I stood and led Shep to the aisle. I tapped my thigh with my thumb, and he circled to stand next to me, both of us facing the small crowd. I looked down at him and clicked my tongue lightly, and he looked up at me…concentrated on me, as he’d been taught. Then I laid my arm across my waist, and Shep sat, his right paw going forward, his left ankle collapsing slightly in anticipation. Then I bowed, and next to me, Shep did the same. His neck bent, his big ears tilted forward, and his nose went almost to the floor.
The cheering increased, and someone, probably Tony, whistled sharply. But Shep held his mark until I tapped my foot. At that, we bounced up in unison, me with my arm flung at an angle over my head like a matador, Shep standing on his hind legs, paws waving.
The crowd, as they say, went wild. The paparazzi finally started taking pictures, but I knew that tomorrow, Shep would appear in the paper, standing by himself in a tightly cropped photo, paws waving, with a caption like: STAR DOG WAVES TO LOYAL FANS. Maybe a piece of my elbow would make it, maybe the toe of my shoe or the tips of my fingers.
But that was okay, too. I’d long gotten over my dreams of acting.
There was a big dinner right after the premiere at a restaurant called Shane’s. The maître d’ tried to turn me away, saying that animals were certainly not allowed, but the director (who was pretty well known) took his arm and explained a few things to him. Money changed hands, and the maître d’ came back all smiles and welcomes. He wouldn’t look at Shep, so I gave my boy the signal, and Shep stopped to raise his leg against the man’s immaculate black pant leg. Of course, Shep did not actually follow through–this was for jokes only–but the man turned very white and nearly fainted.
It was a rowdy party.
Carla came to sit next to me at the bar where I’d gone to give Shep a break from the many hands offering tidbits. He sat next to me, panting as his eyes closed. He was overfed and worn out. I already knew from experience that Shep would have to be kept in the yard tomorrow.
“Hi, Ray,” she said and slid onto the stool next to mine. At the premiere, she’d worn a sparkling gown and her hair had been teased and sprayed into a cloud around her face, but she had changed into slim slacks and a simple peasant blouse that showed her smooth, white shoulders. Her hair was tied back in a pale pink ribbon. She took my breath away.
“Hi, Carla,” I said. “You look great!” I was glad my voice didn’t break over the last word. At twenty-three, I felt barely adult, and the handful of girls I’d taken out were just that–girls. Carla was a woman. Although in her slacks and ponytail, she was a lot less intimidating.
“Thanks,” she said and winked at me. Then, with a PI’s gal Friday intonation she cocked her shoulders and said, “You don’t look half bad yourself, mister.”
I laughed. Actors and actresses, the good ones like Tony and Carla, just had a way about them. They made you feel special just by association.
Shep snored loudly from under my stool.
“Everybody’s a critic!” Carla said.
“You got that right, sweetheart,” Tony said in his best Humphrey Bogart. He kissed Carla’s cheek, and they beamed their thousand-watt smiles at each other. Then he turned to me. “That was a new one…that bow you and Shep did. It was fantastic, Ray!” He clapped me on the shoulder and then bent to pet Shep gently enough not to wake him. He glanced up at me. “Our boy looks like he’s sleeping off a bender.”
“He had a lost weekend,” Carla said. “Just wait until the bus starts coming out of the walls!”
“He’ll really be in trouble if he wakes up with vertigo,” Tony said.
“He has to stop being such a rebel,” Carla said. “He has no cause.”
I knew the two of them could have gone on with that all night. I stood and stretched. “Well, I’m taking Shep and getting him home. The party’s been grand, but I really can’t stay.”
Tony clapped me on the back and promised to stop by tomorrow. He had already turned to Carla by the time I got to the end of the bar, so I was surprised to hear her calling after me once Shep and I had hit the street.
“Ray!” she said. “Ray, wait up!”
I turned to watch as she trotted to us. It was a beautiful spring night, warm and filled with the perfume of flowering trees. There was little traffic at this late hour.
“Thanks for waiting,” she said. She was shorter than me by eight inches or so, and she tipped her chin prettily. Almost defiantly. “Help a lady home?”
