by Bobbie Pyron
Her eyes were empty.
I shook her and shook her and shook her. “Wake up, Babushka, wake up!” Blood rushed from her mouth and pooled beneath it. Still, her eyes looked at nothing.
“Please,” I whispered. I pressed my head to hers.
Smoke sniffed Grandmother’s face and whimpered. He licked the side of her mouth.
Something roared and clawed at the entry to the basement.
Smoke raced to the other side, barking and digging frantically. The passageway up and out of the broken church was buried.
He looked at me and barked. The look and the bark said, “We must live!” I took off my coat and draped it across Grandmother’s head and shoulders.
I joined Smoke and we dug together, trying our best to get out, until my fingers were bloody. “It’s no use,” I said to Smoke. “I can’t get us out.”
Smoke’s eyes told me he believed I could. Then I remembered the bucket I had used to bring water to our den.
I grabbed the bucket and dug with all my might. Smoke dug next to me. Finally, the earth gave way beneath his paws and my bucket, and we pushed into the light.
I coughed and sputtered and flopped onto my back, gasping for air. Something rumbled toward me. Smoke barked in angry fury.
I sat up and rubbed the dirt out of my eyes. A huge digging machine on wheels like army tanks bore down upon me. I had seen these machines before in our village when they tore down the old factory. I could just make out a man sitting atop the machine.
Smoke and Lucky barked and lunged at the machine. Rip darted this way and that just out of reach of the rolling ribbon of wheels.
“No!” I screamed.
I rolled to the side and scrambled to my feet. The man barely glanced at me. I was nothing but a cockroach scuttling beneath him.
I grabbed a fistful of rocks and flung them at the man and the machine. “You killed her! You killed her!”
Rip and Smoke and Lucky ran to the far edge of the weedy lot and barked. With all my strength, I flung a large rock at the man. “I hate you!” I said, tears making dirty tracks down my face. “I loved her and you killed her!”
The rock flew through the air like an arrow, straight and true. It smashed squarely into the side of the man’s face.
“Hey!” he cried. His cigarette fell from his mouth. For the first time he saw me. Blood trickled down the side of his face.
I looked up at him, empty-handed. “I loved her,” I sobbed. “I loved her and you killed her.”
Then I ran to join the other dogs. With one last look at the place holding the body of Grandmother, we raced out of sight.
For days the dogs and I ran. We ran away from The City and the people and the machines and the body of Grandmother. We ran past squat apartment buildings, one after another, all looking the same. We ran past falling-down warehouses, skirting broken glass and bottles and skinny, wary dogs and men with hard black eyes.
We stopped long enough to dig food out of the garbage cans. There was no use begging here: No one had anything to spare.
One day, from the far side of a weedy, glass-sparkled lot, the cries of screeching birds drew us. The wind carried a smell both rotten and sweet. We followed our noses to the source of the smell. There, rising before us like a living, breathing, stinking hulk, towered a mountain of garbage.
Humans of all sizes crawled over the mountain pulling out scraps of this and bundles of that — ragged clothes, broken pots and pans, twisted heaps of metal. A small girl in rags and no shoes squealed with delight as she pulled a naked, armless doll from the mound. A woman with her head wrapped in rags dragged pieces of wood over to a tumbledown hut on the edge of the woods on the far side of the Garbage Mountain. A pack of children played king-of-the-mountain on top of a pile of tires.
Two men argued over a rusty wagon. “It is mine!” said a man with a striped hat.
“No, I saw it first!” said a man with one arm.
The man with the hat hit the one-armed man over the head with a bottle.
We made our way around Garbage Mountain just inside the edge of trees. Even the puppies kept silent as we passed. Here and there, people huddled around small, smoky fires. I did not understand this. It was warm and the sun was high. Still, they stood and sat by the flames, passing bottles and laughing. Skinny, skulking dogs hovered at the edges. Their tails said they were scared and hungry.
The wind shifted, blowing the smoke through the trees to where we watched. Rip sneezed.
The talk stopped at the nearest fire. Heads turned in our direction. The dogs of Garbage Mountain growled. “Who’s that?” someone demanded.
