A Dog's Purpose

by W. Bruce Cameron

  Al got my attention by becoming afraid. His heart started to pound audibly, and I could feel his nervous energy as he wiped his hands on his pants over and over.

  “Maya, when you moved here . . . so many months I wanted to talk to you. You are so beautiful.”

  Maya laughed. “Oh, Al, I’m not beautiful; come on.”

  Some boys down by the water ran by, tossing a saucer at each other. I watched it alertly, thinking of Ethan and the stupid flip. I wondered if Ethan had ever been to the ocean and, if he had, if he brought the flip and threw it out into the waves, where I hope it sank and was never found again.

  Ethan. I could remember how he never did anything without taking me with him, except school. I loved the sense of purpose I got from work, but there were certainly days, like this one, when I thought of Ethan and missed being a doodle dog more than anything.

  Al was still afraid, and I glanced at him curiously, pulled away from the sight of the boys by his continued alarm. Was there some sort of danger? I couldn’t see any; we were all alone in this part of the park.

  “You are the most wonderful woman in the world,” he said. “I . . . I love you, Maya.”

  Maya started to feel afraid, too. What was going on? I sat up.

  “I love you, too, Al.”

  “I know I’m not rich, I know I’m not handsome . . . ,” Al said.

  “Oh my God,” Maya breathed. Her heart was beating now, too.

  “But I will love you all my life if you will let me.” Al turned on the blanket, rising to his knees.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” Maya said.

  “Will you marry me, Maya?” Al asked.

  { TWENTY-FOUR }

  One day Maya and Mama and all of the brothers and sisters and other family members came together in a big building and sat quietly while I demonstrated a new trick I’d been taught, which was to walk very slowly down a narrow path between wooden benches, mount some carpeted stairs, and stand patiently while Al removed something from a small pack I carried on my back. Then everyone sat and admired me while Maya and Al had a conversation. Maya was wearing a big fluffy outfit, so I knew we weren’t going to the park to play afterward, but that was okay because everyone seemed so glad at how well I’d done the trick. Mama even cried, she was so happy.

  Then we went to Mama’s house and children ran around and fed me cake.

  A few months later, we all moved into a different house with a much better backyard. It had a garage, too, but thankfully no one suggested I sleep out there. Al and Maya slept together and, though they didn’t mind when I jumped up to be with them, there was frankly no room to get a good night’s sleep and anyway the cats kept climbing up there, too, so I eventually learned to lie on the floor next to Maya’s side, where I could get up and follow her if she awoke during the middle of the night and went anywhere.

  Gradually, I came to understand that we wouldn’t be doing work anymore. I could only conclude that we’d Found everybody who needed to be Found and that Wally and Belinda had lost interest in the whole process. Maya still went running, though, and Al sometimes went with us, though he had trouble keeping up.

  I was therefore surprised when Maya excitedly loaded me into the truck and took me for a car ride. It felt like we were going to do work, except that Maya’s mood was different, less urgent.

  She took me to a big building and told me it was a school. This was confusing to me, as I had learned that school was something where Ethan went away—it wasn’t a place; it was a state of being without the boy. I stuck to Maya’s side, though, as we entered a big noisy room filled with children, who were all excited and laughing. I sat with Maya and watched the children who were doing their best to sit still. I was reminded of Ethan and Chelsea and the children in our neighborhood, always full of energy.

  A bright light was in my eyes. A woman spoke, and then all the girls and boys clapped, startling me. I wagged my tail, feeling a collective joy washing off the children.

  Maya walked me forward, and when she spoke her voice was very loud and seemed to come from both next to me and at the back of the room.

  “This is Ellie; she is a retired search-and-rescue dog. As part of our outreach program, I wanted to come to talk to you about how Ellie has helped find lost children, and what you can do if you ever become lost,” Maya said. I yawned, wondering what this was all about.

  After we stood around doing nothing for about half an hour, Maya led me down off the stage and the children lined up and then came up in small groups to pet me. Some of them hugged with unabashed affection, and some of them held back, a little afraid. I wagged my tail in reassurance, and one girl put a timid hand out, which I licked. She snatched her hand back, squealing, no longer frightened.

