Zeus, Dog of Chaos

by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

  I chomp.

  It’s fragile, this music bubble, and it bursts before my jaws even close. And—ugh—music tastes terrible! And squeaky, like bathtime.

  But I can’t stop, and now, the students are laughing and cheering me on: “Get ’em, Zeus!” “Catch those bubbles!” My mouth froths, and it’s difficult leaping and snapping with my vest and leash. I want to admit defeat, and just when I’m about to surrender, Madden laughs, and his heart makes a sudden tiny ping! like a xylophone. His laugh sounded that way yesterday, too. Plastic can’t make a sound like that; only warm shiny metal can swell through all the other human noises like a bell.

  This is a hint at his label.

  I turn to him and smile, bubble juice dripping off my jowls. Madden chuckles and smiles back. Smiles at ME, the one he is stuck with! Maybe he is even starting to like me? His glasses are cleaner today, which means I can see his eyes. Almost . . . labeled . . .

  But then the terrible, awful demon bell rings, and students do exactly what they’re commanded to do: they drop everything, pick up their books, and move to the next thing. Strict.

  My paws are slick and sticky from this bubble juice, and in the hallway, I slip on the linoleum floor, but I’m happy because I know one thing for sure: Madden’s label is not plastic.

  As I make my way through the school by Madden’s side, guilt suddenly sizzles through me like a too-sunny sidewalk. What I did back there was the opposite of invisible! My dad’s voice echoes through my skull: Be invisible like your tail, Zeus. Oh, I’ve shamed him. I’ve shamed me! I let my excitement over those silly floating spheres get the best of me. I should’ve known from the bathy taste of them that they were bad news. I am too late to be invisible in the past tense. But I renew my vow: From now on, I will be as invisible as my tail.

  And now I have a blankie! Ahem, I mean, um, yes, a blanket. In band, Mrs. Shadrick put a wool blanket on the floor for me, and I love it so much I can’t wait to shed all over it. Madden burns a bit when she walks over to us and points it out, because this is something else out of the ordinary, something else not invisible. But a blanket! That’s not too obvious, right? It has red and black squares and smells like cinnamon rolls.

  “I think Zeus was trying to get off our cold floor, chewing up all those papers,” she says. “Want to try it out, Zeus?”

  Do I! I hop on the blanket and I spin spin spin left, curl, turn turn turn right, march a bit, finally find the spot, and flop! Ahhh. This blanket is far better than the hard floor, where all the musicians drain their instruments’ spit valves. I smile. My tail thumps.

  Jake scowls as always when he has to step over me to get to his chair, and his mood flushes bitter like dark tea. Madden gulps, and his face shifts into a false grin. He points to Jake’s shirt. It has a picture of a tuba and words on it.

  “‘Don’t Suck’—ha!” Madden says, pointing at the shirt. He’s nervous for some reason. Nervousness smells fruity-sweet and jiggly, like Jell-O. “Good one, Jake.”

  “Wore it for you, Malone.”

  Madden’s jaw tightens so much I fear he might crack a tooth.

  “All right, class,” Mrs. Shadrick says, tapping her stick. (Stick!) “Let’s play warm-up three.” She flips the switch on the tick tick tick machine, the one Madden calls a metronome. “Aaaand one—two—ready—play!”

  Mrs. Shadrick waves her stick about, and I follow it with my eyes. My heart speeds, and I suppress a whimper. When is she going to throw that thing?

  Hummmmmmmnnn hummn hummn!

  The music rises in three long, breathy hums. Mrs. Shadrick shouts, “Bring down your pitch a bit, trombones! You sound high.”

  Hmmmmmmmnnn hmmn hmmn!

  Three more long, powerful hums overtake the room. Mrs. Shadrick twitches her wrist, and she points the stick at the clarinets. “Make sure you know where you’re going, woodwinds.” The notes climb higher, brighter, like a yellow bird against a blue sky.

  “One more!” Mrs. Shadrick shouts with another flick of the stick. She points it at the xylophone player. “Bring us home, Benjamin!” The notes climb higher still. It is a bird that circles overhead without once flapping its broad wings, flying ever further and lighter.

  Tiiiiiinnnggggg tinnnngggg tinggg!

  My heart wraps around these three notes, and I feel warm and tingly and zingy and scared because I don’t understand where all this emotion is coming from. I shake my head to clear it of such nonsense. Emotion makes staying invisible very difficult.

