Sheep

by Valerie Hobbs

  The farmer came riding back on his tractor and stopped. Took off his hat, scratched his head. “Well, what have we here?” he said. I hoped he wasn’t as dumb as that. Anybody could see that what we had here was a sorry herd of goats and a broken-down wagon.

  All things considered, I suppose I should have stayed. But the farmer had no sheep, and I was real tired of those goats. After a good meal, thanks to the farmer’s wife, I headed out across the land. If I never saw another highway, well, that was fine with me.

  But first I had to say goodbye to the Goat Man. I hopped up into the wagon house, and there he was, just as I’d left him. I sniffed his curly beard, his closed eyes, his rough old hand. Storing him up for memory was what I was doing, though I didn’t know it then.

  After a while, I hopped down and headed off, the way the Goat Man left Trudy. Not because I wanted to, but because it was all there was left to do. I stopped just once, turned back, and saw the farmer climbing into the wagon.

  5

  LIFE WAS EASIER without the goats. I could travel faster, go where my nose took me, get away from that highway. But it wasn’t easy for long.

  That first day on my own I stopped in at a few farms, poked around looking for some lunch, too proud to beg. Scared a chicken off her nest and grabbed an egg. Smashed the thing in my mouth. It took me forever to lick the shell off. Sticky darn thing an egg is. Weak with hunger, I went along a dirt road, then a paved road, and came at last to a town.

  It wasn’t much of a town. There were just a couple of streets. One street went straight down to the water. At the water’s edge, men unloaded nets filled with silvery things into big wooden boxes. Curiosity and hunger made me brave. I went to investigate.

  The men paid no attention to me, they had their work to do. They were big and loud and laughed a lot. In their thick rubber boots and yellow slickers, they slogged through puddles cold enough to make me shiver. I hung back as long as I could, but I had to see what was in those boxes.

  It was sort of like the difference between sheep and goats. The stuff in the boxes didn’t look like food, but it smelled like food. One box had a bunch of spiny red things with mean-looking pinchers on their paws. I left them alone. Another box had slimy silver things piled to the top. I sniffed the side of a silvery thing with a dead, staring eye. It reminded me of the creatures in the pet shop, only a whole lot bigger.

  “Hey, whatcha doin’ there? You a fish dog?”

  I looked up, ready to bolt, but the fisherman was dog people, you could tell right away. He knelt and gave me a nice rubdown.

  I had to get back to that fish.

  “You want some cod, is that it? Okay, here you go.” The fisherman grabbed the very fish I’d been sniffing and slapped it down on the dock. Then with a sharp knife he slit that thing right up the middle. Out came all this squishy stuff. Off came the skin. The fisherman laid a piece of white fish meat on his palm and held it out to me. I sniffed it, not bad. So I gobbled it up. The fisherman laughed while I ate the rest of that fish meat. “This here’s a fish dog!” he said to the others. “Ever see a dog who liked fish this much?”

  Well, I was hungry is all. I’d have eaten the red spiny things if that’s all there was.

  Back on the road, I lived on that fish for a couple of days, don’t know how I held out. Proud, I guess. I’d seen the skinny homeless dogs that roamed the streets in search of garbage. Strays. But I wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t a stray. I was a Border collie of distinctive lineage in search of employment. They knew it, too. “Oh, so you’re too good for us, huh?” their eyes would say. “Well, just you wait.”

  They were right, of course. Life on the open road was a brave adventure, but only if your belly was full. Then you had the strength to explore, to go any old place your feet and your curiosity could take you. But if you were hungry, life was just a search for food. You couldn’t think about anything else. You couldn’t enjoy a good romp with a pal you met along the way, or play tag with the kids in the park, or savor all the rich odors of the great outdoors. Your nose had a single purpose, and that was to find food. After a while it didn’t even matter what kind.

  By the third day after my fish, I found myself down by the railroad tracks. I’d had enough of being chased away from the places where food smell was the most enticing: kitchens, restaurants, family picnics. I’d been hanging around people, acting all pitiful. After a while, it wasn’t an act. “Shoo!” the people would say, flapping their arms. “Shoo!” At first I didn’t understand. I thought they meant the things they wore on their feet. The Goat Man worried about shoes all the time. “You’re lucky, Shep,” he said one time. “You got them permanent kind.” Well, my permanent shoes were getting awfully weary. But my belly wouldn’t let them rest.

