Because of Shoe and Other Dog Stories

by Margarita Engle

  Maybe you’re thinking at this point, Who are this kid’s parents that they would leave him alone at night?

  But the Lyonses live next door, and they’re pretty helpful, except that Mrs. Lyons drinks twenty cups of coffee a day and vacuums her house twice a day and their son Robert is always cheating me out of stuff. One night at two A.M., when my parents were at home, I got up in my pajamas and bare feet and sleepwalked over to Robert’s house and knocked on the door, and when his mother who drinks the twenty cups of coffee a day answered the door, I said, “Can Robert come out and play?”

  Robert’s mother walked me home in her nightgown and woke up my parents, and they put me to bed, and maybe they thought about putting a lock on the front door so I wouldn’t escape. Patty slept through the whole thing. Patty doesn’t sleepwalk. Just in her dreams. You can see her paws twitching when she’s dreaming. Maybe she’s running through sunlit fields of wheat.

  Most of the time, my parents get a babysitter when they go out to dinner. I like it when Julie Saylor is the babysitter. She’s funny and has blond hair, and she’s only a few years older than me, and she likes to play games like poker. It was especially fun when she told me that joke about the two babies named Sam and Joe, twins in the womb. I was wondering how babies get in the womb in the first place, and it all seemed especially interesting because Julie looked so nice with her hair and her smile. Then she got to the punch line, where Sam and Joe come out of the womb (how does that happen?) and they look at each other and say, “Weren’t we womb-mates?”

  Julie and I laughed at the joke, and I thought it would be very exciting to be in the womb and have a twin brother named Joe because I don’t have a brother. Or a sister, for that matter. All I have is Patty.

  Then there are the other babysitters, like Mrs. Menzer. She’s okay, but really old, like maybe fifty or something, and I like her, and she plays games with me, but she always gives me my dinner with the food mushed together on the plate so the mashed potatoes get mixed up with the vegetables, and the chicken gets mixed in too.

  The worst babysitter was the old lady my parents found somewhere who looked like a witch. She only came once, and she wasn’t very friendly. I didn’t know who she was, and she came in a scratchy wool dress and had a pinched face. Everything was okay until I went to bed and turned out the light. Then somehow I got the idea that she was a witch or a really bad person and maybe she had a gun and she was going to come in my room and do something terrible. I lay in bed sweating just like I did when my parents left me alone with Patty, my mind going round and round, and I couldn’t go to sleep. Then my parents came home, and everything was fine. They never knew that there had been the possibility that the babysitter was an evil witch. I feel like Patty should have at least barked once at the witch babysitter.

  * * *

  Last summer we drove way up north to visit my grandparents in their little house in the woods. That’s where the big adventure happened, which was also all about Patty and me and being alone in the dark, except that this time Patty didn’t throw up, not at all.

  On the way up, I sat in the back of the car, and I made my own little cave out of a blanket. At first I wouldn’t let Patty in, but she kept sticking her wet nose into the fort, so finally I let her in, and everything was fine until she decided to fart a big smelly fart, and I coughed and gasped, and she looked at me with those I’m-just-a-dog-I-can’t-help-it-aren’t-I-cute eyes, while I rolled down the window as fast as I could. Then Patty sat on my side of the seat and stuck her head out the window for the rest of the trip. She really likes that.

  Finally we got to my grandparents’ house in the country, and there was Yap Yap, their dog. Her name is Lucy, but I call her Yap Yap, because it seems like no matter what is going on, she’s barking. No matter how many times I’ve been to Grams’s house, still Yap Yap barks at me and goes crazy as if I’m an evil intruder. She always has a pink sweater on, even in the summer. She’s tiny, but she looks like she really wants to chomp on my ankle. Not to mention that last year she chewed up my copy of A Wrinkle in Time for no reason at all.

