Fifteen Dogs

by André Alexis

  – The little fucker’s gold, said the man.

  Though she had affection for ‘her’ dog, Clare agreed. It was almost as if the beagle understood them. Beyond that, the dog was compact and adorable. Much of her affection for Russell was transferred to Benjy on the spot.

  – He must belong to someone, she said.

  – No, said Benjy. No, no, no!

  – You heard him, the man said laughing. He doesn’t belong to anyone. Besides, possession is nine-tenths of the law.

  – You think we should keep him?

  – Don’t see why not. He hasn’t got tags. What’s your name, boy? Can you say your name?

  – Benjy, said Benjy.

  – Henny? asked Clare.

  – Benjy, said Benjy again.

  – Benny it is, said the man.

  He opened the screen door to let Benjy into the house. Prince climbed tentatively onto the porch, intending to follow his pack mate in.

  – No, not you, said the man.

  He stuck his foot out to block Prince’s way. Nor did Clare object. She yawned and went in after Benjy, closely followed by the man, who closed both doors after him. In this way, as suddenly as he’d regained a pack mate, Prince lost the dog he believed was the last to share his language. Over the months that followed, he returned regularly to the house. On occasion, he was chased away. On occasion, he sat on the porch waiting to be let in, hoping to speak with Benjy. As it happened, however, this was the last he saw of the small dog with floppy ears.

  The man’s name was Randy. This Benjy learned quickly because Randy taught him to say it. And the man was delighted when, in mere hours, Benjy mastered the r.

  Randy would say

  – Hey! Clare! Look what I taught him …

  Then Benjy would speak the name, rolling the r as if beagles were French.

  – Rrr-andy.

  The humans would laugh, and Benjy – who had no idea why the name provoked such pleasure – would look at them with his head tilted to one side. Something in the sound of the name must have been potent because, later, when Randy grew tired of the game, he would ask not

  – What’s my name?

  but

  – How do you feel?

  The answer

  – Rrr-andy

  would set the humans laughing as obstreperously as before.

  They were, Benjy thought, strange, and over the months he spent with them, he got to observe the strangeness up close. But there were also ways in which they were unexceptional. When they wanted food, they ate. When they were thirsty, they drank. Their den, naturally, was arranged to satisfy these needs at once. When they were in the kitchen, they were never more than a step or two from food or drink. The fridge was – as all fridges are – remarkable in that respect. This one was a wide, tall block of celadon: unavoidable or, better, unmissable. Once its door was opened, it exhaled fat, sweet and spices. Other nooks were just as enticing. The high cupboards, for instance, seemed to be made of coconut, sugar, flour, salt and vinegar. And then there was the room where the humans bathed and applied chemicals to themselves. The bathroom was fascinating, it being astonishing to watch the already pale beings applying creams to make themselves paler still. Was there something about white that brought status? If so, what was the point of drawing black circles around their eyes or red ones around their mouths?

  But if the bathroom was astonishing and the kitchen admirable, what was the word for the bedroom? Here, the two were at their strangest. The bedroom had its pleasures, of course. It was where the three of them – Benjy, Randy, Clare – slept. It was where they were a pack, where Benjy felt most as if he belonged. In the beginning, he was relegated to the foot of the bed, but after a while, he slept closer to the middle, ending up most mornings comfortably lodged between the humans. And so, the bedroom was also the room where the smells human bodies made were most pungent.

  What was strange about the bedroom was neither the room nor the sensual there-ness of its human occupants. What was strange was copulation. The humans had – every now and again – what was called ‘sex.’ (Why they needed a name for something so obvious was beyond Benjy’s understanding. Why name it, when its necessity was clear to all concerned?) The coupling was not confusing. The ritual that accompanied coupling was what Benjy found odd.

  First of all, Randy and Clare kicked him off the bed whenever they were about to have sex. If he got anywhere near them when they were aroused, one or the other would treat him as unkindly as they could: kick, slap or hit. While they had sex, he was not wanted, so he kept his distance, observing them from a corner of the room. He would jump onto the wicker chair beside the chest of drawers. From there, he got the best view.

