A Dog's Purpose, Page 6

  It was exhausting.

  Later, playing out in the backyard, the boy called me Bailey. “Here, Bailey! Here, Bailey!” he would call, slapping his knees. When I trotted over to him he would dash away, and we ran around and around in the backyard. As far as I was concerned, it was an extension of the game inside, and I was prepared to respond to “Hornet” and “Ike” and “Butch,” but it seemed like this time “Bailey” would stick.

  After another meal, the boy took me into the house. “Bailey, I want you to meet Smokey the cat.”

  Holding me tightly against his chest, Ethan turned so I could see, sitting in the middle of the floor, a brown and gray animal whose eyes grew big when he spotted me. This was the smell I’d been tracking! The thing was larger than me, with tiny ears that looked like they’d be fun to bite. I struggled to get down to play with this new friend, but Ethan held me tight.

  “Smokey, this is Bailey,” Ethan said.

  At last he placed me on the floor and I ran over to kiss the cat, but he drew his lips back from a set of really wicked-looking teeth and spat at me, arching his back and thrusting his puffy tail straight up into the air. I stopped, puzzled. Didn’t he want to play? The musty smell coming from under his tail was delicious. I tried to inch in and give Smokey’s butt a friendly sniff, and he hissed and spat and raised a paw, nails extended.

  “Aw, Smokey, be a nice cat. Be a nice cat.”

  Smokey gave Ethan a baleful glare. I picked up on the boy’s encouraging tone and yipped in a very welcoming fashion, but the cat remained unapproachable, even batting at my nose when I tried to lick his face.

  Okay, well, I was ready to play with him whenever he wanted, but I had more important things to care about than some snotty cat. Over the next several days, I learned my place in the family.

  The boy lived in a small room full of wonderful toys, while Mom and Dad shared a room with no toys whatsoever. One room had a basin of water I could only drink from if I climbed into it, and also had no toys unless you counted the white paper that I could pull from the wall in a continuous sheet. The rooms for sleeping were at the top of some steps that were impossible for me to climb despite my full-sized dog legs. The food was all kept hidden in one part of the house.

  Every time I decided I needed to squat and relieve myself, everyone in the house went crazy, scooping me up and racing out the door with me, setting me in the grass and watching me until I’d recovered from the trauma of it all enough to continue with my business, which earned me so much praise I wondered if this was my main function in the family. Their praise was inconsistent, though, because there were some papers they’d set out for me to rip up and if I squatted on them I was called a good dog, too, but with relief, not joy. And, as I mentioned, sometimes when we were all in the house together they became upset with me for doing exactly the same thing.

  “No!” Mom or Ethan would shout when I wet the floor. “Good boy!” they’d sing when I peed in the grass. “Okay, that’s good,” they’d say when I urinated on the papers. I could not understand what in the world was wrong with them.

  Dad mostly ignored me, though I sensed he liked it when I got up in the morning to keep him company while he ate. He regarded me with mild affection—nothing like the berserk adoration flooding out of Ethan, though I could feel that was how much Dad and Mom loved the boy. Occasionally Dad would sit at the table in the evenings with the boy and they would talk quietly, concentrating, while sharp, pungent fumes filled the air. Dad would let me lie on his feet, since the boy’s feet were too far off the ground for me to reach.

  “Look, Bailey, we built an airplane,” the boy said after one of these sessions, thrusting a toy at me. It made my eyes water with the chemical odors, so I didn’t try to take it away. Making noises, the boy ran around the house holding the toy, and I chased after him and tried to tackle him. Later he put the thing on a shelf with other toys that faintly smelled of the same chemicals, and that was it until he and Dad decided to build another one.

  “This one is a rocket, Bailey,” Ethan told me, offering me a toy shaped like a stick. I turned up my nose at it. “We’re going to land one on the moon one day, and then people will live there, too. Would you like to be a space dog?”

  I heard the word “dog” and sensed there was a question, so I wagged. Yes, I thought. I would be happy to help clean the dishes.

  Cleaning the dishes was where the boy would put a plate of food down and I would lick it. It was one of my jobs, but only when Mom wasn’t watching.

