A Dog's Purpose Boxed Set

by W. Bruce Cameron

  The people stood for a moment and then turned away.

  “You only care about yourself,” Gloria said.

  “How does that make sense?” Trent responded, his voice loud.

  “Trent,” CJ said. She put a hand on Trent’s sleeve.

  “Do you know how much money this party cost?” Gloria said.

  “The party?” Trent said.

  “Trent. Don’t,” CJ said. “Just … you know what, Gloria? Give my excuses to your friends. Tell them I’ve got a headache and I’m going to my room.”

  Gloria made a loud noise and then turned and stared at me hatefully. I glanced away from her eyes. She spun and strode off down the hallway, where the people had silently withdrawn. When she got to the end of the hallway she stopped, straightened her back, and tossed her hair. “Giuseppe?” she called into the living room. “Where did you get to?”

  “I’ll get your coat,” CJ said to Trent.

  His shoulders slumped a little. “You sure? I mean, I could stay with you for a while. Talk.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  CJ went into Gloria’s bedroom and came out with Trent’s coat. He put it on. He was sad. CJ smiled at him. “Hey, in case I don’t see you, Merry Christmas.”

  “Yeah, same to you.”

  “CJ, you do get that your mom’s wrong, don’t you? That you might have upset Sheryl, but you gave her really important information. And if you had waited because you didn’t want to disturb the party, you’d have a hard time ever telling Sheryl at all because, well, it would look crazy that you had waited.”

  “I know.”

  “So don’t let her get to you, okay? Don’t let Gloria into your head.”

  They stood and looked at each other for a minute. “Okay, Trent,” CJ finally said.

  Trent turned and went to the door and we followed. Then he paused and looked up. “Hey, mistletoe.”

  CJ nodded.

  “Well, come on then,” Trent said. CJ laughed as he held out his arms. Trent pressed forward and kissed her and I jumped up and put my front feet on her back so I would be part of whatever was going on.

  “Whoa,” CJ said.

  “Okay, well, good-bye. Merry Christmas,” Trent said.

  I tried to slip out the door with him, but CJ held me back. Then she shut the door and looked at it for a minute, while I looked at her, wondering what we were doing.

  I would have been happy to circulate under the feet of all the loud people in the living room and eat treats, but CJ went up to her room, snapping her fingers for me to follow. She took off her loud clothes and put on what she usually wore: a soft shirt that went to her knees. She got into bed with the lights on, holding a book.

  Books are okay to chew on, though they are fairly tasteless and it always makes people unhappy when a dog does so. They are one of those toys that dogs aren’t supposed to play with.

  I curled up on the floor next to her bed and fell asleep, though I was conscious of the hum of people talking below me and, later, the front door opening and shutting a few times. Then there was a knocking sound and I woke up. The bedroom door pushed open.

  “Hello, CJ,” said a man. I recognized his scent from downstairs. When he had reached down to feed me a piece of fish, his watch slid down his wrist with a heavy sound.

  “Oh, hi, Giuseppe.”

  The man laughed and came into the room. “Call me Gus. The only person who calls me Giuseppe is your mother. I think because she believes I’m from Italian royalty.” He laughed again.

  “Huh,” CJ said. She smoothed the blankets down over her legs.

  The man shut the bedroom door behind him. “So what are you reading?” he asked.

  “You’re drunk, Gus.”

  “Hey, it’s a party.” The man sat down heavily on the bed, his feet on the floor right by me. I sat up.

  “What are you doing? Get out of my room,” CJ said. She felt angry.

  The man put his hand on the blanket. “I loved that dress you were wearing. You have great stems. You know what stems are? Legs.”

  The man pulled on the blanket. CJ pulled back. “Stop,” she said.

  “Come on,” the man said. He stood back up, reaching for CJ with both hands. I felt the fear coming off of her and I leaped up and put my paws on the bed and thrust my face at the man and snarled the way I’d gone after Troy the horse when he’d been about to stamp on the baby.

