Fifteen Dogs

by André Alexis

  The other thing that was clear on the night of Athena’s murder was who the conspirators were. Frick, Frack, Max and Atticus had been furtive from early on, at times keeping to themselves. So, when Frick and then Frack had gone off, Benjy had turned to where Max was lying. He had turned and waited. He waited until the strange disappearance of Prince and then observed the stealthy commotion as the brothers and Max searched the den. When the conspirators had left the den, Benjy had followed, going to a tree a distance away from the coppice. He hid in a place that was far enough from the den to afford him some safety but close enough so that he could observe the comings and goings. It was from here that he heard the terrifying fracas that signalled the attack on Majnoun.

  Now, the mystery deepened for him. The conspirators had gone after Majnoun, Bella, Athena and Prince. Where was the logic? What connected the four who had been disposed of? More importantly, as far as Benjy was concerned, where did he fit in the scheme of things? Was there something that tied him to the victims, or was he connected to the conspirators?

  Once the conspirators had returned to the coppice, Benjy sought out the body of Majnoun, saw that the dog was to all appearances dead, and peed on what he took to be the corpse, marking it so that others might be wary of him, if they connected his scent with this violence. After that, still uncertain about what he should do, but convinced he could flee if he had to, Benjy returned to the coppice where, to his surprise, all the dogs were asleep. Warily, he went to his place and stayed there until morning.

  In the morning, a new order came with the sunlight. The dogs woke early, two of them – that is, Bobbie and Dougie – confused by a difference they could not understand.

  – Where is the big bitch? asked Bobbie.

  Atticus yawned before he snapped his jaws together. Then, he barked while Frick and Frack nosed Bobbie, Dougie and Benjy toward him.

  – These are the last words I’ll speak in this useless tongue, said Atticus. The dogs who have not wanted to stay with us have gone into exile. The big bitch has died. Humans have taken her body away. I am now the leader of this pack. Does any dog object?

  – You will make a wonderful leader, said Benjy.

  – Whether I am wonderful or not, I will lead. Those who wish can choose exile. Those who stay will live properly, like dogs. We don’t need words for doors or trees. We don’t need to talk about time or hills or stars. We did not talk about those things before, and our ancestors did well without this language. From now on, anyone who speaks anything but the old tongue will be punished. We will hunt. We will defend our territory. The rest does not concern us.

  – I cannot stop the words that go on inside me, said Bobbie.

  – No one can stop that, said Atticus. Keep them inside.

  – And if we speak by mistake? asked Dougie.

  – You will be punished, said Atticus.

  Who knows why, in these circumstances, a dog would speak up. Benjy was too busy taking it all in. How, he wondered, would they be punished for speaking? How was Atticus to stop them from speaking with each other when they were alone? And why the injunction in the first place? Their language gave them an advantage over other dogs. Still, thought Benjy, might does what might will do, whether it was humans beating you for pissing or Atticus insisting that dogs should not speak. It was best to let those in power do what they wished while finding some advantage in it for oneself.

  Evidently, the orange bitch did not see things his way.

  – I choose exile, said Bobbie.

  – We will help you leave, answered Atticus.

  As if it had been worked out in advance, the conspirators attacked the orange bitch at once. They were ruthless and, as the Duck Toller was smaller than any of the four, they did immediate, severe damage. Desperate because she understood they meant to kill her, Bobbie cried out in distress. The sound was terrifying. She managed to run from the den, but the four pursued her, biting at her legs as she ran. They chased her beyond the pond where, weakened, she fell. There, they bit her until her body stopped moving and her blood ran onto the grass.

  (While recounting this moment to Majnoun, Benjy was as solemn as could be, as if relating an injustice. The truth was, though, that he had felt admiration for the conspirators. Some part of him admired the four dogs still. They had been swift and clear, and one had to admit that clarity, however terrifying it might be, was at least admirable. It was perhaps even beautiful. He could only aspire to it. It was an ideal that, realistically speaking, a dog of his size and stature could never attain, clarity being an expression of power.)