  The memory of my father’s bark echoes again through my head: Tails are invisible, Zeus. You turn, it’s gone. Be your tail.

  Be my tail. Be my tail. Be my tail.

  I’m not doing a very good job at being a tail end.

  The warm-up finishes, and Mrs. Shadrick keeps her stick aloft until the sky-high music fades like a sunset. She lowers her stick at last.

  Her stick!

  It controls all of this! All these firework-filled notes, all these starlight tones. The stick!

  “That’s really good sound,” Mrs. Shadrick says with a smile. “It sounds like one person, doesn’t it?” The earthquake of stomping feet begins, the applause from kids holding instruments.

  “Okay, let’s jump into practicing ‘Sleigh Ride’ for the holiday concert.” While the kids flip pages of sheet music in their notebooks, Mrs. Shadrick says, “Remember, no extraneous noise during a concert. This means no toe tapping. Bob your heels if you need to keep the rhythm.”

  Mrs. Shadrick raises her mighty, all-powerful stick, and the music bounds forth like a herd of deer leaping crisscross over a highway. It’s messy, fussy—stray music notes blart out Gerplat! Splote! Flerp!

  Mrs. S frowns. “Jake,” she shouts over the melody. “Did your instrument practice itself this week?”

  Jake’s mood flushes like a toilet. Madden suppresses a grin behind his mouthpiece, his tuba brighter and peppier than before, but his blood dances wild with his music-making.

  Mrs. S slashes the air like a knife with her powerful stick, and the music limps to the side of the highway and dies like roadkill. “That was . . .” she says, and shakes her head. “That needs work. Practice at home, kids. And when you get sick of practicing, practice some more. And then when you’re done practicing . . . Hey, I know! Practice.”

  She sighs. Places her stick down.

  Places her stick down. Check.

  “Let’s do some individual work instead. Madden?”

  All eyes turn to Madden. His gaze flicks to Ashvi, then to the front of the room. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “G-major scales, please.”

  Madden clears his throat, lifts his tuba, and plays. It’s like watching a bright red cardinal hop to the tip of a snow-coated pine tree, then flit gently back down to its nest. The sugar in his blood dips.

  The stomping feet rumble.

  “Excellent,” Mrs. S says. “Madden, help yourself to the treasure chest.”

  Madden stands, crosses the room. I follow.

  He peers into a plastic chest. It’s filled with dusty bags of pretzels and shiny, colorful bits of candy. He pauses.

  Mrs. Shadrick picks up a flute and shows one of the students where her fingers should rest. She begins playing it, and all the students smile and watch her create tail-chasing-fast flute music. No one is paying attention to me. This is it!

  I streeeeeetch my leash as far as I can.

  It’s not enough.

  I straaaaain my long neck.

  Almost . . . there . . .

  I reeeeeeach my long, pink tongue out, and slurp!

  I got it!

  I got the stick!

  It is chewy and springy between my teeth, but I can’t enjoy some full-on chomping right now. I have to hide it. I duck my head, tuck my tail. I am camouflaged this way. Nice work, son, I can practically hear my proud parents say.

  We cross back to our chairs. Sit.

  Jake glares at me with two laser-pointer eyes. His hand twitches like it’s about to shoot into
the air.

  Madden flips a bag of animal crackers over in his hand. “You want these, Jake? I shouldn’t eat them.”

  Jake’s eyes slide from me, with Mrs. S’s baton tucked between my jaws, and Madden. “Sure.”

  I slip the baton into Madden’s tuba case, tucked beneath some crumpled sheet music. (Stupid sheet music—I haven’t forgotten our battle!)

  Jake pockets the animal crackers. He looks at me again, eyes narrowed.

  I flatten my ears, curl into my blanket. Jake saw me. I know he saw me.

  Why didn’t he rat me out?

  ★ 12 ★

  I Rule at Stick!

  Today the lieutenant picks us up from school in her rumbling, tall truck, and I get to eat sky and suck gnats up my nostrils the whole way home, and it is glorious. Madden brings his huge tuba suitcase, and after the forever longest and most boring part of the day (homework), he flips the two silver latches on the case—click click—and hurls the top open.

