Bug, atop his shoulders, did not.
The hushed crowd watched the northern half of the fake Mrs. Nutbush move in the opposite direction as the southern half as she staggered into the great arena, her various bits again restless and on the move below the leopard coat.
In this fashion did Sam lead his pirate commandos into the greatest dog show on earth in order to destroy it.
Turning back to face the arena hall ahead, Sam immediately smelled Cassius.
THIRTY
GO
Sam hurriedly led the swaying pile of dogs around the arena’s perimeter passage to an isolated, latched side exit. Pushing on the door opened it to the alley behind, where the enormous Tusk waited. The huge dog ambled in. Madam jumped on his back.
“There!” Sam pointed to a spiral staircase that disappeared up to the arena’s roof far above. “Remember to wait for my signal!”
“Forever, handsome,” cooed Madam. Tusk galloped up the stairs toward the roof, Madam hanging on to his back with a cat’s nimble balance.
Sam then led his team to the arena’s main backstage area. It looked like the pits of the Indianapolis 500, the dozens of racers surrounded by their crews prepping them for the big event. But instead of engines being tuned, it was fur being poofed, nails polished and painted, teeth whitened, noses wiped, eyelashes curled, tails trimmed, breaths sweetened and bottoms perfumed.
The mutts below the fur coat peeked out, eyes wide and disbelieving. They simply had no idea that such creatures existed outside of legend.
“Look,” said Ol’ Blue, her voice hushed in awe. Never had these unwanted mutts imagined that any dogs could receive so much slavish, smothering, all-consuming devotion from any human being.
This they mistook for love, and it only focused them on the task at hand.
A blast of trumpets startled them. It was the signal for the grand procession of champions. The backstage exploded into a sudden flurry of action, and the dogs and their owners lined up to enter the main arena.
The commandos found a hidden corner behind a support pillar and tumbled forth from the clothing. They moved to a curtain, and each poked out an un-wiped nose to behold the extraordinary sight unfolding inside the cavernous coliseum.
Amidst flashing camera bulbs, men and women led the show dogs in a procession around the arena, circling a central area covered by a vast red carpet. The hundred thousand people in the seats cheered and waved and thundered their approval or disapproval of the canine gladiators strutting before them as they prepared for their battle of beauty. Occasionally, one human would break from the procession and run to the arena’s edge and raise his dog above his head before the mob and send them into spasms of hysteria—bewitched as they were by the animal’s groomed glory.
On and on the parade of dogs and people went, strutting and prancing and basking in the crowd’s passionate roars. Sam scanned the dogs, desperately looking for the huge poodle whose scent even now filled his nostrils, just as its memory filled his thoughts and dreams. He would find Cassius.
And he would kill him.
Or die trying.
The dogs and their owners returned backstage while another blast of trumpets announced the next vital stage in the day’s events:
Lunch.
As if called by trainers, the humans streamed out from the backstage area and departed for the miniature sandwich squares at the Grand Breeders Lunch in the terrace, leaving their spoiled champions in their little curtained stalls to do what they did best:
Sleep.
Sam whispered to his commandos: “Get going.”
His squad of saboteurs scampered off in all directions and got busy. With paint. Hair gel. Super Glue. Hair dye. Breakfast cereal.
And in Willy and Bug’s case, hair clippers.
A fluffy-furred, puffy white prize bichon from Paris snoozed on his grooming table but awoke to a familiar noise. He sleepily looked up to see what he believed to be an enormous hairy potato beetle hanging from the light post above him, with another tiny dog the size of a rodent wrapped in his tongue and dangling just over his body. The rodent dog was holding electric dog clippers and was nearly finished shaving the bichon’s body smooth. Except for the buttocks.
The bichon laid his head back down, comforted in the knowledge that he was either dreaming or he was dead and being set upon by demons. Either way, worrying about it was more stress than he was used to and he returned to sleep.
Sam watched with limited interest as his commandos worked . . . for this wasn’t why he was really here, of course.
