Bailey's Story

by W. Bruce Cameron

  I hadn’t gotten very far when I caught sight of the black cat from the barn, waddling slowly away from me. Of course, I took off after her. It was funny … when I’d seen the cat in the barn, I didn’t remember a white stripe down her back. Now she definitely had one.

  She didn’t run away from me as quickly as she had before, either. As I got closer, I realized that this was no cat after all. It was a new kind of animal! Excited, I barked and bowed down low on my front legs to invite her to play.

  She turned and gave me a solemn look, her fluffy tail high up in the air. I let my own tail wave back and forth. Great! Although everything about the farm was wonderful, the one thing that was lacking was another dog to wrestle with or chase around. I did miss Marshmallow from time to time.

  I jumped forward to give my new playmate a nudge with my nose.

  The next thing I knew, a plume of horrible stink puffed into my face, sticking to my eyes and lips, choking my nose. I sprang back. What had just happened? Half blind, helpless, I retreated, stumbling over sticks and roots, making my way back to the house.

  “Skunk!” Grandpa announced when I scratched at the back door to be let in. “Oh, you’re not coming in, Bailey!”

  Mom came to stand behind Grandpa on the other side of the door. “Bailey, did you get into a skunk? Ugh, you sure did!”

  Was that the name of the stinky cat creature in the woods? Skunk? Why was everyone just staring at me, not letting me in? I wanted to roll on the carpets and rub some of this awful smell off my fur.

  That didn’t happen, though. Instead, the boy came out, wrinkling his nose. He took me around to the side of the yard, where he wet me down with a hose. When I tried to lick his face, he pushed me away. “Yuck, Bailey. Skunk!” he said. His voice was so stern that I understood: the skunk had been bad.

  Then he held my collar while Grandpa showed up with a basket of tomatoes from the garden. Together, Grandpa and the boy squished the soft, warm tomatoes all over me, rubbing the tart-smelling juice into my fur.

  What a thing to do! I shook myself, sending water and juice and tomato pulp flying. “Bailey!” the boy yelped, and Grandpa laughed and groaned at the same time. “He needs a bath now,” the old man said.

  A bath? What was that? I couldn’t remember. Was it something to eat? That would help to make up for all this ridiculous treatment!

  But it turned out that a bath wasn’t something to eat. Mom brought out some soap that smelled a little bit (not very much, I thought) like roses. Ethan rubbed the suds into my fur until I smelled like a cross between Mom, a flower garden, and a tomato.

  I had never been so embarrassed in my life. And things didn’t get much better after that.

  Even once I was dry, I had to stay out on the porch. And when Ethan came out there to sleep, he kicked me out of his bed!

  “You stink, Bailey,” he said.

  I lay on the floor and tried a whimper or two, but Ethan didn’t give in and let me climb up. So I just tried to sleep despite all of the strange, bewildering smells floating around.

  When morning finally came, I gulped down breakfast—Ethan brought my food bowl out to the porch for me—and raced outside.

  A good roll in the grass helped to rub some of those dreadful odors off of my fur. And when I checked out the pond, I got lucky. Something was lying on the bank—a dead fish! It was small, but the smell was good and strong. I rolled in it over and over, twisting my back to get the scent ground in properly. It didn’t help as much as I thought it would, though. Under the marvelous dead fish smell, I could still sense tomato and perfume and that horrible tang of skunk.

  I needed to figure all of this out, so I headed back for the woods. Sure enough, my nose led me quickly to that skunk. I sniffed at her, hoping that I’d pick up some information that would explain what had been going on.

  And the very same thing happened! She lifted up her tail, and from her rear end, of all places, another powerful blast of stink hit me right in the face.

  I yelped and backed away as quickly as I could. What was going on? Couldn’t that skunk tell I just wanted to play? And if she didn’t feel like playing, why didn’t she just run away or hide or jump up on something tall, like Smokey or the barn cat always did?

  Shaking my head, blinking, I stumbled back out of the woods. “Oh, Bailey!” Ethan moaned when I found him by the fence. “You’re kidding me!”

