Dancing Dogs

by Jon Katz

  People were starting to come into work, and she had to get out of there—she couldn’t just wander around the place looking for Julius. She opened the door a crack, peered into the hallway, and ran back the way she came. The security desk was still vacant. She rushed out the back door and into the parking lot.

  POWERED BY SOMETHING INSIDE of him, something beyond his consciousness, Julius stuck his nose in the door latch, which had been left open from the outside. He did not howl. He simply pushed at it, and pushed again, then squeezed his thin frame through the narrow opening, dragging his sore and awkward leg behind him. Although his leg hurt, the puppy had no real concept of pain. He couldn’t really remember ever not feeling it, and so it seemed almost natural to him.

  There were no people in the room, and the door to the hallway was open. He passed other dogs in cages, some friendly, some not, and some cats who hissed at him. His movement touched off a din in the room, and he limped to the hallway as quickly as he could. There he picked up the smell of the girl and began to follow it, his tail wagging excitedly. He was a nose dog. It was time to get to work. He picked up another smell—cheese again—and moved even more quickly.

  Julius just kept moving toward her smell, dragging his cast behind him. He never stopped or slowed down, not even to investigate all of the rich scents that swirled around him and told him so many other stories.

  HELEN WAS PANICKED. Her mother knew she was not at home, and her teachers would soon know she was not in school. She had no permission to be out on her own, and she knew her parents would be anxious about her. They might even call the police if they thought she was missing or had run off. Which, in a way, she had.

  And she had an awful feeling that she was too late for Julius—that he had already been shipped off to a vet hospital where he would face a life of experimental surgery and never know the love of a home. Or of her.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, she ran through the parking lot and toward the Dumpster to get her backpack. When she rounded the corner, she froze. There, his cast sticking awkwardly out to the side, sat Julius, right on top of her backpack. When he saw her, his tail started going a mile a minute and his piercing yowl cranked up in joy.

  Helen broke into a run and grabbed the dog. “Shh! I can’t believe you’re here! But you have to be quiet or they’ll hear us.” Julius’s howl quieted to a whine, but his tail continued to move like a helicopter blade. She hugged him, supporting his cast carefully, while Julius licked the tears from her cheeks. She smelled cheese and saw some crumbs dropping from his mouth—he had found her stash of crackers in the backpack. She could hardly believe how soft he felt, how sweet his puppy smell was.

  “My boy, my boy,” Helen whispered softly. She picked up a stick and punched a hole through the bottom of her backpack. She carefully placed the squirming puppy inside. Julius fit perfectly, his leg cast sticking through the hole at the bottom and his head poking out of the top. She put the pack on backward so that Julius hung off her chest, where he could see her and look over her shoulder at the world. It seemed like he had been born to this, being carried by Helen.

  But she was terrified. Helen had never skipped school without permission, lied about anything major, or stolen anything in her short life, and in just a couple of hours, she had done all three.

  She peered out from behind the Dumpster. Then she looked down at Julius. He was where he belonged, finally. He was a happy puppy, one of those dogs who would go anywhere with the person he loved, trusting and content.

  Helen wished she felt the same.

  She heard some shouts coming from inside the shelter. They must be looking for Julius, and perhaps for her. The guard may have told them about her, or her mother might have called. Even the school.

  But she was not giving up. This was her puppy. It was meant to be. Helen leaned forward and kissed him on the nose. “Let’s go, boy,” she whispered, and started running along the far side of the parking lot, shielded by trees and cars. At the edge of the lot, she knelt behind a hedge and made sure that the shelter workers hadn’t seen her. When she felt safe, she rose to a crouch and ran down an alley behind some houses.

  She would go a half block, and then she would hide. She hid in an open garage, behind an appliance store, in the shadow of a fountain in the park. Twice, Helen stopped and took Julius gingerly out of the backpack to let him pee, and then they cuddled for a bit before she put him back in. He seemed tired, and she wondered if he needed some medicine. Maybe she had been foolish to take him away from his doctors. Maybe she had put him in danger.