  In the real world, in the world of kitchens, bathrooms, televisions and biscuits, Randy was so obviously the leader that it made no sense to respect Clare. Benjy would lie on her lap while she watched television, lick her face to catch any scraps of food that might linger there, put his head above hers when she was lying down. With Randy he was cautious and much more attentive. Randy was like most high-status beings: he hit out when he was displeased. (The only time Benjy tried to jump up on his lap, Randy pushed him away so hard Benjy flew against a table leg.) He was, at least to Benjy, intimidating.

  In the bedroom, however, things were not so clear-cut. Most of the time, Randy fucked Clare. There was nothing unusual about that. It was his prerogative and, really, Benjy would not have been offended if Randy had fucked him as well. But then there were those sessions that smelled of cow. During these, Randy would wear black leather (with parts of himself exposed) and plead while Clare struck him with a riding crop. Most remarkably, it was then she who would penetrate Randy. More: Randy’s pleadings were, in the bedroom, as pathetic as Clare’s sometimes were in the real world, yet both of them seemed to desire these moments during which Clare was fully and admirably dominant while Randy was, to Benjy’s thinking, contemptible.

  Benjy, a student of dominance, naturally understood that pleasure – the pleasure taken by Randy and Clare in these sessions – changed the equation between beings. As Randy actually enjoyed the moments when he was dominated, it could not mean that he had ceased to be pack leader. Nor could Clare’s pleasure in the bedroom give proof that her status had changed elsewhere, that he (that is, Benjy) should now respect her. Yet, something about seeing Randy vulnerable could not help but influence Benjy’s feelings about the man. He began to think less of Randy from the first time he saw him in leather and thought progressively less of him on each occasion thereafter.

  In effect, Randy and Clare’s love life created a kind of vacuum in Benjy’s imagination. He could not decide who was actually pack leader. That being the case, he wondered why the leader should not be him. So, after a while, he would not come when Randy called, would not repeat Randy’s name, would not immediately submit to Randy’s will, running beneath the bed or sofa rather than doing what he was asked to do, peeing on Randy’s pillow to let Randy know who was in charge. The result? Randy – not a particularly sensitive man nor one with a deep love for animals – grew tired of Benjy, despite the beagle’s intelligence, despite Benjy’s obvious talents.

  Clare’s affection was more durable, but only just. Once Benjy ceased doing what he was told to do (dance, roll over, speak …), it occurred to her that they had overestimated his abilities, that the dog was less intelligent than ‘Russell,’ her dog, the one Randy had chased away and now would not let in. Clare took care of Benjy, though, buying him food and petting him when he allowed it.

  Naturally, this all contributed to Benjy’s feeling that he was in control.

  In total, Benjy spent six months with Randy and Clare, neither a long time nor a short one.

  In the weeks immediately preceding his death, his life was just this side of perfect. He had the run of a house. Clare worked during the day on most days. Randy stayed at home but spent much of his time in the living room before the television, out of Benjy’s way. When he remembered
Benjy or if Benjy prompted him, he would put food down in a bowl – human food, mostly – or let him out the front door so Benjy could relieve himself on the lawn. Otherwise, Benjy was left to his own devices. This was more than a dog of his size and stature could have hoped for: food, a den with humans he could manipulate or evade, and an outside world that was not threatening. If it is possible to grow feral through an excess of civilization, then Benjy grew feral. Ignoring his instincts, abandoning his natural caution, confusing self-indulgence for dominance, losing himself in the twists and turns of his own calculations, he lost sight of the true indicators of dominance.

  Randy and Clare should not have been a puzzle to Benjy. They were not complex. What they were was inconsiderate, crooked and above all selfish. In a word, they were very like Benjy himself. When, five months after taking Benjy in, Clare lost her job, the two were three months in arrears on their rent. Randy refused to work at anything that did not involve his ‘profession.’ (He thought of himself as a musician, though he was actually, from time to time, a roadie. In fact, he did not like music and, being almost proudly shiftless, he had been fired by every band he had ever managed to work for.) Clare, peeved, refused to look for work until he did. Their impasse was unpleasant and tense, but the two agreed on one thing: they would abandon the house rather than pay the rent they owed. In the middle of an October night, taking only what they wanted – and what would fit in their Pontiac Sunbird – they would leave Toronto for Syracuse, where Randy’s brother lived.

