by Peter Howe
Tazar thought he understood the problem. Waggit still thought his former “owner” would rescue him, and because of this he didn’t truly believe that his survival in the hard months ahead depended upon hunting. If he assumed he was about to return to a life where food was regularly delivered out of little metal cans, why should he kill to eat?
Tazar was a smart dog and a wise leader, and he knew that it would be pointless to confront the puppy face-to-face. Waggit wouldn’t admit in front of the other dogs that he still secretly cherished thoughts of his master. No, there was a better way to convince him that there would be no rescue, that he had been abandoned, and that, like it or not, his survival was now and forever linked with that of the team. Tazar would do it tonight.
That evening they had a fine dinner, consisting mainly of hot dogs. Lady Magica had found a large pack of these delicacies tossed in a garbage can. Apart from the green furry bits, they were in perfect condition, and Gordo even insisted that their newly grown fuzz added to the flavor and protected you from the cold. When they had finished and were still in a circle, Tazar called them to attention.
“My brothers and sisters,” he said in his best booming tones, “it occurred to me that, since we have a new brother in our midst”—he nodded toward Waggit, who sat next to him—“it would help him get to know and understand us better if we each told the stories of how we came to be here. Magica, provider of tonight’s good bounty, maybe you would care to get the ball rolling?”
At the sound of the word “ball” Gordo, who had been nodding off, suddenly sat upright with his ears pricked—once a retriever, always a retriever.
Lady Magica looked down, took a deep breath, and started.
“Sure, Tazar, I don’t mind telling my story. I’ve been here for many risings, more than I can remember, really. But I used to live with Uprights, a man and a woman in a house with dirt outside that I could run around in, and it was nice. I got food every day, and the man would comb my coat and take me for walks. I always felt that he liked me more than the woman did, so I suppose I stayed closer to him and was pleased to see him more than her. It’s only canine nature, isn’t it? You take care of them that take care of you. They seemed okay for Uprights, but then things started to change. They would shout terrible sounds at each other all the time. What they were saying I have no idea, because I was young and never learned more than a few words of Upright, but you could feel the anger in the air. It nearly always ended up with the man walking out, and those were the worst times. When he had gone she used to shout at me and kick me, like I was him and it was me she was angry at. I soon got to know that I had to hide when he left.”
Magica hesitated as if troubled by the memory. “This went on for some time,” she continued after a minute or so, “and then one day she was very nice to me. She stroked me and gave me cookies, and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. ‘Walk’ was one of the Upright words I did know. She put me on my leash. We got into the roller and drove for a long time. She finally stopped at a place I didn’t know and walked me here, to the park. When we got here she looked around to see if there were any other Uprights watching, and then took off my leash and started beating me with it and kicking me, so I ran off to get away from her. I hid for a while, and then came back to see if she was still there, but she had gone. I knew then what she had done. She figured that the man loved me, and would be upset if I wasn’t there, so to get back at him for all the things he’d shouted at her she left me here, a long way from home.” She paused. “I bet he was upset, too.”
The team was hushed. The story, which, apart from Waggit, they’d all heard before, still had the power to silence them. Tazar let the stillness hang over the group for a while. He then turned to Lowdown, who sat next to Magica in the circle.
“Lowdown?”
