Buster

by Caleb Huett

  “I’m feeling too anxious. I don’t think I can.”

  My nose twitched as I smelled for details. His breathing wasn’t relaxed, but he wasn’t panicking. This wasn’t an attack—it was anxiety, sure, but it was closer to regular fear.

  “Oh, Tonio. Are you scared it won’t go well? Making friends isn’t supposed to be scary. It’s not something you need to be worried about.”

  That’s not helpful, I thought. It doesn’t matter if it’s “supposed” to be scary. It is scary.

  “I can’t do it by myself.”

  “You won’t be by yourself. You’ve got Buster!”

  I wagged my tail at my name. I nudged him. I’ll be right here.

  The truck didn’t have an automatic unlock, so Mrs. Pulaski reached over to tug up the little nub. “You can do it, Antonio. She wants to be your friend because she already likes you. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  But she might not really want to be his friend, I thought. Tonio’s worried he made it up. Tonio shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t do it. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  Mrs. Pulaski did try to touch him this time, but he flinched away. She put both hands on the steering wheel and watched a goat wander across the sunny field. It was bright outside, but the truck felt like it was under its own personal storm cloud. The goat turned and wobbled toward us.

  “I’m sorry, Tonio.” Mrs. Pulaski spoke to Tonio gently. “We moved to Bellville because your dad loved growing up here, and we thought it would be good for you to be somewhere smaller, but I think we might have just made it tougher for you.” She sighed, and her hands tightened around the steering wheel. “There’s a school in the city, with teachers who know how to work with kids like you. A lot of my clients live there, which is nice, and your dad could find something to do. We probably couldn’t take Buster with us, but—”

  This finally shook Tonio into speaking. “What do you mean? Take him where?”

  She blinked. “To the city.”

  “We can’t leave. You love it here.”

  “I do. But I could love it there, too, and if you can’t go back to this school—”

  “So it’s my fault.” Tonio’s voice shot up louder. “We have to move because of me.”

  “I’m not saying we have to. But, considering everything, it might be the best choice for us.”

  This was not something Tonio had expected. His breath was catching, changing—I tried to squeeze under his arm to distract him, but he pushed me back at Mrs. Pulaski. The truck was tiny, so there wasn’t very far for me to go, but I was stunned at his force.

  “Tonio, please calm down. I’m just saying, maybe you need another environment.”

  I wanted to tell Mrs. Pulaski to stop talking, to give him some space, but the conversation was getting out of control too fast for me to do anything about it.

  Tonio’s face contorted into an angry, confused shape. “I don’t need another environment!” he yelled.

  His mother’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “Then what do you need, Tonio? I’m trying to understand.”

  “I don’t know!” He untangled from his seat belt and tugged at the door handle. The truck door stuck until he kicked it and jumped out onto the grass. “I’m going to go play Beamblade.” I leaped down after him and barked, but he didn’t stop running.

  “Antonio!” his mom yelled after him.

  “I’ll call you later!” Tonio shouted back. He stumbled on a pile of logs but caught himself before he hit the ground and kept on moving.

  He threw up behind the barn. His box fell open when he dropped it, and the note cards blew around in the wind. I whined and bumped against his ankles while he gagged.

  Suddenly, Mia was there, in overalls and a wide black hat, smirking at Tonio. “Is this what it looked like when you threw up on Devon Wilcrest?” she asked. The ball of fluff named Mozart peeked out from the crook of her arm, his tongue lolled out.

  She caught a note card in the air. “ ‘Are you like Robin Hood or like Catwoman?’ ” She raised her eyebrows at Tonio. “I don’t understand the question. They’re both awesome.”

  Tonio rested his forehead against the wall. He was breathing heavy.

  “I’m going to get you some water,” Mia said. “Be right back.” Mozart wriggled out of her arm as she walked away. I stepped in front of him and bumped him back with my paw before he got to Tonio.

  “Hey!” Mozart barked. “Owie!”

  I folded my ears down and stamped my foot for quiet. If he was going to talk, I wanted him to use Underspeak. I wasn’t allowed to bark like that, as a service dog. He ignored me and kept yipping.