“Sure, Carla, no problem,” I said. I gave Shep a quick stay command and raised my arm toward the street to hail a cab.
“Oh, wait, no…I meant…” She turned to look down the street and bit her lower lip as if deciding something. She turned back to me, and her chin tilted up again. Even in the dim streetlights, I could see that her cheeks had warmed. She said, “I meant…would you walk me home, Ray?”
Without further hesitation, I cocked my elbow for her to take. Her hand curved into the crook of my arm, and she swayed lightly against me as we walked. Occasionally, Shep’s nose poked wetly into my free hand, and I read restrained excitement into his odd, but touching, behavior.
Carla had to tell me the way; I had no idea where she lived. Turned out that her little rented bungalow was not far from my house.
She asked me in and pulled a comforter from her bed to make a kind of nest for Shep. After he thoroughly inspected her place and then declared the backyard as his own, he curled up and flopped down with a thankful, contented sigh. He was asleep almost immediately.
Carla sat on the floor next to him, her back against the couch, and caressed him with the long, easy strokes that I knew Shep loved. She told me about the dogs she’d had growing up, getting misty as she did so. Shep’s ears twitched as though he, too, were listening, even in the depths of his dreams.
She segued into coming out to Hollywood with her best friend when they were each nineteen, her mother helping her with money and unlimited emotional support when she’d been close to giving up and coming home. “Ma believed in me,” she said. “And now it’s been three years, and I already have a picture! She’s so proud…she tells all the ladies in the salon how her daughter Carla is going to be a star.” She looked up at me, and her ponytail fell prettily across her shoulder as tears sparkled in her eyes.
She looked like a fresh-faced kid.
She was only twenty-two, a year younger than me. Suddenly any sense of intimidation I’d had melted away.
I stayed that night until midnight and took her out to dinner the next. We were married not long after. Boy, were we ever in love. Shep loved her, too, and she, him. Or at least, that’s what I thought back then. And it may even have been true at the time, but it went bad quick…quick enough that it made me doubt everything that had come before.
* * *
“Come out, Delaney, or we’re sending in the dog!”
The German shepherd barked furiously, leaping against his harness. Spittle flew from his foaming jaws, and the hair across his back stood up as if electrified. The sullen drizzle that had begun falling dotted his fur with pinpoint stars of light. A young cop struggled to hold him. He looked toward his sergeant, waiting for the signal.
A voice wavered from a broken-out window in the dank row across the street. “I ain’t comin’ out, copper! Send in whoever ya want…but get yer body bags ready…’cause they ain’t comin’ out on their feet!”
The sergeant turned to the K-9 officer and nodded. “Send ’im in, Joe.”
The officer swallowed and knelt to give the leaping dog a quick hug. Then he stood and grabbed the release. “Sick ’im, boy…get the bad guy!” He released the shepherd.
The dog charged across the shining street and leapt without hesitation through the window. The line of officers fell silent, collective breaths held, as the blood-red lights on the black and whites whirled with silent intensity.
From inside the building a man’s shout rang out, and then a pistol banged and flashed. A silence. Three more shots.
Silence.
The young cop–Joe–looked a desperate plea at his sergeant. The sergeant nodded him to go ahead, but grabbed his arm at the last second and said, “Be careful, Joe; Delaney is desperate, and desperate men don’t care about consequences.”
Joe nodded. Then, gun up, he advanced on the row home. Five other officers fell in behind him. When they were halfway across the street, the front door banged open, and Delaney came out, a Tommy gun blazing in each hand.
The advancing officers dropped in unison as if a carpet had been pulled from under them. Delaney howled like a wolf with its paw caught in a trap. He sprayed the air with hot lead, advancing on the helplessly pinned-down officers.
The shepherd appeared in the doorway behind Delaney, nearly roaring with fury as he leapt onto the gangster’s back. Delaney went down to his knees, the guns firing wildly and then crashing to the sidewalk like defective missiles as Delaney struggled with the monster on his back. The dog had grasped the nape of Delaney’s neck and held on with bulldoglike tenacity.
