But in America, in 1957, the gun barrels were always there, tracking you.
Ice ran. Sumer did not. Sumer busied herself caring for her children in a clean and spacious cage that had been specially made for her. She moved lethargically, offering her pups her teats. She helped her newborns eliminate their waste. She was dignified, relaxed. She had the majesty of an earth goddess, the confident glow that was the sign of her productivity, her fertility. And this was the perfect environment for raising her pups, it was kept utterly clean, uncontaminated, and every last one of her children was pure as well. Perfect German shepherds, every one.
In the world Sumer inhabited, of course, mongrels were abhorred.
There was no reason, in its value system, for a mongrel to be born.
You, Sumer, do not run. You are waited upon. The owner of the kennel you live in—its owner as well as yours—lavishes attention upon you because you are the mother of her future champions. She places enormous value in your existence. You are cared for. You care for your children, and the woman who ought to be your master but is instead your breeder and handler, she cares for you.
Because you give birth to a beautiful elite.
Because you give birth to dogs of the highest quality, a second generation that is gorgeous above all else, possessed from birth of the qualities necessary to meet even the most stringent dog show standards and to remain unfazed by the judges’ stern, appraising gazes.
The puppies milled around your teats.
And then, when they had drunk their fill, they frolicked and tangled in the shadow of your protective aura.
Until 1957, when at last fate began playing its tricks with you.
What happened? Your master did something she shouldn’t have. Your master and the master of your fellow dogs, and of your children, the owner of your spotlessly clean kennel, she did something unclean, morally contaminated. Her patience had finally reached its limit. She wasn’t taking the trophy. She had been breeding all these dogs with the sole aim of winning the highest title, and here she was, her aspirations still unfulfilled. Her dogs always took second, not first, place. Yes, they had won repeatedly in group judging, totally overwhelming the other dogs. But none had ever been Best in Show. Not one had managed to ascend to the pinnacle, to become the Number One Doggie in the United States. Your master had once been described as “the queen of the postwar American dog show universe” for her utterly masterful handling, her ability to become one with her dogs. But she didn’t have the crown. She was a celebrity who appeared regularly in dog magazines. But without the crown. Each time she became the focus of attention as “a young—and beautiful!—woman handler,” her self-esteem soared; each time the Best in Show ribbon slipped from her grasp, she was more spectacularly wounded. And now, to make matters worse, she was losing her youth. And so your master tried to bribe the judges. It didn’t work. Well then, what if she spread her legs for one of the bigwigs who ran the show? She tried, but she wasn’t young enough; the association chairman couldn’t get it up. I’m way too old, she thought. I’m running out of time. And once she had convinced herself of this, she got so overwrought that she began to lose it. Take your age, Sumer, for instance. Before long you would be too old to give birth, past the age when so-called “late pregnancy” was possible, and all of a sudden that came to seem, in her mind, like some sort of sign—a revelation. It was now or never. And so your master tried a third trick: she went into the paddock and slipped poison to all the other candidates for Best in Show—a Doberman pinscher, a cocker spaniel, a Scottish terrier, a boxer, an Afghan hound, a toy poodle—and then, just to be absolutely sure that everything was all right, put poison in their owners’ lunches too. Four dogs died and two of the owners were hospitalized. Her transgression was discovered with almost hilarious ease, and she was immediately found guilty and shipped off to prison.
Now, Sumer, there was no one to maintain your kennel.
The woman who cared for you had been banished from society.
It was late summer 1957.
And what had Ice been doing that summer? What had become of our mongrel Queen of the Monsters, leader of a pack that roamed back and forth across the borders of four states?
She had puppies. She had given birth again. She was an active mother, suckling her young. How many times had you given birth, Ice? You had no idea. You never counted. Only idiots bother to count each little digit like that, crooking the five fingers on their two hands. Counting is a cross borne by the people of civilized communities, saddled with their decimals. You, Ice, had feet, not hands, and pads on your toes, because your feet were meant for running. They were the engines of your speed. You, Ice—you do not count. You don’t skitter from number to number, you live by instinct. You heed your blood…you are swayed by the intuitions you inherited from a line of victors.
It was, probably, your fourth birth, though you didn’t know that.
