A Dog Like Daisy

by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

  Micah bounces on his toes like the ball he always dribbles. “Yeah? Cool.” He spins like wind.

  “Son?” Colonel Victor says, his voice chalky. Micah stops. Looks back. Colonel Victor is fighting to calm himself, like telling yourself don’t look down when you are high up and teetering. I step between the two of them. The Colonel doesn’t notice. Micah does.

  The Colonel rakes the next words from the bottom of his soul: “Tattoos are for warriors.”

  Micah’s face might split in two, his teeth show so much. “Warriors. Yeah!” He bounds from the room, a skippy, nimble frog.

  The Colonel swallows. I can hear how knotted his throat is. He lays a hand on my back. I can feel how taut his muscles are.

  He rubs the soul swirl tattoo on his own arm: a kingly buck, antlers so big they stretch up and over the Colonel’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Buck,” he mumbles, his voice sticky like peanut butter. “I’m sorry, Buck. I’m sorry, Buck. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Buck.”

  He’s not crying. He’s stuck in a too-tight place for his soul. He’s rubbing his skin raw like sand.

  “I’m sorry, Buck. I’m sorry.”

  I understand this. Buck was part of Colonel Victor’s pack, and now he’s not.

  Buck is gone.

  I understand this because I’ve lost part of my pack before, too.

  My soul tattoo is my torn ear.

  14

  HUMANS ARE DAFFY

  It’s cold-to-the-soul raining. But when you’re a tool and not a pet, you stand under a tiny portable room called an umbrella. It’s a terrifying piece of squeaky colorful plastic. The raindrops ping against it like rocks. The wet air but not-wet me is puzzling. My whiskers twitch at the noise of the rain on the plastic. The Colonel doesn’t care for the sound, either, based on his drumming heartbeat. But he’d apparently rather endure the bone-rattling patter than get wet.

  Humans are daffy.

  “But I have a car,” Colonel Victor says to Alex. Today Alex is mowed grass—a fresher, lighter green but still sticky and itchy and sneezy.

  Alex nods under his umbrella. A dozen tiny rivers snake off the roof of his plastic room and splash down on my head, my paws. I shiver.

  “Like I said before, we’re taking the city bus today for training,” Alex says, his voice an impatient ticking clock. “Nothing will challenge Daisy as much as the bus. It’s only two weeks until her test. We have to challenge her every way we know how.”

  Micah doesn’t carry an umbrella. He has a hood on his jacket drawn tight around his berry cheeks. He splashes—kaPOOSH—into puddles like a pigeon. Water radiates from him like glinting silver pinwheels. He’s grinning and rather enjoying himself. It looks quite pleasurable, honestly. It would be nice to have fun in a puddle again.

  Fun. How frivolous of me! I’m no more focused than a hamster. I concentrate on what the Colonel is saying. Need is heavier than fun. My need is to be a tool. Tools do not splash in puddles.

  “I haven’t been on a bus since . . .” Colonel Victor stops his words like he’s been tripped. His jaw clamps alligator tight. He doesn’t finish his sentence. Unfinished sentences feel like lingering ghosts. I get the feeling his last bus ride has something to do with his last pack.

  The bus hisses to stop in front of us. It sends a wall of water over me and Colonel Victor’s feet. The Colonel spits a tack-sharp word. I shake-shake-shake and Alex and Micah glare at me.

  The bus doors scream open. Alex and Micah duck inside the silver tube. The Colonel tugs the leash, instructing me to get on. The steps are steep and slick and rubbery, like mossy rocks at the pier. I slipped on those once, looking for food. My paw hurt for a long time after that.

  The woman behind the wheel pig-grunts. “No dogs on the bus.”

  Colonel Victor looks to Alex, asking him to explain, which surprises me. Alex arches an eyebrow at the Colonel, telling him this is all you, which surprises me more.

  Colonel Victor swallows. “It’s a service dog.”

  The driver’s pig snout twitches. “She ain’t wearing a harness. She doesn’t get on unless she’s wearing a harness.”

  The man in the front row of the bus looks at his watch and huffs snooty cat impatience.

  “Harnesses are for seeing-eye dogs,” Colonel Victor says, his voice getting pointier and darker on the edges. “She’s a different kind of service dog.”

