by Bobbie Pyron
She looked up at the sky and sighed. “The days are getting short again.” She pulled a sweater from her bottomless bag and draped it around her shoulders. “Soon it will be too cold to come.”
My mouth went dry. I did not want to think about the cold and the snow and not seeing the Woman in the Hat or hearing the beautiful music every night in the Ferris wheel park.
“It is not too cold yet,” I said.
But all too soon, it did turn cold. The leaves fell from the trees. The limbs of the birch tree spread like black fingers.
“Mowgli,” the woman said, “where do you go in the winter? Do you have a warm place to go?”
I concentrated on drawing Smoke’s eyes. I could not seem to get the color just right.
For only the second time, the woman touched my shoulder. I did not pull away. “Mowgli, child. You cannot live here in this cold.”
Not looking at her, I said, “We will stay here until the snow comes. We keep each other warm,” I explained.
She threw her hands up. “Who is we?”
I threw my hands up too. “I’ve told you! The dogs.” I showed her the drawing. “This is Smoke.”
She looked at the drawing for a long time. Then in a sad voice, she asked, “And where do you and the dogs go when the snow comes?”
I did not mean to make her sad. “The City,” I said. “We ride the trains all over The City. It’s warm on the trains and mostly safe.”
She frowned. She pointed at Smoke’s eyes on the white page. “Child, is this another one of your fairy tales?”
I frowned. “I have never told you a tale.”
The next day, I hurried along the path to the birch tree. Food was getting harder to find in the park and I was hungry. Every day was colder; every day there were fewer people.
Lucky stopped just before the thicket on the other side of the birch tree. He raised his head, his nose searching the air. The fur rose on the back of his neck.
I listened. Yes, that was the sound of the old woman’s skirt and her footfall on the dead leaves, but another walked with her. This one’s footsteps were heavy and impatient. I smelled a cigarette.
I wriggled under the thicket and listened.
“Here, this is where we always meet,” the Woman in the Hat said. I could see only her skirt and her feet. A pair of gray trousers and shiny boots stood next to her skirt and legs.
“Well, I certainly don’t see anyone, Mother,” a deep voice said.
“He always comes.” The old woman’s voice was fretful. “You’ll see.”
Her son sighed and flicked his cigarette onto the ground, right in front of my nose.
“It’s too cold for a child to be playing in the woods, Mother. He’s probably gone back to wherever he lives.”
“I’m telling you, he lives here! He and those smelly dogs,” the old woman snapped. “He doesn’t play here like some schoolboy. And of course it’s too cold. That’s why I’m so worried about him.”
I smiled.
The man in the trousers and boots paced back and forth. He lit another cigarette.
“Oh dear,” the woman said. “Where could he be?”
I closed my eyes and imagined wriggling out from the bushes and standing up straight and tall. I would smile and she would hug me to her in relief.
“We’ve waited long enough, Mother. It’s too cold for you to be out here and I have to get back to work.”
She would show me to her son, her eyes filled with pride. She would say, “This is Mowgli. He’s a very good boy. Very good.”
I opened my eyes, my heart light. I pushed myself out from under the bushes and stood.
The clearing beneath the birch tree was empty.
The next day, snow dusted the ground. Still, just as the sun topped the trees, I went to the birch tree. The Woman in the Hat did not come. More snow fell the next day and the next.
Then, as sometimes happens in the late fall, the weather warmed. A salty breeze came from the ocean. The dogs played and hunted. I took the path to the tree.
I smelled his cigarette before I even got to the thicket. I crouched in the shadow of a tall pine and listened.
I heard voices rising and falling. I heard rough laughter. I did not hear the old woman’s voice.
I climbed the pine tree. It still had its needles and hid me well. From a branch high up, I could see over to the small clearing with the stream and the birch tree.
Three men in tall black boots, gray coats with shiny buttons, and red and black hats stood in the clearing. Militsiya! One of the men was the son of the Woman in the Hat.
“So your mother’s been having trysts in the woods with a wild child?” the shortest of the three laughed.
“She’s not having ‘trysts,’” her son snapped. “She comes here to paint and she says he comes here too, with a pack of mangy dogs.”
“Probably one of those kids from over at that dump,” the third man said. “It’s disgusting how many bomzhi live over there with their kids.”
“I say we round up all the filthy bomzhi and their children and ship them off to Siberia,” the shortest one said.
The Woman’s son said, “I told her no child could live out here with a pack of wild dogs, but you know how mothers are. She won’t let it alone until I find this boy.” The other two men nodded.
“There’s thousands of them street children,” one of the men said. “They’re everywhere, like fleas on a dog.”
The three policemen smoked in silence and scuffed their shiny boots in the dead leaves as if I might be hiding underneath.
The old woman wanted to find me! She had sent her son and militsiya to look for me. But why hadn’t she come? Perhaps it was too cold for her now with the snow on the ground. Perhaps, like Babushka Ina, she was afraid of falling on the ice.
