Fearless Warriors

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  Now most dogs—and I’ve had a bunch of them—you can read immediately. The tail wagging, the set of the ears, the body posture, all give you a sense of how the dog is feeling. But with this dog you couldn’t tell. It was almost like it didn’t know how to respond. I had the sad feeling this sixteen-foot world was the only world it had known, and the man in the house was the only contact it had with another life form. And that probably consisted of a thirty-second feeding once a day. It just lay there, head on paws, eyes watching me. Not a twitch, not even a growl anymore. Whatever emotion or passion that had been in the earlier barking was now somewhere else.

  On reflection it must have been an interesting scene, a chained dog, in a circle of dirt, looking at a man, sitting amidst a forest of cartoon like characters, who was looking back.

  Most people who chain their dogs do it to keep them from running into traffic, which doesn’t seem like a tough problem out here. Or perhaps because they are vicious and potentially dangerous. While this dog had a good voice for barking, it didn’t strike me as a threatening animal.

  Neither of us moved for the longest time. Eventually, I couldn’t help but view his world with a morbid fascination. Sure I felt sorry for the poor creature, but it wasn’t my dog, it wasn’t my house, the guy wasn’t even a member of my village. I was just a visitor. That’s what I kept telling myself until I heard the voice of my sister bellowing out across the farmyard. It was time to go home.

  Leaving the dog behind me, for the first time I noticed the lushness of the summer grass and trees off in the distance, the vibrant green colour of the world around this farm. I had left the circle of death.

  Angela was waiting by the car. Allan was standing in his doorway.

  She was surprised to see me coming from the barn. “What were you doing back there?”

  I answered by addressing Allan. “Nice dog.”

  “Thanks. Eats enough.”

  I guess when you’re a bored dog, what else are you going to do.

  On the drive home, Angela rattled on about Allan Martin and her conversation with him. I guess she had struck paydirt. He was interested, but as my sister so modestly put it, it took some fine negotiating and convincing.

  “Did you know he was American?” My sister said suddenly.

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, he’s one of them draft dodgers. Fled the States to avoid going to the that war in Korea.”

  “I think you mean Vietnam.”

  “Yeah, somewhere down there. That’s why he’s here. His family knew some fishermen who’d spent some time up here. Only place he’d heard of. Took off in the middle of the night and was here in two days of hitchhiking. Funny, but I’d never considered Otter Lake a place to run to. Been here ever since, he says.”

  We were getting close to where I had spotted the deer earlier but there was no sign this time. “Does he know he can go back now? There’s some sort of amnesty or something been declared a while ago. He can’t get into trouble anymore.” Angela shrugged. “I don’t know, but I kinda get the impression he doesn’t want to go home. Says he hasn’t written or gotten a letter in over twenty years. Doesn’t have a phone. I don’t think he cares. Sad, really.”

  “How’d you get all this out of him?”

  “I just told him that we don’t have many white people living on the reserve all by themselves. So I asked him how he got here.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That and a photograph of him with his two brothers when he was young. The brothers were in army outfits, the kind Americans wear. I sort of made the connection. You know, he was kinda cute back in the sixties. Anyway, a few well-placed questions, some flattery about his work, and his history is mine.”

  She paused for a moment.

  “I think he’s lonely. He doesn’t seem to have anybody.”

  “He has a dog,” I ventured.

  “Ah yes, man’s best friend.”

  Two days later she told me she was going back to Japland to see Mr. Allan Martin. The festival was two weeks away and she needed to talk with him about his booth and how many pieces he was going to display. Only this time she said she didn’t need me to ride shotgun.

  “He’s okay. He’s harmless. Besides, he’s so skinny I could probably take him.”

  But I wanted to go.

  “Why? I had to practically kick your butt into the car last time.”

  “It’s a nice drive.” A lame excuse but I gave it as much conviction as I could.

  This time Allan Martin was waiting in his doorway as we got out of the car. He even acknowledged me with a scant nod.

