Sheep

by Valerie Hobbs

  “It was because of Spot!” Hollerin said. “The people never saw what you were doing!”

  “Yeah, yeah, Spot’s a real hero! I’m just the one did the dirty work.”

  The weather grew colder, but still we stayed in our weed camp. It wasn’t much of a home, but it was all we had. One morning we awoke with snow covering us like a thin white quilt.

  Snatch jumped up and shook himself off. “Time to head south,” he said.

  “Let’s go to California!” Hollerin yelled. “The snow’s not so cold in California!”

  California? My ears went right up. California was home. Home and Bob, Mom and Dad.

  “Ain’t no snow in California, you idjit. Find some sticks,” Snatch said. “I’ll make us a fire.”

  Hollerin and I went in search of something to burn. There wasn’t much.

  While the snow fell, we sat around that meager fire warming our paws and noses. “We’ll be froze before the Southbound comes,” Snatch said, rubbing his hands over the flames.

  “Not Spot,” Hollerin said. “He’s got a good warm coat on him. Maybe California’s too warm for Spot.”

  “Don’t you worry none about Spot,” Snatch said.

  The snow stopped after a while and the sun came out. Snatch got up and stretched. “Time to get on down the road,” he said. “Southbound train’s due any time now.”

  “Oh, boy!” Hollerin said. “California!”

  California! We were going to California. I gave a little woof of joy and Hollerin laughed.

  “Make sure you pack all your stuff,” Snatch said. “You leave it, you don’t see it never again.”

  Hollerin started packing his things. He didn’t have much. “Spot’s lucky,” he said. “He doesn’t need to carry one thing.”

  “Spot’s a dog, dummy,” Snatch said.

  “I know that,” Hollerin said. “I know that, Snatch.”

  We set out in the opposite direction from town, walking alongside the tracks. What little sun there was felt warm and good on my back.

  “Okay, this is where we wait,” Snatch said. “Down here.”

  We went down the bank to a flat place. Snatch and Hollerin knelt in the bushes. I dozed off. Chicken legs raced back and forth through my dreams. When I heard the train whistle, I woke right up. Snatch and Hollerin jumped to their feet. The train was coming toward us, chuffing and steaming, slowing way down to round the bend.

  “That one!” yelled Snatch, pointing at the train. “That car, see it? The red one!”

  “I see it, Snatch!” yelled Hollerin.

  “Then go! Go!” cried Snatch, and Hollerin climbed up that bank as fast as his big body would go, his arms flapping like he was trying to fly. I took off, too. Or tried to. But I was caught in the bushes.

  “So long, doggie,” Snatch said. That’s when I saw that I was tied. Looped around my neck was a length of thick brown rope. I barked, but Hollerin had already dived through the open door of the red train car. He held out his hand for Snatch to leap up, and then they were both inside.

  The train began to gather speed. I saw Hollerin lean out the door, so far he almost fell. “Spot!” he cried. “Spot! Come on! Come on! We’re going to California!”

  7

  IT TOOK ME a while to chew through that rope, and when I was finished I had a noose around my neck. I lay down in the bushes, feeling pretty low. Hollerin was right, I said to myself, California would have been too warm for me. I wouldn’t have liked it much. But that was just to make me feel better. I told myself that lots of folks would want a dog like me. Mostly, I tried to tell myself that I was fine. I’d been on my own before. Never for long, but I could make it.

  The thing is, I’d been tricked. That was the worst part. Snatch didn’t have to trick me. He could have explained in a reasonable way that a dog just wasn’t in the plans. Another mouth to feed, all that kind of stuff. Then Hollerin and I, we could have said a proper goodbye.

  But Hollerin wouldn’t have been reasonable. Love isn’t always reasonable. He’d have fought to keep me, and Snatch would have given in. He always did. Snatch took care of things the only way he knew how, with trickery. That’s the kind of person he was. But he cared about Hollerin, too, and so he wasn’t all bad. He just didn’t give himself a chance to know me, that’s all.

  Anyway, that’s what I told myself.

