Say No More

by Sasson, Gemini

  We had passed through the hallway and were headed into the kitchen. I couldn’t let her do this. Hunter was in trouble. I sensed it. Every second mattered.

  So I bit her. Not enough to draw blood, mind you. Just a pinch of my front teeth on the tender flesh between her thumb and forefinger.

  She gasped. Then through tight lips, she growled, “You little turd!”

  The hand that was holding me latched onto my collar. She swung me down, slamming me onto my side on the linoleum. The air whooshed out of my lungs. I drew in one quick breath and held it, bracing myself.

  “Hold on a sec, Grace. Someone’s being a brat... No, not him. The puppy. Be right back.”

  Lise set her phone on the floor and clamped down on my muzzle with a death grip. She brought her face close to mine and stared me down.

  I didn’t like what I saw in her eyes. Deep down in my soul, it scared me. It was a glimpse of what we’re all capable of when life has exploded around us and we’re desperate to survive. So I looked away. She was angry. Very angry. Not just at me. At the world.

  Instead of alerting her to a possible crisis, I’d pricked her last nerve.

  Every muscle in my body stiffened. I kept my eyes averted, my ears pinned against my head. Lifting my front and back leg of the side nearest Lise, I exposed my belly. Had I been upright, I would have urinated. At times, it is necessary to display total, utter submission. I had terrorized my littermates until they exhibited these very same signals. Because it was important that they understood who was boss. I had learned this from my mother. There was no mistaking the message that I was trying to send to Lise right then: that she was supreme leader, master of all, and even if she was wrong, dead wrong, I would cede to her.

  Her hands relaxed just enough so I could breathe through my mouth. Still, I didn’t look at her. It wasn’t safe to do so yet. Gruffly, she lifted me up and attempted to scoot me toward the back door with her foot as she reached for the knob. But I was quicker than her.

  I ran.

  Past her legs and across the kitchen. I skidded into a turn as I headed toward the living room.

  “Halo!” Lise screeched. “Get back here — now!”

  A sliver of daylight flashed from around the edge of the screen door. Churning my gangly legs, I bounded across the room, my nails digging into the area rug for added traction, and dove for it. I slammed my nose between the metal frame and the door, the force of my weight propelling it open. I burst through, to the outside, and leapt from the top step onto the concrete of the sidewalk.

  Four more strides and I was racing over the front lawn. Papery red and gold leaves crunched beneath my feet as I ran. Ran, and ran, and ran.

  Lise’s voice behind me got further and further away, then faded to nothing.

  chapter 6

  The sheep lifted their heads as I sped past, no doubt jealous that they were stuck behind a fence and I was not. A noisy cloud of blackbirds lifted from a stubbled field on the other side of the driveway. I didn’t stop to chase them, either. Ahead, the great woods loomed — dense and dark beneath a leaden sky.

  Nose to the air, I searched for Hunter. But the wind had dissipated his scent, wherever he was. I smelled only damp earth and decaying leaves, bruised stems of grass, and wood still green and growing.

  I slowed, looked behind me. The house was far away now. Lise had stopped following me, probably gone back inside. My heart thumped against my ribs. My lungs heaved for air. Every breath tasted of water. The rain was coming. A lot of it. My skin prickled. Soon, thunder rolled down from the sky, shaking the ground. I felt it in my bones. In every sinew and hair follicle. In every tooth and nerve.

  The first drops of rain followed, cool and gentle at first, then colder and harder, more and more. The wind gained force to drive it across the land like a horizontal waterfall. Until it was hard to see at all.

  Knives of rain stabbed at my face. I forced my eyes to stay open, but all I wanted to do was fold to the ground and wait for the storm to pass. I knew, though, that I’d never find Hunter if I did that.

  Glancing around, I looked for shelter — for a barn in which to hide or a car beneath which to crawl. Nothing but a gray bleariness surrounded me. An unwelcoming, watery world. I saw no sign of Hunter. Couldn’t smell him. Couldn’t hear anything above the percussive roar of the rain as it hammered at every surface.