  Grampa, who has this big mustache and always wears army boots, said to me, “The secret is, son, don’t look at the dog. If you don’t look at her, she won’t feel threatened. Then she won’t bark.” He gave me a long lecture about why a dog is a man’s best friend, but it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying, because Yap Yap was getting so thrilled and barky at the thought of taking a chunk out of my ankle.

  One day on our visit, we went for a walk in the woods with Grams and Grampa. Their house is surrounded by a forest, and the year before, I got to make a fort in a big oak tree there, but now we were just going for a walk in the woods. I was thinking to myself, What is the point of this? Just walking? Why can’t we run, or be like woodsmen from the days of yore and hide behind trees and hunt deer and have terrifying adventures?

  And then I thought, not knowing what was to come, The best would be if we got lost and there was a huge snowstorm, and everybody was about to die from the cold and snow, even Grampa, who is supposed to be such a great woodsman. But just in time I would step forward with bravery in my eye. Using our tracking skills, Patty and I would blaze a trail through the snow to the safety of a cave. We would all huddle by a fire that I would make by rubbing two sticks together. Then in the morning, everyone would pat me on the back and thank me for saving their lives. In the meantime, I would have discovered that the cave goes deep into the mountain, and I would uncover a strange native burial site with lots of artifacts in it, and the Museum of Natural History would give me a job, and I would work there and go on expeditions to Africa and Mongolia and dig up stuff. And Patty would come along, I guess. As long as she didn’t throw up. That was my big brave thought.

  But no, we were just going for a walk, and it didn’t look like much of an adventure, so Patty and I were dawdling behind. Actually it felt kind of good to have Patty sticking close to me, her soft black fur against my leg.

  We were walking through a little clearing when suddenly Patty put her nose in the air and started sniffing and then she ran straight into the woods, barking her head off. We called, “Patty! Patty!” and after a long time she stopped barking and came back. It looked like she had a white beard, and she wasn’t barking—she was whimpering instead—and Grampa said, “I don’t believe it. She’s got into a porcupine.”

  Patty had all these quills in her mouth, and she looked really unhappy.

  Grampa said, “We’ll have to take her to the vet.”

  We started back toward home, but when we came to the big field behind Grams and Grampa’s house, Patty took off again. We could see her chasing something black and white through the meadow. The black and white something raised its tail and then Patty came back to us, and she smelled so bad it was way, way beyond a bad smell. It was so bad it made you want to throw up, like a whole new universe of bad smell from the stinky planet. All together, we said, “Skunk!”

  Now, right here you’re thinking to yourself, That could never happen. A skunk and a porcupine in one day? Not one chance in a million.

  But I didn’t make this story up. We just hit the jackpot, the super double sweepstakes of smelly and porcupine, as my grandfather called it. Grampa drove my parents and me to the vet’s with all the windows down and everyone holding their hands over their noses. Patty smelled so bad that the vet had to take the quills out in her garage. It was hard to watch, because it looked like it hurt Patty a lot. Even so, I could see Patty was really a brave dog, and she took it like a man, or a dog, I guess you would say. Afterward the vet washed Patty with something that looked like tomato juice to get rid of the skunk smell, but she still smelled crazy bad. I gave her a big hug anyway on the way back from the vet’s, and Patty gave me a look like, “I’m really sorry. It’s just my instincts. I’m a dog.” And then I kissed Patty on her poor nose and said, “It’s all right. You may be a dog, but you’re a brave dog.”

  When we got home, everything was i
n an uproar. I mean, how could things get worse than they already were? But now Grampa thought he had put Yap Yap down in the field when we first saw Patty chasing the skunk, and then in the confusion had left her behind. Everyone had been so absorbed in Patty that they hadn’t noticed how quiet things were. No yapping. You would think Yap Yap would bark her head off after being left behind, but … nothing. Maybe she was knocked out by a whiff of the skunk smell.

  While we were at the vet’s, Grams had been yelling and yelling for Yap Yap in the back meadow and walking around the fields calling, but no answer. She was kind of hysterical, and now it was late afternoon and we were all tired from the big day, but there was no way Grams and Grampa were going to let Yap Yap stay out all night. After all, she might get her little sweater dirty. Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to say that.