“Well, boss, so far as I know I ain’t ever lived with Uprights. I know my old memory’s not the most reliable, but I’m pretty certain about that. I do remember being with a dog that I think was my mom, living in a box at the back of a big building someplace, where exactly, who knows? Anyway, the Ruzelas came and took us to this sort of lockup where there were hundreds of other dogs, all stuck in these metal cages. They put me in one and my mom in another, and there we stayed. It was horrible. The food was bad—made the green furry bits on tonight’s dinner seem like a luxury—and we only got taken out of the cages once a day to take a couple of steps around a concrete yard, so if I’ve got short legs it ain’t because of too much exercise as a youth.” The team chuckled at this. One thing they all liked about Lowdown was his ability to see humor in even the grimmest situation. “If you was in this lockup, two things would happen to you. Uprights would come in every day, and if they liked the look of you they would take you away to live with them. Those that didn’t get picked stayed in the cages for a while and then one of the Uprights that worked in the place would come and take you away and you’d never be seen again. Nobody knew exactly what happened to those that was taken, but we had a pretty good idea. Every time they came for one of us the rest would bark and howl, they was all so upset. Anyway, I’d been there a while. No surprise that no Upright picked me. After all I ain’t decorative, am I? Then one night one of the women Uprights who was nicer than the others, always sneaking in bits of food and stuff for us, she came, opened the cage, and hid me under her coat. She kept me hidden until we got out of the building and down to the park, and then she put me on the dirt and said something that I didn’t understand. I knew she was kind, and she was trying to help me, so I rubbed myself against her to show that I liked her, but she kept shooing me away. She had water coming out of her eyes, like Uprights do sometimes when they’re upset. I think she knew that something bad would happen to me if I stayed in the lockup any longer, ’cause they had taken my mom away that same day, and I never saw her again.”
And so they went on, each dog’s story one of sadness and abandonment. Even Alicia could make you feel sorry for her when she told of being tied up to a tree with a rope that she had to chew through to get free. She spoiled the emotion of the moment, however, by shrieking, “I don’t get it. I mean it’s not like I’m made of spare parts or anything. I’m a purebred. Why would anyone want to abandon me?”
As each of the animals spoke Waggit felt as if layers of ice were forming around his heart. He became numb with sorrow, but the worst moment for him was when Cal told how he became a Tazarian.
“I was living with two Uprights in one of those big buildings where lots of them live. Our part of it was small, but I prefer it that way. It’s more cozy and friendly. Anyway, things were going along just swell until the little Upright came along. I actually liked him. He made a lot of noise, which I always wanted to do but wasn’t allowed to. He also smelled great. I loved his scent. It was clean and nice. One day I was next to him and I licked him to find out if he tasted as good as he smelled, and the man went crazy. He smacked me across the nose and shouted at me and locked me in one of the small rooms. The next day I thought he’d forgotten all about it, and sure enough he seemed okay and took me for a walk here in the park. He even threw sticks for me, which was great because he didn’t do it that often. He threw one that went a long way. It fell in bushes, and it took me some time to find. When I got it I went back to where the man had been, but he’d gone. I kept thinking he’d come back for me, but he never did.”
Waggit couldn’t believe his ears. What had happened to Cal was almost exactly what had happened to him. His owners had gotten a baby Upright, and although he hadn’t ever licked it, the woman kept on shouting at him whenever he got near it. This went on for several days and it was clear that his master was distressed by what was happening. Waggit assumed that his master had taken him to the park, something that he’d never done before, to get him out of the house and let the woman calm down. Before that day he’d never thrown a ball for Waggit either. He’d thrown a ball a long way down a hill, and by the time Waggit had returned with it he had disappeared. Could it be that
he had really been abandoned like all the others? Was it possible that his owner would never come back, and that he would live the rest of his life with the Tazarians? He liked the team, but then he liked his master, too, and life with him seemed a lot easier than life in the park. He stood up, feeling a little wobbly on his legs.
“I’m just going for a little walk,” he said to nobody in particular.
Lowdown began to struggle to his feet to go with his young friend, but Tazar blocked his way.
“The boy needs to be alone,” he growled softly. “Let him go. He’ll be all right.” And they both watched as Waggit disappeared into the black night.
6
Survival
By the time the dogs were getting ready to sleep, Waggit still hadn’t returned. Lowdown was worried about him. The dog’s stories had obviously upset him a lot, even though they’d achieved Tazar’s intention of making him face up to the fact that he had been abandoned. Lowdown knew that in his present state of mind Waggit would be less alert to the dangers of the night, whether it was the Stoners or Tashi’s team or even traffic.