  You’d think Madden was opening a box of sunshine, the way he glows when he peers inside. The instrument reflects off the sheen of his glasses, and from my angle on the floor, it looks like his eyes are filled with tubas. He traces his fingers lightly over the brassy surface before lifting each section of the tuba out of the case. He puts a few drops of earthy, pungent oil on the cork that lines the edge of each piece and rubs them in with his finger, then swipes an oily fingerprint across his jeans. He screws the three pieces together to make his instrument. Beef the tuba. Hmmpf.

  Madden doesn’t notice the stick I’ve hidden in his case. He winces as always when his tuba rests against his insulin pump. He flexes his lips. He adjusts his mouthpiece, places it against his mouth, and breathes.

  I watch the ice of Madden’s day melt off him, like steam curling above frosty grass as the pink sun rises. He smiles inside, and his instrument smiles with him. The tuba is a bouncy, peppy instrument, but low-sounding, like crawling, like sneaking, like the grumbling that might come from your belly. Madden closes his eyes, and it’s hard to tell where he ends and his instrument begins.

  I sneak the baton out of his case and jump on the bed. I chew. Ah, heavens, is there anything more perfect than chewing? This stick has just enough bend to make it a springy bite, but not so soft it crumbles and splinters between my jaws. A solid nine-out-of-ten chew texture. Would chew again.

  Madden’s song is bouncing and prancing along until plert! It sounds like a stumble, a missed step on a staircase. Madden blinks, shakes his head. He backs up a bit in the song and tries again: plert! It sounds like the song is cracking in two. His brow furrows. “Ugh. High C. I’ll never get this part right.”

  Now, that feeling, I know.

  The lieutenant ducks her head in. “I just made an appointment with your endocrinologist. I hope your A1C levels are better than last visit.” She lifts her chin at Madden. “How much insulin on board now?”

  If Madden was thawing earlier, he flash-freezes when he has to hold the tuba away from his heart to check his insulin pump. “Two and a half units,” he mutters.

  The lieutenant nods. “Well, don’t eat snacks unless you need to. We’re having leftovers for dinner.”

  Leftovers? There is leftover food? Why not just eat it all? Sounds to me like leftovers are for quitters.

  The lieutenant stands in the doorway. “Anything else?” Madden asks.

  “Can you keep the music down? It’s a little loud.”

  She leaves, and Madden’s shoulders slump. He disassembles his tuba and gently places it back in its case. “Who wants to go outside?”

  Me! I bark. Any question that begins with who wants to is usually me, I’ve noticed. Humans don’t ask that of one another. Me! I do!

  “Shhhh,” Madden says to me. “Let’s not be too loud, right?”

  He walks out the door of his room and down the stairs, and I grab the stick and follow. I’ve enjoyed my chewing, but now it’s time to bury the evidence. Literally. There’s an excellent digging spot next to the back corner of the fence, and this stick is going right into a big hole.

  Madden slides open the glass door and stands faceup in the pale winter sun. His inhale is deep; his exhale is clouds. I can still hear the tuba music his breath makes.

  I tiptoe past him, baton in my jaws.

  “Hey, Zeus! You found a stick. Who wants to play catch?”

  I bark, Me, I do!

  Then I realize: Oh. Wait. No, I don’t. Not with this stick.

  But it’s catch! I can’t help myself. I bark again. I hop. Me! Me! Pick me! I RULE AT STICK!

  Madden picks up the stick, throws it. It flips end over end, my slobber glinting in the soft yellow sun. I dash. I leap. My jaws wrap around the baton, sink deliciously into the wood.

  Catch!

  I bring the stick back, drop it at Madden’s feet. It flips and arcs; I jump and catch. We do this several times. Madden isn’t mad at all! Deep down inside, he must want music destroyed. Yes!

  Music is the kind of foe that casts spells with its beauty, but I’ve almost defeated it.

  I knew it. I knew keeping us invisible was the right choice.

  I drop the stick at his feet again. He picks it up, but this time, he flips it over in his hand.

  “What the—”

  His mood grows stormy. “Is this Mrs. S’s baton? Zeus, no! Bad dog! BAD DOG!”

  I sit, then lie.

  Bad dog?

  Being on the receiving end of a bad dog is worse than being jabbed with a broomstick. It’s worse than a kick to the ribs. It’s worse than doctor needles or gravel roads or long, hot stretches without water.