  And so, Benjy’s death began sotto voce. The trees had changed colour. Along Rhodes, the leaves on the branches that hung over the street were orange and yellow. Nothing unusual about that. Clare was home during the day, but that was no threat to Benjy’s routine, so he thought nothing of it. Randy and Clare began to put things in cardboard boxes, but the things they packed held no significance for Benjy, so he was unimpressed. A tension crept into Randy’s and Clare’s voices. Benjy noticed the change in their demeanour, but as he now thought himself pack leader, it would have been beneath him to acknowledge the shift.

  To their credit, on the night they stole away, Randy and Clare tried to take Benjy with them. They had quietly loaded the Sunbird with pots, pans, clothes and lamps. Around one in the morning, when they were ready to leave, they tried to coax Benjy out from under the bed. He refused to follow them. Clare pled their case, but Benjy did not respect Clare. In fact, he was deaf to any counsel but his own.

  – Leave the little twerp right there, said Randy. We’ve got to go.

  – We can’t leave Benny. He’ll starve.

  – No, he won’t. Menzies’ll find him. Besides, I’m tired of his pissing on the pillows.

  Clare sighed.

  – Stupid dog, she said.

  They left the light on in the kitchen. They put down a bowl of water and a bowl of pasta and tuna for the dog. Then they left for their new lives. Clare wept as they walked away from what had been, for five whole years, their home.

  The sound of Clare’s crying troubled Benjy’s dreams. He felt something of her emotion and, roused from sleep, he lifted his head and breathed in. All smelled as it should have and the house was quiet, so he settled back into a dream of quick rats.

  The following day, Benjy woke early. Sometime in the night, he had climbed onto the bed. Had he noticed the humans were not there with him? He certainly noticed in the morning. He was alone at the head of a bed without sheets, the light of an autumn morning coming through the now uncurtained bedroom window. He jumped down and cautiously explored the house, the only sounds being the loud hum of the fridge, the clicking of his nails on wood (bedroom, living room, dining room), linoleum (kitchen), ceramic tile (bathroom). There were also the sounds from outside: cars, mostly, and distant voices.

  For the first time in a while, Benjy called out Randy’s name.

  – Rrr-andy!

  The sound did not quite echo, but it held in the air a little longer than usual. It was as if words persisted when there were no humans around to hear them. He was not upset. Randy and Clare had not got his permission to leave. They would return. He ate a few bites of pasta and tuna, drank from his water bowl, then returned to the bed. He peed in the place on the bed where Randy’s pillow should have been before going back to sleep.

  That was, more or less, how the first days passed. Benjy slept, padded about, drank from his bowl (and then the toilet), waited. The days were measured by the slowed passage of time, by darkness and by light. But as time passed, he grew more and more hungry. The first morning, Benjy had been less than thrilled to find pasta and tuna in his bowl. He’d nevertheless eaten every bit by the end of the day. By the end of the second day, he had licked the bowl so clean there was no hint of tuna left on the porcelain. From that moment, the house became a place in which to search for food.

  The fridge, so fascinating when Randy or Clare opened it, was inaccessible to him. He understood how the door opened. He could put his paw on the magnetized strip – the indentation – between the body of the fridge and its door. What he could not do was open the door. He could not get a proper angle or produce the necessary torque when standing directly in front of the door. The kitchen cupboards were at first as inaccessible as the fridge, but Benjy hit on the idea of pushing a chair over to the counter. He jumped onto the chair, then onto the countertop. Standing up on the countertop, he was able to open the cupboard doors. Little good that did him, though. He could smell a number of things, but the bottom shelf of the cupboard was all he could reach. For all his trouble, the only things he managed to knock down were an opened bag of uncooked macaroni and a can of mushroom soup.

  He ate the macaroni at once but the can of soup was no more than a toy to bat around.

