Say That Again (8 page)

The noise was another matter, however. The volume and relentlessness set me on edge. Every bark was a reminder that if I did not find a home by the time I looked full grown, I would be moved to the kennel runs. There, my fate was questionable. Far fewer people visited that area of the shelter. And it seemed to me that more dogs went in there than ever came out.

The Grunwalds — the parents, a grandmother, and no less than six children — were a boisterous lot. Almost a litter, except that they were obviously of different ages. Since humans seemed to keep their young around longer, I could see the advantage of only having one at a time. Although maybe they did have multiples and there was a shelter where they gave their extra children away? I pondered it and decided this was not the case. I had never seen a human mother with more than one infant at a time. And yet... the two youngest of the Grunwalds were mirror images of one another and both the same height, no taller than their mother’s hip.

Evelyn explained that we were both up to date on our vaccines — I had taken my shot stoically, while the others had screamed and resisted — and that whichever pup they chose, they would be given a certificate for a free spay or neuter, whatever those were. Some sort of prize, I supposed.

After a brief exchange with Mr. and Mrs. Grunwald, in which Evelyn asked if they were prepared to commit to a dog for the next ten to fifteen years, to which they of course said ‘yes’, she excused herself, stating that this mythical Aaron, whom I’d never seen, was not in today and she had to man the front desk again.

Instead of staying behind the low wall and observing the puppies at first like most people, the entire Grunwald family poured into the puppy area. The two identical boys zeroed in on the smaller puppy, passing him back and forth as he wagged his silky tail. The grandmother picked me up, scowled, then set me back down. The two middle children, a girl and a boy, punched each other, then whined to their mother, while the oldest two girls leaned against the wall, jabbing their thumbs at small handheld devices.

“Which one do you want?” the father asked to no one in particular. “And hurry up! We ain’t got all bloomin’ day.”

“This one! This one!” the youngest pair shouted as they jumped up and down, the tiny puppy bouncing in the one boy’s arms.

Just as he thrust the puppy at his father, the puppy peed right onto the father’s boots.

“Aw, God!” The man backed up, waving his hands in front of him. “Put him down, for crying out loud.” His face twisted in disgust. “Mavis, grab the other one and let’s go. I’m not taking home a piss-pot for a dog.”

“But it’s a puppy, Earl.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Puppies pee. Besides, you said it was going to be an outdoor dog. So what does it matter? If the boys want the Yorkie-Poo, let them have him. He can stay in the garage when it’s cold.”

“Look at him, Mavis. The thing weighs four pounds. He’s a stuffed toy, not a dog. They’ll step on him and squash him flat. They need a bigger dog. A sturdy dog that can take a bit of rough and tumble.”

“Then why don’t we look at the adults? I saw some real pretty ones standing in them runs when we drove up.”

“Get a clue, will you? There’s a reason those older dogs are in there. It’s prison for dogs. I’m not dealing with someone else’s problem. These pups are from accidental breedings. They’s mixes. Healthier than those purebreds you pay a thousand bucks for.”

Her gaze falling on me, she sneered. “You just don’t want me to have that Pekingese I saw at the pet store. That smooshed-in face was sooo adorable.”

“I ain’t payin’ for no Pekingese, Mavis Veronica Grunwald. So get that out of your thick head right now. You think the ATM just magically spits out free money?”

“They have payment plans,” she muttered.

“We’re
getting
the big one.”

Squinting, the oldest girl looked up from her device. “Something happened to his tail. What’s wrong with it? Is it tucked between his legs?”

“It’s gone,” the second tallest girl said. “S’pose he was in an accident?”

“Maybe he was born that way?” the mother said. “Aren’t some dogs born like that, Earl? Like bulldogs? My cousin Johnny had a bulldog with a short little screw-tail once.”

“He ain’t no bulldog, Mavis. He’s black and white. Must be part Border Collie.”

That was the first time I realized that sometimes dogs are smarter than human beings. It would not be the last. I was born bobtailed. It was common for my breed, the Australian Shepherd. I’d heard Carol say it many times when people came to look at my litter. My mother had been a dark blue merle, a dazzling patchwork blend of gray with black spots. Her chest and legs were white. I remembered that much of her. Carol had told people our father was a red tri, meaning he was three colors: red, copper, and white. Indeed we had been a motley crew of merles and solids, with varying amounts of white trim, four of the seven of us with copper also on our legs, cheeks, and eyebrows.