  We’ve been learning about scales in science, and here’s mine, from best to worst:

  Whoossa good boy?

  Good dog!

  Atta boy.

  No, Zeus!

  Bad dog.

  Bad dog is the absolute worst.

  Bad dog means I’m failing my human. But I’ve been doing such a good job destroying music!

  Suddenly, I get it. I have a choice: fail my mission or fail my human.

  ★ 13 ★

  The Dingy Raft

  My dreams are filled with the terrible noise of the shrieking bells at middle school, intermixed with the tick tick tick of the metronome. Shriek tick tick. Shriek tick tick. My muscles twitch, my paws claw at the air, but I can’t wake up.

  In the dream, I pant and spin. There’s Madden, his toes dangling off the edge of a small, dingy raft in the middle of a vast ocean. His legs splash, but there’s no ripple in this rollicking sea. The raft lifts and lifts and lifts, then thankfully slides down the backside of a wave. But there is another, bigger wave behind him. There is another, bigger wave behind that.

  I jerk awake. Madden’s there, asleep beside me. And the beeping, shrieking sound is coming from one of his black boxes. It sits on his nightstand, glowing and buzzing.

  His blood sugar is way too low. It smells as briny and salty as shallow tide pools on a hot summer day. And the bed—it’s wet. Urine. It’s not unusual for a person with diabetes to urinate while asleep; I learned this in my training. Their bodies are trying to balance things out. But the salty blood? That’s concerning. The smell is off—way off.

  I nudge Madden with my cold nose. Lick his face. Pull the soggy sheets off him, all the way to the end of the bed. The blankets are dotted with tiny drops of blood from the hundreds of times he’s pricked his fingers to test his sugar levels. He shivers, but he doesn’t wake up.

  I’m sorry I chewed the stick, I say. I’m sorry you had to hide it in the garbage. Please don’t be mad at me anymore. Wake up!

  Madden still has the photograph of the hikers tucked under his pillow, so I can’t use that to stir him. If only I could bark! But I can’t. That’s simply not how service dogs do things. Wake up, Madden! He needs sugar, immediately.

  Sugar!

  Madden keeps sugar under his bed in his snack box. I sneak under the low bed (a tight fit, and one of my tall ears gets snagged i
n the maze of metal underneath. Yipe!). I tug tug tug until the box is free.

  I dig out a bag of gummy bears, place it next to Madden’s head. A box of raisins. Some chewy waxy candies. And then juice boxes. One by one, I pile them around his head. I drop one on his face, and he sputters awake at last.

  Madden’s vision is cloudy and muddled, I can tell from his blinking. He groans, jams his fingertips against his temples, and says, “Ugh, my head!” He looks around at his bed: wet, stripped of sheets, piled high with sugar. He doesn’t even check his black boxes; he fumbles with the straw of a juice box and gulps it down.

  His blood almost immediately takes a turn, like watching a raft reach its highest point on a wave, hover there just under the crest for the slightest of moments, then propel forward instead of drowning under the curl of the sea. Whew!

  Madden shivers. Gulps. Blinks several more times. At last, he looks at his black boxes. When did it stop beeping and shrieking? “Fifty-two? Why didn’t this thing wake me up?”

  I pace and pant while I wait for this wild frothy surf to slow. At last, it calms.

  After another few blinky foggy minutes, Madden gets a towel from his bathroom and spreads it out over his mattress. He gets a clean blanket and curls up under it. He pushes all the sugar I piled around him to the floor. I suppose he’s too groggy to wash his soiled sheets now. Having your blood sugar dip and sway like that can really disorient a person.

  The bed is still wet, but I hop up on it, spin a few times, and flop next to Madden. But instead of him curling way off to one side like he usually does, Madden throws a warm arm over my neck and whispers, “Geez, that was scary. Thanks, Z.”

  And then his heart does it again: it makes a happy tiny ting! like the chime of a xylophone.

  Huh.

  His heart makes music even when the rest of his body shrieks.

  The next morning, Madden balls up his sheets and brings them downstairs to the washer. He crams them inside, dumps in powder that smells like fake flowers, and pushes a button. Whoosh! The sound of water rushing into the machine fills the room. The washer starts bucking like a wild horse.

  Madden turns to me, lays a single finger across his lips. “Don’t tell Mom,” he whispers. “She’ll just worry.”