Authors: W. Bruce Cameron
“So, did your guy win?” CJ asked.
“What?”
“Your guy. The boxing thing.”
Duke rolled onto his back and I seized a wad of throat and shook it gently.
“You really are an airhead, aren’t you,” the man said.
“What?”
“No, he didn’t win.”
“Oh. I’m really sorry, Barry. Is that why you’re back two months early?”
“Yeah, well, when your fighter loses you don’t go on a worldwide press tour, do you? What the … What’s Duke doing?”
“Duke?” CJ repeated. Duke froze at his name, his legs splayed up in the air, his tongue lolling out, my teeth gently pulling on his skin. “They’re just playing.”
“Duke! Cut it out!” the man shouted angrily. Duke scrambled to his feet, knocking me aside, and went to CJ with his ears down. I lay on the floor where I’d fallen, panting.
“What’s wrong, Barry?”
“You’ve turned my dog into a wimp.”
“What? No, they play really well together.”
“I don’t want him ‘playing’ like that with some little rat dog.”
“Max is not a rat dog, Barry.”
Barry, I decided, was the man’s name.
“Okay, well … I don’t remember giving you permission to have a dog and I sure don’t appreciate Duke’s behavior. I hired you because you said you had lots of experience. So, fine. I’m back. If you could just go back to your place, let me unwind and get to know my dog again.”
CJ was quiet for a moment. I stared at her, feeling her sadness and hurt. “But … I don’t have a place, Barry.”
“What?”
“You said eight to ten months. There was no sense me keeping an apartment if I was going to be here eight months.”
“So, what, you’re going to stay with me?” Barry asked.
“No! I mean, I’ll sleep on the couch and look for a place tomorrow.”
“Wait, no. Forget it. I’m … I’m stressed. I worked a year on this and he was knocked out in the second round. You can stay here; I’m just dumping my African stuff and heading over to Samantha’s anyway. We’re going to go to Hawaii. So you can take two weeks to find a place. That okay? I’ll get someone else to take care of Duke for when I’m back in town.”
“So I’m fired?”
“It’s for the best.”
“Well, sure, I can see that.”
“Okay, no need for sarcasm. I paid you pretty well and you got a free place out of it and if I’m not happy I’m the customer.”
“All of that is true,” CJ said.
A little later Barry left. “Bye, Duke,” Barry said over his shoulder. Duke thumped his tail at his name, but I could tell he was relieved as I was to have Barry gone so that CJ wasn’t tense anymore. My girl seemed a little sad, though.
The next day, after we went walking with the usual dogs, CJ left Duke and me alone in the house and was gone for a long time. I wrestled with him for a while but became irritated with him because his head was so large and strong it kept knocking me over.
I was asleep when I heard a low, loud moan coming from the bedroom. I went to investigate and found Duke in a high state of agitation, his stiff tail whipping the air, his head under the bed. He was panting with excitement, and the moaning was coming from Sneakers, who was plainly terrified. Duke was so powerful he was managing to lift the entire bed as he drove to jam himself under there to get at Sneakers.
I went right up to Duke and barked at him sternly. He was quivering, too thrilled at how close he was getting to poor Sneakers, who was pressed back against the wall, her ears flat against her head. Duke ignored my barking, so I lunged at him, clicking my teeth.
That got his attention. He retreated, the bed coming down with a thump. I snapped and snarled at him until he was all the way out of the room, then trotted back to check on Sneakers.
I was small enough to crawl under there if I wanted, but I decided to leave Sneakers alone. She was still frightened, and from what I had seen of cat behavior, when they were scared they tended to use their claws.
CJ left us by ourselves every day, and every day Duke treated her departure as a signal that it was time to start harassing poor Sneakers. It got so that the second the door shut Sneakers would dart from wherever she was napping to her hiding place under the bed—if Duke saw her shoot past, he would gallop after her in dumb pursuit, crashing into walls as he tried to take the corner too fast. I’d be running, too, and when I got to the bed I would dive under it and then turn and face Duke’s quivering, wet nose, my teeth exposed and a growl in my throat. Duke would moan in frustration and sometimes would even bark, the noise deafening in the small space, but I knew I couldn’t back down, and eventually he’d lose interest and go back to the living room to take a nap.
