Flawed Dogs (20 page)

A roar erupted, shaking the very foundations of the arena. TV cameras swung over to the entrance arch, waiting for the dogs and their owners to emerge.

One by one, the champions trotted out in a processional line with their humans close behind. All shapes, sizes and breeds, they circled the carpet and then took their places surrounding the judge, sitting regally and expectant as the crowd’s cheering grew louder.

And then quieter.

And then a complete hush.

Silence.

The crowd had noticed something:

The dogs. Something about them was not quite right
at all.

The fur of a Bolivian elkhound from France wasn’t tan as it should have been. It was lime green. With orange stripes. With little happy faces.

A Spanish shih tzu’s lips were dyed hot pink to match his ears, nose and feet.

A Scottish terrier’s bottom was striped yellow and black like a bumblebee.

The flowing locks of Britain’s favorite sheepdog were strung with beads, plastic army men, and Cheerios.

Those of a collie were worked into rock-hard spikes of hair gel, pointing in all directions, much like a congealed porcupine.

A miniature poodle’s back was shaved smooth of kinky fur. Except for the words I’M WITH THE IDIOT HOLDING THE LEASH.

The dogs—regional national champions all—stared at each other in embarrassed silence.

Someone high in the audience giggled.

Then another. And another.

The laughter then began to build and roll, like a great wave approaching the beach, finally cresting in a thundering crescendo of screaming, howling hoots.

The dogs’ owners looked around in horror at the bellowing mob. They’d found their dogs in this condition when they’d returned from lunch. They’d had no time to change anything! Their dogs were a laughingstock.

Except for one.

A lone magnificent poodle.

Cassius.

He sat perfect and unchanged and sublimely gorgeous, watching the others with disgust.

The judge, standing in the middle of the red carpet, recovered from her shock and waved for the crowd to quiet, which they did. Regaining her composure, the judge stiffened, raised her eyebrows and pushed her glasses up her nose. Then she walked to Cassius and waved a single finger to the right. This was the command to begin his judging run, a trot down the short length of carpet and back for a final inspection of form, fur, line and lineage.

Cassius stood and led his human handler down and then back, his head high, his back arched and his tail at exactly a thirty-eight-degree angle.

The crowd hushed.

This was a champion. This was the most beautiful French poodle in the world. As Cassius and his handler returned to his place at the edge of the carpet, the crowd began to applaud.

Cassius beamed. This was going to be his day . . . the place where his whole life had been pointed.

The judge moved toward him. She had only to extend a single index finger over his head and he would be world champion.

High above everything, up on the roof, Madam and Tusk looked down through the skylight . . . waiting for the signal from Sam: the signal for Tusk to ram the south support for the ten-thousand-gallon water tank, causing it to fall forward and land at the edge of the skylight, dumping its now muddy contents through the portal, plummeting down the 150 feet to the red carpet below . . . and onto the heads of the world’s most celebrated show dogs sitting on it.

“I can’t see Sam!” said Madam, scanning the arena. “Wait. There he is!”

A side curtain at the edge of the show floor parted.

The crowd suddenly went silent again.

The judge, her hand beginning to move toward Cassius, looked up to see a late dachshund competitor moving toward the red carpet, pulling his slower human handler, swaying and stumbling behind him in a leopard skin coat, blue vole hat and baby seal fur boots.

The announcer cleared his throat, his voice booming over the loudspeakers: “Arriving fashionably late is number forty-six, Mrs. Corinthian Nutbush, and her miniature red dachshund, Mr. Toodles.”

Sam trotted stiffly in place of Mr. Toodles. But his eyes were locked onto Cassius, who watched him approach with a skeptical, bemused expression. Sam pulled and steered his confused team to the open space next to the huge poodle. He sat down, his eyes never leaving those of Cassius, who stared back, wondering why this dachshund looked vaguely familiar.

He’s only feet away,
thought Sam, his heart pounding, his mouth dry. He fought to keep his lips from curling upward in rage, revealing his thoughts.
A single leap to the perfectly shaved and perfumed throat. Nobody could stop me.

Now!
he thought.
Your chance is now!

He glanced upward to Cassius’s handler, standing next to the dog he was moments from killing.

It wasn’t Mrs. Beaglehole.

In fact, at that moment, Mrs. Beaglehole was sitting with Uncle Hamish in the audience with a heat pack around her ankle and an ice pack around her throat.

Now standing with Cassius was a tall, very nervous-looking young woman with long brown hair pulled back in a neat ponytail and a red bow. She turned and glanced down at Sam.

Sam’s blood went cold. He drew a breath and held it, afraid to even release his lungs lest the person in front of him disappear.

This couldn’t be real. This he never expected. This he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for three years.

Sam scanned the face staring at him and saw that the large brown eyes of a little girl—gleaming with possibility and wonder and wide open to the limitlessness of love—had softened into those of a young woman. These eyes were sadder somehow, thought Sam.

But they were the same.

Heidy.

Sam’s head spun. He closed his eyes and then opened them again. It wasn’t one of his cruel dreams of a former life he’d tried to forget over the last many years.

No, she was actually there, staring at him, trying like Cassius to make sense of the odd feeling of familiarity they both had about this beautiful dachshund.

From below the leopard coat, Ol’ Blue whispered to Fabio underneath his fanny: “What’s wrong with Sam?”

Fabio shrugged, which nearly toppled the lot of them.

“Number forty-six, Mr. Toodles, and his owner, Mrs. Corinthian Nutbush, please make your judging run,” said the judge, suddenly clearing Sam’s swimming head. Sam looked around. Everyone was watching him, waiting, hushed.

