Thor

by Wayne Smith

  “Can’t?”

  “Uh-huh,” Mom answered, “his exact words: ‘Sis, I don’t want any misunderstanding here. I’m not saying I don’t want a visit, I’m saying you can’t visit me. There’s a chain across the road and it’s staying there until I take it down. And if you hike the last mile, I won’t let you in the house when you get here.’ ”

  “Jesus,” Dad said quietly. “It almost sounds like he’s scared to see us.”

  “Why would he be scared?” Mom said defensively, though she’d thought the same thing. How could he stand to be so alone after everything that had happened?

  Tom took his eyes off the road long enough to see Janet holding her hair out of her face while she leaned her head on her forearm. It was a pose she unconsciously struck only when she was deeply worried. He decided to drop the subject. There was a lot more to talk about, but not in front of the kids.

  * * * *

  Thor missed the entire conversation — not that he would have understood any of it. More important things occupied his mind, like the thrill of hanging his head out the window at sixty miles an hour, and the distant smell of brine that was already finding its way to his nostrils and making him squirm in anticipation.

  Since the beginning of the long partnership between dogs and humans, dogs’ ability to understand large numbers of words has fascinated humans, tantalizing them with the thought of a talking dog. But dogs will never talk or otherwise communicate with words, not because they don’t understand words, but because they don’t think in words. No matter how many times Thor heard the word, “yes,” no matter how well he understood its meaning, he would never think “yes” when asked if he was hungry, or if he wanted to go out. He might feel yes with every cell in his body, but his mind would never “speak” the word, the way human minds do.

  Unlike humans, Thor had no mental language to give structure to his thoughts; he could not use words to construct complex ideas, or formulate questions, or help him remember what he was just thinking a moment ago.

  For Thor, as for all dogs, words were strictly incoming, and thoughts were always fleeting. Which was why he could seem so intelligent and mature, and at the same time, so childlike and simple.

  When Mom and Dad first discussed the BEACH trip, Uncle Ted’s name had come up often enough for Thor to relate Uncle Ted with the BEACH. Now the smell of salt air brought Uncle Ted to mind again.

  The plan to visit Uncle Ted had gotten only as far as the phone. Mom and Dad had agreed to a visit, and Mom asked the phone for final approval. She spoke to the phone as if it were Uncle Ted, but the phone disapproved, which seemed to worry Mom. Still, Thor sensed they’d visit Uncle Ted soon, and the thought warmed him.

  He’d met Uncle Ted a long time ago, when Thor was young. The two had hit if off immediately and been good friends ever since. Uncle Ted was Thor’s favorite relative.

  Through the roar of wind rushing past his ears, Thor heard the steady pounding of surf, and his hind legs did a little involuntary dance of anticipation. The car crested a hill and there it was: that glittering flat plane with its snarling, growling, churning edge. His old friend and playmate, the sea.

  Dad parked the SUV next to some sand dunes and the kids opened a door. Thor pushed past them and was, as always, the first one out of the car.

  He scanned the beach briefly and saw it was deserted. Then he checked the Pack’s reactions, especially Dad’s.

  He relied heavily on the Pack as a second set of eyes and ears. Despite the inferiority of their vision and hearing, they sometimes saw threats he missed, just as he frequently saw threats that were apparently invisible to them. But neither he nor they saw any danger at the beach. In truth, the Pack led a very secure life, and Thor had very little to do in the way of protecting them. But like a cop, Thor was never really off duty. His responsibility was too huge. The Pack was everyone he loved and everyone who loved him.

  For now, though, he accepted the security of the beach and thought only about the fun of exploring and playing with the Pack.

  The day had just begun, and every minute of it would be a thrill. Life didn’t get any better than this.

  * * * *

  Hours later, as the Pack prepared to leave, Thor pushed past the kids to be first in the car (as always). He watched intently as the Pack got in, concerned that no one be left behind. Once satisfied that everyone was present and accounted for, he curled up on the floor behind the front seat and was sound asleep before the car left the parking lot. Snug inside the security of the Pack, the turns and occasional bumps in the road were unable to disturb his nap.