He crept quietly down the aisle of stalls, inspecting the sleeping dogs. Looking. Sniffing.
“Where are you, Cassius, old boy?” whispered Sam, his heart racing. His nose led him to the final stall, its curtains completely closed, hiding the dog within. He stood poised, unmoving, like a bird dog pointed at its prey.
Suddenly he caught another familiar scent. He knew this one too.
Mrs. Beaglehole.
Sam smelled her dreadful perfume made from the feet of Turkish peahens.
Suddenly the curtains flew open and she appeared, chewing a chicken leg. Sam froze and stared up at her staring down at him only feet away.
The huge woman cocked her head and stopped chewing. That beautiful dachshund looks familiar.
They locked eyes. Sam didn’t breathe.
“Couldn’t be,” she said out loud to herself. “You’re DEAD!”
She never actually got a chance to say the word dead, for when she inhaled her mighty lungs to do so, she sucked the chicken leg into her gaping throat. Grasping at her neck, the choking woman stumbled backward and fell onto the dog bathtub, splintering it into shards of fiberglass while wrenching an ankle made weak from years of supporting more bulk than it was designed for. She belched out a shriek of pain, which shot the chicken leg forth from her mouth like a bazooka, hitting a Persian pekinese in the pooper in the next stall, saving her life but forever traumatizing his.
Sam thought it best to run, which he did, but not before glimpsing the unmistakable puffs of Cassius’s white kinky fur as he lay slumbering on a table inside.
Cassius! There! So close . . .
Sam’s mind raced . . .
At that same moment, a TV news helicopter circled over the Madison Square Garden arena, reporting on the dog show.
“Lookit that,” said the reporter, staring down at the building’s roof during a break.
“Lookit what?” said the pilot.
“There’s a skinny little mutt on the roof looking through the skylight.”
“It’s a dog show. He’s sneaking a peek.” The pilot laughed.
“There’s another mutt dragging buckets of dirt from the palm trees up to the water tank and dumping them in.”
“Dumping dirt into the water tank?” said the pilot.
“He’s making mud,” said the reporter. “Wait. Hold it . . .”
He looked again.
“It’s a rhinoceros.”
THIRTY-ONE
DANCE
“Sabotage team, fall back!” whispered Sam, running through the dog stalls moments before the humans returned from lunch. His happy saboteurs poked their heads up from their tasks. The show dogs still napped, professional beauty being exhausting work.
Wee Willy spat out the electric shaver in his mouth. “What’s the matter?”
“Get back into the clothes. We’re suiting up!”
Bug trotted over to Sam, trying to keep up with him. “We’re not finished, Sam.”
“Doesn’t matter! Change of plans! Let’s go!”
“Go and do what?” said Bug, running behind.
Sam and his team disappeared again into the dark corner where they’d left Mrs. Nutbush’s things and started piling atop each other below the clothes, putting the poor woman back together once again. Sam slipped the collar over his head, still connected to the leash that was tied to the empty sleeve and glove.
Jeeves pulled himself into the bosom position
but stuck a foot into Fabio’s ear, making the two-legged mutt jump and sending the lot of them tumbling to the floor in a furred heap.
“C’mon! The others are leaving!” whispered Sam, growing frantic.
“Tell Jeeves my ear is not a footstool,” said Fabio. Wee Willy looked out from under the blue vole fur hat as the confused commandos started construction yet again.
“Sam,” he said. “What are we doing?”
“Meeting an old friend,” said Sam.
Trumpets blew and the lights dimmed in the arena as the crowd roared in anticipation of the final competition . . . and the naming of the grand champion. The judge stood in the center of the red carpet and spoke into the microphone:
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, the finalists for the Westminster best in show . . . the most beautiful dogs in all the world!”
A roar erupted, shaking the very foundations of the arena. TV cameras swung over to the entrance arch, waiting for the dogs and their owners to emerge.
