TWENTY-THREE
LEAVE
As the Rough-Handed Man carried Sam down into the dark depths of the building at the edge of the city, the sights and smells of human beings and money and cruelty couldn’t overwhelm an even larger sense that the three-legged dog was feeling:
Fear.
His own . . . and surprisingly, the man’s. It radiated up from his huge hands, cradling Sam’s bottom and chest as they moved toward the dog-fighting pit below the brilliant light. But there was something else Sam smelled besides the man’s sweat and fear:
Shame.
Sam sensed and saw it on the man’s face as he gently lowered Sam into the tiny arena, now surrounded by yelling faces and waving money. Shame. The man’s eyes avoided Sam, and he turned to make some sort of arrangement with all the money-waving men.
Sam realized now that it was that, the money, that this was all about. And the trembling spitting screaming beast that ached to get at Sam across the pit was the obstacle for the man getting it.
Sam was meant to fight. And win. And survive.
Not likely.
Which is why Sam lay down against the wall and closed his eyes, allowing—for the first time in many years—the memories of a long-past life to flood his mind before the coming violence descended upon his tiny body. He was back in the grass of Vermont, running, a girl’s voice calling his name . . . when another familiar voice broke through.
“BUDDY!”
Sam opened his eyes and looked up at the crowd of faces. He saw the Rough-Handed Man looking down at him.
But he saw something just below him. A ragged poster next to others lining the filthy walls of the pit. It was for the Westminster Dog Show in New York City. It was the large picture of a dog at the center of it that made Sam sit up and squint into the glare of overhead lights.
It was a huge poodle. Looking gorgeous and regal and very, very familiar.
Cassius.
A word that he had long blocked out along with the rest of his memories. A word that suddenly fell on his mind like a butcher’s cleaver.
“Cassius!” said Sam loudly. “CASSIUS!”
The crowd heard a bark from the absurd, tiny dog lying in the pit waiting for death.
Silence.
Two hundred voices suddenly went still, their waving hands grasping the money stopped. The Rough-Handed Man stared, as did the others, waiting. Even the great snarling pit bull opposite Sam froze.
Cassius. The destroyer of worlds . . . Sam’s world. Cassius was alive!
If only it were he that stood five feet away at this moment, thought Sam, rather than the mindless, broken pit bull that was.
That would be something to live for. To die for.
To kill for.
Cassius is still out there.
That single thought . . . the seed of an unfinished idea . . . was enough to hook the frayed remnant that had become Sam’s life and keep him from sinking.
The stunned crowd watched in disbelief as Sam got to his feet. His eyes, now wide and focused, scanned the small pit and wood wall that surrounded it . . . and the killing machine opposite his nose.
Gotta get out of this place! he thought, his mind racing, roaring, cooking at full boil.
But first he had to deal with the huge saliva-dripping problem in front of him. He dug deep for the instincts and skills from a distant time in his life.
Time to change the rules.
“Let him go!” Sam barked to the man holding back the pit bull. “NOW!”
The pit bull opposite was released, but before the great dog could lunge, Sam was rushing him. The massive jaws snapped at Sam’s tiny head but found only air, for Sam had dropped low and slid between his wide-set legs as if on ice, emerging below the dog’s tail. Spinning, Sam leapt atop the beast’s back and careened off his head like a squirrel bouncing across a rock in a stream. But as Sam passed the smooth head, his stainless steel leggle whacked the surprised beast on the skull, stunning him, making him wobble on his spread feet.
Sam raced around the perimeter at blinding speed, the bigger dog spinning dizzyingly in the opposite direction,
vainly trying to intercept the smaller, faster one . . . all of which made Sam look like the tiny ball spinning around a giant roulette wheel.
The crowd screamed. This they’d never seen before. The Rough-Handed Man simply sat, mouth slightly open, eyes wide in shock.