And so, Ice, as summer drew to a close, you and your pack ceased your roving.
You were in your nest. You hated summer. The blood coursing through your veins derived, every drop, from northern breeds. Summer was your enemy. Truth be told, the south itself was your enemy. But it was your destiny to move southward, and destiny is not something you can shake. Your mane, which had evolved to help you endure the bitter cold, was no more now than a soft brush. Each time you birthed a litter, you caressed the puppies with your mane. It was a sign of your motherly love. You and your pack stayed close to the nest. Seven pups were born over seven hours in that gray area at the end of August and the beginning of September, before and after midnight on August 31—you could say the puppies had been born in one month or the other, depending on the time zone—and for the next week you didn’t have a free moment. Another week went by and still you had no time to yourself, but you could at least begin teaching your pups to walk. And other things too. THIS WORLD IS HOT, you told them. IT’S BRUTALLY HOT, AND SO YOU’LL HAVE TO LEARN TO ADAPT AS YOU LIVE YOUR LIVES. This was your command to them: Mongrelize. This was the sacred law of mongrelization: Mix. Be contaminated. Refute the notion of the standard.
Because people are the ones who tried to keep dogs pure.
You and your pack ceased your roving, Ice, if only for a time, and that was very dangerous indeed. True, you had given birth several times before, but this was not then, this was America in 1957. You were public enemies. You, Ice, were Public Enemy Number One. You assumed it would be safe to stay put for two or three weeks, that it would be enough, but you were wrong. You miscalculated. You didn’t even calculate. Because you didn’t count.
People were idiots, yes, with five fingers on their two hands. But they did more with those fingers than count to ten. They also gripped their guns and pulled the triggers.
What happened?
You were surrounded. You and your pack were no longer roving freely. Your territory, and your hunting, began to center on a single point. A single point on the broad map of America. A place one could have pointed to on the mainland—there. A place with clearly identifiable coordinates. You were beasts, it was fitting that you be eliminated, and now at last they had tracked you down. Little by little, they closed in on you. They had you by your tail. These idiots, with their ten fingers…these humans, Ice, had the highest respect for your intelligence. The amateur hunters had all given up. Now only professionals were left on the side of the hunters, and they were hunting you.
National Guard.
Past developments, years of repeated failure, had led to their dispatch.
It was 1957 in America. The governor gave the local members of the National Guard the go-ahead, and they took up their guns—their military guns. Gripped them with their ten fingers. The National Guard was a reserve corps, of course, but they were professionals. Equipped as professionals, with the authority of professionals.
You were fine, Ice, you
and the pack of “wild dogs” you led, as long as you could run. You were safe, you didn’t die. But now you didn’t run. You couldn’t run. And so it happened. One of the squads at the western edge of Wisconsin closed the border and came in pursuit. They used every trick in the book. You could hardly move. You were stuck in the nest with your puppies, not yet three weeks old, and so you couldn’t rely on your intuition to anticipate what was coming, to lead the other dogs. You couldn’t run at the head of the pack. No longer could you assure them, WE WILL NOT BE CAUGHT. No longer could you say, WE WILL KEEP RUNNING.
And so it happened.
Panicked, terrorized, the pack dispersed.
Ice was still a mother then. Not the queen, not the leader of her pack; she was the mother of seven little pups. What’s happening? Ice responds sluggishly. The other dogs are fast, fleeing. Their speed attracts attention. The leaderless pack, dissolving, yet incapable of dissolving fully, winding up somehow in town, in groups of three and two and four. They are discovered, they are shot. The call goes out and they are shot. The dogs are shot, and so quickly too, in no time at all—the guard have accomplished their mission! And so Ice and her children, a bitch and seven pups, are left alive.
They survived until the very end.
They left the nest. Of course. WALK, she told them. WE WILL ESCAPE, STEP BY STEP. WE WILL SURVIVE. The mother and her children stumbled forward. Ice was growling softly. Rrrrrrrr. Searching for a path that would save them from extermination, a path to deliverance.
Searching.
