The Dog Who Was There

by Ron Marasco

  A startled Hog turned toward the sound of Samid’s voice.

  Samid could not help but grin at Hog’s immense shock and at the blank stares of the merchants.

  Samid announced loudly, “That fellow means to do you both harm!”

  “What?” gasped the merchant, taking a step back from Hog and pulling his wife behind him.

  “Yes! He’s a very bad man. Blubbery of belly and hard of heart!” Samid said melodramatically, quite enjoying his own performance.

  Hog tried to speak. “Bu . . . I . . . You . . . Sami . . . I . . . wha . . .” Articulate as always, and now in the throes of rage.

  “Why, just last week I saw that round-shaped thug beat a poor baker bloody just to get his thieving fingers on”—his voice rising—“the same sort of coin purse that you, sir, are no doubt carrying!”

  “What?” the wife shrieked.

  “Oh!” the man gasped as he clutched his coin purse.

  “Samid, you rat!” Hog gurgled, choking in his fury.

  Samid screamed to the bug-eyed couple, “Get away from him! Run for your lives!” And as the couple grabbed for each other and began to flee, Samid emptied his lungs. “Gooooo!”

  And go they did!

  The couple ran down the road as fast as they could, the man clutching his coin purse with both hands.

  Samid called out to them, “And warn anyone coming up the road! His name is Hog!”

  And with that, the frantic couple rounded the corner at the bottom of the street and were gone.

  By now Samid was laughing so loud that his chest heaved with a mirth he had not succumbed to since he was a child. He threw back his head and aimed his big, low chuckles up to the heavens as Barley stood beside him wagging his tail and looking up into his master’s face.

  All Hog could do was sputter, “You . . . you . . . you . . . you . . . !”

  Samid got hold of himself and walked over to Hog. Samid spoke in a tone of sincerity and even with a touch of affection.

  “Hog, I couldn’t let you do this.”

  “What business is it of yours, you rat, weasel, you snake, you . . . you . . . you . . . ?”

  “You said to me last night that you are my friend, Hog. And you are. The reason we have friends is so that there’s someone around to save us from ourselves.”

  Then Samid bent down and took the rope from around Barley’s neck, allowing him to go free, sure he was going to do exactly what he did, which was dash over to Hog, a familiar face, and give him a big greeting. Barley ran to Hog and hopped up with his front paws happily tapping on Hog’s belly. But Hog was in no mood for the affection of a dog, or for talk about being friends with the rat who just ruined his perfect plan to get money for food. He pushed Barley off of him and growled at Samid, “I give you this for your friendship!” and spat onto the ground.

  Samid shook his head with finality and emotion. “No more, Hog. No more hurting people. No more taking things that are not ours. No more mischief.”

  Then he clapped his arm good-naturedly around Hog’s back and said, smiling, “Come, my funny-looking friend, we’re getting out of here,” and he began leading Hog down the street—Samid strolling, Hog resisting, and Barley following right along, happily.

  After a few paces, Hog pulled away.

  “No! I’m not going with you!”

  “Yes, you are. I won’t let you stay here and do this sort of thing anymore. You’re coming with me. Or . . .” Samid took the bunched-up rope in his hand, held it in front of Hog’s face, and said, “Or, if need be, I’ll put this leash around your fat head and drag you with me,” closing the deal by bopping him on the nose with the rope.

  Then Samid put his arm around Hog, pulling him into an affectionate choke, and walked him down the road, with Hog squirming and huffing and complaining as they went. “I think you’ve gotten more cracked than Cracked Amos!”

  Samid replied, “I’ll explain as we walk. I’m going to buy you some breakfast. And some lunch. Come on.”

  “Buy me food? How can you buy me food?” Hog shook his head in misery and said sadly, “Samid . . . I’m hungry. I’m so hungry. You have nothing. I have nothing. And I’m so tired of having nothing.”

  Samid could see over Hog’s shoulder that two merchants were coming up over the hill. One was an older man with a turban who walked with a slight limp, and the other was a much younger woman, who Samid took to be the man’s daughter, who had long, flowing black hair and was talking softly.

