Zeus, Dog of Chaos

by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

  “I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Ashvi says, though her words sound thin. “The company—they’ll replace it all or something, I bet. Don’t you think?”

  Madden warms and shifts in his chair. The cushion flllrrrrppps, a sound like passing gas. Ashvi’s eyes widen on-screen, and her lips purse.

  Madden stammers, “Uh, that was my chair? I promise!”

  Ashvi pops open with laughter. “I thought you’d blame it on Zeus. The chair, huh?”

  Madden laughs. “Definitely the chair. But, hey, I’m not above blaming a fart on my dog.”

  The two laugh and begin playing, and they somehow make music even though Ashvi is only hollowly here. It’s bouncy, peppy music, a pop of a dozen red ladybugs on a tree, and it fills Madden’s room. I’m beginning to suspect that music is bigger than I once thought. My destroying the fund-raising meats doesn’t seem to have deterred it.

  They twiddle and twee through the first part of their duet, and Ashvi’s flute spits out an extra flerrrrr at the end. Her giggle hops like a cricket through the phone. Together, she and Madden both say, “That’s a solo.”

  Madden burns so red I could cook a hot dog next to him. “Mrs. S’s jokes are contagious, I guess.”

  Ashvi nods, and the knot of hair on top of her head bounces like a ball and I love her. “It killed me when she told Eli, ‘Son, I knew you were treble.’”

  Madden grins. “I like how she points to every single rest on our sheet music and shouts—”

  “You’re under a rest!” Ashvi and Madden yell together. They laugh like their instruments, and Madden cools a bit. “Want to try again?”

  Ashvi lifts her flute. “Let’s do it. This duet is going to get us noticed. I just know it.”

  They play.

  They’re good.

  They spin fresh air and green grass and blue sky and yellow sun and pink flowers and leaping and zooming and dashing and chasing squirrels, all out of their instruments. They’re very good. They will get noticed.

  One might even label them outstanding.

  This won’t do at all.

  ★ 23 ★

  Don’t B-Flat

  Madden tries on a number of black shirts with black pants, tucking in the shirt, leaving it untucked. He twists and turns in front of the glassy mirror picture of himself. Madden adjusts his clothes over and over again.

  “All black,” he says. “If you’re wearing it, it’s black. That’s what Mrs. S said.”

  I look at the dog in the glass. That dog is wearing a bright red vest and blue collar. That dog isn’t wearing all black. You got it all wrong, Glass Zeus. I stick out my tongue. He sticks out his tongue, too.

  “Ugh, it always shows,” he mutters, yanking at the hem of his shirt. He smooths his hands over his stomach, and the boxy outline of his insulin pump is there.

  “Madden, let’s go!” the lieutenant’s voice booms and winds up the stairs.

  Madden grabs his big black tuba case, and we bolt, as Madden says.

  The holiday concert is in the school auditorium. When I escort Madden inside, Mrs. Shadrick is there waiting on us. She smiles.

  “I got a present for Zeus,” she says, squatting to look me in the eyes. Her joints pop faintly as she does.

  A present? I wag. Present = treat. Everyone knows that formula. I drool.

  “Really?” Madden says. He looks over his shoulder to see how close the lieutenant is standing. She’s chatting with another mother several paces away. He lowers his voice. “He hasn’t exactly been an ideal classmate.”

  Mrs. S takes out a tiny black slip of material and fastens it around my neck, over my collar. Her hands are gentle and quick. It’s not a treat. I try to hide my disappointment.

  “He’s not a classmate. He’s a dog. He was just doing dog things. I should’ve known better than to leave boxes of food on the floor with a dog around!”

  Mrs. S straightens the material around my neck. “There!”

  Ashvi pops up over Madden’s shoulder like a chirrupy grasshopper. “A bow tie! So cute!” She smiles lightning bolts. I smile and sit taller, chin lifted. Okay, maybe this present isn’t so bad if I get Ashvi-smiles.

  Ashvi nudges Madden’s shoulder with her own, and Madden smells suddenly joyous, like the whoosh of a new can of tennis balls popping open. “You nervous?” she asks.

