Knocking on Heaven's Door

by Sharman Apt Russell

  Dog was so happy he pretended to drool although there was no one like Luke or Brad to see him. He was so happy he did a whirl, a dance, his front legs held stiffly in front. He was so happy he wagged his tail, which was not something direwolves normally did. He had so hoped the sunflowers would return to them after finding each other in the past, after gathering together as a group.

  “Beautiful!” the golden animals spoke together. The golden sunflowers lined up like musical notes on the score of a song. Or now, as they shifted, like the strokes of a Chinese ideogram. These images, the golden animals knew, came from Brad and Dog’s long delicious afternoon with the peyote plant and the musically flowing stream and Brad’s TOE. Dog had seen then: Sunflowers had a good relationship with Brad. Who could explain it? They simply liked him.

  “Come closer,” Dog suggested. Did they need to be coaxed?

  The sunflowers drifted back and forward. They waited. They were mute.

  Merge and separate. “Shall we?” Dog asked the group.

  But the question did not immediately become assent.

  Surprisingly, the saber-toothed cat hesitated.

  Dog understood. The saber-toothed cat had a little bit of the direwolf in her now. Just a little bit, she wanted to run away. Because plants were so different. Their consciousness was so different. Their experience of time was on the quantum level. Look at how they had traveled backward—to that long-ago afternoon before Dog and Luke had ever met Brad, before Brad had turned on his radios. Plants were different in the way rocks were different with their crystalline structure.

  Dog felt a quiver in the land as though a red rock butte had suddenly startled, as though the bony hills had opened their eyes. His own haunches quivered with sympathy, the muscles that were not really there. Where would it end? The water rushing in. The barriers breached. Many different species side by side, dependent on each other, inside each other, combined into one thing.

  Dog and Luke were on an adventure together in a cave overlooking a slickrock canyon, waiting out a violent rain. Although Brad and Clare seemed content on the mesa, Luke more often went exploring, going down to the plain for bigger game, watching for signs of other tribes. In truth, Luke was often restless and needed to be away from the domesticity of camp. Usually Dog went with him, half the golden animals staying with the babies and the others trailing discreetly behind.

  Dog couldn’t help but worry on these trips. He often annoyed Luke by urging their return to the mesa, where it was safe. The high crumbling pueblo was not only remote and free of large predators but also defensible against other people. The winding road remained the only access to the top, and this narrowed the area the golden animals had to patrol. Dog always kept someone at the entrance to that road, most often one of the five mice. In an emergency, a golden animal would send out the alarm. In an emergency, the saber-toothed cat would put their enemies to sleep. No one would be allowed to hurt Dog’s humans. No one would take the twins away.

  Just thinking about it, the habit of Dog growled.

  Of course, he couldn’t protect Luke or Brad or Clare or the twins from other enemies. Not from disease or old age or accident. Dog thought of Jon and felt regret. The hunter’s sweetness. The hunter’s darkness. Jon would have been a good addition to their group. Dog rested his muzzle on his paws, watching the rain fall and fill the newly running creek below. “This rain will loosen the soil,” he said to Luke. “You should be careful of rock slides. And flooding.”

  “You’re as bad as a ground sloth,” Luke grumped. He was in one of his moods.

  “Watch out,” a sunflower whispered in Dog’s ear. Dog felt the scruff of his neck being grabbed and, forewarned, he lifted his head as though in response.

  “Listen to me, Dog. I’m serious about this.” Luke shook Dog lightly. “When it’s my time, just let me dissolve. I’m not coming back.”

  Showing his teeth, Dog broke away and snapped at the crazy old bushkie before settling back into a lump of slightly damp fur, nose to tail, curled at Luke’s side and staring morosely at the rain.

  Someday, years in the future, Luke would be a good addition to their group. Someday, many years past that, Brad and Clare would be a good addition to their group, as would their children and grandchildren. Other golden animals had found a way. Like the sunflowers, other golden animals were coming toward the mesa, slowly, not in a hurry, but ineluctably drawn. They no longer needed Brad’s radios. They no longer needed Dog’s numbers—sine and cosine. Slowly the group would grow and gather strength, merge and separate, merge and separate, become something new. Slowly the group would become bigger and bigger until someday, many many years from now, the entire planet would be a ball of light.

  “Just let me go,” the old man muttered.

  Lovingly, Dog licked Luke’s hand. As if he would ever let that happen.