  The third and fourth days were dire. All speculation about dominance or dignity stopped. He understood at last that he had been abandoned – he knew it – and although the thought wounded him he put it aside. There was still water when he flushed the toilet. That was good. But he grew desperate for something solid. Remembering words that Majnoun had taught him, words that humans always responded to (said Majnoun), Benjy went to the front door and cried out.

  – Help me! Help me!

  For what seemed like days, he cried the words out. He spoke the words clearly and he was heard by a number of pedestrians. Unfortunately, circumstances conspired against the dog. To begin with, it was Halloween. Along Rhodes Avenue, a number of houses were done up in ghastly fashion. There were pumpkins on ledges, witches and zombies on lawns and porches. Some of the witches cackled as one approached them. Some of the zombies groaned loudly and moved their outstretched arms up and down. Given all that, Benjy’s high-pitched calls for help were not alarming. Of those who heard his cries, a good number took his words for a witty reference to an old film in which a man is transformed into a fly.

  It would have been better had Benjy simply barked. The sound of a dog in distress would not have amused anyone.

  Other circumstances worked against him as well. Mr. Menzies, the landlord, had been called away to Glasgow, where his aging father had undergone heart surgery. The last thing on his mind was the property on Rhodes. It would be weeks before he so much as thought about it again. And finally: it being autumn, mice throughout the city were searching for winter homes. For every mouse that found a home, there were many more that found death in the sweet-tasting poisons left in corners or hidden in places a mouse might be forgiven for thinking safe. Before he had been called away and before Randy and Clare left without paying him back rent, Mr. Menzies had traps containing warfarin put down in mouse-tempting places throughout the house: behind appliances, in heating vents, in the cupboards beneath both the kitchen and the bathroom sinks. In principle, the traps were safe for domestic animals. Though the smell of the poison was alluring – like peanut butter, bacon and fried fish – there was no way for a cat or dog to open the black, plastic containers to get at the poisoned pellets. The traps should have been doubly safe, where Benjy was
concerned, because something in their smell reminded him of a garden of death.

  Desperately hungry at last, however, he opened the door to the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. The cupboard smelled of chemicals and decay: soap, acids, rust, mould and grime. In amongst the chemical smells was a hint of peanut butter and fish skin. And it suddenly – or conveniently – occurred to Benjy that the smells of death came not from the plastic trap but from the tins, bottles and cans around it. If he could get the black container out, he would find the remains of a meal that had, by happy accident, been left under the sink.

  As it happened, getting the trap from under the sink was not difficult. He burrowed amongst the bottles and cans, his sense of smell leading him to the black plastic container. What took time was deciding how best to open the thing. He could hear the ‘food’ rattling around inside. He could smell sustenance, but shaking the container did nothing. He was resourceful, however. After some thought, he dropped the trap from the kitchen counter, letting it fall to the floor. He did this only once. The box flew open and half a dozen pellets scattered like pink insects over the linoleum floor.

  Benjy ate every one of the pellets. He waited, felt hungry still, then licked the floor where the pellets had touched. He was grateful that he had found food, strange-tasting food though it had been. He then repeated the process with the trap beneath the bathroom sink. After eating those, he drank water from the toilet and went to sleep on the bed.

  True pain came late the following night. Benjy knew at once that he had made a mistake and that death was on him. His knowledge came from the strangeness of the agony: as if a fire were moving deliberately through the den of his body, searching for kindling. Also: his thirst was beyond appeal or satisfaction. His instinct was to stay still and hide from death. But he was driven to drink from the toilet, and this he did until he was too weak to stand up on his hind legs, too weak to drink.

  The ‘great cold’ had come for Benjy. The death he experienced was as terrible as that suffered by Atticus, Rosie, Frick and Frack. And yet, in the midst of his terrible end, he experienced a stillness from which, in a manner of speaking, he could see beyond life and pain, beyond the world itself to a state that promised relief from suffering. As he died, bleeding from the nose, on the white tile floor of the bathroom, Benjy experienced a moment of hope that was not transcendent or mystical, but, rather, very much in keeping with his character. From the moment he was whelped, Benjy had been calculating, a schemer. But like all schemers he held within him the vision of a place or a state beyond schemes, where schemes were unnecessary because he was safe.