A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray

by Ann M. Martin

  For the time being, I didn’t have to worry about this, though, or about Mine. Mother fed me, Mother protected me, and I watched the world of the shed from our wheelbarrow island.

  One day, when the shape of the moon had changed several times, and Bone and I were even bigger and stronger and steadier on our feet — a day when the air blew warm through the window of the shed and brought sweet fragrances to my nose, making it twitch — Mother nudged Bone and me over the edge of the wheelbarrow. She nudged Bone first because he was a boy, and then she nudged me. Bone landed on a stack of burlap sacks, and I landed on top of him. I looked up at Mother, at our little island, and I let out a whimper. But not Bone. Bone scampered to the floor. He spotted one of the cats and tried to pounce on her. The cat hissed, arched her back, and ran behind a stiff coil of hose. Bone wobbled after her, but stopped to sniff at a mousy-smelling flowerpot and forgot about the cat. Then, tail held high, he began to investigate the shed. I followed him. Mother followed us.

  Soon Mother allowed Bone and me to investigate outside the shed, too, as long as we stayed out of view of the Merrions’ house. The door to the shed faced across their yard. To one side was the back of their house; to the other were fields and woods. Bone and I were taught always to turn away from the house and hurry around the corner of the shed.

  Behind the shed was much more interesting than in the shed. Behind the shed was Outdoors. Outdoors with birds and bugs and mice and moles. Outdoors with flowers and shrubs and bushes and trees. The more we investigated, the braver I felt, but only when Bone was in front of me. With Bone in front, his tail high, my own tail was held high. With Bone out of sight, I was lost.

  Once Mother had tossed Bone and me off of our island, our nest became the burlap bags on the floor below. Bone and I weren’t big enough to scramble back up into the wheelbarrow. I think this worried Mother; she felt that the bed on the floor wasn’t protected enough. Bone and I didn’t care, though. We liked our freedom.

  One morning, the air heavy and smelling of rain, Bone and I tumbled through the doorway, turned the corner, and began a game of chase behind the shed. We jumped, we yipped, we startled each other. We pounced, we ran, we practiced growling. Bone had wrestled me to the ground when Mother appeared. She came toward us at a trot and lifted Bone off of me by the scruff of his neck, then dragged him back to the shed. I followed.

  Something was wrong.

  Inside, Mother settled herself on our bed, but Bone and I were curious and peeped through the crack in the shed door. I could hear the voices of humans. Bone poked his nose all the way out the door then, and I ducked under him so I could see, too.

  The Merrions’ car was parked at the end of their lane. All the doors were open, and the Merrions were pulling out boxes and cases and carrying them into the house.

  “We’re here! We’re here!” cried the girl in her very loud voice.

  “For the whole summer,” said one of the boys.

  This was the first time that I could remember the Merrions coming back to their home when it wasn’t nighttime. In fact, the morning was barely over.

  For a while, Bone and I watched the Merrions as they marched in and out of the house with their boxes and cases, but eventually we grew bored. We were stuck in the shed, though. Mother wouldn’t let us leave it, not until all the Merrions were out of sight. Then she nosed us around the corner as fast as she could.

  When I awoke the next morning, I found that the Merrions were still at their house. They were there the next day and the day after that and the day after that and for all the rest of the days I lived on their property. The games Bone and I played became quieter, no more yipping and woofing. But we weren’t bored. Mother was busy teaching us things in the woods. She showed us how to hunt for small animals. She showed us how to mark our territory. She showed us how to fight and how to defend ourselves. And then one morning Mother left Bone and me playing beside a stone wall near our shed. She trotted off, looking as if she had a specific destination in mind. When she returned, she was carrying something wonderful smelling, but she wouldn’t share it with us. With the something still in her mouth, she turned and walked away, peering at us over her shoulder from time to time, keeping close to a row of bushes.

