Ain't Nothing but a Pound Dog

by Jeannie Wycherley

  More neglect here.

  Where the vegetable patches had once been, there were now weeds. The container plants had gone to seed or died from lack of nourishment. Someone, local kids maybe, had kicked the water barrel over, and Old Joe’s wooden bench, where he liked to bide his time in between spurts of gardening, had been vandalised, the armrests wrenched off.

  The kitchen window had been boarded up back here too, and somebody had scrawled across it in black paint. Toby couldn’t read, but he assumed it didn’t say anything nice.

  And if you can’t say anything nice, why bother?

  Kindness had been at the heart of all that Old Joe did. He liked to grow vegetables, bake cakes and pies, and share the fruits of his labours with friends, neighbours and strangers alike. He had been loved by so many people in the community and well known. Why had The Pointy Woman taken him away?

  Toby turned about. The back door hadn’t been boarded up and was a solid affair. This gave Toby an opportunity to get in. When Old Joe had adopted Toby, he’d arranged for a dog flap to be installed. This comprised a small plastic rectangular flap at the foot of the door that provided the pup with unlimited access to the house or garden, whichever took his fancy. Toby pushed his nose against it now, wondering whether the police had remembered to lock it up from the inside.

  In their wisdom, they hadn’t.

  Toby slid carefully through the flap without making a noise—he’d often practised this when Old Joe had been alive, trying to sneak up on the old man when he wasn’t looking, but Old Joe had the instincts of a cat and always caught him—and found himself in the kitchen.

  His food and water bowls, now dry and encrusted, lay close by the sink in their usual place. Toby investigated them. His long run had left him feeling thirsty.

  He stood in the centre of the small kitchen and scented the stale air. The house had been closed up all this time, and of course recently the weather had been warmer. Fortunately there were no particularly bad smells; anything that might have spoiled had been thoughtfully removed by a human, so the lingering fragrance was of old furnishings and the faintest scent of thousands of cooked dinners.

  Beneath that, Toby could pick out the lingering scent of Old Joe. The old-fashioned after-shave he had worn all the time. His coal tar soap. His lovely peppery old man smell.

  Toby padded along the hallway and into the living room, staring down at the spot where Old Joe had fallen. Of course, all the furniture had been pushed back to make way for the paramedics when they had come to take care of Old Joe. They’d been far too late. Mrs Crouch had tried her best, but she wasn’t young, and The Pointy Woman had been a distraction.

  Then the police had arrived, and The Pointy Woman had somehow managed to melt away in the ensuing fracas. Mrs Crouch had been left to explain everything herself, and although she’d been troubled about the part of the story where Toby had bitten The Pointy Woman, she could only relay what she’d heard.

  And besides, she’d seen the evidence of the wounded hand. She’d had to tell them about that.

  The older police officer had arranged to have Toby removed.

  Toby shivered as he recalled that. One burly officer had employed some kind of wire lasso to loop over his neck, but when his first attempt failed and Toby took the opportunity to shoot behind the sofa, the younger, slighter, plain-clothes policeman had waved the big fellow away and simply held out his hand for Toby to sniff.

  Toby remembered placing his head in the young officer’s hand, his heart broken. The officer had rubbed his ears and then led him outside to where the manager of the Sunshine Valley Pet Sanctuary had been waiting.

  That had been the start of his long incarceration.

  Toby swallowed, biting back the bad memories that threatened to overwhelm him, and continued investigating. The piano remained in its customary place at the end of the room directly opposite the bay window. The sofa had been pushed back. His basket had been tossed to the side. The coffee table had been removed, and the rug it had once stood on had been rolled up. There were symbols on the floor here. Toby had never seen them before, but they were old. He snuffled at them, leaving wet nose prints on the floorboards, and then scratched at them. Some kind of gold paint. They’d been well hidden beneath the perfectly positioned rug.

  What could these mean?

