Lucy

by Chris Coppel

  “Pru, there were too many of them,” Lucy reassured her. “If you’d been there you would have taken like the others. At least this way you’re free, and between us we can go into the city and track them down!”

  “Oh Goldie, I wish I could,” Pru said in a sad and troubled voice, “But I really can’t, don’t you see?”

  “Don’t I see what?” Lucy tried to conceal her irritation.

  “I can’t leave home again. It was too much for my mistress. You saw how she looked the other day. Alone, hurt, sad . . .”

  “And what about Rodney and Rex, and the others?” she snapped. “Don’t you think they’re feeling just a bit alone and sad right now?”

  “Please don’t be angry with me, Goldie. I am what I am. I’m a show dog. All I have are my looks. I’m not brave or smart like you. I’m not fast like Rodney, or fierce like Rex or Hans. I’m certainly not cunning like Angel. I’m just a pretty hound, who likes to look her best and be groomed by her mistress. I’m no good for anything else. I never have been.

  Lucy studied the other animal, and though angry at her weakness, also felt a stab of pity for the pain that Pru obviously carried around inside her.

  “I’m sorry Pru,” Lucy said, soothingly. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you give up your home again. That was very unfair of me. I’m just at a loss as to what to do. I don’t have a clue as to where to even begin looking for the others. Pru? Pru?”

  Pru was staring up at the sky with a very pensive look on her muzzle.

  “Pru?”

  “Oh, sorry. I was just thinking. You know, I really am a silly dog sometimes. I swear if I weren’t on a leash half the time, I think I’d . . . ”

  “Pru!” Lucy interrupted impatiently. “What did you think of?”

  “Oh, yes . . . sorry,” she said, blushing. “I do go on, don’t I? Well, you said that they were taken by humans, some in grey uniforms, and others in blue ones with tall, funny hats.”

  “So?”

  “The ones in blue, sound like policemen. Those are good humans. They’re here to help and protect.”

  “Help and protect who?” Lucy asked.

  “Other humans.”

  “Protect other humans from what?” Lucy was beginning to lose her patience at Pru’s confused ramblings.

  “From bad humans,” Pru stated, frankly.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Lucy began. “The blue uniformed bipeds protect other bipeds from still other bipeds?”

  “Precisely!” Pru exclaimed with delight.

  “That’s ridiculous Pru. Why would one biped need protecting from another biped?”

  “That’s right, you’re a country dog, aren’t you?” Pru stated, as she nodded her fine head.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Where you come from, things are different,” Pru explained. “In the city, bipeds don’t always get along with others of their breed. They steal from each other, cheat, sometimes even kill.”

  “Oh, come on!” Lucy said, shaking her head. “You’re having me on.”

  “No, I’m not,” Pru insisted. “In fact, canines do the same thing in the cities. They fight and steal, and sometimes even harm each other.

  “I’m not sure I like the city anymore, Pru. It doesn’t seem to bring out the best in creatures.”

  “Why would it! I mean look around. It’s not exactly a natural place to live, is it?”

  Lucy nodded her agreement to her friend’s words. The two of them then sat and looked across the park to the city beyond.

  “Weren’t we discussing something important before?” Lucy asked.

  “Were we?” Pru tried to recall.

  “Of course. The others. You started to tell me about policemen and . . .”

  “Oh yes,” Pru interrupted, suddenly remembering her earlier train of thought. “I think I know where they are.”

  “What!” Lucy exclaimed in frustration. “And you didn’t say anything!?”

  “I’m saying it now,” Pru responded calmly. “You know Goldie, you need to relax. You seem very touchy today.”

  “I’m sorry Pru, please . . . go on.”

  “On our daily walk route to the park, we pass a police station.”

  “A what?” Lucy asked, in an attempt at a calm tone.

  “That’s where policemen live! Anyway, there’s a kennel behind the main building and I think that’s where stray dogs are kept after capture, before being sent to the pound.”

  “What’s a stray and a pound? Really Pru can’t you talk canine? I don’t know half these words.”

  “A stray is a dog that doesn’t have a home,” Pru began.

  “But we do have homes,” Lucy stated, matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, but the policemen don’t know that do they? And the pound is . . . well the pound is the ultimate bad place.”

  “Okay . . . okay . . . we’ll get back to that,” Lucy said, impatiently. “So, you think there’s this kennel where . . . how bad a place?”

  “You don’t want to know. I’ve heard that if you end up in the pound, you’re never seen again.”

  “Oh my!” Lucy exclaimed.

  Pru gave her a grave nod. “So anyway, there’s this kennel which I’m certain is used to hold the strays that are picked up in the park. It takes them a couple of days before the animals are moved to the . . . the other place.” Pru had to swallow hard just at the thought of the other place. “I’ll bet you the others are still there.”

  “Well, let’s go. You can show me where it is!” Lucy cried with delight.

  “I’m not going to leave my mistress, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll let her know that I’ve had enough of the park for today, and I’ll lead her down the road with the police station. You just follow us, and I’ll signal when we’re there.”