  I don’t know what I expected to find down by the tracks, but except for crickets, at least it was quiet. And there weren’t any people to shoo me on. I nosed my way along the wooden part. Things had died there. Things that once had fur lay smashed and drying in the sun.

  My first thought when I heard the train whistle was of my mom and dad. I guess because it’s lonely that sound, downright mournful. And then I saw the train approaching, pulling its many cars, blowing clouds into a gray sky. Then the whistle again, the chug-chugging of that big engine, and the train went screaming by.

  I trotted alongside the tracks until I heard people talk. I wasn’t in the mood for humans, but humans had all the food. Unless you were willing to kill, and I wasn’t, you had no choice but to beg. You could act like you didn’t care whether or not they shared their food, or you could try to charm them out of it. It came down to the same thing: begging. The Goat Man wouldn’t have done it, I knew that. But then he had all the goats.

  Two raggedy-looking men were sitting on a log in the middle of a weed patch. One was small and skinny, the other was big as a horse. As soon as he saw me, the big one yelled, “Look, Snatch! A dog!”

  The skinny one was busy pushing a threaded needle through a shoe, just like the Goat Man used to do when his shoes fell apart. “Quit cher hollerin’,” he muttered.

  “It’s a doggie! It’s a doggie!” yelled the big one. He got up and came lumbering out of the weeds toward me, his arms outstretched. I let him beat on me a little. Well, it was his idea of petting. He got down on one knee and started pounding me with those big old hands. He smelled pretty awful. But he smelled like chicken, too, fried chicken. I was so hungry I licked the grease off his chin.

  “Good doggie, nice doggie! Hey, Snatch! Can we keep him? Can we keep this doggie?”

  Snatch’s eyes were real tired-looking, red-rimmed and watery. He looked at the two of us and shook his head. “Quit hollerin’.”

  “Okay, okay, Snatch,” the big guy whispered. Even his whisper was big. “Can we keep him then?”

  “Come over here and try this on,” Snatch said. He laid the old black shoe on the ground. The big guy got up. That’s when I got a good look at what had stunk so bad, his feet. He stuck a big bare foot into the shoe and headed back toward me.

  “Ain’tcha gonna put the other one on?”

  “Huh? Oh! Yeah.” He shoved his other foot into the other shoe. “He can help us, Snatch,” he said. “The doggie can help us, you know, when we get the stuff from the store!” The big guy yelled all the time, even when he tried not to. It made the one called Snatch squinch up his face every time.

  Snatch took a good, hard look at me, scratching his whiskery chin. I wagged my tail and cocked my head in the way people seemed to take to. “Looks hungry to me,” Snatch said. “What we gonna feed him?”

  “He can eat my food!”

  “Quit cher hollerin’!”

  The big guy, Hollerin I guessed his name was, dug into a cloth bag and pulled out a hunk of chicken. “Here, doggie!” he yelled.

  “What d‘ya think yer doin’?” It was Snatch who was doing the yelling now. “D’ya think chickens grow on trees?”

  That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Not t
o Hollerin either by the look on his face.

  “Aw, fugget it,” Snatch said. “Where’s that cigar we was smoking yestiday?”

  Hollerin dug into his bag again. Out came an old brown chewed-up-looking thing that he passed over to Snatch. Snatch stuck it between his lips. Then he struck a match, touched the end of the cigar with it, and sucked some air in. Did that thing ever stink! Worse than Hollerin’s bare feet. Snatch began to cough and cough. Then he passed the cigar over to Hollerin.

  Well, I’d watched people smoke cigarettes before. Cigars were more or less the same, only the coughing was worse. The Goat Man said he could never understand why people smoked, but I did. It was to make the clouds. They’d get this dreamy look in their eyes sometimes as the smoke rose up, and that’s how you could tell. Still, it was strange. The Goat Man said it was like taking poison, and he was never wrong.