  The man threw himself back and stumbled against the shelf on the wall, books and photographs falling to the floor. He twisted and with a crash fell on the carpet, lying on his side. I barked and lunged forward, my teeth still bared.

  “Molly! It’s okay. Good girl.” I felt CJ’s hand on my fur, which was stiff along the ridge of my back.

  “Hey,” the man said.

  CJ found my collar and pulled me back. “You need to leave, Gus.”

  He rolled and got on his knees. The door flew open and Gloria was standing there. “What happened?” she demanded. She looked at Gus, who was crawling on the floor. He put his hands on the bedpost and hauled himself to his feet. “Giuseppe? What happened?”

  He pushed past her out into the hallway, his footsteps heavy. Gloria turned to face her daughter. “I heard the dog; did it bite him?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Well, what is going on?”

  “You don’t want to know, Gloria.”

  “Tell me!”

  “He came in here and started touching me, okay?” CJ shouted. “Molly was protecting me.”

  I turned my head at my name. Gloria turned rigid and her eyes grew large, then narrow and small. “You are such a liar,” she hissed. She turned and ran away just as the front door slammed. “Giuseppe!” she called.

  For the next several days Gloria and CJ never seemed to be in the same room. When they sat down for the part of Merry Christmas where they tore papers and had boxes, they didn’t talk to each other very much. CJ started eating her meals in her bedroom and sometimes it would just be a tiny amount of vegetable and sometimes it would be wonderful plates full of noodles and sauces and cheeses, or pizza and chips, and ice cream. Then she would go into the bathroom and stand on that small box and make a sad noise. Every few hours, every single day, CJ would go stand on that small box. I started thinking of it as the sad box, because that’s how CJ always felt when she was on it.

  Trent came over with Rocky and we all played in the snow. It was the only time CJ seemed truly happy.

  I did not feel like a bad dog for snarling at the man. CJ had been afraid and I did it without even thinking. I was worried that I’d be punished for it, but I never was.

  Soon CJ started doing school again. She and Gloria were talking to each other more often, but I could still feel a tension in the room between them. When CJ was in school, I would go down to my old place under the stairs and wait for her to come home, leaving only to go out though the dog door and play or bark at dogs I could hear yapping off in the distance.

  We no longer went to see Andi every day, but sometimes we’d go for a visit and it was always wonderful to see her. People do that—just when the routine is established, they’ll change it. On these occasions, after the usual greeting of hugs and kisses, we played the game with people sitting in chairs and also a new game with people sitting or sometimes standing in a long line.

  “This is what my grant is for, to see if a dog could signal positive on people in a group,” Andi said. “Only Luke has been able to figure it out.”

  Luke looked up at his name.

  We went up and down the line of people and the first couple of times we did so I could tell that Andi and CJ wanted something from me, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. And then I caught an odor coming off of a woman with no hair and with hands that smelled like harsh soap—there it was, the unmistakable metallic smell on her breath. I signaled and was given a biscuit.

  That seemed to be the game, though I couldn’t be sure because Andi kept leading me to other people who didn�
�t have the same scent, as if I was supposed to signal for them as well. When I did so, though, Andi would stand with her arms crossed and not give me a biscuit. It was very puzzling.

  One day I was out in the backyard in heavy new snow, bounding through it, having to leap up with every step because of how deep it was. I heard the sliding door open and saw Gloria standing there. “Want a piece of roast beef?” she called.

  I hesitantly took a step toward her, then stopped. I could hear the question in her voice but didn’t know if it meant I was in trouble or not.

  “Here,” she said. She tossed something into the snow a few feet in front of me and I went over to it, having to locate it by smell because it had sunk so far. It was a delicious piece of meat! I raised my head and looked back at Gloria, giving my tail an experimental wag.

  “Want another one?” She pitched a piece of meat near me and I jumped on it, snorting, until I found it and ate it in a quick gulp.

  When I looked up, Gloria had gone back inside. What, I wondered, had that been all about?