I had been the plainest of the bunch, dark-faced and with yellow eyes that spooked a lot of people, judging by their wariness. Strangers had a habit of staring at me, remarking on how different I was — how much plainer, how much quieter, how much smaller. Evidently, it was not a compliment. I had grown since then, but I was still plain and quiet. I have never understood why being calm and less barky was considered a flaw, though. ‘Still waters run deep’ has a lot of truth to it.

The oldest girl flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder and sneered at me. “He’s ugly. Just a plain, ugly black dog with a lil’ bit o’ white on him.”

“We’re getting the big one.”

“He’s shy,” Mavis protested. “Don’t wanna have nothing to do with us.”

“He’ll get used to us.” Earl grabbed the twins by their coat collars and prodded them out of the puppy area. “Let’s go, Tristan and Troy. Come on, the rest of you. My shift starts in an hour and I need to get home and change. Last thing we need is for me to get fired, ’cause ain’t no one else puttin’ food on the table.”

“Now you know I’d be working if it wasn’t for my bad back. Can’t help that I got a bad back.”

“You been on your back way too much, woman.” Earl shooed the boys out into the hallway. “No job I know of you can work lying down.” Snickering, he lowered his voice. “Well, there’s one I can think of... That
is
how I met you.”

She punched his arm — and not in a teasing way. “You’re just with me ‘cause no one else would sleep with you. I know I was your first.”

“First, but maybe not my only.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means maybe we wouldn’t be together if it weren’t for the first accident.”

Mavis glanced at the twins through the open doorway, then grumbled, “How do you explain the second, third, fourth, and fifth ones, huh?”

They huddled together, sniping at each other. The middle girl picked me up, her arms clamped around my chest, my back legs swinging freely. She was barely strong enough to hang onto me, but no one seemed interested in helping her.

The rest of the day went like that. Bickering and name calling, shouts and curses. My fur being grabbed, my ears tugged. They placed a snug chain collar around my neck with tags on it. Every time I moved, the metal tags plinked. I didn’t like the feel of it, or the sound. Torture. Absolute torture.

As soon as we were inside their double-wide trailer and the middle girl, whose name was Tiffany, set me down, I ran and hid behind the couch. The twins dragged me out.

One tossed a ball down the hallway. “Fetch!” Troy commanded.

I watched it bounce over the stained carpet, smack against a door, and come to a stop. Tristan ran to get the ball.

“Not you, idiot!” Troy said. “The dog’s supposed to get it.”

“I know. But maybe he doesn’t know what ‘fetch’ means just yet.”

Ten more times Troy lobbed the ball down the narrow hall. After a while, I refused to even look at it. I didn’t like their shouting, the hollow sound of the ball colliding with the closed door, the dimness of the hall, or their rough hands on me. Eventually, they gave up and went outside.

Wary that they might return, I crept into the kitchen and lay beneath the table. The grandmother was there, chopping vegetables and throwing them in a pot. Then she mixed something in a bowl, formed it into a lump on a spoon, and tossed it into a pot of hot grease that sizzled. After that, she washed dishes and set the table, never once looking my way.

My bladder was getting full. This place didn’t exactly smell clean — I could tell a lot of food and drinks had been spilled on the floor and left to soak into the rugs and floorboards — but I didn’t want to pee inside. That was just ... wrong.

So I stared at her, willing her to notice me, wishing she’d take me outside and let me relieve myself. I stared at her so long my eyeballs were swimming.

Making sure the twins were not within sight, I walked up to her and sat, squeezing my hind legs together to keep the pee from leaking out. I nudged her knee with my nose. She swatted at me. I whimpered. She kicked me in the leg with her heavy leather boot.

Limping, I returned to beneath the table. More time passed. She dried the dishes and put them away, stopping now and then to stir the pot of vegetables or scoop one of the greasy, doughy things out of the other pot and adding more. Desperate for relief, I slinked into the living room.

Although it was still daylight out, heavy curtains were drawn across the window, darkening the room. Only bursts of light from the TV lit the over-full confines. Two couches were shoved against opposite walls. In one, Mavis was stretched out, wearing oversized sweatpants and a football jersey. Three empty beer cans sat on the end table next to her. On the other couch, the oldest girl sat with her legs crossed. I called her Scowler, because that’s what she did all the time — scowl.