  I spent the night there in the bushes, cold and shivering. I’d grown used to Hollerin, even his smell. In the middle of the night, whenever a cold wind came up, he was warm as a pile of pups.

  In the morning, I headed back into town to beg for my breakfast. Begging wasn’t exactly noble or even honorable, but it was better than stealing. I never did feel good about my part in Snatch’s schemes. Food bought with stolen money didn’t taste right, at least to me it didn’t.

  It was a sorry day for beggars. Maybe it was the cold, but nobody was willing to part with as much as a crust of bread. Not that I was hoping for bread. I was hanging around the back of a butcher shop when wham! I was caught again. Tangled up in my paws, tying me in knots, was a fishnet!

  Or anyway, that’s what it looked like.

  “Hold him!” somebody yelled, and a hand pushed my head to the ground. I yelped, and bit at the net. What was happening to me? I tried a pitiful whine, but that didn’t work. Before I knew it I’d been thrown into a metal box I couldn’t even turn around in. I felt the rumble of an engine in my stomach and the whir of tires. I scratched at the metal door. I yelped and whined. Even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. All I could think of was that awful day when I’d been taken from my parents.

  “Oh, shut up for heaven’s sake!”

  A yelp stuck in my throat, and I coughed. “What?”

  The voice came from the other side of my metal box. “Relax! It’s only a short ride. You don’t have to carry on like you’re being murdered.”

  “Where are we going?” I didn’t want to go back to the pet store. What if Penelope found me there and took me home again? Hard as my life was on the road, it was a whole lot better than being the baby. “Where are we going?” I asked again.

  “The pound. Where did you think?”

  We made a couple more stops. I heard dogs yipping, fighting their fate. But they all ended up in the truck. You never heard such a racket as we dogs made going down the road. I joined right in, of course. Misery loves company, like the Goat Man used to say.

  “Will yez all shut up?”

  But we drowned that voice right out.

  I thought we’d go on forever. My throat was sore from barking and my legs cramped from being in such a tight space, so I was glad when the truck came to a stop. One by one our boxes were opened and we were hauled into pens inside a long, gray building.

  The howling inside that truck was nothing compared to what was going on in there, dogs in rows of cages all begging to be set free. Dogs of every breed, color, and size, all yapping their fool heads off.

  “That’s the worst part about this place,” the voice said, “all the blasted noise.”

  I turned and saw the sheepdog in the cage next to mine who had been only a voice before. He couldn’t see me, though. Or at least I thought he couldn’t for all the hair in his eyes.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “You never been here? It’s the pound. Don’t know why they call it that. They don’t pound us on the head or nothin’.”

  “Do we have to stay here?” I was shaking all over from fear but trying not to show it.

  The sheepdog just looked at me, or didn’t look at me. Well, you know what I mean. “Depends,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re young, you’ll go quick.”

  “Go? Where?”

  “Give you a tip,” he said, “then I’m going to sack out for a while.”

  I cocked my ears and waited. This guy had been around a lot longer than I had. He knew things.

  “When the people come, don’t get all wild, that
’s all. Don’t do what the rest of these jerks do. Don’t holler and beg and all that. Behave yourself. Be patient. Look smart.”

  He had to know how smart I was. I’m a Border collie, after all. He was only a sheepdog, and probably a lazy one by the looks of him. But I appreciated his advice and told him so.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said.

  “Do you know about the sheep?” I asked him. “Where they keep all the sheep?”

  “Sheep? What’s that?”

  A sheepdog that didn’t know sheep? I couldn’t believe it.

  “Well,” I began, trying my best to explain, “they’re fat and real slow and they’re covered with this wool …”

  I could see he didn’t get it. “No sheep here,” he said. “Dogs is all.”

  “But out there,” I persisted. “Out there in the fields. Did you ever see a flock of sheep and Bob on his horse and—”

  “Don’t know no Bob,” he said.

  My mind had always known how far we were from Bob, but my heart never wanted to get it.

  “Time for a snooze,” the sheepdog said. He padded to the back of his cage and thumped himself down like a big furry rug.

