The 12 Dogs of Christmas (2 page)

2
It's an Adventure!

The next morning Emma's father took her to Pittsburgh's Penn Station and put her on a train. Any other time riding the train would have been exciting. But all Emma and her dad could think about was that they were parting. Mr. O'Connor found Emma a seat, got her settled in, and ran his hands over the old wool cap he had given her to be sure it fit snugly on her head.

“Why do I have to go?” Emma asked for the hundredth time. “I want to stay with you!”

“I know, Em, but it's only for a little while. I'll come and get you before Christmas.”

He had made this promise last night, hoping it would make Emma less sad. Christmas was less than a month away. But that's what worried Emma. How could her father find work
and
a new home in so short a time? A tear slipped down her cheek. But her father quickly wiped it away.

“Come on now; you're my tough girl.”

Her father then took out of his pocket an envelope with a name, Dolores Snively, and an address written on it.

“You are going to like your Aunt Dolores. She can't wait to see you.”

“You promise to come and get me?”

“By Christmas,” her father reassured, putting the envelope in Emma's coat pocket.

“
Promise
.”

“I will,” Douglas O'Connor said as emphatically as he could while holding back tears of his own. Then he hugged his daughter. Emma held on to her father tightly, but soon her father was gone, and Emma was alone.

A moment later, the train came alive and slowly lurched out of Penn Station, picking up speed and rumbling faster and faster away from Pittsburgh.

Emma just stared through the frosted window, into the gray, uncertain about the future she found herself traveling toward, about going up to this place called Doverville, Maine, and about going to live with an Aunt Dolores she hadn't even known existed. But most of all she worried about her father. What was going to happen to him? Was he going to have to live in a Hooverville, in some kind of a cardboard shack?

Because she had not slept the night before, the rhythmic sounds of the train soon helped worry give in to sleep.

Max watched in confusion as the humans carried him in his
box that was like a cage down the stairs of Mr. Whiteside's
house and out the back entrance and to a truck waiting in the
alley. The men loaded Max onto the truck, and he braced himself
as the truck rumbled and bounced through the streets of
New York until it finally arrived at the freight loading dock at
Grand Central Station. Then they loaded his cage into a train.

“Hey, George! Here's another one to Doverville. To that
Dog Lady. Jeepers, this is becoming the Canine Express!”

Soon a huge door on the giant box was slammed shut,
making everything dark. Max lay down with a whimper,
wondering what was to come.

When Emma awoke, Pittsburgh was far behind her, and she was amazed to see a landscape of long stretches of farmland, dotted now and then with houses and barns. Emma had lived her whole life in Pittsburgh and had never been out of the city. She had never seen anything like this! She sat up straight to get a better view.
Hey,
she realized,
this doesn't look so bad. It
could be an adventure!
Emma was always ready for a new adventure. Her dad would borrow pulp magazines from a friend and read her the adventures inside. He enthusiastically performed all the voices of the characters and became Emma's personal radio show. And in the library she had found and loved the adventures of Robin Hood and Tarzan and Little Orphan Annie. All those adventures had carried her out of the dreariness of the Depression, and out of Pittsburgh. But now here she was, on her own real adventure. She tried to think about the excitement that lay ahead, and not about her father left behind.

Eventually the train slowed as it came up to a huge city of unbelievably tall buildings.

“Excuse me,” Emma said to a lady in fur who sat across the aisle. “Is that New York City?”

The lady in fur looked at Emma and smiled. “Of course it is, darling. The greatest city in the world!”

New York City! It was the city where she was going to have to change trains to catch the one going to Maine.
How will I . . . oh, all those people and all those
trains!
Emma's thoughts raced until her hand came to rest on the envelope her father had given her.
It's
an adventure,
she told herself. She remembered that the envelope held detailed instructions.
Like the clues
to a mystery
, she mused.
I'll be okay. It's an adventure.