  “What if she takes you a different route?” Lucy asked, worriedly.

  “I can usually get her to go my way, but if I can’t, you need to find Walton Street.”

  “How do I do that?” Lucy inquired.

  “Just ask directions and read the signs.”

  “You can read too? I give up.” Lucy replied, burying her muzzle beneath her front paws.

  “I’ll go over to my mistress now and let her know that I want to go home. You stay behind us and follow. Not too close. I don’t want her upset.”

  “Thanks, Pru!”

  “I wish I could do more, but I simply can’t. I hope you understand.”

  “I do . . . really!”

  After a brief nose touch, Pru ran off towards the lake and her waiting mistress. As promised, Pru let her biped know that she was ready to leave. Normally, with humans not being as bright as canines, it takes repeated attempts before they caught on to a request. Not in Pru’s case. She walked up to her mistress, picked her lead up in her mouth, then turned to face the pathway that led back to the city, and their home. The female caught on instantly and rose to her feet. She attached the leash and allowed Pru to lead the way.

  Lucy followed at what she felt was a sensible distance behind them. Not too close to be seen by casual glance, and not so far back that she’d miss any key direction adjustments. As they walked past the waterfall, Lucy noticed Pru give their old shelter a brief look, then as if being driven by the memory of her recently captured friends, she picked up the pace.

  After crossing the horse path, they reached the end of the park and the beginning of the city. Lucy watched as Pru and her biped crossed the first of what she knew would be many streets, and felt a shiver run through her body. She took a moment to look back at the park with its gentle hillocks and sheltering trees and knew somehow that she would not be coming back. She took one last deep breath of the sweet-scented park air, then turned and faced the harshness of the looming city. She swallowed hard, then stepped off the gra
ss and onto the cold hardness of the paved walkway.

  CHAPTER 20

  Lucy soon found that the biggest problem was not them seeing her, but of her making certain she could see them. Pru was maintaining a good pace, and though in the park it had been puppy’s play to keep up with them, it was a different thing altogether on the crowded streets. There was a definite method to city walking that Lucy hadn’t realised before. When the group had been together and they’d moved through the city, they’d kept mainly to residential streets. This was an entirely different game of fetch!

  There were bipeds everywhere. Moving in every direction at once, with what seemed to be little or no order whatsoever. She was amazed to see that on occasion, the humans would actually bang into each other. Sometimes a rapid verbal exchange took place, but for the most part, they would simply collide, readjust their heading, and speed off without any indication that something so silly had occurred at all.

  What astonished Lucy the most were the expressions on the faces of the bipeds. They were clearly all in a mad rush to get somewhere, that was a given, and yet they all looked so intensely unhappy to be doing what they were doing. Lucy couldn’t understand why, if this maniacal rushing and colliding ritual were so distasteful to them all, they didn’t just stop or at least slow down. She felt that if they would all just take the time to perhaps visit the park, and who knows, chase a squirrel or a pigeon, they would feel a whole lot better.

  She had to dismiss her ponderings as she was having an exceedingly hard time keeping Pru’s hindquarters in her view.

  Pru was astonishingly good at city walking and seemed able to dodge and weave with amazing skill and success. Even her mistress had the moves down, and rarely seemed to collide with anything.

  Lucy on the other hand was having an extremely hard time of it. She had been tripped over, stepped on, kicked and once almost fallen upon. Luckily, she’d seen the shadow and side-stepped the large, heavily-perfumed female before the toppling biped landed on her.

  As she strode to keep up with Pru, something caught her eye and she glanced over to her left. Her jaw dropped open as she looked into the beautifully arranged windows of what she had only recently learnt was a place called Harrods. She realised in horror that if she was next to Harrods, then just up ahead had to be—before she could even finish the thought, she saw it. She was about to pass right in front of the biped feeding place that they had attacked the previous night. She felt her mouth go dry, knowing that they were certain to still be looking for the perpetrators of the heinous crime. There was, however, no choice.

  Pru and her mistress passed right in front of the feeding place without so much as a glance. Lucy readied herself, and with every nerve end screaming within her tense frame, she ran past the glass-paned entrance. She waited for the screams and shouting that she knew were imminent, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. She risked a glance over her shoulder and verified that no one even seemed to have noticed her. She returned her eyes to the task of following Pru and saw to her utter disbelief that Pru was gone!

  Lucy’s sense of panic lasted only as long as it took her to reach the next corner. Pru and her mistress had turned left off the main street, and somehow sensing that Lucy might have missed the move, the Afghan had feigned sudden intense interest in a large, tabby cat that was seated on a nearby window ledge. Pru’s mistress tried to urge her away from the startled feline but Pru stood firm, barking at the other animal just long enough for Lucy to reach the corner and spot her.

  Lucy was a good distance away from Pru, yet couldn’t miss the admonishing expression being thrown at her. It was as if to say, ‘Pay attention, silly dog!’

  The tracking became much easier once they’d left the main street. There were far fewer bipeds to avoid and plenty of stairways on which she could raise herself to get a better view of her two targets. The street they were on was narrow and crammed on either side with one feeding place after another, many of them located, not on ground level but down stone stairs in converted basements.

  Lucy couldn’t believe the smells. She had been around food prepared in lots of different ways. Cook herself was always trying something new to please their Man, and Lucy tried to make herself available whenever possible for a taste just to give Cook her verdict. But those dishes with their mildly altered scents were nothing compared to the full-frontal nose assault that she was being subjected to on the narrow city street.

  In one place, she could see candles burning atop dark green bottles. They were hardly recognisable because of the layers upon layers of multi-coloured candle wax that had been allowed to dry haphazardly, forming grotesque, waxy sculptures.

  The bottles sat on tables covered with bright, red and white checked cloths that were huddled so close together that Lucy presumed it had to be for warmth. She couldn’t fathom any other reason for people to sit so close to others as they ate. She raised her muzzle as she passed the basement entry, and felt her senses being transported away on a velvety carpet of garlic and oregano.

  Lucy passed another feeding place that was filled with humans who had eyes of a different shape to any she had ever seen, other than perhaps on a cat. As she inhaled the pungent aromas of ginger and garlic, she watched how the almond-eyed bipeds ate their food with sticks instead of metal utensils. She could tell, even from her position outside the eatery, that the bipeds did not simply eat for the sake of nourishment, but rather ate in an intense manner that showed the deep appreciation they held for the meal’s creator.

  It was exceedingly difficult to keep her attention focused on Pru and her biped with so many distractions so close at hand. She tried to close her senses but found that to be nearly impossible.

  Even as she kept her eyes locked ahead of her, she smelled another establishment. This one was giving off aromas of hot oils, coriander and other spices that she had never encountered before. She couldn’t resist a quick glance and saw a tall human with dark skin standing rigidly at the front door. His head was covered with what looked to Lucy to be a piece of cloth, and in the very centre of his forehead, there was a round dot painted right onto his skin.

  “Goldie! Will you keep up!” Pru barked from the end of the street, startling her mistress.

  Lucy refocused herself to the task at hand and followed Pru at the prescribed distance. Though still being veritably assaulted by the sights, sounds and smells of the place, she kept her head forward and simply inhaled the spiced air without letting it distract her.

  Pru made a right turn at an intersection, then glanced back to ensure that Lucy had seen the turn. She had, and the threesome continued their journey for a short distance further. Pru then stopped at a particular lamppost and made a great show of examining it. Her mistress stood patiently by as the Afghan went through the motions of claiming the post as her own. Unbeknown to her biped, Pru was signalling to Lucy that they had arrived.

  Lucy looked over at her friend, then at the building next to her and other than spotting a blue lamp hanging in its entrance, saw little difference between it and the many other buildings she had seen in the city. As she watched, three blue uniformed humans stepped out of the front door and climbed into a bright blue and white vehicle with a funny-looking coloured bar on its top.

  Lucy decided that this must be what Pru had referred to as the police station. She glanced over at the Afghan and saw that she was staring back at Lucy with large, sad eyes.

  Lucy couldn’t just let her walk away, so with a show of complete indifference, trotted over to Pru and gave her a sniff as if meeting for the first time.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay with me and free the others?” Lucy asked in a whisper.

  “Stop it Goldie! You know how I feel. Please don’t make it harder than it already is.”

  Lucy nodded her understanding as she looked upon the features of her friend.

  There was no more to be said, and with a final parting lick on th
e cheek, Pru turned and led her woman to the end of the block, then turned and walked out of sight, and out of Lucy’s life.

  Lucy stayed standing where she was for a moment, until she realised that a couple of policemen were pointing at her from the front door of the building. Lucy could see the irony of being grabbed at that point and thrown in a cell.

  Pru had told her that the kennels were located at the rear of the building so her priority was to find a way to get there. This, it turned out, wasn’t that simple. The Police station was just one building in a row of nearly identical structures, all built together without any space between them. Logic told Lucy that if there was a front, there certainly had to be a back, and that she was just going to have to search until she found it!

  It proved to be quite an undertaking. She walked the entire length of the street and found no alley or even a gap between the buildings. She rounded the corner and found to her amazement that the structures on that street were also built tightly together with no access whatsoever to their rear.

  Lucy sat for a moment and gave the matter some very deep pondering. She had walked one length and found no breaks. She had turned right and done the same. Having no concept of geometry, and thus the basic knowledge of a square, the puzzle was so intangible to her that her brain began to actually hurt as she tried to focus on its complexities. Every time she came close to even the most basic framework of the problem, the pieces of the puzzle would simply disappear like wood smoke dispersed by a summer’s breeze.

  Such was her determination that she retraced her steps just to be certain of the paradox. It was, as it turned out, the best thing she could have done. Lucy retraced her steps right back to the front of the police station where she again sat herself down in complete frustration. As she tried again to piece the puzzle together, she heard the distinct sound of another dog’s growl. She turned and spotted Champ leading Fat Man out of the police station. The Boxer tried to charge Lucy, but only succeeded in nearly choking himself because of the Fat Man’s slow reflexes in releasing the leash.