by Ron Marasco
Barley and his siblings would spend the day looking up at the blue sky, which was how he first got introduced to butterflies—which Barley was very anxious to begin chasing as soon as his wobbly new legs were ready. By the end of most of those early days, when the sun sank below the line of the grass up above the small protected clearing, the family was ready for a well-earned night’s sleep.
Even though Barley would feel tired, the darkness at night would scare him and keep him awake. Barley was the smallest pup in his family, the runt of the litter, and on nights when he was fearful, his mother would lower her comforting brown eyes to watch over him in the moonlight, and sometimes lean her head down to lick her small son’s tiny snout. And Barley would press his head deep into his mother’s soft belly. Barley noticed that when he pressed his tiny triangular ear into his mother’s chest, he could hear coming from deep inside of her a kind of music, a gentle beating—bum-BUM, bum-BUM, bum-BUM—that let Barley know that, even when his mother was asleep, she was still taking care of him.
Since the part of the dream Barley was having as he lay by the hearth at Adah’s feet was happy, he began to wag his tail, even though he was sound asleep. Soon Barley’s dream wound its way to the memory of the very first friend Barley ever had. No one had made little Barley’s tail wag as much as he could.
Micah . . .
Barley was only a couple of weeks old, but his eyes were now fully open and happily taking in all the new sights. And his tiny legs had grown strong enough that he could amble to the edge of the clearing to spend part of each day looking out at the waiting world beyond. One morning he was peering out through the tall grass at the rolling acres that ran along the nearby stream when he saw a sight that made him realize there were more creatures in the world than just dogs, butterflies, birds—there were other creatures that were far larger and more interesting that he had yet to meet.
Walking straight toward him was the boy he would come to know as Micah.
Micah was thin and small for his ten years, with dark brown hair and eyes so clear and green Barley could see their color even at a distance.
When Barley first saw him, Micah was carrying a huge basket, twice his size and tied to the boy’s back with coarse rope that made ruts in his slight shoulders. The basket was filled with the firewood that Micah’s father made him gather and carry. His father didn’t need the firewood. The man was a wealthy farmer with a small army of farm laborers at his disposal. But Micah’s father forced the boy to do things for reasons his young son didn’t understand—or understood to be wrong.
Micah tried to sit down on the ground and rest a moment, but as he tried to pull his arms from the rope, the weight of the basket pulled him over. As he struggled to get free of the basket, he said with a burst of frustrated emotion, “This is so-so-so heavy. I can’t do it . . .”
As Barley watched and listened, Micah plunked himself down on his backside in the grass. Once there, the boy put his soiled cheeks into his hands and—believing he was alone and completely unaware that a two-week-old dog was inches away watching his every move—began to cry. As his slender body heaved up and down, he burst forth with sobs as hard and high as a ten-year-old boy can cry when something is breaking him.
Seeing and hearing this, Barley’s young heart stirred. Before he knew it, Barley had reached out to the boy by means of an audible yip that was so loud and clear even Barley was surprised when it came out of his miniature mouth.
“Huh?” Micah gasped. The boy froze and held his breath in silence until Barley let loose with another sound. Micah’s eyes lit up through his tears, and within a second he’d pulled himself up off the ground, ran to where the noises had come from, and pushed his head through the brush.
As soon as Barley lifted his tiny head and looked up into Micah’s eyes, he saw how glad this small boy was to see him and understood how good it was to have someone be glad to see you. That’s when Barley learned what friendship was—the feeling that you have always known someone, even if you’ve never met them before, mixed in with the feeling that you want to keep on knowing them forever.
Micah stepped cautiously into the clearing. Having been raised on a farm, he knew to approach a pup only if the mother was calm. But seeing only his shining eyes and trusting, tearstained face, Barley’s mother reacted to Micah no more than she would to a warm breeze blowing by. Seeing this, Micah bent down and gingerly reached for the dog who had called out to him, the pup with his head poking up from the pile of his soundly sleeping siblings.
“Hi there,” Micah said as he scooped Barley up and cradled him against his chest.
“So little,” he whispered. And pushing his face down to Barley’s snout said of the small black nose, “Like a tiny fig,” and he laughed.
It was the first time Barley had heard a laugh. And he liked it.
“Maybe you can be mine,” Micah said in the tone boys use to share fun plans.
And from then on, Barley was.
From that first day in the field when they met, Micah visited Barley and his family every spare second he could be away from his chores. And each time the boy came to see them, he would bring Barley and his family new and wonderful presents. One day Micah arrived with a huge sack of straw and a piece of thick cloth to lay over it. This meant that Barley and his mother and siblings could be up off the hard ground at night when they slept.
Years later, after these happy days in the field had been taken away from him, Barley would remember the straw Micah brought for them when Barley watched Adah and Duv put the same soft straw in their basket to be kind to the wooden birds. But the gifts young Micah brought for Barley and his family went well beyond straw. There was the food! Every single day he would bring Barley’s mother something to eat, like large chunks of fresh bread and chopped-up pieces of tasty meat, which Barley loved watching Micah feed to his always-hungry mother.
