Junk Shop: A Dog Memoir

by Jennifer Erickson

  I felt uneasy, knowing that we were leaving the road to Home, but Nelson had promised a warm bed and regular meals, so perhaps it was worth it, just for a while, to regroup before the next leg of the journey Home.

  Their voices were drowned out by the whistling wind, but she seemed to be doing most of the talking. He nodded a lot. I noticed that he never tried his magic glare on her. His glare was nothing compared to hers.

  When we got to the house, she gave Nelson a haircut and misted me with Febreeze, and we settled into a routine right away.

  Life with Nelson's sister was easy. It turned out her name was Nelson, too. Her last name.

  She gave me all the Spam I could eat. Once we got to know each other better, I even let her brush me with an old hairbrush, long strokes down the length of my body that made me shiver with pleasure.

  She poured all the beer down the sink and made Nelson cry, and woke us up in the morning by singing loudly, off-key as she cooked Jimmy Dean Sausage Patties.

  She did as she pleased. And so did we (I mean we did as she pleased), but I didn't mind.

  Her husband was quiet and worked until dark and came home smelling of sweat. Her two almost-grown sons were in and out of the house like trains: big and loud, and then gone.

  Nelson got a Real Job, which meant that he was gone all day like everybody else. His sister thought our conversations were weird because she couldn't Hear me, so we didn't talk any more.

  And after a few weeks of silent meals and sniffing around the frozen yard and lying in the patch of sun by the patio door, I realized that I was no longer needed. She was kind, Nelson's sister, and Nelson was trying hard to fit in, but I couldn't stay. I imagined that He and She were somewhere, not too far, waiting for me.

  Going Home

  Nelson dropped me off at the KT Travel Plaza on his way to work the next morning. He said that he would explain it to the rest of the family.

  He rounded up a fat trucker in stained sweats who was willing to take me to Denver for fifty dollars. Then Nelson held my paw and bowed his head toward the oily pavement.

  "You can come back, you know," he said.

  I sighed. We had been over this already.

  He boosted me into the cab of the eighteen wheeler, and made the trucker promise to lift me out respectfully at a nice park, not just dump me on the side of the highway. And then he walked away quickly.

  He thought I wouldn't make it. He worried about me. But I knew I'd be fine. I was going Home. It was him I was worried about. That life with the job and the family and the No Beer had him in a strangle hold, and some day soon, he would have to fight his way out.

  The trucker kept his promise, lowering me to the snowy ground at City Park with a can of Alpo smeared on a paper sack and a Styrofoam coffee cup full of water. I was too excited to eat or drink. I wanted to get on my way (later, I would regret that decision). As he watched, I wagged my thanks, sampled the air, and bounded toward home.

  When I reached Home that night, the moon was full and the landscape glowed with snow. And because of the snow, the smells were so sharp, so pure, every footprint unsullied. The cars went shush, shush, shush. The house was dark. I didn't notice at first that something was wrong.

  I pogoed up the front steps on three legs, leaving perfect, flawless prints, each one a portal, releasing the glorious scents beneath: Scents of wood and mice and fallen leaves. Scents of the season in which I had left this house.

  I scratched at the door, and I waited. My heart scrabbled at my chest. I rocked from foot to foot with the rhythm of my wag. Nobody came. I scratched and scratched and scratched, and paint flaked off and the weather stripping shredded, but nobody came. Nobody said, "I'm coming, hold your horses." No lights came on. No footsteps sounded.

  And then I noticed what was wrong. It was the smells. They were all stale. Yes, I could smell He there, and She, too, but they were gone.

  I backed up to the top of the steps and I cocked my head to see the blank bedroom window, and I howled, "Nooooooooooo!"

  That was all the plan I had. There was nothing else. The pain, the loneliness, spun out of me in song.

  A window slid open next door. The neighbor barked, "Shut up!" and slammed it shut.

  By that time I was empty anyway. I slumped down on the door mat among the leaves and musty newspapers and the skiff of snow that smelled like dust.