  “Yeah?” The pig woman snuffs. She’d make good bacon. My hackles twitch at her. I start panting because the last thing I need is to get angry here, now. “Why do you need a dog?” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”

  The other passengers on the bus are seat-shifting uncomfortable now, a park full of pigeons fluttering over thrown seed. Micah grits his teeth, places his ear muzzles over his ears.

  The Colonel’s heart rate is thrumming. I can hear the words he’s trying to get loose from his desert-dry throat.

  The seconds last for minutes.

  “This dog,” the Colonel says at last, his words like daggers, “keeps me from killing you.”

  We got kicked off that bus.

  Like a stubborn flea itch, Alex insists we catch the next one. The new driver never even turns his mirrored sunglasses our way. I wonder if he can see at all; his body angles never change, not once, while we climb aboard. If he can’t see, I suppose we’ll be just fine with this bus driver, then.

  And oh, dogs in heaven, this bus stinks. Wet feet and unbathed human armpits and old cigarettes and brown and yellow and moldy green stains. It’s torture, an assault. I’m unsure how these humans aren’t keeled over vomiting in the aisle, but based on the smell, someone has. There’s no place for me to lie down, not really, so I’m balled up at Colonel Victor’s and Micah’s feet. And when we start to move, it’s nothing like riding in a car. It’s a herky-jerky, chipmunk-twitch movement, all starts and stops. My stomach heaves, but I manage to choke everything back.

  One woman with skunk-gray hair coos at me, her sounds fat and round and lazy like guinea pigs. Another guy with a wad of brown goop crammed in his cheek makes ghouly, teethless faces at me. I’m trying to stay focused on Colonel Victor and his cracking knuckles, his grinding jaw. But it’s hard to focus when the kid in the seat in front of you is on her hands and knees poking you with a plastic doll.

  If the test will be like this, I will have a thorny time with it. My stomach twists, and I start panting.

  “Aw, so sweet,” one lady who wears a nostril-burning amount of perfume says as she passes. “Can I pet your dog?”

  “No,” Colonel Victor says. His answer is a bullet. The woman’s eyebrows draw together at his warning shot.

  Micah shifts, his face rearranging. “Daisy is a service dog,” he says to the woman. His voice is floaty, a soft white cloud. The opposite of a bullet. “She’s at work now. So no petting. Sorry.”

  The woman softens. It’s amazing to watch how different her face looks after Micah says this, transforming from purple to yellow, a healing bruise. “Oh, I see. Well, I hope you let her off work soon. Poor girl needs the chance to be a dog, too.”

  The woman surfs away on a wave of perfume. The Colonel, ever so slightly, elbows Micah, the tiniest of thank-yous. Micah’s face pulls into a half grin. He gives off the faintest scent of satisfaction.

  And then, and then, Micah breaks a rule. He inches the toe of his wet sneaker forward and nudges me on the chin. An identical nudge to the one the Colonel gave him.

  I am tail-chasing confused. Why would Micah thank me? I’ve done nothing for him. In fact, I admit: I go out of my way—like, lost-scent out of my way—to avoid him.

  I am not Micah’s tool.

  15

  UNTRUTHS TASTE LIKE TURKEY BACON

  The backyard is little more than patchy green grass, rocks, shells, and sandy soil, but it’s mine. There’s a single palm tree that swishes and paints the sky, and trees like this one are why swishing sounds are always blue.

  I’m sunning myself. The pleasure
of sunning oneself should never be underestimated. My soul is green in the sun. It opens, and I am bigger.

  I need to rest. We’ve been training over many moments lately. Alex says, “One week! One week to go!” His words feel like green-grass bellyaches, like pokes from a sharp stick. So I’m sunning myself after a long day of being useful.

  Hheeeeeeessssshhhhh.

  The sound I see is red and orange and yellow. A burst of flame. I open my nostrils to it and taste Smaug.

  I follow the scent. He’s around the side of the house and he’s sunning himself, too, on a rock. His eyes are closed, and he’s moving slowly, intentionally, like a poem of flower buds lining a tree branch.

  Hheeeeeeessssshhhhh.

  The sound he makes by dropping open his spiky bearded chin and waggling his tongue. It’s the sound of hot, hissing, crackling fire.

  A fire-breathing dragon.

  Do you believe it? Smaug says, eyes still shut. I didn’t know he knew I was here. Do you believe the fire?