They came to the state highway. They could hide their scents by crossing here. Hide their tracks. WAIT HERE A MOMENT, Ice told her children. I’LL INVESTIGATE, YOU WAIT HERE. With that, she darted out onto the highway. She was crossing. There was nothing at all difficult about this. She had crossed any number of these nameless rivers, “human roads.” A moment later, she had crossed to the middle. This river was heavily trafficked, yes, but not so much that it could not be forded. And then…Ice stopped. There in the middle of the river, she paused, turned, looked back. Stood still, looking back. One of her pups had barked. Yelped for its mother. It was about to run out into the road. NO! STAY THERE! YOU MUSTN’T FOLLOW! Ice commanded. She watched until the puppy had retreated. And then—
She was hit.
A pickup truck traveling at seventy-five miles per hour threw her nine feet into the air.
She hit the ground. She died instantly. Countless cars ran over her, and in fifteen minutes she was flat. Cars, cars, cars. Ice, of course, would never have even tried to count them.
And so, Ice, you are dead. Utterly and completely dead.
You are dead, and Sumer is still alive.
Sumer: the other mother. The earth goddess, whose whole life was centered on the shows, who lived in her clean cage and gave birth to one litter after the next, spawning a beautiful elite. Except that no one looked after her cage anymore. The woman who had cared for her had been locked up herself now, in a much bigger cage. So your kennel was no longer maintained. Not that it had been completely abandoned. True, the first two days after the arrest, no one had fed the dogs, but then the authorities noticed. Something had to be done.
The situation was taken care of within a single day.
The kennel was auctioned off. The dogs too. Most of the dogs found new homes right away. They had belonged to the queen (now deposed) of the American dog show universe, after all, and their breeding was impeccable. Over a dozen bids were placed for some of the newborn pups in Sumer’s newest litter. There was much maneuvering. Sumer’s former owner had plotted to take down her rivals; now the other dog-show regulars were eager to take what they could from her. The owner was a celebrity—a queen, even if she had lost her throne.
The dogs fetched prices incomprehensible to anyone outside the dog-show loop.
It happened very quickly. Less than twenty-four hours after the authorities decided to hold the auction, almost all the problems had been solved. An agent had taken control. On the face of it, the dogs seemed to have been sold off in a manner that was completely fair; in reality all sorts of secret, backroom deals were struck. The agent made a tidy profit. Not only the dogs, but all the equipment, too, was disposed of. The kennel was dismantled.
And you, Sumer, where are you?
No answer, not a bark. Why not? Because you were dazed. Because you had been separated. From your children, your kin. They had still been suckling, but they were taken from you, your pups, every one. Gone. Snatched from your protection, from the range of your loving gaze. And what about you? What happened to you? No one wanted you. Not one of your children’s buyers wanted you. Zero, zip. They had their eyes on the future champions, not on the aging bitch who seemed unlikely to bear any more children. You were still very beautiful, Sumer, but you were too old to be entered in dog shows. So you had no value in that world, and everyone who saw you reached the same conclusion: you weren’t worth the trouble and expense. Your old master might not have been so quick to give up. But she was locked up, and the authorities no longer recognized her as your master.
Where are you?
Late summer 1957. The agent had to get rid of you somehow. A few other dogs remained unsold. But he told the authorities he had sold you. To avoid complications. He would have to dispose of you. You and the others. He would kill you.
He herded you all into a trailer.
To take you to another state and kill you. Secretly.
All around you, the other dogs were trembling. They sensed what was happening. But you were still dazed. You had frozen. You were by the window, Sumer. The agent had tied you all up in one corner so that you wouldn’t soil the floor. He had put down a rubber mat. The trailer lurched. Pulled by the car in front of it. You were moving.
Toward death.
And then it happened.
You were on the highway. You had crossed from Illinois into Wisconsin. It was 1957. Late summer, verging on early autumn. You were dazed, staring out the window with empty eyes. You didn’t notice when the trailer’s wheels rolled over the body of an animal. The body of a dog on the road, run over, flattened. And then, suddenly—you are seeing something. You are gripped by what you see, this scene. Puppies, abandoned on the roadside. Seven puppies, huddled together, shivering. WE’RE WAITING. WE’RE WAITING, JUST LIKE YOU TOLD US TO. WE’RE STILL WAITING, they seem to be saying. And you hear them. You recognize this scene. Something seizes you, moves you. Seven hungry puppies, waiting for their mother’s ghost.
