A Dog Like Daisy

by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  Colonel Victor ignores Micah’s question and turns to me. The blacks of his eyes are still wide, but I can tell he can focus now. He is no longer away.

  “You know, don’t you, Miss Daisy?” he asks. His voice vibrates like a gunshot. He grabs the muzzle of my neck and pulls me close to him. He buries his face in my fur. He smells like the dogs who went through the Bad Side door. He’s crying, and he doesn’t want Micah to see, so I wedge myself further between them. Micah flushes hot at that.

  The Colonel’s shadows turn to thin pale red lines. His heart slows. “Thank you. I knew you were the right pick, Miss Daisy. Thank you.”

  I’m not sure what I’ve done, other than pull him back from straying away. Any dog would do that for a pack member.

  We sit like that for a minute, with him hugging me. His tears soak into my fur. Micah is crying, too, his tears tiny oceans. He is not getting hugged. I can feel him feeling that—NOT hugged.

  Colonel Victor snaps straight.

  “No more whistling, Micah.”

  “What? But I—”

  “No more.”

  When we get home, Micah slams the door to his den—bam!—the sound of a kick in the ribs. Colonel Victor winces but is otherwise fine.

  The woman, Anna, and the baby aren’t here. I sniff around a bit, still trying to find the source of the fishy smell. It’s lingered for days. Yesterday I even poked around in the garbage, which says a lot, because garbage smells like loss and good-bye. But I didn’t find it because Anna yelled red sirens at me.

  Tick-tick-tick-SWISH. Approaching: small clicking noises, then the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Like small splinters of chopped wood, then the tree cracking and falling. And again: tick-tick-tick-SWISH.

  I open my nostrils and sniff.

  Fish scales.

  Around the corner he lopes, long toenails ticking on the floor. It’s a lizard, a huge one, about the size of a small cat, with spikes jutting forth from his chin and down his back. He is beyond ugly; he is plastic litter. I scramble to my feet. The hair on my back barbs, and I taste unknown things.

  Relax, grasshopper, says the lizard. One of his eyes rolls skyward, but the other one stays firmly locked on me. Creepy, like spaghetti snakes. I’ve always distrusted spaghetti. I am here, too, the thing says. I am Smaug, dragon healer of precious things.

  I take a step backward. Smaug takes a step forward. The tail on this lizard is several inches long and whips across the floor dully—the sound from before, of the tree falling. It appears as if his tail has a life of its own, as if it’s fighting for freedom from Smaug.

  I am in Micah’s room, Smaug says, when I do not wish to explore. A word of warning: those who do not enter frequently become unwelcome entirely.

  Excuse me? I’ve never been in Micah’s room. There’s never been a purpose for me in there. Why would I do something with no purpose? Purpose is everything.

  Smaug sizes me up, his odd eyeballs twitching, his tongue darting to and fro. You have much to learn about loyalty.

  I snuff. I beg your pardon. You have much to learn about not talking like a fortune cookie.

  Shuffling sounds come from Colonel Victor’s chair. Smaug turns. Here is where I leave you. I do not wish to end this journey just yet.

  Tick-tick-tick-SWISH—splinters and fallen trees—Smaug waddles away, around the corner, his long, long tail snapping out of sight just as the Colonel stands.

  I see that lizard’s game. The big humans don’t know he wanders the house.

  Colonel Victor limps into the kitchen and opens a bunch of bottles. The pills he pours into his hand are blue and red and pink and make me think of howling sad songs. He tosses them into his mouth and gulps water. Soon, his heart slows even more, to a dull, unnatural thud. His face lines turn foggy, changing to a cool off-white color—not his normal shade. It’s an artificial color for him, like light from a bulb instead of the sun.

  Loud music pounds from Micah’s den—boom, boom, boom—a herd of stomping rats in a sewer.

  Colonel Victor slumps into his chair. He taps his leg for me to sit next to him, so I do. But then he taps his leg again. I realize he’s asking me to jump into his lap. I do.

  I fit perfectly—my front paws hanging off one arm of the chair, my back legs off the other, my tail directly in Colonel Victor’s face. He dusts off a rare grin through the fog.

  “Thank you for earlier, Miss Daisy.”

  You’re welcome.

  I’m unsure why it was important. I did what any pack member would do. Any pack member but Micah, apparently.

