Barry (4 page)

And that is what Phoebe and Jupiter and I did for the next few weeks. Every morning, after the clerics had finished singing, we followed Michel outside into the hospice yard. We played out of doors all day long. We sniffed the wind. We barked at the brown ptarmigans. We chased the furry, fleet mountain hares. We rolled in the grass. And when we weren’t chasing hares or birds, we were chasing
each other up one slope and down another, our playful yips and barks echoing off the rocks of the pass.

At the end of each day, Michel would appear at the door of the hospice and call us. Then we would come running. One day when Michel called us, I did not come. I was busy stalking a hare. I had my nose to the ground, following the trail of scent the hare had left. I went around and around and finally I came to a chink in the rocks.

“Barry!” Michel called.

The hare was beneath those rocks. I knew it. I poked my nose into the hole and got a powerful whiff of hare.
Sorry, Michel, but I am busy with a hare just now
, I growled, never taking my eyes off the hole. My thought was:
Michel will understand
.

But Michel did not understand. “Barry!” he said again in a very stern voice. “I don’t care what
you are doing. When I call you, you will come. That is what we call obedience.”

I gave a snort. What was obedience? Was it a hare? Was it a bird or a beetle or a nice bush twig to chew on? What did I care about obedience?

The next thing I knew, Michel was standing over me. He reached down and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, just like Mother did. I was a big dog now, coming up almost to my mother’s shoulder, but he picked me up all the same. He was strong!

“Barry, you will stop whatever you are doing and come to me when I call,” he said. He shook me, not hard, but just enough to get my attention. Then he dropped me. I fell in a furry heap. His face was cold and angry.

I put my tail between my legs and looked up at him, and my expression said,
I am all for obedience,
Michel. From now on, when you call, I will come
.

And I did. Whenever I heard Michel or any of the other clerics or marronniers calling my name, I came. Michel and the others were always so happy to see me that I was glad I had.

Toward the end of the summer, I noticed that my fur coat was getting thicker. I wondered why that was. Then one early morning, while it was still dark outside, I found out the reason. I was in the cellar, fast asleep, when something made me open my eyes. Everything was silent, quieter than I had ever heard it. Has that ever happened to you? That a silence, rather than some noise, wakes you up in the middle of the night?

I went over to the door and sniffed between the cracks. I smelled snow. While the other dogs slept on, I got up and pushed through the door. I ran up the cellar stairs, along the hall, and down the front
steps, my claws scritch-scratching on the stones. When I came to the front door, I lifted a paw and banged at it. Brother Henri came. It was his turn to stay by the door all night to greet travelers who might arrive. “Are you ready for your first snow, Barry?” he whispered, grinning.

He opened the door and let me out.

How can I describe what it was like to see the world I knew—the hospice, the storage sheds, the rocky walls of the pass, the meadow where my brother and sister and I had played all summer, the bush, even the lake—all cloaked in a layer of pure white?

And the silence! We dogs have very sharp ears. But as the snow fell, it made no sound at all. I leapt off the porch and immediately slid onto my rump. This snow was slippery stuff! It was wet and slick like the floor after the clerics had finished mopping
it. It was cold, too. Even through my thick coat, I felt that it was colder than the water from the lake. I stood up, making an effort to keep all four legs beneath me. I put out my claws and grabbed on
to the snow. I walked a little way. Then I couldn’t resist a second longer. I dropped down and rolled on my back in the snow. How can I describe it? It was bliss.

After a while, Brother Henri called me back inside and I came running, because I am an obedient dog. I went back down into the cellar and fell into a deep sleep. I was exhausted after my first encounter with the cold white stuff. I dreamed I was chasing hares through the snow.

When I woke up, I knew it was still snowing. It was cold in the room. The older dogs were getting up and shaking themselves.

It’s snowing again
, Old Luc said, heading for the door.

Those travelers will not rescue themselves
, said Bernice, following him out.

Can I come, too?
I asked.

Not until you have learned how it’s done
, said Bernice.
You would only be in the way
.

All day long, as men and dogs came and went, guiding travelers who had gotten lost in the snow, I stood by the door and watched. Never had I felt so left out. That evening, as I was settling down after my dinner, Michel came to visit me. He was wearing his thick woolen coat and his furry hat. He had a long stick in one hand and a lantern in the other.

“Are you ready to learn to walk in the deep snow, Barry?” he asked.

He did not need to ask me twice. I wagged my tail and followed him out the door. Earlier, the snow had not been this deep. I could tell by how Michel’s stick sank into the whiteness that it was twice as deep as I was tall. I remembered Mother telling me that I would sink and have to be dug out. So I hesitated on the step.

Michel stepped onto the snow. He didn’t sink. His big, flat boots held him up. Perhaps my paws would do the same for me. I set a paw onto the snow. It sank. I pulled back. Then I widened my paw and set it down. My splayed paw stayed on the top of the snow. I tried that with my other paw, and soon I was standing with all four feet on top of the snow!

