Ethan. He liked to play games in the creek with matches, burning plastic toys, like Linda’s dolls. Ethan would participate, but he didn’t laugh as much as Todd; mostly Ethan just watched the things burn.

When Todd announced he had firecrackers one day, Ethan got pretty excited. I had never seen anything like a firecracker and was pretty startled at the flash and the noise and the way the plastic doll instantly had a smoky smell—or at least the part I could find after the explosion. At Todd’s urging, Ethan went into his house and came back with one of the toys he had built with his father and the boys put a firecracker in it and threw it in the air, and it blew up.

“Cool!” Todd yelled. But Ethan just grew quiet, frowning at the little shards of plastic floating away in the creek. I sensed a jumble of confused emotions from him. When Todd tossed firecrackers up into the air and one came down near me, the percussion snapped against my side. I ran over to the boy for reassurance, and he hugged me and took me home.

Having such easy access to the backyard had some advantages. Ethan wasn’t always particularly attentive to the fence gate, which meant I sometimes was free to stroll the neighborhood. I’d trot out and go over to visit the brown and white dog named Marshmallow, who lived in a big wire cage on the side of her house. I marked her trees pretty well, and sometimes, caught by a scent that was both foreign and familiar, I would skip off, nose to the air, and wander far from home on an adventure. During those wanderings I sometimes forgot about the boy
altogether and I was reminded of the time several of us were taken from the Yard to the cool room with the nice lady, how the front-seat dog had a provocative odor similar to the one luring me onward.

Usually I lost the scent and then would remember who I was and turn and trot home. The days that the bus brought Ethan home, I would go with him over to Chelsea and Marshmallow’s house and Chelsea’s mother would feed Ethan snacks, which he always shared with me. Other days Ethan came home in Mom’s car. And some days no one in the house got up for school and I would have to bark to wake them all up!

It was a good thing they no longer wanted me to sleep in the garage. I would hate for them to miss the morning!

One day I wandered farther than usual, so that when I headed back toward home it was getting late in the afternoon. I was anxious, my inner clock telling me that I had already missed Ethan’s arrival on the bus.

I cut through the creek, which took me right past Todd’s backyard. He was playing on the muddy bank, and when he saw me he called to me.

“Hey, Bailey. Here, Bailey.” He held out his hand to me.

I regarded him with open suspicion. There was just something different about Todd, something inside of him I didn’t trust.

“Come on, boy,” he said, slapping his hand against his leg. He turned and walked toward his house.

What could I do? I was compelled to do what a person told me. I lowered my head and followed.

Todd let me in his house through the back door, shutting it noiselessly behind him. Some of the windows were covered, giving the place a dark, gloomy feel. Todd led me past the kitchen, where his mother was sitting and watching a flickering television. I knew from Todd’s behavior that I was supposed to be quiet, but I thumped my tail a little when I smelled the mother, who carried a strong chemical odor similar to the man who had found me by the road and named me Fella.

The mother didn’t see us, but Linda sure did. She sat upright when we walked past her in the living room. She, too, was watching television, but she slid off the couch and made to follow us down the hallway.

“No,” Todd hissed at her.

I certainly knew
that
word. I cringed a little at the venom in Todd’s voice.

Linda held her hand out and I licked it, and Todd pushed it away. “Leave me alone.” He opened a door and I went inside, sniffing at the clothes on the floor. It was a small room with a bed in it. He locked the door behind us.

I found a crust of bread and ate it quickly, just performing a quick cleanup. Todd pushed his hands into his pockets. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, now . . . now . . .”

He sat at his desk and opened a drawer. I could smell firecrackers in there; the pungent odor was unmistakable. “I don’t know where Bailey is,” he was saying quietly. “I haven’t seen Bailey.”

I wagged at my name, then yawned and collapsed on a soft pile of clothing. I was tired from my long adventure.

A tiny knock on the door electrified Todd, who leaped to his feet. I jumped up, too, and stood behind him while he whispered angrily out his door at Linda, whom I could smell more than see in the dark hallway. She seemed both scared and concerned, for some reason, making me anxious. I started to pant a little, yawning nervously. I felt too tense to lie back down.

