A Dog's Purpose Boxed Set

by W. Bruce Cameron

  It was late in the afternoon when the stream joined a river. The boy stood and looked blankly at the dark water for a long time, then aimed us downstream, pushing through grasses and thickly choked trees.

  Night was just starting to fall when I picked up the scent of men. At this point Ethan seemed to be walking without purpose, his feet scuffing numbly in the dirt. Each time he fell, he took longer and longer to get back up, and he registered nothing when I darted ahead, my nose to the ground.

  “Come on, Bailey,” he mumbled. “Where you going?”

  I think he didn’t even notice when we crossed the footpath. He was squinting in the fading light, trying to keep from tripping, and I sensed nothing from him for several seconds when the grasses underfoot became a well-trod trail of dirt. I could smell several different men—all of them old scents but as clear to me as the track of children up and down the streets back home. Then suddenly the boy straightened, taking in a breath. “Hey!” he said softly, his gaze sharpening on the path.

  Now that I had a firm sense of where we were going, I trotted on ahead a few yards, my fatigue lifting with the boy’s rising excitement. Both the trail and the river were bending in parallel to the right, and I kept my nose down, noticing how the man smell was becoming both more strong and more recent. Someone had been here not long ago.

  Ethan stopped, so I went back to him. He was standing, staring, his mouth open.

  “Wow,” he said.

  I realized there was a bridge across the river, and, as I watched, a figure broke out of the gloom and walked along the railing, peering at the water. Ethan’s heart rate ticked up; I could hear it. His excitement, though, faded into a fear, and he shrank back, reminding me of my first mother’s reaction when we would come across men while we were hunting.

  “Bailey, be quiet,” he whispered.

  I didn’t know what was going on, but I sensed his mood—it was the same thing that had happened at home, the night he got the gun out and poked it into all of the closets. I looked at him alertly.

  “Hey!” the man on the bridge called. I felt the boy stiffen, getting ready to run away.

  “Hey!” the man shouted again. “Are you Ethan?”

  { TWELVE }

  The man on the bridge gave us a car ride. “We’ve been searching the whole state of Michigan for you, son,” he said. Ethan looked down, and from him I sensed sadness and shame and a little fear. We drove to a big building, and as soon as we stopped Dad opened the car door and he and Mom hugged Ethan and Grandma and Grandpa were there and everyone was happy, though there were no dog treats of any kind. The boy sat in a chair with wheels and a man pushed him into the building, and just before he went inside the boy turned and waved at me, and I thought he would probably be okay, though I felt pretty anxious to be separated from him. Grandpa held tight to my collar, so I didn’t have any choice in the matter.

  Grandpa took me for a car ride and I was a front-seat dog. We went to a place where they handed Grandpa a delicious-smelling sack through his window and he fed me dinner right there in the car, unwrapping hot sandwiches and handing them to me one at a time. He ate one, too.

  “Don’t tell Grandma about this,” he said.

  When we got home I was startled to see Flare standing in her usual place in her yard, regarding me with a slack expression. I barked at her through the car window until Grandpa told me to stop barking.

  The boy was only gone one night, but it was the first time since we’d been together that I had slept without him, and I paced the hallway until Dad shouted, “Lie down, Bailey!” I curled up in Ethan’s bed and fell asleep with my head on the pillow, where his scent was the strongest.

  When Mom brought Ethan home the next day I was overjoyed, but the boy’s mood was somber. Dad told him he was a bad boy. Grandpa talked to him in front of the gun cabinet. Everyone was tense—and yet nobody so much as mentioned the name Flare, and it was Flare who was the cause of the whole thing! I realized that because no one else had been there they didn’t know what had really happened and were mad at the boy instead of the horse.

  I was angry enough to want to go outside and bite that horse, but I didn’t, of course, because the thing was huge.

  The girl came over to see the boy, and the two of them sat on the porch and didn’t talk much, just sort of mumbled and looked away from each other.

  “Were you scared?” the girl asked.

  “No,” the boy said.

  “I would have been scared.”

  “Well, I wasn’t.”