  Mostly, though, my job was to play with the boy. I had a box with a soft pillow in it where the boy put me at night, and I came to understand that I was to stay in the box until Mom and Dad came in and said good night and then the boy would let me up into his bed to sleep. If I got bored in the night, I could always chew on the boy.

  My territory was behind the house, but after a few days I was introduced to a whole new world, the “neighborhood.” Ethan would burst out the front door in a dead run, me at his heels, and we’d find other girls and boys and they’d hug me and wrestle with me and tug toys from my mouth and throw them.

  “This is my dog, Bailey,” Ethan said proudly, holding me up. I squirmed at the sound of my name. “Look, Chelsea,” he said, offering me to a girl his size. “He is a golden retriever. My mother rescued him; he was dying in a car from heat exhaust-station. When he gets old enough I’m going to take him hunting on my grandpa’s farm.”

  Chelsea cuddled me to her chest and gazed into my eyes. Her hair was long and lighter than even mine, and she smelled like flowers and chocolate and another dog. “You are sweet, you are so sweet, Bailey, I love you,” she sang to me.

  I liked Chelsea; whenever she saw me she would drop to her knees and let me pull on her long blond hair. The dog scent on her clothing came from Marshmallow, a long-haired brown and white dog who was older than I but still a juvenile. When Chelsea let Marshmallow out of her yard we would wrestle for hours and sometimes Ethan would join us, playing, playing, playing.

  When I lived in the Yard, Senora loved me, but I now realized it was a general love, aimed at all the dogs in the pack. She called me Toby, but she didn’t say my name the way the boy whispered, “Bailey, Bailey, Bailey,” in my ear at night. The boy loved me; we were the center of each other’s worlds.

  Living in the Yard had taught me how to escape through a gate. It had led me straight to the boy, and loving and living with the boy was my whole purpose in life. From the second we woke up until the moment we went to sleep, we were together.

  But then, of course, everything changed.

  { SEVEN }

  One of my favorite things to do was to learn new tricks, as the boy called them, which consisted of him speaking to me in encouraging tones and then feeding me treats. “Sit,” for example, was a trick where the boy would say, “Sit, Bailey! Sit!” and then he would climb on my rear end, forcing it to the ground, and then he would feed me a dog biscuit.

  “Dog Door! Dog Door!” was a trick where we would go out to the “garage,” where Dad kept his car, and the boy would shove me through a plastic flap in the side door to the backyard. Then he’d call for me and I’d push my nose through the flap and he’d feed me a dog biscuit!

  My legs, I was gratified to see, kept growing with the rest of me, so that as the nights grew cooler I was able to keep up with the boy, even at a sprint.

  One morning, the dog door trick took on an entirely different meaning. The boy was up early, barely after sunrise, and Mom was running in and out of different rooms.

  “Take care of Bailey!” Mom called at one point. I looked up from where I was giving a chew toy a serious working over, taking note of Smokey the cat, who sat on the counter and gazed down upon me with insufferable haughtiness. I picked up the chew toy and shook it to demonstrate to Smokey what a great time he was missing out on by being so snooty.

  “Bailey!” the boy called. He was carrying my bed, and, intrigued, I followed him out to the garage. What was this
game?

  “Dog Door,” the boy said to me. I sniffed his pockets but couldn’t smell any biscuits. Since the whole point of playing Dog Door was, in my opinion, the dog biscuits, I decided to turn away and lift my leg on a bicycle.

  “Bailey!” I felt impatience from the boy and regarded him in puzzlement. “You sleep here, okay, Bailey? You be a good dog. If you need to go to the bathroom, you go out the dog door, okay? Dog Door, Bailey. I have to go to school now. Okay? I love you, Bailey.”

  The boy gave me a hug, and I licked him in the ear. When he turned, I naturally followed, but at the door to the house he barred me from entry. “No, Bailey, you stay in the garage until I get home. Dog Door, okay, Bailey? You be a good dog.”

  He shut the door in my face.

  “Stay”? “Dog Door”? “Good dog”? How were these terms, which I’d heard so often, even remotely related, and which one was “Stay” again?