  “Not really,” Madden says, which is the opposite of the sweat I smell on his palms, the squeak of his gritting teeth. Maddening. “You?”

  “Gosh, yes!” Ashvi is telling the truth. Her heart races like a rabbit, and her toes drum inside her black combat boots.

  “You two will be great,” Mrs. S says. “Just don’t B-flat. Get it? B-flat? A little band humor there, kids.”

  Ashvi and Madden grin and slide their eyes at each other.

  “Go find your places, okay?”

  I guide Madden to his chair, the one on the end of the row on the far right side of the stage. Jake is already in his seat, and he glares at us.

  “Hey, Jake,” Madden gargles in a whisper. His throat is filled with sand.

  “You’re only in that first chair because of your dumb dog,” Jake whispers back, teeth gritted, barely moving his lips. “Not because of your talent. You’re going to mess up that duet so hard.”

  Madden’s heart drumrolls, and his sweetness plunges. His scent is suddenly sour yogurt. He is not in the dangerous zone, but he could be, quickly. I perk my nostrils.

  The auditorium is chaos. I think of those dizzying balloons, lifting and spinning. So disorderly! So unpredictable!

  This chaos puts me on high alert. Kids pinging and spinning off one another, cases clanging, locks clicking, instruments flashing. Nervous whispers and giggles, all crisscrossing like silvery spiderwebs. And under that, Madden’s heart, his sweat, his sugar. I have to really focus to find it.

  Eventually, everyone is in their seats, like coals cooling.

  Except it’s not cool at all. Up here on the stage, the lights are so bright, all I can see is hot white beams and the darkness behind them. The light pings off the brassy instruments in tiny starbursts and my eyes water. The auditorium smells of stage fright and expectancy and nervous, proud parents. All of these distractions make it harder to do my job. I strain to find Madden’s scent.

  Mrs. S taps on the podium with her chewed-up stick (stick!), and the room silences. Wow, her power!

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Page Middle School holiday band concert!”

  The audience wags tails of applause.

  “We’ve worked really hard on the selection of music you’ll hear today. I think you’ll love what we’ve put together. But I did want to let you know: if you ordered something through our fall fund-raiser, you’ll need to please see me after the show for a full refund of your purchase. We had a little . . . incident with our fund-raising. And because of it, Page Middle won’t be able to attend the state band competition this year.”

  What?

  I did it!

  I stopped the music!

  The audience groans and whispers and shuffles in their seats. Sixty-some-odd band members rumble. The smell up here onstage shifts from nerves to nastiness, as though the wind were suddenly blowing campfire smoke directly into my eyes. It burns, all these gazes narrowed at me.

  Next to Madden, Jake stiffens. His eyes are knives.

  I can even feel Jesus—kind, funny Jesus, Hey, Zeus!—clench his teeth in my direction.

  But worst of all: Ashvi won’t even look over at us.

  The most difficult missions don’t earn you any friends, I’m learning. And it’s been hard destroying music, but I’ve done it! Their season will end short because of me. Perhaps we will all just go home now.

  But Mrs. S taps her stick on her podium again, and the shuffling and whispers from the audience and band settle like dust. “It’s disappointing, I know. Especially for our eighth graders. But it doesn’t change how hard they’ve worked, or how much they’ve grown musically. It doesn’t change how
much heart and joy these kids pour into their music. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.”

  At that, the lights shimmer and shift, darkening slightly. A drumroll rumbles from the opposite corner of the stage, growing slowly louder, as blurry and lovely as hummingbird wings. A cymbal crashes. My eyes grow instantly misty. My throat swells.

  The kids roll almost flawlessly through the music they stumbled and tripped over in class: “Jingle Bells” and “Sleigh Ride” and “Feliz Navidad.” I sit next to Madden, rather than lie, because it feels right, more distinguished, and chills race under my fur as the songs swell and swirl around me.

  The xylophone tiptoes across the stage. The saxophone sneaks. The triangle hops like a frog. The drums jumble and roll, like the rhythm of tags jangling on a run. Notes float in the air, sliding over and through those beams of light, like bumblebees fat and lazy, buzzing from flower to flower.