  Bone knew what Mother wanted, and he followed her. So I followed Bone, as usual. The farther I walked, the more my nose twitched. I could smell whatever Mother was carrying, and lots more.

  Mother led us to garbage, to a lovely pile of things I had no names for at the time, but that I now know were old chicken and stale bread and bits of scrambled egg and several olives and some congealed spaghetti and a puddle of sour milk.

  Bone and I pounced. This was how a dog could hunt even when there were no animals to hunt for. This was heaven.

  That night, our stomachs full of scraps, Bone and I lay curled up in the shed with Mother. It was a rainy night and the wind blew and thunder growled and every now and again bright light would flash through cracks in the ceiling. I nuzzled against Mother and was beginning to doze when I heard a noise outside, a noise that wasn’t part of the storm.

  Yip, yip, yip!

  It sounded faint and far away.

  Mother and Bone were fast asleep, but I wanted to know what was outside. I crept off of the burlap sacks and across the shed to the open door. I peered into darkness. I can see well in the dark, but with the storm I could make out little until the next flash of lightning turned the yard to noontime, and there was Mine. I glimpsed her only for a second. She was standing, dripping, at the Merrions’ back door. What was she doing? Hoping to find food? Surely she knew where the garbage heap was.

  I waited for the next flash of lightning, and when it came Mine had vanished. I watched our yard until the storm moved away and there was only the dark and the rain. Then I returned to our bed and the heartbeats of Mother and Bone.

  Mother had known Mine meant trouble, and now I knew it, too. It was as if Mine were an alien creature in our world, and didn’t know our ways. But over the next few days, I almost forgot about her. I didn’t see her or her kits. The rain had ended and the Merrion children spent a lot of time playing in their yard. Because the children were outside, Bone and I needed to be more cautious than ever. We were also entertained. If we couldn’t play, at least we could watch the Merrion children play.

  And we did. The older boy and the little girl shrieked. They ran. They climbed onto large wheeled toys, which I later learned were called bicycles, and rode them up and down their lane. The younger boy was quieter. He didn’t come outside as often as his brother and sister, and when he did, he mostly sat under a tree.

  Sometimes Mrs. Merrion stood on one of the porches and called to her children: “Put your shoes back on! I don’t want you outside barefoot!” “Don’t go in the flower beds. The gardeners were just here!” “Matthias, please, take your nose out of that book and get some exercise. It’s too nice to sit around and read all day!”

  Bone and I were fascinated, even if we missed playing our own games.

  And then one evening I saw Mine again. She trotted through the Merrions’ yard at sunset, just as the girl ran outside calling, “I want to catch fireflies before I go to bed, okay?” She held a glass jar in her hand.

  I’m not sure whom she was talking to. Mother and Bone and I were in the shed, and I was peeking out the door, but I didn’t have a view of the entire yard. I heard the scream, though. All the animals on the property heard it. The girl had said she wanted to catch fireflies, and then someone let out a scream as loud as a screech owl or a raccoon, and then Mrs. Merrion shouted, “It’s a fox! A fox is in our yard! Come inside!”

  Mine bolted. I saw her tear across the yard and disappear into the woods.

  It was the next night, at about the same time, when Mother and Bone and I heard human voices outside the door to our shed. I hadn’t been around the humans often enough then to be able to recognize who was speaking, but I thought I heard Mrs. Merrion. And I heard the voice of another grown male who mi
ght have been one of the gardeners. I didn’t have time to puzzle over this, though. Mother grabbed me and dragged me through the shed toward the nesting boxes, Bone at our heels. From inside the boxes came low growls of warning, but Mother ignored them. She nosed Bone and me into the darkest corner of the shed and stood in front of us facing the door.

  My heart thumped so hard I could feel it beating in my throat. I sat trembling behind Mother, waiting for the shed door to bang open, but I heard only the sound of voices.

  “That fox is a menace. My wife thinks it’s rabid.”

  “Well, I —”

  “Are you sure you know how to handle that thing?”

  “I never miss my mark.”