The pit bull was powerful but slower than the tiny target, and Sam stayed in front of his flashing teeth. Over and over, Sam would leap high on the wall and fall atop the big dog’s head with a well-aimed whack of the steel ladle. But this would not be enough. It only drove the pit bull into further rage, the snot blowing from his flared black nostrils like dragon’s breath. It set itself up for one final run straight at Sam, backed up against the wall.
The big dog kept his head low, knowing Sam’s favorite trick. The muscled legs propelled the fighting machine forward with shocking power, and his head was nearly upon Sam when the dachshund leapt straight up, four feet like a sprung mattress spring. He wrapped his front legs around the surprised fist of the Rough-Handed Man leaning over the railing . . . and hung on.
The pit bull never saw Sam do this and to this day remembers none of it, for when he hit the wall with the top of his pointed head, he was knocked clean into blissful unconsciousness, where he immediately commenced a dream of being stuck inside a locked closet filled with expensive shoes and beef liver and then eating his way out: the default fantasy for all pit bulls.
The crowd sat stunned, silent. They turned their eyes up to Sam, still dangling on the Rough-Handed Man’s arm, who lifted the victorious dachshund and placed him on the wall before him. Slowly and silently, men began handing fistfuls of cash to the man, laying them in little piles next to his dog. Their bets.
It was a lot of money.
Sam looked up at the only small window above the crowd’s heads, the full moon shining brilliantly beyond the distant horizon. He looked back over at the man’s eyes and looked at him squarely. Even if this human being would have understood the dog, no words were needed:
It was time for Sam to leave.
The Rough-Handed Man looked back into the eyes of the dog that he’d nursed back from the edge of death many months ago, and he smiled.
Then with a wink he stared squarely at Sam and began singing under his breath: “Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies . . .”
Instantly, Sam hopped atop the man’s head and then leapt to another two feet behind him. That man threw his hands up to try to catch the bounding dog, but Sam was long gone to the next noggin. And the next, moving ever closer to the window behind them all as the men went wild again and roared, pushing closer and reaching to stop the head-leaping runaway.
Dogs just don’t escape, they were all thinking. Not here!
And especially not one that took their money.
Food and drink cups and bottles hurtled toward Sam, but the dog simply ducked and dodged the missiles. Two men spotted his destination and moved to block the tiny window. Now where? Grimy hands reached for him, tearing at the folds of his skin but finding no purchase with the smooth coat of fur. Sam moved in jerky, frantic changes of directions as he looked for any escape, any exit, any possible path to freedom, but the enraged crowd only closed in tighter. The lights went out and the room fell into darkness.
Suddenly a different voice—a dog’s voice—cut through the roar, as if someone had turned the crowd’s volume control down: “ ’ Ere, lad! Over ’ere!”
“Hey! What? Who was that?”
He heard it again.
“Over ’ere, doggy doggy!”
Sam couldn’t see the caller, but he leapt across more heads toward the voice, trusting its urgency. There was no other option.
“The tunnel! Go for the bloody tunnel!” said the stranger with a metallic echo. “Follow me melodious voice!”
Sam spied a small opening at the base of the filthy wall at the back of the ro
om—a heating duct from where the voice emerged. Sam went for it. He shot into the dark hole, but a large red-faced man with a stinking, fuming cigar clenched in angry teeth grabbed the weakest link in any dog chase: Sam’s tail.
Sam came to a sudden stop in the duct. Then he was dragged backward toward the man’s huge, red bald head, which was now wholly inserted into the aluminum tunnel. Sam had little choice but to push the nuclear button in a dog’s world of survival:
He peed.
This, among other more useful results, extinguished the cigar.
TWENTY-FOUR
CURTAINS
Sam wiggled through the heating vent duct like a rat in a drainpipe, the sounds of the hollering men growing distant behind him. He saw a light ahead and aimed for it. He hit a wall grate and tumbled out into a filthy stairwell. The source of the voice stood staring at him nervously on the steps.
It was—from Sam’s best guess—a Scottish terrier- hyena-dust mop mix.
One that appeared to have been plugged into an electrical socket while standing in a dish of muddy water.
“Who are you?” said Sam.
“No! ’Oo are YOU?” said the beast with an odd Scottish lilt.