  I don’t. I learned long ago the difference between fire in my soul and fire on my skin. Don’t be silly, I say.

  Smaug opens one roly-poly bug eye. If you believe, it becomes.

  I huff. Not always. “Always” is every time. “Not always” is not.

  Your belief is flimsy, Smaug says. He waves a claw through the air like a breeze. I am a fire-breathing dragon. What are you?

  I pull my neck backward, a turtle in retreat. Pardon me?

  What are you? What do you choose to believe about yourself?

  Beliefs are leaves: each different, each essential. Plump with green, full of hope and promise, each one supporting growth. Renewing.

  If I could pick any leaf in a world of leaves, I’d pick the one that seems most important to my pack: the tool leaf. The useful one. The one that proves my first pack was wrong about me. But I don’t tell Smaug this, because his point is I can become anything, anything at all, and that is simply absurd and untrue. Untruths taste like turkey bacon.

  I think back to Micah and his flying-friend birthday party.

  I want to fly, I say. That’s not a turkey-bacon truth, that’s 100 percent pure pork. Who doesn’t envy birds? But me flying is as absurd as Smaug believing he’s truly breathing fire.

  Then jump, Smaug says. You can’t fly without jumping.

  I’m shaking my head so hard at this silly lizard, my tags jangle. He jerks his whiskery chin at the big metal box that blows cool air inside the house.

  He’s daring me to jump off it. Dares taste like sardines, salty and boneless.

  I clamber atop the metal thing, my toenails making horrible knifelike noises as they claw the ridges on the box.

  The metal is hot under my paw pads. This box has been sunning itself, too.

  Smaug spins his head so his eyes are almost where his chin should be. He is rubber-ball unpredictable. Now the potential to fly exists. Jump.

  The box is taller than I thought it was, now that I’m up here. Why do our eyes sometimes lie to us? My knees tremble like butterflies.

  Fly.

  I close my eyes.

  I jump.

  My legs spiral through air, swimming.

  And the second before I land, I feel it. I feel flying.

  I smile, loll my tongue.

  But I don’t tell Smaug. Why give him such satisfaction?

  Smaug’s eyes are closed again, and he’s hissing fire colors: Hheeeeeeessssshhhh.

  I climb back onto the metal box. It’s not easy, and it’s sidewalk hot, but flying!

  I jump again. This time I twist my hips and let my tongue flap. Flying!

  I can’t hold it back. Did you see that? I say, grinning. I’m grateful that Smaug is not an I-told-you-so kind of lizard. I-told-you-sos rank at the same level as tattletales.

  Hheeeeeeessssshhhhh.

  And again. I climb. I ready myself. I leap—

  Hheeeeeeessssshhhhh.

  “DAISY!”

  Micah’s voice hits me with a crack, like a ball hits a bat. I open my eyes. I don’t fly. I crash. Onto Smaug.

  Smaug curls, hisses. I can’t blame him. Instinct is blood.

  Micah marches to us, his feet furious. “Daisy! Bad girl, attacking Smaug! Bad, bad girl!”

  And then he does it. He takes the basketball he’s always holding and he throws it with all his might. It hits my jaw like a car bumper. Silver chrome pain shoots through my skull.

  I duck my head, instinctively protecting my torn left ear, and tuck my tail. I am tangled-leash confused. This is something my first pack would do. My heart knots with sadness.

  Micah scoops up his ball, his lizard, and stomps inside, his feet tattletaling my mistake to the Colonel. “Dad!”

  If you believe, it becomes.

  I believe I need to stick to that tool leaf.

  “Well, you shouldn’t let that lizard wander around like that!” the Colonel snaps at Micah. He leans against me, taking the weight off his walking stick.

  Yeah! I chime in.

  Micah flinches. I swear, I think he hears me better than any of them.

  “It’s a bearded dragon, Dad. And he was here first.”

  The Colonel pinches the skin between his eyes, and the gesture gives off a high-pitched shriek, like escaping air. It only seems to bother me, though. I cock my head.

  “Micah, honey,” Anna says. She lays a hand on his shoulder. “You just have to keep him in his tank now, okay?”

  Micah scowls at me like I smell of skunk. His feet twitch. I pull back.

  “We know you love Smaug,” Anna says. “But we need Daisy. Understand?”

  Everyone is stone quiet except the Colonel’s pinch. It’s nerve-snapping shrill.