Slowly I left the cover of the trees and stepped into the light. The dogs — my dogs — pressed close to my legs. I rested a hand on Smoke’s back. A low growl rumbled up through his chest and to my hand.
“What’s your name, boy? Who do you belong to?”
“I belong to them,” I said.
“Who?”
I rested my other hand on Lucky’s head. “The dogs,” I said.
“Ha,” said a woman with no teeth. “Who heard of a child belonging to a pack of dogs?”
“You come over here with us,” a man in a long coat said, waving me over to the fire with a bottle. “We’ll look after you.”
“And bring those young dogs with you,” another man said, licking his lips like a wolf.
The low, skulking dogs, stay-by-the-fire dogs, inched forward and growled.
My heart thundered in my chest and told my legs to run. But my legs would not run.
The toothless woman grinned and cackled. “Come over here, little boy. Come to granny.”
My brain told me to run but I was frozen like a statue. Perhaps the toothless woman was a witch and had cast a spell on me. I closed my eyes and rubbed the baby tooth in my pocket.
Just then, a high tweet! tweet! pierced the air. Cries of “Militsiya! Run!” crisscrossed Garbage Mountain. Birds and dogs and people scattered.
The spell broke. My legs came to life. The dogs and I ran as far and as fast as we could away from Garbage Mountain.
We ran as if on fire, faster than we had ever run before. We left Garbage Mountain behind, we left the tribe of Garbage Mountain behind. We ran until our feet no longer skimmed and skittered over asphalt and broken glass. We ran until our feet fell upon green grass, and a gentle trail led us into the woods.
Into the woods, the trail led us deeper and deeper. Never had I heard such quiet. The only sounds were my footfalls and the snuffling of the dogs. Everything was to be sniffed; everything was to be peed upon.
I had never imagined the world could hold so many trees. In my village, the only tree was the yelka tree in the town square at Christmastime. In The City, the trees grew confined in corrals of brick and iron, as if they might walk away on their own and wreak havoc in The City. Here, the trees grew and soared and sighed and sang where they wanted.
And birds! Oh, the birds and their sweet music!
For the rest of that day and the next, we followed the trails. They led us across small meadows dotted with bright yellow flowers, past clear streams, and through places where the trees hugged so close together the sun barely reached the forest floor. We drank from the streams and rolled in the grass. We napped to the drone of bees and the press of warm sun. My heart ached when I thought how much Grandmother would have loved sleeping in sun-warmed grass.
That second day, Smoke dropped a dead rabbit at my feet. It was large and brown and soft as soft could be.
“Thank you, Smoke,” I said as I stroked the still-warm body of the rabbit. “But I can’t eat this.” I pushed the rabbit back to Smoke. Smoke looked at me with puzzled eyes. He picked up the rabbit and tossed it at my feet.
“No,” I said.
Smoke sat and looked at me for a long time. He took in my short, stubby fingers without claws. He studied my small, useless nose and equally useless teeth.
Smoke snorted. He picked up the rabbit and carried it to Little Mother
and the puppies, who were watching from beneath a flowering bush. Smoke and Lucky and Rip trotted off on the trail; when they returned they carried another rabbit and two squirrels. My stomach rumbled. I watched miserably as they ate.
The third day was cool and overcast. Clouds spit rain. Once again, I watched in misery as the dogs ate mice for their meals. Even the puppies were more successful than I.
I crawled beneath the umbrella of an evergreen’s wide branches. I stuck my thumb in my mouth, then pulled it out. “I am not a little baby,” I said to the rain and the dogs beyond the branches. “I got us away from the evil witch who eats children and puppies.” I reached underneath my sweater and ragged shirt for the pages of my fairy tale book. “Yes, just like that witch who tried to lure those children into her oven.”
The pages weren’t there. I frowned and dug down in the front of my pants. No pages there.
And then my heart fell away down to my toes. “My coat,” I whispered. “The pages were in the pocket of my coat.” Which was covering the body of Grandmother.
“No!” I cried as I flung myself from beneath the tree. “How could I have forgotten? What will we do without the stories?”
I beat the bushes furiously with a stick. I knocked off the showy heads of flowers. “Stupid, stupid boy,” I said as I beat and smashed. “You are useless and pathetic.” I watched the puppies play tug-of-war with a squirrel tail. “Even the puppies are smarter than you,” I said.