Scowler glanced up from her handheld device, then back down. “What’s he doing in here? Thought y’all said the dog was staying outside.”

“Soon as your father gets home from work and gets around to putting some water in the bowl and straw in the doghouse.”

A loud noise came from the TV and Mavis jerked upright. A moving picture of a car exploding and bursting into flames flashed across the screen. For a moment I thought it was a window to outside, but then I realized the scene lacked dimension. It also lacked scent. How could they spend so much time watching something that wasn’t real? Could anything be more boring?

Mavis squinted at me, fighting sleep. “Take him out, will you?”

“In a bit,” Scowler said.

“Now!” Mavis barked.

“I said in a bit!” Scowler shouted back without looking up, even as her fingers flew over the device, tapping away. “Movie’s almost over, all right? Geesh, get off my back.”

Either Mavis believed her or she’d given up arguing. In minutes, she was asleep. Without a glance in my direction, Scowler marched off to a back bedroom, slammed her door, and turned her music up loud.

I could hear the twins yelling outside, but I hadn’t seen the others since we arrived. Earl had gone off to work within minutes of getting home. I went and lay by the front door, hoping Mavis or Grandmother would see me. But neither seemed concerned about where I was, what I was doing, or if I might need anything.

Time to leave a message, bold and clear. I squatted over the welcome mat and emptied my bladder. It soaked through, running out onto the tiled floor to seep beneath a row of cardboard boxes. When I was done, I carefully picked my way around the mess and went back to my spot beneath the kitchen table, where I fell sound asleep — until the front door banged shut.

“Oh my God!” Tiffany screamed. “Is that ...? Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. It
is
!”

She stomped into the living room. “Mooommm! The dog peed a river right in front of the front door. My dance costumes are ruined.” Her voice pitched to a shriek. “Ruined! Completely and totally ruined!”

Message received. The contents of the boxes were an unfortunate casualty.

The Grunwalds were not, however, quick learners. Or perceptive. Rather than understanding that they needed to let me outside occasionally, they chose to punish me for doing what nature demanded.

Scowler was coerced — Mavis threatened to shut off her precious phone — into spreading straw in and around the doghouse in the backyard and filling an old metal bowl with water for me. I might have enjoyed the separation from the family goings-on, but the bowl still had a layer of algae on its surface and so the water tasted bad. The straw was damp and had a moldy smell. And I had not been fed since early that morning.

There, Scowler tied me, the limit of my world being the length of a chain that went from a hook on the doghouse to a skinny, leafless tree. As the sun dipped behind distant mountains and the cold settled in, I crawled inside the doghouse. I shivered myself to sleep, my belly rumbling for food.

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—o00o—

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D
ays and then months passed this way. The collar, that had at first been barely big enough to slip past my ears and over my head, grew tighter and tighter. Whenever I swallowed, the metal links dug into my throat. Sometimes, it even made it hard to breathe.

Things weren’t all bad. At least I wasn’t subjected to the perpetual disorder and uproar of being indoors at the Grunwalds’ house. In my isolation, I was able to observe many things: cars speeding down the road in the distance; squirrels leaping from limb to limb in the nearby woods; and crows swooping through the sky in great clouds, then down to dot an adjacent field as they pecked kernels of corn from the furrowed earth. I watched as storms rolled in from the west and snowflakes drifted down to coat the hills in a glistening blanket of white.

And then, as the days warmed, the grass greened, and the tree branches thickened with buds, rain came down to cleanse the world. If only it could wash the unhappiness from the Grunwalds, too ...

But all was not peaceful. I dreaded whenever I saw the twins coming. They often taunted me, bouncing stones off the side of my doghouse as I huddled inside, or poking me with a stick when I ventured outside as they pretended to be knights with swords and I was the dragon. I discovered by accident that me playing dead gave them satisfaction. Troy would plant a foot on my ribs as I lay still and declare me ‘slain’; then they would run off, laughing. I was grateful when they climbed on the school bus each morning and just as grateful that the other children took no interest in me. As far as I knew, I didn’t even have a name, although I heard Tiffany call me Piss-Pot more than once.