  Micah scoots his chair back. He leaves. Anna sighs smoke. Victor pinches—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  I understand.

  Smaug is love.

  I am need.

  But need is useful.

  Right?

  16

  GARBAGE TRUCK WORDS

  “Today’s the big day, Daisy!” Alex squeaks at me, his words a pile of twitchy chipmunks. “Today you take your test. Are you ready to be a full service dog? Are you ready to earn your patches?” Alex shows me the important scraps of material and thumps me on the ribs. I feel his question echo through me.

  For the last week, ever since my pack thought I was attacking Smaug, I’ve been grunted at, scowled at, and looked at with squinty suspicion. By Micah. The other two treat me as a thing. A tool. A need, not a want. That’s what I wanted, right? Yes, it is what I want. Usefulness.

  I am ready.

  Alex turns to the Colonel, and his voice changes back to normal onion green. The way he changes his voice when he talks to me irritates me like a buzzy mosquito. “Let’s go in.”

  In is not inside a building. In is through the gates of an amusement park on the beach. Humans are packed inside like rows of fish scales. It smells of funnel cakes and hot dogs and sweat and grime and joy and fear.

  Colonel Victor’s jaw stiffens. Shadows pull his face down, down. Sometimes I fear the shadows will never release their hold on him.

  Micah bounces on his toes, points to a large ugly metal mountain. “Can we ride the Screamin’ Demon while we’re here, Dad?”

  Colonel Victor shouts his answer, I’m guessing because he can hear little else above his hammering heart. “Sure. After Daisy passes her test. We’ll . . . try.”

  Micah jogs in place, a ball itching for play. His face reflects the rainbow colors of the lights here. He is endless grass on the perfect summer day in this place. I can hear his heart singing.

  Once inside, Alex approaches a fellow built like an apple tree: all shoulders, tiny feet. The sun glints off his furless head. I feel sorry for him and how cold he must be.

  “Colonel,” Alex shouts over the rainbow noise of the crowd to Colonel Victor. “This is Frank. He’s doing the test today.” Alex’s voice isn’t green when he says this. It’s orange, like an arrow
sign on a highway. Like it knows things I don’t, pointing toward ways I don’t know.

  Colonel Victor’s jaw is popping like firecrackers now. He nods once and hands my leash over to Frank.

  Wait, WHAT? My own heart speeds. Nearby, a train screeches on the ugly metal mountain and humans shriek like bats. Colonel Victor isn’t walking me through the test?

  Frank’s eyes barely twitch in my direction, and based on the way he holds the leash, Frank is about as kind as a gravel road. He has a silver hoop through his nose. I sit, because no one told me I’d be tested by a bull.

  Frank jabs his meaty thumb between my ribs. “Psssshhht!” he snake-hisses. “Stand, Daisy.”

  I do, if for no other reason than to avoid getting another jabby poke in my ribs.

  Frank starts walking. His stride is much different from the Colonel’s—his pace is faster and shorter, and I struggle to adjust. When I tug the leash, Frank pssssshhhttts me and prods me in the ribs with his thick, rude thumb.

  “We’ll be back in ten minutes,” Frank says. He doesn’t turn to say it, so I can’t be certain the Colonel has heard this news with his tiny, ineffective human ears. I worry he thinks I’m leaving him. I perk my ears backward to listen for his troubled heart, but I can’t hear it walking away through all this noise.

  Oh, the noise! It’s a terrifying tangle of sound: screams and thundering music, metal-on-metal grinding, children crying, adults yelling, children laughing, adults laughing. When you mix all the colors together, you get muddy brown. It’s hard to see and move through mud, but I want those patches. I want to make the Colonel proud. I want to be a useful tool.

  “Block, Daisy,” Frank whispers like dandelion fluff. His orders aren’t commanding like the Colonel’s. They are soft and too airy. I need to sort out his cold-breath words from the other six thousand words staining the air right now. By the time I do, Frank has pssssshhhttted me again. That thumb of his is thick, but I could snap it off with my powerful teeth.

  When I adjust to the muddy noises, I realize how many smells have wings in this place. Hot dogs and gyros and ice cream and popcorn and cotton candy. My mouth is a puddle. And there, lying under all the smells, just on the other side of the giant terrifying metal wheel, is the ocean.