by Bobbie Pyron
I scrambled beneath the cot on the far side of the tiny room and made myself as small as possible. I watched the feet scurry back and forth. I covered my ears to block out the angry words. I shook and shivered with fear. I wet myself.
Finally, the door opened, and then clicked shut. No feet, no angry voices.
I cried and rocked myself to sleep.
Later, a smell woke me. The door eased open just a bit, and a hand pushed a tray of food through the opening, then the door slammed shut.
I watched the bottom of the door and the tray of food. When no one came back, I crept out from the safety of the cot and crawled over to the tray. I lowered my head and sniffed. The hair rose on the back of my neck and along my arms. There was something very wrong with this food.
I backed away.
A noise on the other side of the door.
I looked up.
A face with eyeglasses watched me through the small window in the door.
I flashed my teeth and retreated to my hiding place beneath the cot.
A day passed and then another, and another. During the day, people came and went. If hands tried to grab me from beneath the cot, I bit and clawed and kicked. Once I almost escaped through the door when food was brought — food that still held the bad smell — but I was knocked to the ground.
The man in the white coat, one hand bandaged, pinned my arms behind my back. “Don’t you know we’re trying to help you?” he shouted in my face.
I wanted to say if he wanted to help me, he would return me to my family. Instead, I spit in his face.
That night, I paced back and forth, back and forth in my tiny room, trying to outrun my despair. I sat on the cot and rocked and cried and pulled at my hair. I rubbed the little tooth still in my pocket until my thumb hurt.
And then, like a dream, I heard it: first a bark and then a questioning yip. I sat still as stone and listened.
One howl rose and then another and another. I gasped. There was no mistaking the deep rumbling of Lucky, the high, soaring song of Moon, the yip, yip of Star.
I pulled the cot over to the window that was barely a window and climbed up. If I stood on the tips of my toes, I could just see outside. My eyes searched the shadows for the dogs but I could not see them.
I am here! I am here! I yipped.
There, on the other side of a high wire fence surrounding the courtyard, I saw them.
I laughed and cried. They had come for me! I threw back my head and howled.
The dogs barked and howled in a frenzy of excitement. I could just make out Lucky standing tall on his back legs, clawing at the wire fence.
I barked louder and beat my fists against the glass pane separating us. Moon and Star dug frantically beneath the fence.
A bright light flooded the courtyard. The dogs froze. People ran out into the courtyard shouting and waving their arms. Moon and Star cowered before their angry voices. Lucky snarled and growled.
Someone picked up rocks and threw them at the dogs through the fence. One of the dogs yelped in pain, but I could not see which one.
Moon and Star fled into the street.
Lucky looked from the people to my window.
Don’t leave me! I howled.
“Get out of here!” someone yelled, and threw part of a brick at the wire fence.
Lucky hesitated, then he loped out of sight, his head and tail low in defeat.
I pounded my fists against the glass. “No!” I cried. “Come back! Come back!”
But no matter how loud I howled and called, they did not come back.
Finally, exhausted, I curled up under my cot and comforted myself with the knowledge that somehow, Lucky and Moon and Star had gotten free of the awful net and they were alive.
They returned the next night and the next. They howled and they dug and I called to them in return, I am here! I am here! And every night, the people ran them off.
During the day, I heard the women in the green uniforms wonder at the dogs. “How did they find him?” “Why do they keep coming back?” “What do they want of him?” One woman whispered, “It is not normal, the way the dogs and the boy are bound.”
I smiled to myself as I listened to them from the den beneath the cot. I wanted to say to them, they found me and they wanted me because I belong to them; we are bound because we are family, we are each other’s place in the world. But I did not waste my words on them. They were human.
And then came the night when the moon was full and bright upon the snow; I saw him. He stood silver and black and gray and proud, shifting in the moonlight. His amber eyes glowed. His voice — deep and wild as our summer forest — said, I have come, Malchik.
Smoke howled our story long into the night and into the next. He told of how we found one another and how he had saved me and I had saved them. He howled of the Glass House and the death of Grandmother and running free in the forest. He sang of the House of Bones and the battle with the boar and nights beneath moon and stars and city lights; of cold that almost killed us if it were not for one another.
I howled back and pounded my fists harder and harder against the glass window.
“I am here!” I cried. “Don’t leave me!”
Dark forms inky against the moonlit snow stomped across the courtyard. They shouted at the dogs. Lucky hurled himself against the wire fence. One of the humans raised something in his hand. A crack, and a light flashed in the night. A gun!
“No!” I screamed, pounding my fist against the glass. “Don’t shoot!”
The dogs scattered. They regrouped a short distance from the fence and barked and howled even more.
The gun fired again. A sharp yelp.
“No!” I screamed. I slammed my fist against the glass. It shattered. I gasped from the pain. Blood spattered everywhere. It ran down my arm and onto my bare feet.
I tore my eyes away from my blood and searched the night for the dogs. There they were, milling about, all of them moving. I panted in pain.
I saw the arm raise the gun again and take careful aim.
“No, no …” I moaned. My head swam and my legs shook.
With the last bit of strength I had, I screamed, “Run!”
