Flawed Dogs (11 page)

Several hours later the light returned to Sam like drapes in a black room opening very slowly. After a few moments he remembered that his heart was broken.

Things were blurred. Shadowy. Wet.

Wet?
thought Sam.

He was being kissed all over the face.

Licked.

Slowly, the face on the other end of the oddly rough tongue doing the licking came into focus, inches from his. She was beautiful. A miniature greyhound, maybe—of exquisitely delicate features.

“Am I in heaven?” asked Sam.

“Certainly,” cooed a voice like velvet. “And I’m Bambi’s dead mother.”

Sam picked up his head and looked around. Ancient bricks oozing water and slime curved over his head. Black, rusted bars stretched across in front of him. A round, dungeon-like space lay beyond, bathed in a familiar misty blue light. He could hear music and voices somewhere, echoing through watery tunnels. No, not heaven.

“Actually, my name is Madam. And you’re still in Vermont. Fifty feet below it.”

“Why are you licking my face?” said Sam.

“Because it’s such a cute one. I’m also tidying it up.”

Sam realized his head didn’t throb with pain anymore. With a paw he felt that the bullet’s gaping cut on his scalp had been sewn shut and the dried blood was gone. A needle and thread lay nearby on the filthy floor. Madam shrugged.

“I’ve . . . gotten quite good with that.”

Sam rose unsteadily and walked toward the bars to look out. A crumbling spiral staircase descended from the darkness above. A single beam of pale moonlight found its way down from some distant filthy window. In the middle of the round brick room sat a single old desk with piles of paper, a video player and a small TV on top: the source of the blue light that flickered across the bricks.

A sign on the desk said:

Seven dogs sat piled on and around a single chair in the dark, watching the tiny screen. They turned their heads to look at Sam and said in chorus:

“Evenin’!”

Then they turned back to the old movie playing on the TV.

Sam noticed that his cage door was open. He moved out toward the desk. One of the dogs turned to Sam and said in a hushed, excited voice, “It’s the last scene! Sooo, so great. Lassie was taken from her little boy and sold and sent away, then escaped and spent months lost and crossing the country struggling to get home and she’s nearly dead and crawling to his school where the little boy has come out and spotted her . . .”

Sam looked at the screen. He watched the boy in the movie run to the filthy, wounded collie and embrace her. “Lassie, you’ve come home!” he said.

The mesmerized dogs erupted in a cascade of mournful howling and sobs, making Sam jump. They turned to each other and hugged happily. One gargantuan beast turned to Sam, wiped a tear and said, “
SUCH
a good flick!”

“How . . . many times have you all seen it?” asked Sam, wide-eyed.

The dogs looked at each other. One started counting on his paws.

“Well, lessee. . . . Every night for . . . for . . . how long, Blue?”

“Years,” said the dog next to him. A blue pit bull. With lavender spots and chartreuse ears.

As an astonished Sam moved closer to them, he suddenly realized that they were the seven most ridiculous dogs he had ever seen. The seven most ridiculous
anything
he’d ever seen.

“Meet the neighbors, pilgrim,” said Madam, pointing to the biggest one, indistinguishable from a furry rhinoceros. “This is Tusk. His love of mailmen is a one-way affair.”

A terrier mix the size of a yard mole stepped forward. “Wee Willy,” said Madam. “Willy liked to lick noses. Alas, from the inside.”

A nearly hairless mutt walked out with a face overwhelmed with wrinkles, piano wire hair and bulging eyeballs. “Here’s Bug,” said Madam. “An underappreciated beauty.”

The blue pit bull mix stood up, the color of gummy bears. “Dear, sweet Ol’ Blue. She clashed with her last owner’s couch. She actually clashes with all couches.

“Fabio, stand up, please,” urged Madam. Fabio—a lanky greyhound-pointer-beagle mix of some sort—did exactly that, standing on his two rear legs, which was good since he had no front legs whatsoever. “Fabio was born missing some things. But not a healthy self-image.”

A bassett mix ambled out, tripping over jowls that draped like beach towels. “Here’s Jeeves. Very important that he avoids breezes.

