by Peter Howe
“Let’s go and see if she drops some,” whispered Waggit.
“Okay, but be careful,” said Lowdown.
“Aren’t you coming too?” asked Waggit.
“No, I’m too old and slow,” said Lowdown. “You go and see, and if you get some bring it back here.”
Waggit thought that Lowdown used the “old and slow” excuse a little too often, but he let it go this time. Very carefully he edged toward the sounds and smells under the cover of some bushes. Then suddenly he saw her; she was sitting crossed-legged on a rock with a package of sandwiches by her side, thick pastrami sandwiches, fat with layer upon layer of thin, sliced meat. In one hand she held a piece of paper with strange markings on it. It was a sheet of music, but Waggit didn’t know that, and neither did he care. All he could see was the meat, and he could feel the drool starting to run out of his mouth.
He was so focused on it that he forgot that the leaves on the bushes under which he crouched were still young and not fully formed. They weren’t doing as good a job of hiding him as he had hoped. The woman suddenly looked up and caught sight of him.
“Why hello, little fellow,” she said in a pleasant voice. “Who are you, and where did you come from?”
Waggit froze, his mind quickly planning his escape.
“Don’t be scared,” she said. “I won’t hurt you.”
Waggit of course could not understand anything she said. All he could think of was the piece of sandwich in her hand and the pastrami that overflowed its edges. She saw him looking at the food.
“Do you want some?” she asked, holding out her hand. “Here.”
Waggit had been told too many stories by Tazar and others of the ways that humans tried to trap you, and there was no way he was going to go closer. On the other hand he was mesmerized by the smell of the meat. When he didn’t move, the woman took the pastrami out of the bread and threw it toward him. It landed about a foot away from his nose, the smell overpowering him, and he couldn’t resist. He rushed forward, snatched it in his mouth, and ran back to Lowdown. They divided it up pretty much equally between them, although Waggit did get slightly more, which was only right, considering that he was the bigger dog and he was the one who got it in the first place.
“Boy, that was good,” whispered Lowdown. “It’s a pity that’s all there was.”
“I’ll go back and see if she does it again,” Waggit quietly replied.
“Be careful,” said Lowdown. “It might be a trap.”
“Don’t worry,” Waggit said.
Slowly and carefully, he went back to the same spot, all the while looking out for anything that was suspicious.
“Why, you’re back,” said the woman. “Was that good? Ready for some more?”
Waggit lay there prepared to run at the first sign of trouble. Then the woman took all the meat from one half of a sandwich and tossed it at him. This time she threw it too hard, and it hit him full in the face.
“Oops.” She laughed. “Sorry!”
Waggit didn’t care. The only thing he was worried about was collecting all the pieces as quickly as possible and then making his escape. He ran triumphantly back to Lowdown, holding his head high, the pastrami flopping up and down.
“My oh my,” said Lowdown admiringly when he saw all the meat in Waggit’s jaws, “that’s way too much for us to eat here. We have to take that back to the team.”
Waggit knew that he was right. It was too much to eat on the spot, and so they started back toward the tunnel, where they would add it to the communal meal that night.
The following day Lowdown was feeling stiff and achy and told Waggit that he thought he would stay in the tunnel and rest. Cal and Raz invited Waggit to join them instead, but he politely refused. He had a hunch that the woman might be there again. There was no reason to think that she would be, but in the time that he had lived in the park the young dog had come to rely on his instincts and had found that they were rarely wrong.
Sure enough, as he got closer to the spot where they had met the day before, he could hear her singing again, only this time there was no evidence that she was eating. There were no pauses in her song, no noises made by her chewing, and no muffled notes. There was, however, a strong smell of meat again, and a delighted smile when she saw him.
“Well hello,” she said. “You’re back. I hoped you would be.”
He lay there, tense, but not quite as tense as yesterday, his eyes focused on a large kielbasa sausage that lay on the rock by her side.
“Looks good, doesn’t it?” she said and broke off a piece, holding it out in her hand for him to take.
He was still wary of going too close to her, even though she seemed nice enough. He was moving slowly toward her when he heard a twig snap nearby. He leapt back, his heart pounding, but nothing happened. It was probably a raccoon or a squirrel breaking a branch as it went by, but it was enough to make him stay exactly where he was.
“You still don’t trust me, do you?” said the woman. “I’m okay, honestly.”
She threw the piece of sausage to him and this time it landed perfectly, right between his paws. He wolfed it down without moving.
“Wow,” she said, “you are hungry. I wonder who you belong to? You don’t have a collar on.”
Waggit didn’t understand any of her words, but he did understand that there was still most of a kielbasa left next to her on the rock.
“Well, my little friend, you can have all of this,” she offered, picking it up, “but you’re going to have to come and get it.”
She held the sausage out, and Waggit waited for her to throw it, but she didn’t.
After a while she said, “Come on. Come and take it. I won’t hurt you.”