  I was put through the whole thing again—the water from the hose, tomatoes from the garden, and Mom’s horrible fake-flowery soap. Was this going to be my life now? Every day? Would I ever be let back into the house, where Grandma’s cooking smelled so delicious? Would I ever sleep in the bed next to my boy again?

  “You are so stupid, Bailey!” the boy scolded as he scrubbed me.

  Grandma was watching this time. “Don’t call him stupid. It’s such an ugly word,” she said. “And he’s hardly more than a puppy. He didn’t know what he was doing. Tell him … tell him he’s a doodle. That’s what my mother always called me when I was a little girl and I did something wrong.”

  The boy faced me sternly. “Bailey, you are a doodle. You are a doodle, doodle dog.” And then he laughed and Grandma laughed, but I was so miserable I could barely move my tail.

  Just to show that skunk, I was going to ignore her. That would serve her right, after everything she’d put me through.

  9

  Over the next few days, the smells faded from my fur. And about the time I finally smelled like myself again, my family stopped behaving so strangely. They let me in the house, and I took over my job of tasting kitchen scraps. The boy called me doodle from time to time, but I could tell he wasn’t angry when he did.

  “Want to go fishing, doodle dog?” he’d ask, and we’d shove out in the rowboat and pull tiny fish out of the water for a few hours.

  One day a chilly breeze swept in from a cloudy sky. Ethan pulled on a shirt with a hood that covered his head, and he called me to go down to the pond. We had been fishing for a while, and I was starting to wonder when we’d be going in for lunch, when Ethan suddenly sat straight up. “I’ve got a big one, Bailey! A big one!”

  I leaped to my feet, barking. If Ethan was excited, so was I!

  Ethan wrestled with his rod for more than a minute, grinning and laughing, and then I saw it. A fish the size of a cat was coming to the surface of the water, right next to us! Ethan and I both leaned forward eagerly to see it. The boat lurched under us, and with a startled yell, the boy fell overboard.

  The boat rocked back when Ethan fell, throwing me to the bottom in a heap. I jumped up and peered over the side, down into the dark green water. I could see the dark form of the boy going down, vanishing from sight. The bubbles rising to the surface carried his scent to me, but he wasn’t coming up.

  My boy was in trouble!

  I didn’t hesitate. I dove right in after him, my eyes open as I pushed against the water, struggling to follow the trail of bubbles down in the cold darkness.

  I couldn’t see much of anything. The water flowed into my nose, smoothed my fur, and flattened my ears against my head. The boy must be somewhere below me. I paddled as hard as I could, my front legs reaching, my back legs thrashing.

  Finally I caught sight of him—a blurry image in murky shadows. I lunged, jaws open, and seized the hood of his sweatshirt in my mouth. Lifting my head, dragging him with me, I swam hard for the sunlit surface of the pond.

  We burst up into the air. “Bailey!” the boy shouted, laughing. “Are you trying to save me, boy?” He reached out and snagged the boat with his arm. Frantically, I tried to claw myself up over his body and into the boat, so that I could pull him the rest of the way to safety.

  He was still laughing. “Bailey, no, you doodle dog! Stop it!” He pushed me away, and I swam in a tight circle around him. I knew I shouldn’t go far from him. “I have to get the rod, Bailey. I dropped the rod. I’m okay! Go on! I’m okay!” The boy waved a hand at the shore, as if he were throwing a ball that way. He see
med to want me to leave the pond. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. What if he went under again?

  But at the moment, he was talking, and laughing, so I could tell that he was fine. And he kept waving me to the shore. Finally, I went and pulled myself out onto a small area of sand next to the dock to shake all that heavy water from my fur.

  “Good boy, Bailey!” Ethan called.

  I looked around and saw his feet go up in the air, and an instant later he vanished under the water. With a whimper, I threw myself back into the water, swimming as hard as I could, my shoulders lifting all the way out of the pond with the effort. I had to reach Ethan!

  When I got to the trail of bubbles, I followed the scent. It was much harder to get myself down this time because I hadn’t dived out of the boat, so I was slower to reach the boy. As I was headed toward the bottom of the pond, I glimpsed him beneath me, coming up. I switched directions. Our heads broke free of the water and out into the air at the same time.