  Losing interest, he sniffed instead at a dark stain on the wooden floorboards. Blood? All he had left of Old Joe. His snuffle echoed around the empty room. Toby hated the house this way, so devoid of life, devoid of love, devoid—most of all—of Old Joe.

  Toby lifted his scruffy head and began to keen.

  He slept upstairs on Old Joe’s bed. The covers hadn’t been changed and the room appeared to be almost the same as the old man had left it on that last fateful day. The police had obviously been in, conducting their searches, because Toby could smell them. However, they’d left Old Joe’s meagre belongings pretty much in the exact places they had always inhabited. Toby instinctively understood that there would be nothing to find in the house that would help them catch The Pointy Woman anyway.

  She had surely discovered whatever it was she’d been after on the day she’d killed Old Joe located inside the carriage clock. She hadn’t bothered to look anywhere else. She’d known exactly what she was looking for and where to find it.

  Exhausted by his misery, he slept.

  Typically, even here in the very place he’d yearned to be for the past six months, his dreams were of Old Joe and the walks they’d taken, but at last, as fatigued as he was this afternoon, he relaxed completely. One of his favourite destinations during the winter had been on the beach at Durscombe. How he’d loved skipping through the rock pools, sniffing the barnacles, dipping his nose in the still, cold water and then trying to catch the little shrimps that floated past. Fortunately for them, he usually failed, and simply succeeded in stirring up the water so that he’d have to wait for it to settle again before he could resume his shrimp hunting practice.

  And so he snoozed, remembering the good times…

  Until a strange noise brought him back to reality.

  Old Joe’s bedroom faced out onto the street. A shuffling noise on the front step alerted him to someone’s or something’s presence in the garden.

  He bit back his natural urge to bark. Had the manager of the Sunshine Valley Pet Sanctuary tracked him down already? He supposed it made sense for them to check here. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Of course this would be the first place they would search for him.

  He pondered on the best way to escape. Without a key they couldn’t gain access to the property. Surely that gave him a little time?

  He slipped from the bed. Lifted his head, the better to listen and sniff. Then, hackles raised, he squatted low and slipped from the room and down the stairs. He paused by the front door. The noise of someone moving came from the other side of the wood.

  “Where the devil have I put that?” A woman’s voice. Young.

  Toby cocked his head, listening.

  “I only had it a moment ago. Honestly,” she sounded exasperated, “I’d lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on.”

  Did humans have their heads screwed into place? With actual screws? And did those screws come loose? That sounded painful to Toby. He swivelled his own head, testing out how his attached to his shoulders. Nope. His did not appear to be screwed into place using anything metal. Thank goodness.

  He’d hate to be a human.

  He pricked his ears up at the sound of small items cascading onto the step and bouncing down the path.

  “By all that’s green!” A vehement curse, but not a nasty one.

  Toby padded towards the door and sniffed along the bottom of it. He could discern the faint scent of rose. Light and slightly musky, not old-lady rose and not at all overwhelming. He could also make out boot polish. Old Joe would have approved of that. He’d often said that young people today didn’t know how to look after their footwear. He’d kept a pair of boot brushes under
the sink along with his Kiwi polish, and they’d seen frequent action every Monday morning like clockwork.

  The woman outside didn’t smell nasty at all. This couldn’t be The Pointy Woman come looking for him, and she didn’t smell like Selma—who always smelled of dogs—or the awful manager of the kennels either, who smelled of high-end cologne and meanness.

  The muted sound of metal on stone was quickly followed by a waft of old leather and the fresher scent of something meaty. Ham. Whoever it was scrabbling around on the front step had a sammich. A ham sammich.

  Toby loved a ham sammich.

  He snuffled at the door. It had been far too long—in dog minutes—since his last meal, and now that his nerves had settled down a little he realised just how famished he was.

  “Is someone there?” the voice on the other side of the door called out. She could only be inches from his nose.