  He sighs and picks at the fabric on his chair. “Driving is dangerous now, too. I can’t do any of the things I used to love. Hunting, fishing.” He tilts his face around to look in my eyes, and his voice is suddenly a raccoon lying too still in the middle of the highway. “But you don’t want to hear any of this, do you?”

  Go ahead.

  “I fight with my wife. I fight with my son. I can barely hold the baby . . .”

  His voice turns twitchy, a too-late jolt of the raccoon’s tail. He finds a string on the chair and pulls it.

  You can tell me.

  “They say I’m ‘unemployable.’ I mean, that’s the definition of a serviceman—service. And now I’m useless? It’s the ultimate insult.”

  My whole self softens. Yes. I understand. Uselessness is the highest dishonor. It is the ultimate cone of shame.

  I have been called useless.

  But he’s wrong. Colonel Victor is not useless. He’s the alpha dog of this pack. He must still be confused.

  His eyes turn watery. He tries to swallow it back, but I can hear the knot in his throat.

  “I can’t turn it off, Miss Daisy. The constant seeking and searching for danger. I can’t turn it off.”

  He’s crying now. He’s bad at it, too. He chokes and gasps like red raccoon guts spilled on pavement. I can tell he doesn’t let himself cry a lot. He pulls the string from his chair and it gets longer.

  “That’s why I told Micah not to whistle. It sounds too much like incoming mortar shells. The sound I heard before my friends . . .”

  The string he pulls pops. Colonel Victor sobs but tries to clench it in his throat like a fist. Tears make rivers on his face.

  I shift on his lap and reach up. I give him a quick kiss on the cheek. I catch a tear on my tongue. It tastes like fighting a bigger dog. I never wanted to do that—fight the bigger dog. Fight any dog.

  He thumps my rib cage in thanks. We are a team, and I think of wet-nosed nuzzles from my family.

  “They keep calling me a wounded warrior, Miss Daisy. But I don’t feel like either of those—wounded or a warrior. If I were a warrior, I would’ve brought every man back home.” His voice cracks like gunfire.

  I don’t know what that means, exactly, but I know he is a warrior. The essence of it is written on his soul.

  “And wounded? I guess. But I actually just feel . . .”

  He pauses to think of the word, and his fingers pick at another string on his chair. My ears perk toward the hallway. Micah is just around the corner, listening. His shade bleeds around the door frame: a murky horizon, like a dark, sad, gray ocean on a rainy day. I can hear the tears on his cheeks.

  “Broken. I feel broken.”

  5

  THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SMART AND OBEDIENT

  “Okay, so . . .” Alex the Awkward claps his hands. I have lived with the Abeyta pack now for seven sunrises, and I’ve seen Alex every insufferable day. So his hand-clapping doesn’t make me jump anymore because I know that’s what Alex does to make himself sound Important: he claps. I understand the need to feel Important. Important tastes like beef gravy.

  But when Alex claps, his scent wafts off him, and that’s a problem because he smells bad. This human bathes in onions, I believe. And today, even his voice has that yellowy-green tint to it that makes me taste wild onions. I gag a bit, and Alex squints at me.
>
  He thinks I’m gagging because I’m still protesting the leash. Which I’m not. I don’t love the leash, don’t get me wrong. It’s still an abomination. But I enjoy the connection it gives me to Colonel Victor. It’s a tendon that joins us, and I can read him better when he’s holding it. When he tenses, I feel it through the leash as sure as salt.

  When Micah tenses, I feel nothing. It happens a lot. He wears tense all the way from the crease in his forehead to the toes of his sneakers, which drag when he walks. His tense feels different from the Colonel’s, and even Alex’s. His tense feels like he’s rooting for me to fail. I don’t know why.

  “We’re doing one more training day in here”—Alex sweeps his hands wide, as if this plain white building were a palace—“before we take our training into the real world.”

  Those two words—real world—make sparks burn across the shades of Colonel Victor’s face and turn them to ash. But he nods. He’s brave, my alpha dog.

  “So I think Daisy’s ready for this.” Alex holds up a piece of cloth, the color of sand. “This is your vest, Daisy,” he squeaks at me in a high-pitched tone. This voice of his—the one he uses only for me—is like chewy, sticky caramel. “VEST. You’ll wear it when you work. It’s your UNIFORM.”