For Sam, suddenly the thought of killing Cassius—the thought that had dominated all others for a week—was replaced by another:

Heidy. Once lost . . .
she might be his again.

She stared down at him.
What was she waiting for?

Suddenly he knew.

She was waiting to see the old Sam the Lion.

He stepped onto the red carpet, pulling his “Mrs. Nutbush,” causing them to stumble and sway.

“Sam! What’re we doing?” whispered Bug from below the fur hat.

But Sam was too lost in the memories from a previous time to answer. He pulled his team to the center of the carpet as the judge and Heidy and Cassius and a hundred thousand people in the arena and millions around the world watched.

Then he stopped. He looked back at Heidy, still staring with a quizzical expression . . .

And then he danced. Just as he and a little girl had done in the Vermont backyard of McCloud Acres a lifetime ago. He leapt and twirled and bounced, his mind suddenly awash in a feeling approaching happiness . . . one that he hadn’t dared allow for a very long time.

Cassius stared . . . awash in his own memories:
I’ve seen this before.

Heidy was thinking the same thing . . . but her mind couldn’t make sense of it. Sam was gone. Destroyed years ago when she was a little girl.
Dogs don’t return from the dead.

In the audience, Uncle Hamish stood, staring, disbelieving.

The crowd began laughing again at the dancing, spinning dachshund. They hadn’t seen such a performance at a dog show before . . . but the dachshund was quite beautiful.

But then suddenly a hush fell upon the arena.

“The . . . The Duüglitz Tuft!” someone cried out in the audience.

More people pointed and shouted: “The Duüglitz!”

Outstretched fingers shot toward the top of Sam’s skull, pointing at the tiny curled wisp of hair that Sam had instructed Madam to glue atop his head.

“The Duüglitz Tuft . . .” the judge said in a whispered awe, her eyes brimming with tears. She picked up the huge silver best in show chalice and blue championship ribbon and began to move toward the heartbreakingly flawless dachshund.

A thunderous cheer then arose from the now standing, fist-pumping, astonished crowd.
The DUÜGLITZ!!

Sam the Lion was cookin’! He was on fire! The roars and cheers drove his spinning and bouncing to a frenzied pace and he twirled and danced and flipped and . . .

And then it was suddenly quiet again.

Sam stopped. The crowd was standing, staring, mute. He looked over at Heidy, who stared but held a hand to her open mouth.

He looked around on the red carpet. Pieces of fur and leather and tape and glue lay scattered. His artificial leg lay several feet away from him.

Sam stood, leaning slightly on his three feet, ragged and shorn of his deceit. He blinked . . . as if waking from a rapturous daydream.

But it was not a dream.

High atop the roof, Tusk and Madam stared down through the open skylight at the events unfolding below. “Oh, dear,” said Madam very simply.

Watching from the edge of the red carpet, suddenly Cassius knew. He suddenly saw everything clearly. The big poodle leapt forward, snapping the leash held by Heidy. He reached the backside of the fake Mrs. Nutbush, still teetering close to Sam . . .

. . . and he sunk his teeth into her bottom.

Which was actually Ol’ Blue’s. Which started a predictable chain reaction of dogs tumbling hard down onto the red carpet into a tangled heap of squirming mutt bodies, coats, hats, legs, boots and tails.

Heidy walked toward the tangle of ridiculous dogs and the one battered, very flawed but familiar dachshund at the center. She picked up the fake leg . . . and felt the pieces of fur that had been pasted over his scars. Her head spun.

“No . . .” she said and backed away, confused, trying to make sense of the unbelievable.

Sam watched her move backward.
“What’s wrong? Heidy, it’s me. It’s Sam. I’m here! It’s ME!”

“But it’s not you,”
said Cassius, again approaching his old enemy.
“Look at yourself. You’re not the dog she loved before. You’re broken. You’re
ugly.
I told you before and it’s still true: she doesn’t want you now.”

Sam looked at Heidy and saw the confusion in her face.

Sam suddenly believed Cassius’s lie.

“Run, stray, run,”
said the big poodle.

Sam did. He dashed for the exit at the far end of the arena.

“Sam!” cried Heidy, but he didn’t hear her.

But Cassius did. And in her voice, the one he’d learned to know and love more than any during the last many years, the poodle heard what he dreaded: she still loved the dachshund.

Far more than she’d ever love him.

Cassius dashed after the running Sam. He knew he had to do what he should have done years before to keep Heidy in his life.

He had to kill him.

The vast crowd of onlookers was blocking the exits, and Sam turned around to see Cassius almost on him, a look of fury in his eyes. Sam’s will for vengeance was broken, his spirit collapsed, and he only wanted out, out,
out.

Cassius was on him and they both fell against a tangle of folding chairs, sending the crowd screaming. Sam pulled out from the jaws of the big poodle and his old survival instincts took over:

Head for higher ground. Go
up.

A steep set of circular steps pointed toward the steel rafters of the ceiling . . . and the giant boxes that hung from them, the ones used as scoreboards during sporting events. Sam shot up the stairs, the lack of a fourth leg slowing him only slightly. Cassius followed, only seconds behind Sam, his teeth bared in furious hatred.

“Sam! Sam the Lion!” screamed Heidy, who reached the stairs just as both dogs ascended above her. She followed them up before the show officials could stop her.

Close behind her, the entire commando squad from the National Last-Ditch Dog Depository scrambled to catch up.

They had no idea why. But they were a team, and it seemed right to follow Sam, if not totally sensible. They stumbled and scrambled up the stairs, snapping at the hands of officials trying to stop them.

As the stunned crowd craned their necks and the TV cameras pointed up at the remarkable events occurring high above the red carpet, only one thing remained clear for them and the millions of people watching around the world: