A Dog's Courage--A Dog's Way Home Novel

by W. Bruce Cameron

  Again, burning bits of wood blew at us in strong gusts and the dirt was soon flying from the shovel blades.

  Olivia dropped her bucket. “I’d better get back on the roof!”

  The heat and fumes were too much and we all retreated until we were pressed up against the side of the house of barking dogs. The flames snapped and the wind gusted and I turned my face away.

  “Look! It’s not jumping the trench!” Lucas called.

  I glanced up at him through watering eyes. I sensed something in his mood and turned and looked—smoke and flames blackened the grasses, but didn’t burn the ridge of dirt or the long hole.

  “It’s holding,” Mack agreed. “It’s gonna work.”

  Gradually the fire, seemingly on its own, gave up. I sniffed at the rank and offensive odor of all the grass that had burned, but the smell was receding with the flames.

  After a time, Olivia came back down the ladder and walked over to us. I wagged, happy to have her with us.

  “It’s over,” Mack told her. She hugged him, and Lucas and I trotted over to be hugged too.

  Mack walked to the long hole and shook his head. “Pretty sure what we just did was impossible.”

  “That wasn’t so bad, this time,” Olivia murmured.

  “Well, there was a mad minute, but yeah,” Lucas agreed. “Not as bad as when it was in the front.”

  We returned to the inside of the house of barking dogs and there was Dave, asleep, face-up on the floor.

  Diane was filling a dog bowl with food. “My brother just collapsed. I thought he was having a heart attack, but I think he’s just asleep. I decided in his state there was no sense in trying to get him to get back up.” She set the dog bowl on the floor in front of me and I attacked it.

  Lucas knelt by Dave and picked up his hand. “Your brother’s alive, don’t worry. Pulse is fine. Just exhaustion.”

  “I know how he feels,” Olivia replied.

  Mack’s voice was weary. “I think we should open the windows. We can put the furniture back where it goes. Let’s let the dogs take shifts out in the dog kennels.”

  “I’m afraid the dog houses were across the street and are lost to the fire,” Lucas remarked sadly.

  “I imagine that’s not all that was lost to the fire,” Diane murmured.

  The heat left the room when they opened the windows. My eyes were not burning as badly now. Olivia and Lucas dragged a couch and put it underneath a window. They sat down on it and Olivia put her arms around Lucas and they were both instantly asleep. I jumped up, circled twice, and lay at their feet. For the first time in a long time, I felt good about things. This felt normal.

  Aware of little, I registered the comings and goings of dogs and cats as Diane let them in and out of the kennels in the back. I noticed when Dave stumbled to his feet and drank some water and sprawled back down. I heard Mack, who had pushed two chairs together and was lying on them, murmuring restlessly, and felt Lucas and Olivia rearranging themselves a few times to be more comfortable. I sensed the sun going down and then coming back up. Diane took me out to a kennel and I squatted gratefully but then I returned to my rightful place with my people.

  The air was much clearer the next morning after that, and Lucas and Olivia awoke as soon as the sun’s rays filtered in through the dirty window glass.

  “Did you get any sleep at all?” Olivia asked Diane.

  Diane shook her head. “Just a little. It would have felt selfish. All I did was stay inside and take care of the animals. You fought the fire. You saved their lives.”

  “It was a team effort, ma’am,” said Mack.

  “I told Dave not to start the generator while you were sleeping, but now that you’re up we’ll get it going and I can make coffee. I don’t have much in the way of food, but I have some bread and some jam.”

  “Bread and jam sounds heavenly,” Olivia said.

  “I’ll help,” Lucas offered, groaning as he got to his feet.

  Olivia and Lucas and Diane were soon in the kitchen opening and shutting doors and I could smell something sweet on the air.

  I realized then that something had changed—the frantic, high-pitched barking had died down. An occasional whine or yip emerged from the back hallway, but the dogs had calmed.

  I was fed another generous bowl full of dog dinner by Diane, who I was coming to appreciate very much. Then the people sat at the table and ate toast. I did a good Sit by my boy’s elbow because, well, toast.

  I could smell smoke and was glad that we did not go outside. Everyone napped instead, which was my preference anyway.

  I awoke when my body vibrated with a loud, low, and familiar rumble. Mack heard it, too. He eased off of his chairs, went to the window, and looked out.

  “Well,” he said with a disbelieving shake of his head. “Well, well, well.”

  Fourteen

  Mack was chuckling as he opened the front door. I bounded out ahead of him to see exactly what I expected: one of those loud and gigantic trucks with some of his friends on it. It squealed to a stop in the driveway and men and women jumped off and ran up to Mack and hugged him. I sniffed at their booted feet, wagging, letting them know that if they were in the mood to hug, there was a dog present for that purpose.

  One of Mack’s friends had what I could definitely smell was some sort of chicken in his pocket. I decided to hang around him for a moment and see if he understood that, generally speaking, chicken treats were usually tossed my way.

  Some of the newcomers were familiar to me—even beneath the odors of smoke and dirt, people are, underneath, fundamentally unique and recognizable. On the bed in our home I had a blanket completely covered in my boy’s aromas. Though I slept on it and had, over time, covered it with my own scent, my Lucas blanket vividly emitted the smell of my boy.

  I realized in that moment how much I missed my normal life. I wanted to do Go Home with Lucas.

  Chicken-pockets stepped forward. “Mack.”

  “Captain.”

  The man shook his head. Even that small motion sent wonderful chicken fumes into the air. “I honestly didn’t think you’d make it.”

  “We lucked out. Had a lot of defensible space. And a good team.” Mack wiped his forehead and looked around. I followed his gaze, but didn’t see anything but burned trees and grass. “How does it look? Overall, I mean.”

  Chicken-pockets shrugged. “Well, not good. Less than one percent contained. This is no longer a state-by-state problem—the whole mountain range seems to be on fire, and the feds have stepped in. Hundreds of square miles have already burned. Paraiso took a pretty bad hit, but there are some sections of town that made it okay. We’re going to spend the day putting out spot fires, then we’re going to start letting small numbers of people back up. High winds predicted all this week, though. You ready to get back to work?”

  Mack grinned. “Yes, sir.”

  Olivia and Lucas walked up to join us. I wagged. Hopefully now the source of the mysterious bouquet of chicken would be revealed. I did Sit to prepare myself for it.

  “You missed the party,” Olivia noted dryly.

  The people all smiled.

  Mack turned to Lucas and Olivia. “I gotta go now. You guys take care.”

  Lucas hugged Mack. “You be safe, Mack.”

  Olivia stepped into a hug and looked Mack solemnly in the eye. “Thanks to you, all of these animals are alive.”

  “Thanks to all of us,” Mack corrected softly. He bent down and ran a hand over my head. I wagged. I loved Mack. “You’re a good girl, Bella. Thanks for being a good fire dog.”

  The men and women all climbed up on their truck, and with a loud bellow it started and trundled back down the driveway, taking the man with the fragrant pockets with it. I did not understand why anyone would carry chicken around if they weren’t going to give some to a dog.

  Scott came a little while later and gave us a car ride. I was in the back seat with Lucas, while Olivia sat up front. Scott turned to look at me just b
efore we started moving. “You guys get some sleep?”

  “Eventually, a little,” Lucas admitted.

  “A lot,” Olivia corrected.

  “I slept pretty much straight through,” Scott replied. “Then I had all-you-can-eat pancakes. I ate more than I could eat.”

  Lucas and Olivia laughed, so I wagged.

  “How is your … how is your house?” Olivia asked tentatively.

  Scott gave her a sad smile. “It was the last one, at the end of the cul-de-sac, on the edge of the woods. It’s the only one on the street we couldn’t save. Too many trees.”

  “That’s awful. I’m so sorry,” Olivia replied solemnly.

  “It’s okay. I think we lost more of the town than anyone could have expected. You’ll see … it’s like a bomb went off in some places.” Scott’s voice coarsened. “The real tragedy is that some people waited too long and got trapped on the road trying to get to the highway. You can’t really tell what types of cars they even were before everything was cremated. No way to know who, or how many.…” Scott’s voice faltered for a moment, and Olivia put a hand on his shoulder. He pressed his trembling lips together for a moment. “I got to say, if I had known what it was going to be like, I wouldn’t have stayed, but once I was in it…” He shrugged.

  “You didn’t have time to think,” Lucas finished for him.

  “Exactly.”

  “How much of the town was spared?” Olivia wanted to know.

  “Well, we didn’t lose much of the Main Street district—for some reason, the fire skipped right past it. That’s how it went generally: we’d lose three streets, every house burned to its foundation, but then the next street over wouldn’t lose a single one. It’s … This place, it’ll never be the same. People are going to be shocked when they come back.”

  Lucas nodded. “The fire department told us they’re going to start letting folks return to their homes tomorrow.”

  “Their homes,” Scott repeated. “Most of them won’t have homes to return to.”

  “We’re going to stay for a few days,” Olivia told him, “help Diane with the animals.”

  “You can’t get back to Denver anyway,” Scott agreed, “unless you go to Grand Junction and take a plane.”

  “I’m going to see if someone needs the help of a newly minted doctor,” Lucas added.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Scott said. “My aunt and uncle’s house didn’t burn, and their Tahoe is parked in the garage. I know where the keys are. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if we borrowed it. You can even sleep there—beats lying on a cot at the middle school, or even being at the animal shelter, though you got a generator up there and my aunt and uncle don’t.”

  “Your relatives. They got out okay?” Olivia probed.

  Scott glanced at her. “We don’t know yet.”

  He drove us to a place where we had been before. There was food and water and people who were dressed like Mack and smelled like smoke. I saw Lucas go into a big soft room and help Mack’s friends in odd ways: wrapping cloth around their fingers and arms. Some of them flinched sharply, clearly feeling pain. Later, Scott drove us to an odd stretch of land where everything was ash and burned wood and piles of stone and brick. I had seen big areas of forest that were burned to the ground, but this was different—humans had lived here before the fire came, and an occasional untouched house among the ruins stood as a solemn reminder of what had been lost. We drove past odd patches of scorched ground and then came to a row of houses where trees were felled and torn-out bushes were lining the roads, many with soil clinging to the roots.

  Scott gave Lucas and Olivia a rueful grin. “This was the first street we got to after being up at the shelter, when we still had a lot of energy. Cut everything down and hauled it to the street. That’s my uncle’s place right there. It’s all open—most people don’t lock their doors in Paraiso.”

  I watched uneasily as Lucas and Scott climbed out but left me in the car with Olivia. The two men didn’t go in the house; they raised the garage door and went inside. I jumped into the front seat and put my paws up so I could watch. Olivia reached out with a soothing hand. “It’s okay, Bella.”

  I didn’t glance at her but continued my frantic vigil. Where did he go? I whined.

  There he is!

  Lucas and Scott walked back out of the garage and when Olivia opened her door, I scrambled over her lap and jumped up on my boy, wagging and licking.

  He grinned at me. “Bella! I was only gone for thirty seconds!”

  Olivia laughed.

  Scott left, which made me anxious, but then we climbed into a big vehicle in the garage. Lucas took us on a car ride back to the area with the large soft rooms. We spent the day there, but when the sun left the sky we returned to that same house, which was nice but smelled of other people.

  We didn’t go to sleep right away. Olivia and Lucas emptied the oddly warm refrigerator and freezer into trash bags, making faces at all the wonderful odors.

  “Ugh, this sure went bad fast,” Lucas told me.

  I wagged.

  When night came, they lit candles and carried them around and we slept in a new bed.

  That night, I dreamed I was in the middle of a fire. I was trying to find Lucas, but I couldn’t. I spotted Big Kitten, though—she was terrified, running from the flames, unable to escape.

  I blearily opened my eyes when I felt a hand on my leg. Lucas bent over me in the dark. “Bella? Are you okay? Are you having a bad dream? You’re crying in your sleep.” My boy put his arms around me and gently pulled me up, so that I was lying with my head on the pillow next to him. “Good dog,” he murmured sleepily.

  With his arm around me, I felt safe and loved.

  The next day, Olivia and I returned to the house of barking dogs. They were still barking, but more for the sake of barking, not in abject fear. Outside, a squat machine buzzed angrily, but Olivia held me back from examining it. “No, Bella, that’s the generator.”

  Inside, we saw Diane, and Olivia approached each dog and cat and held her phone up in front of its face. “Look at the camera, Casey,” she told one. “Hey, Socks, look over here.”

  I did not know what we were doing then, nor did I understand when we stood by a machine that slowly spat out one sheet of paper at a time. I did not like that Lucas was gone, and I continuously lifted my nose, expecting the return of the flames. I felt anxious and kept glancing at Olivia for reassurance.

  I was much happier when Lucas returned and brought sandwiches. I sat dutifully under the table while he and Diane and Olivia ate. Other dogs might be barking, but not good No Barks Bella!

  “How’s it going? With everyone returning,” Diane wanted to know.

  Lucas shrugged. “It’s not actually everyone. They’re only letting folks come up a busload at a time, and they get to spend a few hours in town before they get back on the bus. Mack’s one of the firefighters taking people on tours in a minivan. He looks wrecked—I guess it’s pretty bad. They’re allowed to see what happened to their homes, hopefully make connections with friends and family, and then they have to leave. Anyone with a standing house, the fire department goes in to make sure it’s safe, and then they can return in their own vehicles the next day. No electricity, though, and from what I hear portable generators are in short supply.”

  Delicious odors were up on that table. I sat and stared at Lucas, but he wasn’t taking the hint.

  “But everyone got out in time?” Diane pressed.

  Lucas sighed. “Down by where we set up the medical tent, there’s a wall on the side of the library. That’s where they are putting up photographs of friends and loved ones that are missing. It’s a long list, so … we don’t really know yet.”

  “I spent the morning taking pictures of all the animals and printing them out,” Olivia told Lucas. “I’ll put them up on the library wall next to the people.”

  “Good idea,” he agreed.

  Olivia shuffled some papers. She hadn’t yet drawn the obvio
us connection between her sandwich and a good dog, either. “How many pictures are there right now, Lucas?”

  Lucas stared steadily back. “The official tally is, eighteen hundred people are missing.”

  Diane gasped and Olivia lowered her eyes and shook her head.

  Soon, we took another car ride back to where all those soft rooms were. I stayed with Lucas while he spoke to various people, and Olivia walked around outside. I soon lost interest—it had been a long time since I had played with anything resembling a dog toy, so I had very little patience for waiting while Lucas stuck sticks into people’s mouths.

  “Say ahh,” he’d tell them.

  Then he’d pull the stick away and the people would let him. People just don’t know how to play Tug-a-Stick properly.

  “You have to understand,” Lucas told one of them, “that it’s reasonable for you to be stressed. It’s reasonable for you to be feeling shocked. But you’re being treated for high blood pressure and we need to get you back on your medication. I know it seems hopeless, but you don’t want to stop taking your medication just because you’ve lost…”

  “Everything,” the man he was talking to whispered. “I lost everything.”

  I trotted out to see what Olivia was doing, and she was busily affixing sheets of paper to a wall. People gathered around to watch. One woman gasped out loud. “That’s my Trixie!” she shrieked. She put her hands to her face and started to sob.

  Olivia walked over to her and gave her a hug. I watched all this curiously, feeling the woman’s odd combination of happy and sad.

  “We didn’t have time, we just left her. I thought she’d be dead for sure,” the woman cried into Olivia’s shoulder.

  “She’s at the shelter,” Olivia assured her. “You can come anytime and get your Trixie.”

  “I don’t know that they’ll let me. We’re sleeping at the high school, and my house is gone,” the woman replied, wiping her eyes.

  “Then when you have someplace to live. We’ll take care of Trixie until then.”

  “Someplace to live … when will that be?” the woman asked, her eyes searching Olivia’s.