“You called for me to run into the duct!”
“No, I called for one o’ them sixty-pound murder ’n’ mayhem machines. And out pops a peewee tofu pup wearin’ a kitchen spoon. Now what bloody good are you?”
“What good am I for what?” said Sam.
He followed the mutt’s nervous glance down the stairs. A dozen serious, murderous-looking feral cats crept up from the building’s depths straight toward them.
The new dog looked at Sam and shrugged.
“It ’appens that in regards to the house management, I am a little behind on me mouse payments.”
He pointed at his pursuers.
“Sic ’em, killer.”
Suddenly a metal door flew open on the landing just behind the gang of cats, out of which tumbled a gaggle of men. The large bald one—still with a soggy cigar in his mouth—was wiping his head dry of defensive dachshund pee. The damp man yelled, “THERE! THERE! GET HIM!”
Sam spun and dashed up the stairs, the other dog following. Sam hit the roof door and found himself on an empty flat rooftop four stories above the streets in the driving rain of a summer night’s thunderstorm. The skies lit up and cracked in rolling rumbles.
The gang of cats emerged from the doorway, fifty feet opposite them. They fanned out to attack, crouching low.
The men followed. Pulling their shirts over their heads against the rain, they too fanned out. Sam and the mutt’s backs were now up against a low wall at the corner of the roof sixty feet above the concrete.
Trapped.
The men and cats started moving in on them.
“Well, now,” said the new dog without taking his eyes off their assailants. “Guess yer pretty glad I got ya out o’ that bit o’ trouble down there, Sammy lad.”
Sam glared at the dog. “How did you know my name was Sam?”
“Well, now. It’s not Maurice Tenderboogers, is it?”
“No.”
“Bubbles Graboff?”
“No.”
“Peaches?”
“No.”
“Good, ’cause that’s my name. That leaves Sam.”
Sam ignored this curious logic because the men were getting closer and they were holding wooden clubs and slapping them on their sweaty hands. Within moments they and the rabid pack of cats would be upon the filthy, disheveled, mud- and sweat-caked little pair.
“Looks like it’s curtains for us, Sammy,” whispered Peaches, staring at their approaching attackers. “You and me, we’ve been through a lot together. Experienced all the ups and downs o’ life. I’d like t’ just say that if you and I ’ave to depart this cruel world . . .” He licked his paw and smoothed the clot of lawn sod on his head. “. . . we’ll be goin’ out lookin’ our very best.”
Sam twitched.
Going out lookin’ our best . . . repeated Sam to himself.
And then in the span of a single second . . . in the same tiny amount of time it takes for the most complex adventure to spool out in a dream—it all just popped into Sam’s mind:
How to get to Cassius.
Born instantly in all its devious complexity—whole and complete:
Going out lookin’ our best.
Sam’s face lit up, in a dark sort of way.
Sam looked around. He spotted what he was looking for. Jumping onto the low wall, he swung the steel ladle on his stump up and hooked it onto a telephone cable stretching down to a junction box at the street four floors down. Hanging upside down by his chrome foot in the driving rain and holding on to the wall, he was about to let go when he looked back at Peaches.
“You want to come or do you have other plans?”
The strange dog turned around to see what looked like the army from hell coming for them. He turned back to Sam.
“Depends. Where we going?”
“To destroy the International Westminster Dog Show in front of the world.”
Peaches blinked.
“Or we could just hide in a Dumpster,” said the mutt.
The men and feral cats were running at them now, hands and claws stretched out.
“Alas,” said Peaches, staring at the looming mob. “No time.”
Suddenly a white figure dashed in front of them from the left, skidding to a halt between the dogs and their pursuers. The huge pit bull killing machine Sam had just vanquished moments before stood there, legs apart, head low, teeth flashing and drool pooling on the pavement below his curled lips.
But he faced the men and cats, who wisely started backing up.
Turning his great square, bruised head back toward Sam, he said “GO!” Then he grinned and added, “Before I tried to kill you, you asked if there was anything I’d rather be doing. It came to me: Musical theater! Go!”