He moved forward a couple of paces.
“That’s right,” she coaxed, “come on.”
He crept a little closer; she didn’t move; again a few inches nearer the sausage; again she didn’t move. Finally he could stand it no longer and ran forward, snatched the food out of her hand, and ran back to the tunnel as fast as his legs could carry him.
When he arrived, panting and out of breath, he dropped the sausage onto the evening’s supper pile. Lowdown looked at it and turned to Waggit.
“It’s from that Upright again, isn’t it?” he said.
“No,” said Waggit, “I just found it.”
“Are you sure?” asked Lowdown.
“Absolutely sure,” said Waggit.
He had no idea why he lied to his best friend, but he did. Something inside him wanted to keep the woman for himself; it wasn’t a plan or anything as complicated as that, but just a feeling that this was what he should do.
It was the same instinct that told him to go back the next day by himself, and then the day after that, and the one after that. Each time she was there, sitting on the same rock in the same cross-legged position and singing. And each day she had some delicious treat. She knew he liked meat, and the food she brought was always different from the day before. He became more trusting with every encounter, and by the third day he allowed her to stroke him and tickle him under the chin, both of which she did very well.
On the sixth day he turned up at the same time, but there was no sound of singing as he approached their usual meeting place. He continued more cautiously, keeping beneath the bushes as much as he could. She was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was too early or too late, or maybe she was. He thought he had better wait for a while in case she turned up. As he lay there his nose started working. He was definitely getting a faint scent of meat. Maybe she had turned up early and, when she saw that he wasn’t there, had left a package by the rock.
He decided to get up to investigate, and he approached the place from which he thought the smell was coming. Suddenly something grabbed the loose flesh at the back of his neck and whisked him off the ground. He was suspended in midair, his legs flailing around desperately, trying to get a grip on something.
“Got you,” yelled a voice triumphantly. “Got yo
u, you little devil.”
Out of the corner of his eye Waggit could see the dreaded green material that was part of the uniform that the park rangers wore. He bared his fangs, frantically trying to get away. But his captor’s grip was too strong, and holding the clawing animal at arm’s length he quickly walked toward the road. Parked just around the corner was the truck that every park dog feared, the one that took you to the Great Unknown, from which no dog ever returned.
14
Terror in the Great Unknown
The truck lurched, bumped, and rattled its way through the city. Inside, one to a cage, were Waggit and three other terrified dogs. One of them, a small animal of very mixed breeding, whimpered constantly. There were no windows and the only light came from a small dome in the roof that shed an unfriendly, yellowish glow on the interior. For each of the creatures it was a nightmare come true.
It seemed as if they were driving forever. Waggit wondered if this would be where he would spend the rest of his life. Maybe the Great Unknown was actually the back of the truck. Finally the vehicle braked sharply and came to a halt. Waggit heard the sounds of gates being rolled back. The truck started up again, moved forward a short distance, and then stopped once more.
The back doors were flung open, and standing there were four men, each wearing blue coveralls and thick, heavy leather gloves. Because Waggit had been the last dog captured he was the first one taken out. One of the men opened the metal cage and slipped a chain collar attached to a leash over Waggit’s head. He then took him by the scruff of his neck and roughly pulled him out and dropped him on the ground.
Waggit looked around and saw a courtyard surrounded by gloomy old industrial buildings. He was pulled toward a door in the wall of one of them. It was strange to be back on a leash again after so many months without even a collar. He struggled, trying to get it off, but the more he pulled the tighter the chain got.
As the man opened the door a wave of noise hit Waggit, so loud it was almost physical, and he was led into a huge room filled with metal cages like those in the truck, only bigger. In each was a dog, and almost every one was either barking or howling. He counted dozens of them as he was led past one sad face after another. The fear that he could feel coming from them made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was the scariest, most unhappy place that he had ever been.
They finally came to an empty cage with its door open, and the man shoved Waggit in, took off the chain, and then shut the door with a clang as he left. There was nothing inside except for a bowl with water in it; the only place to sleep was on the cold steel floor, but sleep was the last thing on his mind. To his right a skinny dog was standing on its hind legs, barking furiously and scratching at the wire, trying to get out. To his left was a medium-size, depressed-looking hound, whose droopy jowls had spread out on the floor where he lay.
“Who are you?” barked Waggit at the top of his voice, trying to be heard over the noise.
The hound didn’t move except for his eyes, which rolled in Waggit’s direction in a mournful stare. After several minutes the barking finally died down.
“No point in trying to make yourself heard over that din,” the hound said, still without lifting his head.
“I’m Waggit,” said Waggit. “Who are you?”
“The name’s Bloomingdale, like the store,” said the dog.
Waggit didn’t know what Bloomingdale’s or indeed any store was, so he let this comment pass.
“Where did they get you?” he asked instead.
“About a block from my house,” Bloomingdale said.
“What do you mean?” asked Waggit.