“Boss,” he asked Tazar, “do you think we should go and look for Waggit?”
Cal and Raz overheard him.
“We could go,” Cal volunteered. “We’re good searchers, honest. Please let us go.”
But Tazar was firm. “No,” he said, “he needs time to come to terms with all that he’s heard tonight. There’s a risk that some harm could befall him, but it’s a risk we’ll have to take. Until he accepts his past he will never be comfortable with his future.”
There were times when you could persuade Tazar to change his mind, and there were times when he was immovable, and the dogs recognized that there was no point pressing him on this any further. They sighed and settled down for the night as best they could. Lowdown found it difficult to sleep. He tossed and turned, scratched and snorted, and worried about Waggit until tiredness finally got the better of him and he drifted off into a sleep that was disturbed by dreams of terrifying monsters attacking puppies, and Stoners and Ruzelas, and storms with terrible thunder and lightning.
He awoke with a start several hours later as the dawn was breaking on a clear and much colder day. His alarm clock turned out to be Cal, gently nipping at his leg.
“Look who’s here, Lowdown, and see what he’s got.”
The old dog blinked, yawned, and struggled to his feet. There at the entrance to the tunnel was Waggit, covered in mud and leaves. In his mouth he had a large, dead rabbit.
Tazar’s instincts had been right once again. Knowing that his “owner” had discarded him like so much trash had a profound effect on Waggit. Now he knew that there would be no rescue, no cans of food. He hadn’t wanted to kill the rabbit, but in doing so he was obeying the oldest law of the planet, that of survival.
Now he dropped the dead animal and entered the shelter that was his only home. He began to shake uncontrollably. Cal and Raz came to either side of him and pressed their bodies against his quivering form.
“It’s okay,” said Raz. “You get used to it. You get used to everything.”
The change in Waggit was clear to everyone. He was more serious and focused, more suspicious, and less willing to take everything he was told at face value. Even his body language changed. He walked closer to the ground, never making eye contact with strangers, moving surreptitiously through the park, especially when he had to cross open terrain. He also lived up to Tazar’s expectations of his abilities as a hunter, providing more food for the team than any other dog. When he went out on a hunt it was as if he shut down his emotions; he couldn’t afford to feel sympathy for his prey, not anymore.
He was no longer an innocent puppy, but he was still a young dog, and he loved to do the things that young dogs do. This mostly meant wrestling with Cal and Raz, and occasionally with Lady Magica. If Lowdown was his soul mate, these three were his playmates. They would snarl and growl and roughhouse one another to the ground, teeth gnashing and lips curled. To the onlooker it was fearsome, but to the dogs it was harmless fun. When they regained enough breath they would move on to the next game. Sometimes they would play tug-of-war, with a dog on each end of a fallen branch, or chase stones down a hill, and they frequently ended up swimming in one of the more secluded parts of the Deepwater.
Lowdown and Gordo were content to watch these antics. The older dog couldn’t participate because of his aches and pains; and, anyway, wrestling him to the ground would have been no challenge because he was so close to it to begin with. Pinning Gordo down, on the other hand, would have been a challenge for the combined efforts of the entire team. How he remained so enormous was one of the enduring mysteries of the park. At first the team suspected that he had a secret food source, but he didn’t. It was just how he was built, and he stayed the same in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.
Gordo refused to participate in the games for two reasons. The first was that he was afraid that he’d hurt someone by accident. The second, and to him the more important reason, was the pleasure that he got from watching the love of his life, Magica, play-fight with the boys and give as good as she got. If for some reason she wasn’t part of the free-for-all he would generally nod off to sleep, his second favorite activity.
