The Dog Who Was There

by Ron Marasco

“Shut up,” his friend said. “You see what happens to people these monsters don’t like.”

  “Hey,” said the other man, no longer laughing. “Did you get a look at who it was they hanged?”

  “Only saw a couple of bodies. Too squeamish to look much closer.”

  “They’re hanging people for everything these days.”

  “And well they should,” barked the man who had thanked the soldiers, “to keep us safe.”

  “It’s not to keep us safe,” the other merchant said. “It’s to keep us quiet. More and more and more the Romans are spooked by troublemakers. They’re not just hanging thugs and cutpurses—they’re hanging rabble-rousers, even blasphemers.”

  “Good!”

  “Like the people who follow that teacher from Galilee.”

  “Really?” said the man who cheered the soldiers. “My wife thinks that neighbor of ours is becoming a follower.”

  “Turn him in,” his friend said maniacally.

  “Not a bad idea! He monopolizes the well on our street. I’d love to see him hang!”

  Barley’s head swirled with uneasy thoughts, but nothing stopped his legs from propelling him toward the crowd to make sure that Adah and Duv were not there.

  A cluster of about eight or so people were gathered around, looking down into the back of a horse-drawn cart. It was a low, wooden-slatted conveyance pulled by a single gray nag. The driver of the cart had lost all of his teeth, but that didn’t stop him from talking away in a loud and crackly voice. He seemed to enjoy having the attention of the passersby who had stopped to have a look at the inside of his long cart and to ask about the soldiers.

  “That’s the way of things,” the old man laughed. “Roman justice! Soldiers roaming the streets looking for people to make an example of. And good they do, if you ask me.”

  Barley could now see what was in the cart. A wide piece of rough cloth was draped over a flattish mound of something lumpy and angular around which the citizens gathered, some laughing, some gasping, all staring at what was in the cart.

  Barley got close enough to the crowd to confirm that Adah and Duv were not among the onlookers. Barley was on the verge of abandoning the street to explore another road when the wind shifted and he caught the telltale whiff.

  On the dusky air, he’d caught it—the scent of Adah and Duv.

  All of Barley’s senses became alert. He began to sniff and wag his tail, prancing to and fro, until his eyes landed on a sight that stopped him. A lady in the crowd moved to get a better look at what was in the cart, so that now Barley also could see.

  A man was lying in the back of the cart, his head covered with a large piece of rough cloth. The only part of him Barley could see with any detail were his feet, which hung over the edge of the cart and had on the same common work sandals most laborers and merchants wore. The man was very, very still, more still than Barley had ever seen a person, even sleeping.

  Barley took a few steps closer to the cart to see if he could get a scent. As Barley neared, one of the citizens, a gray-haired man, yelled out excitedly, “What was the crime? Thievery, blasphemy? What?”

  The driver answered the man with a laughing, enthusiastic flair, saying, “See for yourself!”

  The driver reached down into the cart with a flourish and lifted the cloth off the man’s face, and there he was for all to see.

  His eyes open and all of him still as a stone.

  Once Barley realized what he was looking at, his angle of vision shifted—and he felt the road beneath him kick up dust into his face. It was only then, when Barley’s front paw had gone out from under him, that he knew how scared he had been that it might be Duv.

  It wasn’t.

  The man was younger. But it was still a man. And in a condition Barley had never before witnessed. A rope was tied tightly to his neck, and the man’s face was the color of sand, not the human pink Barley was used to. The end of the rope had been cut and was frayed and hanging limply out of the cart.

  The cart driver laughed. “This one was a common thug.” And he took a stick and pushed it into the man’s face, grotesquely moving the body’s otherwise motionless cheek.

  Barley knew the soldiers had done something bad to this man who was lying so still in the cart with rope on his neck. The driver’s loud, bragging tone and the crowd’s ugly laughter filled the air with the sort of fast-traveling stink of human cruelty that Barley (like most animals) had a nose for.

  Barley’s nose also told him that Adah and Duv had been here. He was sure of it. The wind had become strong enough that when it blew past Barley’s snout, it filled his sensitive nostrils with the sweet and familiar scent of Adah and Duv.

  Before he had even finished inhaling their comforting scents, Barley heard the sound of people walking toward him up the hill from the marketplace. He knew Adah and Duv would be surprised to see him there, but also glad—because they always were when they saw him. He only hoped they would not be disappointed in him for having broken the no-jumping-out-the-window rule.

  Barley stood at the crest of the hill waiting and wagging.

  But the lady and man Barley saw cresting the hill were, to be certain, not Adah and Duv. In fact, this particular couple were about as far from Adah and Duv as they could get. They were loud and giggling foolishly, and both of them reeked of wine. They held on to each other as they staggered up the hill past Barley. They drunkenly surveyed the old horse, the ghoulish driver, and the body in the cart and exclaimed loudly, “Oh—too bad. We missed a hanging!”

  “Yes, you did,” the driver laughed. “A couple of soldiers bought this fellow a one-way trip to the boneyard, if you get my meaning!”

  “So what did he do to get himself hung?”