  Though Maya and I no longer did work, we very often did school. Sometimes the children were little, and sometimes they weren’t children at all but people as old as Grandma and Grandpa. Sometimes Maya and I went to places full of chemical smells and people who were in pain or feeling sad and sick as they lay in bed, and we would linger with these people until some of their sadness lifted.

  I could always tell when we were doing school, because Maya would take extra time getting dressed in the morning. The days we didn’t do school, she dressed hurriedly and sometimes ran out the door, with Al chuckling. Then Al would leave, too, and I’d be stuck at home with the stupid cats.

  Though I no longer wore nose cream, Tinkerbell persisted in hanging near me and cuddling up against me when I’d take a nap. I was glad that Al wasn’t there to see it. Al had a lot of affection for me, but for the cats, not so much. Tinkerbell hid from Al, while Stella only approached him when Al had food, and Emmet would occasionally strut over to Al and loftily rub against him as if putting cat fur on his pants was doing him some kind of favor.

  We’d been doing school for several years when Maya broke the pattern. We were in a place called class, which was smaller than some of the rooms in which I’d been and which was filled with children who all seemed about the same age. These particular children were very little and sat on the floor on blankets. I was a little envious—most of my time at home was spent napping and I didn’t seem to have the energy that I’d once had, so I decided that if the children wanted me to lie on a blanket with them, I’d be willing to do so.

  Maya called forward one of the children, who approached shyly. Her name was Alyssa, and she gave me a hug. When I licked her face, the children laughed—but Maya and I had never done this before, had a single child come forward, and I wasn’t sure what it was about.

  The woman who sat at the big desk, the teacher, said, “Alyssa has never actually met Ellie before, but if it weren’t for Ellie, Alyssa would never have been born.”

  Soon all the children were touching me, which was much more typical of how school went. Sometimes the children were a little rough and at this school a boy pulled sharply on my ears, but I just let him do it.

  At the end of school, the children raced out the door, but the little girl Alyssa stayed behind, as did the teacher. Maya seemed excited about something, so I waited expectantly, and then a man and a woman came into the classroom and Alyssa ran to them.

  The man was Jakob.

  I bounded over to him. He stooped down, scratching my ears. “How are you, Ellie! Look how gray you’re getting.”

  The woman picked up Alyssa. “Daddy used to work with Ellie; did you know that?”

  “Yes,” said Alyssa.

  Maya hugged Jakob and the woman, who set Alyssa back down so she could pet me some more.

  I sat and regarded Jakob. He was so different than when I last saw him—the coldness in him seemed to have gone away. This little girl Alyssa, I realized, was his child, and the woman was the girl’s mother. Jakob had a family now, and he was happy.

  That’s what was different. In all the time I’d known him, Jakob had never once been happy.

  “I’m glad you’re doing this community outreach program,” Jakob told Maya. “A dog like El
lie needs to work.”

  I registered my name and the word “work,” but there was no sense in the room that we had an urgent need to Find. Jakob just always talked about work; that was his way.

  It was very pleasant to be there with Jakob and feel the love pour out of him when he looked at his family. I eased down onto the floor, so happy I thought I might nap.

  “We’ve got to get you home,” the woman said to Alyssa.

  “Can Ellie come?” Alyssa asked. Everyone laughed.

  “Ellie,” Jakob said. I sat up. He bent down again, holding my face in his hands. “You are a good dog, Ellie. A good dog.”

  The feel of his rough hands on my fur took me back to when I was a puppy, first learning my work. I wagged my tail, full of love for this man. Yet there was no question that I was happy with Maya, so when we all left each other in the hallway I un-questioningly followed her, my nails clicking.

  “Good dog, Ellie,” Maya murmured. “Wasn’t it fun to see Jakob?”

  “Bye, Ellie!” little Alyssa called, her tiny voice echoing in the quiet hall. Maya stopped and turned, so I did, too, and my last sight of Jakob was of him picking up his daughter, grinning at me.

