Zeus, Dog of Chaos

by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

  I hang my head, preparing to face Dave.

  This swollen balloon? It’s about to POP.

  ★ 25 ★

  Leaves or Stars?

  My heart yanks me forward into the prison, and my tail is so excited to wag at Dave it pulls me sideways. Calm down! I tell my tail, but it doesn’t listen. It never listens. Tails don’t have ears. You can’t change a tail.

  We don’t go behind the bars this time, into the cells. Instead, we go to a room Dave rarely went when I was his roommate: the guest visiting room.

  The prison smells the same: sweat and food and tiredness. Dave’s scent is there, far away but approaching. I picture his footsteps echoing on the concrete floors as he nears us. Lots of things echo in a prison. Footsteps. Voices. Memories.

  The door swings wide, and THERE HE IS! I LOVE YOU, DAVE! I forget my vest rules, and I whine and I wriggle and I hop on my two back legs and I lick his face with my wide pink tongue, scccch-llluuurrrppp! He tastes the same: wise with a hint of salty sadness. Authentic. Dave laughs but holds his hand out, palm cupped. The sit gesture. My butt drops to the cold, hard floor. He flips his palm over, flat. Lie down. I do.

  Dave scratches me behind my ears, and it feels so good I close my eyes and pant. Dave.

  Dave shakes the lieutenant’s hand, then Madden’s hand. Then he turns to me. “Shake, Zeus.”

  I sit up and offer my paw like the dignified gentleman I am. Dave laughs and shakes it. Madden smells like a pop of surprise, a smoky firecracker.

  “I didn’t know he could do that!”

  Dave hands Madden the stack of papers he’s holding. “Yeah. I forgot to give you this. It’s the rest of the commands Zeus knows.”

  Madden flips through the many pages, a sound like wings. “Wow! Look at this, Mom. He knows all these commands? He can turn lights on and off?”

  Dave nods. “When we’re first training the dogs, we’re not sure where they’ll be a good fit. All the dogs learn those things in case they excel at assisting someone in a wheelchair.”

  Madden looks at me, his face shifting like he’s working on a puzzle. “Dude. He’s smart!”

  I smile at him. They don’t call me a single, accurate bloodhound who prefers the status quo for nothing!

  The humans settle into chairs, and I try to choose who I sit beside: Dave or Madden. Dave or Madden? I decide it’s easiest if I sit between them.

  “So, how’s it going?” Dave asks. I can’t figure his voice out. He doesn’t want me to be reassigned, does he? I think of a bit of kibble, plopping into my water bowl. At first it’s great, because hey, soft meaty kibble! But the longer the kibble stays there, soaking, the mushier the kibble gets. The murkier the water grows.

  This conversation feels like that. Mushy. Murky.

  “It’s good, I guess,” Madden says. The lieutenant shifts, like this is the first time she’s heard the I guess part. And she understands reassignments. She understands the re part of that word means again, means backward. Like retreat. Like revert. Reassign.

  Dave’s jaw tightens. This is it. This is where I get placed somewhere else. I clench my teeth. “Is he detecting your blood sugar levels accurately?”

  Madden’s mood sweetens, a puff of cotton candy. “Oh yeah! He’s really good at that.”

  Dave sits back in his chair, knots his fingers. “Good. He’s an excellent scent dog. We trained with those scent tins for months.”

  Dave goes on to tell the lieutenant and Madden how they trained me: using cotton balls that people with diabetes wore in their socks. I’d smell the sweat, learn the difference between blood sugar highs and lows. It all seems straightforward to me, but Madden looks at me like I’m some sort of superhero. Like I should wear tights and a cape.

  “But is there . . . something else?” Dave asks.

  This is it. This is where Madden tells Dave about all the times I’ve been a Bad Dog. (If only I could let Dave know why, about Operation Destroy Music, he’d understand. I know he would.) Here comes my re-assignment.

  “Well, he’s . . . not very obedient,” Madden says, looking at his hands. His fingers are twitching, and I can practically smell how much he wishes he could wrap himself in the safety of his tuba right now.

  “Oh, service dogs like Zeus shouldn’t be obedient,” Dave says. He smells as confident as soap; he knows dogs. “They need to be smart. Stubborn. Wisely disobedient, in fact. He needs to pay attention to your blood sugar, and he needs to get you to do the same, no matter what it takes. That’s his job.”