  “Killed two merchants coming up from market. An old couple. This thug came from behind that boulder, where he’d been hiding. Attacked them up there. Near where that little dog is sniffing around.”

  He had only taken a few steps toward the marketplace when he saw it.

  Adah and Duv’s basket, lying smashed in the street.

  The straw that he had watched Adah and Duv place in the basket this morning to make the birds comfortable on their journey was strewn in the road. The handle—the larger one, the one on Duv’s side—was hanging off limply, like the rest of the basket had been wrenched away from it. And a huge foot had stomped on the delicate cedar lid into which Duv had carved words, and it was smashed to pieces.

  He looked at the basket. He sniffed it. Even nudged it once with his nose.

  He knew.

  Barley knew his masters were gone.

  It was the way he felt their scent leaving on the desert wind that told him.

  Barley knew he was alone in the world now.

  As he stood in the street, looking down at their shattered basket and realizing his masters had left him behind, Barley hoped that wherever Adah and Duv had gone, the two of them were still together.

  I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

  CHAPTER 5

  The sky was a deepening gray now, and darkness would come soon.

  Nightfall had always meant one thing to Barley . . .

  Dinner.

  The wind had been blowing for hours, and now Barley felt its chill in his bones. He had not realized how cold and hungry he was when his every instinct was focused on finding the people to whom he belonged. But now that he belonged to no one, standing alone in the darkening street, nightfall had new meaning.

  Cold.

  Then Barley heard a sound that roused him.

  Humming.

  It was not the sort of humming Adah always did. This was a man humming. His ears flew up and he listened to the merry sound on the otherwise silent street. He could tell the man was drawing near, just about to come up over the hill.

  And when he did, Barley was happy to see not just a man, but a woman too. This couple was much younger than Adah and Duv, but Barley could tell they were similar to his formers masters in how they matched. Except in
this couple it was the man who did the humming.

  Maybe they could be his new masters. Maybe they would give him dinner.

  Barley wagged to greet them and waited for them to see him.

  But as soon as the man noticed him, he stopped humming. Barley could tell by the look in their eyes that something was wrong. They were frightened of him.

  Barley knew that desert dogs were something to be frightened of—the big, long-snouted, fierce-fanged creatures that roamed the night. But he wanted to assure this nice couple that he was not one of them. So he began to take a few tentative steps toward them. But as soon as he did, the woman let out such a nervous cry that Barley froze right away.

  Then very calmly, so as not to alarm them, Barley lay down on the street and looked away from them. He knew this was best so they could pass by him as they continued down the road without being worried he would hurt them.

  And that’s what they did. They passed him and continued on down the road and out of sight.

  Barley would have felt sad except that as soon as the couple left, he heard other voices coming from farther up the road. Voices that sounded high and happy.

  Soon Barley found himself looking up at two young boys.

  One was a tad older than the other, both around eleven or twelve years old, and they were walking along with their father, who looked to be some kind of laborer.

  Barley immediately sent out one quick, bright bark.

  The young boys’ attention snapped to Barley. When they saw him, their faces bloomed into wide grins, and they ran down the street toward Barley, ogling him and giggling as they neared, as their father yelled out a few parental words of caution.

  The sight of their smiling faces rushing to him made Barley wag his tail until his haunches danced and his tongue bobbed happily out of the side of his mouth.

  After getting a good look at him, the two boys whispered something to each other. Then they looked up and down the street to see if this dog’s owner might be anywhere nearby. When they saw no one else, they looked back at Barley tentatively.

  Barley tried wagging, pleading with his eyes.

  The boys ran back over to their father, and whatever he said made the boys laugh.

  The boys ran back toward Barley, stopping in the middle of the street about twenty yards away from where Barley stood. The boys both squatted down in the street. They were now at eye level with Barley and peered over at him with fascination.

  Barley gave them a few cheery yaps in the hope they would come over. But instead, one of the boys tossed something toward Barley that flew over his head and landed in the thicket behind him.

  Fetch? Barley wondered.

  Barley was very tired but would certainly play some fetch if they wanted. He wagged his tail as he turned around to look at the street and see if he could find the stick. But he saw no stick in the street. So he turned back around to the boys.

  As soon as he did, he saw a rock heading for his face. Barley ducked, just enough so that the flying rock missed his snout and only grazed his ear—but with a very sharp sting.

  Then he looked over at the boys, wagging his tail awkwardly and shaking his leg to flap away the pain smarting his ear and maybe even the terrible awareness of what two boys, who looked so friendly, had just done to him.

  The boys began laughing excitedly and looking around for another rock to throw.

  Barley barked—sharply but sadly—as he crouched, watching the boys’ movements closely so he would be ready to fend off any other flying rocks.

  But the father had let his boys have their fun, and now it was time to get home since it was already dark. The three of them made their way across the street and down the road and were soon out of sight.

  Never in his life had Barley felt more alone.

  Barley turned away from the empty marketplace and began to walk on the crossroad in front of it, up the long, barren street. And before he knew it he was actually running.

  By now a thick darkness had covered his way. Barley looked around for another street to explore. He turned down a smaller road that wound around for a long way until he came to another road, and then another, and from there Barley trotted along that thin and twisty road with no idea where it would take him.