  That year Emmet and Stella both died. Maya cried and was very sad and Al was a little sad, too. The house seemed empty without them, and Tinkerbell needed constant assurance from me now that she was the only cat—several times a day I’d awaken from a nap to find her pressed up against me or, even more disconcerting, standing and staring at me. I didn’t understand her attachment to me and knew it was not my purpose in life to be the substitute mother for a feline, but I didn’t mind it much and even let her lick me sometimes because it seemed to make her happy.

  The best days were when it rained, which it did infrequently—the smells seemed to leap off the ground, the way they did when I was a puppy. I could usually sense when the thickening clouds meant moisture, and remembered how much more often it rained back on the Farm.

  I found myself thinking of the Farm much more often, now, the Farm and Ethan. Though my life with Fast and Sister, and the Yard with Coco, had faded to a distant memory, it seemed that sometimes I awoke with a start and lifted my head, thinking I’d just heard Ethan’s car door slam and that he would soon walk in, calling my name.

  One day when rain seemed imminent Maya and I were doing school, in a class with children who sat in chairs instead of on blankets. There was a sudden crack of lightning, and all the children jumped and laughed and then turned to look as a huge storm made the sky black and pounded the building with a roar of rain. I inhaled, wishing they’d open the windows to let in the fragrances.

  “Settle down, class,” said the teacher.

  The door to the classroom suddenly opened and a man and a woman came inside, both of them wet. “We’ve lost Geoffrey Hicks,” the man said. I picked up the tension in his voice and regarded the two of them alertly. The alarm coming off the two people was familiar, an emotion I’d encountered several times when I was doing work. “He’s a first grader,” the man told Maya.

  The children all started talking. “Quiet!” the teacher snapped.

  “They were playing hide-and-seek when the rain started,” the woman said. “The storm just came up out of nowhere; one minute it was fine, the next . . .” She put her hands to her eyes, which were suddenly full of tears. “When I had everyone come in, Geoffrey wasn’t with them. It was his turn to hide.”

  “Could the dog . . . ,” the man asked.

  Maya looked at me, and I sat up straighter. “You’d better call 911,” she said. “Ellie hasn’t worked search and rescue in seven or eight years.”

  “Won’t the rain wash away the scent? It’s really coming down out there,” the woman asked. “I’m worried that by the time another dog got here—”

  Maya bit her lip. “We will certainly help look. You need to call the police, though. Where do you think he might have gone?”

  “There are some woods behind the playground. There’s a fence, but the kids can lift it up,” the man said.

  “This is his backpack; will that help?” the woman asked, holding out a canvas bag.

  I felt Maya’s nervous excitement as we ran down the hallway. We stopped at the door, and a sense of defeat came over her. “Look at it rain,” she muttered. “Okay. Ellie?” She lowered her face down to mine. “Ellie, you ready, girl? Here, smell this.”

  I took a deep whiff of the canvas bag. I could smell peanut butter, chocolate, crayons, and a person. “Geoffrey, Geoffrey,” Maya said. “Okay?” She opened the door and the rain whipped into the hallway. “Find!”

  I leaped out into the rain. In front of me was a wide expanse of wet pavement, and I coursed back and forth, my nails clicking. I could faintly smell many children, though the rain was beating the scents down. Maya was out, running away from the school. “Here, Ellie, Find here!”

  We tracked all the way back to the fence: nothing. Maya felt frustrated and frightened as she sloshed through the wet ground. We found a section of fence that was bent back, but I could find nothing to alert on. “Okay, if he’s in there, you’d smell him, girl, right? Geoffrey!” she shouted. “Geoffrey, come on out; it’s all right!”

  We hugged the fence heading back to the school, sticking to the other side of the yard. A police car pulled up, lights flashing, and Maya jogged over to speak to the man driving.

  I continued to Find Geoffrey. Though I wasn’t picking up much of anything, I knew if I just concentrated, as I had been trained, if I just focused, I could separate the smell from the backpack from all the others, if I didn’t quit . . .