  None of this made any sense to me. I sniffed around the garage, which was full of wonderful smells, but I wasn’t in the mood to explore; I wanted my boy. I barked, but the door to the house remained shut, so I scratched it. Still nothing.

  I heard some children yelling from the front of the house and ran to the big garage doors, hoping they would lift up as they sometimes did when the boy stood in front of them, but nothing happened. A loud truck of some kind swept up the voices of the children and carried them away. A few minutes later, I heard Mom’s car drive off, and then the world, which had been so full of life and fun and noise, became intolerably quiet.

  I barked for a while, but that did nothing at all, though I did smell Smokey just on the other side of the door, smugly taking note of my predicament. I scratched the door. I chewed on some shoes. I ripped up my dog bed. I found a trash bag full of clothing, tore it open the way Mother had when we were scavenging for garbage, and strewed the clothes around the garage. I peed in one corner and pooped in the other corner. I tipped over a metal container and ate some pieces of chicken and some spaghetti and a waffle, and licked out a can of fish that smelled like Smokey’s breath. I ate some paper. I knocked over my water dish and chewed on it.

  There was nothing to do.

  After what seemed like the longest day of my life, I heard Mom’s car pull into the driveway. Her car door slammed, and I heard running feet pound through the house.

  “Bailey!” the boy shouted, opening the door.

  I tackled him, overjoyed that we had ended this madness forever. But he stood staring at the garage.

  “Oh, Bailey,” he said, sounding sad.

  Full of manic energy, I burst past him and skittered around in the house, leaping over furniture. I spotted Smokey and took off in pursuit, chasing him up the stairs and barking when he dove under Mom and Dad’s bed.

  “Bailey!” Mom called to me sternly.

  “Bad dog, Bailey,” the boy said crossly.

  I was astounded at this false accusation. Bad? I’d been accidentally locked in the garage but was more than willing to forgive them. Why were they scowling at me like that, shaking their fingers at me?

  Moments later I was back in the garage, helping the boy, who picked up everything I’d played with and put most of it into the trash container I’d knocked over. Mom came out and sorted through the clothing, taking some into the house with her, but no one praised me for discovering where the items had been hiding.

  “Dog Door,” the boy said crossly, but he didn’t give me any treats. I was beginning to think that “Dog Door” was the same as “bad dog,” which was very disappointing, to say the least.

  Obviously, this had been a very upsetting day for everybody, and I was certainly willing to put the whole incident behind us, but when Dad came home Mom and the boy talked to him and he yelled, and I knew he was mad at me. I slunk off into the living room and ignored Smokey’s snide expression.

  Dad and the boy left right after dinner. Mom sat at the table and stared at papers, even when I approached and put a wonderful wet ball in her lap. “Oh, yuck, Bailey,” she said.

  When the boy and Dad came home, the boy called me out into the garage and showed me a big wooden box. He climbed inside, so I joined him, though the space was hot and tight with the two of us in there. “Doghouse, Bailey. This is your doghouse.”

  I didn’t see how the box related to me, but I was certainly happy to play “Doghouse” when treats were introduced into the mix. “Doghouse” meant “go inside the doghouse and eat the dog biscuit.” We did the doghouse trick and the dog door trick while Dad moved around the garage, placing things up on shelves and tying a rope on the big metal container. I was overjoyed that “Dog Door” had treats associated with it again!

  When the boy grew tired of tricks, we went inside and wrestled on the floor. “Time for bed,” Mom said.

  “Oh, Mom, please? Can I stay up?”

  “We both have school tomorrow, Ethan. Time for you to say good night to Bailey.”

  While conversations like this took place in the house all the time, I rarely bothered to pay attention, but this time I lifted my head at my name, sensing a shift in the boy’s emotions. A sadness and regret wafted off him and he stood, his shoulders slumped.

  “Okay, Bailey. Time for bed.”

  I knew what bed was, but apparently we were going to take a detour along the way, because the boy led me out to the garage for another rousing game of Doghouse. I was perfectly fine with this but shocked when, moments later, the boy sealed me back in the garage, all by myself.

  I barked, trying to make sense of it all. Was it because I’d chewed up my dog bed? I never slept in the thing anyway; it was just for show. Did they really expect me to remain outside in the garage all night? No, that couldn’t be it.