  My Mistake

  For a few days I lingered there, sleeping under the bush in the front yard and hoping, hoping that I was wrong, that they would be home any minute. I kept watch from under the bush, and at every noise, every slamming car door, every voice and shadow, I raised my head hopefully, sniffing, sniffing.

  But it was never them.

  I was hungry and weak.

  The snow stopped and the neighbors came out with their shovels and scraped, scraped the concrete, letting all the smells out to mix together.

  Then I felt the rumble of a shovel on our walk and leapt up in joy, knocking a chunk of snow off my bush. I bounced out from under, wagging the wet clumps from by coat.

  "Woah! Sophie, is that you?"

  The person shoveling our walk smelled of cigarettes and sitting still. He smelled all wrong. It wasn't Him. I froze mid-wag and squinted up at him.

  "Oh, Sophie," he said, so sadly.

  It was the neighbor. The man with the cocky Chihuahua that talked smack at me through the crack in the fence. My people treated this man like a friend, but I knew better. Just then, the Chihuahua started yapping.

  "I own you! You're my bitch! Come and get me!" he said, "Just try! I'll rip you apart! What are you, a sissy?"

  The neighbor reached out as I backed away. I forgot and put my foot down. In spite of myself, I yelped. It must have been the lack of sleep and the cold and the hunger, because I don't usually vocalize unless I've got something to say.

  The neighbor tried to grab me by the neck. I sidestepped him, trying to think through my options, while the whole time that Chihuahua was yapping, "We own you! You're our bitch! We're gonna show you who's boss!"

  Before I knew what I was doing, I was pogoing toward the street, and I hadn't even decided where I was going. I thought maybe I'd circle back once things calmed down, but that never worked out.

  The neighbor cut me off. He cornered me there between the six-foot cedar fence and the hose bib, with the Chihuahua on the other side, talking smack.

  What happened next was possibly my lowest point. It's where I Hit Bottom, as they said in Nelson's AA meetings. I was confused. I was overstimulated. I thought I had nothing to lose. I was wrong. I bit him.

  As he howled and cursed, I fled. I ran to the park where in better times I had played with my people and He would throw a ball for me while She sat on the swing and watched. I crawled under the picnic table and I hid my head, cowering from the consequences which were at that very moment headed my way.

  "It went under there," came the neighbor's voice, muffled by snow.

  "I see the prints. Stand back."

  Footsteps neared. A shadow fell across my closed lids. Something slapped me on the back of the head, then it had me by the neck, choking, choking! It dragged me out while I gasped "It was an accident! Can't...breathe!"

  I lay on my side, one leg in the air, tail tucked, and peeked out from behind my paw. At first all I saw was the lowering sky with a few snowflakes spiraling down. Then a man in a uniform stepped into view above me.

  "She really doesn't look that vicious," he said. "You say it's your neighbor's dog?"

  "Former neighbors. I thought so, but now that I get a look at her, she's a lot skinnier. And their dog didn't have whatever is going on with the leg there."

  "Broken, I'd say," the uniform put in.

  "And Sophie would never have bitten me...So, what next?"

  "No collar. We'll check for a microchip. After that..." He shrugged. Sighed.

  Truffle

  The Pound isn't just one place. It's everywhere. But it always smells the same, of diarrhea
and bleach and fear.

  And I knew that it was Not Good that I was back. I was a Bad Dog, and also lame, and odds were high I was headed for The Room You Never Leave.

  I kicked over my water bowl and hunched in the corner, despondent, leaning my shoulder into the damp wall to prop me upright. My eyelids fluttered shut.

  I sprang them open again. My head bobbed. I would not sleep. I would stay alert to face my consequences.

  Exhausted, I sagged into the wall again. My shoulder slid gradually down, until I was almost (but not quite) sprawled on the floor. If I got too comfortable, I might fall asleep.

  "Hey, Fang! Hahaha!"

  My eyes popped open.

  My upper lip was smeared to the wall. Drool pooled on the floor and on my front paws, where my chin had rested just moments before.

  A woman with a small head-tail (not a glorious one like She) tossed a chunk of kibble through the gate to get my attention. I let it bounce off my shoulder and roll into the hair-filled floor drain.