Joe was the first officer up, and he scrambled across the street. Gun raised, he said, “Hands up, Delaney!”
“Get ’im offa me!” Delaney cried, rolling to try to dislodge the shepherd. “He’s killin’ me! Get this mutt offa me, ya rat bastids!”
The other officers had advanced, guns drawn and pointing at the struggling gangster.
“Well, since you asked so nice,” Joe said. “Champ! Release!” The dog backed off and sat obediently. The officers swarmed over Delaney, cuffing him roughly. They took turns clapping Joe on the shoulder.
“Good job, Joe!” they said and, “That’s a fine animal ya got there, Joe!” and, “He’s gonna get a medal for this one; Joe, just you watch!”
But Joe’s attention was on Champ, who was panting and beginning to list to one side. Champ licked his chops and whined, struggling to maintain his seated position. A black and white went slowly past, the light of its headlamps running across Champ like a spotlight.
The dog’s side was covered in blood.
“Champ!” Joe cried and dropped to his knees beside the dog, just in time to catch him as he sank to the street. “No! No, it can’t be!” He looked up in desperation. “Champ’s been shot, fellas! He’s been shot!” The milling officers turned, their faces filling with horror.
“Get a doc!” they yelled and, “Get the ambulance!” and, “Officer down!”
The sarge clapped a hand onto Joe’s shoulder but addressed the dog, who had closed his eyes as he rested in his master’s arms. “Hang in there, Champ! The doc’s on his way!”
But even the greenest of the beat cops could see that Champ wasn’t going to make it. They drew off their hats, and silence fanned out among the deep circle of blue surrounding Joe and his good dog, Champ.
Joe kissed Champ’s head, and the dog opened his eyes, weakly trying to bring up his paw. “Rest, Champ; just rest” Joe said, his voice strong despite the tears that rolled down his face. “You did a good job, boy…you’re a good dog.” The dog’s tail thumped, once, twice, and then grew still. The big, black and tan head lolled over Joe’s arm. Joe buried his face in the dog’s ruff and ‘The End’ flashed across the screen. The credits rolled.
Beside me in the theater filled with thunderous applause, Carla clapped, too, but her smile was strained. This movie–Police Dog–had been a sore point between us.
Because she hadn’t been in it.
On my other side, Tony (who had, of course, played the brave young K-9 officer, Joe) coaxed Shep out into the aisle, where the flashbulbs popped with strobelike rapidity. Joe waved and knelt beside Shep, hugging him. Then he stood, and with a signal to Shep that was all but invisible to the crowd, he and Shep took a deep bow. Then, at another signal, they both popped up, Tony in the matador stance and Shep on his hind legs, waving.
Laughter and cheers filled the theater…about ten times as much as I’d received when I debuted that bow at the premier of Saving Mary two years ago–that had been the movie that put Carla and I together.
The movie after Saving Mary had been Last Stand of the Drover, and it had been about the fires in the Australian Outback. It was the second Mars Brothers’ vehicle for Tony and Shep, and Carla had had only a small part in it. She’d taken the role willingly enough, but had started making jokes about playing second fiddle to a dog…and the jokes weren’t very funny.
She wasn’t offered anything in Police Dog or the one that came after, Blackfoot’s Heart–the one Tony and Shep were currently filming–but she’d been auditioning regularly enough that it seemed as though something would have to come through for her…but nothing did. Hollywood is fickle, more fickle than even its most sought-after starlet. There were no guarantees in the business.
Except, it seemed, for Shep and Tony. Mars Brothers, buoyed by the successes of the Tony and Shep films, had signed us on to another four-picture deal. Carla and I moved to a bigger house, which she jokingly began to refer to as ‘the house that dog-spit built.’
I didn’t find that joke very funny, either.
By then, Shep was seven years old, finishing up the shooting of the last movie of the first contract, and coming to the tail end of his prime. I could see the beginning signs of age in the light dusting of gray on his muzzle and the rare and subtle, but frightening, collapse in his back legs. I began to worry about the shepherd’s curse…hip dysplasia.
