The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (6 page)

Baby
(new in a household). Someone brought home a new baby to a home a little dog thought was totally her own, where she was totally the center of attention, and all of a sudden there's this whole other thing, and all of a sudden she's deaf and homeless?

I don't care that it didn't say in the notes what Josie did to that baby. I care that it didn't say what was done to the side of her head. Was she hit with a hand? With an object?

Note to self: remember, me getting nipped by Josie was not her fault.

Bark.
Shadow is mute, but nothing is wrong with the parts of his body that are there for making sounds. He could bark. Would changing his name help?

No, that's stupid. A dog doesn't know which human words have silence built into them and which don't. But he should have looked sorry for peeing on me.

Car.
So Tasha was riding in a car, until she wasn't.

I wonder, how long did she run after the car before she had to give up? How close did she come to being hit by other cars? This was in a city. This was somewhere with serious traffic. Were horns blown at her? Were steering wheels turned, brakes stepped on? Where did she spend her city night? Did she sleep at all? Did she jump to her feet, her heart leaping, every time a car went by that was the same sort of model as hers? Should I even be asking questions like this, when they can't be answered?

Yes, I should. Yes.

Chain, collar.
I wish I knew the length of the chain Shadow was attached to in his yard. I wish I knew exactly what he had to deal with. Also, there is no way to know what type of metal collar infected his neck. I looked at some online. I learned there's such a thing as a “choke collar,” with spikes around the inside rim, like little nails. Some types of this collar have spikes with rubber tips. Some don't.

Companion.
Shadow was never anyone's companion. What's worse, to never be one, or to be a companion to a human who threw you out of a car, made you homeless and deaf, hit you with hand-held things of wood? (To be continued, because I think the whole be-a-companion thing is actually a big deal.)

Answer: stupid question. There's no “worse.” It's all equal.

Depression.
When being sad for a very good reason goes too far. Basically, the same as
anxiety
, but the other side of a coin.

Hackles.
The fur on the back of the neck, which rises in certain situations. An act of communication where fear plus ready-to-attack can make for complications. Best to consider this a system of Warning. Best to consider it's always done for a very good reason.

Home.
You can have one, or even two, but at the same time, even though you're fed well, and groomed well, and all the rest of it, you can be someone who doesn't have anywhere to apply the word to, that is, if you're willing to be honest when someone asks you, “Where are you when you're at home?”

In.
There must be a dog-language version of this word, and not only for every dog chained for life in someone's yard. Note to self: do you really think that learning to talk to dogs is going to be easy?

Also note to self: stop thinking so much and maybe just do it.

Kill.
What the notes on Josie were talking about when they were talking about euthanize.

Out.
What Shadow knew in his soul about where he was, on his chain. But probably, as with
in,
everyone here is on the same wavelength about it.

Rescue.
Best. Verb. Ever.

Shelter.
A place where you're glad to be. Unless you're a dog in one, with the feeling that this is where you have to be for the rest of your life, because you haven't got a home.

Wag.
Dogs can talk with their tails? Okay, I just got here and I don't know anything about dogs, but I know that if a tail of a dog is going side to side, either quickly or slowly,
it's a very positive sign.

T
REATS-MAKING TIME
was over. Mrs. Auberchon stood by a window in the lobby, waving goodbye to Mrs. Walzer, riding passenger on the Polaris of a Sanctuary volunteer who brings the treats up the mountain and returns Mrs. Walzer to her house in the village.

It used to be that Mrs. Walzer made the treats at home, but several years earlier her quality went into decline. Maybe it was age creeping up on her; maybe it was carelessness. A human hair was found dangling from the mouth of a dog who'd eaten a large biscuit, and once you're alerted to something like that, you have to pay attention. The offenses began to pile up, such as undercooked jerky and chunks of brown sugar. Sugar was forbidden to the dogs. Finally the worst happened when someone at the Sanctuary broke apart a biscuit and found shards of chicken bones, one of them quite long.