3
Doverville

Emma was amazed by Maine. It was snow-covered and beautiful, and everything was bright because the air was so clear, nothing like her Pittsburgh home. But it was still an unknown. She anxiously stepped off the train at Doverville Station. Emma took a deep breath, and like a good adventure hero, took the lay of the land.

The first thing Emma noticed were boxes and crates and carrying cases and cages being unloaded from the freight car of the train onto a large wheeled cart. And all of them contained dogs—all kinds of dogs, including two Dalmatians, a Golden Retriever, a couple of Beagles, a Chihuahua in a carrying case, and one large Poodle. There was also a woman all bundled up against the cold, and a young boy around Emma's age similarly bundled, standing by a flatbed truck directing the freight handlers to load the dogs onto the truck carefully.

“They seem to be coming from all over, Mrs. Stevens,” said one of the handlers.

“I know,” said the woman. “It was the magazine article. I thought maybe the publicity would get me some donations. Instead it's just gotten me more dogs.”

“Well, I suppose you don't have to take the delivery.”

“How could I do that? Look at them. They're beautiful. And this Standard Poodle—what a handsome boy he is!”

A kind-looking lady looked through the slats of Max's cage
and smiled at him, which was nice. But she was not Mr.
Whiteside, and Max wanted Mr. Whiteside. “What's your
name, boy? Oh, I see.” The lady looked at the label on the
cage. “It's Max. Well, Mike,” she said to a boy standing
nearby, “this is Max. We better get him loaded.”

The boy came over and tugged at Max's cage, which was
still on the freight cart, but the cage went nowhere. It seemed
to be stuck on something. He tugged again, and again, and
once more, which was not fun for Max, as it jerked him
around in the cage. He wished the boy would stop. Then a
girl walked up and said, “Here, let me help.”

Mike, in the middle of his struggle with the Poodle's wooden cage, looked up to see where the voice had come from and saw who he at first thought was a boy. But the voice he had heard was a girl's, and the hair was long, blond, and in braids, even if it was covered by a man's cloth cap—much like the one Mike himself was wearing. Why Mike took an immediate dislike to Emma is a mystery. He glared at her as he jumped onto the freight cart to try to move the cage from a different angle, telling her, “I don't need help from a girl.”

“Obviously you do,” Emma observed, not understanding Mike's logic and jumping in to help by tugging on the cage as Mike tried to push it forward.

“No, stop,” Mike insisted, alarmed at Emma's interference. “Stop!”

But Emma wanted to help and saw no reason why she shouldn't.

“Just leave it. Leave it!” he ordered.

Emma was not used to taking orders from boys— unless you count her father, which she didn't. So she tugged even harder at Max's cage.

Why were these kids pulling and pushing his cage so much?
Max could hardly keep his footing, and he was scared, and
so he growled at the kids. He had never, ever growled at kids
before. Mr. Whiteside had not liked it.

“
I've
got it!” Mike tried to convince Emma as she made one last, big tug on Max's cage. Unfortunately she was tugging on the end that opened—and it did, releasing Max.

Freedom! Max bolted as fast as he could, away from the kids
and away from the cage. And maybe, just maybe, he could
find Mr. Whiteside.

“Aarrugh!” Mike yelled as he jumped down from the cart, landing with his face right in Emma's. “Girls are worthless!” he shouted at her, and then he took off, running after Max.

Emma may have been tough—but not so tough that what Mike had said to her did not hurt. Girls were worthless? No, that's not what he meant; he meant that
she
was worthless. But she had only been trying to help.

None of this was funny, of course, but there was someone viewing it through a pair of binoculars that thought it was. His name was Melvin, and you should know right now that he is not going to be one of the heroes of this story. In fact, if any man in the town looked like one of the villains in the adventures Emma loved, it was Melvin. First of all there were the goggles he always wore, which gave a very insect-like look to his face, a look aided by the old leather aviator's cap pulled tightly down on his head, his gray and dirty beard, and his twisted smile that showed off his rotten teeth. Second of all were the old, worn, black leather jacket and the black shirt and the black boots he wore. We are very fortunate that Melvin rarely talked, for his voice most certainly could not have been pleasant. But why did he find the scene he had just witnessed funny? Possibly because he always found a chuckle or two in the misfortune of others, and most certainly because he knew his boss, Norman Doyle, would also find it amusing. Melvin couldn't wait to tell Norman, so he jumped on his motorcycle, roared the engine once, twice, and a third time, and then sped away to do that very thing.