  Barley continued to trot, then ran a little faster—then faster and faster, until soon he was running much faster than a dog as hungry and cold as he was should. He couldn’t help himself. Barley was now so hungry he found that the only way to stop thinking about his painfully empty belly was to run even faster.

  And he kept at this until . . .

  He smelled something in the air. Barley stopped and sniffed.

  The smell was smoke. But the smoke had a bitter smell to it, and seemed to be mixed with other strong smells—smells that weren’t entirely pleasant.

  But when you are cold, even bitter-smelling smoke means there’s warmth to be had. And soon Barley’s sensitive nose had pointed his body in the direction of the smoke and the other curious smells.

  Barley eventually rounded a slight curve in the road and saw flames in the distance. They were at the end of a long path that cut through some rocky terrain dotted with brush. Barley began walking up this sorry-looking little road, heading toward the flames, when he saw a sight he had never before seen.

  Along the path was a series of tiny makeshift huts, no bigger than the length of a person. They were low to the ground, ragged, and filthy. As Barley passed by them, he could see that there were people in most of them—tired-looking people huddling beneath their thin cloaks, some sleeping, some peering out and shaking with cold.

  The end of the road was within Barley’s sight, only about a few hundred yards away. And the smell of the fire was stronger, filling the dark night sky with plumes of dark smoke. As Barley continued toward the fire, he heard a sound rising up out of one of the small roadside huts and went to investigate.

  A lady was lying inside of the shelter. Barley could see by the way she moved her lips that the noise he heard was her singing.

  As he got even closer, he saw that the lady was lying next to a small person—so small Barley didn’t even think it was a person, until it moved slightly. The lady was holding this tiny person up against her body.

  The way the two of them were curled up together reminded Barley of his mother, and the way that he, as a puppy, had fit so perfectly in the curve of her belly.

  Barley continued down the path toward the fire and soon came to the end of the small road, where he discovered a large opening in a dense thicket. The area Barley had stumbled upon was on the very outskirts of the city and covered a few acres, about the size of a small lake. He took small, tentative steps into the thorny vestibule of this eerie place and peered into the clearing beyond.

  Quite a few people were gathered, huddled in small clusters of two, three, or four. Most were trying to warm themselves by fires of various sizes—some wildly ablaze, others barely glowing with pitifully smoldering embers—but all of them smelling bad and filling the air with the stench of a city’s discards.

  While the people here were of different shapes, sizes, and ages, they all looked dirtier than most people Barley had seen before. Most of them were unusually thin, and as a few of the older ones got up to walk, Barley saw that they had bent limbs, making their silhouettes look like small dead trees moving against the night sky.

  A few men could be heard singing—one beautifully, one making a terrible babble. But most of the hollow-looking inhabitants of this place merely sat mutely as they stared into their fires. Occasionally, Barley could hear the air fill with a raucous laugh or an angry outburst.

  The inhabitants of this place called it the camp. To the rest of the civilized city of Jerusalem, the place was a notorious no-man’s-land filled with the poor, the disenfranchised, the diseased—all unwelcome in the city itself, especially under the strict governance of Judea’s Roman occupiers. But the isolation and infamy of the camp was a kind of refuge for its inhabitants. This area wa
s the one part of Judea where the downtrodden and displaced could avoid being roughed up by the soldiers who policed the rest of the city. In the government’s estimation, there was no one in this part of town worth protecting, so it was one of the only places of true freedom in all of Judea.

  Barley stood still and hungry, crouched near a cluster of bushes, terrified of being noticed by one of these hard characters, but desperate for a scrap of something to eat. Barley could tell that these people were broken, and he could also tell that they knew it. Barley could sense their desolation just by watching them from a distance through the hazy mist that swarmed over the eerie scene.

  At the fire closest to him was a small group, just three people.

  The first man was short and stocky, with a hard, squat body, a mop of ragged light brown curls on his head, and a thin, patchy beard dotting a red face that shone with sweat. He was sitting on top of a large rock near the fire and noisily slurping wine from a broken piece of pottery. He had a loud, rude voice, and the other two called him “Hog,” which was an appropriate nickname.

  Near him was a woman with long reddish hair, who looked to Barley like she had once been very pretty. She was lying against a man who sat by the fire, using his thigh as a pillow for her snoring head.

  This man was a taller fellow, Barley could see by his long legs, which were stretched out on the ground. He was cooking something on a long stick that he held idly over the flames. He had dark brown hair and a beard. His body was thin, but he had sinewy muscles that made him look strong. His nose looked like it had been flattened by boyhood fights, but in a way that made some men’s faces look more interesting, or manly, or wise to the ways of life.

  “Arrrgggh! Give me! Give me! You . . . you . . . aaarrrgh!”

  Barley heard the very loud and very disturbing sound.

  In a flash, a very old man hurled himself like a speeding ghost from a bush near where Barley was standing. As fear streaked through Barley’s body, the old man fell hard onto the ground a few feet from Barley, screaming.

  “Aaahhhhh! Nooo! Mine!”

  He was followed, a second later, by a younger man who was grabbing him and trying to take something from the old man’s hand.