  To my left, a slash of yellowish-brown moved amongst the woods at the edge of the field. I started that way, but upon coming closer, I could see it was only the leaves of a yet-fully leafed bush waving in the wind. My spirits plunged. The urgency that had gripped me only minutes ago was giving way to panic. The longer Hunter was gone, the harder it would be to find him.

  Perhaps, I thought, I should return to Lise and get her to help. I turned back. Trotted awhile. Down a slope. Waded through a swale that had turned into a belly-deep stream. Over clods of upturned earth and channels deep with mud.

  Where was the driveway? The sheep field? The house? I couldn’t see any of them. Didn’t know in which direction they lay. But if I went back now, Lise might not be there. Or if she was she would be angry at me for having bolted out the door, only to come back a drenched and dirty mess.

  There was no alternative. I had to find Hunter.

  And when I did, even if we didn’t know the way home, at least we would be lost together.

  I forced myself onward, while rain fell hard and cold around me.

  —o00o—

  It was desperation that sent me into the woods. That or stupidity.

  Youth is bold, you see. It is also quick to hope, for life’s realities have not yet tempered it with the caution that follows experience. Youth believes what is possible; it does not dwell on the many ways we can fail.

  It was a blessing that day that I was so young. Because it meant I believed I could do anything, without knowing what I could not. In my own mind, I was invincible. It was all I needed to keep going.

  I wouldn’t go home without Hunter. Lise depended on me, whether she knew it or not. She had simply misunderstood me when she tried to usher me out into the backyard. She had not known what I knew.

  By now, she did.

  When the rain finally began to abate, rifts of blue were showing at the sky’s rim. Low black clouds had given way to gauzy blankets of gray. The wind that had been so fierce and unforgiving not so long ago had diminished to a soothing breeze, whispering in my ears, Find him, Halo. Find him.

  I wandered until the pads of my feet were cracked and raw. Thorns tugged at my fur. Cockleburs tangled themselves in my britches and feathers. I sniffed and sniffed and sniffed. I smelled a hundred smells. None of them were Hunter.

  Often, I stopped to listen. For a cow bellowing. For the plaintive bah of a ewe. For the familiar rasp of truck tires crunching on a limestone road. Anything that might clue me in on where home was, for Hunter couldn’t have gone far. But I heard only the hushed remnants of the wind and the caw of blackbirds scattering from the trees as they arose in a black tornado of wings to blot out the bleary autumn sky.

  Tired to the bone, I stopped at a ditch that ran between two fields and drank some water. It was gritty with soil, but I was thirsty from my running. And growing hungry, too. I climbed up the embankment and sank to my belly, mist falling gently on my face. I wanted so badly to rest, to sleep until morning. But this was not a time to think of my own needs. Duty called. As long as I had breath and a heartbeat and strength enough to walk one more step, I would go on searching.

  But which way?

  From somewhere, I thought I heard a human voice calling my name. A familiar voice, a man’s voice. I held my breath, turned my head to listen. Nothing.

  An amber beam of sunlight stretched from below the last of the clouds, just above the nearly bare treetops. It would soon be dark. My energy may have waned with the hours, but my determination had not. There was still hope. Always hope.

  The hum of an engine sounded in the distance. Tires whirred over asphalt
. For a few seconds, I thought it was coming closer, but the sound was muffled by countless trees, their branches clattering as a gust of wind rattled them.

  I sat there minutes longer, barely breathing, just listening. Another vehicle whooshed along the unseen road, then another. If I went toward the sounds, I would find people, but racing by in their cars, I wasn’t sure they would bother to stop for me and if they did, how would they ever know I belonged to Lise and that Hunter was lost?

  No, I had to keep searching. No matter how long it took. So I put my nose down and cast in sweeping arcs — left, right, left, right — until I found a thin path of trampled grass. The downpour had washed away any traces of scent, but still I followed it. Down a gentle slope, across a gulley, through a patch of bramble.

  Halo! This way!

  There it was again. It was Cam’s voice. I swear it!

  I took off blindly in the direction I thought it had come from.