4
The Brothers Doyle

If Norman Doyle had had his way, Doverville would have been renamed Doylerville. His grandfather had been one of the founders of the town. His brother, Nobel Doyle, was the newly elected mayor of the town. And he, Norman Doyle, was about to be installed in the very important position of Town Dogcatcher, which was quite a promotion from his previous job as Town Garbage Collector. Now in most towns the position of dogcatcher, while not unimportant, was usually not considered
very
important. But this was Doverville, where dogs were outlawed, and in a town where dogs were outlawed, the Town Dogcatcher was as important as the Town Sheriff. It was actually more important, if you thought about it, which Norman did, despite how difficult thinking was for him, for the sheriff only had to catch human criminals, of which there were next to none in Doverville, it being a small, quiet town of fairly nice people. But the
dogcatcher
had to catch all the dogs. And there were now quite a few. And Norman loved catching dogs, for he hated dogs— hate, hate, hated them!

Why did Norman hate dogs? Well, maybe because some people just do. Some people just aren't dog people; some people are, like Norman, cat people, the best kind of people to be in his estimation. Or maybe it was because when Norman was nine and three quarters years old, he slipped and fell into a large pile of dog poop. This is bad in and of itself, but far worse when all the other kids see you do it and laugh at you in all the variations of laughter. Some of the kids chuckled, some guffawed, some tee-heed, some slapped their knees while howling, and some even snorted. And every one of these various laughs cut like a knife deep into Norman. He cried, he hid his face, and he never forgot it. And he might still be sitting in that dog poop if his big brother, Nobel, had not rescued him and driven the other kids away.

How times had changed. Now here they were in the town hall. Nobel, the mayor, was addressing the newly elected Town Council—all cat people good and true—who had all run on the same platform Nobel had run on. And nearby stood Norman, whom everybody had gathered in the town hall to see installed in the very important position of Town Dogcatcher.

Twenty-five years ago, the year of the great rabies scare, the townspeople passed City Ordinance 109, section 2, approved on December 19, 1906, that read in part: “Forthwith it shall be unlawful for dogs to reside, bark, breed, or foul the foot-ways within the city limits of Doverville.” No one had enforced the no-dog law since 1907, the year the great rabies scare had ended. In fact no one had even remembered there still was such a law on the books—that is until Nobel discovered the law while looking for a campaign platform. He quickly took a poll and determined that there were more cat people in Doverville than dog people, revealing the preference of the majority, whose votes he wanted. And he knew his opposition would be weak, for there was a Depression going on, and a dog was just another mouth to feed. Nobel surmised that people might even like the excuse to get rid of the mangy mutts. Now that might have been so, and it might not, but what was definitely so was that Nobel ran unopposed, so he couldn't help but win. Nonetheless, he acted like he had won a major victory against great odds, strutting around in his three-piece suit and top hat, with a medal on his lapel that he considered to be his badge of office, but was really just a third-place medal he had won for a spelling bee in the fourth grade.

“The dogs will go!” Nobel declared to the town council and other cat-people citizens of the town. “That's what I promised—that's what I'm delivering.”

The council and citizens gave him a rousing round of applause—including Norman, even while holding his beloved cat, Scratch.

“To help me in this momentous task, my friends, I have duly appointed Mr. Norman Doyle dogcatcher of Doverville!”

This was Norman's cue to immediately come up front and receive his share of applause. Soon Norman was up and standing beside his brother, smiling and nodding at the recognition, and hugging Scratch.