  “What’s that kid doing? Smells good! He sad or something? Mia will fix it. She’s good at cheering people up, no problem!”

  I twisted my tail and shifted my posture. This is kind of her fault.

  “Her fault?” he yipped. “No way! Mia’s the nicest, coolest human there is. Whatever’s wrong with him must be your fault.”

  I hated talking to puppies.

  It’s not my fault, I said. I’m trying to help.

  Tonio groaned and dragged himself along the wall. I stepped over to him and licked his face. He patted my sides and slid down to sit in the grass.

  “Help how?” Mozart was still yipping. “Looks like you’re just standing around to me!”

  I’m doing my job.

  “Oh, you are? That’s cool. I guess your job is to not do anything? Hey! I want him to pet me, too!” Mozart hopped up into Tonio’s lap and put his little paws up on Tonio’s shoulders.

  “You’re so pretty,” Tonio said. “Look at your big poofy chest.” Mozart puffed up his chest proudly. Tonio scratched at it, and I rolled my eyes—puppies have it so easy! But at least Mozart helped calm Tonio down.

  I decided to ask Mozart a question, since he was in a good mood. Why is Mia working so hard to get money?

  “None of your business, old man! It’s a secret.”

  If you tell me, maybe I could help.

  He bared his teeth, but it was more cute than scary on his tiny face. “We don’t need your help!”

  “Here.” Mia was back. She held out a water bottle and looked down at me. “Okay if I come through?”

  I stepped out of the way, and Mozart hopped in circles around Mia. Tonio took the water and gulped it down while Mia looked around at the cards.

  “Your handwriting is cute. ‘Are Bug Scout cookies the only thing you lie about?’ ‘What’s your favorite movie?’ ”

  “I was—I’m—” Tonio was already embarrassed. I sat down and leaned my weight against him. “I wanted to know if you were good or bad. I thought that would help. But it was stupid.”

  She looked amused. “Good or bad at what?”

  “At … like, all around.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. I’m good.”

  “If you were bad, you would also say that.”

  “Okay, but I’m not.”

  Mia stared Tonio down. He took another drink of water.

  “Can we go somewhere else?” she asked. “It smells like throw-up over here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tonio mumbled miserably. “I should go home.”

  Mia was already walking toward the stable. “You just got here! Besides, I need your help.”

  “My help?” Tonio was surprised. He pushed off the ground and quickly gathered up the cards that hadn’t ended up in the splash zone. “With what?”

  “My dads are busy, Leila spent all morning rolling in mud, and it’s hard to give her a bath by myself.”

  “Leila isn’t a bad dog or anything, but she has so much fur,” Mia explained when we got to the stable. She was right—Leila was part mastiff, part Saint Bernard, part everything huge and fluffy. And she was absolutely caked in mud. “She’s the sweetest dog on the planet, absolutely perfect, but if anyone’s ever going to adopt her, she has to be clean. It’s like she knows when humans are coming and gets extra dirty.”

  Leila winked at m
e—or at least I think she did, under the dripping gunk and thick fuzz. Almost like it’s on purpose, she underspoke to me with a twitch of her nose and tail.

  You’re making the humans waste time cleaning you on purpose? I asked, surprised. Mia tossed Tonio a bottle of shampoo and walked to the stable’s wall to hook up the hose. Why don’t you want to be adopted?

  All my friends are here. I like the wrestling league, and I don’t like leashes. Leila wagged her tail when Mia started blasting the hose without warning. Tonio had to dive out of the way before he got soaked.

  But you’d probably stay in Bellville, I argued. And you could still come here to wrestle sometimes. Is that really it?

  You’re nosy! Even for a service dog. You know that?

  “I don’t want to be adopted, either!” Mozart yipped, oblivious to Leila’s tone. She laughed as he jumped in front of the hose’s stream, trying to catch water in his mouth.

  You won’t be, little pup. You’re Mia’s favorite.

  “That’s right!” Mozart said. Mia turned the hose off and showed Tonio how to start scrubbing the shampoo into Leila’s fur. “And she’s gonna take me with her when she leaves.”

  Leila swatted him on the snout as my ears perked up.