  The murder of the orange bitch was a signal event. After that, it was clear to all that Atticus was serious and that the conspirators wanted what Atticus wanted. It was also clear that the conspirators were a different kind of creature. The attack itself had been ruthless, swift and canine. Admirable, as Benjy thought. But what had preceded it, the offer of exile: why propose such a thing if it were not meant? The orange bitch had taken them at their word and they had murdered her. Why? Benjy could not see the advantage. The bitch had been no threat at all. To him, the decision to kill her had been perverse. And, in the end, it was this perversity that proved the conspirators’ strangeness.

  As far as Benjy was concerned, Atticus, being unpredictable, was a danger to them all.

  On top of that, with the death of Bobbie, it was clear that he and Dougie were now of lowest status. They were meant, it seemed, to scavenge and to be submissive. This was not necessarily a bad thing. Submissiveness was worth the trouble if one’s submission were rewarded by something valuable: protection, say. It remained to be seen, however, what good would come from Atticus’s reign.

  (How quickly the dead pass from mind. Though they had been pack mates, neither Benjy nor Majnoun remembered much about Bobbie, save that her fur had been orange and shaggy and that she had smelled of pine even before they found the coppice. She had once defended Benjy from a mutt that attacked without warning but Benjy did not remember this. At her death, Bobbie imagined she was sinking in deep water, the sensation bringing her back to a moment as a pup when she had nearly drowned. She died in great distress, unconsoled.)

  The first days of Atticus’s rule were exceedingly peculiar. Dougie was bitten hard when he inadvertently spoke in the new tongue. Thereafter, Dougie and Benjy were careful never to use words when the others were around. They barked. But this was disorienting. They were forced to imitate what they remembered of their old language. They were, in effect, dogs imitating dogs. This would have been less troubling if the imitation had been done for humans. Most humans cannot tell a benign growl from a growl that prefigures attack. Atticus, however, having demanded that the pack return to the old ways, now constantly judged how Benjy and Dougie were performing ‘as dogs.’ This made everything stranger still. Benjy and Dougie were dogs forced to perform a version of dogness convincing enough to please other dogs who had, to an extent, forgotten what dogness was. Were any of them actually barking or growling in the old way? Neither Benjy nor Dougie ever knew. Nor, of course, could they ask. They would have been bitten – or worse – if they had. Far from becoming more doglike, Benjy could feel himself becoming less so: more self-conscious, more thoughtful, more dependent on a language that he kept to himself. The safest thing was to imitate Atticus as best as one could.

  In the beginning, Benjy and Dougie were protected when they went scavenging. One or two of the conspirators always went with them, attacking the occasional dog who stood up to them, watching as the smaller dogs got into places the bigger ones could not. At least for Benjy, it was a relief to discover that there was some purpose to his presence in the pack. He and Dougie were adroit finders of things humans had rejected. During their winter in High Park, the two were especially useful. It was rare for the larger dogs to be admitted to a human home, but Dougie and Benjy could sometimes charm their way in and steal useful things: discarded cushions, pieces of foam, old clothes, a moth-eaten blanket left in a yard, anything to make the copp
ice more hospitable.

  After a while, the conspirators, either through laziness or unconcern, allowed the small dogs to go off on their own so that, as might have been expected, the relationship between Benjy and Dougie evolved into a friendship. At first, Benjy could not stand the schnauzer. The thing he felt most like doing, when he and Dougie were together, was to mount him. Not because he wanted to fuck Dougie. No, the desire to dominate when he himself was dominated was strong and instinctive and belonged to the unquellable depths of himself. At the same time, it was obvious that Dougie also wanted to mount him. None of this was personal. He wished Dougie no ill, and Dougie almost certainly wished him none. Each simply wanted to get on top of the other. And yet it was personal, too. At times, they fought bitterly over who had the right to mount whom. Their disagreements did not, however, affect the others. All of the others, including Rosie, mounted Benjy and Dougie as a matter of course. And both of them bore this because they had to.