  Fifteen minutes later, he woke instantly when the car pulled to a stop and the engine died. He hopped onto the back seat and crowded past the kids to the nearest window, and saw that the Pack had stopped at a supermarket.

  He sat up on the back seat, alert and awake. It was hard to sleep when the Pack left him alone in the car, as they always did at supermarkets. Instead, he would guard the car and watch the front door of the supermarket until they came out.

  The Pack trusted him enough to leave a window open. He was proud of their trust, and had no intention of violating it.

  It hadn’t always been that way; as a young dog, he’d messed up badly on his first shopping trip. They’d left a window open for him, told him “STAY!” and left. As soon as they disappeared inside the store, he panicked. He leaped through the window and ran to the sliding glass doors of the store. An electronic motion-sensor opened the doors with a whoosh that startled him. But he saw his chance and took it; he darted into the store, frantic to find his Pack.

  When he found them, instead of being happy to see him, they were furious, especially Dad. He called Thor a Bad Dog and dragged him back to the car, painfully yanking on Thor’s choker collar the whole way. When they got to the car, Dad angrily repeated the “STAY!” command.

  It was Thor’s first lesson in a fundamental principle: Dad’s Law overrides Natural Law.

  Eventually Thor learned his lesson, and as time went by, the memory of his earlier mistake faded, replaced by memories of more recent, better behavior.

  Now, years later, he only remembered how flawlessly he’d performed on these outings in the last year or so. Like a human, he used his memory to reinforce his Goodness instead of reminding him or his former Badness.

  Of course, the earlier memories were still intact somewhere in his brain. He just didn’t recall them.

  * * * *

  When the Pack finally emerged from the supermarket, everyone carried a paper bag except Dad, who carried two. Thor barked once in greeting. Dad looked around to see if any cars were coming; seeing none, he called Thor, who eagerly leaped through the window and ran to meet them, barking for a bundle to carry.

  It was a long-standing tradition. Since he was a pup, he’d always insisted on carrying a grocery bag with the Pack. It was one of the few chores he could help with, and he insisted on doing his part.

  Dad took one of his two bags (the half-empty one he’d gotten specifically for Thor), and rolled up the top of the bag. He offered the rolled-up end to Thor, who took it gently in his jaws.

  Thor strutted proudly with his bag, feeling completely adult, almost human. Few things felt better than full participation in Pack affairs.

  He carried his bag to the car, and when they got home, he carried his bag into the house. A perfect ending to a perfect day.

  As the Pack sorted the groceries and put them away, Thor curled up on the cool linoleum of the kitchen floor and sank into the deep, untroubled sleep of the innocent.

  Chapter 3

  “Thor!” Debbie called. “Here Thor! Heeere Thor!”

  Thor lay on the porch with his eyes closed and his chin resting on his crossed paws, breathing gently through his nose and smelling the world go by. He’d killed countless afternoons that way, but in the past he’d always let his eyes drift shut. Not today. Not for several days. His eyes had acquired a habit of scanning the horizon for something in the di
stance, despite his sense that it was quite far away. Something told him the thing in the distance mustn’t be allowed to catch him off-guard.

  He listened closely to Debbie’s voice but ignored her request. She could ask him to come, but she couldn’t order him to come. He outranked her and was not obliged to do her bidding.

  If she were to cry out in fear or pain, it would be a different story. Thor would be at her side in an instant, ready to offer whatever help he could. When it came to the Pack’s well-being, every member was precisely equal. Rank did not figure into Pack security.

  “Heeere, Thor! Heeere, Thor! Heeeeeere, Thor!”

  Her calls became a chant, which Thor enjoyed. It kept him updated on her whereabouts and condition, and he liked hearing the sound of his own name.

  “Heeere, Thor.”