  Jesus stands and plays his trumpet solo. It is brassy yellow owl eyes swirling through midnight skies. The band slowly weaves the rest of the sound around his, lifting his music ever higher.

  I hear it, I taste it: the joy and smiles and wonder of these musicians. The music is so powerful, I feel stinging in my nose, my eyes. I want to sneeze sneeze sneeze with joy like I do while chasing those confounded ducks, but I remember Mrs. S saying absolutely no sneezing. As much as I want to destroy music, I love Mrs. S and I will obey her commands.

  Then Madden and Ashvi stand. Madden’s heart rolls, but his scent is earthy and solid. He is confident. His tuba cartwheels and spins around Ashvi’s flittering flute. Their instruments play together like puppies, one big and goofy with oversized paws, one small and yippy with sharp teeth and a quick pink smile.

  Madden’s tuba rumbles my core. A tingle starts in my paw pads and climbs up over my belly. Chills make my fur stand on end. I can’t explain it; I can’t label it. The rush of the music rolls over me and wraps me up so tightly that this stinging has to go somewhere, and I find it grumbling across my vocal cords. I made myself visible when I chased those silly bubbles; I cannot do that again! The music wants to escape me like a puppy jolting through a swung-open gate.

  I cannot let that happen! I MUST remain invisible.

  I whimper.

  I whine.

  I shift on my tailbone.

  I shake. My tags jangle. This won’t do!

  Madden’s gaze slides down toward me. He glares, his eyes sharp as a high C note. His frown pushes through his tuba and barks at me, putting me in my place.

  Maybe if I just . . . leave . . . then I won’t be tempted by all this confusing emotion.

  I can slink offstage. Hide in the dark, cool back area. I can camouflage myself by crouching low, tucking my tail, hunching my back. All dogs have this superpower, after all. I turn to sneak into the backstage shadows. One step, two steps, three . . .

  Then my collar yanks my neck—hork! I pull. Tug.

  My leash is tangled around something. I put my whole body into it, and I heave!

  Behind me, Madden’s music stand topples with a CRASH!

  And his music stand topples into Jake’s, which topples into Gracelyn’s, which topples into Kate’s. The four metal stands clattercrash boom bang clank! Sheet music flutters up and around the tuba section like an explosion of feathers.

  I run to the dark, cool backstage, dragging Madden’s music stand behind me: CLANG CLANK CRASH! I duck behind the thick velvet curtain, peer out at the bright stage with a shiver.

  The percussion section sees the issue and tries to cover my mistake. They boom the bass drum out of turn, run a mallet across the chimes, and crash the cymbals, as if it were all a part of the song. I once heard Mrs. S call this type of music improv. It’s a fancy human word for make it up as you go. But it also sounds like improve, and it improves this piece. It’s jazz! Many of these musicians are in the jazz band, so they apparently know how to play like this, like it’s a spontaneous conversation between instruments.

  It is chaos. Jazz is chaos—patterns woven inside the chaotic.

  And? Madden glances down the row at his fellow tuba players, nods at them: keep going. He is their leader, their first chair, and they listen. They shuffle in their seats, kick the music stands gently aside, and keep making music.

  It’s not what this song is supposed to sound like. The song is supposed to sound like kittens tiptoeing and tumbling on tiny pink toe-bean feet. It now sounds like a herd of cattle escaping an avalanche. Powerful and earthy.

  And the kids? They never stop playing. The drummer and xylophone player now pick up the tempo, and they trot their sound in next to the original song, adding a new layer of sound where one wasn’t before. Jesus throws in an extra-powerful punch of a note, then two, then a whole little shimmy-shake with his trumpet. They make my mistake a part of their music. I didn’t know music could do that: spin noise into something so lovely.

  Can chaos be lovely? Surely not!

  The song winds down, and the air stops its brassy shimmering.

  Quiet.

  The whole auditorium, every musician, every audience member, looks at me, hiding between the folds of the theater curtain. The lights get sweatier. I feel dizzy. My left ear twitches.

  The room explodes with applause. Laughter.

  The musicians stand. Bow. The audience stands, too.