The last thing I saw was the dogs disappearing into the night.
I dreamed I flew far above the earth. Below passed the village and the brown, squat apartment building where my mother and I had lived. I soared high above the round, golden domes of The City like a firebird. Below I saw dogs and children and militsiya and bomzhi. I flew low over Garbage Mountain and the great forest.
I saw the dogs — Smoke, Lucky, Rip, Little Mother, Moon, Star, and even Grandmother — running through the meadow, their heads tilted back, watching me.
“Come join me,” I called, “it is beautiful up here,” even though I knew they could not leave the earth.
I swooped across the Ferris wheel park. The dogs ran below, barking and barking. Then, I saw them, each in a Ferris wheel seat. They rose higher. Just as each reached the top of the wheel’s great arc, they flew into the air. Wide wings unfurled from their backs as the music from the Ferris wheel toot tooted.
I clapped my hands and laughed. “You are such clever dogs.”
I dreamed of Little Mother’s tongue washing my hot face. A brilliant light shone behind her. I reached out to stroke her head. She pushed my hand away and said, There there, my little puppy.
I dreamed of climbing the tallest tree in all of Russia and fighting giant pigs. I dreamed of Rudy with his gray eyes and Tanya with her bruised and swollen face. I dreamed of seeing the little schoolgirl, Anya, in the great Red Square. She did not recognize me. She said, “Go away, you mangy dog.”
I dreamed of Smoke singing the song of our life together in the cold winter night. I dreamed of sitting in my Babushka Ina’s lap as she sang songs to me older than the earth. And I dreamed of my mother, humming this song and that as she rocked me to sleep. Her voice wove in and out with the voices of Smoke and Babushka Ina and the Ferris w
heel and the Accordion Man and the cry of the subway trains and the laughter and the cries of all the homeless children, to make the most beautiful music in the world.
I opened my eyes. I smelled something sharp and soapy. I also smelled vomit and pee like it sometimes smelled in the train stations. Was I back in the metro with Rudy and Tanya and Pasha? Had my life with the dogs been all a dream?
I tried to sit up. Someone fluttered over to me. “No, child, no. You must be still.” All in white she was dressed, and from the side of her head lifted wings like the seagulls along the Great River.
I wanted to ask her if she was an angel or perhaps a Sister of Mercy. I ran my tongue over my cracked lips. I needed water. I opened my mouth to speak. The word I managed to croak surprised us both: “Dogs.”
I do not know how long they kept me in the children’s ward of the hospital. They said I had lost a great deal of blood when I broke the window that night. “Whoever would imagine so much blood could come from such a little boy,” the nurse said as she clucked and fussed around me. My arm became infected and my fever so high they thought I would die.
As I grew stronger, they assaulted me with questions: “What is your name?” “How old are you?” “Why were you living on the streets?” “Where is your family?”
I answered none of these questions. Instead, I watched and I listened. I was no longer in the orphanage, I knew that. I was in a hospital in The City. If I was still in The City, then I could find the dogs. I had to find the dogs. Little Mother had new puppies. They needed me and I would take care of them.
If I could escape.
I learned the comings and goings of the nurses and doctors. One night, at the time when the doctors had all gone to their homes and the nurses were sleepy, I pulled the needle hooked to the bag beside my bed from my arm and slipped out of bed. My clothes were gone, my boots were gone. My baby tooth was gone. I did not care. I wrapped a blanket around my body and slid open the glass door of my room.
I crouched in the doorway and listened. No sound. I scurried down the hallway and past the big desk where a nurse slept. I flew down the corridor, my bare feet slapping on the cold floor and the blanket flapping around me. There, at the end of the corridor, were two tall doors with bars across them.
I hurled myself against the doors. The doors did not open. Instead, a siren screamed and lights flashed. I covered my ears with my hands against the screeching and squinted against the flashing lights.
Hands grabbed. I kicked and bit. Too many hands. Something stung my arm. Everything fell away.
After that, I was tied to the bed. It did not matter if I had to relieve myself, I was kept tied. They fed me with a spoon like a little baby. At first I refused to eat. I spat the food back in their faces. But then I realized as long as I was in The City, there was hope of getting away. It would not be an easy escape, I told myself. I would have to be as smart as Smoke and as strong as Lucky and as swift as Star. For that, I needed to eat, and so I did. I even pretended to be a good boy. Soon, they untied me. I did not bite, not even once, even though I wanted to.
One day, as the snow fell outside, a tall man in shiny black boots and militsiya clothes came into my room.
I dropped to the floor and scurried under my bed. My stomach felt sick.
“Hello, Mowgli,” he said.
The voice. I knew that voice. I plucked at my eyebrows.
“I’ve brought someone to see you,” he said. “Someone I think you’ll be very happy to see.”
The door whispered open. Soft furred boots the color of Lucky’s brown and black coat walked into the room. A flowered skirt brushed the tops of the boots.
“Hello, child,” the Woman in the Hat said. I growled and pushed against the wall.
“Oh, child.” She stooped down. Her eyes searched for me under the bed. “Please come out,” she said, holding out her hand. “You know I won’t hurt you.”
I growled a little louder and flashed my teeth.