  There. I had something, and whipped my head around. There was a small gap in the fence, two poles between which no adult person could climb, but I could smell Geoffrey—he’d squeezed through here. He had left the playground.

  I ran back to Maya and alerted. She was speaking to the policeman and didn’t notice at first, but then she turned to me, shocked. “Ellie? Show me!”

  We ran back through the rain to the two poles. Maya peered through the small gap. “Come on!” she shouted, running along the fence toward the front of the school. “He left the school grounds! He’s on the other side of the fence!” she yelled at the policeman. He ran after us.

  From the other side of the fence I could smell Geoffrey at the two poles, and from there I could track which direction he’d headed. Yes, he had gone this way!

  Abruptly the scent faded. Just two steps on the route he’d taken and I’d lost all sign of him, though it had been so strong there for a second.

  “What is it?” the policeman asked.

  “He might have gotten into a car,” Maya said. The policeman groaned.

  I dropped my nose, and that’s when I picked it up again. I reversed direction, and the scent got stronger. In the street, water rushed down in a steady stream by the curb, gurgling into a storm drain. I shoved my snout into the gap, ignoring the smells carried into the drain by the rushing water, and concentrated on my nose. If I wanted to, I could wriggle through that gap and into the loud, wet drain, but there was no need to—I could smell Geoffrey now; he was right in front of me even though I couldn’t see him in the darkness.

  I looked up at Maya.

  “My God, he’s in there; he’s in the sewer!” Maya shouted.

  The policeman popped on a flashlight and beamed it into the storm drain. We all saw it at the same time: the pale face of a frightened little boy.

  { TWENTY-FIVE }

  Geoffrey! It’s okay; we’re going to get you out of there!” Maya yelled at him. Heedless of the water, she knelt in the street, straining to reach the boy. The water had pressed him back away from the small opening, and he was clinging to the far wall, the terror coming off him so strong it was blinding. Right behind Geoffrey, a black tunnel sucked in the rainwater with a loud roar. Grunting, Maya pushed in as far as she could, but she couldn’t reach the boy.

  “How did he get in there?” the policeman shouted.

  “It
’s a tight fit; he must have squeezed in before it started raining. God, it’s really coming down!” Maya’s voice was full of frustration.

  A circular iron plate was set into the concrete right above Geoffrey’s head. The policeman pried at it with his fingers, muttering. “I need to get a tire iron!” he bellowed. He handed the flashlight to Maya and ran off, his feet sloshing in the water.

  Geoffrey was shivering with cold, and his eyes were dull when they looked into the beam from Maya’s flashlight. He had the hood of his thin yellow rain slicker pulled up over his head, offering him scant protection from the chill. “Hold on, okay, Geoffrey? You hang on; we’re going to get you out of there, okay?”

  Geoffrey didn’t respond.

  The patrol car’s siren came on and within less than a minute it was whipping around the corner, sliding a little as it came to a stop next to us. The policeman jumped out and ran to his trunk.

  “Fire and rescue are on the way!” he hollered.

  “There’s no time!” Maya shouted back. “He’s slipping into the water!”

  The policeman came around the trunk with a bent piece of iron. “Geoffrey, hang on; don’t let go!” Maya yelled. The policeman went to work on the circular plate with his tool. When Maya jumped up to watch I went with her, which was how I saw the spatter of mud fall on Geoffrey’s face when the iron plate was knocked aside. He lifted his hand to wipe it away, and as he did so he lost his grip on the wall and fell into the water. For a brief second he was looking up at us, and then he was swept into the tunnel.

  “Geoffrey!” Maya screamed.

  I was still on Find, so I didn’t hesitate, plunging headfirst after him. The second I hit the water, the brute force of it carried me into the tunnel, and I swam in that direction.

  It was dark in the tunnel, and as I bobbed up and down in the current my head struck the cement above me. I ignored all of it, concentrating on Geoffrey, who was ahead of me in the darkness, soundlessly fighting for his life. His scent was faint but there, vanishing and reappearing in the deadly waters.