  Then I heard Gloria calling from the front yard, “Yoo-hoo, Molly! Dog, want another treat?”

  Treat! I bounded over to the gate and found it open. The walk had been shoveled by the man who came by on winter mornings with a truck to clear away the snow. I trotted around the side of the house. Gloria was standing in the driveway.

  “Treat,” she said. She tossed another piece of meat and I snagged it out of the air. She opened her rear car door. “Okay, want to get in? Treat?”

  Her meaning was clear. I hesitantly made my way over to the open door. She pitched some meat onto the rear floor and I jumped in and she shut the door while I gulped down the treat. Then she got in the car, started it, and we drove off down the driveway.

  I didn’t mind that I wasn’t a front-seat dog. I didn’t think I would like it with Gloria driving. I stared out the window at the snowy trees and yards for a while, then circled around and lay down on the seat for a nap.

  I woke up and shook when the car stopped and Gloria turned it off. She twisted around in her seat. “Careful now. Remember, I fed you a treat? You be nice, Molly.”

  I wagged at my name. I sniffed at Gloria’s hands as they came around my throat, but there was no meat in them. With a sudden click, my collar dropped off and landed on the seat. I lowered my nose to it.

  Gloria got out of the car and opened my door. “Come along. Heel. Be a good dog. Don’t run off.”

  We were approaching a building that reeked of dogs. Gloria pushed open the front door and slapped her leg and I followed her inside. Inside was a small room with an open door through which I could hear what had to be more than a dozen dogs barking.

  “Hello? Hello?” Gloria called.

  A woman came out through the open door and smiled. “Yes, can I help you?”

  “I found this poor dog abandoned in the streets,” Gloria said. “There’s no telling how long he’s been living like that, alone and far, far away from his family. Is this where you drop off lost dogs?”

  FIFTEEN

  I had been in places like this before. In fact, it was a little like where CJ and I went to play with Andi and Luke, except there were far more dogs and the ceiling was low and there was no big area for people to sit in chairs—just cramped aisles filled with dog cages.

  I was put in a cage with a cement floor and only a few feet between the gate and the door to a doghouse. The doghouse had a piece of carpet in it that smelled of many dogs, just as the air around me smelled of dogs and was filled with the constant sound of barking.

  When the woman came with water or food I rushed to the gate, wagging, hoping she would let me out. I wanted to run, to play, to have people pet me. The woman was nice, but she would not let me out.

  Most of the other dogs also rushed to their gates when the woman was nearby. A lot of them barked, and some of them sat quietly, being as good as they knew how. The woman did not let them out.

  I did not understand what was happening or why I was in this place of barking dogs. I missed CJ so much I found myself pacing, whimpering a little, and then I’d go into the doghouse and lie on the small piece of carpet, but I wouldn’t sleep.

  The barking that assaulted my ears was full of fear, with some anger, some pain, some sadness. When I barked, my voice carried with it my heartbreak and my plea to be let out of this place.

  At night most of the dogs quieted down, but then one of them would start barking, often a brown and black dog in the kennel next to mine, tall and thin with no tail, and that would stir up the other dogs and pretty soon we’d all be barking again. It was very difficult to sleep under such circumstances.

  I pictured myself lying at the foot of CJ’s bed. Sometimes in the night I would get too hot and jump down on the floor, but now, missing her so much, I wanted to be lying on that bed no matter how hot it was. I yearned for the touch of her hands on my fur and the familiar and wonderful scent of her skin.

  The next morning I was let out of the cage and taken down the hallway and put up on a table, just like at the Vet’s. A man and a woman petted me, and the man looked in my ears. The woman took a stick and held it near my head, but the man had his hands on both sides of my face so I couldn’t get a good look at it to see if it was a toy.

  “Got a hit,” the woman said.

  “I knew she’d be chipped,” the man said.

  I was returned to my cage. I was so disappointed I could barely summon the energy to go back and lie down on the carpet. I chewed a little on the doghouse, but even that didn’t make me feel better. I sighed, lying down with a groan.