  Though the coppice was as hospitable as the dogs could make it, the winter in High Park was just short of disaster. The trees and bushes were adequate windbreaks, but the cold was so often unbearable the small dogs were forced to consider escape. One January night, Benjy wondered if he were going to die, so violent were his shivers, so loud the clacking of his teeth. The following morning, he and Dougie set out early, on their own. The other dogs were all asleep. Atticus, Max, the brothers and Rosie lay together on blankets in a warm congregation from which both Benjy and Dougie had been unceremoniously excluded.

  On the January morning of their escape, the snow was almost impassable. The familiar world of smells and sounds and landmarks was lost beneath the snowfall. It seemed to the two as if some strange being had taken everything they knew, leaving only whiteness and the indistinct profile of a world they had once known. When they were far enough from the den, Dougie said

  – I’m cold. I thought I was going to die.

  – Me too, Benjy said. The others do not think about us.

  – I believe you, said Dougie. I tried to sleep next to them and the leader bit me. It isn’t right for dogs not to care about dogs.

  – They don’t want us, now that the ground isn’t what it was. They would let us die.

  – I believe you, said Dougie. What can we do?

  – I am going to find a human to let me in. Why don’t we see if there are humans who will take us both?

  – Should we tell the others we are going?

  – No, answered Benjy. I do not know what would happen.

  – I believe you, said Dougie. The leader is strange. It is difficult to know when he will bite, and he bites hard. It will be better if we go on our own.

  This decision brought them immediate good fortune. Making their way out of the park by Wendigo Pond, Dougie and Benjy trudged through the snow along Ellis Park Road. There, they were seen and hailed by an old woman.

  – Here, doggies! Here, doggies!

  Both recognized the tone but they were wary. For as many kindnesses as they’d had from perky summoners, there had been bewildering cruelties: stones thrown, beatings with sticks. They were desperate, however. They were cold and hungry. So they made their way toward her. A good choice, as it happened, because the woman had recently lost two of her six cats and her innate sympathy for all animals was heightened. When they entered her kitchen, she set down two bowls of cat food. And though the food smelled like fish and cinders, it was good.

  That winter, Dougie and Benjy had shelter. They were well-fed and they were let out into a yard whenever they liked. The woman and her cats, however, were a kind of trial they endured together. To take the cats first: yes, Benjy and Dougie felt an antipathy toward the creatures. As far as Benjy was concerned, no reasonable being could feel otherwise. He was prepared to live in peace, but the cats that slunk about the old woman’s home were more pernicious than the usual felines: hissing constantly, arching their backs as if making themselves bigger could intimidate, jumping up and down with their claws out. They would not live in peace.

  In other circumstances, Benjy and Dougie would have ganged up on the pink-tongued hysterics and broken their necks for them. It was clear from the old woman’s behaviour, however, that she actually valued the cats. She cleaned up their feces (which, as it happened, tasted very good), groomed them, purred at them or with them as if she were an oversized moggie herself. It was easy to see that if they hurt any of her furry charges she would throw them out. So, when the cats were most annoying – mincing about like legislators – he and Dougie permitted themselves only the quietest of growls, intimate warnings that the cats resolutely ignored.

  The woman herself was a more complicated irritant. She was human. So, she could be manipulated in a number of ways the small dogs had mastered. When they were hungry, they rolled onto their backs for her or stood up on their hind legs, a thing she seemed to particularly enjoy. She was inexplicably delighted by certain things but just as inexplicably horrified by others. She petted them and made high-pitched sounds when they jumped into the bed beside her or licked her face, but she would lower her voice and squirt them with water if she caught them licking their own or each other’s genitals. She would offer them food whenever they turned on the television for her, but she could not stand to see them eat the cats’ droppings.