  Madden nods at the tips of his sneakers.

  “Is he behaving?” Dave asks. “A polite dog is what we want, not an obedient dog.”

  “Yes, he’s—” the lieutenant begins.

  “No.” Madden interrupts. They glance at each other. Mushy. Murky.

  Dave’s gaze pings between the two of them like a bouncing rubber ball. “Is Zeus . . . a good fit?”

  If the silence before, in the car on the way here, was a party balloon? THIS silence is one of those huge hissing balloons that float high in the sky, ready to crash with the shifting winds.

  I’m so frustrated at not having the right label for this moment. It occurs to me that a swirl of music, a mix of sorrowful sax and high-stepping clarinet, would be better at capturing how I feel right now. And that frustrates me even more. Stupid music!

  “He’s great at alerting me to changes in my blood sugar,” Madden says. “But why does he keep acting out?”

  Dave’s voice is gentle like a cool, shallow puddle. “Are you walking him every day? Grooming him? Playing with him? A German shepherd like Zeus has a lot of energy, Madden. If you don’t do those things, he’ll channel his energy elsewhere.”

  Madden is silent. Even his pulse quiets. “I could do more of that, I guess.”

  “If you do, he’ll be a great dog. I promise.”

  I will! I will be a great dog if you do those things, Madden! I’ll do my very best! I thump my tail, because humans can’t resist that.

  But then. THEN Dave does something I never expected. He sighs, and it’s filled with a mixture of scents: doubt and hope. I used to think those two labels were opposites, doubt and hope, so they couldn’t possibly exist at the same time. But I’m finding that doubt and hope often walk side by side for humans.

  “I tell you what,” Dave says. “I don’t usually do this, but let’s have another evaluation in four more weeks. If Zeus is still acting out then, well . . . we’ll figure something else out.”

  WHAT?

  My stomach feels like I gulped a handful of gravel, and I have to lie down. I could still get reassigned? I can’t think of anything more unfair! Or humiliating—what will my dad say once he finds out? Or the others at Canine College? Beef? Service dogs are huge gossips; they’ll all find out once the dogs in here start flapping their tongues.

  And this, coming from Dave! Unfair smells like turkey bacon. I huff. I turn my back on him. I huff again. I clench my jaw.

  Dave and the lieutenant chat about some other things, fill out paperwork. Madden gets down on his hands and knees, looks at me.

  “I’ll do better if you do better, okay, Z?”

  Deal. But listen. This whole thing reeks like cat pee. I won’t get any more bad dogs. I will always be whoossa good boy.

  Madden nods like he understands. “Shake, Z.”

  I offer my paw. We shake on it. It is now a pact, a word that sounds a lot like pack, so it’s weighty and important. Madden’s scent changes; he now smells like hope, like a fluff of musky dandelion just before its seeds fly on the wind. But there it is: a bit of doubt walking alongside it. Doubt and hope, together again.

  Moments later, Madden gathers my leash. Dave stoops and hugs my neck. His heart is slow and steady and asks for forgiveness, as always. I’m sad and angry, but I have a job to finish.

  Madden pauses just before we walk past the guard out the door. “Do you really think this’ll work out, Mr. Dave?”

  Dave grins and replies in a wa
y that is very Dave; he points to Madden’s star-spattered shirt and says: “Which are there more of: stars in the universe or leaves on the trees?”

  Madden blinks. “Uh, stars, I guess.”

  “But how do you know? You can see more leaves than stars.”

  Madden inhales, his brain ticking like drumsticks counting off a measure before a song. “I don’t know. I believe what the experts tell me, I guess.”

  “Exactly. And I’m an expert in Zeus. I’m telling you, he’s a great dog. But I’ll see you in four more weeks to make sure. One month.”

  Madden looks at me. My ears pivot toward him.

  Dave blinks. Is he holding back tears? Why doesn’t he believe in me yet? Why do I have to worry about reassignment still hanging over my head? Why aren’t there better words, better commands to tell me what to do in situations like this? I am the best at following commands. The very best. The single-accurate-bloodhound-who-prefers-the-status-quo best.