  Hog turned and looked up the road.

  Samid said quickly, “Hog, I have something for you.”

  “What?”

  “Money,” Samid answered, grinning broadly.

  Hog spun back around to him.

  “What?”

  “Yes! Money! A coin . . .”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “From Boaz the flute player.”

  “You stole it from that old tightwad?”

  “No, Hog, he gave it to me!”

  “Boaz the flute player gave you a coin?”

  Samid laughed. “Yes! He did! To thank me for buying him bread!”

  The two of them began to walk together down the street as Samid reached into his tunic. “He gave it to me,” Samid said, “and now I give it to you. Here.” And he handed the coin to Hog.

  Hog looked at the coin, and his face fell in disappointment.

  “Some coin. That won’t get me much.”

  “No, my lumpy friend, but it’s a beginning. You know what your problem is, Hog?” Samid said as they walked.

  “What?”

  “Despair.”

  As they walked down the road, a song suddenly filled the morning air. It was the daughter of the merchant singing as she strolled down the road with her father. The song was exotic and haunting and beautiful, unfurling in syllables that lifted melodically into the rosy dawn.

  “See,” Samid said. “You’ve got a coin in your pocket, a song to send us on our way, a pretty sky to walk under, and friends, just like a family out on a happy Sunday.”

  “It’s Thursday, you dolt.”

  Samid laughed as he patted his friend’s back.

  Hog laughed too. “Some family,” he said with a reluctant grin. Then, seeing a stick in the road, Hog picked it up and tossed it down the road with a chuckle.

  Barley trotted down the road happily, chasing the stick.

  “Hey, Samid,” Hog said from behind him.

  Samid turned around to answer. When he did, his lip was struck by the coin Hog had thrown with all his strength at Samid’s face. The small, hard chunk of metal stunned Samid with a jolt of pain and shock.

  “Fool!” Hog laughed out the word gleefully, sealing his betrayal.

  As he backed away swiftly from Samid, he taunted him, “To blazes with you, you weak, pathetic fool.”

  Then Hog took off down the road toward the old merchant and his daughter, moving as fast as his hunger and his rage would take him.

  “Hog, come back here.”

  Samid turned and called to Barley, who was trotting back to lay the stick by his master’s foot. Samid bent down quickly and put the rope back around Barley’s neck. With a sharp “C’mon,” the two of them took off running up the road toward Hog and the merchants, Barley now sensing his master’s intensity.

  Hog had moved his lumbering body up the street as swiftly as he could without making the two merchants suspicious, as he called ahead to them, “Oh, how fortunate to find two kind citizens! I was wondering if you might direct a lost traveler . . .”

  Samid cupped his free hand at the side of his mouth and hollered up the street as he ran with Barley, “Sir! Lady! That man means to rob you! Run!”

  But the old man just peered down the road at Samid and smiled.

  So Samid began to wave his arms wildly at the merchants and, running as fast as he could, yelled out, “He will hurt you, sir!”

  But the old man just waved back to Samid cheerily and through a toothless smile intoned a kindly
flow of words—every one of which, Samid now knew, was in a foreign tongue.

  Hog pounced.

  He swung his beefy leg hard and swept the old man’s spindly shins out from under him, dropping him into the street. As the old man landed in a heap, the daughter burst into a ferocious chorus of high-pitched wails and foreign words.

  When he saw the chaos ahead, Samid stopped abruptly, and Barley skidded to comply.

  Samid looked around desperately until his eyes fell on what he needed—a thin, sturdy tree at the side of the road. He yanked the rope, and Barley followed his master to the tree. Samid crouched down and tied the free end of Barley’s rope to the tree as tightly as he could.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt again, boy. I’ll be right back.”

  Then Samid took off, dashing up the road as fast as his long strides would carry him, the rhythmic pounding of his sandals on the road drowned out by the earsplitting howls of the man’s daughter. Barley watched with mounting anxiousness, moving forward until the rope halted him. Then he backpedaled and began to prance in place, bobbing his head and letting out a loud mix of sharp barks and glum yowls as he watched the scene up the road.