Micah and Barley would spend lazy afternoons lying face-to-face in the grass. Sometimes Micah would pluck a blade of grass to tickle Barley’s snout, tracing it around the splotch of pink on his nose. On some days, Micah and Barley’s happy visits would come to an abrupt halt.
“Micah!”
The voice would ring out low and loud from faraway.
“Your father is looking for you!”
Barley could see the boy’s body tense, and Micah’s face would lose its joy.
“Shhh,” Micah would say, pressing his finger to his lips, and then with a quick head pat and a whisper, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” And Micah would run away.
Even though Barley would miss Micah when he was away, Barley knew that the longer Micah was away, the happier they were to see each other. Barley would hear his friend come running and would begin wagging his tiny tail like mad as Micah’s fast stride crunched through the coarse grass, every ounce of his bursting ten-year-old joy carrying him back to see his tiny friend.
Once Micah burst into the clearing, he always went first and right away to Barley. The boy would fall to his knees and gently push his face right into Barley’s snout and let Barley’s minuscule tongue give him a riot of wet licks up and down Micah’s giggling face—from chin, to cheeks, even to eyelids.
“Are you mine?” Micah would ask and answer his own question with a “Yes, you are!”
Then Micah would start to use his dog voice, a special, squeaky, gritted-teeth voice that Barley loved so much that he would jump up onto Micah and they would both fall back into the high grass, laughing and rolling.
If only the dream stopped there, with images of sunny days and the sound of a young boy’s joy.
But sometimes, even with Adah and Duv so near and the hearth warm and the dinner simmering, Barley’s sleep would carry him away on a cold stream of the first terrible memories from his early life. For dogs, no less than for people, firsts matter. They echo long past their point in time, especially in dreams. It’s true of the good firsts, and very true of the bad ones. That’s why when a dog cries in a dream—even a full-gro
wn dog, even an old dog—the cry it cries is the cry of a pup, because that’s what it is doing when it sleeps—reliving a first.
CHAPTER 2
Barley had just had a fine meal and was relaxing in the sun, happily pressed up against his mother’s belly, listening to the reassuring bum-BUM, bum-BUM, bum-BUM of her body.
Then, as Barley lay there, something new happened.
The comforting bum-BUM, bum-BUM rhythm inside of his mother got faster and faster.
Barley lifted his head from her chest to look up at his mother’s face. As he did, he saw her tilt her head up and lift her ears tautly. She became very still. She was listening. And Barley could see that what she heard worried her.
Barley listened as well.
He could hear creatures across the field.
They were running. And they were getting closer.
This made Barley happy, as he loved the one visitor they’d had. He looked over to his mother to see if she was also happy, but as soon as his eyes fell on her, Barley saw that she was not only unhappy—she was frightened. His mother stood up so quickly that one of Barley’s brothers fell from her nipple and plopped to the ground.
Barley watched his mother standing stiff and alert while his siblings lolled blissfully on the straw.
In that moment, Barley had his first awareness of what it meant to be a certain kind of son.
He knew he was going to have to be the one to help his mother. As Barley watched her pace back and forth, lifting her head to the field beyond, Barley looked up as well and peered through the little crevices in the high grass where he could already see far-off movement.
Barley’s little legs had been getting steadier by the day, and now he put them to the test, scampering forward to the edge of the clearing where the tall grass began. Then he pushed his snout between two tufts and peered across the field.
There he saw three very large people running in the direction of his family’s clearing. One man was tall and confident and wore a clean tunic. The other two men wore short worker’s robes and thick sandals. Both of these men were so huge that at first Barley thought they were hills instead of people, until the two hills began running off in different directions.
As they parted, Barley saw someone else behind them, running as fast as he could to keep up with the three men. As soon as he saw who it was, Barley began to wag his tail.
It was Micah.
But as he heard him speak, Barley knew something was wrong.
“Nooo! Please, Father! Don’t!”
Barley could feel his soft fur stiffen into cold spikes along his spine.
The man’s voice was curt as he talked to the workers. “You brought the sacks?”
“Yes, we did, my lord.”
“Follow me, you idiots.”
This was the voice of Micah’s father.
As the men drew near, Barley got a closer look at Micah’s father. His cloak was neat and new. His black hair was thick and full and surrounded his face in a way that drew out the dark from his brown eyes. His pupils looked like two deep holes that were empty of any warm feeling, unlike Micah’s eyes—which were, at this moment, looking up at his father.
“Father! Please!” Micah begged.
But his Father snapped back, “I’ll give you ‘Please!’ Where are they?” The man’s voice echoed with its own authority. “Tell me or I’ll flog you!”
Barley watched as the father grabbed Micah by the back of his tunic and pulled him along. Micah—still crying—struggled to keep from falling. Then the father pushed Micah out in front of him a few paces and pushed his leather-sandaled foot into Micah’s backside, giving him a mighty kick that sent the boy reeling toward where Barley was crouched, watching them.
The father yelled to the workers, who were scanning the brush in search of something. “Over that way, you fools! Not by the stream!”
As the father drew closer, the man began screaming at his son with a bloodcurdling wrath that felt to Barley like it could break his small ears in half.