  She could call all day if she wanted to. Made no difference to Thor, as long as she was in Pack territory and she wasn’t in trouble.

  It was a weekday, and life was back to normal.

  * * * *

  Mom and Thor had gone for their morning jog; afterward, Dad had come downstairs, smelling of soap and after-shave and dressed in dark, creased clothes that somehow made him stand and move stiffly. He ate breakfast with Mom, kissed her at the front door, and left.

  Thor hated to see Dad leave. It made no difference that he’d left practically every morning of Thor’s life and returned practically every night. The fact remained, he left the Pack, and would be gone all day.

  What if Dad met an enemy while he was out there? It could happen . . .

  And Thor wouldn’t be there to defend him. Dad could get killed, and the Pack would be without its male leader, without half its Mating Pair.

  Thor stood at the living room window every morning and watched Dad leave, wishing he’d turn around and come back. And every night, he stood and waited for Dad’s car.

  And Thor always seemed to know just when Dad would return.

  Sometimes Dad left for two or more days, and Thor didn’t sit at the living room window until the day Dad came home.

  Mom had noticed Thor’s apparent awareness of Dad’s schedule, but decided he was probably just picking up on her own expectations, which was partly right. Thor did notice Mom’s lack of anticipation when Dad wasn’t due home, but there was more to it than that, as Mom realized the night Dad got a flat tire.

  * * * *

  The skies were dark with rain clouds as Tom got in his car to go home. He’d had a hard time getting out of the office, and hadn’t looked at his watch until he was already in the car. He was a half-hour behind schedule, due home in ten minutes, with a forty-minute drive ahead of him. He knew he should call to let Janet know he’d be late, but the battery in his cell phone was dead and the nearest landline was in his office, six floors up, and he didn’t want to go back. He’d told Janet he had a heavy schedule, so he figured she wouldn’t worry too much, as long as he wasn’t more than a half-hour late.

  About halfway home, doing seventy, his left rear tire went out with a pow! that almost startled his bladder loose. The car lurched across two lanes before he managed to wrestle it onto the gravel shoulder and let it drift to a stop. He cursed under his breath and got out to survey the damage.

  The left rear wheel was shot, torn to shreds. And then his situation dawned on him: no one was going to stop to help.

  There was nothing but forest on either side of the road, not a building in sight, and, he knew, none within walking distance.

  He sighed, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, opened the trunk, and bent down to haul out the spare tire and get to work.

  By the time he had the lugnuts off the flat, his shirt and pants were ruined, smeared with road grime, grease, and whatever else sticks to tires. He was pulling the flat off the axle when the skies opened up and dumped what felt like Niagara Falls on him. He cursed and jumped into the car and waited for a break in the rain. It was a long wait.

  He ended up spending forty minutes changing the tire.

  Janet sat at the living room window the entire time, peering through the rain for headlights, trying to keep her fears under control. Thor lay on the floor at her feet, sleeping calmly. She tried to make Thor’s disinterest into a good sign, but in reality, she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  A minute before Tom pulled into the driveway, Thor suddenly tensed, sprang to his feet, and pressed his nose against the glass. Janet thought he must have heard the car coming. She squinted out the window, but saw nothing. Thor squirmed and whimpered. She looked again — still nothing. She decided Thor must have heard an animal outside; then she saw headlights through the rain, and Tom’s car came crunching up the gravel driveway. Thor gave a little greeting woof and dashed off to the back door to greet his leader.

  Janet wondered about the incident for a long time. For days, she watched Thor whenever Tom was due home. At first she thought Thor’s hearing was just that much better than hers, but she couldn’t convince herself. Thor had perked up a whole minute before the car arrived. A little arithmetic told her that if Tom had been doing thirty miles an hour (a conservative estimate, but considering the rain, he might have been going that slow), he would have been a half mile away when Thor perked up. Even if Thor could hear the car that far away — through a closed window, in pouring rain — could he have distinguished it from all the other cars on the road?