  Toby darted backwards, his paws making pitter-patter sounds on the floorboards.

  “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  Toby slunk backwards, still peering at the teeny gap between the bottom of the door and the sill.

  “Is that a dog?” The voice had risen to door handle height now. Toby followed the sounds, his ears flicking this way and that, trying to work out where the danger might lurk. The woman sounded intrigued however, not annoyed in any way. She didn’t sound like a dog warden or a police officer.

  The faint clink of the letterbox, and the paper that had been jammed inside fell to the floor. A pair of green eyes regarded Toby through the letterbox. “Hello,” the voice cooed in excitement. “Are you alright? How did you get in there?”

  Did she think he was stupid? He was hardly going to tell her that or she might try and get in too. He clamped his jaws shut and growled low at the back his throat.

  Go away.

  “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know you’re safe.”

  I’m perfectly safe, Toby thought. But not if you’re going to bring the authorities round here. If you do that, then I’m probably done for.

  “Are you living in there? I thought this place had been locked up and deserted. Is anybody with you?”

  Toby simply stared at her, ready to start barking the second she tried anything funny.

  “Maybe he’s trapped,” the woman muttered.

  Was she talking to herself? Toby could neither smell nor hear anyone else.

  “Are you trapped?” she asked him. She waited a second, as though for an answer from him, then her eyes withdrew from the letterbox and it clanged closed. He heard her moving about on the step. The next time the letterbox opened, her fingers appeared. She pushed a little bit of her sandwich through the gap. It fell to the floor with a little plop. Heavy on the butter. The ham smelt heavenly.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  Toby’s stomach gurgled but he remained where he was.

  After a few long seconds—and while Toby’s mouth began to water—the woman made a huffing sound. “I guess not, which probably means someone is feeding you. So who is living there with you? I’d really like to talk to them about Mr Silverwind.”

  Now curiosity got the better of Toby. This lady had known Old Joe?

  He took a few faltering steps towards the door, but the eyes had disappeared again.

  “Maybe I should let someone know you’re here. I’d hate to think of you trapped inside and nobody looking after you.” The voice, oddly discombobulated now that he couldn’t see the eyes, drifted towards him, the tinge of anxiety in the tone reminding him of the way Selma had often spoken to him of late.

  Genuine concern.

  He could imagine the woman sitting outside on the step and dialling the police on her little handheld phone—mobiles they called them. Old Joe had never had one of these, trusting only to his enormous telephone with the curly wire connecting handle and base. It still sat proudly on the oak telephone table in the hall.

  The woman would make her phone call and other people would come. He couldn’t have that. He needed to stop her.

  If she genuinely cared about what happened to him, and she sounded as though she might, he had to persuade her to leave him in peace.

  Without a second thought he scooted backwards, reversed in the tight confines of the kitchen door and then burst through the dog flap. In seconds he had pelted along the side of the house, ready to confront the woman.

  As he rounded the corner, speeding towards her like an express train, she dropped her phone in shock and stumbled backwards, tripping over the step and landing on her rump with a surprised explosion of air.

  Toby planted himself directly in front of her as she pushed herself away from him and lifted her arm to shield herself, perhaps expecting him to attack. She was as young as he’d thought she was, mid-twenties or a little older, dark curly hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, rather plain face with pretty grey-green eyes. She wore black jeans, thick-soled lace-up boots, and a gaily coloured t-shirt that had faded after being washed too many times.

  “Please don’t call the police,” he said.

  The young woman’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Wh-wh-what did you say?”

  “I said please don’t call the police,” Toby repeated. “It won’t end well for me.”

  The young woman lifted a hand to her right ear. “Why won’t it end well?”

  “Because I’ve only just escaped from the kennels and they’ll take me back. I don’t want to go back.”

  The woman regarded him in total astonishment. “Are you talking to me?”

  Toby gazed back at her in utter disbelief. “Can you understand me?”

  “Yes,” they both replied in unison.