  He shouts those two words, but I look past his stupidity because I understand: these are my working clothes! Like the Colonel’s muddy boots. Talk about Important! This is chuck roast beef gravy. This says I AM USEFUL.

  “Do you want a VEST, girl? Do you?”

  I’ve only tasted caramel once, in the Dumpster behind the ice cream parlor where I used to live. The humans there threw away a whole tub just because a tiny cockroach climbed inside for a swim—so wasteful! I ate so much of it I threw up. Deliciously sickening.

  That is my now: I know Alex is squeaking to be sweet, but it’s too big. His sweet is overwhelming, like eating an entire tub of caramel instead of a dollop.

  “VEST, girl! But first, Daisy needs to go to the bathroom.” Alex opens the one door that leads outside, and the air out there smells of water in sandy soil and lush grass and palm trees swishing. “Once she’s wearing her vest, there is no going to the bathroom. Ever. No eating, either. When she’s wearing the vest, she’s on the clock. Working. Okay, Victor?”

  “Got it.”

  “Daisy!” Alex says, his voice raising to a sticky-sweet pitch again. It’s so annoying, getting squeaked at like this. Why does he only talk to me in that voice? Micah is also a lower-ranked pack member, and he gets a normal taupe tone. “C’mon, Daisy! Do your business!”

  Seriously? Do your business? I look up at Colonel Victor.

  But the Colonel just leads me to the door. “Stay here, Micah,” he says to the corner. Micah nods, even though his ears are covered again. I worry about whether he’s endangering our pack with those things. Surely he cannot protect himself, and those who cannot protect themselves are the spoiled link in the sausages.

  “Do your business, Daisy!” Alex screeches, and I want to lick my teeth just listening to him. He looks at me and dangles my vest in front of me like a bribe. “Do your business and we’ll put on your VEST.”

  I snuff. I want that vest and apparently I have to poop to get it. So I do. Ridiculous. And they give me no privacy. Appalling.

  “Good girl, Daisy!” Alex squeals.

  I’ve never seen anyone so excited to watch a dog use the restroom. I finish and scratch the grass, because I’m no savage. Alex scoops it up with a plastic bag. It’s every proof I need that he is indeed insane.

  Back inside, Colonel Victor straps on my vest. I feel I might pop open the straps of the thing, my chest puffs so full of filet mignon pride.

  “You look great, Miss Daisy,” the Colonel says.

  Thank you. I do look smashing, don’t I?

  “Great,” Alex says, and claps again. I try not to gag at the cloud of onion gas it propels my way, but I don’t succeed. Alex squints at me. “Last week’s training was getting Daisy acquainted with the basics: Sit. Stay. Come.”

  Easy-peasy. Nailed it.

  “Today we’re going to teach some additional obedience commands and address any behavioral issues we might have while learning those. From there, we’ll develop short-term and long-term goals for you and Daisy here.”

  Colonel Victor nods. He smells like impatience. Alex talks these same words every day.

  “The training from this point is hard work, Victor,” Alex continues. “That’s why we train daily. And we only have nine weeks left, so we really need to buckle down. It requires repetition, consistency, compassion, timing, and a ton of patience.”

  “With you or with the dog?” Colonel Victor asks.

  Alex stops talking. His face blushes with hot-sauce embarrassment.

  The Colonel winks his eye whiskers. “C’mon, I was teasing, Alex. I’m used to hard work. Let’s get started.”

  Alex takes a deep breath and his shadows cool a bit. He jogs across the room to another clear plastic bin.

  “Okay, Daisy,” he squeaks. “Let’s learn some new words.”

  “BALL,” he squeak-shouts, and he holds up a ball. The caramel taste flares again from my belly. He places the ball back in the bin.

  Oh, heavens.

  “SOCK.” Alex holds up a sock. He returns the sock to the bin.

  Really? I look at Colonel Victor. He’s not tensing up at this idiocy, though, so I try to let it slide.

  “TOY.”

  “BONE.”

  “STICK.”

  I purse my lips. C’mon.

  Alex jogs back to us. He unclips my leash—hallelujah!—and squeals, “GO GET THE SOCK, DAISY. THE SOCK. GO GET IT. THE SOCK. THE SOCK. SOCK, DAISY!”

