The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (30 page)

The truck was a reconditioned large-animal carrier, of a size to fit, I think, at least four cows or horses. The inside was full of wall-attached cages, with a floor lined with straw. That was the first thing to notice when the door slid open. Two men of about thirty, in overalls and jean jackets, had hopped down from the cab. They went inside.

I noticed that the volunteers at the front of the line had dog-travel crates with them, at their feet. The first volunteer handed up a crate to a transport guy. Before he opened the first cage, he held out his hand to the other guy, who passed him a muzzle. It was the basket kind, which looks sort of like the cup of a lacrosse stick. And materializing in there was a third guy, in the same overalls and jacket. They'd had someone riding with the dogs. I should have known that.

The cage with the dog they were muzzling was blocked by their bodies. A moment later, two of them were passing down the crate to a pair of volunteers. It was heavy; they staggered with it. I caught a glimpse of muzzle behind the bars of the crate. Then it was on the move and the process was repeated for a total of six times. They were taking the most unsocialized ones out first. I'd find that out later.
Most unsocialized.
That was what the staffers decided to say so they didn't have to say “dangerous.”

All along was the strangeness of a strange, strange silence. When the door first opened, there came out, into the sunny mountain air, a blast of frenzied, high-volume barking and whining, along with sounds you could only call screeches. These were unlike anything I'd heard from a Sanctuary dog.

It seemed to me that the entire carrier was rocking on its axles from the noise. But suddenly it was the same as what happened with my dogs when they'd finished making a racket, here inside. But it was only the same in terms of coming on fast and settling deeply. The hush in the cages did not have a solemnity. It was not the quiet, dignified calm of dogs who were doing their jobs as watchers, as witnesses. It was eerie. It was unnatural. It was like a landing of aliens, as if the carrier were a spaceship that touched down on the first American hilltop they'd spotted, and this particular species, while known for such traits as exuberance and vast amounts of personal power, had cloaked themselves with muteness, worse than Shadow's because it really might never go away.

And inside that silence was a terrible tension, a deep and disturbing unease. I couldn't help feeling almost desperate for my ears to pick up any sounds out there that were the normal sounds of dogs being dogs. I even wanted the screeching again. That silence
hurt.

A little one was taken out of a cage: a square-headed pup, maybe six or seven months, passing to the cradle of a volunteer's arms. Another pup came, another. The silence was even worse when it was coming from babies. My dogs were absolutely still. The only movements, in this space of our own sanctuary, came when Shadow left the window to rest his legs, then raised himself back up.

I wondered what Hank would be doing if he were here. He could tap into two different parts of himself. Maybe he'd be acting all retriever, the ghosts of ancestors behind him with their genius at waiting alertly, patiently, for a signal before bursting to life and going to fetch whatever needed fetching, on land or in water. Maybe he'd want a signal from me that he should rush to the carrier and retrieve a pittie on his own—a small one, alive, our new class pet. Or maybe he'd know in his soul that he was more of a pittie than a Lab. He'd know he was looking at members of his own tribe. He'd be upset. Maybe he'd go back to pacing.

And Dapple? I don't think she would have felt a connection to the arriving dogs as dogs. She would have been too busy being scared. That would be the main thing she'd pick up on, like she could only tune in to one feeling. She wouldn't know that pit bulls are famous for courage.

I'd read that they were the mascots of the U.S. Armed Forces in the First World War. I had looked at posters online. Posters of pit bulls used to be everywhere. I saw pictures of pit bulls wrapped in American flags, pit bulls wearing navy caps, pit bulls shiny and smiling energetically, proudly, draped in parade-like buntings. Looking at their faces, I had a little glow. It was the first time in my life I had any idea what people are talking about when they talk about patriotism. I wasn't just looking for something historically uplifting about pit bulls to balance what I'd read about fighting. I looked at the dogs on those posters, and I was
jelly.

A volunteer now at the head of the line held a blanket in her arms. A guy from inside held a pittie he'd just taken from a cage. Another guy sat down on the edge of the truck, his legs hanging out the door. They had reached the stage in the delivery where they were bringing out the ones who needed special handling.

