Stay!: Keeper's Story (7 page)

Chapter 9

I
THINK IT IS FAIR TO SAY THAT
I
WAS,
and am, a clever dog. I had always, since infancy, been able to think my way through problems that confronted me.

I have heard that there is a book that rates dog breeds according to intelligence. It is a book, I'm told, that makes poodle owners very happy and Afghan owners fall into severe states of depression.

But I question its accuracy. One of its testing procedures—so I have been told—involves placing a towel over the head of one's dog and then observing how quickly the dog wriggles free of the towel.

What kind of test is that? It fails to consider various important factors.

For example, if I happened to be lying on my bed of cedar shavings late some evening, and in the same room (this has happened) the photographer was entertaining a large group of friends by playing irritating music too loudly, and if several of his friends (this has happened) were smoking cigarettes, filling the room with a completely repellent haze of gray smoke; and if, under those circumstances, someone happened to drop a towel on my head?

According to the book, I would be deemed "highly intelligent" if I removed the towel.
Pardonez-moi?

I don't think so.
I think any highly intelligent, self-respecting dog, poodle, Afghan, dingo, or coyote, would be grateful for that towel, and would heave a sigh of relief and go peacefully to sleep.

I, of course, being of mixed ancestry, am not listed in that book. But I feel certain that I am a clever dog, able to discern when and when not to allow a towel to remain on my head.

Yet somehow I was not able to work out a foolproof plan for running away. My life had become so organized and so protected that I had no moments for wandering on my own. There was no way that I could simply, casually, disappear.

I could have, in my days with Jack. Often during our time on the street I would go for a stroll. I had physical needs to attend to, after all; Jack understood that. Sometimes I wandered out of his line of vision, turning the corner, simply checking the neighborhood. In truth, I was always on the lookout for two things: the appearance of Scar, so that I could flee (later, as I developed more self-confidence, I began to think that instead of fleeing I might fight), or the appearance of my lost sister, Wispy, who I always hoped might be somewhere just around the corner, looking for me.

Occasionally I glimpsed Scar. He was usually lurking some distance away, not noticing me, so that I was never called upon to make the crucial decision between fleeing and fighting. I would watch from my safe stance as he terrorized some other puppy or human. Our last confrontation had been indecisive, and I knew I must one day face him again. In those last days with Jack, my attention had been solely directed to my friend. It had not been a time for battle. But I had vowed that when the time was right, I would drive Scar from the neighborhood forever.

I had composed a valiant little ode that I murmured to myself whenever I saw my mortal enemy. It made me feel strong while safely postponing any real dangerous action.

I vow this, Scar, with all my might!
Someday I'll beat you in a fight!

It was a silly little couplet, and I thought I could do better; I wanted, actually, to try to rhyme the word
confrontation,
now that I had a greater and more sophisticated command of language. But I simply hadn't gotten around to it yet; I'd been so busy with my career.

As for Wispy, and my search, I simply repeated as a little talisman

Wispy, sister, hear my rhyme—
I'll seek you till the end of time!

(I had originally composed
till the end of my life,
which I felt was more truthful and accurate, but as a poem it was simply too amateurish.) I had some small hope that my repetition of the verse might magically cause her to reappear someday. But in my wanderings during those months with Jack, there was never the slightest glimpse. Sometimes I would see a little female who reminded me of my sister, but on close examination, on an exchange of sniffs, there was only disappointment and the awareness that the world was very full of little crossbreed females with mottled fur and inadequate, crooked tails.

I always returned to Jack after a stroll. I had no inclination to stray from the place of greatest comfort and camaraderie.

Similarly, in the early days with the photographer, there were countless opportunities for me to run off. There were no leash, no cage, no conditions. I remained because he was kind, because he fed me pasta, and because his plaid bathrobe had a pungent and agreeable smell.

Now things had changed. Now the dog walker had a hideous retractable leash, which of course required that a collar be placed around my neck. The photographer had a new cashmere bathrobe, which made me sneeze, and shared pasta seemed a thing of the past. Now I was famous and rich, and my food was served to me in a Santa Fe pottery bowl that was embellished with my name, PAL, on its side. But I no longer had the freedom to walk away.

During the day, when I was working at various locations, there were always guards, off-duty policemen hired to hold back the crowds who waved and whistled at me. The Jeep was a thing of the past, relegated to the garage, and I was whisked from spot to spot by limo. While the photographer talked business on the cell phone, I pressed my nose sadly against the tinted glass, no longer worried about the smears, only longing for a life beyond the confines of what my own had become.

At each new location I would be collared, leashed, and led to a place where I was told to attend to my bodily needs. Sometimes a bowl of water would be brought, or a dry-tasting biscuit would be handed to me by one of the assistants. Then I would be led to my spot at the side of a thin person—sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes apparently neuter—in new-smelling clothes. My leash and collar would be undipped, and someone would say sharply, "Sit. Stay." If, restlessly, I shifted positions or turned my head, the sharp voice would command me again, and there would be a veiled threat in the tone. No one called me by name.