  She was getting tired herself. When she was only a few blocks from home, she let her guard down. She walked out in the open, still carrying her puppy on her chest. Julius was asleep now, his head drooping down over the backpack.

  Just as she turned onto her street, she heard tires scream and saw flashing red and blue lights.

  “Young lady, stop right there!”

  Helen froze when she heard the police officer’s voice. She was a criminal, and she didn’t want to get shot. She didn’t want Julius to get shot either.

  But the police officer was surprisingly calm and nice. He didn’t do any of the things police officers did on TV. He got out of the car, introduced himself as Officer Jenkins, and asked if she was the little girl named Helen who had taken a dog out of the county shelter. She nodded, tears running down her cheeks, and she nodded again when he asked softly if this might be the dog.

  He asked if she would like a ride home, and she bobbed her head. “No handcuffs, I guess,” he said.

  It was the strangest and most embarrassing ride of her life. Her face was beet red, and she lowered her head to avoid the stares of neighbors and kids riding their bicycles on the street. The dog curled up in her lap and trembled—he was clearly not used to riding in cars. She reached in her pocket and took out a cheese cracker, ate half and gave the other half to the puppy.

  When the police car pulled into the driveway, Helen’s mother rushed out of the house and hugged her until she thought her neck might break. She introduced her mother to Julius, and although her face softened when she saw the puppy, she still looked Helen in the eye and said, “You know this dog doesn’t belong to you. You do know that, don’t you?”

  Helen nodded, too choked up to talk, but she wouldn’t let anyone else hold Julius.

  Her father was there too, having rushed home from work when he found out she was missing. He took her onto the porch while she clutched the puppy. “Helen, I want to say something to you,” he said. “What you did this morning was wrong, and I’m thinking of ways to punish you. But I understand why you did it, and even though I’m angry, I’m also proud of you for being so brave. I love you, and I’ve realized that I don’t really know my little girl as well as I should. I’m going to fix that.” And then he gave her—and Julius—a big hug.

  Her parents drove her to the shelter, and Officer Jenkins followed them there. Helen wouldn’t let Julius out of her grip, but once there, she allowed Dr. Jaffe from the Pennsylvania Regional Veterinary School to examine him, check his cast, and give him some medicine for the pain. The puppy seemed to be greatly enjoying all of the attention, but he never took his eyes off Helen. If anyone tried to take him away from her, he yowled so loudly that everybody in the room would wince.

  The shelter director explained that Julius was not up for adoption because he wasn’t strong enough. “He needs surgery and a lot of care, and we don’t want any family to take home an unhealthy animal. It’s our responsibility to take care of him until he’s healed. If he survives the necessary surgery, he’ll be put up for adoption then.”

  Dr. Jaffe told her that the vet school provided expensive surgeries to shelter animals for free. And then they returned them. The school did not experiment on dogs or cats. Students at the vet school would operate on Julius’s leg—under the strict supervision of their teachers—and then return him to the shelter. If Helen wished to adopt him then, she could. Dr. Jaffe looked at Julius an
d Helen and smiled. “Seems like a good fit.”

  The shelter director said it was wrong for Helen to have stolen Julius from the shelter. Imagine if a person had been bitten. What if Julius had hurt his leg further, and needed attention? Sick animals needed care, and they could be dangerous.

  Helen nodded her head as she considered the director’s words. She hadn’t thought about Julius hurting anyone, but she had worried that she’d put the puppy in danger.

  “I’m sorry for stealing Julius,” she said seriously, “but I didn’t actually take him out of the shelter, honest. I was planning to, but he wasn’t in his crate so I left. He got out by himself, and I found him sitting on my backpack behind the Dumpster.”

  The director raised her eyebrows. “I have a hard time imagining this injured puppy escaping from an enclosure, getting out of the shelter, and walking across the parking lot unaided and unobserved,” she said. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Helen, but it’s a stretch.”