“Come along, Barry,” said Michel, setting out. “We’re going to take a nice moonlit walk.”

I followed Michel. The light from his lantern sparkled on the snow. But soon I was leading the way. Could it be that my sense of smell guided us along the path more surely than the lamplight? The little bush was buried in the snow. Only the rooftops of the sheds showed. When I turned to look back at the hospice, I saw drifts of snow that nearly reached the second story. In the valley
below, the lake was covered with a crust of white. My breath steamed in the air. Did I feel the cold? Yes, but it didn’t make me shiver. It made me feel
alive
!

In spite of the heavy blanket of snow, I could still smell the earth far down below. I could smell the hares burrowing and the bugs and the plants asleep in the dirt. I still had the scent of the path in my nose, and of all the feet that had trod over it for so many years that no dog—and very few men—could keep count. Every so often, I would halt and sniff and make sure that the path was still beneath me. Sometimes I ran quite a way ahead, but I never lost track of Michel. His tall, slender figure cloaked in black with the pointed cap was easy to see against the stark whiteness of the snow.

Every evening, when he had finished singing in the chapel, Michel took me out to walk. I quickly
learned that the hares that were brown in the summer were now white. They skittered over the drifts, nearly invisible to my eye. White, too, were the once-brown ptarmigans. But my own coat did not turn all white. I kept my brown spots. And my fur, though thicker, was still short. This was good because the snow did not form little balls on it as it did on the coats of the longer-haired dogs that sometimes visited the hospice. Those poor dogs got cold and stayed cold.

One fine night, I was padding along in the snow in front of Michel when I came to a sudden halt.

I could not have said what stopped me like that. Perhaps it was a stillness in the air and the earth, even more arresting than the stillness of the snow. Michel stopped, too. He swung his lantern toward me.

“What is it, Barry? Are you dawdling tonight?” he asked. He was not angry with me. But he was curious. I was curious, too. Something was happening. Something in the earth that came up through my feet and filled my body with the force of its presence.

Something was coming! Something huge and heavy and cold!

Suddenly, ahead of us, a good distance away but close enough that we could see it, a great rumbling torrent of snow came rushing down the mountainside. The silence was filled with a mighty
thundering that shook the earth. Michel called out and turned away to hide his head behind the collar of his coat.

Then the thundering stopped and the earth grew still again. I no longer recognized the way ahead. It was buried in a deep layer of fresh snow.

I confess that I could not help myself. I whimpered and cowered. Michel shook the snow off his cloak, then bent down and hugged me.

“You will be all right, boy. You have just witnessed your first avalanche,” he said.

And I knew with every bone in my body that it would not be my last one, either.

H
IDE-AND
-S
EEK

More avalanches followed. When the avalanches hit, the older dogs—Old Luc and Marius and Father—would go to the front door to wait while the clerics got ready. The clerics put on their cloaks and hats and took their long sticks in hand. Then the dogs would lead the way out into the snow with the clerics following behind, dragging their long sleds.

I would wait anxiously by the door. Sometimes
I waited all day for them to come back. Once Marius returned alone. He barked and barked.

We need more help!
he said.

Is it bad?
I asked.

Some men are trapped in an avalanche!
Marius said. He panted from the long run.

What will you do?
I asked.

Brother Martin and Brother Gaston came to the door.

“What’s wrong, Marius?” asked Brother Martin.

Marius grabbed Brother Martin’s hand in his mouth and pulled.

Brother Martin looked at Brother Gaston and said, “It seems we are needed.”

Brother Martin, Brother Gaston, and two marronniers donned their heavy cloaks and got their long sticks. I said to Marius,
What’s happening out
there? Tell me, what do you do when you go out on a mission?

You will find out soon enough, Barry
, Marius said.

The brothers went outside and each drew a sled from out of the shed. They followed, one after the other, in Marius’s paw prints. I stood in the yard and watched until all five of them disappeared into the whiteness.

I sighed. I was nearly full-grown. Why couldn’t I go with them?

Someone stroked my head.

I looked up into Michel’s kind face. “What is the matter, Barry? Do you feel left out?”

I whimpered. Michel understood me so well.

“Your first birthday is coming soon. Your time to take part is nearly at hand,” he told me.

I was still waiting by the door when I spied the
rescue party in the distance. On each sled was a body bundled in black wool blankets, bound by ropes.

Michel and others inside the hospice sprang into action. I stood by and watched, trying to stay out of their way but wishing I could do something to help. They heated big pots of wine on the fire. They got heaps of blankets and dry clothes ready. In the kitchen, the clerics on duty prepared a thick savory soup. They filled two big basins with water and ice and snow.
What was that for?
I wondered. The hot wine and dry blankets and soup I could understand. But surely the travelers had had quite enough of ice and snow!