  The question gnawed at her until weeks later, when Tom was twenty minutes late. It was just enough for Janet to start worrying, but this time, she went into the living room to watch the dog, rather than the road.

  Thor had made himself comfortable in the window chair, but he wasn’t looking out; he was waiting. Janet sat a few feet away with her stopwatch in hand. A few minutes went by and Thor sat up. She hit the stopwatch. Thor squirmed, pressed his nose to the window and whined, then sat rigid and alert. His ears were up, but they didn’t twitch the way they did when he heard something in the distance.

  The stopwatch ticked off twenty seconds, twenty-two, twenty-five. Thor didn’t move. Fifty seconds. Thor stiffened slightly, his ears perked up, and he tilted his head to put his left ear a little closer to the glass. His eyes were locked on the street.

  Thor’s face lit up. He’d heard the car for the first time. Janet stopped the watch. Fifty-five seconds. A few seconds later, she heard the car.

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and a chill ran down her spine. She’d just witnessed something impossible.

  Later, Janet told Tom about it, but to her amazement, he wasn’t surprised. His family had always had dogs, and he’d seen similar behavior in more than one of them. His childhood dog, Harmon, for example, had always known when he was going to the vet, despite the family’s careful avoidance of “the V-word.” People casually referred to it as a “dog’s sixth sense.” When Tom was a teenager, he’d looked for other “psychic powers” in Harmon, but found none. If dogs had any other unexplained abilities, they kept them well hidden.

  Eventually Tom accepted the explanation that dogs simply pick up very subtle cues from their masters. No big deal.

  Janet was disappointed. She’d never been around dogs before, and thought she’d discovered something truly extraordinary. Thor might become famous, she’d imagined, the Psychic Dog.

  But if this ability was so commonplace, why hadn’t hard research been done on it?

  “Well,” Tom suggested one night, “assuming dogs do have some psychic ability, maybe scientists feel it’s beneath them to research. Who knows?”

  Janet spent some time in the library reading all she could find about dogs, but never found any mention of a canine “sixth sense.”

  But she did find numerous stories about a mysterious ability of dogs to find their way home from hundreds, sometimes even thousands of miles away. Sometimes to homes they’d never been to before. In one case, a family moved cross-country, leaving the dog behind. Months later, the bedraggled pooch showed up on their new doorstep.

  But as amazin
g as the stories were, they were just that — stories. Anecdotal evidence only. No research to back it up. Why not?

  And Thor showed no other unusual insights. Just apparent premonitions of Tom’s return (and her own return from shopping, which she wasn’t there to see).

  In the end, Janet, like Thor, accepted what she couldn’t understand.

  Things seem normal because they’re familiar, not because they make sense.

  * * * *

  “Heeeere, Thor!”

  “Thor? Here, Thor!”

  Mom’s voice, not Debbie’s. Calling from the kitchen.

  Thor sprang to his feet with his ears pricked up, listening for the next call to double-check her tone of voice.

  “Here, Thor!” A little impatience, but that was normal for a second call. Overall positive, a little residual irritation (also normal at this time of day with the kids home). Her irritation probably wasn’t directed toward him. Could be a trip. Could be anything.

  He poked the front door with his nose, but it was latched, so he trotted around the house to the kitchen door, briefly checking on Debbie on his way.

  As he expected, she was playing with her plastic sand bucket and shovel in the little grassy strip between the driveway and the house, chatting idly with her favorite doll, which sat watching from the sidelines. Her kitten was nowhere to be seen, which was not unusual. She’d brought some sand from the beach, and was busy discovering that wet sand and dirt make better castles than the ones she’d made on the beach with wet sand alone.

  He was glad to see that Debbie was on the Pack’s side of the split-rail fence that separated the Pack’s property from the neighbors’. The bottom rail was high enough for Debbie (or Thor, for that matter) to pass under easily, which she quite often did. Thor didn’t care for that. He understood the meaning of the fence, and he agreed with it in principle. In fact, he reinforced its meaning every day with his urine.