by Wayne Smith
* * * *
Thor hung his head out the car window, feeling the stiff breeze brush his fur and whip through his open mouth, cooling his tongue so fast that he didn’t have to pant, despite the heat of the day.
The landscape rushing by was all hills and trees, with hardly a building in sight. The hills kept getting higher and higher as they went, and the buildings fewer and farther between. A dazzling variety of trees flashed past the SUV, offering an equally dazzling variety of aromas, both floral and faunal. Thor was tantalized by the prospect of the animals he would find hiding behind the dense wall of leaves and pine needles that blanketed the hills. The thrill of discovery electrified him, and his hind legs and tail twitched with anticipation. The woods around Uncle Ted’s house were denser and wilder than those behind the Pack’s house; they were as exciting as any place Thor had ever visited, and the vague possibility of danger lurking among the trees made the woods even more attractive.
Thor knew he was a feared animal, among the most feared animals in any environment. But he also know there were animals out there that he would be wise to fear, and not all of them were bigger or stronger than he. As a young dog, he’d learned a painful lesson when he met his first porcupine. Now when he smelled porcupine tracks, he sniffed them out of curiosity only, and never hurried to catch up with their owner.
But caution didn’t diminish his love of discovery. In fact, it heightened it. He couldn’t wait to get out of the car and roam the woods around Uncle Ted’s house, as free as any wild animal.
Which was another thing he liked about Uncle Ted. His house was all by itself, with no other humans around for miles, so there was virtually no need for Thor to think about Pack security. There were no restrictions on Thor’s wandering when the Pack visited Uncle Ted.
The trip seemed to take forever as the car snaked through the valley to Uncle Ted’s house. It was strange, about the car. Humans did everything slowly; they walked slowly, they ran slowly, they ate slowly and they played slowly. The only thing they did fast was drive. And yet, no matter how fast they drove, it always took the car a long time to get where it was going. As if it, too, were going slowly.
Fortunately, the trip itself was fairly exciting. The smell and sight of the dense forest stirred something deep in his genes. The Pack had made this trip many times (although not lately) and Thor know the route well. The sight of “almost there” landmarks encouraged a gentle flow of adrenalin that tingled his legs and chest.
The car turned off the two-lane blacktop and onto a gravel road, where it started its long uphill climb. There were five mailboxes at the mouth of the gravel road; some of their owners had to drive more than a mile from their homes to check the mail. Nothing else on the landscape indicated the presence of humans.
As they got closer to Uncle Ted’s house, one of Thor’s front paws kept stepping through the window involuntarily, as if he were about to jump out and run ahead. Brett kept grabbing his paw and pulling in back inside, which embarrassed Thor. He wasn’t planning to jump, and wished he could control his paw’s reflex action.
The car wound up a steep grade, high above the valley floor. The trees began to thin out somewhat, and eventually almost all of them were pines of one kind or another, with just a few leafy trees here and there. The hillside was cooler and darker than the valley, but the trees weren’t dense enough to cut off the sunlight, and there were lots of bushes and scrub on the ground.
Then the road leveled off and followed the side of the hill. Eventually, they reached Uncle Ted’s driveway and turned downhill. Finally an angular wood and glass structure appeared, and the car pulled to a stop. Uncle Ted’s “cabin” was actually an airy, luxuriant, redwood A-frame, perched near the top of the hill, surrounded by redwood forest on three sides, and sky on the other. His nearest neighbor was two miles away. Above his house, a little-used hiking trail ran along the ridgeline of the hills for miles.
“Go for it, Thor!” Dad called over his shoulder as he stopped the car. Thor leaped through the window before the words were out of Dad’s mouth. Mom punched Dad on the shoulder for encouraging rowdy behavior.
Thor hit the ground running, torn between his urge to sniff out the grounds and his desire to see Uncle Ted. Uncle Ted was nowhere in sight, so the urge to sniff won. His nose guided him to the edge of the pathway that led to Uncle Ted’s house. He drew in a series of short sniffs of the ivy-like foliage that carpeted the ground and shrouded the earth beneath its low-lying leaves. He sniffed aimlessly at first, both to familiarize himself with the smells of the area, and to overwhelm his nose with the ever-present odors of fresh and rotting pine needles, so their scents would fade into the background and allow fainter, subtler smells to be detected, categorized, and filed away.
