The Dogs of Winter

by Bobbie Pyron

  I tried to remember summer. What had it felt like to be warm day after day? How had grass felt under my bare feet? I could not picture the green meadow dotted with yellow flowers. I could not remember the sheltering arms of the great tree we slept beneath. I did not believe in Summer or Warmth or Angels. All I believed in was Cold.

  We were all tired and snappish. Some days, all I wanted to do was sleep on the warm, rocking train. The thought of spending another day in the bitter cold and wind and snow trying to find enough food to feed the seven of us brought me to tears and made me turn on my family.

  “Why can’t you find your own food?” I shouted at the dogs one afternoon as I dug my way through a snow-filled garbage bin. Rip whined. Lucky just wagged his tail.

  “If it weren’t for you, I would be fat,” I said. I pulled a rotten potato from the snow and hurled it at Rip. It bounced in front of him and then skittered away. Star pounced on the potato. Lucky woofed with excitement at the new game I had invented.

  “I’m not kidding!” I shouted. Little Mother and Moon looked up at me on top of the snow-covered garbage with worried eyes. “You’re lazy! You’re stupid, lazy dogs!” I hurled frozen carrots, onions, chunks of bread, and bones down upon the dogs. The dogs quickly realized this was no game. They crouched and cowered beneath my anger, their eyes pleading.

  Stop, Smoke said.

  “Oh, now you speak to me!” I cried. “You haven’t spoken to me for months and now you boss me around!” I threw a frozen cabbage as hard as I could and hit Smoke squarely in the side of his head. He yelped in pain and staggered. The dogs all looked at me like I was some red-eyed beast. I was not their boy; I was not one of them. I was an Other.

  Smoke shook himself and then tossed me a cold look. “I’m …” The words were a frozen lump in my throat.

  Smoke barked once and trotted to the end of the alley. The dogs looked from Smoke to me, standing on top of a small mountain of garbage and snow, red-faced and shivering.

  Despair and the days behind us and ahead of us swept over me. “Go,” I cried. “Just go! I don’t need you!”

  The dogs flattened their ears and tucked their tails and disappeared with Smoke.

  I stared at the huge, empty, dog-shaped hole where they no longer were. I dropped to my knees and panted. I waited and watched. Surely they would be back any minute: Lucky smiling his Lucky smile and wagging his tail; Little Mother washing the snot and tears from my face; Rip snuggling against me — their eyes, even Smoke’s eyes, saying all is forgiven.

  I climbed down from the garbage bin as the wind swirled up the alley. The sky grew leaden and close. Any minute now, they’ll be back, I told myself over and over.

  The skies opened and great sheets of snow fell. I climbed inside an empty cardboard box and curled up on my side. I hugged my knees to my chest and rocked back and forth.

  I heard soft footfalls in the snow. They were back! I stuck my head out into the snow. “I am so sorry! I —”

  A large black cat looked at me with cold green eyes. A rat hung from his mouth.

  I pulled back inside the box and buried my face in my hands. “I am alone,” I moaned. “I belong nowhere and to no one in the whole world.” I cried and shivered and rubbed the tooth in my pocket over and over and over. Day faded to night.

  I woke to something warm and wet stroking my face. “Mother,” I said through chattering teeth. I reached up my arms to the warmth of Little Mother’s neck. I buried my frozen hands and face in her deep fur. Rip pushed into my lap and snuffled my neck. Moon and Star did their best to curl themselves into the box, but it was not big enough for a small boy and four dogs. I crawled out of the box. The alley was lit with snow and moonlight. I stood in drifts above my knees.

  The dogs crowded around my legs and licked my hands and fingers. “I am sorry,” I whispered in the moonlight. “I never meant to hurt you,” I said, stroking heads and shoulders. “You are the best dogs, the best family.” Lucky dropped a fat sausage at my feet. I laughed. “Who did you steal this from, my little thief?” He wagged his tail. His eyes glinted with mischief.

  Malchik.

  I turned.

  Smoke shimmered and shifted as a cloud passed over the moon.