The guy who was sitting received the dog into his lap as tenderly as if the dog had just been born. I saw a beautiful white and brown face, almost half of each, from forehead to chin, like the running together of the symbols for yin and yang. The eyelids were partly down. I saw what could have been fight marks near both eyes. I saw a limpness in the body overall. I saw a normal pittie stand-up folded ear, and then an ear I thought was somehow, I didn't know how, folded the wrong way. I tried to think of it as folded, even though it was so jagged. I will never forget the beat of my heart that didn't happen when I realized half of the ear wasn't there.

You cannot look at the partly missing ear of a pit bull and tell yourself that maybe there was a good explanation, like maybe it was an accident. Or maybe the dog was born that way. I thought I was so safe, seeing the newcomers at a distance. I thought I was prepared. Then came a mental flash of Tasha the day she roughed up that terrycloth bunny. She'd looked so sweet and funny and also bad with the purple ear in her mouth. I tried to set up an equation of the two things, in an algebraic way. I used to like algebra in school. I remembered how thrilled I was to find out there's such a thing as math that had letters of the alphabet.

I was hoping that the purple bunny in my head would cancel out the partly missing ear of the yin-yang dog, which also would have meant not thinking about how, in real life, with a real animal,
it had hurt.

Into the blanket went the yin-yang dog. That volunteer was big—a Rottweiler of a person. The way the dog was carried was the same way a child would be carried by a firefighter out of a hell—into safety, peace, a sanctuary. Maybe the dog knew what
rescued
meant. Maybe she didn't.

The next volunteer also had a blanket. The next dog was tawny and nervous. I could see the trembling. It was worse than Dapple's. That was when I stopped watching, although there were still quite a few to come out. In another mental flash, I remembered the notes on Tasha, the part that said she was almost adopted by people involved in dogfighting. I remembered how those two words put together were actually only words to me.

I was standing by the crate Josie was sitting on top of when I turned my head from the window. I didn't realize, until I looked at her, that I had a hand on her. I was patting her. She was letting me.

Dora didn't like that at all. She moaned for my attention. Boomer wanted to get down from the chairs and return to his crate. Shadow came over to me, rubbing himself against my leg. And Alfie? He stayed at the window, the only one keeping it up, his tail out, his eyes wide open, his body intact, unscarred. He was so unlike his usual “fuck you” self, it seemed a greyhound who looked like him had replaced him. I looked at the angle of his head. I thought maybe he was staring at Tasha and thinking sad, lovelorn thoughts. He wasn't. He kept staying there watching the carrier until the last one was out and the door was closing.

Meanwhile Shadow scored points with Dora and Josie by getting the jar of peanut butter to fall off the crate I'd put it on. Naturally it was a plastic jar. The three of them lunged for it as it rolled on the floor, as if they were pretending they had hands to open the lid.

But they were working off the stress; it was a good thing. Boomer changed his mind about a nap and got involved too. Some of the label came off from being drooled on and pawed. Shadow grabbed it. It felt wonderful to see that bit of paper hanging sideways out of his mouth, like a vintage poster of a movie star with a cigarette, like he was James Dean or Marlon Brando. I couldn't believe I was saying to them, “You guys are so normal. You guys are so
lucky.
”

I had them line up to wait their turns to lick my fingers, starting with Boomer. Dora was next. We were going by age. After Dora had her turn, she backed out of line and went to the other side of Shadow, like maybe I'd think I hadn't gotten to her yet. She sat there tipping her head up in complete innocence. We'd never done it like this before, in a line. I didn't fall for it. But I almost did. I just had to deal with the possibility she might be smarter than I was.

When I brought the jar to Alfie at the window, he ignored me. I put it near his nose. He didn't even want to sniff it. Peanut butter was his favorite thing.