The trees were different from the ones behind the Pack’s house, and wildlife was everywhere. Scents of different soil types mingled with a kaleidoscope of animal smells — traces of fur, feathers, rotting carcasses, and waste products flashed through his nose and excited his imagination.
Thor’s sense of smell wasn’t just more sensitive than the Pack’s; it was also more specialized. While he could detect any scent more easily than the Pack, he smelled some things better than others. Important things, like the fatty acids secreted by the skin of mammals, which tag each individual with a distinct and unforgettable signature. When it came to detecting and discriminating between these highly individual scents, his nose was supreme. He could find and follow a three day old scent trail, and identify it based on less than a millionth of the smallest amount detectable by humans.
The experience of smelling was also different. The wet end of his nose was extremely sensitive to temperature changes; it could determine the speed and direction of the slightest breeze with pinpoint accuracy. Thor’s brain processed wind-direction information along with the odors in such a way that he smelled things where they were, outside his nose, the same way humans hear sounds where they are, instead of inside their ears, where the hearing is actually taking place.
Thor was deep in the ocean of aromas, finding and filing away new floral odors, acrid waste products from birds, insects, and small mammals, and the pungent, heavy mulch perfumes of the soil, when the front door of Uncle Ted’s house opened, and he looked up.
Uncle Ted!
Thor forgot his explorations and ran to Uncle Ted with his head down, his ears flat against his head, his tail between his legs in respectful submission, wagging uncontrollably. He just couldn’t get to Uncle Ted fast enough.
Uncle Ted smiled down at him just as Thor leaped up like a dolphin, lightly touching the bottom of Uncle Ted’s chin with his nose and licking it with the tip of his tongue. He leaped twice and kissed him twice before Uncle Ted raised his hands to fend off the affectionate attack, then hunkered down to greet his old friend.
Unable to fully express his joy by wagging his tail, Thor’s whole body wriggled and danced in delight at the touch of Uncle Ted’s hands. Uncle Ted hugged him warmly, patting Thor’s rump and stroking his head and neck to calm his twitching, squirming torso. Thor managed to control himself a little and politely kissed Uncle Ted’s hands, in deference to Uncle Ted’s wish not to be kissed on the face.
Then Uncle Ted spoke, and everything changed.
“Hi, Thor.”
Something was wrong with his tone of voice. Uncle Ted was not happy.
Thor’s concern overrode his sense of protocol, and he looked directly at Uncle Ted’s face. He was sorry to see that his impression was correct. Uncle Ted was terribly unhappy. Thor kissed Uncle Ted’s hands gently, tenderly, as he would kiss an injury. His kisses were intended to show his sympathy, to console Uncle Ted that whatever was wrong, he was still loved. The purpose of his kisses was more urgent than mere greetings, and he didn’t let himself be put off by Uncle Ted’s upraised hands. He easily pushed past them and kissed Uncle Ted’s chin, then watched for some sign that his affection might have helped heal Uncle Ted’s unseen wound.
It had
n’t.
“Hi, Uncle Ted!” Brett and Debbie sang at almost exactly the same time. Uncle Ted stood up, a little relieved to escape Thor’s emotional first aid. Brett and Debbie ran to him with outstretched arms, while Teddy leaned against the car, too cool for this scene. Thor let Brett and Debbie squeeze him out of the action, and soon the whole Pack was walking together up the stairs to Uncle Ted’s house.
Thor muscled his way past the Pack (as always) and ran inside to sniff things out. He bounded into the house, looking for the scent of Uncle Ted’s mate, Marjorie.
There were cardboard boxes on the living room floor, some filled with Uncle Ted’s belongings, most empty. What was going on here?