  “Did you get cold at night?” she pressed.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  I alertly followed this exchange, sifting carefully for words such as “Bailey,” “car ride,” and “treats.” Hearing none of them, I put my head down and sighed. The girl reached down and petted me, so I rolled on my back for a tummy rub.

  I decided I liked the girl, and wished she visited more often and brought more of those biscuits and gave me some.

  Then, before I was ready, Mom packed and we took the big long car ride that meant school was coming. When we pulled in the driveway at home, several of the children came running over, and Marshmallow and I got reacquainted on the lawn, slipping right into our ongoing wrestling match.

  There were other dogs in the neighborhood, but I liked Marshmallow the best, probably because I saw her nearly every day when the boy went to stay with Chelsea’s mother after school. Often when I would head out through the open gate on an adventure Marshmallow would be out, too, and would accompany me while we explored the issue of other people’s trash cans.

  So I was alarmed to hear Chelsea leaning out of her mother’s car one day, calling, “Marshmallow! Marshy! Here, Marshmallow!” Chelsea came over to talk to Ethan, and before long all the kids in the neighborhood were calling Mashmallow’s name. It was clear to me that Marshmallow had been a bad dog and had gone off somewhere on her own adventure.

  Her scent was most recent in the area of the creek, but there were so many children and dogs, I didn’t have a good sense of what direction she’d taken. Chelsea was sad and cried, and I felt bad for her and put my head in her lap, and she hugged me.

  Todd was one of the children who were helping to look for Marshmallow, and curiously, her scent was on his pants. I sniffed him carefully, and he frowned and pushed my head away. His shoes were muddy and Marshmallow’s scent was strong there, too, plus other things I couldn’t identify.

  “Come on, Bailey,” Ethan said when he saw Todd’s reaction to my examination.

  Marshmallow never did come home. I remembered my first mother, running out the gate and into the world without a look back. Some dogs just want to be free to wander, because they don’t have a boy who loves them.

  Eventually Marshmallow’s scent faded from the wind, but I never seemed to stop sniffing for her. When I remembered playing with Marshmallow I found myself thinking of Coco, back in the Yard. I would have loved to see Coco again, and Marshmallow, but I was beginning to understand that life was far more complicated than it had appeared to be in the Yard and that it was people who were in charge of it, not dogs. What mattered was not what I wanted; what mattered was that I was there in the woods when Ethan was cold and hungry, keeping him warm at nights, being his companion.

  That winter, around the time when Dad put a tree in the living room for Merry Christmas, Chelsea got a new puppy. They named her Duchess. She was relentlessly playful, to the point where I’d get annoyed at her sharp teeth digging into my ears and would give her a quick growl to make her stop. She’d blink at me innocently and back off for just a few seconds before deciding I couldn’t have meant it, and then she’d come right back at me. It was very irritating.

  In the spring, the word “go-kart” swept through the neighborhood, and all up and down the street the children were sawing and hammering on wood, totally ignoring their dogs. Dad would come out to the garage every evening and talk to the boy whil
e he fussed over whatever he was doing. I even went so far as to go into the boy’s closet and bring out the loathsome flip, thinking I could tantalize him with that, but he remained totally focused on playing with pieces of wood that he never once threw for me to chase and bring back.

  “See my go-kart, Bailey? It’s going to go fast!”

  Finally the boy opened the garage door, sat on the go-kart, and rode it like a sled down the short driveway. I trotted beside him, thinking we’d both been through a lot of bother for such a pointless ending, but when the go-kart reached the bottom of the driveway he picked it up and carried it back into the garage to play with it some more!

  At least with the flip you had something you could chew on.

  On a sunny day when there was no school, all of the kids in the neighborhood took their go-karts to a long, steep street several blocks away. Duchess was too young to accompany the procession, but I went along with my boy, though I had no enthusiasm for his initial idea that he should sit in the go-kart and I should pull him down the street by a leash.

  Todd and his older brother, Drake, were among the kids and laughed and said things about Chelsea’s go-kart, and I could sense that her feelings were hurt. When they lined up the go-karts at the top of the hill, Todd’s was next to Ethan’s.