  Angela shook hands with him, before turning to me. “You want to come in with us? Get out of the heat?”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine out here. You do your business.” I gave them a polite smile, and in return got a confused stare before she and Allan disappeared into the Marlowe house.

  She was right, it was another hot day, and the fact that I was wearing my jean jacket over my t-shirt on such a humid day probably didn’t help my case. She knew me well enough to know something was up.

  Once they were safely inside, I made my way past what looked like a wooden image of a buffalo, to the corner of the barn.

  The last time I was here, the wind had been blowing slightly from the south, so therefore I hadn’t noticed it. Today, there was practically no wind and it hit me as I got closer to my new friend. The smell. The dog looked to be about middle age, approximately five to nine years old. And if he had been chained all that time, with no bath, and sitting in five to nine years worth of dog shit, imagine the smell. No wonder the dog house was behind the barn. Allan had put it here on purpose, no doubt.

  Breathing through my mouth, taking shallow breaths, and hoping my sense of smell would get used to it helped a little.

  This time, the dog didn’t bark. He was lying in the scant shade of the dog house, tongue hanging out of his mouth, staring at me again. It was as if he was expecting me.

  I took my place on the grass in front of him and returned his gaze. I couldn’t tell if he recognized me—his brown eyes didn’t really convey much. I wondered if my eyes communicated anything to him.

  Judging by his panting, and the sweat soaking into my shirt, the temperature was rising. I took off my jacket and reached into the inside pockets. The last time I was here, I noticed Allan fed his dog those kind of inexpensive, anonymous, dry, round pellets that passed for dog food, and it probably tasted as appetizing as it looked.

  As I unwrapped the package, I saw the dog’s ears shoot up. For the first time I saw interest wash across his face. Almost immediately, he moved from a lying position into a sitting stance, cocking his head as I pulled two large pork chops out of the styrofoam container. His tongue dripping wet for a different reason this time, he inched his body forward.

  I tossed one chop, then the other into the circle of death. They both landed a few inches from his feet, little clouds of dust swirling up around them. After a brief sniff, he grabbed the first one and tried to swallow it whole but the bone made it difficult. Instead he wrestled it in half, using one paw to hold it down as his jaws ripped and pulled. The bone he crushed in his jaws. He made equally short work of the remaining one.

  His tongue flicked out, washing his whole face, savouring every tiny particle he could find. I wondered if I had made a mistake. There are a few rules on the reserve: never sleep with another person’s partner, and never feed another man’s dog. Both might get to like it. It’s a good thing Allan Martin wasn’t married too.

  I don’t know why I felt the need to buy groceries for a dog I barely knew. I had scarcely enough money to feed myself, let alone another man’s pet. But something about this animal, his life, or lack of it, alerted me to the occasional need for human kindness.

  I didn’t know if I’d ever be out here again, and I didn’t know how Allan would react. I didn’t even know if I’d remember the dog next week, but I had done my little bit to make the world a better pl
ace. Maybe it would ease the feeling of guilt I’d had since I first saw the dog, a feeling I didn’t understand, but couldn’t get rid of.

  After licking clean the paw that had held the chop, the dog gave me one final glance, then retreated to the relative cool of the dog house shade. We resumed our inspection of each other. Then, surprisingly, after a few minutes of watching me, and no doubt noticing there were no more delectables being thrown his way, he grew tired of my presence.

  One of his paws began to scratch at the dirt. Gradually this became an increasingly important act to him. Driven, he rose to his feet and started digging manically, spraying dirt and dead grass out from under him. I could hear him whining in frustration. Then he stopped and sat down again, ignoring completely the five-inch deep hole he had made.

  The circle of death was full of holes, scattered at random intervals throughout the dog’s sixteen foot kingdom. That’s all the dog had, or could do. His was a lifetime of digging holes and then, just as quickly, losing interest.