“I’ll show you what happens when you don’t do your chores! I’ll show you what happens when you waste time playing with filthy mongrels!”
Barley finally heard the boy speak, and the quavering fear of his young voice made Barley hurt.
“Father, I am sorry! Please! Please don’t. I’ll do my chores! I won’t play with them again!”
But nothing Micah said could stop his father’s rage.
“You’re a sneaky little thief! I’ll show you what happens to any son of mine who steals food to waste it on useless curs.”
By now Barley had seen enough to know his mother was right to be worried. He pulled his tiny head from between the grass and turned back to his mother. Her body stiffened, and she stood perfectly still. She pressed her strong paws into the dirt, her legs poised and ready. Then she tensed her face in a way that hardened her soft kindness into a strength that made Barley feel proud of her.
Instinct had made Barley’s mother turn her back to the litter and do a head count. Not seeing Barley there, she looked around frantically. When she saw him a few feet away from the rest of the litter, at the edge of the clearing, she gave him a look that told Barley what she wanted him to do. He scampered behind his mother, standing at her back paws, in front of his huddled siblings.
“Here, sir! Over here!” one of the workers shouted to Micah’s father. “They’re over here!”
Within moments, the high grass circling the clearing was shaking violently. As soon as she saw the brush move, Barley’s mother began a steady battle cry of noble barks. Then an enormous shadow suddenly darkened Barley’s world as he looked up to see every bit of sunlight obscured by the arrival of one of the workers.
“Sir, I found them!” The man’s voice boomed, and birds fled from nearby trees.
As his mother kept up the defensive pitch of her barks, Barley saw that the worker was holding a large harvesting sack.
Moments later Micah’s father, panting and red-faced, arrived in the clearing. He froze with rage when he looked down and saw the litter of dogs that had been living in his field.
The father was also holding a sack.
Then, as the two men glared down at the dogs, Barley heard Micah’s voice. “Father, please don’t hurt them! Please! Pleeeease!”
The boy burst through the clearing. He fell onto the ground at his father’s feet a few inches away from Barley’s mother, who was barking frantically. Micah grabbed hold of his father’s leg, pressed his face into his thigh, and begged, “Leave them be, Father! They’re my friends!”
But his father was having none of it.
“I’ll ‘my friend’ you right over my knee as soon as I’m done with this one, you daydreaming little sneak!”
“Father . . .”
“Get away!” the man hollered, scraping the boy’s face off his leg and pushing him to the ground.
This small flash of violence made Barley’s mother bark with even more intensity.
Now the father began moving toward Barley’s mother, swinging the heavy sack back and forth as he neared, whipping the air with the sack to frighten her. But Barley watched as his mother stood her ground, protecting her litter and giving her scrappiest son a first lesson in bravery.
The father leered at Barley’s mother, leaned his head back toward the larger of the two workers, and ordered, “Go get me a stick or a rock!”
Barley’s mother crouched slightly, readying herself to strike.
“No need, sir,” the worker said, smiling. And before Barley’s mother could lunge at Micah’s father, the large man lifted his tree-size leg and kicked Barley’s mother in the snout.
“Stop!” yelled Micah.
Barley watched as his mother reeled backward and fell onto her side—her growl evolving to a single high-pitched cry. Barley could see his mother was stunned and hurt. She tried to roll off of her back and right herself, struggling to stand up. But she was still dazed, so one paw went out from under her and she faltered
onto three legs, wobbling.
Micah’s father pointed to the weakened mother and told the worker who had kicked her, “You handle that one!” Then the father walked toward Barley and his siblings, snapping open the sack he was holding as he neared.
Micah tried again to reason with his father and said, “Father, punish me—but leave them be!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll punish you later. But first I’ll handle these wretched creatures.”
Micah’s face turned ashen as his father signaled one of the workers to take the boy away. As Barley watched, peering up sadly, the worker wrapped his giant arm around the boy’s thin middle and hauled Micah from the clearing, Micah pleading loudly with his father all the while.
A series of tiny anguished whelps could be heard from the clearing as Micah’s father plucked up pup after pup and plopped them into the sack. Micah, seated on a rock where the brutish worker had placed him, watched from afar as his father wiped sweat from his brow and the other worker arrived with a thin piece of leather to tie off the sack. When Micah saw this nauseating sight, his heart sank and he lowered his head to let the tears pour forth.
And when he did, he found that he was looking down at a surprising sight.
Barley was at Micah’s feet, staring up at him.
Micah let out a gasp of joy and admiration. The plucky little dog had slipped past Micah’s father and managed to make his way to his young master’s side. Micah bent down, dizzy with glee, and Barley hopped into his open arms. Then he drew Barley in close, hunching his shoulders around his dog as Barley licked his face.
“Give him here, sneak!”
It was the booming voice of the worker approaching. A massive hand reached down between boy and dog and wrenched Barley from Micah’s arms with such force that Micah knew that if he did not let go of Barley, the brutal man’s tug would rip the pup in half.
So Micah let go.
As Barley was carried away, he saw his first friend crumple into the grass, sobbing inconsolably.