The conversation ended with Todd slamming his door and locking it again. I watched as he went to his drawer, fished around, and brought out a small tube. He was emanating an agitated excitement. He removed the top and took a tentative sniff while heavy chemical vapors instantly filled the room. I knew the astringent odor from when the boy and Dad would sit at the table and play with their airplane toys.

When Todd shoved it at me I already knew I didn’t want my nose anywhere near the tube, and I jerked my head away. I sensed the flash of rage in Todd, and it frightened me. He picked
up a cloth and dripped a lot of clear liquid from the tube onto it, folding and squeezing the cloth so that the sticky coating was all over it.

Just then I heard Ethan, a plaintive cry from outside the window. “Bayleeeee!” he was calling. I ran to the window and jumped up, but it was too high for me to see out, so I barked in frustration.

My rear end stung as Todd struck it with an open palm. “No! Bad dog! No barking!”

Again, the heat of his fury flowed off of him as strong as the vapors coming from the cloth in his hand.

“Todd?” a woman called from somewhere in the house.

He gave me a mean look. “You stay here. You
stay
,” he hissed. He backed out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

My eyes watering at the fumes that still filled the air, I paced around apprehensively. The boy was calling me, and I couldn’t figure out how Todd had the right to keep me locked up in here as if it were the garage.

Then a small sound alerted me: Linda was opening the door, holding out a soggy cracker. “Here, Bailey,” she whispered. “Good dog.”

What I really wanted was out of there, but I was no idiot; I ate the cracker. Linda held the door open wider. “Come on,” she urged, and that was all I needed. I bounded down the hallway after her, turning down some stairs and trotting to the front door. She pushed it open and the cool air washed those horrible fumes right out of my head.

Mom’s car was down the street, and the boy was leaning out of it, calling, “Bailey!” I took off as fast as I could, in hot pursuit. The car’s taillights flashed brightly and Ethan was out on the street, running to me. “Oh, Bailey, where have you been?” he said, burying his face in my fur. “You are a bad, bad dog.”

I knew being a bad dog was wrong, but the love pouring out of the boy was so strong, I couldn’t help but feel that in this case, being a bad dog was somehow good.

It wasn’t long after my adventure at Todd’s house that I was taken on a car ride to see a man in a clean, cool room. I realized I’d been to a similar place before. Dad drove Ethan and me to the place, and from Dad’s attitude I got the sense that I was somehow being punished, which hardly seemed fair. If anyone belonged in the cool room, in my opinion, it was Todd. He was mean to Linda and he kept me apart from my boy—it wasn’t my fault I had been a bad dog. Nonetheless, I wagged and lay quietly when a needle was slipped into my fur behind my head.

When I awoke I was stiff, sore, and itchy, with a familiar ache low in my belly, and I was wearing a stupid plastic collar, so that my face lay at the bottom of a cone again. Smokey clearly felt this was hilarious, so I did my best to ignore him. In fact, nothing felt better than lying on the cold cement floor of the garage for a few days, my rear legs splayed.

After the collar came off and I was back to my old self, I found that I was less interested in pursuing exotic odors outside the fence, though if the gate was left open I was always happy to explore the neighborhood and see what all the other dogs were up to. I stayed away from Todd’s end of the street, though, and if I saw him or his brother, Drake, playing in the creek, I usually shied away from them, slinking into the shadows the way my first mother had taught me.

I was learning new words every day. Besides being a good dog, and sometimes a bad dog, I was being told more and more that I was a “big” dog, which to me mostly meant that I was finding it harder and harder to arrange myself comfortably on the boy’s bed. I learned that “snow,” which sounded so much like
“no,” but was shouted joyously, meant that the world was coated in a cold, white coat. Sometimes we went sledding down a long, steep road, and I usually tried to stay on the sled with Ethan until we crashed. And “spring” meant warm weather and longer days and that Mom spent all weekend digging in the backyard and planting flowers, the dirt smelling so wonderful that when everyone went to school I dug the flowers up, chewing the bittersweet blossoms out of a sense of loyal obligation to Mom, though I eventually spat them all out.