  I am not so good when there are no commands to follow.

  But Dave grins. “In dog we trust.”

  Maddens nods. “In dog we trust.”

  But apparently not.

  Apparently, some words mean nothing.

  ★ 26 ★

  The Same

  In the car on the way home, a song tinkles through the radio. Madden leaps toward a button, turns up the noise.

  “Stevie!” he shouts. “I love this song!”

  The lieutenant’s face breaks. Stretches. Into . . . no. A smile?

  “Me too!”

  The two of them howl along to the words in the song: Signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours!

  Madden’s fingers thrum along the seam of his jeans, and I can see he’s picking out the notes he’d play on his tuba, if he were playing this tune.

  They are singing the same song, the same words, at the same time. It is the first time I have seen them be the same.

  They can be the same?

  It’s as sweet as the earth after a fast, hot rain on a summer day. I want this moment to last, because the same is the status quo, and it’s what I prefer. The same is as comfortable as a crunchy old chew toy that tastes like months of mouth. So I regret when I smell it: Madden’s blood turns, and his scent is suddenly overly salty. Low, dark, and hollow. A curl of sea.

  I stand on the back seat.

  I nudge him.

  He laughs and scratches me behind the ear. It feels delicious, but he needs to be alerted.

  I ram my head into his shoulder. Paw at him. Lick his face.

  “Mom,” Madden says at last. “Can you pull over? I think Zeus is telling me I need to test.”

  The lieutenant veers the car to the side of the road, a little too sharply. We swerve in the gravel, and I lose my footing. I tumble onto the floor of the back seat.

  The lieutenant’s heart is suddenly cloudy and thunderous. “The doctor said that the motion of a car can mask a low blood sugar. I should’ve told you to test before we left. I should’ve . . .” Her voice trails off like a scent on the wind.

  While Madden tests, I pace the back seat, window to window. Too low. Too low. A low of deep ocean washing over Madden, a dot of sunlight gurgling further away. Out of one window, cars whiz past in roars of color. Out of the other, a goat lifts her head, looks our way, and bellows, My graaaaaaaass. Get your own paaaaaaaaasture!

  Madden blinks at the number on his monitor. “Wow, fifty-two!” He digs into the drawstring backpack at his feet and gobbles down a handful of gummy bears. His face twists as he gulps them down drily—he’s not hungry, but he must eat.

  The sugar in his blood climbs out of the sea and washes onto the beach. The lieutenant thanks me by scratching my neck. Or trying—her fingernails are still a short, scraggly mess. Ineffective as tools of any sort. Which is always surprising to me.

  Perhaps it is something that happened to her when she was reassigned, these short fingernails. It certainly seems a punishment of some sort.

  The goat takes great offense to the fact that we haven’t heeded her warnings. I saaaaid LEEEAVE!

  Her eyes spin in their sockets, and she charges at us. The goat rams her head into the wooden fence next to our car. It cracks like thunder, making both Madden and the lieutenant jump.

  I bark at her, Come on! The kid’s gotta eat!

  Madden and the lieutenant chuckle. I made them chuckle! I shouldn’t bark in my vest, but I made them so happy. And, well, I’m not barking to alert anyone. It’s a silly goat, for heaven’s sake. So I bark at the confounded animal. The lieutenant smiles and swerves back onto the highway in a cloud of gravelly dust, until I can’t see that stupid goat anymore.

  That’s riiight! LEEEEEEEEAAAAVE! the goat bellows after us.

  The car is quiet, no more Stevie songs sewing Madden and his mom together, making them the same. But Madden tries something, a small stitch to get that moment back. “We’re working on ‘Superstitious’ in band, you know. The part I play goes, hmm frmm hmm frmm . . .”

  “Do you want to try a new insulin? Your doctor said that Fiasp is supposed to be faster-acting. And listen, before I forget, we still need to discuss that JDRF walk next month . . .”

  Madden falls silent. So does the lieutenant. Silence is a big, important thing with humans, and it says more than words, usually. The lieutenant’s scent changes back to the whiff she usually wears around Madden: eggshells. Cool. Chalky. Fragile.

  The tires buzz.