  I snuff. I trot to the box, nose through its contents, retrieve the sock, and bring it back.

  “GOOD GIRL, DAISY! EXCELLENT! OH, WHAT A SMART GIRL YOU ARE.”

  I am underemployed, is what I am.

  “BALL, DAISY! WHERE’S YOUR BALL? GET THE BALL! BALL, GIRL! BALL. BALL. BALL!”

  I do as I’m asked. I get the ball out of the box. The glory that is heaped upon me is whipped-cream-with-sprinkles incredulous.

  “STICK, DAISY! WHICH ONE IS THE STICK? GET THE STICK, GIRL. STICK!”

  I roll my eyes and get the stick, already. I drop it at his feet. Seriously, Alex. Challenge me here.

  “BONE, DAISY! GO GET THE BONE, GIRL. WHICH ONE IS THE BONE?”

  Enough already.

  I jog to the box, clamp my teeth around the handle, and drag the whole thing back.

  There. There’s everything you could possibly need, Alex.

  Alex’s forehead crinkles like paper. His face darkens with green worry lines.

  Uh-oh. I look up to Colonel Victor.

  The Colonel’s heartbeat skips and his shoulders start shaking.

  Big uh-oh. What have I done? Have I pushed him too far? Alex calls this out of sync—have I pushed the Colonel out of sync? Oh my.

  But instead, the Colonel snorts. He bottom-of-his belly, bend-over laughs. He flares like a bonfire with each guffaw.

  “She outsmarted you, Alex,” Colonel Victor said. “She brought you the whole box!”

  Alex shakes his head. “I don’t know. I think it’s a sign of behavioral issues—”

  But the Colonel keeps chuckling, and his bright red laughter burns away some of the shadows that color him always. He ruffles the fur on my head. I smile, relaxing my jaw and letting my tongue loll out. Even Micah, who sits in the corner, ears covered, giggles little hiccups of green-and-yellow joy. My tail thumps because I’ve pleased my pack.

  “I think it could be a serious issue. . . .” Alex is saying, but none of us are listening to his useless cat litter words.

  When we finally calm ourselves, Colonel Victor sighs like wind. “She’s a smart dog, Alex. She got those items first thing.”

  Alex’s shoulders drop. “She’s smart, yes. But she’s stubborn. She disobeyed. There’s a difference between a smart dog and an obedient
dog, and for this job, we need an obedient dog.”

  The Colonel tightens his grip on the leash. The lights behind his face cool, a setting sun. So do Micah’s. I’ve disappointed them. Disappointment tastes like earthworms.

  I tuck my tail. Why did I go and show off like that?

  They’ll send me back to the shelter.

  Alex digs in his pocket. He bends and looks me in the eye.

  “These are service dog patches, Daisy,” he says, holding up tiny round pieces of colorful cloth. He doesn’t squeak. His voice is dog-treat serious. I pay attention.

  “You have your vest,” he says, and points to my uniform. “If you pass your service dog test, Victor will sew these patches on your vest. Then you’ll be a true elite. A real service dog. I want you to be an elite dog, Daisy. I want you to earn these patches. We have nine weeks, Daisy. Nine.”

  He tucks the delicious patches back into his pocket.

  An elite.

  The Colonel’s grip on the leash tightened when he heard that word, so I understand.

  An elite is Important. It’s special, unique, different from just pet. It’s a tasty word, like chicken. Elite is useful.

  I was told I was useless by the other humans, my first pack, and then they left me in a Dumpster. I’ll do everything I can, toenails to tail tip, to be the opposite of useless.

  I want those patches so much I can feel it down to my paw pads.

  Elite.

  6

  DON’T FLY, DAISY

  When ten Micahs are turned loose in a big room, they run and scream and whack one another with plastic sticks, and it’s like being caught on the beach in a sudden storm: sound and sand and salt pelting you from all around. Stinging everywhere. But oddly happy. The boys don’t seem miserable. Just the opposite: they bare their teeth and whoop and climb things and jump off things and fly to the ground, and whoa, does flying ever look like fun.

  But I’m not here to have fun. This is a birthday party, after all. I’m on the job.

  Sit, I remind myself as I stay seated next to Colonel Victor. I practice my commands even when the rest of my pack doesn’t. It helps me be more useful. Elite. Stay.