  "So what's your story? Lenny says you bit somebody."

  "Fuck off," I murmured under my breath, and focused on the seam where the cinder blocks met. There was hair in there as well.

  "You don't look like a killer to me," she said. She tossed another piece of kibble.

  "I'm not," I growled.

  "So what happened to your leg? Doesn't that hurt?"

  I swiveled my eyes to look her over. "Are you just here to mess with me? Because I'm really not in the mood."

  A wicked grin spread over her face. "Oh, the dog deigns to give me a glance."

  She whirled like she'd proved some kind of point and bounced off, with the barks of the other dogs following her down the aisle. After she had left, and the other dogs settled down except for one cocker spaniel with emotional issues, I curled up as tight as I could. Inside, I was whimpering, but I didn't let it show. My dignity was all I had left.

  Two days later, the barks washed over me like a wave as someone entered the kennel block. I felt the rattle of the keys in the gate, and I knew this was it. I was going to That Room.

  Hands slipped the noose over my drooping head. I kept my eyes on the floor and my whimper contained as I was led down the line. The other dogs were all barking now, with joy and longing and jealousy. "Pick me! Pick me!" They chorused.

  "Idiots," I thought.

  Past legs and children and chairs we went. Past a cat meowing from a cardboard box.

  And then, suddenly, we were outside! And it was like seeing the sky, the sun, smelling dirt and asphalt for the first time.

  At the other end of the leash was (I did a double-take) the woman with the small head tail.

  She paused while I did two days' worth of business next to the poop-bag dispenser. As she stooped to collect it, grimacing, I did a Fosbury Flop into the gritty snow and wriggled, wriggled, until I no longer smelled of despair but of other more hopeful scents: spilled soda and motor oil and a bouquet of different urines.

  I bounced with her across the tarmac. I didn't care who she was or where we were going as long as we were leaving. She opened the door to her Very Small Car, and I jumped right in. Smiling, I hunched to see the sky through the windshield.

  She gave me a dirty look and rolled down her window. "Your breath reeks," she said.

  She didn't exactly have Heart. At least I couldn't see it. But she had something. A little chocolate truffle or something right there in her chest, that she was afraid somebody might steal.

  As the car crept through town, she muttered to herself about Rush Hour and Learn to Drive You Asshole. Her fists clenched the steering wheel. She leaned forward into the glare of headlights.

  And as we glided slowly, I caught a faint whiff of my old neighborhood and craned my neck in yearning. The scent faded, faded behind us as my heart crumbled all over again.

  Lost in thought, I plowed face-first into the windshield when the car stopped. I was starting to develop a fear of cars.

  As she slipped a noose over my head, I sighed and tried to focus. This was my new gig. I had to pull myself together.

  She coaxed me up a steep metal staircase as I panted with effort and dread. Snow and concrete and shadows loomed through the gaps in the treads. I was way beyond Wanting or Making Things Happen. This was survival mode.

  "Hi Grandpa," she said, when an old man opened the door. She gripped the noose more tightly.

  "What's this?" he barked.

  "I got you a dog."

  "What for?"

  "I thought you could use the company."

  He glared at her, then inspected me doubtfully. My dirty fur. My bony ribs. The useless leg resting gently on the landing.

  Truffle held her breath.

  "My show is coming on," he said. He left the door open as he turned back toward the main room.

  "Please, Grandpa. They were going to put her down."

  He eased himself into an easy chair with an ergonomic cushion, let his hand dangle down near the floor and twitched his fingers.

  That was our in! I towed Truffle across the carpet and nuzzled his fingers.

  "What for?" he asked. Truffle seemed confused, but I knew that he wanted the details of my crime.

  I said, "It only happened once, and I didn't mean it!"

  Truffle started to speak. He shushed her. She settled like a bird on a telephone wire.

  He leaned to peer down at me. After a long inspection he scowled up at his granddaughter.

  "You can go now."

  He pried the TV remote from between the chair cushions and the TV started to speak.

  She waited, but he was completely focused on the TV.