  “I know where the fox’s den is.”

  “There’s not going to be enough light to take care of this tonight.”

  The voices faded away. My heart stopped pounding.

  The next afternoon I was following Bone to the garbage heap when I heard an explosion. It was so loud that it echoed through the hills and startled the birds, who fell silent.

  Bone and I looked at each other in all that quiet, then turned to run back to the shed, but we skidded to a halt when we saw one of the gardeners. He was trotting across the yard toward the farthest flower bed, and he was carrying a rifle. I let my eyes travel ahead of him to the garden.

  There was Mine. She lay in a heap under a peony plant. She was very still.

  Mother found Bone and me then and herded us toward the shed, staying well away from the men. As soon as the gardener bent over to look at Mine, Mother ran us around the corner and pushed us through the door, and we retreated to the dark corner again.

  The rest of the day was quiet. We didn’t leave the shed. And we didn’t see or hear the Merrion children. But all afternoon Mine’s kits yipped softly in their den.

  Early the next morning Mother left the shed and trotted off in the direction of the garbage heap.

  She never came back.

  Bone and I waited a very long time for Mother. That first morning, when we didn’t know that she wasn’t coming back, we entertained ourselves as we usually did. We hunted in the woods. We played by the stone wall. We visited the garbage heap and found bits of smoked turkey, a melon rind, coffee grounds (which we tasted but didn’t like), and half a piece of cake with white frosting. We ate until our stomachs were quite fat.

  The day was very hot. It was so hot that the Merrion children, who had been spraying one another with the garden hose in the morning, went indoors for their lunch and didn’t come back outside. By the time the sun had reached its highest point and had started to pass over the Merrions’ backyard, the shed, even with its open window and door, had grown too stuffy for any creatures except the mice. Bone and I lay in the shade of the woods and waited for Mother.

  At the end of the day, when the shadows were long and the heat had faded a bit, Bone and I returned to the shed. I expected to find Mother in our nest. Sometimes now Mother left us for long periods of time, but she always came back by evening. Our nest was empty, though. And the shed was still stuffy. One of the cats poked his head through the door, sniffed at the dusty, dense air, turned and left. Bone and I remained. I was hungry and I suspect Bone was, too, but we wanted Mother.

  The air cooled, darkness fell, the stars came out and so did the bats, and still Mother did not appear. Bone and I curled into each other in our nest, our stomachs rumbling. I thought of the garbage heap, of the turkey and melon rind and cake, but Bone and I hadn’t been outside in the nighttime by ourselves yet. Besides, surely Mother was on her way back to us.

  All that night Bone and I slept on the burlap sack, slept with our legs and tails entwined. I could feel Bone’s breath on my neck. It was our first night without Mother, and it seemed very long.

  In the morning when I awoke I saw Bone, three of the shed cats, and a mouse poking its head out of a flowerpot, but no Mother, I knew that she was not going to come back at all.

  Bone and I were on our own. We were responsible for finding all of our food and water, and for remembering the many, many things Mother had taught us — how to stay out of trouble, when to snap and bite at an animal, to steer clear of humans and other dogs, to clean our wounds, to groom ourselves. We tried hard and we managed fairly well. The garbage heap became our best friend.

  I do not understand emotions very well. I know what fear feels like, and I have been afraid many times. But I am less clear about words such as joy, happiness, sadness, and anger. Over the years I have heard humans, especially Susan, talk about these things, though, and I see how Susan appears when she says she is happy. Looking back, I think I was happy during the rest of that summer when Bone and I lived in the shed; that I was happy even though Mother was gone.

  The truth was that with Mine gone as well, the Merrions’ property was a much more peaceful place and our world seemed less threatening. Mine’s kits had left, too — the morning after their mother was killed they tumbled out of their den, trotted into the woods, and just kept going. So the Merrions’ yard was free of foxes, and I was not to see the man with the gun for quite a while. Bone and I began to feel safe.