Once again I had become "The Dog."

I no longer took pride in my pose or my sneer. I simply did my job, watching fruitlessly for some unattended moment when I could simply walk away.

It came, finally, on a spring day when we were shooting a commercial for antihistamine tablets. We were assembled on a golf course quite far from the city. We had been more than an hour in the limo: time for the photographer to make four lengthy phone calls and read the entire
Wall Street Journal.

The script called for me ("The Dog") to sit at the edge of the green, watching attentively as two golfers wearing baggy trousers on their legs and visors on their heads attempted to hit the ball a few inches into the cup. Each one, interrupted by a sneeze, would miss. The crowd (forty people hired to stand around the green wearing light-colored clothes and animated facial expressions) would send up a groan at each miss. Then, as the failed and allergic golfers looked on in dismay, handkerchiefs to their noses, The Dog was to walk over and nudge the ball into the cup. Then I was to sit there and sneer at the camera while the crowd cheered.

It made absolutely no sense, and I have no idea why they thought it would sell antihistamine tablets. But they were paying the photographer a huge sum of money for the use of The Dog, and to me, it was just one more job in my increasingly lethargic life.

I hadn't composed a poem in weeks.

Then, suddenly, as I sat at the edge of the green, looking theatrically alert and interested (despite my total boredom), there was an alarming clap of thunder. A few drops of rain fell. The golfers looked up, confused. I could see the photographer cover his camera quickly, to protect the lens.

The sky darkened and a lightning bolt outlined a jagged streak at the horizon. The hired crowd, feeling heavier raindrops, headed for the cover of the trees.

I sat and looked as I had been instructed: alert, interested. In truth, I
was
becoming more and more interested as I saw that everyone was dispersing and that they were forgetting The Dog.

The photographer was packing his equipment very hastily into cases. The two actors who were playing the roles of the golfers ran to a car.

"Get away from the trees!" someone yelled. "It's dangerous under the trees!"

Someone else yelled, "It's dangerous out in the open!"

Another crack of thunder, much louder, and a streak of lightning, much closer, sent everyone scattering chaotically. I heard shouts, rain, thunder, and cars starting. But I did not hear anyone say "Come!" in the sort of commanding voice that alerts you to the fact that they are calling a dog.

So I simply walked away. My walk was casual at first, for I expected at any second to hear the familiar "Come!" But after a moment I began to trot. Then, gradually sensing my freedom, I stretched my legs into a liberating lope. In a moment I had traversed the fourteenth fairway, jumped a fence, and found myself completely alone, running with blissful abandon down a country road through a rainstorm.

I was thoroughly wet and exquisitely happy. My magnificent tail, profuse even when dripping, flowed behind me.

I'm free I'm free I'm free I'm free!

To which there was only one obvious second line:

I'm me I'm me I'm me I'm me!

Poetry had returned.

Chapter 10

"C
AN
I
KEEP HIM
?"

There.
That was what a child was
supposed
to say when a dog followed him home.

Or her. This child was a girl, actually.

I had found her (she thought she had found me, but the reverse was actually true) after roaming the countryside for two days and nights. At first I had wandered joyfully, feeling myself to be a truly free and untamed creature, sharing my world with deer, raccoons, hawks, and countless other inhabitants of the outdoors.

But after two days I realized I was having difficulty with the food. My first cuisine had been French, as I was weaned from mother's milk to the world of pâtés and terrines and gâteaux. I knew a béchamel sauce from a Hollandaise, and the difference mattered to me. My early poetry had had a Gallic influence; remember "
Adieu to Jack
..."? Not a mature work, of course, but one that played with bilingualism.

My stay with Jack, though never in the least luxurious, had nonetheless had a certain standard as far as food was concerned. Sorting through discarded garbage after the market had closed, Jack had carefully carved away spoilage from apples and pears with his penknife. He had examined each morsel carefully before slicing it into portions for himself and me. Jack was a fastidious man, though hard times had caused him to be less selective than he might once have been.

It was while sharing discarded pizza remains that Jack had first alerted me to the delights of Italian cuisine.

"This isn't bad, Lucky," he had said (for I was still Lucky then), "but wait till you taste a real good pasta. Maybe a linguini with clam sauce, or a fettucini Alfredo. Then you'll know what Italian cooking's all about."

And so I had, through the photographer, before our life was ruined by fame and fortune. Oh, the
puttanesca
sauce!
The funghi
and the
carbonara!

Dogs don't weep, but the memory of those sauces, French and Italian both, almost brought tears to my canine eyes during those two days in the woods. I thought of tender asparagus—perhaps a
crème d'asperges vertes
—when I found myself, ravenous, nibbling at slimy swamp cabbage; and when I shared a rotting rabbit carcass with a roaming possum, I remembered
lapin au saupiquet
with ineffable sadness.

It was, in fact, while gnawing at rabbit that I remembered watching Scar devour rat remains, and the disgust I had felt at the time. Suddenly I felt with horror that I had been reduced to a creature as primitive as my enemy, and I resolved to turn my life around once again.

