The Dog (2 page)

puppy paws. Yesterday the snow was wet and mushy. It caved

in, dropping him into grey hollows where he couldn't keep

his balance. Today it holds him. He barrels forward, steadier

now. Sometimes he stops to lick the crust of the snow.

That morning his hunger drove him a long way, despite

his exhaustion. Big drifts had blown up against the cabin. He

couldn't get close to it. Slowly he continued up the hill, resting

now and then on the crust, panting. He kept looking up

towards the barn. When he reached it he sat down in front

of the door. He looked at it. But nobody came. He yelped

and whimpered but no voice answered. He curled up against

the door. He didn't fall asleep but lay looking out across the

marsh, sniffing. He caught a scent. Soon he also saw something

white bounding through the newly planted pines. It

was a hare. The pup rose stiffly and made his way down the

slope. He thought that where there was movement he might

find the high voice or the deep one. Or his mother. There

might be food.

The scent was still there, rich and pungent among the

small pines, but the hare was long gone. At least it had left

something behind. He gobbled up several pellets of warm

hare droppings. He started off again in search of more. That

was when he heard a voice. It was forceful and stern and

kept repeating one single sound. By now he had reached the

marsh, and where he was standing the birches and the little

waterlogged pines were so sparse there was nowhere to hide.

He crouched, belly to the snow crust, hearing the voice

again. It was scolding him. When he peered up he saw outspread

black wings, wings he already had inside him, an

image that was deep down and signalled danger. He dragged

himself towards a small pine tree but it had so few branches

he could still see the silhouette of the crow. All of a sudden

there were more voices and more black, circling bodies.

They left him alone, though. They were after something else

they couldn't find in the expanse of white, covered with a

thin layer of ice, still so hard from the morning chill that it

held his weight.

He padded across the snow, on his guard against the ones

up there, ready to lie flat if they dive-bombed. But what

made him keep going and overpowered his fear was something

his sense of smell had picked up and that kept growing

THE DOG

stronger. The scent was coming from the snow. It made him

start digging with his paws and poking with his nose. The

crust was sharp but he broke through it quickly and the

smell, the wonderful smell, the smell of food, wafted up. The

snow had receded, packed down by the thaw. It was heavy

and grey but he didn't sink into it the way he had the day

before. Head and forepaws deep in a hole, he dug out the

snow the storm had brought. Suddenly he got his first taste

of whatever had smelled so good, though it was just a little

scrap. He went on digging all the way down. Finally he sank

his teeth into a frozen flank with a bristly hide. He had got

through. It was food.

The crows were carrying on. They saw he'd got hold of

the thing they were after, concealed from them by the

snowstorm. They circled closer, settling in the tops of the

pines, scolding loudly. But he wasn't prey for them. When

they came too close he growled, his body all muscle and

determination now, arched over the big frozen mound of

food in the snow. They couldn't know the white teeth he

bared were just puppy teeth. Eighty-four dawns were

behind him when the sun rose, and he wouldn't have

made it through a single day more if he hadn't found the

moose carcass in the marsh. No one can live long; on hare

droppings.

The nights were very cold. He sought shelter as close to the

food supply as he could, but found none in the marsh. He

had to head up the south slope where enormous spruces

spread out their protective skirts. From there he could see

the place where the snow was spotted with fur. At dawn, as

soon as he heard the crows, he left the shelter.

In the mornings the young birches and pines were covered

with white hoar frost and the crust held all the way to

the food spot, where the crows were circling, flapping and

screeching. A few days earlier he had cowered in fear of

them. Now his belly was round and he stayed warm all night

and angry all day. When he curled around himself with his

muzzle tucked up under him he kept that vital spark of life

burning inside. In the mornings he was hungry but not

worn out. When the screeching awakened him he was cold

and sluggish with sleep, but when he saw the crows sitting in

the snow tearing at his food his anger woke up as well.

Within a few mornings he had realised they'd fly off when

he approached, and he took the time to pee before heading

toward them. Urinating on the crust of snow, crouching like

a female, he glared at the big-beaked thieves.

As the sun rose higher in the sky the frost on the trees

melted and dripped. 'By midday the water was streaming and

the sun beat down. It warmed his back. Bulging with food,

he needed somewhere to rest. He lay against a spruce trunk

in the sun and, what with the warmth and the dizzying sense

of satisfaction, he couldn't keep his eyes open, even when he

heard rustling and chirping nearby. He slept in the comforting

sunlight, squinting with one eye when he heard pine

cones fall or branches snap. There weren't many sounds in

the forest in the middle of the day. The soft chirping of the

titmouse, the willow-tit's constant activity in the spruces

above him. Murmuring water. Dripping branches. It made

him drowsy.

In the engulfing, deep blue twilight the cold crept up

stealthily. He needed to eat again. His gums were bleeding

from the new teeth coming through. A fresh crust formed

on the snow and at night, when the stars shone bright over

the jagged spruces, the temperature dropped. He went back

to his shelter and carefully chose a spot for sleep, tramping in

a circle and finally curling up with a deep sigh.

Sometimes at night he heard howling. He raised his head

and shivers of anticipation ran through his body. He was riveted,

but as the tension receded a dull sense of discomfort

was left in its wake. Only sleep could make that go away.

The howling was hoarse and piercing, carried by the

wind from off the lake. It wasn't the right howl: his mother's.