Little Mother watched me with worry-filled eyes. She was torn between wanting to comfort me and fear of my anger and the swinging stick. Rip nipped at my leg. I swung my stick and brought it down hard on the little dog’s shoulders. Rip yelped in pain. His eyes were huge with fear. He rolled over onto his back, exposing his throat and belly. He wet himself. The forest grew utterly silent, except for Rip’s whimpers. The dogs all backed away from me as if I were a stranger.
I dropped my stick and ran into the forest.
I curled up under a bush and rocked myself back and forth. “Everything is wrong. Everything is lost! Grandmother, the fairy tales … and look what you’ve done now, you stupid boy,” I sobbed. “You worthless cockroach.” I buried my face against my arm and bit down. Hard. I bit my own arm until I drew blood. “You hurt Rip,” I said over and over as I continued to bite.
Something warm and wet and rough stroked the side of my face. I lifted my head and looked into the smiling, worried eyes of Lucky. Just behind him stood Smoke.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Lucky sniffed my arm.
“I am nothing but a stupid, pathetic boy.”
Gently, Lucky licked the blood from my arm.
Finally, Smoke nudged my side. He pushed at my legs and knees. When I didn’t obey his command, he pulled on my sleeve.
I crawled from beneath the bush. “What do I do?” I asked the dogs.
Smoke barked twice. Lucky wagged his tail. Let us show you, his eyes said.
They led me along narrow trails crisscrossed with animal tracks. They led me across one meadow and then another. They led me across a stream, past a pond. The narrow trail grew wider, and then met a gravel road. The gravel road curved this way and that. It crossed a stone bridge littered with leaves and empty acorn shells. Something big startled at our passing and bounded away into the forest.
We loped along the gravel road for a long time. My legs trembled from hunger. I stopped. The wind blew and rain pattered the puddles in the road. “I can’t,” I sobbed. “I can’t go any more.”
Lucky leaned into my legs and licked my hands. Smoke barked up ahead. There was no sympathy in his bark, only a command.
Finally, the gravel road stopped. A blacktopped road crossed in front of us. A road that hissed with rain and cars. I swayed on my feet and shivered.
When the road was clear of cars, the dogs dashed across. What could I do but follow?
We trotted along footpaths. Here there were signs of people: aluminum cans, glass and plastic bottles tossed to the side of the path; empty candy wrappers and tufts of tissues. The trees thinned and then opened. I gasped.
A huge wheel higher than a house loomed above us. Wooden seats dangled from the giant wheel. They swayed in the wind. The wheel was still, but it didn’t fool me.
I clapped my hands. “It’s a Ferris wheel! You brought me to a Ferris wheel!” I had seen them on television before.
The dogs glanced up at the wheel with little interest. They trotted across the puddle-strewn plaza, noses held high in the wind. Reluctantly, I followed.
We passed a large pond. Ducks and geese huddled on the shore. We skirted a wooden stage and a scattering of tables and chairs. Sodden plastic bags hugged the chair and table legs.
The dogs led me to rows of empty wooden stalls and stopped. They sniffed and I sniffed. Food! I followed my nose behind the wooden stalls and a narrow, stinking shed to a large metal garbage bin. Delicious smells met my nose. My stomach groaned and burned. Lucky and Smoke looked from the garbage bin to me with pride.
“Oh, thank you,” I said.
But the garbage bin was tall and the metal slick. I jumped and jumped but still could not reach the lip of the bin to pull myself up. Viktor’s voice mocked me. Jump, little circus mouse!
Then I remembered: tables and chairs! I dashed back to the stage and grabbed a chair. I dragged it to the bin. I clambered up, pulled myself into the bin, and landed in a gloriously stinking pile of garbage. I stuffed bread into my mouth, and pieces of half-eaten chicken. I ate and ate until my poor shrunken belly could hold no more. And still, there was so much food.
I climbed back out of the bin and rescued two plastic bags. Lucky and Smoke watched with shining eyes as I filled the bags with cast-off food. With this, I could eat for days. This human park, this garbage bin, would be my hunting ground.