  “Bailey!” Ethan called in delight. He tossed his rod into the boat. “You are such a good dog, Bailey!”

  I swam beside him as he pulled the boat over to the sand. He was all right! The water hadn’t taken my boy away from me! I was so relieved that I danced and licked Ethan’s face as he bent to pull the boat out of the pond.

  “You really tried to save me, boy.” I followed him onto the sand and shook myself again. Then I sat, panting, as Ethan left the boat on the sand and settled down beside me to stroke my face. His touch was as warming as the sun.

  The next day, the boy brought Grandpa down to the dock. I raced ahead of them to be sure the duck family was out of the water. The boy was wearing another shirt with a hood, this one light gray, and he paused next to Grandpa on the dock. I sat down, too. All three of us looked into the green water.

  “You watch. He’ll dive underwater, I promise,” the boy said.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Grandpa replied.

  Grandpa grabbed my collar. “Go!” he shouted to Ethan.

  The boy took off running. I strained to follow, and Grandpa let me go. Ethan sailed off the end of the dock with a huge splash. I skidded to a stop and barked, looking back at Grandpa.

  “Go get him, Bailey!” Grandpa said.

  I looked down at the frothy water where the boy had gone in. Then I looked at Grandpa again. He was old and moved pretty slowly, but I couldn’t believe he was so daft that he wasn’t going to do anything about this! The boy needed help! Again! Why was Grandpa just standing there?

  I barked some more.

  “Go on!” Grandpa urged me.

  Did I have to do everything in this family? With one more bark, I dove off the end of the dock, swimming down toward the bottom, where I could just see Ethan’s light shirt. I gripped his collar in my jaws and headed for air.

  “See! He saved me!” the boy called when our heads broke the surface.

  “Good boy, Bailey!” Grandpa and Ethan shouted together.

  I was so happy with the praise and so relieved that Ethan was okay that I decided to take off after the ducks. They’d thought it was safe to get back in the water. I’d show them! I got so close to snapping off a few tail feathers that they flapped their wings and quacked. That meant I’d won.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon playing Rescue Me. After a few more times, I got less worried, since Ethan always came back up. Still, he was so happy every time I hauled him to the surface that I did it again and again.

  I couldn’t see any reason why we’d ever leave the farm, but when Dad arrived a few days later and Mom started walking from room to room, opening drawers and pulling things out, I had a feeling that we were going to be moving once again.

  I stuck close to Ethan in case he had any ideas of leaving me behind. He laughed at me, and finally he yelled, “Car ride!”

  I dashed outside and jumped in the backseat, hanging my head out the window. The horse, Flare, stared over the fence, probably jealous because I could fit inside the car and she couldn’t. Grandma and Grandpa hugged Ethan and me before we drove away.

  The car took us back to our first house. I missed the farm, but it was good to smell the familiar smells once more and to meet the other kids and dogs in the neighborhood again. We played games and I chased balls and wrestled with my friend Marshmallow. It was wonderful.

  What happened the next day was not so wonderful.

  Everybody got up early, and I was led out to the garage. Again! I thought the people in my family had learned their lesson. Why was this starting all over?

  I ran out of the dog door into the backyard and checked to see that Mom and Ethan were really leaving. They were! Ethan climbed into the big yellow bus and Mom drove away.

  This would never do.

  I barked for a while, and Marshmallow answered from down the street, but that didn’t help as much as you’d think. Since I couldn’t think of what else to do, I went back inside and sniffed at the doghouse. I wasn’t about to spend the day in there.

  I saw Smokey’s feet underneath the door that led back to the house. I put my nose to the crack and breathed in his scent, letting out a frustrated sigh. He didn’t smell sorry for me at all.

  I was a big dog now, bigger than I’d been the last time I’d been locked in the garage. The doorknob wasn’t as far above my head as it used to be. As I looked at it, I remembered how I’d gotten out of the yard where I had lived with my mother. I put my front paws on the door, took the knob in my mouth, and twisted it.