  Could it?

  I was so distressed, I couldn’t help but whimper. The thought of the boy lying in bed without me, all alone, made me so sad I wanted to chew shoes. My cries grew louder, my heartbreak unrestrained.

  After ten or fifteen minutes of relentless grief, the garage door cracked. “Bailey,” the boy whispered.

  I ran to him in relief. He eased out, carrying a blanket and a pillow. “Okay. Doghouse, Doghouse,” he told me. He crept over to the doghouse and arranged the blanket on the thin pad inside. I climbed in next to him—we both had two feet sticking out the door. I put my head on his chest, sighing, while he stroked my ears.

  “Good dog, Bailey,” he murmured.

  A little while later, Mom and Dad opened the door from the house and stood there, watching us. I flapped my tail but didn’t get up, not wanting to wake the boy. Finally, Dad came out and picked up Ethan and Mom gestured to me and the two of us were put to bed inside the house.

  The next day, as if we hadn’t learned anything from our mistakes, I was out in the garage again! This time there was far less for me to do, though I did, with some effort, manage to tear the pad out of the doghouse and shred it up pretty well. I knocked over the trash container but couldn’t get the lid off. Nothing on the shelves was chewable—nothing I could reach, anyway.

  At one point I went over and assaulted the flap over the dog door, my nose picking up the rich scent of an oncoming rainstorm. Compared to the Yard, where a dry, sandy dust had coated our parched tongues every day, the place the boy lived was wetter and colder, and I loved the way scents would blur together and re-form when it rained. Wonderful trees, laden with leaves, sheltered the ground everywhere we went, and they would harbor raindrops and release them later when tossed by breezes. It was all so deliciously moist—even the hottest days were usually broken by cooler air at night.

  The tantalizing odors drew my head farther and farther through the dog door until suddenly, quite by accident, I was out in the yard, without the boy having to push me!

  Delighted, I tore around the backyard, barking. It was as if the dog door had been put there to let me out into the backyard from the garage! I squatted and relieved myself—I was finding I much preferred doing my business outdoors instead of in the house, and not
just because of the lack of drama. I liked to wipe my paws on the lawn after I went, trailing the scent from the sweat on my pads onto the blades of grass. It was also much more gratifying to lift my leg and mark the edge of the yard than, say, the corner of the couch.

  Later, when the cold rain turned from mist to serious drops, I discovered the dog door worked both ways! I wished the boy were home so he could see what I had taught myself.

  After the rain ended, I dug a hole, chewed the hose, and barked at Smokey, who sat in the window and pretended not to hear me. When a large yellow bus pulled up in front of the house and disgorged the boy and Chelsea and a bunch of other kids from the neighborhood, I was in the backyard, my paws up on the fence, and the boy ran up to me, laughing.

  I didn’t really go into the doghouse after that, except when Mom and Dad yelled at each other. Ethan would come out into the garage and get into the doghouse with me and put his arms around me, and I would sit perfectly still for however long he wanted me to. This was, I decided, my purpose as a dog, to comfort the boy whenever he needed me.

  Sometimes families would leave the neighborhood and new families would arrive, so when Drake and Todd moved in a few houses down I considered it nothing but good news—and not just because Mom made delicious cookies to take to the new neighbors, feeding me a couple as a reward for keeping her company in the kitchen. New boys meant more children to play with.

  Drake was older and bigger than Ethan, but Todd was the same age and he and Ethan became fast friends. Todd and Drake had a sister named Linda who was even younger; she fed me sugary treats when no one was watching.

  Todd was different from Ethan. He liked to play games in the creek with matches, burning plastic toys, like Linda’s dolls. Ethan would participate, but he didn’t laugh as much as Todd; mostly Ethan just watched the things burn.

  When Todd announced he had firecrackers one day, Ethan got pretty excited. I had never seen anything like a firecracker and was pretty startled at the flash and the noise and the way the plastic doll instantly had a smoky smell—or at least the part I could find after the explosion. At Todd’s urging, Ethan went into his house and came back with one of the toys he had built with his father and the boys put a firecracker in it and threw it in the air, and it blew up.