Then a thought seized me and wouldn’t let go: perhaps she was readying her house for us! Yes, she must live in a very big house if her son is a policeman! She would bring the dogs and me to live with her. She would clean us and feed us and cook porridge on her stove. I would have real books to read. I would again sleep in a bed (which I would, of course, share with the dogs) and eat out of a bowl. And I would be the very best boy.
A cold wind set the branch I perched on swaying.
“Well,” the old woman’s son said. “Let’s go roust some bomzhi over at the dump and ask around about the boy.”
They flicked their cigarettes into the snow. The short one asked, “How are we going to know which one he is?”
The son took a piece of paper from his coat pocket and unfolded it. “Here,” he said. “She drew a picture of him.”
The men looked down at the paper. The third policeman shook his head and said, “He does look like a wild child.”
The short man hooted with laughter.
I frowned. We’d see who’d be laughing when I had a bath and new clothes.
The son folded the paper over and over. “She calls him Mowgli. It’s driving my wife crazy. I don’t know what I was thinking, bringing her to live with us.” He clamped his hat to his head against the wind. “Three adults plus two kids in a two-bedroom apartment …” He shook his head.
My heart fell.
“What do we do with him if we find him?” the third militsiya asked.
The old woman’s son stuffed the drawing of me — her Mowgli — into his pocket. “An orphanage, of course,” he said. “What do you think? He’d come live with us?”
The men howled with laughter as they walked away.
I held tight to the tree limb as the word dropped like a stone into my stomach.
Orphanage.
That night I cuddled closer with the dogs than I had in a long time underneath our tree. “You were right about the Woman in the Hat,” I whispered to Little Mother. “You and Smoke and Moon were all right. I should have listened.” Little Mother washed and washed my face as if saying, Never mind that now.
I stroked Moon’s face. “It was just so nice to have someo
ne to talk to, who talked back,” I said.
Smoke shifted against Rip. She did not love you, Malchik.
“I know,” I whispered. “I thought perhaps she would love us and give us a home where we would be warm and safe.”
I felt Smoke’s breath on my face. We are where you belong.
I did not return to the birch tree. Mowgli was gone.
I dug through the garbage cans in the Ferris wheel park. For the first time in weeks, the cans were full. Perhaps the garbagemen were once again on strike; perhaps there had been a holiday I had forgotten about. I had forgotten many things in my years of living with the dogs.
I remembered the old woman asking me how old I was. I couldn’t say. Six? Seven? Was my birthday in the late spring or early summer?
Rip trotted along beside me as I crossed the place where the people had danced on the long summer evenings. “I think I am seven now,” I said. “I could even be almost eight.” I liked the sound of being eight. Eight-year-olds got to do many things five-year-olds did not.
A shadow swept across the concrete. I stopped. Was it just a cloud passing across the face of the full moon?
“There he is!” someone shouted.
Rip growled.
Militsiya came from everywhere!
I crouched and growled.
A voice I recognized as the old woman’s son said, “Take it slow. Don’t scare him off.”
I dropped my bags of food and backed away from the men.
The old woman’s son held out a hand to me. “It’s okay, boy. We’re here to help you.”
I looked from the men to the side of the park with the duck pond. That was where the other dogs had gone in search of rats. I threw back my head and howled. Rip joined in.
One of the men laughed. “We should take him to the circus instead of the orphanage.”
“Shut up,” the son snapped. Then he stepped closer and said, “Come now. I have a nice lolly for a good boy.”
I pulled back my lips and snarled even as I felt the other dogs circling quietly behind me.
One of the policemen said, “Let’s just use the net and be done with it.”
The old woman’s son nodded his head ever so slightly.
My heart pounded in my chest. It was time to run. I flicked my hand. Moon, Star, Smoke, Lucky, Little Mother, and, of course, Rip, surged forward snapping and snarling.
“Holy mother of God!” one of the militsiya cried. “Look how many!”
Smoke and Lucky drew themselves up tall with their tails held high and stiff. Smoke’s eyes glowed yellow and cold in the moonlight.
“What’re we supposed to do now?” the policeman with the net asked, stepping back.
Smoke and Lucky lowered their haunches and gathered their muscles, readying to spring.
Run, Malchik!
I ran and ran and ran as fast as I could. The sound of snarling and screaming and shouting and yelping grew fainter. A sick feeling rose from my stomach and filled my lungs.
Soon, I heard the running feet of the dogs behind me. They ran, swift and silent in the moonlight. I listened over my hammering heart for the sound of boots. The dogs splashed through the stream and into the birch grove. I counted as they came — one, two, three, four, there were only four!
I whistled low. The dogs gathered around me — Lucky, Little Mother, Moon, Star. Where were Smoke and Rip?
Of course! How could I be so stupid! Rip couldn’t run as fast as the rest. Smoke must be with him.
“Stay here,” I said. I touched Lucky’s head. “You come,” I said.
We ran back the way we came, through the stream and past the big birch tree and across the small meadow. Soon we would be at the road to the Ferris wheel park. I heard running boots and heavy breathing. Someone called, “I can’t see a thing.”
Lucky woofed low and raised his tail.
Into the moonlit meadow ran Rip with Smoke.
I dashed across the meadow and scooped Rip up in my arms. The sound of boots grew closer. Car horns honked. Someone cursed.