  I could understand why! It was mesmerizing!

  When Truffle was gone, his hand crept down, oh, so casually, and rested on my neck. And when a commercial came on, he muted the TV again, and said, "So what is it you did, but only once?" This time, his voice was kind.

  Virgil Rosenberger

  His name was Virgil Rosenberger. Downstairs, under the apartment with the TV, was a shop where he sold Really Old Stuff to people who needed more Stuff.

  "I think you and I can get along," he said. He preferred dogs to people, he said, because they couldn't hurt you the same way. He told me about his family, who were Self-Absorbed Asses (and mostly dead anyway), and Truffle, who Never Wrote a Thank You Note in Her Life.

  "Don't know why she's trying to suck up now," said Virgil.

  We decided that it was because Virgil was going to Keel Over soon.

  "Sophie," he said. "You've gotta watch out for people who think they're doing you favors."

  I thought of my unwelcome detour toward the Big Break In L.A.

  "And women," he added. "Never trust a woman."

  Our first day together was very much like every day after it. Virgil booted me off the end of the bed, where I had crept in the middle of the night. We had coffee and Little Debbie Swiss Rolls for breakfast. I wasn't sure at first whether I liked coffee, but after breakfast I felt Very Alert.

  We tackled the Scary Stairs one at a time. Virgil gripped the rail. I panted and concentrated on not tumbling end-over-end.

  I did my business on the patch of dirt next to the tree on the parking strip and Virgil kicked it into the gutter.

  The Shop smelled of broken dreams and lost love and mice and wet shoes, and all of it was fuzzy with dust.

  As Virgil watched, almost smiling, I wobbled around, familiarizing myself with the layout. Under the racks I wandered, and behind the bookcases and into the deserted corners.

  I heaved my front end up onto boxes to sniff at the cardboard flaps and stuck my head into the bathroom that smelled of urine and followed a spider along the base of the wall, sniffing, sniffing, until it reared up in annoyance.

  I got on my belly and wormed under the sales counter with the dropped change and lost receipts and balls of hair. And then I got stuck. Virgil tipped the counter up on two legs as I scrambled out, sneezing. Everything in the case shifted six inches to t
he front, and stayed that way.

  I found sweaty old clothes hanging from pipes in the ceiling and cut glass candle sticks and board games in broken boxes and photos of someone's ancestors and jars of marbles and half-empty cardboard cartons spilling their contents onto the concrete in places where the linoleum had worn away. There were cases full of sparkly jewelry and broken meat grinders. Anything you could possibly want, you could find in our shop.

  Overall, it was satisfactory. There and then, I embraced my new career as a Shop Dog.

  The Power of Stories

  Every night we watched television together, and every day we hobbled down the stairs to the Shop. Virgil read novels that smelled like autumn leaves. I lay on my bed behind the counter, or under the army surplus rack, and watched.

  It wasn't just a junk shop. People called it that because we weren't much for cleaning and things were organized according to whether Virgil Got Around To It.

  But it was a lot more than a junk shop. A person looking at it with eyes of wonder would have seen a place of possibilities. Anything could be there. Everything was there. Everything in the whole world. I know, you think I'm exaggerating because you only look with your eyes. You glance over something, and you think you know it.

  Well, it's not looking that will help, anyway. It's seeing. And seeing isn't only with your eyes.

  You know they train dogs to be "seeing eyes", which is kind of ironic, considering our vision is, well, mediocre. But the thing is, dogs don't see with their eyes. We see with our hearts. We see with smell and sound and feel. We know all the scents on the wind, the tension in the air. We see what you're thinking. We hear what you don't say. We touch you with our eyes. We make things happen by wanting.

  Dogs operate in a connected universe. People, not so. Even when you think you can see, you're blind: The Orphans of the Universe.

  Customers trickled in. They gave Virgil Rosenberger money for Really Old Stuff that smelled of despair and of ghosts. In the beginning, I asked Virgil why they bought this Stuff, why they came to a shop that smelled so sad, and gave him Good Money for dead people's clothes and broken appliances and toys that were never loved, even when they were new.