  So, even though it was late afternoon, it was time to organize a search party. Grams and Grampa and Dad and Mom and me and Patty. This time Grampa said we had to put Patty on a leash, so she wouldn’t get into any more trouble, and I was on leash duty, bringing up the rear as we walked across the meadow to where Grampa thought he might have last seen Yap Yap. Grampa brought a couple of flashlights, in case we had to search all night or something.

  We walked all the way through the field and didn’t find Yap Yap, so we went on into the woods. Everyone began talking about where they thought they had seen Yap Yap earlier and what she must have been thinking, and how the poor little dog must be cold and shivering somewhere all alone. In her pink sweater, I thought. And not barking. That’s a relief.

  The whole time they were talking to each other, though, no one was thinking about Patty—Patty, whose ancestors were great hunters in England or somewhere, dogs who had amazing noses and could sniff anything from a mile away and find anything lost. But nobody was thinking about that; they were just trying to use their brains to find a brown dog with a pink sweater instead of using their noses, the way Patty would.

  Grampa set off up a hill, saying that’s where she must have gone. “We took her up that hill once, and she sat on the bench at the top of the hill, and she liked the wind in her fur. It’s just a little ways up the hill, and if she’s not there, we’ll split up and search for her in teams. Maybe she’s back in the field after all.”

  Grampa always likes to be the leader, the commander-in-chief.

  Away we went, Patty and me following behind. I was wondering if her mouth was still hurting from all those quills, since she was holding back. She kept sniffing something off to the left, and the others started to get ahead of me. Then all of a sudden, Patty pulled hard on the leash and ran off sharp left, dragging me along behind her. I tugged on the leash to make her stop, but she just kept on and wouldn’t let up.

  Was it another skunk?

  The branches were slapping my face as we went on, and I tripped on a log and went flying into the dirt. But Patty kept pulling. I got up, brushed myself off, and spat the dirt out of my mouth, and Patty took off again, zigzagging back and forth, her nose to the ground. At first we were running downhill, then the ground flattened out and we were in a pine forest, which was good because the trees were farther apart and I could follow Patty without getting my face whapped every two seconds.

  By now I was thinking, Good dog, Patty, you’ll find Yap Yap. I know you will. What else would make Patty run so fast?

  I called out, “You’re a real hunter, a real hunter. Nobody can find Yap Yap but you.”

  This seemed to get her going even faster. We kept running like this for a long time through the woods, and then I noticed that Patty was nosing back and forth in the same place, over and over, and then around in circles, and then …

  She stopped and sat down.

  I looked at her.

  She looked up at me.

  We listened. It was quiet in the woods. Just a little swishing in the pine trees. I looked at her again.

  She’d lost the scent.

  Maybe she still smelled too much like a skunk to smell anything else.

  I listened some more. I couldn’t hear my grandpa or my mom or dad. Patty moved a little bit. I told her to sit still, and I listened hard for a sound. But there was only the swish of wind in the trees. Nothing else. I looked around. The daylight was fading fast. I could hear an airplane high above.

  A little part of my mind, a fear part, was getting bigger. I turned around in a full circle, peering into the woods. Everything looked the same. Which direction had we come from? What was Patty going after? Whatever it was, Yap Yap or something else, she had definitely lost the scent. She was just sitting there panting. My heart was pounding.

  I sat down in the leaves and tried to think. Actually, I tried not to think. Not to think the one thing that my mind was already thinking: We’re lost. And it’s getting dark.

  The trees were starting to fade into each other, turning into black angular shapes. Quiet all around. I petted Patty.

  “Where are we?” I said.

  She looked up at me with those big Patty eyes and shifted on her feet and then stared off into the woods. Was she afraid? Was she going to throw up like she did in my room? I started talking to her.