The studio ramped up the schedules of the new movies, slating all four to be finished within two years.
In their current film, Blackfoot’s Heart, Tony was again a cowboy, but Shep was playing a brave wolf (named Blackfoot) who had chosen to befriend the cowboy after they’d been forced to spend an uneasy night together in a cave where a furious blizzard had snowed them in.
Shep had been dyed black, and it gave me chills sometimes to see him running furiously through the snow-covered terrain like a demon loosed in heaven. We shot that one in Oregon, and the cold was difficult for him to recover from. They brought in a veterinarian who’d been studying with racehorses, and he implemented a regular swimming schedule for Shep in water hot enough to make my good dog pant. But he did seem to enjoy the swimming, even though Carla said it was funny that a dog got a whole hot tub while she didn’t even rate a bathtub in the trailer she shared with me and Shep during shooting.
The last scene of Blackfoot is Tony (as the cowboy) yelling at Shep to leave, go on! Leave! Go back with your own kind! I don’t want you! He even throws a few stones. Of course, the cowboy is doing it for the wolf’s own good–the cowboy has to go to the city, and no wild wolf belongs in that environment–even though it’s breaking his mighty cowboy heart to do so.
I knew that it was going to be a hit…bigger even than Police Dog was turning out to be, and life sure was getting complicated.
I decided I needed some time to think. Maybe I could puzzle out just what Carla expected from me; maybe I could make a decision as to whether I would finally keep one of the many pups the Shep had sired by then to start training–it was something the studio boys were always after me to do. Maybe I could get it figured out why I felt so irritated by Tony lately and was coming to regret signing on to spend another two years with him, watching him mourn my dog over and over and then steal the bow I’d invented to get a laugh and a cheer from the crowds at the premiers.
I needed to figure out why everything had changed, why the fame I’d longed for had somehow turned sour in my mouth.
So, one afternoon, while Carla was at yet another audition and we still had a week before shooting began on the next Mars Brothers’ film, I took my good dog to the park where we’d begun his training four years ago. We passed our tiny, cramped, old apartment, and I was surprised by the depth and intensity of the homesick nostalgia that laid itself across my shoulders like a lead blanket. I didn’t understand it…I lived in a beautiful house…the old apartment would have fit in my current bedroom!
But even Shep gave the place a few backward glances, nose twi
tching, as if he, too, had his own memories to contend with. Maybe he was recalling that first piece of oven-baked hot dog and thinking how good it had tasted back then…back before he’d eaten about a billion of them.
The park was quiet and distressingly shabby. Either this part of town had gone downhill or I’d just gone too far uphill to be able to feel comfortable here anymore.
I sat on a bench facing the big, green mud puddle that passed for a pond, and Shep sank down into the grass with a sigh. I watched him for a moment and then joined him so I could keep a hand on his warm back. I scratched the heavy ruff between his shoulder blades, and he looked up at me, grinning as he panted, his eyes half-closed. A blade of grass was stuck to his lip. His big ear twitched when a fly buzzed it.
But Shep didn’t care.
He didn’t care about the rusty playground equipment or the cracked foundation of a lion statue to our left. He didn’t bat an eye when a duck landed in the pond and then flew out, indignant and covered in green slime.
He didn’t care that there was no one here to take his picture.
Shep hadn’t changed.
From the day my ma put him in my arms to today, through everything he’d learned and done and achieved, through the premiers and the injuries and the lean times and the fat…my good dog hadn’t changed.
He was just a dog, and everything that phrase implied, both good and bad, slammed into me with a clarity that nearly made me dizzy. I was twenty-five years old, I was married to a beautiful girl, I had a career that most regular folks would envy, and everything in my life had been on an upward trajectory for the last four years…and I’d never been unhappier.
But Shep had not changed.
I stretched my legs out and tilted my face into the sun. I kept my hand on Shep as the light and heat sank into me. I let my shoulders fall and watched the orange and yellow shapes shift and flow behind my eyelids.
More Good Dogs: More Stories About Good Dogs and the People Who Love Them Page 14