She gasped. The shiny black boots moved next to her.
“Go away,” I ordered.
“Now, boy,” her son said, “we’re only trying to help you.”
I felt anger burning up through my legs and stomach. My hand itched for my bone club or my knife.
“Yes, dear,” the Woman in the Hat said, rubbing her hands. “They’re going to take you to a better place, a safer place than —”
The burning anger flew up my throat and burst from my mouth. “You!” I screamed. “It’s all your fault!”
I shot from under the bed and stood before her, my fists clenched.
The Woman in the Hat’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened and closed around words she could not say.
I stepped toward her. “My place is with the dogs,” I said in a low growl.
I never saw the Woman in the Hat or her son again.
Two days later, the doctor entered my room.
He listened to my heart and my lungs. He unwrapped the bandages on my arm and studied the long lines of gashes.
He looked at me for a long moment. His eyes were full of questions. He reached out a hand as if to touch me, then stopped. He put the hand in his white coat pocket. He sighed and nodded to the nurse and left the room.
“Well,” the nurse with the winged hat said, bustling around me. “This is fine, then. You’ll be off tomorrow.”
Off? But where, I wanted to ask her. It did not matter. Tomorrow, they would take me out of here and I could escape. My body tingled all over. I grinned inside myself. I wriggled my toes. Get ready, I told my feet and my legs.
But there was nothing to get ready for. They dressed me in a coat that was not like any coat I had ever seen. It pinned my arms and crisscrossed this way and that so I could not move. They bound my legs and wheeled me in a chair to a van like the ones I had seen children taken away in before.
They strapped me in a seat in the van beside a window.
“Good-bye, child,” the nurse with the winged hat said. Tears ran down her cheeks.
My heart pounded. Sick rose up from my stomach and burned my throat. I swallowed it down. The van pulled into the traffic of The City. I leaned my head against the window and I watched The City — the beggars and the children and the dogs and the Crow Boys and the police and the garbage bins and the grand metro stations and the great golden domes — pass by, and finally, away and away from everything I had ever known.
I dream of dogs. I dream of warm backs pressed against mine beneath a tall pine tree. I dream of flashing teeth, warm, wet tongues, and amber eyes, watching. Always watching.
I dream I run and run and run with the dogs through forests thick with birch trees and giant pigs. I dream we run through winter streets and across frozen rivers. I dream we fly.
A hand touches my arm and shakes me awake. A voice — the same voice that has said this same thing every morning — says, “Wake up, Little Bear.”
I open my eyes to this kind face, these eyes almost, but not quite, the color of amber. She switches on the tape player on my small desk and music fills the tiny room.
“Today is your day,” she says as I sit up and scratch my head.
She leaves and I look around this room I have lived in for five years. It is small and unremarkable. There is no window. There is my narrow bed and a small desk and chair and a closet for my few clothes and two pairs of shoes — more shoes than I have ever had in my life. But the walls — oh the walls! Covering every inch are paintings and drawings of the dogs. Dogs with wings, dogs riding Ferris wheels, dogs with torn ears, dogs the color of the moon, dogs made of smoke. Eyes watching, always watching.
I hear the other boys on my floor yelling and laughing. I know that behind closed doors, some are crying. When I open my door, I will smell breakfast in the dining hall.
I pull on my shirt. I roll down the sleeves to cover the scars on my right arm. I put one leg in my jeans and glance at the crescent-shaped scar on my other leg before I shove it in. I carry many scars. She was the first to und
erstand.
When I first came to The Children’s Recovery Home and School on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, I was not a boy. I was Wild Child. That is what they called me.
I hid under my bed. I hit and bit and barked and howled. I threw whatever I could get my hands on, so they took everything but my bed out of my room. I terrified the other children, so they tried feeding me in my room. I used the forks, even the spoons as weapons; once again I ate with my hands. They had to sedate me to give me a bath and shave off my hair.
I cried and rocked myself for days after under my bed. Everything was lost: the mother, the button, the stories, the tooth, and my only family. I was lost. I was again a ghost.
I think they had all but given up on me, until she came.
One day, the door to my room opened as it did several times during the day. I pressed my back against the wall and watched from under my bed. I growled low as I always did so they would go away.
But the feet that stood in front of my bed were not the usual feet in heavy work shoes or scuffed leather boots. These shoes were made of some kind of black cloth almost like fur. Colored thread swirled across the toes.
I sniffed. This person did not smell like cigarettes or cooked cabbage like the other women who came into my room. This person did not smell like beer and vodka. I took a deep sniff even as I growled and grumbled. This person smelled like the forest and clean smoke and there, just there, the tiny yet distinct smell of dog. My heart quivered.
She dropped to her knees and peered under my bed. I growled louder.
She laughed.
I stopped mid-growl. How long had it been since I had heard laughter?
I plucked anxiously at my hair and my eyebrows, and I rocked myself. I woofed at her to go away.
She did not. Instead, she sat cross-legged on the floor and did the most miraculous, mysterious thing: She began to hum!
I stopped rocking and I stopped growling and I listened. Her humming was beautiful. I closed my eyes and let it touch first my hand and then my face and then my chest.