Mrs. Auberchon was supposed to fire Mrs. Walzer, and never mind that making treats was her one activity, since the day she retired from a whole adult lifetime of baking, first in the little shop that used to be part of the village, then at the supermarket. And never mind that Mrs. Walzer wasn't paid. Or that the slipping of the quality took place just shortly after she became a widow.

The snowmobile chugged off in splashes of snow that looked like sea foam. You had to admire her, Mrs. Auberchon felt, for riding that thing at her age, and also for going along with the new plan about where to make the treats. She never knew of the almost-firing, or the charges against her. When Mrs. Auberchon put it to her that the baking would have to be done at the inn, she had said it was the Sanctuary's idea: a new rule, not to be argued with. This way she could take over ordering the ingredients and doing some supervising. She never had to talk about standards. She never had to say, “I'd welcome the companionship once a week.”

It was a good companionship because it had formalities. Unlike Mrs. Auberchon, Mrs. Walzer hadn't grown up in the village. She'd come to work in the bakery when she was barely out of her teenage years. Mrs. Auberchon hadn't met her until after she'd married a local. They fell into the habit right away of never calling each other by their first names. They were friends but not
friends.

Mrs. Auberchon went to the wood stove. In the urgency of the baking, she'd let it go. She looked at the red beads of embers and wondered why there was so much ash. Why did it look so powdery, compared with the regular stuff of the hardwoods? She reached for the ash bucket and the little iron shovel. Was something burned that she didn't know about? Impossible. She must have put in rotten wood without realizing it. She scolded herself as she shoveled out the extra ashes, careful not to scoop up any embers. When the new fire was going, she found herself wondering about the guest. All was silent upstairs, but that didn't tell her a thing. Was the girl being a slob and a pig? Probably yes, and yes. She was probably used to hired help. You could tell. Mrs. Auberchon provided meals for the duration of a stay, and she'd launder the towels and bed linens if a stay lasted longer than a week, provided the guest brought the towels and linens down. She did not provide daily cleaning—this wasn't a hotel.

She looked at the remains of the girl's breakfast on the tray and brought it to the kitchen to take care of it. There wouldn't be grocery shopping today, which was just as well, because more and more, lately, she'd been feeling herself putting up resistance to going out; but she had set aside a chicken from the treats. Well, she'd ordered one extra, on that budget. It was on the counter, cooling in its roasting pan. There'd be enough for dinner, then sandwiches for tomorrow's lunch, dinner tomorrow evening, then soup.

It was making her restless that there wasn't any Internet, so she bundled up for outdoors, craving activity. She found the long-handled brush and went out to clear snow off the roof of the rickety, slumping back porch. The roof itself was in good shape, but she'd decided the buildup might any minute make it collapse. Standing on a snowbank, she rained down sprays on herself with every stroke of the brush, so she was constantly spitting out snow. She could not decide what made her madder—her Internet connection or the Sanctuary, because they still hadn't told her anything about the girl. All she could do was be equally angry at both.

When the roof was as clear as she could get it, she returned to the kitchen, stomping and aching and breathing hard. The guest was sitting at the table. In front of her was the roasting pan containing the chicken. She was hunched over it. The silverware drawer had not been gone into for a fork, a knife. The cabinet had not been gone into for a plate. The rack of paper napkins on the counter had not been disturbed for a napkin. There was just the food and herself.

Two flaps of breast skin, each of them removed in one piece, were looped on a side of the pan, like miniature, brown-yellow rags hung to dry. A great deal of the chicken, Mrs. Auberchon saw, had been consumed.

The girl looked up at Mrs. Auberchon. She hadn't touched the wings or drumsticks. Bits of white chicken were in her teeth and in a corner of her mouth.

“Hi!” said the girl. “You didn't fix lunch. I was
starving.
”

Then she got up from the table as normally as anything and went to the counter where Mrs. Auberchon kept the rack of paper napkins. She took one and wiped her mouth, took a second napkin for her hands, and balled the the two together when she was finished. She turned to face the trash pail in the corner. It was a plastic one with a center push-slot in the lid. She gave a throw to the napkin ball, holding up her arm, flicking her wrist just so. The thing landed perfectly. It dropped the lid on its hinges and disappeared.