  Leaves? I asked. To go where?

  See? Leila underspoke. Nosy.

  “Nunya biz, old man!” Mozart barked. “It’s a secret!”

  Don’t worry about it, Leila added. As if to emphasize the point, she flexed and shook out her fur, spraying sudsy water all over the kids. Tonio sputtered in surprise, Mia laughed, and after a second, Tonio laughed, too.

  “It seems like you throw up a lot. You’re not sick, are you?” Mia asked once they’d settled into a rhythm and were working their way through opposite sides of Leila’s mountain of hair. “I can’t get sick right now.”

  “No, I’m not sick. Not like that.”

  Mozart slammed into my front leg while dashing around. I grabbed his neck in my mouth and set him to the side. He recovered immediately and tried to jump onto my back.

  “ ‘Not like that’? Meaning … ?”

  “I have anxiety.”

  Mia leaned over to look at him suspiciously under Leila’s stomach. “Is that contagious?”

  A smile dug through Tonio’s stressed face. “No, it’s not like that.”

  “Okay, well, I’m tired of asking you to explain what you mean, so you can either tell me or we can just sit here and clean the dog.”

  Tonio blushed, embarrassed. I shook off Mozart and moved over to nudge him supportively. “It’s, like, a brain problem. Where I get really worried. But …” Tonio checked Mia’s face to see if she was actually interested, or just being nice—or, worse, getting ready to make fun of him. She was watching him seriously, so he continued. “But when it’s bad, I feel it in my stomach. Or in my throat. It can hurt, or make me throw up.” He paused, then added, “I don’t really throw up a lot.”

  Mia made a face like she wasn’t sure she believed him about that, but she said, “Did you have any other questions you wanted to ask? On your cards?”

  Tonio considered. “Why did you ask me to come back here?”

  With a crackle, Mia unwrapped a ball of Crunchsquish gum (First You Crunch and Then You Squish™) and popped it in her mouth using her bare, soapy hands. I winced at the combination of flavors this must have created, but she didn’t flinch. “I dunno. I just did.”

  The look on Tonio’s face reminded me of robots in movies when you tell them something that doesn’t compute. “But you came all the way to my house.”

  “I came to your house to drop off your sketchbook,” she pointed out. “Everything else I just thought of right then.”

  Something about the way she said this caught his attention and gave him an idea for what to say next. “Do you still talk to Sloan?”

  I’d never heard that name before, but Mia’s head snapped up to look at Tonio, with the least-chill expression I’d seen on her so far.

  “Why are you asking me that?” she said defensively.

  “You were best friends.”

  “Yeah, but why do you care?”

  “She was nice. I thought you might know if she was okay.”

  “Of course she’s okay. She’s always okay.” Mia turned the hose back on and waved Tonio out of the way to wash off the shampoo. “She’s the person who taught me that quiet people like you are paying attention, too.”

  “Is that why you asked me to hang out?” Tonio pressed. “Because I’m quiet?”

  Mia looked uncomfortable for the first time as they rubbed Leila with some old towels. Leila and Mozart had both stopped playing around and were taking concerned poses as they listened to Mia.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought you’d be like Sloan, maybe.”

  “Do I—”

  “But you’re not anything like Sloan.” Suddenly, Mia seemed frustrated. “She doesn’t have to ask a bunch of dumb questions; she just knows what to say. And she doesn’t have anxiety, either.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tonio said. “I thought you’d like talking about her.”

  “Of course I like talking about her!” Mia glared. “You don’t get it. I knew this would happen.”

  Knew what would happen? I underspoke to Leila. She didn’t answer me. I nudged Tonio, but he was frozen, surprised by Mia’s sharp tone. She must really miss her friend, I said to Leila.

  We all do, she answered. But we’re handling it. All right, Miracle Dog? You take care of your human, and we’ll take care of ours.

  Handling it? I asked. What does that mean?

  “I don’t need other friends, okay?” Mia said to Tonio. “I asked you to come because I didn’t want to wash Leila by myself. You can go anytime.” She shoved her hands in the pockets of her overalls and walked away with a stomp that was a little too intense to match the casual way she tried to hold her posture. Mozart followed behind at her heels; Leila watched her go with a sad droop to her tail.

