Bailey's Story (6 page)

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

Todd glared at me. “You stay here. You
stay,
” he ordered. He backed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

I paced around the room some more, confused. I knew the word “Stay.” I knew what it meant. But I didn't like it much … and the boy was calling me! How could I find him? It wasn't right, being here in this room. I was becoming more and more sure about that. But the door was shut, and the window was covered, and Todd had certainly seemed angry when I'd barked …

A
click
came from the door, and I whirled around.

The door was eased open just a little, and in the narrow crack along its frame I could see Linda's face. She thrust a hand into the room. It was holding a soggy cracker.

“Here, Bailey,” she whispered. “Good dog.”

I liked her voice, I liked her words, and most of all I liked that cracker. I was at the door in three steps, and I slurped the cracker out of her sweaty hand.

Linda opened the door wider and beckoned to me. I bounded down the hallway after her until we reached the kitchen. Todd's voice came from the living room. “What? What do you
want
? No way. I'm not doing that.” A woman's voice mumbled. “I don't care. I'm busy,” Todd snapped.

Linda and I had reached the door to the outside. She pushed it open and the cool night air flowed in. I sniffed it in gratefully and leaped onto the grass.

Then I turned to look back for a moment. Linda stood in the doorway, looking both relieved and miserable. For a moment I wished I could bring her with me. She seemed nice, and maybe she'd bring some crackers along with her.

Then I raced off into the night to find my boy.

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

I knew that being a bad dog was wrong, but the love pouring off of the boy was so strong. I couldn't help feeling that, right now, being a bad dog was somehow good.

*   *   *

I was so glad to be back home that I didn't even check the gate to the backyard for a few days. When I did feel adventurous again and managed to slip out, I stayed away from Todd's end of the street. And if I ever saw or smelled him playing in the creek, I was careful to slink into shadows or dash behind some bushes before he could see me.

I was learning new words every day. Besides being a good dog, and sometimes a bad dog, I was told that I was a big dog over and over. It seemed to be a good thing, mostly, so I wagged when I heard it. I also noticed that I had trouble arranging myself comfortably on the boy's bed.

Then there was the word “snow.” The first time I heard it, I thought Ethan was shouting “No!” and I didn't understand. I didn't even have anything in my mouth! And I certainly hadn't lifted my leg. I'd already decided doing that inside the house was more trouble than it was worth.

But Ethan threw on his coat and hat and boots and dashed outside, yelling at me to follow. That's when I discovered that “snow” meant the world outside had changed.

It was covered all over in a cold, white, furry coat. I paused at the back door and stared. Where had the grass gone? Where was the patio? I put a paw tentatively into the white fuzz. Cold! But Ethan was running around in it, and I wanted to be near him. So, very bravely, I jumped into the freezing stuff with all four feet.

“Come on, Bailey!” Ethan shouted. “It's snow!”

The snow made my paws ache after a while, but it was fun to bite, and Ethan loved it so much that I decided I loved it, too. He pulled a heavy, flat wooden thing out of the garage. “Let's go sledding, Bailey!” he said.

I followed him, tromping through the snow and up to a hill a few blocks from our house. He dropped the flat wooden thing to the ground and flopped down on top of it. “It's a sled, okay, Bailey? You watch, Bailey. It's fun!”

He pushed hard with his hands, and suddenly he shot down the hill, away from me.

I stared in astonishment. I never knew that the boy could move like that! Instead of walking or running, stiffly upright on two legs, he was zooming close to the ground. I tore down the hill after him, barking with excitement and surprise.

The sled slowed a bit as it got closer to the bottom of the hill, and that meant I could catch up. I timed things carefully and leaped, landing right on top of Ethan. He shouted. The sled shot ahead, skimming past the sleds of several other children who had all been doing the same thing.

The ground flattened out and the sled skidded sideways, tumbling Ethan and me off into a thick patch of snow. “You like sledding!” Ethan gasped, laughing under me. “You're a sled dog, Bailey!”

I barked, and we raced up the hill to do it again.

We went sledding a lot while the snow stayed on the ground. After a while it went away, and I learned the word “spring,” which meant the sun stayed out longer, and the air warmed up, and Mom spent weekends digging in the backyard and planting flowers. The dirt smelled so wonderful, rich and dark and full of life, that after everybody went away, I dug, too, pulling the flowers back up from their beds. I hoped Mom appreciated my help.

That night they all called me a bad dog again, and I even had to spend the evening out in the garage instead of lying on Ethan's feet while he worked on his papers. I didn't understand it at all. I'd just done what Mom had been doing! What was wrong with that?

Then one day the kids on the yellow school bus were so loud that I could hear them shrieking five minutes before the thing stopped in front of the house. The boy was full of joy as he ran up to me, so excited that I ran around and around in circles, barking as loud as I could.

When Mom came home, she was happy, too, and from then on Ethan didn't go to school anymore. We got to lie in bed quietly every morning, instead of getting up for breakfast with Dad. Life had finally gotten back to normal. Thank goodness that whole school thing was over and done with.

 

8

One warm day, Ethan and Mom and Dad loaded up the car with a lot of suitcases and boxes, and then they called to me. I hopped into the backseat with Ethan. We took a long ride, and when we were done, we were at “the farm.”

The farm meant new animals, new people, and new smells. From the first moment I jumped out of the car after Ethan, I was very busy.