  Smoke. I held out my hand. For the first time in all the many months we had been together, he pushed his head into my hand. I stroked the top of his silver and black head and the thick ruff around his neck. His eyes were yellow in the moonlight.

  Our Malchik, he said again. Our boy.

  And I knew my place in the world.

  And then, as suddenly as it had come, winter was gone. The great rafts of ice in the river broke up and floated away. The children emerged from the underworld, blinking and pale in the spring sun. The banks of snow piled in the alleyways and against buildings, tall as any man, melted and revealed those who had not been so lucky to survive one of the worst winters in the last twenty years.

  Leaves unfolded and hands unfolded. Perhaps it was everyone’s relief at having survived, perhaps it was the return of true sunshine, but the people of The City were generous — for a time, anyway. The passersby dropped coins and rubles in outstretched hands with a quick smile. The shopkeepers handed out day-old bread every morning. The militsiya once again patrolled the streets and the parks, leaving the metro stations to us. Even the gangs of black-clad, chain-wearing Crow Boys left the smaller children alone. The bomzhi were not so lucky.

  One day, we found more Christian Ladies than we’d ever seen at Komsomolskaya Ploshchad. Their tables and boxes filled the square. Lines and lines of ragged children snaked around and about the benches and statues. Some stood swaying on their feet, others hopped from one foot to the other. Little boys wrestled like Moon and Star had when they were just silly puppies. Girls clung to one another or to older boys. Some of the small children cried, and others chased the army of pigeons.

  The dogs and I watched the street children and the Christian Ladies from the top steps at the feet of a statue. A man carved of marble clutched the lapel of his coat, his other hand thrust in his marble pocket. He studied the crowd of homeless children with eyes that said How did it come to this?

  A woman stopped at the bottom of the statue. “Come get something to eat,” she said.

  “Is there food for them too?” I asked, motioning to the dogs.

  The woman shook her head. She waved to the never-ending line of children. “We barely have enough food for them. You think we would feed dogs too?” And then she stalked away.

  I hopped down off the perch at the feet of the marble man. A fight broke out between three boys over a piece of bread. Two more boys jumped in just for the fun of the fight. The Christian Ladies shouted, “Stop this foolishness or none of you will get one bite to eat!”

  “Come,” I said to the dogs. We trotted across the wide plaza, away from the marble man with his stern, cold face and away from the crying, fighting children.

  We rode the escalator down and down and down into Yaroslavl Station. As always, we slipped into the last train car. The dogs sprawled on the floor of the rocking car with a sigh. All their ribs showed through their dull coats. Lucky had received a wound that refused to heal from a fight with another street dog. I had a cough that rattled deep in my chest and kept me awake at night.

  I leaned my head against the sun-warmed window. It was time to go home.

  We would return to the woods. The dogs would once again become fat. I would grow brown in the sun that stretched into the late evening hours. We would race through the woods and the meadows with soft grass and leaves beneath our feet instead of concrete. We would fly as if we all had wings.

  We rode and rode the train until we came to the park with the Ferris wheel on the edge of the great wood.

  We waited until dark. After the few people who were there trailed away, we made our way into the park. We said hello to the Ferris wheel, the wooden stalls selling beer and shashlyk, and the stage where the bands played. The ducks floated on the pond. Rip and
I found a nest of eggs and ate them. Smoke snapped a fat duck’s neck and carried it off into the woods to share with Little Mother. This year, I did not need to drag a chair over to the garbage bin to climb in. All I had to do was stand on my toes and reach up.

  I filled plastic bags with food. We set off for our home beneath the tree. Would I remember how to get there? It did not matter. Once we crossed the boulevard to the edge of the great forest, my feet remembered the way. We ran and ran along the trails we knew so well. Patches of snow still pooled beneath some of the trees. Finally, we burst free of the forest and into our meadow. Here the grass was green and dotted with yellow flowers. The creek overran its banks and sprawled this way and that.

  And there, on the far side of the meadow, stood our tree.