“And then finally, we have Pooft. Come out, dear.”

A tiny black curly-haired mutt hopped forward. Sam stared. Seemed normal. “Wait,” said Madam. Suddenly a three-foot flame rocketed out from his exhaust port accompanied by the sound of an old Chrysler backfiring. Pooft shot forward and hit the wall next to Sam. Behind, all the papers from the desk had blown off, leaving a few singed and smoking with a faint odor lingering in the air of, thankfully, French toast.

Pooft looked at Sam, somewhat embarrassed. “Bad kibble,” he said.

Sam stared at the dogs, perplexed. “What breeds are you?”

The dogs glanced at each other, confused.

“We’re dogs,” said Madam.

“What
kind
?” said Sam.

Madam thought. “With skin,” she said, satisfied.

Sam looked at them in horror. “Where am I?”

Then he knew. “Wait. I’ve heard about these places! It’s the scary bedtime stories that dog parents tell their puppies about where they’ll end up if they’re not clean or groomed or . . . perfect.”

Sam looked at the bars with disgust.

“This is a dog pound.”

Madam moved in closer toward Sam. “No, no, no, handsome. It’s not just any dog pound. It’s the country’s
worst.
It’s where they send the hopeless cases. It’s the end of the road. The unholiest of the unholy. The National Last-Ditch Dog Depository. And you . . . are the newest depositee.”

Sam looked stunned. Then angry. “I’m no depositee. I’m an Austrian red dachshund.”

The dogs looked back at him politely.

“I have a Duüglitz tuft!” said Sam.

Fabio stood on his only two legs, cleared his throat and struck a pose. “I have twelve nipples.”

Sam looked around frantically. “I’ve gotta get back home. Which way is out?”

Madam pointed up the spiral stairs. Sam dashed up several and then stopped.

“The door’s not locked,” said Madam.

Sam looked surprised.

Madam smiled slightly. “They know we won’t leave. We don’t want to.”

“Then what
do
you want?”

“Why, to be
taken.
”

Sam frowned, then turned to go higher. He stopped again and looked down at Madam. “Come with me. You’re not like those others. You’re
perfect.
”

Madam reached up with a paw, pushing off her fake, expertly sewn dog muzzle made of leather and snipped fur . . . revealing the snubbed flat nose of a cat.

“Nobody’s perfect,” she purred.

Sam dashed out of the ancient fort and into the frigid night. He looked back to see a series of crumbling walls hewn from massive red granite. It looked like what it was: a forgotten prison from a long-ago war, rotting in a frozen marsh. A sign, leaning from the wind, read:
ADOPTIONS
ON TUESDAYS, 1 P.M. TO 1:15 P.M.

Someone had scratched out the times with a marker, scrawling underneath:
DON’T BOTHER.

Where was he? The hills looked familiar. He was at the edge of a familiar city. He sniffed the freezing air. A thousand scents flooded in, but it wasn’t difficult picking out the smoldering alder wood in the fireplace of Hamish’s upstairs study. He sniffed. Home was about five miles away. Maybe four. He’d follow the river.

As Sam started off, he looked back at the gloomy stone citadel from which he’d just emerged.
Won’t be coming back here,
he thought.

Back inside and below the old fort, down in its darkest recesses, the homeless, unwanted lost dogs of the National Last-Ditch Dog Depository pushed the start button on the VCR and huddled together as
Lassie Come Home
started again. Madam looked up the winding stairs that the strange new dachshund had just ascended. The others noticed her looking and looked at her. Then, on cue, they all said in a chorus: “He’ll be back.”

Staying to the shadows of the riverbank, Sam ran west. He would find Heidy and she would somehow understand that everything was a mistake—that it was Cassius, not he, that was the danger.

Breathing hard, Sam loped through the fresh snow, lit brightly by a newly emerged moon. His head throbbed as he reached a low draw in the hills where the wall crossed a stream, now frozen. A large drainpipe emerged below the stonework: the way he and Heidy would sneak out of the estate when she was supposed to be doing her chores. Sam stepped into its darkness. He froze at a familiar voice in the blackness inches from his face: