Storm Dog

by L. M. Elliott

  Listening to Mama had made my skin crawl. Her prejudice against her own childhood community and her quest to turn G-L-O-R-I-A into a total “It Girl” reminded me of the evil stepmother in Cinderella, with that character’s conniving to elevate her own daughters with the prince. Mama’s comments also made me wonder if Daddy had been “an option” in Mama’s eyes—which would way validate the icky stuff the pearl-ladies said about her. I didn’t like to think about it.

  In the back of Marcus’s Mustang was the huge pizza-slice costume he wore to dance around street corners to advertise a local pizza joint. He reached in and pulled out a wad of coupons to the place. “Here, take these.”

  “You don’t need to bribe me, Marcus. I won’t tell.”

  He frowned. Lighting a cigarette, he let it droop from his lips so it popped up and down as he spoke. “It wasn’t a bribe, just a thank-you. Share them with your friends.” He pushed them at me again.

  “I don’t really have friends, Marcus.” I thought about the boy with the big gleaming smile, who sat behind me in Civics. But he probably didn’t even know my name and definitely didn’t need to be getting pepperoni stuck in his braces.

  Marcus frowned again. “Why not? A smart girl like you?”

  “Maybe I’m too smart for my own good.”

  “That stinks.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I answered.

  Since I wouldn’t take them, Marcus tossed the coupons through the window of the front seat. They landed on a copy of devotionals for deer hunters and a really fat book titled Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned. He breathed in his cigarette and considered me a moment.

  “You really should stop smoking, Marcus. It’s terrible for you. And it stinks up everything. Mama will know you were in the living room because of the smell.”

  “Darn it,” he muttered. He threw the butt to the ground and squashed it with his heel. “Now see there, Ariel? That was being a good friend.” He stuck out his hand. “I’d be proud to consider you one of mine.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded.

  So I shook his hand tattooed with a swallow. And I knew that I would do my best to make him feel better if things went sideways with Gloria because of Mama. To be honest, Gloria liking Marcus, and her braving Mama’s disapproval, had helped me like her, a little anyway.

  Still, Marcus being so nice to me made me think I should warn him not to count on things too much. It came out all geeky, of course. “Hey, Marcus, do you know that your tattoo, ‘carpe diem,’ is from a Latin poem? It starts with ‘seize the day’—which sounds all hopeful—but it ends with ‘putting as little trust as possible in the future.’”

  “Shoot, girl, that’s pessimistic. You gotta have belief in the possibilities every tomorrow promises. Otherwise how do you get up in the morning?” He winked at me as he got in the car. “Hey, here’s a thought. You know I work at the animal shelter on Saturdays, right?”

  I nodded. Marcus worked hard. He was mainly a handyman, able to fix most anything with a screwdriver, duct tape, and some paint. He and Gloria had met when Marcus was fixing gutters and rain rot around our house. He was constantly being called by the county’s new residents, those SUV drivers with their Bluetooths and bumper stickers bragging on their honor student kids. I swear they do Google searches to hire help for just about everything except screwing in new light bulbs. So Marcus was able to piece together a decent enough living.

  “Why don’t you come pick out a dog?” he suggested. “We’ve got a bunch of really nice ones in right now.”

  I ached to tell him about the German Shepherd—the dog I was already starting to think of as mine—but I didn’t trust Marcus that much yet. So I just spoke a truth: “Mama won’t let me have a dog.”

  “Say what?” He thought a moment. “Well, come on over this weekend, and you can help me brush them. I try to get them out in the yard to exercise and clean them up some. That way they have a better chance of being adopted when people come in.”

  Wow—a real invitation. Like a friend might make. Things were definitely looking up! “Okay, thanks!” I smiled.

  “You know what, Ariel? You’ve got a real sweet smile.” He grinned, turning on his car’s engine with a roar. “See you Saturday.” With that Marcus drove off, his tailpipe smoking and “Take Me Home, Country Roads” wailing from his Mustang.

  I went inside to pick up those magazines. They were scattered and jumbled, their covers turned up and corners squashed. Gloria never picked up after herself—ever. You can’t even see the carpet in her bedroom, it’s so layered with her panties and T-shirts and dresses and sweaters she’s taken off and just dropped. I didn’t really care about Gloria getting busted. In fact, it kind of would have made my day. But I didn’t want Marcus to be barred from coming to the house now that we were officially friends.

  It was pretty reckless of Gloria to be sucking face with Marcus indoors. But Mama never sets foot in the library. It’s Daddy’s sanctuary. The corner where his desk is smells of Daddy’s tweedy jackets and leather briefcases. But there’s nothing museum-stuffy about our library. Those books are well-loved companions.

  Once, I found notes scribbled all over the margins of O. Henry’s really beautiful short story The Gift of the Magi. The one about the woman who cuts off and sells her hair to buy a pocket-watch chain for her husband for Christmas, not knowing he’s sold his precious watch to buy special combs for her luxurious, long hair. In delicate, perfect cursive were these English teacher–smart comments: “Exquisite sacrifice and irony,” “If only all love were this true,” “Mythology of selflessness.”

  When I asked Daddy who made those notations, he kind of twitched as he stared down at the pages. “It’s your grandmother’s handwriting,” he said softly. “She earned her doctorate in English literature from the University of Virginia. One of the first women allowed to do that, you know.”

  “No, Daddy, I didn’t. I don’t know anything about her.” That’s when I realized that I’d seen nothing anywhere in the house about the woman who’d raised him.

  Daddy fished around in his top drawer and pulled out a black-and-white photo of a woman in a formal fox-hunting coat, sitting tall and straight on a horse, surrounded by foxhounds. Her face was in profile, turned away from the camera mostly, so all I could really see was a long nose and thick, even frizzly hair caught up in a chignon under her velveteen riding hat. “She was brilliant . . . witty . . . could recite entire poems. She was stern, exacting, but unwavering in her devotion to those she cared for . . . a quick-flash temper . . . a magnificent rider.” Daddy said all that, strangely hesitant. “She always made me think of women warriors—like Cleopatra. Terrifying but wonderful.”

  Daddy took the photo back, looked at me kind of funny, like he was going to say something else. But instead he tucked it into the desk’s top drawer and left the room.

  I’ve pulled the photo out a bunch of times since then to look for clues about what made my grandmother as righteous and fierce as a woman warrior. So far I could find nothing in her appearance, other than her straight back and the aura of self-confidence her posture hinted at.

  But there wasn’t time for that today. Daddy would be home from work soon and head into his retreat before dinner. I started stacking the magazines Gloria and Marcus had dislodged, and I was pretty happy doing it. I do love a pile of National Geographics. It’s like dozens of windows looking out on the entire world all at once. Daddy must have had serious trouble sleeping the night before—court cases he’s really worked up about keep him awake sometimes—because there were about twenty issues lying there, new ones and old ones.

  Sitting in that pool of covers, I couldn’t help lingering over photos of coral reefs and translucent fish, mysterious places like Stonehenge, exploding volcanoes, robed men riding on camels, close-ups of bug-eyed lemurs. I definitely couldn’t resist reading about the mama panda cuddling her baby. People all over the country are c
onstantly tuning into the National Zoo’s Panda Cam, so how can you blame me?

  But it was another article in that issue that really grabbed me. It was on the joy and the healing powers of dance. I was completely enthralled by stop-action sequences of ballerinas, ballroom dancers swirling in glittery gauze, and a photo that really rocked me: a dog standing on his back feet dancing with a lady in pink sequins and tap shoes. They were competing in Dog Dancing. “Musical Canine Freestyle” is the fancy name. I kid you not—there are national competitions all over the world for this. The article quoted a judge who said, “With the right piece, the dog lights up. Its tail wags harder.”

  I thought about how my humming had helped that traumatized German Shepherd beat back his terror and come through the door to me. Music must be a powerful incantation for him. It certainly was for my brother—what made George feel “invulnerable.”

  Tomorrow afternoon, I was going to play lots of tunes for that dog at Sergeant Josie’s cabin. I closed my eyes and envisioned juking with him. I was flying happy in my imagination when Gloria completely crashed me. Talk about a buzzkill.

  “Hey, Loser,” she sneered from the doorway. “You ever sneak up on me like that again and I’ll find a way to embarrass the hell out of you somewhere when it counts. Understand?”

  I peeped open one eye. There G-L-O-R-I-A stood, neat and primped, makeup perfect, her naturally wavy hair ironed flat in a long sheen of gold. As if she could humiliate me any more than she already did with her snipes and shunning.

  Mama called to her from the front hall. Sweet as syrup, Gloria turned and sang back, “In here, with Ariel. She’s been into Daddy’s magazines again, and I was just telling her she better pick up her mess.”

  Gloria checked her cell phone, giggled, and texted something back to one of her thousand friends. Without even looking my way, she threw one last barb at me. “And don’t kid yourself about how nice Marcus was to you today. It’s only because of me. Next time he’s here, I’ll tell him not to bother.”

  Mama shouted again, fussing about being late for the princess meeting.

  “Coming!” Smiling dreamily, Gloria flounced away.

  That’s when anger boiled up in me as fast and dark as a squall line gathering along the Shenandoah. And the idea—an idea fit for a wind-spirit, tempest child who could conjure storm clouds and might be destined to go to H-E-double hockey sticks—came to me. Right then and there I knew that I was going to teach that dog to dance. Music would set him free of fear and elevate my soul out of nobodyhood.

  Then he and I were going to crash the Apple Blossom parade to steal some of G-L-O-R-I-A’s thunder.

  Seven

  THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ARTICLE WAS OVER a decade old, so I turned to YouTube to get the current scoop on dog dancing. Typing in those two little words took me to a whole new universe. Dachshunds to Great Danes danced with their trainers to ragtime, hip-hop, and rock ‘n’ roll. I traveled to competitions all over the world and witnessed crazy-good performances.

  One man pretended to be Charlie Chaplin, that silent movie guy with the little mustache and bowler hat, twirling a cane and waddling like a windup toy. His collie pranced along beside him in perfect step. Then the collie seemed to get full of himself and took a flying leap to knock Charlie flat on his back. Charlie’s legs sprawled up into a V. The collie jumped through the man’s legs, did break dance–like spins, added that scraping thing dogs do to kick grass over their poop, and finally hopped around on his back legs like a boxer does after KOing his opponent. The crowd guffawed with laughter.

  But the routine I hit over and over again was a lady and a golden retriever with Rapunzel-gorgeous fur. The dog glided back and forth under his handler’s legs as she walked. He cross-stepped in perfect rhythm. He bowed as she kicked her legs over his head. He sashayed backward, shifting directions as flawlessly as she did, and spun round and round, vaulting off the floor, his tail whip-wagging the whole time. At the end of the routine, he jumped into her arms and covered her with kisses.

  I wanted my stressed-out, bedraggled German Shepherd to feel that kind of trust and companionship, to move with that kind of happy abandon. I wanted to be like that lady. I couldn’t see her up close to know for sure what her face was like, but dancing with her dog, she was beautiful. She was graceful. And she’d had eight million views!

  If I could teach him to dance, maybe people would talk about what I had created, rather than what I looked like or what they thought I might become given their definition of worth. Maybe they’d even stop comparing me to G-L-O-R-I-A.

  I fished around YouTube to find how-to instructions. I quickly learned the choreography involves a lot of “heel work,” treats, and hand signals, plus breaking the routine into little pieces, practiced over and over again before linking the segments together. I could do that.

  The first step was finding music to suit the dog’s movements and attitudes. Well, I thought, my phone was crammed with over a thousand songs. With all those choices, I’d find something that German Shepherd would like. My real problem would be keeping my mind on school the next day until I could climb the hills to Sergeant Josie’s cabin.

  That didn’t go so great. I flunked an Algebra test. I’d completely forgotten about it, I was so excited about dog dancing. So getting half the problems right was a decent accomplishment, I thought. But the teacher didn’t. She gave me an F minus. What’s that all about? If you flunk, you flunk; there’s nothing below that, except to rub it in.