  In a clearing, I raised my face and looked about. The sun had bowed behind the treetops. Shadows filled my vision, black edging columns of gray along the wood’s edge. There, a man stood. He hooked an arm in the air, beckoning to me. I tried hard to focus, but the light was dim. The silhouette was familiar. It could have been Cam.

  Between here and there stretched a pasture where cows had been not long ago. I could smell their waste. Piles of it. Their scent was strong, overpowering. So I let my eyes do the work, while I was still able to see. Barely.

  It was nearly dark now. There wasn’t much time left. When I looked again toward the edge of the woods, the man was gone.

  In a depression in the field glimmered the surface of a pond where the cows would come to drink. They had left deep hoof prints in the mud around it. My eyes followed the pond’s edge around to the other side.

  My heart vaulted. I knew this place. Cam had brought me here once with Bit. We had stayed for hours while he cast his line into the water and sat with his pole propped between his knees, gazing at the sky. He said he was fishing, but he only caught two fish and those were very small, so he threw them back. A ripple at the surface caught my eye and I looked past it, up the slope —

  And there, I saw him.

  Hunter was sitting, hugging his knees, halfway up a hill on the far side. His head was bent, resting on his forearms. My boy!

  I barked, a small bark of excitement, happy to have found Hunter, to be in a place I had been before.

  Except, I didn’t know the way back from here. Cam had brought me here in his truck on the way home from Ray’s and I had fallen asleep on the seat between him and my mother.

  But like I said before, what mattered was that I’d found Hunter.

  I barked again, louder, more clearly. Hunter raised his head, then stood. I wasn’t sure he could see me, so I ran.

  He began to run, too. Toward the pond.

  As fast as my feet could fly without twisting around each other, I raced to him. My toes, as quick as lightning, clipped the ground. I plowed through the tall grass, holding my head tall, bounding high every few strides to try to catch a glimpse of him. But it was hard to see him in the failing light. His head bobbed above the reeds rimming the pond’s edge. The water was deep there. I had discovered it that time with Cam when I thought I’d go wading to snap at tadpoles. Instead, I’d found myself in water over my head. My feet had hit the murky bottom then and I’d burst upward, desperate for air. When I surfaced, I paddled my way back to Cam, who laughed at me. But as with so many things, dogs were born with the memory of how to swim. I was not so sure it was true for humans. If Hunter fell in —

  So I barked my warning as I curved around the pond. Until finally Hunter saw me and turned. Barely in time.

  I gathered myself in mid-stride, sprang from my haunches, and sailed at him. My feet hit his chest squarely, knocking him back, away from the water. He landed in the tall, wet grass with a soft oomph, me on top of him. I kept him pinned there to make sure he didn’t move just yet. Then I licked his face all over, a wet and thorough washing, rapidly lapping him from chin to forehead.

  He flung his arms around me. “Halo!” he cried, his small voice breaking into sobs of relief. It was the most joyous sound I had ever heard.

  Exhaustion flooded through me. I collapsed beside him. We lay like that awhile, his arms hugging my chest, my snout tucked in the crook between his neck and shoulder.

  “I saw him,” Hunter whispered in my ear. “I saw Daddy.”

  I did, too.

  Salty tears slid down his cheeks. I licked his face clean and pressed myself closer to his shivering body.

  —o00o—

  I don’t remember hearing Lise and Grace tromp down the hill and come to us. I only knew that they did. I was aware of it. Yet I never looked up, never left Hunter. They were just there all of a sudden, standing over us, squealing with relief as tubes of light from Grace’s flashlight bounced around us.

  Lise scooped Hunter up and crushed him to her chest. I sat at her feet, waiting for some acknowledgment of what I had done. For the longest time, she didn’t look down at me. When she finally did, it was in response to a comment Grace made.

