Skidboot 'The Smartest Dog In The World' (6 page)

A faraway bark told him that Skidboot was locked up in the woodshed again, which suited Russell fine. He was tired of the frantic flurry of paw steps always rampaging after him, of the cold nose and the huge energy. Skidboot barked again, short, needy, demanding. 

Russell yelled, "No Skidboot, you go away!" He wanted some privacy, not to have to deal with Skidboot again. Russell for a moment felt the dark fury of the bully, the perpetrator, the brutish force of the aggressor over something smaller, weaker, and unable to speak.
Like me,
he realized with a start. That's how he felt at school these days, pushed around.

He scuffed his boots, disturbing a horned toad that froze in the flashlight beam and dove into the soil, only it's eyes showing, fixed and bright. Every current of life force in the tiny reptile called for quiet. Maybe Russell could learn something from a Texas horned toad, the art of camouflage and mind control. So the two cooperated, the toad lying still as winter and Russell, even though he knew it was there, pretending ignorance. He strolled by and both of them were relieved.

Studious and extremely bright in every subject, Russell teetered between admiration for David's love of the rodeo circuit and his own more academic nature. One seemed to circumvent the other. If he chose rodeo life, it would oddly empower him, like a dam that forces a flow of water in an unnatural direction. Right or wrong, directing the channel gave him a sense of being grown up. After all, how many ways to Sunday had his parents gotten it wrong?

On the weekend, he'd end up in Dallas with his grandparents, waiting to be picked up by his birth father. Sometimes he felt like a UPS parcel, going from one place to another, only to return back again. So it went, one week in Quinlan and the weekend elsewhere. Quinlan had backwater schools. He should be learning more.

"Salutatorian!" His grandparents glowed with the pride of his achievements. Everyone rolled with pride when it came to Russell, the lone youngster in the group of adults. He guessed he deserved it, his grades certainly were outstanding. Junior high school beset even the most stalwart, leaving them indecisive. Since Russell was generally obedient, his efforts to change often led him right back around to what he was supposed to do.

He was fed up with country living, fed up with Quinlan and all the jokes about it. Then he smiled, remembering one in particular.

"You born in Quinlan?"

"No, but I got here as soon as I could."

He grinned, then frowned again. Distracted and daydreaming, he walked around the corner, never imagining that he was heading into trouble of a different order, something more tangible, more frightening, than anything yet.

Inside the house, David and Barbara were head to head, trying to figure out bills, Russell, work prospects, and how to divide up the chores. David thought Barbara was too hard on the boy, Barbara thought David was too soft. For a child of divorce, Russell was surrounded by adults, who circled around, issued rules, laws, declarations and advice, who came up with game plans spilling over with conflicting moves. Agree to disagree seemed to be the style.

Suddenly, Skidboot broke into a round of intense barking, decibels rising in a frantic, noisy pandemonium ranging wildly up the scale of canine vocals. By the time he hit howl, Both Barbara and David were so irritated they turned in unison.

"Skidboot,
shut up!
”

"He don't like being locked up," David said. "He's mad, but we can be madder. We have to make him learn."

Russell had been outside later than usual. Dusk had drawn softly into evening, and as he walked around behind the barn, he kicked through the hay, while listening to the horses munch and breathing in the night. He mused to himself, thinking over the day's events in school. Here he had privacy and could think his own thoughts. He watched the stars poke through the dark sky, one after another, drawing down the night. Then he heard a chilling sound, part snort, part growl—a hair raising emanation that shot out of the dark, unidentifiable, horrific and scary. Like the noises he'd heard in that werewolf movie at the cinema last month. The same guttural trapped sound, as if a huge force was pushing itself up out of the ground. Russell struggled backwards, barely able to see in the dim star shine. He flipped on his flashlight again, and waved it—
my light sabre
-- in the direction of the sound. The guttural sound burst out again, a sound that seemed horribly familiar, and would have caused a hunter to flip off his gun's safety
that very minute
to prepare to shoot down a wild pig.