  Helen could see that the director clearly did not believe her. She didn’t know what to say. It was a stretch. “It’s the truth,” she said, her eyes welling up a bit.

  “Okay,” the director said, “if that’s what you say.” She paused for a moment, studying Helen, then continued. “If the operation goes well, and I hope it will, you’ll be welcome to apply to adopt Julius. But I can’t promise anything. We’ll have to consider what’s best for the dog. And your entire family must be on board.”

  Officer Jenkins stood up and leaned over to kiss Julius on the nose. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m around a lot of people who lie well, and Helen here, I don’t think she knows how.” Helen blushed and smiled shyly.

  Then he shook her hand, said he had other more serious criminals to attend to, and wished her luck. “Don’t be running away from home or stealing anymore dogs, young lady,” he said, and winked. “Next time, I’ll use the handcuffs.”

  “Thanks for the ride, Officer,” she said, looking him in the eye. He smiled.

  Helen was surprised at how nice the vet and the shelter director were, all things considered. She was sorry that she had stolen Julius. But not very. Not really. She loved him now more than ever, and she was worried about the surgery and whether her parents would let her adopt Julius if he made it through. And she was very tired.

  THREE WEEKS LATER, Julius came home. Helen’s parents had gone to the shelter, filled out the adoption papers, and paid the fee—$75—which would come out of her allowance as punishment for cutting school, leaving home without permission, and stealing the dog from the shelter. Helen also agreed to volunteer at the shelter twice a week, cleaning up the messes in the dog and cat crates. She was happy to do it.

  The vet techs from the hospital lifted Julius’s crate out of the van and put it on the sidewalk, and Helen, who heard the yowling from inside the house, came running out to open the crate and pick up her puppy. They had fought long and hard to be together, and now, they finally were. Maybe it was true, Helen thought. Maybe if you wanted something badly enough, it might actually happen.

  Julius had steel pins in his knee and would always walk with a bit of a limp, the doctors at the vet school told her, but he would be fine. He could go for walks, chase balls, sniff things, and easily climb the stairs to get to Helen’s bedroom, where he would sleep for the rest of his days. She would have to watch out for arthritis when he got older. And she’d have to monitor his medications and learn how to massage his leg and give him physical therapy.

  But none of that mattered. Helen was crazy about Julius, and she was so much happier now that she had a puppy. Whenever something bad happened at school, all she had to do was think about him and she’d smile. Each afternoon, they shared a pack of cheese crackers. And her parents conceded that they’d been wrong about Helen; she took wonderful care of her puppy. Julius slept with Helen every night, lay on her feet as she did her homework, curled up next to her while she read, walked and played with her, and spent school days looking out the window, waiting for her to come home. When she neared the house, she could hear his howls.

  Helen and Julius’s connection changed her family. Her mother was still stunned by her daughter’s sudden evolution into what she called a “puppy commando.” As for her father, he seemed to look at Helen in a different way. He still wasn’t thrilled about having a dog in the house, and Helen understood now that that probably wouldn’t change. He really wasn’t a dog person, but that was all right. She was, and he was okay with that.

  Julius quickly became a master at getting people to scratch his soft pink belly. And, if they didn’t, he would yowl. Helen said he was singing, and occasionally, they sang songs together. Her mother said it was the cutest thing she had ever seen, and her father loved to listen. During one of these impromptu concerts, the phone rang. Helen’s mother answered it and then held the receiver out to her daughter. “It’s for you,” she whispered. “It’s Iris, your friend from school.”

  Her parents exchanged a look. It was the first “friend” from school to call Helen.

  Helen glanced up at her mother, utterly confused, then took the phone. “Hi, Iris,” she said shyly.

  “Hey, Helen,” the girl replied, her voice stripped of its usual edge. “I heard you got a puppy. Can I come over sometime after school to meet him?”

  “Sure,” Helen said, a smile spreading across her face. “He’d like that.”