  Her unpredictable likes and dislikes were not the worst of her. The worst of her was her clinginess. The two had encountered this particular fetish before, of course. Both knew what it was like to have a human hold you for too long: the suffocation, the back-cracking struggle to get away. But the woman seemed to have some need to crush them. She held them tight no matter how they squirmed.

  One day, Dougie asked

  – Do you think she could kill us when she squeezes?

  Benjy found it troubling that he could not answer one way or the other. He had no idea if the old lady was a hazard, no way of knowing. And it seemed unwise to depend on the restraint of a being one did not know. On top of that, there was the feeling that accompanied the crush. It was as if the woman were trying to instill something in them or to communicate a thought. Gradually, over the last of winter and the beginning of spring, she became unbearable. By the first warm days, Benjy and Dougie found themselves again dreaming of escape; this, despite the food and shelter the woman provided.

  Dougie first spoke of his desire to leave, on an evening when the world smelled again of things expunged by winter: muck, greenery, rotten food and shit. He and Benjy were in the woman’s yard, lying on the warm patio stones. Dougie had had enough of the old woman and of the cats who polluted her den.

  – This is not where I want to be, he said.

  – Where will you go if you leave? asked Benjy.

  – I want to go where we were, he answered. These creatures are making me unhappy and the human will break me, I’m certain of it.

  – It would be dangerous to go back, said Benjy.

  – The leader is a true dog, said Dougie. He will teach us how to be true dogs again.

  – Going back is an idea that is not good, but I do not want to stay here on my own.

  – Then come with me. The world is warm. We can live with our pack, as we were meant to.

  Dougie had apparently forgotten the abuse and the humiliations they had suffered. He’d forgotten how frightened they’d been, had forgotten how violent and unpredictable the pack could be. Benjy shared his longing for the company of their pack, but he could not see any profit in a return. He saw only danger and, ever practical, he thought first of what was good for him. As clingy as the old woman was, there had to be alternatives to returning to the coppice.

  – Why not find another human? he asked.

  – No, Dougie answered. Why change one master for another?

  – Their homes are different, said Benjy. They smell different. I believe they are different. We may find one who has none of these ugly creatures with them.

  – We are from the same pack, said Dougie. I know what you are saying, but my
thinking is not like yours. We have a home elsewhere. I want to go back. We can look for another place, if the pack is still strange.

  Dougie would not be dissuaded. He no longer wished to live with this human or these cats. His spirit would not allow it. A few days after their talk, he precipitated their ouster from the old woman’s house. His behaviour would have terrible consequences, it’s true, but Benjy would not blame his friend for the events that followed their ouster. He could not. In fact, by the time he told all this to Majnoun, he’d convinced himself that Dougie had been considerate when he’d got them both thrown out of the house. ‘Considerate,’ in that his actions forced Benjy to reconsider where and how he wanted to live, forcing on him the unexpected dignity of a choice.

  First, however, the ouster: Benjy had always been an excellent hunter. He could sniff out rats, knew how to kill them and, from time to time, enjoyed eating them. They were not his preferred meal, so he did not kill them unless he was hungry. Dougie, on the other hand, was a masterful hunter and enjoyed killing rats and mice for the sport. It was, simply, Dougie’s way, and Benjy thought nothing of it. That is, he thought nothing of it until Dougie cornered and killed one of the woman’s cats.

  It happened in a moment that left Benjy feeling profoundly ambivalent. They had been lying together, he and Dougie, in the kitchen, when one of the cats came in and went for its bowl of water. Without warning, Dougie struck. (How fast he was, and how wonderful!) The cat, its reflexes almost as impressive as Dougie’s, tried to jump out of Dougie’s way, jumping straight up and screeching for its life. To no avail. It was trapped in a narrow vee where the side of a cupboard met a wall. It tried to jump a second time, but it had no chance. Anticipating its desperate movements, avoiding its claws, Dougie darted in, bit the cat’s neck and shook it as if it were a plush toy until it stopped wriggling and hung limply in his mouth.