Sam saluted the bull terrier, turned and leapt for the telephone cable. He hooked the soup ladle on the wire and hung upside down. He looked back at Peaches and said, “Plane’s leaving!” Peaches leapt onto Sam’s upside-down back and sank claws into Sam’s belly, making him wince. Sam let go of the wall and the three-legged dachshund and frazzled, doggy dust mop slid down the rain-soaked cable below a silver soup spoon, down into the driving storm, down toward the flooded street that led away from town and away from trouble and directly toward far, far more.
TWENTY-FIVE
RETURN
In the basement of the old stone fort on the edge of town, the eight depositees of the National Last-Ditch Dog Depository were awakened by a sound different from the muffled sounds of the summer storm they’d heard all night.
As always for the last many years, they’d slept in a pile, so untangling was a bit of a chore. Pooft yawned, politely minding where his inflammatory opposite end was pointed. Wee Willy pulled himself out from between Tusk’s toes, where it was always warm. Ol’ Blue stretched a lavender leg. Bug rubbed his eyes with a paw, being careful not to knock one out. Fabio hopped onto his remaining two feet, stretching like a ballerina. And Madam adjusted her self-sewn Great Dane muzzle as she climbed out from below the blanket that was Jeeves’s left jowl.
They all heard the same thing coming from outside the bars of their cage. The television. A little boy’s voice:
“Lassie, you’ve come home!”
The dogs stumbled out of their enclosure past the always-unlocked cage door and blinked into the darkness. As thunder rolled somewhere above and lightning flashed, the dark room exploded into brilliance. Madam coolly stared at a vaguely familiar spoon-legged dachshund sitting atop the desk in the middle of the dungeon-like brick room.
“Handsome,” purred Madam, “is back.”
The little TV was on and playing their only movie: the little boy on the screen hugged his achingly beautiful pet.
Sam turned down the volume with his mouth. He glanced at Peaches, watching from the shadows, and th
en faced the others. He pointed to the screen and spoke with a different, harder voice than he had years before.
“ ‘Lassie, you’ve come home!’ the boy says. He cries. He holds her. He hugs her. And he tells her again . . .”
Sam leaned in close to the dogs.
“ ‘ . . . You’ve . . . come . . . home.’ ”
Sam pushed the power knob and the picture went black.
“WE,” Sam roared, “WILL NEVER HEAR THAT!” The dogs jumped. Peaches ducked. Sam began to pace across the top of the table, throwing glances at his audience.
“They aren’t coming, you know,” said Sam. “The families in their big boxy cars and the kids piling out to come down here to this wretched hole, put their faces to the bars, point at your crooked, runny noses and say, ‘THAT one, Mommy. That’s the one we’ll take home and give a wicker bed and an old pillow to sleep on, the one we’ll give a lap to rest his head on while we read a book . . . the one who’ll curl up with us when we’re sick or sad or just in need of someone to LOVE.’ ”
Sam spat out that final word as if it was something disgusting.
The dogs looked at Sam with a look that was new for them. Something between shock and sorrow and a deep and mournful pain that comes from finally seeing something unthinkably awful that you’d struggled to ignore.
Sam continued. “They are not coming for you. Ever. Because they have been fooled. And seduced. And stolen from you by the others.” Sam dropped a rolled-up poster to the floor, where it unspooled. The dogs read it:
THE Westminster Championship Dog Show COMING TO NEW YORK IN THREE DAYS
They all gasped at the magnificent dogs illustrating the words . . . their noses and legs and ears and fur all breathtakingly perfect.
They’d never seen such animals.
Wee Willy walked up closer to the poster and whistled a low whistle of awe. He was looking at a picture of Cassius, standing largest in the center.
“Zowie. That’s a dog.”
“Yes,” said Sam, cool, hiding his real emotions. “He is. And he . . . and all the rest of them . . . is why you will wait here forever while they take what should be yours. Because you’re flawed and they’re not.”
Flawed Dogs Page 7