Then one day the pattern changed. We went for our usual walk, but when we returned CJ brought over a crate and opened the door in it and carefully placed Sneakers inside. The crate reminded me of the one I had sat in as Molly, the one that tipped back and forth before winding up in the loud place with all the cars. Sneakers wasn’t happy and didn’t come over when I pushed my nose up to sniff at her. Then Duke came over, snorting loudly, and Sneakers backed away into the far recesses of the crate.
“Duke,” CJ said warningly, and Duke went over to her to see if she was going to give him a treat.
CJ picked up the crate with Sneakers in it and left us alone. This was absolutely baffling: where was she taking Sneakers that we weren’t going along as well? We didn’t know what to do, so we lay on the floor and gnawed chew toys.
When my girl came back, Sneakers was no longer with her.
Where was Sneakers?
TWENTY-THREE
For two days, CJ would take us on a dog walk and then would leave us alone with no Sneakers. Duke and I made the best of it—in fact, without a cat in the home, some of the tension left our relationship and we were able to wrestle more freely and for so long that sometimes we’d wind up falling asleep on top of each other. Well, I was on top, anyway. If Duke had been on top, I sincerely doubt I would have been doing any sleeping.
On the third day, when we returned from our walk, a woman was waiting for us outside the door. Duke, of course, wagged and thrust his big head at her, while I retreated to CJ’s feet and waited rigidly to see if there was any threat.
CJ called the woman Marcia. After we’d been inside for half an hour, Marcia carefully extended her hand to me and I sniffed it after CJ said, “Gentle, Max,” to me in very soothing tones. The hand smelled like chocolate and dogs and some sweet things I couldn’t identify.
Duke and I chewed lazily on each other while CJ and Marcia talked. “Okay, I think that’s everything,” CJ finally said, standing up. Duke and I bounded to our respective feet. Walk?
“So Duke, I guess this is good-bye. Marcia will be taking care of you now,” CJ said. A sudden sadness broke inside her and I went to her and put my paws on her leg as she bent over on the couch, taking Duke’s head in her hands. I could tell that he knew she was sad by the way his ears dropped and his tail wagged and then drooped. I wondered if he knew what was going on, because I didn’t.
“I’m going to miss you, big guy,” CJ whispered. I tried to climb up into her lap but couldn’t quite make it.
“Oh God, I feel awful,” Marcia said.
“Don’t. Barry has the right; it’s his dog.”
“Yeah, but, I mean, Duke thinks he’s
your
dog. You can tell. It’s not fair to cut off all contact between the two of you.”
“Oh, Duke, I’m so sorry,” CJ said. Her voice carried a lot of grief.
“Maybe I could call you and we could meet somewhere,” Marcia offered.
CJ shook her head. “I don’t want to get
you
in trouble. Barry will fire you in a second. Believe me, I have firsthand experience.”
Duke mournfully put his head in CJ’s lap, sharing her mysterious sadness. I envied him his height: all I could do was scrabble fruitlessly at her legs, hoping to be noticed.
“Okay.” CJ sighed. “Nice meeting you, Marcia. Come on, Max.” CJ reached down and scooped me up, and now I was above Duke, looking down at him. CJ snapped a leash onto my collar but not onto Duke’s, and all of us went to the door.
“Bye,” CJ said quietly. She opened the door and Duke lunged to follow her outside, dragging Marcia with him as he struggled with her grip on his collar. CJ, still holding me, blocked Duke. “No, Duke. You stay. I’m sorry.”
They managed to get the door shut. CJ dropped me to the floor and I shook myself, ready for whatever we were doing. Inside our home, Duke gave the door a workout, his paws making it rattle loudly in the frame.
As we went down the hall, I heard Duke’s sad, heartbroken barking and wondered again what was going on. Why wasn’t Duke coming with us? He wanted to go!
My girl was crying and I kept looking up at her in concern, but she didn’t say anything more to me. We took a very long walk, first on the loud, smelly streets and then up a whole lot of stairs. CJ rattled a doorknob and then it swung open, and I instantly smelled Sneakers.
“Welcome home, Max,” CJ said.
We were in a small kitchen, with a bowl of Sneakers’ food on the floor that I went over to sniff. The kitchen also had a bed in it, which was where I found Sneakers. She was lying on a pillow and stood, arching her back, when she saw me.