He sniffed the boxes and the chairs and the sofa. He pushed his nose deep between the sofa cushions, where he picked up Marjorie’s scent, old and faint and almost undetectable. Where was she? And where was the scent of sex that had never been more than a day old on previous visits?
Uncle Ted and the Pack came in the front door talking, which made their usually slow pace even slower.
“So where’ll you go?” Dad asked Uncle Ted gently.
“I haven’t made up my mind,” Uncle Ted said. “But I can’t stay here, not now. Maybe later. I’m putting my stuff in storage until I make up my mind where to go, which might take a while.”
“Well, if you need help, all you have to do is ask,” Dad said.
“No, he doesn’t have to ask,” Mom said. “We’re helping whether you ask or not.”
“Hey, look, sis,” Uncle Ted said, smiling lamely (but at least smiling). “No need to get bossy here. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.” Dad elbowed Mom in the ribs at the sound of his own words.
Thor listened carefully to the odd-sounding conversation. Something was wrong with the way Uncle Ted was talking to Mom and Dad. Something disturbingly familiar, and at the same time, disturbingly out of place. Thor poked his nose into a box and didn’t look up. He didn’t want to be obvious about studying Uncle Ted, but his attention was riveted on the subtle nuances in Uncle Ted’s voice.
He observed Uncle Ted for a few minutes, but still couldn’t decide what was wrong. Uncle Ted was hiding something from the Pack, that much was obvious. First of all, he was both hiding and not hiding his emotional state. He was making it clear to the Pack he was terribly unhappy, but not allowing them to see just how unhappy he was. Typical human behavior.
But there was more to it than that, a deeper subterfuge that was obscured by the obvious one. What was it?
Thor’s span of attention was stretched beyond its usual limit. An odd smell in one of the boxes caught his attention. He lost track of the mystery of Uncle Ted’s secret and went back to his general-purpose olfactory investigation.
He finished with the boxes and sniffed the sofa again briefly, going back to the familiarization routine that had been interrupted by Uncle Ted’s strangeness. Mom, Debbie, and Brett had made themselves comfortable on the sofa, which didn’t make his job any easier. He picked up a whiff of Marjorie’s scent again, which brought back the question of her whereabouts.
He followed his instincts to the wrought-iron spiral staircase that always gave him so much trouble. He climbed up the steps two at a time (his problem with the staircase was coming back down). He wanted to check Uncle Ted’s bed-sheets.
He bounded onto the bedroom deck, an oversize balcony above the living room, and went straight for the bed, which was just a mattress and box springs on the floor. Unlike the Pack, Uncle Ted never made his bed, which made Thor’s job easier. He stuck his nose deep in the sheets and snuffed around. He found only the faintest detectable trace of Marjorie, not on the sheets but on the mattress beneath. There was no detectable aroma of sex, which wasn’t surprising. The smell of sex fades much faster than the smell of skin oils.
The picture was complete. There was almost no trace of Marjorie anywhere. Uncle Ted had been alone for some time. That must be why his emotions were so mixed up. Thor’s sympathy went out to Uncle Ted. Nothing is worse than loneliness.
There was a cardboard box filled with laundry in the bedroom. Thor thrust his snout into it and got a surprise. Inside was the scent of a strange animal. The scent was strangely dog-like, but the animal was not a dog. Its scent was wild, feral, unlike any animal scent Thor had ever encountered before. And even stranger was the fact that he hadn’t picked up the scent anywhere else in the house. Just in the box. Uncle Ted must have encountered a wild animal outside and gotten its scent on his clothes, then left the clothes in the box.
“Thor!” Dad called from the living room. “Get down here!” Thor was glad to oblige. He’d found everything he was going to find up there.
He negotiated the first steps of the spiral staircase cautiously. The stairs were steep, and curved inward too tightly for his long, horizontal body. On top of that, they weren’t solid. They were metal grids that Thor could see through, an unsettling quality he particularly disliked. He took three or four tentative steps, then tumbled down in a kind of controlled fall, his feet guiding his descent rather than carrying him down.