The javalina is North America's most grotesque feral throwback, a misshapen peccary humped up at the shoulders like an economy buffalo, leaving its outsized head hanging straight down, dragged there by the weight of its tusks. A misfit beast, with teeth too long and legs too short, it made up for its shortcomings with the nasty temperament of a yak and the remarkable action of tusks that would self-sharpen whenever the mouth opened or closed. Hunted by sharpshooters, dreaded by homeowners, the hairy, musty, dung-rolled javalina often hid in basements and carports of the unsuspecting to wreak havoc, a danger to anything in its path. People could be wounded. Worse, the javalina typically herded with its kind, which meant if you saw one, there were probably more out there, circling around.

In this case, something must have stirred it up, since it usually sheltered after dark. Barks of outrage, challenge and anger collided into a howl that rose up into the night as Skidboot threw himself against the confines of the wooden dog pen. Later, Skidboot would reflect, in that way that a dog
could
reflect, that he did not deserve to be penned. Everyone else would reflect, in a storytelling way, that maybe it was the poor fencing material, or maybe a loose wire, but really, however it happened, the dog just flew over the fence.

"Hog!" David hollered. As he limped through the dark, he bumped over a water bucket, battled exposed pipes, kicked paint cans and collided seriously into an angular metal thing that felt like a wheelbarrow. He disentangled himself and limped faster. Up ahead, outlined by the glow of a flashlight, he saw the hog, forelegs planted, mouth like a bagpipe in a full, ear-splitting squeal.

Squeal didn't describe it, he told people later. Squeal is more of a cartoon sound, like the Three Little Pigs, rather than this splintering shriek. The sound was like framework ripping at a construction site, an anarchy of splintered boards, the attack call of a hog that meant business. David shuddered, his game leg like cardboard, bending in all the wrong places.

Still yards away, David paused a minute and let out a sudden roar, a sound so loud it startled himself, the javalina, and especially Russell, who panicked to think that hogs were now stampeding from the rear. The hog gathered itself up like an accordion, then shot toward Russell, hoping to make a quick finish of things and get away from the foul smell of humans.

The next moment fractured into a chaos of sound as Barbara screamed and rushed toward her son, David roared as he swung his crutch at the feisty hog, then lost his balance and toppled over. The hog turned from Russell to the downed man and sped at him, tusks thrust low.

Then it was over. A streak of mottled black, a flash of fangs, a dog that leaped at the hog's neck, bit deep, then jumped back, barking up a frenzy. The hog had no sense of what happened only that something
had
happened. Something that meant
retreat
. Pain and fear drove it back into the dark, away from this crazy barnyard of screaming humans.

"How the heck…" Barbara rushed to Russell, and they all turned and marveled at Skidboot, a Houdini whose dark arts had helped him through an unopened pen. The woodshed, obviously, couldn't hold him.

"Can he sleep with us tonight?"
About time
Skidboot thought, questioning David, even though Russell and Barbara were hugging and tugging at him, smooching him, cuddling, complimenting. A straight line of sight shot toward David's eyes.

"Maybe this dog's a pointer," he said. "A hunter."

David had to break gaze, as there were calls to make and bills to settle, and this staring contest with a dog got on his nerves. Skidboot kept facing the spot where David had been for a minute after, then finally dropped his head and began to lick his coat. Up, then down, then up again, delicately, finding precision in the small damp trail of tongue against fur. The dog was intent on his work and deliberately did
not
look at David again. At least not for a while.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Is he a dog or what …?

Morning dawned on a household so quiet that even the mice tiptoed. A house that sucked up silence from the surrounding hills and from the pale, clueless sky. Silence settled like dust, filling the corners and soothing David. With Barbara at work and Russell at school, David was left to flip a lariat around, trying out a new brand of polyester rope to see whether it had slippage. He hoisted the noose against his boot to give it a pull, but then his crutch clattered to the floor and knocked over his coffee. Premium blend splattered on his Levi's. He sighed, daubing them dry. He'd made Russell breakfast and lunch, usually a satisfying task but today he felt irked because the Raisin Bran was short of raisins and they were out of milk. A bowl of dried cereal with tap water seemed a pitiful start to the day. He needed to make a grocery list, yet he just sat there, silent, brooding, staring at his pencil.

