Water trickled, a soothing sound. That meant the kitchen sink was leaking again. These things happened: Bernie had a tool kit, did all the home repairs, some of them over and over. Once he got his hand stuck in the garbage disposal and then the whole fuse box started smoking and the fire department—
I opened my eyes. At home in the kitchen? No. Everything came back. I was in the mine, darkness all around. But what was this? Darkness, yes, but not complete. In the distance, I saw a narrow shaft of golden light. I rose, realizing that not quite everything had come back to me: I’d forgotten the choke chain. I rolled over, squirmed this way and that, tried to get rid of the thing. But the choke chain stayed where it was, twisted around my neck, the free end trailing on the ground.
I sat up, still and quiet—I could sit very nicely, thanks, Mr. Gulagov—and listened. There was nothing to hear except trickling water. I licked some off the wall and moved toward the light.
It turned out to be far away. The closer I got, the more I could see. I was in a narrow tunnel, and it was getting narrower, the walls and ceiling all closing in. I had to crouch low as I reached the source of the light, a narrow crack in the wall. I sniffed at it, smelled outside things: mesquite, flowers, and another scent that reminded me of cats. I pawed at the crack. A bit of the wall crumbled away, and the crack got bigger. I pawed some more. The crack grew into a hole. Through it I saw big rocks, a ball of tumbleweed rolling by, and in the distance a tall butte.
The next thing I knew, I was digging, digging harder than I’d ever dug. Dirt and rocks flew all over the place. Soon the hole was big enough to stick my head through. I stuck my head through, blinked away some dust, saw I was high up a steep slope, way above the desert floor. I tried to wriggle the rest of me through the opening, got nowhere. That made me a little panicky. My front paws were stuck but not my back ones; they started digging crazily. Then came a strange rumbling sound, and the whole mountain seemed to tremble. With all my strength, I wriggled and dug, trying to get free. The mountain made a boom and shot me right out of the hole—in fact, the hole wasn’t even there anymore. I tumbled down the mountainside, rocks and clods of dirt bouncing all around me.
I came to rest at the top of a narrow ledge, the end of the choke chain slapping across my body, dust blowing everywhere. Did I feel any pain? No: wasn’t thirsty, wasn’t even tired, only a little bit hungry. I remembered that cold steak Bernie and I had shared, slathered with A.1. All right: I was very hungry.
I got up and had a good shake, raising clouds of dirt, like a little storm. When it cleared, I could see down below to the desert. It went on and on, with some mountains in the distance: no sign of Mr. Gulagov or his ranch, no buildings of any kind in sight, no people. I was free! My next thought was of home and Bernie.
But home—which way? I sniffed around. I’d gotten home from far away before, always by following my own smell; a very nice one, did I mention that? This time the only scent trail of me led back up the mountain, into the mine. The wrong direction, for sure. I walked along the ledge, looking for a path down. That strange cat smell was in the air again, not quite cat but somehow more so. I found a narrow gully, followed it off one side of the ledge and around a big rock, the size of a car. Fresh air, not too hot, lots of sunshine: This wasn’t too bad. My tail was up, alert, wagging a bit. All in all, I was feeling pretty good, and if I did have any worries, I couldn’t think what they were.
Then, with no warning except a slight rush of air behind me, I got hit by something big and strong with so much force I flew off the ground, landing hard way down the slope. I rolled over, looked up, and saw a huge catlike animal bounding toward me, an animal I knew from the Discovery Channel: mountain lion. Huge teeth, huge claws, huge yellow eyes—cat blown up to nightmare size. What had Bernie said that time in front of the TV? “If you ever meet up with one of these suckers, whatever you do, don’t run. Run and you’re done.” He’d even—this was after a bourbon or two, not always a good idea for Bernie—done a lion imitation and come at me, making his fingers like claws, saying, “Stay, Chet, stay.”
I trusted Bernie, believed every single thing he’d ever told me. I turned and ran.
My very fastest running, paws hardly touching down, ears flat back: and yet she pounced on me almost right away, claws digging into my back. We rolled together, down and down the mountain, our faces close together. Those eyes: a killer’s eyes.