  “It’s okay, we’ll get home. Patty, can you find the way home? Can you smell the way home?” Patty didn’t move. She just looked off into the woods. No matter how hard I tried to get her to move, she just sat there on her haunches.

  “Where is Yap Yap?” I whispered in her ear. Patty was like a statue—only her nose twitched a little.

  We were lost, and Patty the wonder dog was definitely not coming through with a big batch of heroics. The dark trees looked darker, and the wind died down completely, and now it was definitely turning to night. I remembered something they taught us at camp about getting lost: Stay where you are. Don’t try to find your way home. You’ll just get more lost. At least that was what Counselor Jake had said. Or I thought that was what he’d said. I wished I’d listened to what he was saying.

  I sat down and leaned against the scratchy bark of a pine tree. Patty curled up next to me.

  There was nothing to do but wait. I tried not to think about being in the woods all night, but in the back of my mind, the thought was looming, like a dark cloud. My palms were sweaty, and I wished I was at home curled up in bed with a good book and my dad downstairs listening to the stereo and everything right with the world.

  Patty and I sat there for a long time, and then I saw the moon coming up through the trees. As it rose, the woods brightened, and light shone through the branches, and soon it seemed as bright as day. I could see anything in this light.

  Anything at all.

  Good, bad, or—

  I heard a branch crackle, then another. Not far away. Just behind the tree I was leaning on. I peered around and saw a dark shape under a tree. Patty was up now, too, growling. Then she started barking, loud.

  CRASH! The thing ran toward us, then stopped a few feet away and stood stock-still in the moonlight. Patty stopped barking. We both stared.

  Then I saw its antlers.

  A deer! Just as I realized what it was, it wheeled and ran gracefully away through the pines. Patty wanted to chase after it, but I grabbed her leash and held on tight, and this time she didn’t get away from me.

  My heart was still pounding. I stood for a long time, listening, then went back and sat down against the pine tree. Patty lay down next to me, and I put my arm around her and petted her head and felt her cold wet nose. Why do dogs have wet noses? Maybe it makes them better at smelling.

  I looked up at the moon through the trees. The high branches rustled in a tiny breeze. Maybe the deer was just as afraid as I was.

  I felt Patty’s warm body next to mine. I rubbed her back, and she wagged her tail in the moonlight, and I remembered when my parents first brought Patty home. For a few years after our dog Trio died, we didn’t have a dog, but then one night my parents went to their friends’ house for dinner, and I was sleeping on the porch—and yes, don’t worry, we had a babysitter—a
nd it was really nice to be out there in the cool air in my sleeping bag. I had fallen asleep to the sound of the cars going by and, far away, a train. I woke up a little later when I heard my parents come home. The moon was shining that night, too.

  Very quietly, they opened the porch door and slipped a little black ball of fur into my sleeping bag with me, and that was Patty, and she was our dog, our own little black Lab, and she had a cold wet nose and soft black fur just like now, far away and lost in the north woods.

  Somehow, sitting there against that pine tree, I felt like we were going to be okay, Patty and me. I wasn’t in a sleeping bag at home, but the night was beautiful and calm, and slowly I calmed down, too. After a long time, I fell asleep, even though the moon was so bright. I don’t know how long I slept, but I woke to a sound in the distance.

  Patty was up already, staring into the dark. I got up and turned, and though I couldn’t see anything, I could hear a sound that was unmistakable and—

  Irritating.

  And wonderful. More wonderful than irritating at that moment.

  Now it was close, cutting through the quiet of the pine forest: Yap Yap, barking that screechy, whiny bark.

  Then I saw flashlights and heard my father calling, “David! David!”

  I jumped up and down and called back and ran toward them and jumped some more and held Patty close and laughed, and soon they were all there, Mom and Dad and Grams and Grampa, hugging and happy and crying and everybody wanting to know what happened. I felt kind of stupid as I told the story, but no one seemed to mind that at all. When I finished, they put an old army coat of Grampa’s on me and then we walked home in the moonlight.