There was sonrething dangerous about it that came through

despite his weariness. Even in his sleep, all his muscles were

quivering slightly. Finally the howling ceased. All the tension

left his body and his sleep was deep and oblivious.

Day followed day and between them cold fragments of

nights penetrated his sleep with the hooting of an owl or the

snapping of a frozen branch. But he didn't connect the days

in a series. His life and his memory were images upon

images, fading in and out, scraps of days with bright skies,

sharp scents to follow, disconnected cries wafting one by one

through the woods until they attached to an image deep

inside him. There was baying darkness that turned into grey

dawn and blustering, biting snow that forced him back into

the hole; there were days and nights of hunger when he

shivered from the cold and damp, days of gluttony with the

hot sun on his back. The others down by the marsh moved

in and out of these images: a white, long-eared shape bobbing

in circles among the trees; the enormous grey creatures

with long legs making their way across the marsh; the

screeching black forms; the little peepers and busy chatterers

in the spruces; the black, heavy ones perched in the tops of the birches; other grey animals that left such straight tracks

among the tree roots. He never got really close to them but

their paths criss-crossed his memory, the trails of their scents,

their calls and chirps, the hoarse howls of the invisible one

who was sometimes down on the lake.

By now he knew he must never stop guarding the food

spot. Sounds penetrated his deepest sleep, making him raise

his nose to pick up a scent from the marsh. He fell asleep

again but slept uneasily. His puppy sleep had been heavy; he

had given himself up to it, abandoning any claim to the life

that had satisfied him, until he woke up eager for warmth

and a full stomach. Now his sleep was tattered and ragged,

with sharp, easily awakened hunger, with alarm and muffled

excitement, with sudden readiness that instantly flooded his

primed muscles with coursing blood. Sleep and calm

returned to him when it was quiet again or when the tantalising

smell had drifted away.

Sleep and calm came from a full belly and the warmth of

the sun, absorbed by his healthy, dry fur. But even then he

was waiting.

He didn't have an image or a name for what he was

expecting. But he would recognise it when he heard it or

caught its familiar scent. He lived in wait like the lumptish

living in the cold, cloudy, turgid water of the stream underneath

the ridges and rough patches in the ice.

One night he was awakened by a sound so familiar it

called forth an image in him: bones cracking between powerful

jaws. He pulled himself out of the hole and sat rigidly

attentive under the spruce. The teeth went on crunching

bones. He waited for a scent to complete the image, turning

the crunching into his mother's teeth and the shadow down

in the marsh into his mother. The moon was out and the

crust of snow was gleaming. Branches cast a pattern on the

white surface. He took a few steps across the expanse of crust

and emerged from the shadow of the spruce. Now he could

see the shape over by his food. He wanted it to be her, and

his memory stretched and twisted to turn this long, thin

back and the far too bristly tail into his mother. On the

verge of terror, he took small, cautious steps until he couldn't

make himself go on. He was torn between vigilance and

anticipation. Then he started off again, and what propelled

him along the last stretch was sheer longing. But when he

got close enough to see the long, thin legs, the triangular

head with the long snout and pointed ears, he stiffened and

stood still. The blood froze in his belly, bringing on waves of

nausea. Terror made his fur rise. He saw eyes gleaming in the

moonlight, reflected on the crust, and the look in them was

alien and hostile. Now he caught the scent of fox.

He wanted to turn tail and flee back to his hole. But

between the paws of the fox was a piece of the moose meat.

When that smell reached him he had the urge to run up and

bare his teeth. The fox didn't move. It stood still, a full

grown male with thick winter coat and bushy tail, every hair

on end, filling a large space in the moonlight. A large space,

a large body, he emitted wave after wave of pungent presence

without moving.

The dog sat down. He sat suddenly and clumsily as if plopping

his backside down on the kitchen linoleum. He lifted

one back paw and began scratching his ear. He scratched and

scratched as if he didn't have a care in the world other than his

madly itchy ear. And the fox, mouth still open and upper lip

pulled back, withdrew into the undergrowth. There he stood

still and the pup continued scratching, his paw thumping the

hard snow. The fox slipped away and was gone, reappearing

down on the marsh: a back, a long tail, a vanishing streak.

The pup didn't know how he'd managed to get the fox

away from his food. But the fox was gone and now he

walked stiffly, sniffing its tracks. He left a few drops of urine

here and there. This was the first time he peed standing up

with one hind leg raised. Then he gnawed at the rib bone

the fox had pulled out of the snow.

When he had finished he sat listening for sounds in the

bright night. Then he started to bark. The sound rang out

between the trees, high-pitched and tentative. He listened to

the echo and barked again. Finally he was overcome by

sleepiness and loped back in his own tracks to the hole.

The hoarse howls from off the lake often woke him at night.

His body tensed and he growled. As he drifted back to sleep

his throat and lungs would sometimes let out an instinctive,

involuntary response. His own howling woke him up. He sat

up straight and threw his head back, baring his throat. He

bayed. At the tip of his muzzle his lips formed a small, round

opening through which he pressed the air.

He walked on the crust of the snow now. His paws were

still large and clumsy but his legs had grown longer. He flew

forward. Now and then he stopped, listening for the hoarse

cries from the lake. Behind him there were no longer any

memories.

From the pasture in front of the cabin he could see the

lake. The frozen surface reflected the moonlight. The ice