  Once he snapped at an errant fly that buzzed too close. Mostly he’d lay down. His eyes lingered on me, then they closed. In a scant fifteen minutes, I had just witnessed the entire life of this creature. This was all it knew, all it would ever know. And I realized that no amount of pork chops would increase its quality of life. Not as long as it remained in that circle, with that chain around its neck.

  I sat there for a while, feeling the sad hopelessness of the dog creep into my soul. Despite an occasionally wayward childhood, the years have revealed what appears to be a conscience. As I sat by that circle, I learned just how annoying a conscience can be.

  “Andy, where are you?” My sister’s voice brought me out of my daze. I looked at my watch, realizing we’d been there about forty-five minutes.

  I could see the two of them, standing by the car. They both seemed surprised to see me approach from the barn.

  “Just looking at some of his … whatever you call them. The wood things.”

  My sister looked pleased. “We’ve decided to call them Pinnochios. Get it? Little people and animals made out of wood.”

  “Cute,” I answered.

  “We thought so.”

  Allan looked uncomfortable. “It was your sister’s idea.”

  Somehow I knew that.

  Angela shook Allan’s hand. “I’ll be back on the weekend to pick up your Pinnochios. We’ll set them up at the community centre that afternoon and be ready for customers Saturday morning. Okay?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  Angela gave him her best smile. “Oh, it’ll be fun. Don’t worry. Alright, Andy, I’ve got things to do. Let’s motor.”

  Allan Martin waved after us, as my car dug up the weedy driveway. I was still feeling the effects of my visit with the dog. My sister must have noticed it because, in the middle of one of her monologues about life and the art and crafts world, she stopped.

  “What were you doing by the barn?”

  “Looking at those things you want to sell.”

  “They’re in front of the barn.”

  “I thought there might have been more in the back.”

  “Were there?”

  “No,” I paused. “Just the dog.”

  Angela eased back in her seat, once again comfortable. “Oh yeah, he told me about his dog.”

  “He’s got it chained behind the barn. It doesn’t look happy.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “Do you know if it has a name?”

  Angela thought for a moment. “No, he never mentioned it. Just refers to it as ‘the dog.’”

  “What did he say about the dog?”

  “Not much, just that he’s always tried to do a Pinnochio about a dog, his dog to be specific, but it never came out properly. Looked too silly, or the proportions were all wrong. Kind of ridiculous when you think about it. You’d think doing a dog, especially when you have a model right there in front of you, would be the easiest thing in the world. But I guess not. Instead he does buffalos, bears, cowboys … ”

  “Maybe it’s too close to him. Maybe he needs distance.”

  Angela shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  My sister was quiet for a moment. “His two brothers are dead. You know, the ones I told you about that were in the picture.”

  “He told you this?”

  “Uh huh. I asked him if his family ever came up to visit him. He got kinda quiet, then said his brothers died in Vietnam. Both of them. Seems they all were supposed to enlist together but Allan didn’t want to, chickened out he says, so they did it without him. They were killed about a year after he came up to Canada. Poor guy, he couldn’t even go home for the funerals because he’d be arrested.”

  I was trying to process all this information. Even eccentrics have a deeper, darker story. That’s usually what makes them eccentrics. “This is all kind of personal to be telling someone you just met.”

  “He’s definitely lonely. His mother’s dead and he and his father haven’t spoken in years. I think he blames himself.”

  We were quiet for the rest of the trip back to civilization, both lost in our own thoughts. I began to wonder how what happened to Allan Martin could screw up a life. Maybe if something like that happened to me, I’d end up in the woods, on an Indian reserve in another country, carving fake animals and people out of wood, with a dog chained to a dead tree.

  During the next few days, it occurred to me that I’d never noticed how many dogs there were on the reserve, all of them running free, barking, chasing cars. Until now, I’d always been annoyed, screaming at the animals to not jump on me, not to pee on my car, and to get off the road. Now I watched with wonder as one dog chased a squirrel across a friend’s front lawn. It was so caught up in the chase that the dog practically followed the squirrel half-way up a pine tree before the law of gravity caught up with him.