Those two days had taught me that I was not cut out for a survivalist existence. The romance of it was false. Carefully I found my way back to a road. I shook myself to rid my fur of the reek of rotting
lapin,
took a deep breath, and set out at a trot to seek a more amenable life somewhere.

It was not very long before I saw the little girl, who was carrying schoolbooks and just turning into a curving dirt driveway that led to a small brick farmhouse covered with ivy. Obviously well brought up, she spoke softly in greeting and held her hand out politely for me to sniff. Then, gently, she stroked my head and neck. I moved my lovely tail back and forth for her to admire.

She had a similar tail of hair at the back of her head, and she swung hers back and forth in reply. I looked at it carefully, assessing it as a rival tail. But human tails do not compare with those of dogs. Hers was tied rather messily with a band of ribbon, and there was something that looked like a wad of chewing gum near the end. I do have to deal with burrs and other intrusions from time to time, so I understood the problem. Still, it did not appear that she had even tried to gnaw it loose.

When she smiled at me, I saw that her front teeth were missing, which obviously accounted for her failure in adequate grooming. Perhaps she had been in a terrible fight.

Thinking of battles reminded me of Scar, my enemy, and I glanced apprehensively around. But I was far from the city now. Scar was in my past, both geographically and chronologically. Alas, I thought sadly, so was Wispy.

The little girl invited me to walk beside her, and I stayed obediently at her heels as she continued the length of the driveway and opened the back door of the house. By her side I entered the kitchen.

"He followed me home," she told her mother.

"Really?" her mother replied skeptically, and looked down at me. I sat very still, using my best posture: cocked head, arched neck, attentive look. I flicked my tail to the side, hoping it was in a flowing, silky state. I tried to arrange it into a question-mark shape, but as you know, we dogs do not have as much control as we would like over our tails.

"Can I keep him?"

Her mother chuckled. "I'm sure he belongs to someone."

"He doesn't have a collar."

"Well, he must have lost it. We'll have to try to find his owner. Actually," she said, leaning down to look at me more closely, "he looks familiar." She patted my head and peered into my face. I liked her pat and her smell—she was without perfume but had a little cake batter on her fingers—but I feared her perceptions. I knew why she found me familiar. She had seen me sneering on magazine covers, billboards, and TV commercials. It would only be a matter of time before she remembered that.

I arranged my lips in something of a smile, wanting no hint of the famous expression to betray my identity. Fragments of a desperate little poem began in my mind.

Smile, lips! Hide, sneer!

I was running through the possible rhymes (there were some spectacular ones—
souvenir, pioneer, chandelier—
but in truth I thought using
fear
would reflect my feelings more accurately) but had not yet completed the couplet to my poetic satisfaction when my creativity was interrupted by the placement of a glass bowl near my feet. Then, beside it, a second. One was a bowl of water, and the other appeared, to my amazement, to be
boeuf bourguignon.
I touched my tongue to it in rapture.

"Leftover stew," the girls mother explained to me in a soft voice. Turning to the girl, she said, laughing, "Hope he likes mushrooms, Emily!"

Ah, if she only knew my history.
Champignons!
They had been among my first and favorite solid foods. My brothers had disdained the delicate little morsels, but Wispy and I had tasted them with delight, and Mother had been pleased at our discernment.

Daintily I nudged the mushrooms out of the stew with my tongue and nibbled them one by one with appreciation. Then I consumed the remaining beef and gravy, even eating the carrots—not my favorite vegetables—with enthusiasm. I followed lunch with a long drink of water from the companion bowl. Surely a good
boeuf bourguignon
is second only to a fine
spaghetti bolognese;
at least, that is my opinion.

I tried to remember the polite way to inquire about the location of the facilities. Living in the woods, it had not been a matter of importance. Living with the photographer, I had been taken outdoors, to curbside, twice a day. And in my days with Jack, we had each morning shared companionably the amenities of the river and its banks.

I walked with dignity to the door and stood beside it with a questioning look.
Avoid the sneer,
I repeated to myself.
At any cost, do not sneer.

"He wants to go out, Emily. Open the door for him." The mother was mixing her cake batter again.

"But what if he runs away?" the little girl asked in a tremulous voice.

I laughed inwardly, but the mother echoed my laughter aloud. "Why on earth would he run away, Emily, when he has just been fed a bowl of beef stew?" Ah, a woman who understood me completely. My heart leapt.

Emily let me out and I investigated the bushes with their various smells. No dogs lived here. That was good. I wasn't ready for a territorial battle.

However, I perceived that there were cats. I sniffed Cat—that distinctive, oily, pungent odor, quite disagreeable to a dog—everywhere. That could be a bore, dealing with cats. But I decided on the basis of the stew, the child, the kind voice of the woman, and the fact that I was exhausted after two days and nights of wilderness adventure that I could compromise on the cat issue. Carefully I lifted my leg against the thick leaves of an evergreen
Raphiolepsis,
relieved myself, and marked this place as mine.

Then I went back and scratched politely on the door of the house where my new family was waiting.