“What part of ‘a block from my house’ do you not understand?” he replied somewhat testily. “I was on my way back to my house when they picked me up.”
“You mean you lived in a house with Uprights?” Waggit said.
“Of course,” said Bloomingdale. “Where else would you live?”
“So why didn’t they stop the Ruzelas from taking you?” Waggit was now confused.
“I was by myself,” explained Bloomingdale. “I found a way of opening the back door to get out. Between you and me,” he continued confidingly, “I need to get out of the house from time to time. They’re a bit overprotective, and a dog needs some freedom.”
Had he been speaking a foreign language his words could not have been more mystifying to Waggit. All of the dogs in the park had exactly the opposite experiences with human beings. The best treatment they had received was neglect; the worst was cruelty.
“And how about you?” inquired Bloomingdale. “How did you come to be in this mess?”
“I did something I should never have done,” replied Waggit, with an edge of bitterness in his voice. “I trusted an Upright.”
“Oh,” sighed Bloomingdale despairingly, “and he let you down?”
“She, actually,” said Waggit, “and she didn’t just let me down, she tricked me.”
And with that the two animals fell silent, each thinking about the injustice and treachery in the world.
There were many things about being in the Great Unknown that were terrible—the fear of not knowing what was going to happen next; the boredom of hours spent doing nothing; the discomfort of the metal cages. But Waggit hated the lights most, because they were on all the time. As a park dog he had lived by nature’s clock; it was either night or day. Here you couldn’t tell which it was, except for the daily exercise period when he and about ten other dogs would be led into the yard and walked around on leashes. Mealtimes were also a way of knowing that another day had passed, when a metal bowl containing some sloppy canned food would be pushed into the cage. Bloomingdale often didn’t eat his, complaining about its quality, but for Waggit it was fine. He had eaten far worse during the winter, and for him having food on a regular basis was a novelty.
There were two other grim ways of knowing both that time was passing and that time was short. Once a day those dogs who had been there the longest would be led one by one out of the room and through a door at the far end. Nobody knew where they were going, but everyone knew that they never came back. Often the departing creatures would look over their shoulders as if to get one last glance at the life they were leaving. This always happened just after mealtime, and the dogs who were to leave that day knew it, because they would be passed over as the food was handed out. Everyone was in no doubt that one day they would be the ones who would get no food.
And every day more dogs were brought in. When this happened all the dogs would howl and bark to greet the newcomers. These were not sounds of joy, but of hopelessness, and each time that it happened it so upset Waggit that he would shake with fear and loneliness. He longed to see Lowdown’s cheery face, or even Gruff’s grumpy one.
When a human being who was not one of the workers was led into the room, he or she would walk solemnly past each cage. The person would sometimes pause hesitantly in front of one of the dogs, frown and shake his or her head. Then suddenly there would be a cry from both the human and a dog, and the rest of the inmates would know that some lucky soul had been reunited with his owner. This would set off another round of barking and howling, but this time they were whoops of rejoicing. It gave them all hope. But not Waggit. To be rescued by your owner meant that you had to have one in the first place.
The worst day for him was the one on which Bloomingdale was given no food. Waggit had grown fond of the gloomy guy with his bleak view of the world, and when no bowl was placed in his cage they both looked at each other sorrowfully.
“Oh well,” said Bloomingdale. “I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“I don’t understand,” said Waggit, “why your Uprights didn’t come to get you. If they wanted to protect you so badly, why wouldn’t they look for you?”
“Who knows?” said Bloomingdale. “They were very private. Kept to themselves. Maybe it was too much bother, or maybe they didn’t want to make a fuss. In the end the reason isn’t important.
The fact of the matter is that they didn’t come, and now it looks like I’ve run out of time.”
There was nothing Waggit could say to this, and so the two just waited until the inevitable happened. Shortly after the food distribution one of the workers came up to Bloomingdale’s cage, opened it, and slipped a chain collar around his neck. Bloomingdale gave Waggit one last, mournful look.
“So long, pal,” he said, “and good luck!”
And then, with his head held high, he walked briskly off to whatever fate awaited him on the other side of the door. Waggit felt as if someone with very cold fingers had squeezed his heart, and to lie there on the hard floor and look at the empty space next to him was almost more than he could bear. It was unfair. Bloomingdale was a good dog, a threat to no one. Beneath his gloomy exterior he cared for other dogs and, even after his experiences, held no bitterness toward humans. All he had wanted was a little freedom, something that Waggit could certainly understand, and for this he was to be punished with—who knew what, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Waggit also realized that it would soon be his day to get no food. He had come into the Great Unknown only a short time after Bloomingdale, so it couldn’t be far off. He let out a long, sorrowful howl of despair.
But the worst day miraculously turned into the best. Not long after Bloomingdale’s departure, Waggit’s ears pricked up at the sound of a great commotion from the other side of the entry door. Suddenly it was flung open and in walked the woman from the park. One of the workers was trying to stop her.