  Friday came and, for reasons that were mine, I offered to help Angela load up Allan Martin’s “art” for her festival. This time she was glad to have the help. That and the fact my pickup truck would be better than her minivan.

  All the way there she babbled on about the festival—the promotional work she and her friends had spent the last month working on, all the local radio stations that had been running ads, and our one television station that was due to make an appearance at the festival. It was no longer just a community event. Angela had the knick-knack equivalent of Olympic fever. It wasn’t a pretty sight. My mind, however, was on other things. But Angela was oblivious. She was giving this festival the enthusiasm reserved for the Second Coming, and she was John the Baptist.

  For the third time in a week, we pulled into the Marlowe driveway. Beside the front door of the house was a neat stack of what looked like two dozen of the so-called Pinnochios, waiting to be loaded. Allan emerged from the darkness of his house, drying his hands with an old rag.

  He threw the rag back inside the house. “You two always travel everywhere together?”

  We looked at each other. “When we have to,” my sister replied.

  Allan shrugged and put his hand on the pile of cut-outs. “I have twenty here; think that will be enough?”

  My sister’s eyes lit up. “I hope not but it will do for now. Do you have a cheque ready for the fee for your stand?”

  “I only work in cash. Makes life easier. I have your money inside. That was forty bucks, right?”

  Angela nodded and followed him in the house. As soon as they were gone, I moved towards the age-old barn. There were no Pinnochios drying on the grass this time. The trampled grass was reflecting the sun.

  A wind was blowing towards me, so I could smell my destination from a hundred feet away. I rounded the corner of the barn to find the dog peeing against the dead tree. As he finished, he trotted towards me, but was jolted back by the pull on his chain.

  I reached into my coat pocket. Instantly he was salivating at the possibility of another treat. Instead, I pulled out a large hunting knife,
one I’d had for about ten years, since the first time I went hunting. The dog looked disappointed, puzzled, even a little worried as I stepped across the green line into the circle of death.

  The animal backed up a bit, not knowing what to do. He whined, let out a small bark. His chain was wrapped around the dog house, so he couldn’t move freely. I took this chance to close in on the poor creature.

  For the past week I had carried this dog with me, in my mind, my dreams, my consciousness. He would not leave me and I could not put him down. It occurred to me that the only way I would be free of the pitiful image that stayed with me constantly, would be to physically free the vision itself. No more circle of death.

  Muttering words of hopeful pacification, I advanced on the animal, murmuring, pleading, talking gibberish in the hopes of gaining its confidence. I focused on the leather collar it wore, and I knew my knife would slice through it quicker than my wish to forget the dark circle I was in.

  The dog could go no further, and the collar was straining under the dog’s efforts. I saw my opportunity and I grabbed the chain near the buckle with my left hand and concentrated on the spot in the collar where I would cut the animal free.

  Faster than I thought possible, the dog turned and bit me, hard, on the arm. In reflex I let go of the knife as the animal darted underneath me, throwing me off balance. I landed on my left arm with a second eruption of pain. The dog retreated to the dead tree. Before long, it had started to growl at me again. I knew I’d risk further, potentially worse injury if I tried to free it again. Instead, I grabbed my knife, and taking off my jacket, examined my arm. Blood oozed lightly from four specific puncture wounds, and about another half dozen fiery red dots slowly began to welt up. I wrapped my jacket around my arm and quickly ushered myself out of that ring of failure.

  I bandaged my wound by the car, doing what I could with some Band-aids and an old bottle of vodka I had forgotten under the seat. As I put my jacket back on, I felt a peculiar sense of failure, of not being able to do a good deed through no fault of my own. I didn’t know what my next move would be. The slamming of Allan Martin’s front door drove me from my contemplation. My sister was coming towards me in a mood I had not seen in recent months.