  I was not at all prepared for what happened next: someone yelled, “Go!” and then the go-karts were off, rolling down the hill, gathering speed. Drake ran up behind Todd and gave his go-kart a big push, and it leaped ahead.

  “Cheating!” Chelsea yelled. Her go-kart was moving very slowly, but Ethan’s was gaining speed and soon I had to run to keep up. The other go-karts fell away, and after a little bit it was just Ethan’s go-kart, steadily closing in on Todd’s.

  I ran with abandonment, an exuberant freedom, galloping down the hill after my boy. At the bottom a boy named Billy stood with a flag on a stick, and I sensed that he was somehow part of what was happening. Ethan was hunched over, his head low, and it was all so much fun I decided I wanted to be on the go-kart with him. I put on an extra burst of speed and leaped through the air, landing on the back of his go-kart and nearly toppling off again.

  The force of my impact threw us forward, so that we were now passing Todd! Billy waved his stick and I could hear yelling and cheering behind us as the go-kart, now on the flat part of the road, rolled to a stop.

  “Good dog, Bailey,” the boy told me, chuckling.

  All the other go-karts rolled up behind us, followed by the rest of the children, who were all yelling and laughing. Billy came over and held Ethan’s hand up into the air, dropping his stick with the flag on it. I picked up the stick and pranced around with it, daring someone to try to take it and have some real fun.

  “Not fair, not fair!” Todd shouted.

  The crowd of children grew quiet. A hot fury poured off of Todd, who stood facing Ethan.

  “The damn dog jumped on the kart; that’s why you won. You’re disqualified,” Drake said, standing behind his brother.

  “Well, you pushed your brother!” Chelsea shouted.

  “So?”

  “I would have caught you anyway,” Ethan said.

  “Everyone who says Todd’s right, say ‘aye!’ ” Billy called.

  Todd and his brother shouted, “Aye!”

  “Everyone who says Ethan won, say ‘nay.’ ”

  “Nay!” all of the other children shouted. I was so startled at this loud outburst, I dropped my stick.

  Todd took a step forward and hit Ethan, who ducked and tackled Todd. They both fell to the ground.

  “Fight!” Billy yelled.

  I started to surge forward to protect my boy, but Chelsea put a firm hand on my collar. “No, Bailey. Stay.”

  The boys rolled around, the two of them tied together in a tight knot of anger. I twisted around, trying to slip my collar, but Chelsea held fast. Frustrated, I barked.

  Ethan was soon sitting up on top of Todd. Both boys were panting. “You give?” Ethan demanded.

  Todd looked away, his eyes squeezed shut. Humiliation and hate wafted off of him in equal amounts. Finally, he nodded. The boys stood up warily, beating at the dirt on their pants.

  I felt the sudden rage from Drake at the exact moment he lunged forward, slamming Ethan with both hands. Ethan rocked back but didn’t fall.

  “Come on, Ethan. Come on,” Drake snarled.

  There was a long pause while Ethan stood looking up at the older boy, and then Billy stepped forward. “No,” Billy said.

  “No,” Chelsea said.

  “No,” some of the other children said. “No.”

  Drake looked at us all for a minute, and then he spat on the ground and picked up the go-kart. Without a word, the two brothers walked away.

  “Well, we sure showed everybody today, didn’t we, Bailey?” Ethan said to me. Everyone hauled their go-karts to the top of the hill and rolled them back down, all day long. Ethan allowed Chelsea to ride his go-kart, since hers had lost a wheel, and she had me ride behind her every time.

  That night Ethan was excited at dinner, talking rapidly to Mom and Dad, who smiled as they listened. It took the boy a long time to fall asleep, and after he did so his restlessness made me slide off the bed and lie on the floor. This meant I wasn’t really asleep when I heard a huge crash from downstairs.

  “What was that?” the boy asked me, sitting bolt upright in bed. He jumped down onto the floor as the lights came on in the hallway.

  “Ethan, stay in your room,” Dad told him. He was tense, angry, and afraid. “Bailey, come.”