  The air cooled down after that one blistering day, and sometimes I saw the Merrion children wearing the kind of clothes they had worn in the spring. Cooler air meant that the shed was more comfortable. And just enough rain fell — enough to fill the buckets and watering cans that Bone and I drank from, but not so much that we couldn’t go hunting. We were not very experienced hunters yet, my brother and I, but we caught enough small animals here and there so that our stomachs were usually full. If we had a bad day, we could always raid the garbage heap.

  Our lives were quiet. Bone and I played and hunted. We chased squirrels and chipmunks and each other. I finally made friends with some of the shed cats. One of them, Yellow Man, would wait for me in front of the nesting boxes each morning and rub his head under my chin before he left to spend the day in the woods. I even came to recognize the shed mice, every single one of them. I never thought of them as meals. They were my neighbors.

  It was a warm afternoon with the smell of cut grass in the air and bees humming in the bushes when Matthias discovered Bone and me. He took us by surprise. We had eaten breakfast at the garbage heap and were napping in the woods, our bellies full, when I heard the sound of crunching leaves and a hushed human voice. Bone and I jerked to attention. Here came Matthias, the boy who liked to sit under trees, the boy Mrs. Merrion would tell to take his nose out of that book. He was carrying a book now, and talking to himself, and his face looked like Susan’s does after Mrs. Oliver has told her she’s too old to be living on her own.

  Bone and I drew back and held very still, afraid to run and draw attention to ourselves.

  Matthias almost stepped on us.

  “Hey!” he cried. “What — Hey, I found puppies!”

  Bone and I did scramble away then. We ran straight for the shed and zipped through the door.

  Matthias ran after us and followed us to our nest.

  “Hey, puppies. Hey, puppies,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.” He held his hand toward us.

  Bone growled at it.

  “I know. You don’t trust me,” said Matthias. “I don’t blame you. You don’t know me.” He paused. “Not yet anyway.”

  Bone and I left our nest then and backed into a corner.

  Matthias stood up but he didn’t approach us. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  As soon as Matthias left the shed, Bone and I scooted out the door and ran for the woods.

  We hid in the woods, afraid to move about, but by the end of the day we felt brave enough to make our way to the garbage heap. When we did, I saw Matthias walking around the Merrions’ yard. He was holding something in his hand, and he was peering under bushes and around trees and in the sheds and playhouse. He didn’t call out, though, as Mr. and Mrs. Merrion had done one day when they couldn’t find the noisy little girl. I realize now that Matthias didn’t want his mother to kn
ow he had found puppies on the property. She wouldn’t stand for that. We were Matthias’s secret.

  We didn’t want to be Matthias’s secret, though. Mother had taught Bone and me to fear humans, so we tried to stay alert and keep out of Matthias’s way. But one morning the rains came again, and after Bone and I had found breakfast and relieved ourselves, we returned to the shed. We were settling in for a cozy day with Yellow Man, the rain drumming on the roof, when the door was flung open and in walked Matthias.

  “There you are,” he said softly when he saw Bone and me.

  Matthias always spoke softly, not like his sister. He crouched down and held out his hand.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Yellow Man and the other cats had retreated to the farthest recesses of the nesting boxes. I was about to run for the corner when a scent, a wonderful, beautiful scent, reached my nose.

  Chicken.

  Matthias was offering us pieces of chicken.

  Bone and I couldn’t bring ourselves to approach Matthias, but we didn’t turn and run, either.

  Matthias stretched his hand out as far as it would reach.

  Bone and I darted forward to snatch the chicken, and then we did retreat to the corner.

  Matthias grinned. “That’s all for today,” he said. And he left.

  But he returned with more chicken the next morning and the next morning and many mornings after that. By the third morning, Bone and I didn’t feel that we needed to hide in the corner in order to eat our prizes. Matthias did nothing while we ate but sit and wait and watch. If Susan had been there then, she would have said that Matthias was patient.