The girl's face lit up with a grin.

“Oh,” she said, “I didn't think you'd want me going through your drawers and cabinets for silverware and things.”

Mrs. Auberchon had left the snow brush on the porch, but the kindling hatchet was in her hand. She was dripping melting snow. She couldn't blink right; snow had crusted her eyes. Her skin was tingling with cold, but she was sweaty and hot, head to foot. She loosened her grip on the hatchet because the way she squeezed the handle was suddenly alarming to her. She set it down, propping it against the wall. Then she changed her mind about having it close at hand. She put it into the broom closet.

“By the way, it's weird we never introduced ourselves. I'm Evie,” said the girl. “I know you're Mrs. Auberchon, but I don't know your first name.”

Mrs. Auberchon unzipped her parka and reached down to undo her boots. She stepped out of them. She placed them on the little rug by the electric wall heater.

“I'll be in my room, off-limits to guests,” she said. “I wish to be undisturbed.”

“No problem. I totally respect your privacy.”

Evie. Mrs. Auberchon willed the name to delete itself from her mind, like letters typed on a screen, then backspaced into a vanishing. As soon as she was in her room, she bolted the door. She peeled off her outer clothes and turned up the heat on her stove, a smaller, gas version of the lobby one. She went to the work table, to her computer.   

There was a knocking at her door.

“Mrs. Auberchon? I found a plate for the chicken. I put it away in the fridge. I hated to think what could happen to it if a dog showed up.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Auberchon managed to say.

“But I couldn't find aluminum foil to cover it with.”

“That's all right. This is my private time.”

Mrs. Auberchon turned on the computer. She had Internet.

But the girl wasn't going away. Mrs. Auberchon could almost hear her breathing on the other side of the door.

“Will a dog show up again, Mrs. Auberchon?”

“Not today.”

“Can I ask you one more question? Then I'll go upstairs.”

“All right.”

“Do you work for the Sanctuary?”

“I do,” answered Mrs. Auberchon.

Silence. Good. Mrs. Auberchon put on her fuzzy slippers, towel-dried her face and hair, filled her electric kettle from her bathroom sink, plugged it in, dropped a tea bag into the mug by her computer, and sat down. Her room closed around her like a shell. It was a large one, with doors for a closet, the bathroom, and access to the porch. It held a single bed, an armchair by the biggest window, a couple of bureaus, and this table and chair. She waited until her tea was ready before putting on her headset and crossing the mental line that separated “Mrs. Auberchon the innkeeper” from “Mrs. Auberchon the Sanctuary Warden.”

A moment later she was in. As usual, she started with a sweep of her three locations.

On the screen appeared the large outer room near Solitary. The holding room, it was called. It was the first stop for a newly arriving dog, but for now it was an isolation unit for six juvenile huskies. They needed to be apart from the others as a preface to training for work. They didn't need her. They'd be leaving soon. All were asleep, sprawled and well fed.

Next, she looked at the infirmary. No one was there. Then she keyed into Solitary.

The little room was once a storeroom for the old ski resort. It was large enough for even the biggest dogs to walk around. A pair of ventilation windows were set high up, to be unreachable. The heat vent in the floor was heavily grated. Dogs who were jailed in winter tended to stay close to it, hunkering like lost, worried hikers in the wilderness, terrified that flames of a campfire might go out.

A dog was there. Mrs. Auberchon saw black, solidness, muscularity. She saw a white chest, a black face with a white muzzle. But she knew by the pacing who it was: Hank, partly black Lab, partly pit bull. This was his first time in Solitary.

She brought up a second screen to remind herself of his bio. Age about five. Adoption possibility zero.
Do not introduce in his presence until further notice any hand-held natural wood object such as fire kindling, including sticks of any length.

Back and forth he went, back and forth, his feet going in the same steps every time. When he reached the door, he raised a paw and struck at it, sideways, like a punch thrown out from an arm that was crossed at a chest. When the door didn't open as he seemed to expect it to, he turned around and started over.