  But she was that kind of teacher—the overly ardent kind who seems personally insulted if her students screw up and gets really impatient with them, which borders on ridicule, if you ask me, when done in front of the whole class. Maybe she’d been a teacher’s pet all her life and now that she was on the other side of the desk didn’t know how to give positive feedback rather than get it. Maybe she was just socially inept. But she sure was messing with my one little shred of self-esteem. It meant a lot to me that I was in the “gifted and talented” section, taking high school–level math as an eighth grader. Six kids had washed out and left her class for “regular” math, looking like that shell-shocked German Shepherd as they did. I’d been terrified I might be next.

  Normally I would have stewed on that test failure for days and called myself all sorts of names. But as the school bus belched its way out of the parking lot at 2:25, I put in my earbuds, turned on music, and tuned out my own noise.

  Kids from the county’s most rural areas go to my school, so our buses cover a lot of geography. It can take forty minutes for mine to make it to my stop. It’s some beautiful territory, though, full of lush rippling hills, sun-danced ponds, and fields of horses chasing each other just for the fun of it. So I don’t mind the trip. Normally those views soothe me as I head to the rocky world of home.

  But that day I was saved instead by Sara Bareilles playing piano and singing “King of Anything,” her defiant rejection of people imposing their opinions on her self-concepts. She makes it real clear that no one should try bossing her around. But she’s not all mad about it, so the song is totally catchy. Come to think of it, I discovered her on YouTube, too, singing on a bus with marching band musicians playing in the back seats. The video makes me think of George. So I can listen to the song over and over again as a kind of pep rally when I need to lift my mood.

  It plays for 3:23 minutes. That meant I could listen to it twelve times before I stepped off my own bus that afternoon at my driveway. I divided it out in my head (to get 11.8343-something). See, Ms. Math? I know what I’m doing!

  When I got home, I dumped my books, pulled out my bike, and headed for the hills. At Sky Meadows, I started climbing, happy and excited. But up on those trails, I got all turned around trying to refind Sergeant Josie’s cabin. I began to wonder if I had just dreamed the whole thing when I heard the wispy tinkling of wind chimes, far-off, faint and haphazard. I followed the little stream of bell-song. That’s how quiet the world is up there on those hills, how much the wind
picks up a sound, cradles it, and carries it right to you—if you’re listening.

  The music led me straight to the clearing. As I neared, I could see Sergeant Josie and the dog together on the cabin steps, soaking in the sunlight that sifted through breaks in the forest canopy. They both had their faces lifted. Josie was smiling, eyes closed. The dog was sitting on her feet, sniffing in every smell the wind was dangling around him. They both looked so hushed, so peaceful, so renewed.

  She’d even brushed him clean of burrs. I felt a stab of jealousy. Was she going to turn out like G-L-O-R-I-A, hogging the attention of anyone I hoped would love me? But when that dog saw me, he dove off the steps to jump all over me, licking my face and nosing my hands for treats.

  “Hey,” I greeted Sergeant Josie as I walked to the porch, the dog hip-hopping all around me.

  “Hey yourself,” she answered as she stood. “Come on inside. I made cookies. My mom always had cookies waiting for me after school. I think they’re still warm.”

  Cookies? I don’t think I’d ever before had a plate of warm anything waiting for me after school. I almost drooled like the dog when she offered me a plate full of sweet vanilla sugar cookies.

  I broke off a piece to give him, assuming he was still beside me. But the dog had stayed outside, sitting sentry, looking in through the door. “He won’t come in?”

  “No. I got him out last night, and he hasn’t left the clearing. But he hasn’t come back through that door again either.”

  She waited until I had downed the second cookie to bring up finding out if the dog belonged to anyone. I almost spat the cookie back out at her when she did. “I called the local shelter to see if anyone reported a missing shepherd and no one has. He’s obviously been traveling on his own for a while. But we should still have him checked for an identity chip. If he’s a Military Working Dog, he’ll have one. But”—she held up her hand to stop my protest—“we need to get him to trust us first. Right now, I don’t think I could get him into my truck to take him there without re-traumatizing him. And that would totally blow his ever trusting you.”