  I tried making friends with the mixed breed on the other side, but she only wanted to complain about “the accommodations,” whatever that was.

  After a while, all the dogs but me settled down. They slept or hunted for fleas, biting their sore backsides.

  I was bored. That’s the thing about Border collies. We’ve got to have something to do, something to keep our minds busy. And there was nothing in that cage. Nothing to chew on, nothing to nose around or chase, not even a bug. I ran in circles for a while, my nails clicking on the concrete floor. I had to get out of that cage. Somehow. I knew I’d go crazy if I had to stay in there long.

  Well, I ran myself ragged. Then I plopped down and fell into an exhausted sleep, the floor cold and hard beneath me.

  In no time, or some time, I don’t know which, the place was a madhouse again, dogs barking, yipping, whining, throwing themselves against their doors.

  One by one, metal bowls scraped across the floor into our cages. It was that paper-bag food again, like the stuff at the pet store, but you can bet on an empty stomach it tasted like real food.

  That night in my dreams I ran with the sheep for the very first time. It was like a gift, that dream. I could smell the grass again, bump my nose against the woolly side of a fat sheep, hear Bob call from across that moving gray sea. I was quick as an eye blink when he called, darted this way and that way, dodged and feinted. My paws felt sure and strong beneath me.

  “Good job, son,” I heard Dad say.

  I awoke with his voice still in my head. Good job, son. I knew that’s what my dad would have said to me in time. I saw the pride in his eyes as he watched me try my best to herd those sheep. He was waiting for me to learn, to grow into my craft. He thought there was time.

  The next day, and all the days after, whenever the people came, I was on my best behavior. While the other dogs carried on, I did what the sheepdog said. I sat with my head erect, my tail wagging an invitation.

  Some people had come to find the dogs they’d lost. What happiness when they were reunited! Kisses, slobber. It made my heart hurt. But I didn’t let it show. I waited patiently for somebody to notice me. Sometimes they did.

  “Let’s get that one!” a boy or girl would say, stopping at my cage. The kids liked me. But the moms or dads didn’t for some reason. They’d say I wasn’t a house dog (they were right about that!). They’d worry about having to walk me every day. One mom looked at me as if she was about to change her mind. Then she said, “There’s something wrong with him. I don’t know … He’s too perfect.”

  Days passed, and I was getting desperate. I had to get out of that cage, I had to find the sheep. I’d plead with my eyes, my tail. I’d even started to whine a little. One day, when I thought everybody had gone, I began complaining to the sheepdog. “Nobody ever picks me. I’ll never get out of here!”

  “You’re trying too hard,” the sheepdog said. “Relax!”

  That was when I noticed the man hanging back by the wall, leaning against it, picking his yellow teeth with a little stick, looking at me from under bushy black eyebrows.

  My tail stopped wagging, and a feeling like cold metal came into my heart.

  “This one,” the man said after a while, pointing straight at me.

  The door opened, and a lady leaned in. She was the one who fed us and had cut the rope from my neck, so I trusted her. “Come on,” she said. “Come on out now.”

  Out was what I wanted. It was a stronger feeling than fear, that need to be free of the cage.

  “We’ll put this on him,” the man said. He leaned over me, and before I knew what was happening, I was wearing my first collar. It was awful, a wide leather thing that weighed my neck down. But the worst part was the muzzle, a cage for my mouth. I tried to shake it off, but it was on to stay.

  “He’s pretty well behaved,” the woman said. I don’t think she liked the looks of that muzzle either. “These dogs are smart as a rule.”

  “I know their kind. Too smart for their own good.” The man’s laugh wasn’t like any I’d heard before or since. It had a crack in it, like it was broken, and he always coughed up something afterward and spit it on the ground. “He’ll be some trouble all right, but he’ll learn.”

  “He’ll need a place to run,” the woman said. “Your Border collie can cause some trouble if he’s not kept busy.”

  The man laughed that wicked laugh again. “Oh, he’ll be busy all right.”