He was still witnessing. I wondered if he'd been transported on a carrier like that one. I wondered where he'd been picked up, where he'd been dropped off. I wondered how many places he'd been before he came here, how many places he was sent away from with all his stillness and bad attitude and lack of participation and, fuck you, I'll poop indoors whenever I feel like it.

I thought of my own notes on him, and how I'd imagined his past. And what I wanted for his future.

Then it was naptime.

Everyone but Alfie went into shutdowns. Boomer didn't make it into his crate. He dropped to the floor and shut his eyes and started snoring. Josie placed herself against him.

I sat down against the wall, and Dora came to my lap. Shadow lay with his head on my legs. Below us were multiples of sounds, of movement, of talking, muffled, faraway as I grew drowsier. I had one hand in Dora's fur, the other on Shadow's head. My breath came and went in Dora's rhythms. I wondered what it would be like for the pitties to wake up tomorrow morning and not understand right away where they were. I knew their confusion would make them afraid, maybe even panicky, and I wished I could tell them I knew a little bit about that sort of thing, from being small and going back and forth between houses. Sometimes they moved me in the night, because maybe the days of who was supposed to have me were mixed up, or someone decided to go out for a late supper, or cocktails somewhere, and they traded having me in phone calls I was too deep in sleep to eavesdrop on. I had tried for a while never to go to sleep. That didn't work out at all. It also didn't work out when I put up a campaign to have the two different bedrooms of mine, in those two different houses, redecorated to be identical, so I'd never feel like an alien in my own beds, crash-landing into almost awakeness, and wondering, oh no, where am I?

How was I going to talk to those dogs? What could I say to those dogs?

I remembered an article I'd read about people involved in dogfighting. I learned that when they're training a dog to be a fighter, they don't call it “training.” They call it “conditioning.” They feel proud about putting it that way: conditioning bodies to
achieve a maximum
of potential,
like, hey, pit bulls want to fight each other because that's who they are, and all we're doing is
helping.
Some dogs, I had read, are conditioned by being placed on treadmills. Some are attached to heavy objects they are required to try to pull. Some are taken out running on long leashes or ropes or chains, while the person doing the conditioning is not running with them but riding in a car, with one door slightly open. I wondered if any of the pitties below me had any of those experiences.

Alfie came over and curled up at my side. I let him lick the peanut butter right out of the jar. I held the jar like I was feeding a baby with a bottle. Then I sleep-drifted. It occurred to me that, no matter where in the Sanctuary I happened to fall asleep, I would always know, all the time, where I was.

I didn't hear Giant George come inside. Tasha wasn't with him. But I'd already said goodbye to her, even though dogs don't know that word.

I knew that a volunteer was going to give George and Tasha a ride to somewhere a couple of hours away, then someone else would give them another ride, and so on, until they got to where they were meant to be. All the drivers and the vehicles involved were part of the Network, which made sense. You can't take a Rottweiler on, say, a bus.

Giant George was looking down at me. I held a finger to my lips to tell him
hush;
please don't wake these dogs. He squatted down and motioned for me to hold out the hand that wasn't on Shadow. Into my hand came the keys to the Jeep, on a plain silver ring.

Shadow opened his eyes and saw who was there. He didn't know about the leaving. He had an expression of, oh, it's only you, no big deal. He went right back to sleep. It had been a hard day.

“I'm not driving that thing,” I whispered. “Take these back.”

He laughed at me. Then he whispered to me that he wanted to have my socks, the ones on my feet. I'd been wearing that pair for I didn't know how many days. They were white crew socks. Over them I had on my L. L. Bean slippers. It took me a moment to understand. When I did, I nodded to him, strange as it was, to give him the okay about taking off the slippers, then the socks, since I certainly couldn't do so myself.

He was gentle about it. He put the socks in a pocket of his Sanctuary jacket. I was pleased to see he was taking it with him.

He whispered, “Should I wait to give her these until we're there? Or should I give them to her on the road?”

“Give her one on the road,” I answered. “And the other when you're there.”

“Okay,” he said. “I hope I don't worry about you too much.”

“Don't. Why would you?”