Sneakers had her own house! I didn’t understand it but thought maybe it had something to do with the way Duke was always harassing her when CJ would leave the three of us alone. Perhaps to protect Sneakers CJ found this new house at the top of all the stairs, a place where the cat would be safe. Now I was being shown that this was where Sneakers lived, and soon we’d be going back home to Duke, who would smell Sneakers on me—I wondered what he would conclude from that! Would he figure out that CJ and I had been to Sneakers’ house?
People do whatever they want, but as far as I was concerned, cats already ate better food than dogs, so to give one a house seemed unfairly indulgent.
Sneakers purred and circled around me, rubbing against me, and we played a little. She seemed awfully glad to see me there without Duke. I could smell another person’s hands on her, a strong, flowery scent that reminded me a little of Gloria.
We didn’t go home that night—CJ slept in the small bed and I did, too, curled up at her feet. Sneakers prowled around a little in the house and then leaped nimbly up to try to snuggle with me, but it was too uncomfortable for both of us and when CJ mumbled and moved her legs Sneakers jumped back to the floor and didn’t try to come up again that night.
What she did do, though, was sit at the front door and meow a little the next morning, and CJ said, “Okay, you want to go see Mrs. Minnick? Let’s see if she’s home,” and then we went out into the hallway and knocked on the door next to us. The woman who opened the door carried the strong scents I’d smelled on Sneakers, so I knew she and Sneakers had been spending time together. In fact, Sneakers walked right in as if she lived there.
“Oh, hello, Sneakers,” Mrs. Minnick said, smacking her lips in an odd way as she spoke. I held myself stiffly but didn’t growl, because the woman was clearly feeble and not a threat.
From that point on, Sneakers seemed to regard every opening of the door as an opportunity to dash over and wait to be let in to see Mrs. Minnick. I didn’t know what the attraction was, but clearly Sneakers liked it there. I didn’t have any opinion about Mrs. Minnick at all, other than the fact that her mouth made strange clicking noises when she talked.
CJ and I still took dog walks, but now we had to go a long way to pick up the first one, who was named Katie, and missing from the usual pack were Sally and Duke and Beevis.
I didn’t miss Beevis at all.
One day it rained on the way to get Katie and I was so cold I was shivering. “Oh, Max, I’m so sorry,” CJ told me. She held me in her arms until I was warm, and the next time the wind was cool she slipped a blanket on me that I could wear. “You like your sweater, Max? You look so handsome in your sweater!” I loved the feel of the tight sweater on all sides of me and it had the added benefit of keeping me warm. I was proud to wear it because I felt it showed that CJ loved me more than she loved Sneakers, who didn’t even rate a collar. “You look so cute in your sweater, Max! You’re my sweater better dog,” CJ crooned to me. I wagged, loving to be in the center of her world.
When CJ removed the sweater it made a ripping sound, every single time. I came to associate that sound with the end of a walk and the start of a nap.
I didn’t know why we never went back home, and I didn’t know why Duke didn’t walk with us anymore. I knew Sneakers probably didn’t miss Duke, but I found that I did. As irritating as he could be sometimes, he was big and goofy and fun to play with. He let me be in charge and followed my lead, and I could feel people’s wariness when CJ was protected by both of us. He had been part of our family.
This was, I reflected, how people ran the world. One day they would decide to live somewhere else and to stop playing with certain dogs.
Sometimes CJ would sit on the only piece of furniture she had besides the bed, a lone stool, and toss a small ball around in the kitchen and it would bounce and I would chase it, my nails scrabbling on the slick floor. “Oh, Max, I am so sorry this place is so tiny,” she said to me. I loved the game and, now that I was used to it, I loved the new home better than the old place, because it meant that I could be closer to CJ.
We were playing with the ball when it sailed up onto the bed and I leaped right up after it! I was a little surprised, because I’d never managed to get up there before, and I know Sneakers was startled because she jumped to her feet, her eyes large and her tail puffy.
“Max!” CJ said, laughing in delight.
When CJ put on the nice-smelling shoes and spent a lot of time playing with her hair I knew that Gregg was coming over, and sure enough, there was soon a knock on the door and I ran to it, barking, while Sneakers fled. I could smell Gregg on the other side, so I kept barking. CJ picked me up.
“Max, be nice,” she said, opening the door. Gregg came in and touched his face to CJ’s while she held me away from him. I growled.