One by one, the champions trotted out in a processional line with their humans close behind. All shapes, sizes and breeds, they circled the carpet and then took their places surrounding the judge, sitting regally and expectant as the crowd’s cheering grew louder.
And then quieter.
And then a complete hush.
Silence.
The crowd had noticed something:
The dogs. Something about them was not quite right at all.
The fur of a Bolivian elkhound from France wasn’t tan as it should have been. It was lime green. With orange stripes. With little happy faces.
A Spanish shih tzu’s lips were dyed hot pink to match his ears, nose and feet.
A Scottish terrier’s bottom was striped yellow and black like a bumblebee.
The flowing locks of Britain’s favorite sheepdog were strung with beads, plastic army men, and Cheerios.
Those of a collie were worked into rock-hard spikes of hair gel, pointing in all directions, much like a congealed porcupine.
A miniature poodle’s back was shaved smooth of kinky fur. Except for the words I’M WITH THE IDIOT HOLDING THE LEASH.
The dogs—regional national champions all—stared at each other in embarrassed silence.
Someone high in the audience giggled.
Then another. And another.
The laughter then began to build and roll, like a great wave approaching the beach, finally cresting in a thundering crescendo of screaming, howling hoots.
The dogs’ owners looked around in horror at the bellowing mob. They’d found their dogs in this condition when they’d returned from lunch. They’d had no time to change anything! Their dogs were a laughingstock.
Except for one.
A lone magnificent poodle.
Cassius.
He sat perfect and unchanged and sublimely gorgeous, watching the others with disgust.
The judge, standing in the middle of the red carpet, recovered from her shock and waved for the crowd to quiet, which they did. Regaining her composure, the judge stiffened, raised her eyebrows and pushed her glasses up her nose. Then she walked to Cassius and waved a single finger to the right. This was the command to begin his judging run, a trot down the short length of carpet and back for a final inspection of form, fur, line and lineage.
Cassius stood and led his human handler down and then back, his head high, his back arched and his tail at exactly a thirty-eight-degree angle.
The crowd hushed.
This was a champion. This was the most beautiful French poodle in the world. As Cassius and his handler returned to his place at the edge of the carpet, the crowd began to applaud.
Cassius beamed. This was going to be his day . . . the place where his whole life had been pointed.
The judge moved toward him. She had only to extend a single index finger over his head and he would be world champion.
High above everything, up on the roof, Madam and Tusk looked down through the skylight . . . waiting for the signal from Sam: the signal for Tusk to ram the south support for the ten-thousand-gallon water tank, causing it to fall forward and land at the edge of the skylight, dumping its now muddy contents through the portal, plummeting down the 150 feet to the red carpet below . . . and onto the heads of the world’s most celebrated show dogs sitting on it.
“I can’t see Sam!” said Madam, scanning the arena. “Wait. There he is!”
A side curtain at the edge of the show floor parted.
The crowd suddenly went silent again.
The judge, her hand beginning to move toward Cassius, looked up to see a late dachshund competitor moving toward the red carpet, pulling his slower human handler, swaying and stumbling behind him in a leopard skin coat, blue vole hat and baby seal fur boots.
The announcer cleared his throat, his voice booming over the loudspeakers: “Arriving fashionably late is number forty-six, Mrs. Corinthian Nutbush, and her miniature red dachshund, Mr. Toodles.”
Sam trotted stiffly in place of Mr. Toodles. But his eyes were locked onto Cassius, who watched him approach with a skeptical, bemused expression. Sam pulled and steered his confused team to the open space next to the huge poodle. He sat down, his eyes never leaving those of Cassius, who stared back, wondering why this dachshund looked vaguely familiar.
He’s only feet away, thought Sam, his heart pounding, his mouth dry. He fought to keep his lips from curling upward in rage, revealing his thoughts. A single leap to the perfectly shaved and perfumed throat. Nobody could stop me.
Now! he thought. Your chance is now!
He glanced upward to Cassius’s handler, standing next to the dog he was moments from killing.
It wasn’t Mrs. Beaglehole.