  They started with the basics. Her name was Clarissa Louise Page, and she informed Toby she was a journalist.

  He confided in her that his name was Toby and he was an escaped convict.

  She eyed him carefully, chewing on a fingernail. “Convict?”

  “The police believe I bit someone. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t do that. I’m a good boy. Old Joe told me so,” Toby said carefully, trying not to let his heartbreak spill out into the open.

  She heard it anyway. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her eyes sparkled and she looked away.

  He watched her as she busied herself scrabbling around on the ground. It seemed she’d dropped her large leather handbag while trying to locate a pen, hence the sounds he’d heard before. Keen to be of use, he helped her find all her bits and bobs, nudging them with his nose when she couldn’t immediately see them if they’d rolled under a bush or the tall grass, or dropped into a crevice between the lawn and the garden path.

  The rest of her sandwich lay half in and half out of its little cardboard container, enticing him with its saucy contents.

  “I love a ham sammich,” he told her when she stooped to pick it up.

  She hesitated. “I thought you weren’t hungry?”

  “I could eat a sammich.”

  “It has tomato in it. And lettuce.”

  Toby shrugged and blinked up at her. “It’s all good. I’ll take it.”

  “Okay.” She placed the sandwich in front of him and he wolfed it down in about four seconds. “Did you even chew?” she asked. “I didn’t know dogs ate salad, that’s all.”

  “Hungry dogs do.” Toby licked his lips and peered up at Clarissa hopefully.

  She understood exactly what that look meant. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any more. That was supposed to be my lunch.”

  Toby tried to look contrite but failed.

  Clarissa dropped into a crouch, her backside on the step, staring at him. He’d lost interest in her, and now snuffled along the path searching for other dropped treats. “I can’t quite get over the fact that dogs can talk. I feel a little spooked, I have to be honest.”

  “Well I don’t know that all dogs can talk,” Toby said, casting a wary eye around. “You never know when some hostile kennel owner or The Pointy Woman might be scouring the neighbourhood looking f
or you.”

  “The Pointy Woman?” Clarissa’s brow creased.

  “Never mind,” he told her. “But she’s the reason I’m in this situation.”

  “A talking dog with a back story,” Clarissa marvelled.

  Toby shot her a look, wondering if she was making fun of him. Perhaps he could test her out.

  He checked the pavement and road, and with the coast seemingly clear of hostile strangers, Toby returned to sit in front of Clarissa. He purposefully placed his legs and paws neatly and sat straight. He wanted her to take him seriously. “You already understand that dogs can talk to each other and be understood by each other, right?”

  She shrugged and nodded. She didn’t know a huge amount about animals but this made sense.

  “That’s your basic canine communication right there,” Toby continued. “And all dogs can communicate with humans. But they rarely make themselves understood because dogs and humans speak different languages.”

  Clarissa mulled this over. “I think I know what you’re saying. I have a friend with a dog, and she understands what he wants and needs, and they do communicate with each other but not in human language.”

  “Exactly,” Toby nodded.

  “But with you, it’s different. I mean… you’re actually speaking real English!”

  Toby hesitated. Should he tell her what had happened or not? He decided he’d err on the side of caution until he knew more about her.

  “English is the language I know. It’s how Old Joe spoke to me. What’s more interesting—to me at least—is that you can understand me.”

  She nodded. “You keep mentioning Old Joe? That would be Joseph Silverwind would it? He was your human?”

  “Yes. Everyone called him Old Joe. He was my beloved human.”

  “You must miss him very much.”

  “I do. Every moment of every day.”

  Clarissa’s eyes welled up with tears. “I know what that must be like. My parents were… taken away from me. A long time ago.” She reached out a tentative hand. No red claws for Clarissa, Toby noted. Her fingernails were chewed and broken and clear of nail paint, and slightly mucky from scrabbling around on the ground picking up the belongings that had fallen out of her bag.