Two older people came out of a big white house, and there was a lot of happy exclaiming while I ran around everybody's feet. Ethan called the two new people Grandma and Grandpa. After he'd spent some time hugging them and hearing things like “You've grown so
much
!” and “So this is Bailey!” he ran off across a patch of packed-down dirt. “Come on, Bailey!” he called to me.

He didn't need to call; I was already racing after him.

He took me past a split-rail fence where an enormous horse stared at me. I crawled under the fence to bark and invite her to play, but she only puffed air out through her nostrils and went back to biting off mouthfuls of grass. Her loss! I dove back under the fence and took off after Ethan, who was happily shouting my name.

I followed him down to a pond. I guessed that was what the farm had instead of a creek. There was a family of ducks to bark at, and they splashed into the water, paddling away as I ran up. Unfair! The minute I stopped barking, they came back toward the bank, the mother in the lead and half a dozen little fluff balls behind her in a line. So of course I had to bark again. Back they all went into the water. Ducks looked to me to be about as useless as Smokey the cat.

“You crazy dog, Bailey!” Happiness was pouring out of Ethan's voice. “Come on!”

We went running back to the big white house.

Dad left after a few days, but Mom stayed with us on the farm that whole summer. Ethan slept on the porch, and I slept right there with him, and no one even pretended that the arrangement should be different.

Grandpa liked to sit in a chair and scratch my ears. Grandma always seemed to be cooking in the kitchen, and she needed me to sample what she made. I was glad to do my part. The love from both of them made me squirm with joy.

Outside, there was no yard, only a big open field with a fence. The horse, whose name was Flare, stayed inside the fence all day, eating grass. It was a strange thing, though; I never saw her throw up once. She did leave big brown piles all over the field, which smelled interesting but tasted dry and bland. I only ate a couple of them.

Sometimes Flare went into a big, shabby old building called the barn, and the first time I followed her in there I discovered that the farm had a cat. What a disappointment! She crouched back in the shadows and jumped up high or ran away whenever I came near. Well, that made her a better cat than Smokey, at least.

Beyond the barn were woods that were fun to explore, and it was always worth checking out the pond to see if the ducks needed to be barked at. The boy liked the pond, too. He would put me in an old rowboat and push it out into the water. Then he would pull out a pole with a string attached, stick a worm on the string, and drop the worm over the side. Sometimes he'd pull out a small, wriggling fish for me to bark at. Then he'd let it go.

“It's too little, Bailey,” he'd say. “But one of these days I'm going to catch a big one.”

One afternoon, after we'd been at the farm a few weeks, Ethan was at a table and Mom was stretched out on a couch with a book, and Grandma had gone upstairs to lie on her bed, which meant that the kitchen didn't smell as good as usual. I decided to explore a little more of the woods.

I hadn't gotten very far when I caught sight of the black cat from the barn, waddling slowly away from me. Of course, I took off after her. It was funny … when I'd seen the cat in the barn, I didn't remember a white stripe down her back. Now she definitely had one.

She didn't run away from me as quickly as she had before, either. As I got closer, I realized that this was no cat after all. It was a new kind of animal! Excited, I barked and bowed down low on my front legs to invite her to play.

She turned and gave me a solemn look, her fluffy tail high up in the air. I let my own tail wave back and forth. Great! Although everything about the farm was wonderful, the one thing that was lacking was another dog to wrestle with or chase around. I did miss Marshmallow from time to time.

I jumped forward to give my new playmate a nudge with my nose.

The next thing I knew, a plume of horrible stink puffed into my face, sticking to my eyes and lips, choking my nose. I sprang back. What had just happened? Half blind, helpless, I retreated, stumbling over sticks and roots, making my way back to the house.

“Skunk!” Grandpa announced when I scratched at the back door to be let in. “Oh, you're not coming in, Bailey!”

Mom came to stand behind Grandpa on the other side of the door. “Bailey, did you get into a skunk? Ugh, you sure did!”

Was that the name of the stinky cat creature in the woods? Skunk? Why was everyone just staring at me, not letting me in? I wanted to roll on the carpets and rub some of this awful smell off my fur.

That didn't happen, though. Instead, the boy came out, wrinkling his nose. He took me around to the side of the yard, where he wet me down with a hose. When I tried to lick his face, he pushed me away. “Yuck, Bailey. Skunk!” he said. His voice was so stern that I understood: the skunk had been bad.

Then he held my collar while Grandpa showed up with a basket of tomatoes from the garden. Together, Grandpa and the boy squished the soft, warm tomatoes all over me, rubbing the tart-smelling juice into my fur.

What a thing to do! I shook myself, sending water and juice and tomato pulp flying. “Bailey!” the boy yelped, and Grandpa laughed and groaned at the same time. “He needs a bath now,” the old man said.

A bath? What was that? I couldn't remember. Was it something to eat? That would help to make up for all this ridiculous treatment!

But it turned out that a bath
wasn't
something to eat. Mom brought out some soap that smelled a little bit (not very much, I thought) like roses. Ethan rubbed the suds into my fur until I smelled like a cross between Mom, a flower garden, and a tomato.

I had never been so embarrassed in my life. And things didn't get much better after that.

Even once I was dry, I had to stay out on the porch. And when Ethan came out there to sleep, he kicked me out of his bed!

“You stink, Bailey,” he said.

I lay on the floor and tried a whimper or two, but Ethan didn't give in and let me climb up. So I just tried to sleep despite all of the strange, bewildering smells floating around.

When morning finally came, I gulped down breakfast—Ethan brought my food bowl out to the porch for me—and raced outside.