The first time he’d gone up there, when he was a pup, he’d gotten stuck, afraid to negotiate the scary, see-though steps. Dad had to come up and carry him down, which was humiliating beyond belief. The next time the Pack visited Uncle Ted, he bounded up the stairs again before remembering what had happened. When he realized what he’d done, he looked at the stairs, pulled back, recalled the embarrassment of being rescued, and forced himself down in exactly the same manner as he did today. His technique was primitive — even Thor thought so — but it worked. He’d never improved on it.
When he reached the living room floor, Dad was in the kitchen area, holding the back door open.
“C’mon,” Dad said. “Out you go.” Thor needed no coaxing. He dashed through the door into Fantasyland. There was a lot of territory out there, just waiting to be explored.
His nose led him up the hillside. There was a path behind the house that got just enough use to keep it from being swallowed up by the underbrush. At the top of the hill it joined a popular hiking path that followed the ridgeline of hills through the area. The ridgeline path was older and, since it got more use, better defined. Hikers came through on a fairly regular basis, leaving garbage behind that attracted animals. It was a great place to sniff and explore.
Skyline Trail, as it was known, was almost a quarter mile up the hill from Uncle Ted’s house, and hikers normally passed by without ever knowing anyone lived on the hillside below. Only at night could a hiker spot the house from Skyline, when light glowed dimly through the foliage below. But hikers rarely used Skyline after dark, and almost never took the little footpath down to Uncle Ted’s house — Skyline was two miles long, with a hundred paths leading off; most of them led nowhere. Most hikers took Skyline all the way to the end, where it led out of the hills and into a state park, where friends waited to pick them up.
Thor had no idea why the myriad hikers along the summit didn’t come down the hill, but his nose told him that was the case. Whenever he picked up a human scent on the path leading up to Skyline, it was invariably Uncle Ted’s or Marjorie’s. Now he picked up only Uncle Ted’s scent, and an occasional hint of the Wild Animal he’d smelled in Uncle Ted’s laundry.
He trotted up the path briskly, but not so fast that he might miss something interesting. In past visits, he’d frequently spotted animals off the path and gotten in some invigorating chases.
Less than halfway up the hill, he found the scents of raccoons, opossums, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, and a cornucopia of droppings. And the Wild Animal. Something about the scent made the hair on Thor’s shoulders rise slightly, and he listened more carefully to the forest sounds around him.
The Wild Animal’s scent got stronger as it went up the hill, which was odd in itself. Scents don’t usually get more or less intense as they go along. They only get stronger if they’re joined by the scent of another animal of the same kind, or if the anima
l stops and lies down, or does something to leave more of its essence behind, like scratching itself against a tree. But there was no sign that the Wild Animal had stopped, and no second scent. The scent just got stronger.
Very odd.
Thor wanted to sprint up the hill, follow the Wild Animal’s trail to the end, see what he could find out about it, but some deep-seated instinct advised caution. Very strongly. He proceeded cautiously.
Just a few hundred feet below Skyline he picked up a fresh human scent. A woman. The scent appeared out of nowhere, as if the woman had walked down the path toward Uncle Ted’s house, then turned around and gone back. He followed it up the hill for a few feet when he realized the Wild Animal’s scent had stopped where the woman’s scent started. He doubled back to find the end of the Wild Animal’s path, and found his mistake: The scent trails didn’t end, they left the path, and went into the dense underbrush on the hillside. Thor followed the overlapped trails.
About thirty feet from the path, the woman’s trail entered a wide patch of berry plants whose stems were covered with sharp thorns. And here Thor picked up the unmistakable scent of human blood. The woman’s scent was stronger here — she was probably struggling to get through the brambles, sweating, getting cut, and secreting more odor in the process. Thor stepped through the brambles carefully, lifting his feet high in the air and looking for an opening in the thorns before gently, tentatively setting them down.
Humans seldom stray from paths, Thor knew. Could the animal have led the woman off the path? But would a human follow an animal across a dangerous field of thorns? Would an animal cross the bushes in the first place? Everything seemed wrong. The questions fluttered wordlessly through Thor’s mind and vanished as quickly as they appeared, but they changed the scenario in his mind.