  I sneak back onstage, still dragging Madden’s music stand.

  The audience wags like mad, their applause loud and constant. I smell salty tears. I taste smiles. I hear snippets of whispers in the audience: “That sounded like true jazz!” and “Was that planned?” and “Those kids really know how to improvise!”

  We’re all standing and wagging as the music notes melt from the air around us. The whole room smells confusing and overwhelming, like tuna casserole.

  I love tuna casserole.

  ★ 24 ★

  The Expectation of Pop!

  The next day is a no-school day, which usually means Madden and I sleep until the sun is high in the sky and our breath stinks of too much morning. But today, the lieutenant wakes us early and we pile into the car, voices and tummies grumbling.

  We go through this thing labeled a “drive-through,” which is a glorious place where they shove food through the window of your car. We get biscuits and coffee. Well, they get biscuits and coffee, a steamy drink that looks and smells like mud but makes hearts hummier. The lieutenant is strict about me not eating “people food,” which I think is a cruel and limiting way to label 80 percent of tasty edible things. But I lap up biscuit crumbs off the floor.

  Then we get on a highway. The sun is just barely peeking over the hilltops, and the grass melts from frosty white to crystal wet, and the pink sunlight glistens through the dew like tiny drops of wet fire. The tires purr on the road, and Madden’s pulse purrs with them.

  “You didn’t tell me you had a solo in the concert,” the lieutenant says, and just like that, his purrs become growls.

  “A duet, actually,” Madden mumbles.

  “Okay, a duet. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Madden lifts a shoulder, lets it drop. If we were in band, that gesture would sound like a misplaced note. I can practically hear the words inside his head: You wouldn’t listen anyway, because all you do is worry about me. Also, You wouldn’t let me because you’d think it was too strenuous. Also, You didn’t invite Nana and PopPop to come. I don’t know how I can hear him so clearly. How can I hear him and not be able to label him?

  A silence fills the car. I mean, fills it. In science class recently, Madden’s teacher Ms. Yang used another balloon to demonstrate a concept—gas expansion or something like that. She exhaled into the balloon over and over again, and it slowly, gently swelled. (Humans can do amazing things with their breath.) The balloon filled and grew, grew and filled, and its skin became glowy and transparent. She kept blowing into that plastic pouch, and it burst with a POP! She blew up a second balloon then, and the expectation of that pop made my every strand of fur stand on end
.

  The silence now fills the car like that.

  “You were good. You and Ashvi—you were very good.”

  Madden becomes glowy and transparent, too, and his scent lightens sweet and mild, like dewy drops of wet fire. He tugs on his T-shirt (which he always does when he smells embarrassed). His shirt looks like a night sky, a universe swirled with purply blue-pink clusters of stars. Chaos.

  “I’m sorry you don’t get to go to state,” she says. “I bet you and Ashvi would kill it with that much more practice.”

  I know Madden is mad at me for stopping his outstanding music. And here is where he could tell the lieutenant that it’s all because of me that he and Ashvi don’t get to play in the big competition. He inhales, but the words Zeus’s fault never pop out.

  I don’t know why.

  I can’t label this mix of feelings. I’m proud I’m keeping Madden from being outstanding. I am. We are supposed to be invisible, he and I. But him being mad at me is as itchy-uncomfortable as a mosquito bite.

  And? I will miss music. I admit, I will miss that beguiling mystery. Now that we’re not headed to “state,” surely the band will just give up on making music and do other, more practical human things, like cooking meat and throwing balls and opening doors.

  It is chaos. All of it.

  We ride along in silence for a while longer, until the lieutenant takes a sudden left turn.

  “Almost to the prison,” she says. Madden nods.

  The prison?

  DAVE!

  But, oh, the prison?

  That means today?

  Today is the day of my four-week evaluation.

  Today is the day when I find out if I’ve been a Good Boy, and I get to stay with Madden, or if I get re-assigned.

  I ate the sheet music. I ate the stick. I ate the fund-raiser. I ruined the concert.

  There is no way Madden is going to keep me after all that. So even though I’m nailing my mission, the others are going to see this as a failure. I am definitely going to be reassigned.