  Hog had wasted no time in finding the fallen merchant’s coin purse and was now trying to yank it off the old man’s belt, elated to find such an easy victim. But easy victims sometimes know they’re easy and thus go out into the world equipped. From deep inside the front folds of her flowing and exotically colored robe, the daughter pulled a thin, shiny blade.

  Hog was bent over the father and had just pulled the purse hard enough that it ripped off the man’s belt, spilling coins. Hog felt triumphant, unaware that behind him, a wild-eyed, blade-wielding daughter was heading toward him with the intent of stabbing her father’s attacker in the heart.

  The moment Samid saw the telltale gleam of the blade, he gasped and, without breaking stride, bellowed up the road. “Hoooooggg!”

  Samid yelled with such uncharacteristic desperation that even Hog had to turn round to see what the commotion was about.

  While Hog did not turn in time to avoid the oncoming blade completely, he did move his massive body enough that the path to his heart the daughter aimed for was avoided, and her knife found only the edge of Hog’s tunic, shredding a slice of it and exposing his large, pink middle.

  The daughter persisted.

  She wheeled back around toward Hog, coming at him again, screaming and plunging her thin arm down to stab her father’s attacker. But Hog caught her by the wrist.

  By the time Samid got to them, Hog and the daughter were rocking to and fro in mortal conflict over control of the blade, each hollering in a different tongue. Samid simply reached in and, with one deft grab-and-twist, snapped the blade away from them. As Samid stepped back so that neither could grab it again, Hog pushed the woman hard, sending her flying back several feet and landing in the street.

  Down the road Barley barked more frantically than before, a husky, primal call that rattled Samid and added to his impatience when Hog came back at him.

  Hog lunged at Samid, reaching wildly for the knife. For a while Samid just stood tall and still, holding the weapon safely behind his back, keeping Hog at bay and watching him flail ridiculously, until finally he had had enough.

  Samid punched Hog in the face—a shot to the jaw that dropped Hog to the street.

  He leaned over his former friend’s felled body and said, “That was for your own good.”

  With Hog and the wailing daughter both dazed, Samid attended to the old man who lay on the street, moaning a sad stream of unintelligible words. Crouching down, Samid helped him into a sitting position. Then he handed the torn coin purse back to the man and began to gather up the coins, putting the knife in his teeth as he scooped them up from the road.

  When the man saw that Samid was there to help him and not hurt him, he began to cry and kiss Samid repeatedly on his arms and on the hem of his grubby tunic.

  The man’s daughter had, by this time, gotten up off the ground and was now swatting at Hog, who was just getting back onto his feet after Samid’s punch. As Hog struggled to get his balance, the woman clawed at his jowly face and screamed. He positioned his legs in a wide stance and then, with a loud, strength-summoning grunt, pushed the woman out of his face and onto her back, flattening her again onto the street.

  As Hog raised his head victoriously, he found himself looking straight into the red eyes of a massive, charging horse.

  Before Hog’s face had time to register fear, the Roman soldier on the horse had driven his sword so far into Hog’s torso that the momentum carried his speared body several gallops before it fell in the street. Without stopping, the soldier pulled the sword from Hog, drawing forth a cascade of terrible red that Barley saw ooze over Hog’s limp body as horse and rider sped up the road, heading straight toward Barley’s master.

  Samid froze. He did not move even as the powerful horse, reined by the huge rider, skidded to a stop inches in front of him.

  Samid raised his head slowly to see that he was staring at the point of the soldier’s sword, still dripping with Hog’s blood.

  Now the rider, clad in Roman armor, looked down to survey the scene.

  Samid looked up at the soldier.

  “I . . . I was trying to help . . .”

  “Yes. I see that,” the soldier’s low voice boomed back. “Trying to help yourself to this merchant’s money.”