“Run!” I said to Smoke and Lucky. “The others are ahead.”
Lucky dashed off into the forest. Smoke said, I will stay.
“No,” I said. “Run.”
I ran as fast as I could, Rip bouncing in my arms. Smoke ran next to me. He threw his ears back. They come.
I stopped and looked around. I spotted just what I needed: A pine rose tall and black in the moonlight.
“Run,” I said. I hurried to the bottom of the great pine. I pulled myself up with one hand while the other clutched Rip to my chest. He kept perfectly still. I worked my way into a thick tangle of branches and stopped. I looked down. I could just see the eyes of Smoke watching from beneath a cluster of bushes.
I bowed my head against Rip’s ragged ear. “Shhhh …” I whispered as I tried to quiet my breathing.
The militsiya entered the clearing. One limped and another had a torn sleeve. Yet another held a hand to his chest as if it were injured. The old woman’s son had lost his hat. They panted in the cold night air.
Rip trembled against me.
“Now where?” one of the men grumbled.
“It’s crazy, hunting that kid in this forest at night. We can’t see a thing,” another said.
“We’ll have to come back in the daylight,” the woman’s son agreed.
The man with the limp said, “And just where are we going to look? Do you know how many hundreds of acres this forest is? He could be anywhere.”
The woman’s son lit a cigarette. The other men followed suit. “The bomzhi over at the dump gave me a pretty good idea where he and those dogs live out there.”
“All I know is,” the policeman with the hurt hand said, “we won’t be able to get to that kid with the dogs protecting him.”
“There are ways to deal with them,” the old woman’s son replied.
“Bah,” one of the men said. “Why are we even bothering with him? There’s lots of these street kids and no one cares.”
The son of the Woman in the Hat tightened his scarf around his neck. “It’s not just my mother driving me crazy now. She’s got all her old crones riled up about it, all because he lives with those dogs.” He coughed and spat on the ground. “Let’s get out of this damned cold.”
I stayed in the tree long after the militsiya left.
Smoke crept from under the thicket and followed their trail. After a bit, he returned and barked the all clear. I lowered myself and Rip to the ground. My legs and arms shook. My face bled from tree scratches. I stroked Rip’s ears. “You were the best boy.”
I was tired, so tired. I half slept on my feet as Smoke led us back a different way to our home beneath the tree. As we entered our meadow, the rest of the pack hurried out to meet us, whining and licking and sniffing us all over. We crawled beneath the tree and piled together. The heat from the dogs’ bodies slowly stopped my shivering.
“We will rest now,” I said. “But we must leave very early in the morning and go back to The City. They will not find us there.” There, we would be just one of many fleas upon the dog.
As always, we rode the train. And for a time, we were safe.
I begged money, bought food, scoured the garbage cans and trash bins behind restaurants. The people in their winter coats hurrying to and from the trains dropped coins and rubles in my hand without a word or a second glance.
Then one day, as I stepped into the bright sunlight from the train station below, I saw a policeman talking to the woman I bought bread from at the stalls outside the station entrance.
He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and showed it to her. My heart dropped to my knees. I pulled myself and Lucky and Rip into the shadows. My ears — keen from the months in the forest — picked up their words.
“This is a street boy we’re looking for,” the militsiya said.
“Bah,” the woman said. “There are too many of these to count, these children with no home. How would I know one from the other?”<
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“This one is very young and travels with a pack of dogs.”
The woman hesitated. My mouth went dry. She had seen me several times with the dogs when I bought bread from her.
“You think I have nothing better to do than watch boys and dogs?” the woman snapped. But I could hear a sliver of doubt in her voice.
“Yes, yes,” the policeman said. “But my boss is driving us crazy with this boy. He won’t let us alone until we catch him.”
Could his boss be the Woman in the Hat’s son?
“Here’s my card,” the militsiya said. “When you see him, let me know. You’ll be rewarded, I promise.”
“Let’s go,” I whispered to Lucky and Rip. We found the others sleeping in the train station. Together, we slipped into the last car in the next train and traveled to a different part of The City.
After that, it seemed everywhere we turned, militsiya watched for us. Sometimes I saw them as they showed the drawing of my face to a shop owner. Sometimes I saw them watching on the train station platforms as people and dogs came and went on the trains. We could not rest. It was getting harder to find food. We were always on the run.
One unusually warm winter day, I napped with the dogs in a patch of sun between two big garbage bins at the end of an alley. My hand rested on Little Mother’s round belly. Her belly was not round from food, for there had been precious little of that. I’d felt something move in her belly when I stroked her the night before.
“It’s him,” a loud whisper said.
The dogs leapt to their feet — all but Little Mother — and growled.
Two dirty faces looked down at me.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. They were only street children like me.
“I told you it was the Dog Boy,” one said, jabbing the other with his elbow.
Smoke stood in front of Little Mother and me and flashed his teeth and growled louder. The children’s eyes grew big in their thin, dirty faces.
I stood and placed a hand on Smoke’s back.
The taller of the two licked his lips and said, “They’re looking for you, you know. The militsiya.”