  A few hours later the man came back. “Hello, Molly,” he said to me. I sat up and wagged, loving to hear my name. He slipped a rope around my neck. “Come on, girl; someone’s here to see you.”

  I smelled CJ the second the man opened the door at the end of the hall. “Molly!” she called. I dashed up to her and she fell to her knees and put her arms around me. I kissed her face and her ear and ran around and around her, the rope trailing behind me and getting all tangled. I gave voice to my relief, crying and crying. She laughed. “Good dog, Molly, you sit, now.”

  It was hard to sit, but I knew I needed to be a good dog. I sat, wagging my tail, while my girl stood and talked to the man.

  “I’ve been so worried,” she said. “I think she got out of the gate when the man came over to shovel the walk after that big snow we had.”

  Back down the hall, the tall black and brown dog started barking and everyone joined in. I hoped their people would come to take them home soon, too.

  “The woman who dropped her off said she was running down the street.”

  “That’s so not like Molly. How much is it total?”

  “Sixty dollars.”

  I wagged at hearing my name. CJ reached down to pet me. “Wait, the woman?”

  “Some rich lady,” the man said.

  “Rich?”

  “Well, you know. She had a new Cadillac, dressed expensively, nice hair. Lots of perfume.”

  “Blond hair?”

  “Yeah.”

  CJ drew in a deep breath. She was looking for something in her purse. I watched attentively because she often kept cookies in there. “Look, was this her?” CJ leaned over the counter.

  “I don’t think I should say.”

  “The woman in the picture is my mother.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mother dropped off your dog? Without telling you?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a silence. CJ was both angry and sad.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said.

  “Yeah.”

  I was put in the front seat for the car ride. “I missed you so much, Molly. I was so scared something was going to happen to you!” CJ said. She held me to her and I licked her face. “Oh, Molly, Molly,” she whispered. “You silly schnoodle not a poodle.” She felt sad even though we were back together. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know she’
d do something like this.”

  Though there were many interesting things to see out the window, I looked at CJ and licked her hand and put my head in her lap, just like I used to do when I was a little puppy. It felt so good to be near her I slipped into a quick and exhausted sleep.

  I sat up when the car slowed and turned sharply, filling with familiar scents. We were back home. The car became quiet and CJ reached for me, holding my head in both hands. “It’s not safe for you here, Molly. I don’t know what I am going to do. I can’t trust Gloria not to hurt you. I’d die if anything happened to you, Molly.”

  I wagged a little. CJ let me out of the car and I stepped through the melting snow to the front door—it felt so good to be home. CJ opened the door and walked in and then gasped, the fear rising up in her in a flash.

  “Shane!”

  CJ’s friend Shane was sitting in the living room. He stood, but I didn’t go over to him and I didn’t wag my tail. There was something wrong about him being here, alone in our house.

  “Hi, CJ.”

  “How did you get in?”

  Shane went down on one knee and clapped his hands. “Hiya, Molly.” He smelled like smoke. I remained by CJ’s side.

  “Shane? I said how did you get in?”

  “I stuck a rake up through the dog door and turned the dead bolt,” he said, laughing.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “How come you never call me back?”

  “You have to get out of here right now. You can’t come in my house!”

  CJ was angry. I watched her carefully, wondering what was going on.

  “You left me no choice. You’ve been completely ignoring me.”

  “Yes, that’s what people do when they break up, Shane. They stop talking to each other. You can look it up.”

  “Okay if I smoke in here?”

  “No! I need you to leave.”

  “Well, I’m not leaving until we talk this thing out.”

  “What thing? Shane, you…” CJ took a deep breath. “You called me like thirty times in a row at two in the morning.”

  “I did?” Shane laughed.

  I heard a car pulling into the driveway and went to the window to see who it was. The car door opened and it was Rocky! Trent got out, too. Rocky ran over to lift his leg on a tree.