  I obediently eased down the stairs with Dad, who moved cautiously and turned on the lights in the living room. “Who’s there?” he asked loudly.

  Wind blew the curtains on the front window—a window that was normally never opened. “Don’t come down with bare feet!” Dad shouted.

  “What is it?” Mom asked.

  “Someone threw a rock through our window. Stay back, Bailey.”

  I sensed Dad’s concern and sniffed around the room at all the glass. On the floor was a rock, little shards of the window clinging to it. When I put my nose to it, I instantly recognized the smell.

  Todd.

  { THIRTEEN }

  A year or so later, in the spring, Smokey the cat got sick. He lay around moaning and didn’t protest when I put my nose down in his face to investigate this new behavior. Mom became very worried and took Smokey for a car ride. When Mom came home, she was sad, probably because cats are no fun in a car.

  A week or so later, Smokey died. After dinner the family went into the backyard, where Ethan had excavated a big hole, and they wrapped Smokey’s body in a blanket and put it in the hole and covered it with dirt. Ethan hammered a piece of wood into the soil next to the mound of wet dirt, and he and Mom cried a little. I nuzzled them both to remind them that there was really no need to grieve, since I was okay and really a much better pet than Smokey ever was.

  The next day, after Mom and the boy left for school, I went out into the yard and dug Smokey back up, figuring they couldn’t have meant to bury a perfectly good dead cat.

  That summer we didn’t go to the Farm at all. Ethan and some friends in the neighborhood would get up every day and go to people’s houses and cut grass with loud lawn mowers. The boy would take me along with him but always tied me to a tree. I loved the smell of the newly cut grass, but I did not care for lawn mowing in general and felt this activity was somehow involved in us not visiting the Farm. Grandpa and Grandma did drive in for a week, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun, especially when Dad and Grandpa exchanged some harsh words when they were alone in the backyard peeling husks off of corn. I felt the anger in both of them and wondered if it was a reaction to the fact that the corn husks were inedible, something I’d verified by both smelling and chewing. After that day, Dad and Grandpa were very uneasy in each other’s company.

  When school started again, several things were different. The boy no longer went to Chelsea’s house when he got home
—in fact, he usually was the last one to arrive, smelling of dirt, grass, and sweat as he raced up the driveway after a car dropped him off in the street. And some nights we’d go on a car ride to what I came to understand was a football game, where I would sit on a leash at the end of a long yard next to Mom and people would yell and scream for no reason. Boys wrestled and threw a ball to each other, sometimes running down close to where I was standing and other times playing all the way at the far end of the big yard.

  I could smell Ethan in the group of boys sometimes. It was a little frustrating to just sit there and not go out and enhance the game—at home, I’d learned to get my mouth around a football. One time I was playing with the boy and I bit too hard and the football collapsed until it was a saggy flat wad of leather, sort of like the flip. After that, Ethan didn’t want me chewing on footballs, but I was still allowed to play with them as long as I was careful. Mom didn’t know this and held me tight by the leash. I knew if she would just let me go get the football, the boys would have a lot more fun chasing me than each other, because I was faster than any of them.

  Chelsea’s puppy, Duchess, grew up, and we became good friends, once I demonstrated to her how she was to behave around me. One day when the gate was open I trotted over to see her and she was wearing a plastic cone around her neck and seemed very out of sorts. She thumped her tail a little when she saw me outside her cage, but she didn’t bother to get up. The sight made me uneasy—I hoped no one was planning to put one of those things on me again.

  When it snowed Ethan and I played with sleds, and when the snow melted we played with bouncy balls. A couple of times the boy pulled the flip out of the closet and stared at it while I glanced away in dread. He’d hold it up and look it over, feeling its heft, and then put it away with a sigh.

  That summer was another one without a Farm visit, and once again the boy cut grass with his friends—I would have thought he’d gotten it out of his system, but he apparently still enjoyed it. That year, Dad left for several days and while he was gone Grandpa and Grandma visited. Their car smelled like Flare and hay and the pond, and I stood and sniffed it for several minutes and raised my legs on the tires.