In fact, at that moment, Mrs. Beaglehole was sitting with Uncle Hamish in the audience with a heat pack around her ankle and an ice pack around her throat.
Now standing with Cassius was a tall, very nervous-looking young woman with long brown hair pulled back in a neat ponytail and a red bow. She turned and glanced down at Sam.
Sam’s blood went cold. He drew a breath and held it, afraid to even release his lungs lest the person in front of him disappear.
This couldn’t be real. This he never expected. This he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for three years.
Sam scanned the face staring at him and saw that the large brown eyes of a little girl—gleaming with possibility and wonder and wide open to the limitlessness of love—had softened into those of a young woman. These eyes were sadder somehow, thought Sam.
But they were the same.
Heidy.
Heidy.
Sam’s head spun. He closed his eyes and then opened them again. It wasn’t one of his cruel dreams of a former life he’d tried to forget over the last many years.
No, she was actually there, staring at him, trying like Cassius to make sense of the odd feeling of familiarity they both had about this beautiful dachshund.
From below the leopard coat, Ol’ Blue whispered to Fabio underneath his fanny: “What’s wrong with Sam?”
Fabio shrugged, which nearly toppled the lot of them.
“Number forty-six, Mr. Toodles, and his owner, Mrs. Corinthian Nutbush, please make your judging run,” said the judge, suddenly clearing Sam’s swimming head. Sam looked around. Everyone was watching him, waiting, hushed.
For Sam, suddenly the thought of killing Cassius—the thought that had dominated all others for a week—was replaced by another:
Heidy. Once lost . . . she might be his again.
She stared down at him. What was she waiting for?
Suddenly he knew.
She was waiting to see the old Sam the Lion.
He stepped onto the red carpet, pulling his “Mrs. Nutbush,” causing them to stumble and sway.
“Sam! What’re we doing?” whispered Bug from below the fur hat.
But Sam was too lost in the memories from a previous time to answer. He pulled his team to the center of the carpet as the judge a
nd Heidy and Cassius and a hundred thousand people in the arena and millions around the world watched.
Then he stopped. He looked back at Heidy, still staring with a quizzical expression . . .
And then he danced. Just as he and a little girl had done in the Vermont backyard of McCloud Acres a lifetime ago. He leapt and twirled and bounced, his mind suddenly awash in a feeling approaching happiness . . . one that he hadn’t dared allow for a very long time.
Cassius stared . . . awash in his own memories: I’ve seen this before.
Heidy was thinking the same thing . . . but her mind couldn’t make sense of it. Sam was gone. Destroyed years ago when she was a little girl. Dogs don’t return from the dead.
In the audience, Uncle Hamish stood, staring, disbelieving.
The crowd began laughing again at the dancing, spinning dachshund. They hadn’t seen such a performance at a dog show before . . . but the dachshund was quite beautiful.
But then suddenly a hush fell upon the arena.
“The . . . The Duüglitz Tuft!” someone cried out in the audience.
More people pointed and shouted: “The Duüglitz!”
Outstretched fingers shot toward the top of Sam’s skull, pointing at the tiny curled wisp of hair that Sam had instructed Madam to glue atop his head.
“The Duüglitz Tuft . . .” the judge said in a whispered awe, her eyes brimming with tears. She picked up the huge silver best in show chalice and blue championship ribbon and began to move toward the heartbreakingly flawless dachshund.
A thunderous cheer then arose from the now standing, fist-pumping, astonished crowd. The DUÜGLITZ!!
Sam the Lion was cookin’! He was on fire! The roars and cheers drove his spinning and bouncing to a frenzied pace and he twirled and danced and flipped and . . .
And then it was suddenly quiet again.
Sam stopped. The crowd was standing, staring, mute. He looked over at Heidy, who stared but held a hand to her open mouth.
He looked around on the red carpet. Pieces of fur and leather and tape and glue lay scattered. His artificial leg lay several feet away from him.
Flawed Dogs Page 9