It speaks to you. Go, it says. Wake up.
Suddenly, you understand. Those puppies have lost their mother. And so—
At last, Sumer, your blood stirred within you. You were never just a pretty dog. Your father was Bad News: one of the greatest war dogs ever to fight in the Second World War, one of the few who returned unscathed from the battlegrounds of the Pacific. Explosion was your grandmother, and Masao was your grandfather. Two war dogs, one American, one Japanese, who had survived those timeless days at the westernmost tip of the Aleutians. Slumbering deep within you was the power to attack. Sleeping within you. And now it had awoken. Your teeth were meant to chew through ropes tying you down. Your muscular legs were built to hurl you against the wall of this trailer, shaking it, tilting it. Your agitation roused the other dogs, tied up around you, destined for death—it was infectious, and one after the next they rose, joined in your rebellion. Still tied up, they flung themselves against the walls, over and over. The trailer skidded, rocked. The dogs were barking. The trailer’s driver noticed, hit the brakes, and the agent got out of the cab, opened the door, and stuck his head in. And then, Sumer, you leapt. You attacked. GET BACK, you said. GET OUT OF MY WAY. DON’T INTERFERE. I’LL KILL YOU.
Yes, Sumer, you were awake. You left the agent badly wounded, and you ran. You fled.
Yes, Sumer, you made a break for i
t.
You were running.
At last, seven puppies waiting by the roadside found their phantom mother.
She didn’t look at all like Ice, but she had come to protect them, and they gathered around her, keening.
Their mother had come.
With her full teats, milk enough for seven. With her love.
Sumer: earth goddess and, her father’s blood awakened within her, destroyer.
The seven pups raised their heads, gazing up at you. And you told them.
GO ON, you said. SUCK. DRINK MY MILK. GATHER AT MY TEATS.
You suckled them, Sumer.
Starting that very night, you were on the run. You were a mother again, and they were your children. You crossed the highway, all but empty now that night had come. Crossed to the far side, forded that river. And so Ice’s final wishes were carried out. Beyond all expectation, a second mother realized the intentions of the first. You made an odd group, of course. The mother, a German shepherd enlisted in the pursuit of pureblooded beauty; her children, seven puppies who looked nothing alike, offspring of a belief in monstrosity and the power of mongrelization. One puppy had the smile of a Samoyed; another had a mane the color of sesame seeds; another had the face of a Labrador retriever, the chest of a Siberian husky, and the high shoulder joints and thick curl of the tail of a Hokkaido dog.
When you joined them, you united two different worlds with different values.
Your mutual love obliterated every meaning that had been invested in you.
The destinies of two bloodlines crossed, and you were a family.
You lived as a family in a “nest” that Sumer found. In a railroad switchyard, at the edge of the classification yard, where the freight trains stood as though abandoned. Almost no one came here behind the arrival tracks. Sumer settled on a boxcar. She led the children in through the cracked-open door. HIDE HERE IN THE DARKNESS, GET USED TO THE DARKNESS, she told them. THIS IS OUR NEST. She knew they would be well protected in this place. And she was right: it was as sturdy as a fortress. Steel walls surrounded them, raised off the ground. It wasn’t very clean, but it reminded Sumer of her cage at the kennel. This was a good place to raise her children. Her old cage had been brightly lit; here there was only darkness. That was fine. Sumer cared for the puppies. For her own mongrel puppies. No one cared for Sumer now. She hunted for food. For the whole family. The puppies were ready to be weaned. Late at night, Sumer poked through garbage around the station. In the late 1950s, people loved the wholesomeness of their American lifestyle, their way was the best, and food left over was emerging as a symbol of their victory, a validation of capitalism. Frozen vegetables had come to seem natural; they were always available, there was always more. This culture of excess was what allowed Sumer to care for her family, her nest. Sumer didn’t look like a “wild dog,” and she didn’t rove in a pack, so humans didn’t pursue her. She lived quietly. She kept going, quietly. The puppies kept growing. In the nest in the boxcar, they frolicked and tangled in the shadow of Sumer’s protective aura.
Belka, Why Don't You Bark? Page 9