  After they finished smoking and choking, Snatch and Hollerin spread some coats on the ground and lay down. So I did, too. By the smell of it, Hollerin’s pack still had food in it. I was going to stick close and see if he would give me more.

  After a while, Hollerin sat up and stretched. “Let’s get a chocolate milk shake!” he yelled.

  “Can‘tcha let a guy sleep?” Snatch rolled over. Then he got up and peed in the bushes. Hollerin’ did, too, marking the place for later, so nobody else would take it.

  Hollerin kept on and on about the milk shake, and Snatch kept telling him to shut up. After a while Snatch gave in. “Okay! Okay! Lemme see how much money we got.”

  He dug into his pocket and came out with some paper money and some coins. “This is it,” he said. “It’s all we got left.”

  Hollerin hung down over Snatch’s hand. “Enough for a chocolate milk shake?”

  Snatch frowned at the little pile of money. “It is,” he said, “if we don’t buy any supper. But you don’t care about that, right?”

  “I don’t care about supper,” Hollerin yelled, shaking his big head. “I just want a chocolate milk shake!”

  “You just want a chocolate milk shake,” Snatch said. He sighed and stuffed the money back into his pocket. “Aw right, come on then.” He slung his pack over his shoulder, and Hollerin did the same. I think he forgot all about me then, but I trotted along behind him, keeping an eye on that pack.

  It was a long walk for that milk shake, and Hollerin never stopped yelling about it until we got to the place where they made them. Then he slurped it down so fast.

  “I hope yer satisfied,” Snatch muttered. “We gotta get us some stuff for supper now. You ready?”

  “I’m ready,” Hollerin said. Then his big, soft-looking eyes got wide. “And the doggie’s ready, too. Aren’t you, doggie?”

  “Might as well name the mutt,” Snatch said. “Ya can’t keep callin’ him doggie. People won’t believe he’s yers. They’ll think somethin’s fishy. Then what? Didja think about that?”

  Hollerin’s mouth hung open while he thought about that. “Spot,” he said after a while. “That’s what I’m going to name him.”

  “Now where didja ever get that name?” Snatch said. He began to laugh and cough, pounding his skinny chest with his fist.

  “’Cause he’s got this spot!” Hollerin yelled. “He’s got this big white spot on his tail.”

  “Well, ain’tcha one smart fellow,” Snatch said.

  6

  I FOLLOWED SNATCH and Hollerin down the main street. All the shops were open, people going in and coming out.

  A pretty little spaniel caught my eye. She was on a leash but didn’t seem to mind. She walked ahead of her mistress with such an air of self-possession that you wondered who was walking whom. The spaniel stopped to give me a good sniff of her. I let her do the same. We touched noses, and I went back for another sniff.

  “Come, Phoebe!” her mistress said, giving the spaniel’s leash a tug. We said a reluctant goodbye, and I watched her go off, her head and tail high.

  And then I remembered: Snatch and Hollerin! Where were they? I ran up the street, dodging legs and bicycles, poking my nose into shop doors. They were nowhere to be found. In just the few minutes that I’d let myself be a real dog, I’d lost them.

  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as the people went walking by, feeling strange inside, a little sick and a whole lot sad. I guess it was a sign of how much I’d come to depend on the Goat Man’s company. I needed a home, I needed some folks. My life on the road as an independent dog was only a couple of days old, and I’d already had enough of it.

  Just then I heard a great commotion. People were slowing down to watch something going on across the street. I found my way clear of the legs, and what do you know—it was Snatch and Hollerin. I raced across the street to join them, but they had their hands full and didn’t see me.

  Snatch was loaded down with bread and bananas. Hollerin had a jug of milk and a whole wheel of cheese. A man was yelling, “Stop, thieves!” and swatting Snatch on the head with a newspaper.

  “Run!” Snatch yelled.

  It took Hollerin a little time to get that big body moving. Then the two of them were racing side by side down the street, dodging cars and people, and I went racing after them.

  “Whole lotta good your doggie did us!” Snatch said when we were back in the weeds again.

  Hollerin gave me the saddest look. “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “He don’t want to say mean things. It’s just how he is.”