  Moon and Star galloped happily over to our den and wiggled beneath the branches.

  “Let’s go home,” I said to the dogs.

  It was still quite wet in the well beneath the tree — too wet for us to live in for now, anyway.

  I crawled out and sighed. Smoke watched me as I thought and thought what to do. Rip and Lucky rolled with joy in the grass and mud.

  I crawled up onto the big flat rocks where I’d watched the stars last summer, the place where we howled together at the moon. Little Mother climbed up beside me and laid her head on my leg.

  “We need to make another home until our den dries out,” I said, stroking her head. “We could go to Garbage Mountain and get things to make a home.” Little Mother sneezed.

  “I know,” I said. “I do not want to go back there either. There are bad people there.”

  Star barked from the boulders at the top of the gentle rise above the meadow. He sat at the foot of the tree stump — the stump on top of which the giant deer skull still rested, shining white in the moonlight.

  Smoke and I trotted up the rise to the boulders and the skull. Up here, the ground was dry. Next to the boulders, it was warm.

  I scraped together a bed of dry leaves. “We will sleep here tonight. Tomorrow, I will find a way to make us a shelter until our den is dry.”

  We all piled together on the bed of leaves. I picked burrs and twigs from Rip’s fur while Lucky scrubbed my face with his tongue. The wind shifted and sighed around us. Clouds sailed over the moon and beyond.

  The days grew longer, and the dogs grew stronger. Ribs and hip bones and knobby backbones disappeared beneath glossy fur and fat.

  Week by week, I shed first the coat, then the sweater, then the boots and socks and hat. I took my knife to the legs of my raggedy pants and cut them off just above the knee. I scrubbed and scrubbed my lice-filled hair with mud and rinsed it in water so cold it made my teeth ache. The sun healed the sores on my face and feet.

  Like the summer before, we explored the border regions of the forest. We found rotting carcasses of the old and weak animals that had not made it through the terrible winter — deer, a fox, birds, and even a dog.

  I squatted beside the body of the dog and studied what was left. A back leg was bent at an angle it should not be. Many of the teeth were missing. I touched the brown fur still covering the ribs.

  Smoke ran his nose along the bones and fur. Them, he said.

  My heart shuddered. Could this have been one of the dogs I had hit with my club during the fight at the House of Bones? “I am sorry,” I said.

  Smoke snorted and trotted away, his tail held stiff and high.

  We did not return to the House of Bones, but we did find the skeleton of the Biggest Pig in All of Russia. The leg bones were not long enough to make another club, but I took the longest of the curved ribs just the same. It felt good in my hand and worked just fine for knocking off the heads of dandelions. I invented a game of hockey — a pinecone for a puck, the rib bone for my hockey stick — like the street hockey I had seen the bigger boys play. Star and Lucky were the best players, next to me.

  One day, just after the second full moon, I climbed our tree to retrieve a bag of food. I climbed first one branch, then up to another and another. I climbed past the bag of food. I climbed higher than I had ever been — higher than the longest escalator in the train stations.

  I heard a bark and a yip from below. I stopped and looked down. All six dogs sat at the bottom of the tree, their heads tilted all the way back.

  I laughed and waved. “Come on up,” I said.

  Lucky wagged his tail and woofed. Little Mother whimpered and whined with worry. Rip and Moon barked. Star rolled onto his back.

  Down, said Smoke.

  “No,” I said, but I climbed down anyway. The dogs mobbed me, jumping and licking and crying. Smoke sat off to the side, watching me with worried eyes. It is not right, he said.

  I tossed a pinecone in the air for Lucky to catch. “You’re just jealous because you can’t climb trees,” I said. “You are earthbound,” I said.

  So are you.

  Smoke and I looked at each other for a long moment. “I am not always like you,” I said.

  And so, I climbed the trees. I climbed every tree that would let me. I climbed higher and higher to the swaying tops. If I could just climb high enough, I could fly and not have to ride the trains. If I could climb high enough, I could touch the sun and never be cold again.