  Madden stares out his window, forehead against glass. The lieutenant looks in the rearview mirror. The windows are all foggy, so I don’t know what they’re looking at. I do know what they’re not looking at. But here’s what they don’t know:

  Their hearts are humming the same tune.

  Their hearts both hum: I want you to hear me.

  ★ 27 ★

  Grooming Habits

  Superstitious.

  Super. To excel at something; to be a Very Good Dog.

  Stitious. Well, honestly, I’m not really sure what this means, but if I’m super at it, that’s all that matters.

  The song we’re listening to in Madden’s room is the one he practices now in band. This version sings about being very superstitious. It also sings about the writing on the wall, which I assume means a whiteboard like the one they use in my school, so I know this song is about being smart and scholarly and making wise, informed choices.

  Madden runs a wiry brush through my coat over and over again, and it feels so good to get all that loose hair out of my fur, my haunches shiver. He laughs and cleans the brush. “Dude. Another baby Zeus could be made with all this fur.”

  Well. It is certainly time for the lieutenant to discuss certain things with Madden, because that’s not how babies are made.

  Madden hums along to the music that shimmies out of a box on his desk, and I think what an astounding thing humming is: not singing, not silence . . . just another amazingly breathy way humans make music. It calms their hot blood, humming.

  Madden cuts my toenails (not too close, there, bub) and trims the fur between my paw pads. He gives each paw pad a tiny massage, and it feels so good I flop over on my back and drool. Madden scratches my belly. My back left leg laughs.

  He washes the gross brown gunk out of the corners of my eyes, and they are blinky clean again (ahhhh). He cleans my ears with a cool cleansing pad (yesssss). He folds open my flappy lips and scrubs my teeth with a cloth. Then he hands me a green bone, and my breath feels tingly and sparkly as I wrap my paws around it and chew.

  I feel like a new dog. I look for the dog that lives in the shiny glass, expecting to stick my tongue out at that ratty old fella, but would you look at that? Someone’s gone and groomed that rascal Glass Zeus, too! Hmmpf. Show-off.

  Next, Madden grooms his instrument. He flips open the locks on the black suitcase, click click, and pulls out the shiny brass bell of his tuba. He handles it so gently, Beef the tuba, and I feel jealousy bite me like my new tingly teeth.

  Madden polishes the b
rass with a cloth, and the instrument brags with shine. There is a Zeus in there, too—in the gleam of the instrument, all pointy ears and lush whiskers—and that Zeus, Music Zeus, I like least of all.

  Madden drops earthy, musky oil onto the up-down buttons of his tuba named Beef, and then smears wax inside each piece of the instrument, on the cork. He smiles. “Zeus, Ashvi’s pretty great, isn’t she?”

  Yes. We both love her.

  Madden twists his instrument to and fro, sending splashes of yellow light onto his walls. “Yeah, she’s great. But she was just hanging out with us because of the duet. I know it. You watch: now that the duet is over, she’ll ditch us like dirty Kleenex.”

  Dirty Kleenex is delicious, and speak for yourself. She loves me.

  A new song wiggles out of the radio, one that sounds like chasing and leaping at playful crumples of moths. “Yes!” Madden leans forward, turns up the volume. His toes tap, his shoulders sway, his heart dances.

  I can’t help it: my tail wags in time with the music.

  Drat! How does music get the best of me every time?

  I cock my head left, then right. I don’t get it. Music can’t be contained, can’t be defined with words. It is impossible to label. It has no obvious survival value; if anything, it lets defenses crumble.

  Take the musicians in our band class: The red faces. The blown-out cheeks. The popping eyes. Their knees shake to hold a note. Their foreheads bulge; their necks strain. They sweat. They spit. They fart. And Madden especially: music makes his blood go wild. They do all this to create music, something so very . . . impractical!

  Music is nonsensical.

  So why does it make me feel so happy?

  Madden turns all this grooming energy onto himself next. He peels off the stickers he wears on his arm and on his belly. He winces a bit as they come off. I can’t say I blame him—I can hear his fur getting ripped out by the root from here.

  Madden takes a white cloth that burns my nostrils with its strong chemicals and swipes it over his skin. He takes a piece of plastic and, click click—a sound just like the instrument case—he places a new pod in his arm. He staples another piece of plastic into his belly. More plastic is latched onto these ports.