  Nothing happened.

  I didn’t give up, though. The knob was slippery in my mouth and the metal tasted bitter, but I tugged and pulled, wrestling with it, and suddenly there was a click.

  The door opened!

  10

  Smokey had been sitting against the other side of the door, probably laughing at my struggles with the knob. But when the door swung open, he definitely wasn’t laughing anymore! His pupils grew dark and he turned and fled. Of course, I followed, skittering around a corner and barking when he jumped up onto a counter.

  It was much better in the house than in the garage. It was warmer, and it smelled nicer, and best of all, there was a long flat box lying on the counter. Last night’s pizza dinner had been delivered in that box, and Ethan had let me have his crust. Delicious! I jumped up to pat the box with my front paw, and it tumbled easily to the floor.

  I ate it. Well, all of it that I could, and I shredded the parts that were too tough to chew. Smokey watched, looking disgusted, but I knew he was just jealous. Then I ate the cat food in his bowl, licking it shiny, just as I did when I played Clean the Plates with Ethan.

  Normally I wasn’t allowed to get up on the couch, but I figured that the usual rules didn’t apply now, since I was here in the house by myself. So I hopped up and settled in for a nice nap in the sun, on warm cushions that smelled of Ethan and Mom and Dad. Unfortunately, they smelled of Smokey, too; I couldn’t do anything about that.

  Sometime later, I realized that the sun had moved. What a nuisance. I stretched and wriggled into a new sunny spot.

  Then a heard a faint creak. I knew that sound well. It meant that one of the kitchen cupboards was opening.

  I jumped off the couch, shook myself, and hurried into the kitchen to see what was happening. Smokey was on the counter again, and he had carefully reached up with one paw and opened a cupboard. I didn’t know he could do that!

  Then he did something even more interesting. He jumped right inside the cupboard! For the first time, I thought that there might be some good in being as small as a cat.

  Smokey shifted inside the cupboard and looked down at me, as if he were thinking. I nibbled an itch at the base of my tail and then glanced up at him.

  Smokey had been tugging at a plastic bag with one paw. Now he smacked it once, then twice. On the third smack, the bag tipped over, wobbled for a moment on the edge of the cupboard, and fell. It hit the counter and bounced onto the floor.

  I pounced on it and bit it. The plas
tic split open, and wonderful, delicious, salty, crunchy things sprayed all over the kitchen floor. I got busy cleaning them up. Smokey watched me and then batted down another bag. I ripped this one open. It was full of sweet, doughy rolls.

  I decided right there and then that I had been wrong about Smokey. I almost felt bad that I’d eaten his breakfast earlier. It was his own fault for letting it sit there in the bowl, of course, but even so … If I’d known he was going to be so nice to me, I would have left his food alone.

  At least I would have tried to.

  I nosed at a few of the lower cupboards, but I couldn’t get them open myself. How did Smokey do it? I did manage to get my front paws up on the counter and tug down a loaf of bread in another plastic bag. I ate the bread and left the plastic alone.

  The kitchen trash can didn’t have a lid, so it was easy to get in there. A few of the things inside were not to my taste. There was some bitter black grit that coated my tongue when I gave it a lick, plus some eggshells and more bits of plastic. None of those were worth my time. But there was plenty that I liked—pizza crusts, leftover scrambled egg, a scrap of bacon fat. I chewed up the plastic afterward, just because.

  I was outside waiting when the bus arrived. Chelsea and Todd both got off, but there was no sign of the boy. That meant he would be arriving later, with Mom. I went back into the house, wandered upstairs, and pulled a few shoes out of Mom’s closet. I didn’t chew on them too much, though. I was feeling full from all of my snacks, and kind of sleepy.

  I carried the shoes down with me to the living room in case I wanted them later, and stood for a while, trying to decide if I wanted another nap on the couch (but the sun wasn’t shining on it anymore) or in a patch of sun on the carpet (but it wasn’t as soft as the couch). With a sigh, I chose the carpet and lay down restlessly. I wasn’t quite sure it had been the right choice.