His thoughts zigzagged back and forth, one telling him that the dog was
not
insane, that on two occasions he'd shown rational behavior, once leading the horse back after David's accident, then last night, attacking the javalina. Lurking in that furry mayhem were the seeds of instinct, like concern for his family, loyalty, even decision making. It didn't seem right to let a possible intelligence go to waste. Why, the dog had even taken to imitating him, limping after David with identical, mincing steps, a real sideshow.

Rudy Hartwig, David's Dad, had said to him on many occasions, "always travel light." David himself had translated that to mean "make the most of what you have," which in this case, was an oddball Blue Heeler who thought he was a human. David chugged back a glass of water. He sat on the sofa and tossed a baseball from hand to hand, thinking. Fate rested in the final toss, as in
will I
or
will I not
? Back and forth, the ball plopped from one hand to another. On the final toss, he lost his grip because of a searing pain in his leg. The ball fumbled out of his hand and rolled under the sofa—gone.

Just then a ruckus struck up under the sofa, flushing the dust balls into a swirl on the floor. A black nose poked out, retreated, then poked out again as Skidboot cautiously emerged. The dog had the ball in his mouth. He planted himself in front of David, panting, with that same signature gaze—a hypnotist to his subject.

Now? Now?
Now could he play,
now, now?
Skidboot nosed the ball up and down, as in
look, look!

David sighed.
What a show off.
A boaster, a beggar, an annoying blitz in their orderly lives. David mused, watching the dog. His nature was to fix things. If rattlers slithered out to the barn, he'd pitchfork them. If mice invaded, he'd design a trap. If the calves had nits, he'd dip them. So why the delay with Skidboot? He couldn't figure it, but knew it had to do with him being Barbara's dog and respecting her ownership. She'd had pets all her life growing up in California, and she'd formed a tight bond with this dog, pesky or not. When she got home from work, Skidboot lay waiting for her, tucked under her horse trailer. If his paw had a thorn, or he had the sniffles, he headed straight to Barbara for pampering. David respected that, but courtesy time was just about over. It was time for something else.

David reached for the ball and slapped it into his hand.

"Yes sir, I will!" he said, narrowing his eyes at Skidboot, who quivered in front of him like a pile of springs, nearly shaking, ready to go. People say a dog is like a child that never grows up. David was about to prove that one wrong.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Leash Law

The day had started normal enough. A few pillows gnawed, one toy demolished. Amazing that the Hartwigs still gave him so many toys, which was a
happy thing.
The stuffed rabbit lay mangled in a heap of corduroy and polyester, after which Skidboot smacked his way through breakfast. He was just about to gnaw Russell's leather belt when David's shadow fell over him. Outside, morning light silvered in, and when David rose up to his full height and dangled the skid boot in front of him, Skidboot,
the dog,
got so excited, so hysterical, that he forgot to look up at David's face.

Which would have terrified him. It was screwed up into a mask of pure determination, a gritty, even hateful look, one purely different from the face he usually wore in the morning, which looked easygoing and friendly.

But not now.

David glared at him, then waggled the leather skid boot, which made
the canine
Skidboot delirious. He locked on like a pit bull, growling, pulling and eyeing the rope David had tied to the railing.
Rope practice, yes!
Then David stretched tall toward the upper cupboard, and balancing on his crutches, he brought Skidboot's favorite treat, milk bones, after which he hobbled like a crippled thing outside to the corral, where he stumbled around to set up a folding chair. This seemed to Skidboot, well, uninteresting. Maybe they'd rope calves? He didn't see how David could walk using that funny wooden support. Skidboot decided not to think about that, as it prompted some bad feeling in him. He didn't know why.

So David had sat there. One man, one chair, in the middle of a corral outside of Quinlan, Texas. He fiddled with the loop on the rope, moving it up and down, tightening it, trying it thoughtfully, slowly, with purpose. But where were the calves, the dog wondered?