  Busy. That sounded good to me. He had a beard like the Goat Man’s and a belly like the Goat Man’s, and I figured, well, maybe he had some goats like the Goat Man. I went without a fight.

  Not that I had a choice. Once we were outside and the door had closed behind us, a chain got attached to my leather collar. “Heel!” the man said.

  Heel? What did that mean? I pulled away, dancing back and forth, trying to shake that chain, shake off that awful muzzle.

  The first time he hit me with the chain, I was too shocked to feel it. I froze. Something was wrong. I was supposed to understand something, how to do something, how to “heel,” but I didn’t. I didn’t understand. I hung back. Down came that chain again. I yelped. My back stung like it was on fire.

  “I said heel!” he thundered. Grabbing hold of the collar, he yanked me alongside, next to his legs. The collar choked me half to death. I stumbled along. By the time he let me go, I’d gotten the idea.

  I was on my way to Billy’s Big and Happy Circus. Don’t let the name fool you.

  8

  BILLY’S BIG AND HAPPY CIRCUS looked cheery enough on the outside. But there was only the one tent, so it wasn’t very big, and it sure wasn’t happy. Billy led me at his heel in one flapping door and out the other. I saw stacked-up chairs, swings hanging down over a big, wide fishnet. We walked through a mud puddle to an old gray barn. Billy opened a side door, and I followed him in. It was so dark in there I couldn’t see anything at first, not even with my great night vision, but the stench was awful, so awful I can hardly describe it. And fear. The smell of fear hung in the air. I shivered all over.

  Billy struck a match, and up loomed the cages, the sad and angry eyes, the animals, big and small. They were quiet, which is almost worse than the noise they could make when they wanted to. They stood in the gloomy light of the match like the stuff of nightmares. Then the match went out and I heard a cage door open. Billy gave me a push, and I was jailed once again.

  My eyes were used to the dark by then. My cage—all the dogs’ cages—was more like a chicken coop than like the sturdy one at the pound. But it was strong enough. You couldn’t chew your way out, that’s for sure.

  There were yips of welcome from a couple of terriers in the next cage. I touched noses with them through the wire. They wanted to know all about me, where I’d come from, how I’d gotten caught. Mostly they wanted
to know about life on the outside. The terrier brothers —you couldn’t tell them apart until you got to know them—had been with Billy all their lives.

  “He’s not so bad if you don’t cross him,” said the one Billy called You.

  “Just do what he says and you’ll be all right,” said You Too. He turned to his brother. “Tell him what happened to the other one.”

  “Sparky? No way, you tell him.”

  “The whole thing stinks,” said You, “and that’s the truth.”

  They argued back and forth about who would tell me what happened to Sparky, whoever he was. Always arguing, those terriers.

  “Will you two please, please be quiet. I am so tired of your bickering!”

  That’s when I got my first look at Tiffany.

  Love is a funny thing, you know. Not that it’s a thing, and not that it’s only one kind of thing. There are many kinds of love. But I was young and just beginning to understand how many. Mom and Dad love, Goat Man love, Bob and Ellen love—they were all different. But Tiffany? Well, this was something I’d never felt before. One look at her long, elegant nose, her soft, brown eyes and I felt warm all over, kind of shivery and silly. Only later did I begin to get the whole picture. It wouldn’t have mattered what Tiffany looked like. Love has little to do with the outsides of things.

  Tiffany was in a cage across from mine. The space between didn’t allow for us to touch noses, which was just as well. I’d have made a real fool of myself, I know I would.

  She welcomed me with a wag of her slim, pointed tail. She was so tall that the top of her head touched the ceiling of her cage. She asked where I’d come from.

  Well, I should have said the pound and let it go at that, but her eyes invited all kinds of things from me, so I found myself telling her my whole life story.

  “You’re a working dog,” she said. She admired that, you could tell.

  “I’ve got to find the sheep,” I explained. “Old Dex is getting ready to retire, and Dad’s going to need me.”

  Her eyes said something I didn’t understand then. It was as if she could see things I couldn’t, knew things I didn’t.