We crashed into the bottom of a saguaro, came to a stop. I was up right away, and so was she. She crouched, ready to spring. I faced her and growled, didn’t know why, just did it. She paused, as if in doubt—Bernie was right!—and then, instead of springing, lashed out at me with a paw, so quick I didn’t even have time to flinch. I felt pain on my side, but what was this? She’d caught a claw in one of links of the choke chain. That brought another pause, a pause I took advantage of, turning my head a little and biting her on the shoulder. She roared, a horrible roar that sounded like a thunderstorm. My hair stood on end. She tried to free her paw, yanking it back, and I felt her tremendous strength right through my skin. The chain snapped at once, and she roared again, crouching to spring. But in the next instant her roar turned into a gagging cough, the kind familiar to me from chicken-bone incidents. What was this? Behind those huge teeth, at the back of her throat, I glimpsed a chain link; it must have flown into her mouth. She backed away, bending over, trying to cough it up. I took off and didn’t look back till I reached the desert floor. No sign of her.
I followed the sun: That seemed right. It led me toward those distant mountains. I went into my trot. So nice to be free of the chain! Once I got going, I could trot forever.
***
But by the time the sun sank behind the mountains, cooling the air right away, I was walking, and not very fast. Hungry, tired, thirsty, all at the same time. My tongue was dried out again, too big for my mouth. Panting spells came and went, plus I smelled blood from time to time, had to be mine. Once I saw a sign on a post in the middle of nowhere. I gazed at it for a while, then at the mountains. They didn’t look any closer, but their shadows were, and moving toward me all the time.
Night fell. Stars came out, filling the sky. I knew my direction was right, kept going. In the distance, I spotted a light, an unsteady kind of light, yellow and flickering. Soon after that, I smelled smoke, and not just smoke but meat, meat on the grill. I picked up the pace, even trotted a bit. Slowly, the flickering yellow light became a fire, with human-shaped forms moving around it. I approached, staying in the shadows beyond the reach of the light.
Humans, yes, of the biker kind; we didn’t like bikers, me and Bernie. They sat around a big open campfire, men and women, drinking, smoking, cooking burgers; their bikes stood by an old falling-down shack. How many bikers? That was the kind of thing I couldn’t tell you.
“Hey, what’s that?”
My ears perked up.
“Coyote?”
I drew back, not in the mood for insults.
“Nah. Looks like a dog.”
“Way out here?”
“Must be hungry.”
“Hey, pooch—wanna burger?”
Not long after that, I was sitting around the fire, working on a burger, not my first, and socializing with the bikers. I changed my mind about bikers, or at least these bikers. They were big, the women, too, with lots of tattoos and piercings—the sight of piercings always gave me this unpleasant feeling all over my skin—but friendly.
“He looks pretty wore out.”
“Wonder where he came from.”
“Check his tag.”
“Got no tag,” a biker lady said, coming closer, giving me a nice pat.
No tag? Uh-oh. Couldn’t feel my collar. I’d lost it? How did that happen?
“There’s something on his back,” the biker lady said. “Maybe dried blood.”
The biggest biker, a huge guy with a huge white beard, leaned over and had a look. “That’s nothin’,” he said. “You should see the other guy.”
Everybody laughed and laughed.
“You thirsty, pooch?”
I was.
“Like beer?”
I really didn’t. What I liked was water, but there didn’t seem to be any around. Someone filled an old hubcap with beer. I took a sip. Not bad, not bad at all. I lapped up some more.
“Dude!” said a biker. He gave me a pat. The biker lady gave a pat. Then the big biker shoved them both away and took over the patting, chugging a beer at the same time. Soon the flames were dancing in all kinds of interesting ways. Another biker lady reached down her T-shirt and pulled out a harmonica. The moon came up. I did some howling at it. So did a biker or two. They were real good howlers, almost in my class. Someone refilled the hubcap.
***
In the morning I was first one up, feeling not too good. The bikers were sleeping all over the place, some of them wearing not much. Like other humans, almost every one of them looked better with clothes on. I went behind the falling-down shack and did what I had to do. When I got back, the bikers were stirring. I smelled all kinds of human smells, a few brand-new to me.
“Hungover again,” one said. “Been hungover every morning of my grown-up life.”
“That’s not the record,” said another.
The huge biker with the white beard scratched himself for a while—good idea: I scratched myself, too—and then said, “Let’s roll.”
“What about the pooch?”
The huge biker gazed at me. “Can’t just leave ’im here,” he said.
The huge biker had a huge bike, silver and gleaming. I ended up sitting behind him, strapped in with a bungee cord. First time on a bike! I felt all better right away, alert and rested, even hankering for a little more beer. We roared across the desert, my eyes watering from the wind, my ears blown straight back, weird rock formations whizzing by. The biker turned his head, shouted something to me that I didn’t catch. I barked in his ear.
“‘Born to be wild,’” he screamed into the wind. “‘Like a true nature’s child.’”
Couldn’t have agreed more: I barked my head off. We did a few wheelies.
We rode across the desert. Oh, the noise we made! Sometimes the huge biker and I were in the lead, sometimes we dropped back—to pass around a tequila bottle, for example. The mountains came nearer and nearer, and soon we were riding on paved roads, narrow at first, then with lots of lanes and some traffic, but did we slow down? Not a bit! The opposite! Like a true nature’s child, we were born to be wild!
A little later, we entered the foothills and came to a town. The whole gang stopped outside a bar—I could tell it was a bar from the neon martini glass in the window, but also from the smell of human puke in the air—and everyone went in, everyone except me and the huge guy, my biker buddy. We kept going, around a corner and up a side street lined only by a few buildings, some boarded up. We stopped in front of the last one. My biker buddy got off and unhitched me.
“Cool ridin’, huh?” he said. “Come on, pooch, let’s go.”
I jumped down and followed him along a stone path and through a gate that led to the building; he closed the gate after me. Hey! I caught the scent of my guys, lots and lots of them. What kind of place—
The biker opened the door and we entered the building. We were in a small room with a counter, a woman behind it, and lots more smells, all from members of my nation. That was one of Bernie’s ideas—we were a nation inside of a nation.
The woman looked up. Her smile faded quickly when she saw the biker. “Help you?” she said.
My biker buddy gestured at me with his thumb. He wore a wide silver thumb ring; the sight distracted me, and I maybe only caught part of what he said next. “…picked up a stray.”
“Wearing any tags?” the woman said.
“Nope,” said the biker. “Looks like he’s been through a rough stretch, but he’s a good ol’ boy.”
“Why don’t you adopt him? We could handle the shots right here and—”
My biker buddy waved his hand. “Nah.”
“Are you aware that only fifteen percent of dogs left at shelters get reunited with their owners?” the woman said.
What was this? A shelter? I’d been in a shelter once, but that was undercover, me and Bernie working on a stolen-goods case I never understood too well. But I’d learned about shelters: no space, no running free, and lots of mysterious comings and goings, mostly goings. I turned to the door. Closed, and there was no other way out.
“Nope,” said the biker.
“And that only twenty-five percent get adopted?”
“Didn’t know that, neither.”
“But you do know what happens to the others?” said the shelter woman. She lowered her voice. “Here, for example, we have a three-day grace period, if you follow.”
The biker gave me a long look. I wagged my tail but not much: I didn’t understand “grace period,” and even “three days” was a little hazy. I noticed again how big my biker buddy was, all except his eyes. “I’m outta here,” he said.
He turned and started for the door. I trotted after him, sure of one thing only: I was outta there, too. The woman laughed. “Isn’t he the clever one?” she said. Then somehow she was right behind me, slipping a leash around my neck before I realized what was happening. She didn’t tug hard, just enough for me to feel the pressure. I glanced at her, taken by surprise. When I turned back to the door, it was swinging shut, and biker buddy was gone.
“Easy, boy,” the woman said. She came around in front of me, knelt down to my level, stroked the top of my head. “You’re the kind of dog someone cares about, I can tell. Where’s your collar?”
Good question.
She scratched behind my ear, just perfectly. She was an expert. “What’s your name?”
Chet. Chet was my name. I lived on Mesquite Road, had an important job and the best partner in the world.
She sighed. “Hungry? At least we can get you fed.” She rose, led me around the counter to a back door. We went through, and a whole lot of barking started up right away.
A corridor. Little rooms on both sides, with chain-link fronts and one of my guys in each, small ones, big ones, male, female, purebreds and no-breds, all barking except for a pit bull. She stared at me with her dusty brown eyes. I remembered watching prison movies with Bernie.
“Knock it off,” the woman said.
Everyone went silent. Why? I felt like barking myself, so I did. No one joined me. We came to an empty room. The woman led me in, removed the leash.
“Shh, shh,” she said. “Shh. You’re a good boy.”
I quieted down. She went away. I paced around the little room. There was no wall at the far end, which opened into an outdoor cage. I went out there. I could smell who had been this way before, and before that. A dachshund lay sleeping in the next cage. Sausages, Bernie called them. I liked dachshunds—Bernie said Iggy had some dachshund in him. I pawed at the chain link between us. The dachshund didn’t wake up. I turned to the cage on the other side. A spaniel lay there, a fat fly buzzing slowly over her nose. I liked spaniels, too: Bernie said that Iggy was also part spaniel. I went over, pawed at the cage. The spaniel opened her eyes, gazed at me for a moment, and closed them.
The shelter woman came back with a bowl of kibble and a bowl of water. “Here you go,” she said. She left, closing the chain-link door. I drank water, left the kibble alone, not hungry. I paced some more, then went outside. The dachshund was no longer around. I lay down. The sun moved across the sky. Shadows lengthened. Night fell. Motorcycle sounds came faintly from far away.
***
I dreamed about the ocean. I’d actually been to the ocean once, after we’d wrapped up a case I no longer remember, except for the part where I grabbed the bad guy by his pant leg. But I remember the ocean, all right. Those waves! We’d bodysurfed, me and Bernie, rolling and tumbling, so much fun, especially after I’d stopped trying to steer him to shore all the time, and also stopped making myself sick by drinking the water. The surf pounded and pounded. Bernie laughed his head off. He met a woman on the beach and seemed to like her. The whole time he talked, the woman’s eyes never left a long string of snot hanging from his nose; green snot, I thought, but Bernie always said I couldn’t be trusted when it came to color.
I woke up, hungry but rested, feeling good, ready to start the day. Then I saw where I was. My tail sank right down. I made it stand up, left the room, went to the outdoor cage. The spaniel lay where she’d been the last time I’d seen her, eyes open. This time she flicked the end of her tail the tiniest bit. I wagged back. Flies buzzed around her.
I turned to the cage on the other side, the dachshund side, only the dachshund wasn’t there. Instead, a mixed breed, about my size, was pacing back and forth. He saw me and charged right away, not even hesitating a moment. Maybe he hadn’t seen the fence. He bounced off it, landed skidding on his side, scrambled up with a twisting motion, and stared at me, saliva dripping from his mouth. I went back inside my room, turned a few times in a tight circle, and lay down. I didn’t like this place.
Food came—it tasted all right. My water bowl got topped up. Someone took me for a walk on a treeless patch out back, gave me plenty of time to do what I had to. Everyone at the shelter was nice, so: no complaints. I still didn’t like it.
A man came by with a clipboard, looked in on me. “Hey,” he called to someone. “Does that first day count?”
“Yup,” someone called back.
“Even though it wasn’t a full twenty-four-hour day?”
“New protocol.”
“So that leaves him with…” The man made a mark with his pen and went away. He left behind a smell that made me uneasy. I closed my eyes and dozed off, not a good sleep, but the kind I hate, sleeping because there was nothing else to do.
***
“What about this one?”
I opened my eyes. Some people stood in the corridor outside my room, gazing in at me through the fencing: the shelter woman, plus what looked like a family—mom, dad, two kids.
“Too big. Think of what it would cost to feed him.”
“I think he’s cute. Look at his funny ears.”
“I’ll pay the extra food out of my allowance. Please, Daddy, can we take him, please?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You have until tomorrow,” said the shelter woman. “Nine A.M.”
I don’t do much in the way of planning, but a plan began to form in my mind. Step one was leaving with this nice little family. Then came lots of hazy steps, and after that the last one, running home to Bernie. I got up and went closer to them, wagging my tail and trying not to look like a big eater.
“See how friendly he is, Daddy? Oh, please. Mom, make Daddy say yes.”