  Laura Passerby

  LAURA JAMIESON DROVE THE SAME ROUTE TO HER JOB AS A receptionist at a large suburban-Atlanta dental center for six years until the state decided to tear up the highway for a new overpass. This meant that for the next two years she would be getting off the main roads and driving through some rural landscape and farmland. The detour added almost forty-five minutes to her commute.

  Some days she resented the construction, especially when it was raining or snowing. But some mornings, she didn’t mind because she got to look at pretty farms and pastures instead of traffic and malls, and she felt the pleasant sensation of being reconnected to nature, not an easy thing to do in booming Atlanta.

  It was some time during the third week of driving her new route that she noticed the decaying old yellow farmhouse and a black and gray dog chained to a tree out front. Laura was almost past the farmhouse when she saw the dog. Something seemed wrong. In her neighborhood, dogs were sometimes out in yards but almost never tethered to trees.

  The image of the dog tied to the tree stuck in her mind and bothered her all day as she answered phones, filled out insurance forms, and shuffled people in and out of the dentists’ offices.

  She had a dream about the dog that night. In the dream, the dog, maybe a German shepherd, was choking on the chain while hundreds of people drove by.

  The next morning, Laura kept an eye out until she saw the farm looming up on the right after a new McMansion development. The farmhouse paint was peeling, and there were pieces of slate missing on the roof. The front and side yards were covered with junk—old tractors, plows, engines, trucks, and cars.

  Laura pulled her Toyota Corolla slowly off to the side as she approached the farmhouse. It almost seemed abandoned, although when she looked off to her right, she saw an old red tractor far out in the field behind the house, black smoke belching from the exhaust pipe. She turned off the car engine and glanced off to the right. There was a giant old oak in front of the farmhouse, perhaps as old as the house itself, and tethered to it by the six- or seven-foot-long chain was the German shepherd, black and gray as she had remembered. He’d wrapped the chain partway around the tree and could only move a foot or two toward the road before being jerked back. She could see the water bowl well out of reach.

  This dog was none of her business. But she got out of the car and slowly approached him—she couldn’t remember when she’d last even touched a dog—and he seemed overjoyed to see her, barking, wagging his tail, lunging, then getting jerked back again by the chain. She worried he would break his neck.

  She pu
t her hand out. If she got bit, she had only herself to blame.

  The dog licked her hand. She felt as if he’d been waiting for her, desperate for her to help him. She knelt down on the grass and stroked his head. He was panting heavily, and spittle had caked up on his jaw and chest. There were scabs and scars all around the dog’s neck from where he’d pulled against his collar. One was ugly, open, and raw.

  She undid the hook that tethered the chain to the tree, then unraveled it from the trunk. She walked around the tree several times to do this, and the dog followed, almost eagerly. Then she refastened it. She leaned over to look at his threadbare collar. The tag said his name was Max. The rabies tag beneath was four years old.

  “Max, come with me, come here,” she said softly, and he enthusiastically obeyed.

  When the chain was straight, she leaned over to pat him, and he licked her hand again and looked at her expectantly.

  She thought about her father, a career military man who’d been killed in a bomb blast in Iraq six years earlier. Mind your own business, he always said. But if you see a wrong, try to right it.

  The two seemed to be in conflict sometimes, but she knew what he meant. She needed to try to help this dog.

  She walked back to the car and got out a piece of paper from her briefcase and a pen. She wrote a note:

  Dear Sir, I found your dog wrapped around the tree. I helped him get the chain straight. In case you are not aware of this, he has wounds on his neck.

  Laura, Passerby

  She left the note in the mailbox.

  Laura thought about Max all day and called her best friend, Nicki. “That’s terrible,” she said. “You ought to report him. That’s abuse.” Nicki was deeply into rescuing things—rabbits, birds, dogs, cats, anything. Nicki would rescue a hippo if she found one in the road.

  Laura said she didn’t want to get too involved. Maybe the farmer didn’t know. Maybe he would read the note. Still, on her lunch hour, she shopped for dog biscuits and an antibiotic ointment Nicki recommended in case the situation did not improve.