The sun was setting as we crossed the last meadow to the place where we’d left the others. Rip yipped a happy greeting. He raced in circles around us, licking Lucky’s mouth and face and my hands. Little Mother and the puppies crawled from under a shelter she had dug in the deep well beneath a sprawling evergreen. They sniffed and sniffed me all over. The puppies pulled at my sleeve. I laughed and pushed them away. “I am not something to eat, even though I smell like it,” I said.
I picked up Rip and kissed the top of his head. “I am sorry I hit you,” I whispered in his torn ear. “Sometimes I am not the best boy.” I took a piece of meat from my pocket that I had saved just for Rip, and fed it to him.
One of the puppies — the boy puppy — grabbed the bottom of one of the plastic bags and yanked. Food spilled out the bottom onto the wet ground.
The dogs leapt upon the food. My food.
“No!” I roared. “It’s mine!”
The dogs slunk away on their bellies. I stood over my food, Rip still in my arms, and growled. I flashed my teeth.
They looked at me with round, piteous eyes. All but Smoke. He sat a few feet away and regarded me with cool, amber eyes.
I tied the bottom of the torn bag. I took off my tattered sweater and tied the arms in such a way as to create a cradle.
I stepped away from the food on the ground. “Okay then, eat,” I said. All but Smoke ate in grateful gulps.
Smoke watched with great curiosity as I climbed the wide branches of the evergreen and stashed the cradle of food.
That night we all curled close together in the well beneath the bottom of the evergreen tree. It was dry here, despite the rain. The generous skirt of bottom branches provided a thick, lacy green roof. The puppies played with pinecones while Rip and Lucky slept against my legs. Little Mother washed and washed my face and ears and neck. I fell asleep to the rasp of her tongue, the tickle of her whiskers, and her warm, smelly, wonderful breath on my face.
And just outside, in the glow of the rising moon, Smoke watched over us all. His pack. My family.
The days grew steadily warmer and longer. The puppies grew by leaps and bounds, the dogs shed their winter coats, and I sh
ed most of my clothes.
The dogs hunted together and alone. There was plenty in the forest for them to eat: rabbits, mice, squirrels, and the occasional bird. Their coats grew shiny and sleek. The shadow of ribs and angle of hipbones fell away.
I quickly learned the rhythms of the park with the Ferris wheel. If I went there just after sunrise, workers were there mowing and cleaning, setting up the chairs and tables, and emptying garbage cans. Every few days a big truck came and emptied the metal bin I hunted in. If I came late at night after the park closed, shadow-people crept into the park. They argued over things they took from their coat pockets. Gangs of Crow Boys came too with their chains and knives.
So I came in the time before sunrise, just before black gave way to gray. The dogs and I watched from the edge of the woods for shadow-people and for Crow Boys. We knew after the winter that no good could come from people.
I searched the smaller garbage cans as well as the big metal bin. The big metal bin was for food; the smaller garbage cans were for treasures: rubber bands, a kerchief, a plastic rain cap, a broken kite, and the greatest treasure of all, a knife. Often I found matches or lighters. But after the Glass House, I was afraid of fire.
In the early part of that summer, the dogs discovered the eggs ducks had laid by the big pond. I gathered up eggs for myself to eat. I loved their wonderful slippingness as they slid warm and rich down my throat, like a small, fat yellow sun.
Now that we were all stronger and the puppies had grown long legs, we explored the forest. Farther and farther we went into the wildest parts, the Border Lands. Here the trails were not made by humans. There were no bottles or metal cans left to the side of the trails. There were no wide trails or straight trails. These trails, such as they were, were barely wide enough for my small boy feet placed toe to heel, one in front of the other. These trails wound in and out, back and forth in secret ways known only to the animals that had made them.
We followed these trails, Smoke always in the lead, me behind, and the rest of the dogs close. Smoke talked to me with his ears and tail. I watched which direction his ears swiveled. Were they thrown forward or were they relaxed? If he raised his tail high, something exciting was ahead — perhaps a deer to chase or a fox. We had seen many deer in this far border of the forest and tracks in the damp earth of something much larger. But even the small dappled deer were too big and too fast for the dogs to kill, except in their dreams at night. Once they had tried, but all they managed to catch in the end were empty stomachs.