The plan was working, working well. I wagged harder, rose up on my back legs, pawed at the chain link in my friendliest way. But uh-oh—what was this? The nice little family jumping back in alarm?
“He looks too aggressive,” the mom said.
Me? I backed off, found myself pawing air.
“We’ve got another possibility down at the end,” said the shelter woman. “Part Australian terrier, I think.”
“I’ve always wanted to go there,” said the mom.
“This one’s very gentle and much, much smaller. His name appears to be Boomerang, but you can change it to whatever you like.”
They moved away, out of sight.
I came down on all fours.
***
Time passed very slowly, but I lost track of it anyway. Mostly I lay down, either in the room or in the outside cage. The big mixed breed next door stayed inside; I could smell him. Once I opened my eyes and saw a man in a white coat opening the cage on the other side. The spaniel rose slowly and followed him out, across the hard-packed dirt yard and into a small building with a metal door and a tall brick chimney. Her tail wasn’t down or up, just sticking straight out in a way I liked: I knew she’d be a good pal.
I slept for a while, woke up to the smell of smoke. This wasn’t a nice smoky smell, like burgers on an open fire. I looked out, noticed a thin white plume rising above the brick chimney across the way. I went back inside, lay in the farthest corner of my room, but couldn’t get away from that smell.
***
When I woke again, it was morning. I felt hungry but pretty good, ready to start the day. Then I saw where I was. I went out to the cage. The big mixed breed was lying down, facing away from me, not moving; on the other side, the spaniel side, there was now a puppy. He raced to the fencing the moment he spotted me and stuck his nose through—most of his face, actually: He was very small. I went over and gave him a little push with my paw. He tumbled backward, bounced up, stuck his nose back through, ready to do the whole thing again. But at that moment I heard a woman’s voice out in the yard, a voice I knew.
“…and our readers love stories about dogs, so we turned it into a whole series.” I knew that voice, but who was it?
“And one of the stories is going to be about shelters?” said the shelter woman.
I went to the end of the cage, looked out, and saw, down at the end of the yard, the shelter woman talking to someone else, my view of whoever it was blocked by a shed.
“Exactly,” said this person, this woman whose voice I knew. “And you were highly recommended.”
“Really? That’s nice. Where do you want to start?”
“Maybe with some stats first, to get an overview. After that, I’d like to see the dogs, get a few pictures if I could.”
“No problem.” The shelter woman stepped behind the shed, and I couldn’t see her, either. “We’ll start in the office,” she said, her voice growing fainter as they moved away.
“And don’t let me forget,” said the other woman, almost out of my hearing range, “I’ve brought some treats.”
“Treats?”
And then, at the very edge of what I could pick up, maybe even beyond, the other woman said, “Dog biscuits. I’ve got a whole box in my car.”
Dog biscuits? A whole box in her car? Suzie! Suzie Sanchez! I started barking, barking and barking with all my might, hurling myself against the cage, again and again.
But they didn’t come. Instead, the metal door opened across the way. A man and a woman walked out, both in white coats. “What’s with him?” the man said.
“I think some of them just know,” said the woman.
“Get serious.”
They moved toward my cage. I went still.
“I mean it,” the woman said. “They know more than we give them credit for.”
The man shook his head. “I like dogs as much as anybody,” he said, “but that’s sentimental crap.”
The woman gave him an annoyed look, which he didn’t catch because he was opening my door. “Hey, boy,” he said, “Let’s—”
I bolted out before he finished his proposal, bolted out to freedom and Suzie San—
But not quite. The woman slipped a loop of rope over my head as I went by, and now held on as I pulled her across the yard. The man grabbed on, too, and I came to a dead stop.
“Wow,” the woman said. “He’s so strong.” She reached out to give me a pat. I tried to bite her. She flinched and drew back, eyes wide. They led me—dragged me, actually—to the metal door, and through. It was very cold inside.
icken. As a newspaperman, I was fascinated.
It was the newspaperman’s fascination that prevailed—or at least predominated—and left me dissatisfied with every analysis of Nazism. I wanted to see this monstrous man, the Nazi. I wanted to talk to him and to listen to him. I wanted to try to understand him. We were both men, he and I. In rejecting the Nazi doctrine of racial superiority, I had to concede that what he had been I might be; what led him along the course he took might lead me.