Another park mystery, along with Gordo’s weight, was what Tazar did during the day. Sometimes he would hang out with the rest of the team, but it was more usual for him to leave by himself in the morning and return shortly before the meal in the evening, unless there was an emergency that he had to deal with. Lowdown told Waggit that he thought Tazar spent his days gathering intelligence about what was happening in the park. Indeed there was nothing that occurred within its boundaries that he didn’t know about. He had a favorite saying—“There’s no such thing as a pleasant surprise”—and to him, knowledge was control.
Tazar’s obsession with knowledge saved two of the team members some days later. The pleasant, unusually warm weather had ended, and a brisk cold spell had taken its place, cold enough to make people take lunch where they worked, or in restaurants outside of the park. It was also chilly enough for the small animals that lived in the woods to stay in their warm holes beneath the earth. There was very little food and the dogs were hungry. Cal and Raz expended more energy than most of their teammates, and therefore needed more calories. They were on a foraging expedition that took them close to those places most frequented by humans, in the vague hope that some of the hardier ones would still be taking a quick lunch on a bench. Cal’s nose suddenly quivered.
He turned to Raz and said, “Do you smell what I smell, brother?”
Cal lifted his snout and took several sharp intakes of breath. “I do indeed, brother—meat, and not too far away by the smell of it.”
The two of them moved forward in silence, their nostrils flared and twitching. Suddenly they came upon a strange wire structure, in the middle of which was a slab of red, delicious, fragrant meat.
“Oh my,” said Cal.
“Indeed,” said Raz.
Then they saw that no more than twenty feet away was a similar enclosure with an equally attractive meal lying inside. Cal’s stomach growled in appreciation.
“You take this one,” he said to Raz, nodding to the closer of the two, “and I’ll take the other.” Just as they were going to snap up their finds they heard a familiar bark behind them. They whirled around to see Tazar imperiously perched on a rock.
“I would think twice before doing that if I were either one of you,” he said.
“But why, boss?” asked Cal, with just the hint of a whine in his voice. “It smells like good meat.”
“I’m sure it’s the best the Ruzelas could find,” Tazar agreed.
“But why would the Ruzelas leave meat in the woods?” asked Raz, genuinely confused.
“Well, first of all, let me say this,” said Tazar. “Whenever you find something that seems strange, be very, very suspicious. Have you ever seen these wire dens before?”
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“Well, no,” the other two agreed.
“Now let me answer your question with action rather than words.”
Tazar looked around until he found a long, straight, dead branch, one end of which he grasped in his mouth. Then he ran with it toward the meat in the cage. When the far end struck the food, a spring-loaded door came crashing down, sealing off the entrance, and therefore the exit, for any animal trapped inside. Cal and Raz both gasped.
Tazar dropped the branch.
“I saw the Ruzelas setting up these devices earlier this morning. Get caught in one of these little beauties and you end up in the Great Unknown.”
“However…” Tazar chuckled, a wicked smile upon his face. “It is nice of the Ruzelas to leave out food for us, especially in these lean times. Cal, get ready,” he commanded.
Cal got ready, for what he had no idea. But he was prepared for anything that Tazar wanted him to do. The branch was still stuck in the mouth of the cage. Because the branch was curved, there was a gap between the door and the ground. Tazar maneuvered his powerful body into this space and began to push upward with all his might to force open the door. But it wouldn’t budge.
“Get over here and help me,” he panted to Raz. The dog ran over and put his weight underneath the door as well, and between them they managed to force it open no more than six inches. For Cal, however, this was more than enough space to crawl through and retrieve the meat with a howl of triumph.
“Let’s do the other one, too,” he said excitedly.
The two dogs scurried into the woods and soon came back with another branch of a similar shape and length.
“Give it to me,” Tazar ordered. “We’ll do this one a little differently.”
He put the branch in his mouth, but instead of springing the trap by touching the meat, he very carefully placed the tip of the branch in the far corner of the cage. Using only his teeth, he forced the branch against the top part of the hole where the trapdoor slid down. Seeing that the door was now jammed, Cal enthusiastically ran in to get the meat.