  “Do you think he followed the dog out the door?” Grace cocked her head sideways, staring at me with suspicion through her narrow glasses. She had two little yappy dogs herself — toy poodles named Henri and Sophia. I didn’t like either of them and I wasn’t sure I liked her. She spoke nonsense to them in a baby voice, fed them canned gourmet food on crystal plates, and dressed them in little coats speckled with sequins. I was from a working lineage, farm-bred Australian Shepherds, and I took immense pride in it. My kind guarded the homestead with the ferocity of lions and watched over the children like the mastiffs of the ancient Roman army. We kept predators at bay, hunted vermin, and herded bulls twenty times our size, sometimes risking our own lives in the process. We weren’t afraid to get dirty or work beyond the point of exhaustion. Warming laps, having my toenails painted, and getting carried around in a faux alligator purse, had I been small enough, would be beyond disgraceful. It would be mortifying.

  “I think,” Lise began, setting Hunter on his feet, “that maybe it was the other way around.”

  Scooting closer, I leaned against her leg. She stroked the top of my head. After awhile, her fingers wandered to rub the crease of my ear.

  “Good girl, Halo.” Her voice was hoarse. She’d been hollering for Hunter a long, long time. “That was a very, very good girl.”

  I leaned into her more heavily and closed my eyes. I was only doing what I was supposed to. What dog worth his kibble wouldn’t have?

  And yet, I needed to hear those words from Lise. I needed them more than I needed food or sleep or water. I needed her. And Hunter.

  What she didn’t know was how much they needed me.

  chapter 7

  My skull rattled against the cool glass of the window as we bumped down the road in Lise’s Subaru. I just realized it had only been late morning when Hunter disappeared. It was fully dark now. We’d been gone a long time. I should’ve been tired, except when Lise found us a new surge of energy had filled me. I hadn’t come down from the thrill of it yet. I’d found Hunter and Lise had found us. Everything in the world was as good as it could be again.

  Only it wasn’t. I sensed it.

  An exhausted Hunter was piled beneath blankets in the back seat. I peered from the storage area in the rear over the top of the seat at him. Wet hair still clung to his forehead. Mud was streaked across his cheek and at his temple was a fresh scab, the blood barely dry.

  In the front, the glow of the dashboard illuminated Lise’s pale face like moonlight on still waters. She gripped the steering wheel so tightly the veins on the back of her hands bulged. Every once in awhile she’d steal a glance at Grace, but the moment Grace looked her way, Lise’s eyes would dart back to the flickering yellow line in the middle of the road.

  At the edge of the tunnel of light cast by the car’s headlights, a pair of green eyes flashed, then dis
appeared into the darkness of the ditch. Lise jerked her arms to the left, overcorrecting, and my shoulder slammed into the wheel well with a thump. She straightened the steering wheel and glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, girl.”

  Grace burned a stare into the side of Lise’s head, but Lise was purposefully ignoring her now.

  “Look, I know you’re mad at me,” Grace finally blurted out, “but I still think you should have called the sheriff. Or the neighbors. They could have helped search for him. At the very least you should have given Estelle a head’s up. He was probably headed that way and —”

  Lise punched the brake. The tires skidded on asphalt for a heart-clenching moment, then crunched over gravel as we slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the road. She locked her arms straight on the wheel and swiveled her head to glare at Grace. “Are you crazy? I want nothing to do with that woman. Nothing!” She shot a glance at Hunter, but there was no sign he’d been awakened. She lowered her voice to a growl. “Hunter slipped out of her house and could have died because she couldn’t watch him for one minute and you think I should —”

  “Hunter left the house right under your nose, Lise. Does that make you a bad person?”

  As suddenly as if she’d been slapped, Lise’s head snapped forward. Angry tension melted from her shoulders. Gradually, her hands slid from the steering wheel and into her lap. “It’s just that ... God, I don’t even know where to start. My life is such a mess. In more ways than one.” Her cheeks puffed with an exhaled sigh. “I didn’t just call you over to help me pack, Grace.”

  Her friend shifted sideways in her seat and placed a hand on Lise’s arm. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. You know that. Hey, who rescued you on the first day of school from Tyler McRory, huh? I did. I swooped in and threatened to call his mother. He never gave you a hard time again, did he? Who taught you how to deal with Mr. Penright? I did. Told you all the magic words, like learning module and core curriculum, that would make him happy enough to stop pestering you for a few days. Yeah, that was me. And who flattened the mouse that took up residence in your desk drawer? Me, again.”