  “Is this your coin purse?” the soldier asked the old man, pointing with his sword. The old man nodded yes.

  The soldier smiled with satisfaction and said, “Some merchants coming down the street said there was a robber up the road, and it looks like they were right.”

  Now the daughter ran over to her father, crying hysterically.

  “Quiet!” the soldier yelled.

  Then he maneuvered the giant horse even closer to Samid and sneered, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this one.”

  As the daughter bent down to gather up the coin purse and help her father stand, the soldier looked down at Samid and ordered loudly, “Stand up!”

  Samid stood, and in one expert motion, the soldier whipped out a rope that landed around Samid’s neck. The rope was tied into a thick noose.

  As soon as the rope landed on his master’s neck, Barley made a desperately sad yelp that Samid had never heard him make before. Samid turned away from Barley sadly.

  Seeing what the soldier had done to Samid, the old man reacted passionately.

  He began to protest to the soldier, repeating a phrase in his language over and over, the same handful of syllables uttered pleadingly as the man began to cry through his words—words that neither the soldier nor Samid knew or understood, words meant to tell the soldier Samid was not a bad man.

  When the soldier failed to understand his meaning, the man even reached up and tried to take the noose from Samid’s neck.

  The soldier swiped his sword down at the man.

  “Don’t interfere with me! Are you too ignorant to know when a soldier is trying to help you? Go!”

  Terrified by the soldier’s tone, the daughter grabbed her father and the coin purse and, leaving her knife lying in the street, they hurried off in the same direction they had come from.

  The soldier leered at Samid. “Well, well, well . . . Found you just in time.”

  Samid kept his back turned to Barley.

  He thought it best to.

  Barley raised his eyes, his head still lowered, and two large crescents of white formed under his brown pupils. He wanted his master to look at him.

  But his master wouldn’t. Even when Barley began to cry—his small black nose pulsating feebly with high-pitched whimpers—his master did not turn around.

  The soldier gave a sharp snap of the reins, ordered, “Let’s go!” and, gritting his teeth in a hateful scowl, clutched the rope hard as Samid reached up to try to get his fingers between the rope and his throat, at least enough to let him breathe. Then the soldier used his
other hand to expertly maneuver the reins of the huge horse, turning him around sharply. As the horse turned, Samid was yanked with such force that, for a second, both his feet were swept off the ground. And in this way, they started down the road.

  Barley’s thin, airy cries quickened as he watched his master be taken away down the street.

  Just as they were at the bottom of the hill, about to round the bend of the road, Samid craned his head back and peered over his shoulder to take one last look at his dog.

  And then he was gone.

  Though the road was now empty, Barley could not take his eyes off the vacant turn around which his master had disappeared. He stood still, even as the heavy weight of sadness began to lower his body, first into a crouch, then down onto his belly, where he lay in the street and kept staring at the empty spot, staring unblinkingly at nothing at all.

  Then—! There it was!

  Barley sprang back up, eyes wide, tail up, paws poised. Yes! He knew it for certain. Though far off now, it was unmistakable.

  His master’s whistle.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was Barley’s instinct to run after his master, to follow his call. So he did. But his hind legs slid from under him as the rope that was ringing his neck yanked him back.

  Barley stood up, walked back till the rope was slack again. He coughed twice, then stood there, stock-still. He couldn’t follow, run, or help. All Barley could do was bark. He barked across the road at the stone-still body of Hog. But Hog was no help.

  The sky began to darken as Barley continued to bark. After a while, Barley’s barking deepened into a hopeless howl, and darkness covered the road.

  Barley barked and howled until his voice was hoarse with the effort. He stopped and remained quiet for long, empty minutes, the realization sinking in that his master was gone. Through the bleak, silent darkness, Barley thought he began to sense something or someone approaching.

  It began as a very far-off clah-clink, clah-clink, clah-clink, a rhythmic clanking of metal that grew louder as it neared, coming from the direction in which his master had been taken.

  As the sound grew closer, Barley could hear that the sound was a strange kind of half growling, half singing.