  One hot, still evening, I bathed in a cold pool of water at the bottom of a concrete chute near the road separating the forest from the Ferris wheel park. Never had we come this close to the park and the people when there was still light. Like the summer before, I raided the garbage cans in the early morning hours during the short time of real darkness.

  I pulled on my cutoff pants. The dogs shook the water from their coats and sprawled in the shade of a large oak tree. I could see, just up at the top, a wonderful breeze moving the leaves of the tree. There, if I could just get up there …

  I pulled myself up and up, branch by branch, until I reached the topmost limbs. I settled in the forking arms of the branches and closed my eyes. The breeze lifted my wet hair off my face. I smiled. “Thank you,” I said.

  Tweet tweet, toodle-loo, the breeze sang back.

  I opened my eyes. What was that? I peered down through the branches to the dogs. They were fast asleep.

  And then it came again, a beautiful sound, a sweet soaring sound, drifting across the road from the Ferris wheel park and up to my branches.

  I climbed up a little higher and looked toward the park. And oh! The giant wheel turned slowly in the strange light of the summer evening. The Ferris wheel seats dangled from the wheel like shivering drops of water. The music carried by the breeze came from the great wheel.

  I clapped my hands and laughed. How clever the wheel was! I drew my knees up to my chest, rested my chin on my knees, and listened. Sometimes the music was sad and sometimes it was happy. For the first time in many months, I thought of my mother humming at the kitchen sink. I saw her hands slipping in and out of the steaming hot water as she washed the dishes. I thought about the blind man in the train station with his beautiful accordion, how the air sang in and out of its chest like a dragon. I bowed my head. The music pulled hard on my heart from a place I had long forgotten. I wiped at the tears trickling down my cheeks.

  Every evening as the sun slipped low, I returned to the oak tree at the edge of the forest. I climbed the tree and listened.

  Soon, I crept closer to the road. The dogs whimpered and shifted nervously around my legs. “I need to get closer to the music,” I said. Their eyes begged me to go back to the shelter of the woods.

  “What can you understand of music,” I said with a snort as I climbed a tree. The dogs woofed and whined.

  It wasn’t long before I had to cross the road.

  “Come,” I commanded the dogs. Only Lucky and Star followed me across. The other dogs melted into the shadows with their eyes fixed like lasers on us.

  I crouched between the two dogs, my shoulders level with theirs. We eased from shadow to shadow. The music grew louder. The voices of people laughed and rose and fell. These
were not angry voices, yelling voices, voices that hit and spit. These were happy voices.

  We skirted the edge of the stalls with their smells of roasting meat, and the plastic tables and chairs. Always when I came here, the tables sat empty and the chairs overturned and scattered. Now men and women and children sat at the tables eating and drinking and laughing. Children sat in their mother’s and father’s laps sleeping or bouncing up and down. One small boy sat in an old woman’s lap, his head resting against the pillow of her large chest, one hand fingering the cross hanging from her neck, the other hand curled under his chin, his eyes half closed. The old woman rocked him back and forth. A scarf covered her head.

  I had sat in my Babushka Ina’s lap like that once, so very long ago. She had rocked me and sung to me and all the world was safe. I had food enough and I was rarely cold. The world turned as I lay curled in her lap without a care.

  And then one day she died, and everything changed.

  “Get out of here, you mangy cur!”

  I blinked. I was crouched next to Star with my thumb in my mouth.

  Glass shattered. Lucky yelped and dashed away from the tables with his tail tucked between his legs and his ears flat against his head. Clamped between his jaws was a stick of roasted meat and vegetables. Lucky, the thief.

  He ran to our hiding place in the shadows. Someone called, “Look, there’s more of them!”

  I wanted to stand up on my two legs and walk out into the light and call to them, “See, I am just a boy.” I wanted to climb into that babushka’s lap and rest my head against her chest.

  A bottle exploded above my head. Beer and glass rained down. Laughter. Shouts. More bottles and cans. Lucky stood in front of us, shielding me with his strong shoulders and fierce teeth. He barked and growled. All the fur stood up on his back.