  But Tonio swallowed and raised his voice. “Do you know what kind of dog Buster is?” he almost-yelled after Mia. “I think he might be a vizsla, but also maybe some poodle or something.”

  She stopped and turned her head around to answer. “No way. Terrier, maybe, but poodle?”

  He whispered loudly through nearly clenched teeth. “I just think there might be some poodle.”

  Mia put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. Don’t you know anything about dogs?”

  “No!” Tonio almost-cheered, relieved she had turned back around. “I don’t know anything about dogs at all!”

  Her chin pushed up into the air. Her Crunchsquish gum popped. “Well, you can help me feed the dogs, if you want. And I can tell you about them.”

  Tonio’s hands clenched and unclenched around his box of cards. “Okay,” he said. Mia started walking in a different direction from the one she’d been heading in a moment before, and Tonio moved to follow her. I stuck to his heels, tail wagging with pride.

  “Pride. Interesting word choice, Buster.” Pronto stepped out of his bumper car, thick coat rippling over his intimidating muscles. He walked along the front of the Court’s audience confidently, making Lasagna waddle around in a circle to watch him. Buster didn’t bother. “Because right now I feel the opposite of pride. I feel shame. Shame that so many of my fellow dogs are ignoring our sacred laws to try to make a few children happy.”

  Lasagna hopped back around to look at the judge. “Your Honor—”

  “I’ve been very patient,” Pronto interrupted. “I cannot allow Buster to continue misleading the Court without offering the Law’s perspective.”

  The judge nodded. “Make your point, Speaker.”

  “Do you know what human happiness looks like?” He turned to the crowd. “It looks like a puppy, adopted into a family for its cuteness, and then abandoned when it grows up. It looks like a greyhound, forced to race until the humans stop making money. It looks like Laika, may she wat
ch over us always, sent to space alone with no hope of return. They take our childhoods, our strength, and our lives for their happiness.” The husky shook his head sadly. “When they know we have minds, they’ll try to take those, too.”

  A sadness swept over the expressions of the crowd, and a few dogs arched their noses into the sky in the traditional salute to Laika. Lasagna and Buster saluted, too, but Buster’s head was bursting with frustration. Her name in Pronto’s mouth felt gross, especially because he was just using it to get people mad at Buster.

  Pronto continued. “Human happiness is temporary, and they never try to fix it themselves. They always try to get someone or something else to do it, and these children, Tonio and Mia, are no different. Instead of pulling themselves up and dealing with their own problems, they’re begging at all sorts of tables: first other humans’, like therapists and friends, and then, when that doesn’t work, they turn to us. You fell for it, Buster. You and Mozart and Jpeg and Leila. Mozart’s just a puppy, of course, so maybe he can be relocated, but for the rest of you, The Farm seems the only correct option.”

  “One case at a time, Pronto.” The judge’s pose was serious. “We’re here to talk about Buster.”

  “I am talking about Buster, Your Honor,” Pronto insisted. He stepped back into his bumper car and hit his paw against the dashboard. “The Court didn’t punish him severely enough last time, and now there are three other dogs turned Bad by his influence.”

  A dog’s bark rose from the crowd, breaking the silence. “OKAY, BUT WHO’S SLOAN?”

  Pronto’s head shot around to glare into the crowd. “That doesn’t matter.”

  Lasagna’s tail wagged. “Actually, Speaker, I believe it does. Your Honor, he’s trying to hide the details from us, because he knows they matter.”

  “WAS SHE, LIKE, A SPY? OR SOME KIND OF ROCK STAR?”

  “Sadie,” Pronto chided, “you’re not supposed to yell in court.”

  “I’M NOT YELLING. I’M ASKING A QUESTION!”

  “Thank you for your input, Speaker.” The judge nodded at Pronto but made no expression of her opinion. “Buster, you may continue.”

  A deep breath. A nod. “Well, Your Honor, Tonio had made a friend. I wish I could say that fixed it all, but …” Buster closed his eyes and tried to push back the hurt that came from thinking through these memories. “I messed up.”