  “Slice us off some of that cheese,” Snatch said. “You didn’t have to grab the whole blasted thing, you know. How’s a guy supposed to live on cheese? Milk and cheese and bananas. We gotta do better than this.”

  Well, the Goat Man did just fine on milk and cheese, but I couldn’t tell Snatch that. Snatch was one of those people who didn’t listen much anyway. He mostly did the talking and deciding, while Hollerin did the listening and the yelling. They were a team that way.

  I missed the Goat Man so much that night, lying beside Hollerin, the sky spread over us with its blanket of stars. I guessed I’d found a new home. It wasn’t much, a patch of weeds was all, but as you well know, a home isn’t just the stuff it’s made out of. As a cold wind crept into our camp, I snuggled closer to Hollerin, who was just as warm as he was big.

  The next day and the next I had nothing to eat but the milk Hollerin gave me, mixed in with a little bread. He laid some banana on the ground for me, too, and when I didn’t touch it, he picked it up and popped it in his mouth.

  “I’m tired of this damned cheese!” Snatch said on the fourth day. “We need to get us some money. Buy some proper food, like proper people, in a market.”

  “Yeah!” yelled Hollerin.

  “Well, get up then. Ain’t gonna do it by myself.”

  “Spot’s coming, too,” Hollerin said. “Aren’t you, Spot? You’re going to help us today. Right, Snatch? He’s gonna help us, right?”

  Snatch stopped what he was doing, and I watched an idea hatch in his eyes. “Well, I’ll be,” he said. “If that pea brain of yours didn’t come up with something useful for a change! Listen up now. I’ll tell you what we’ll do.”

  “Okay, Snatch, okay! I’m listening.”

  “Then quitcher hollerin’ and listen.”

  Snatch grabbed on to Hollerin’s arm while he explained what he had in mind, I guess so’s Hollerin wouldn’t wander off. When he was finished, Hollerin turned to me.

  “You have to play dead now,” he said.

  When I didn’t do what he said—I didn’t know how—he got down on the ground and showed me. Hollerin with all four feet in the air and his eyes squeezed shut was something to see. Snatch laughed so hard he had to slap his knees to calm down.

  “Okay, now you,” Hollerin said, lumbering to his feet.

  It was easy enough. I lay down, rolled over, stuck my paws in the air, and closed my eyes.

  Hollerin clapped and cheered.

  “If you two ain’t an act,” Snatch said.

  They walked ahead, going in a dif
ferent direction than the day before, Snatch talking to Hollerin while I snuffled through the weeds thinking about gophers and field mice. Their homes were everywhere. Could I eat one if I had to? If I caught one, how was I supposed to kill it? Bite its head off? The whole thing was enough to make me a vegetarian. Besides, I wasn’t about to take my eyes off Snatch and Hollerin and lose them again.

  We weren’t in town five minutes before Hollerin said to play dead. The sidewalk was hard, but I did it anyway. Then Hollerin dropped to his knees and started wailing. “My doggie! My doggie! My doggie’s dead! Help! Help!”

  People began to gather around. My eyes were shut, but I could hear them.

  “What’s going on here? What’s the matter with your dog?”

  “Oh, he’s all right! Can’t you see he’s just playing dead?”

  “No, he isn’t! What’s the matter with you? That dog needs medical attention. Don’t worry, big fellow. We’ll call somebody!”

  After a while, I’d had enough of that. I opened my eyes and hopped up.

  “He’s all better!” Hollerin yelled.

  “See? What did I tell you?” a man said to his wife. “He was just playing dead.”

  “Good doggie! Good boy, Spot!” said Hollerin. “I’ll tell Snatch to buy you a treat!”

  Where was Snatch? We walked along the street for a while, Hollerin looking everywhere for Snatch. Then there he was, just like that, walking beside us.

  “Snatch!” Hollerin yelled, as if he hadn’t seen his friend in weeks. “How did Spot and me do?”

  “You did fine, fine!” Snatch hissed. “Now shut up or we’ll end up in the hoosegow.”

  Wherever that was, Hollerin didn’t want to go there. He whispered all the way back to camp. As soon as we got there, Snatch began pulling wallets out of his pockets and dropping them on the ground. Then he knelt down and started going through them. “Good take,” he said.