A Dog's Purpose

by W. Bruce Cameron

“Hannah!” Grandma said, coming out of the house. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Morgan.”

  “Come in, come in. What have you got there?”

  “My mom made some brownies.”

  “Well, isn’t that wonderful. Ethan, you probably don’t remember, but you and Hannah used to play together when you were just babies. She’s a little more than a year younger than you.”

  “I don’t remember,” Ethan said, kicking at the carpet.

  He was still acting oddly, but I felt duty bound to guard the basket of dog biscuits, which Grandma set on a side table. Grandpa was sitting in his chair holding a book, and now he reached into the basket, looking over the tops of his glasses.

  “Do not spoil your dinner!” Grandma hissed at him. He snatched his hand back, and he and I exchanged grieving looks.

  For the next several minutes nothing much happened, biscuit wise. Grandma did most of the talking while Ethan stood with his hands in his pockets and Hannah sat on the couch and didn’t look at him. Finally, Ethan asked Hannah if she wanted to see the flip, and at the sound of the dreaded word I whipped my head around and stared at him in disbelief. I had assumed we had ended that chapter of our lives.

  The three of us went out into the yard. Ethan showed Hannah the flip, but when he threw it, it still fell to the ground like a dead bird.

  “I need to make some design changes to it,” Ethan said.

  I walked over to the flip but didn’t pick it up, hoping the boy would decide to end this embarrassment once and for all.

  Hannah stayed for a while, going over to the pond to look at the stupid ducks, petting Flare on the nose, and taking a couple of turns with the flip. She got on her bicycle and as she steered down the driveway I trotted beside her, then when the boy whistled for me returned at a dead run.

  Something told me we’d be seeing that girl again.

  Later that summer, too early in the season to go back home and go to school, in my opinion, Mom packed up the car. Ethan and I stood next to it as Grandma and Grandpa eased into their seats.

  “I’ll navigate,” Grandpa said.

  “You’ll fall asleep before we cross the county line,” Grandma replied.

  “Now, Ethan. You are a big boy. You be good. You call if you have any problems.”

  Ethan squirmed under his mother’s hug. “I know,” he said.

  “We’ll be back in two days. You need anything, you can ask Mr. Huntley next door. I made you a casserole.”

  “I know!” Ethan said.

  “Bailey, you take good care of Ethan, okay?”

  I wagged my tail in cheerful noncomprehension. Were we going for a car ride or what?

  “I stayed by myself all the time when I was his age,” Grandpa said. “This will be good for him.”

  I could feel worry and hesitation in Mom, but eventually she got behind the wheel. “I love you, Ethan,” Mom said.

  Ethan muttered something, kicking at the dirt.

  The car rolled off down the driveway, and Ethan and I solemnly watched it go. “Come on, Bailey!” he shouted when it was out of sight. We ran into the house.

  Everything was suddenly more fun. The boy ate some lunch and when he was done he put the plate on the floor for me to lick! We went into the barn and he climbed up on the rafters while I barked, and when he jumped into a pile of hay I tackled him. An inky shadow from the corner told me the cat was watching all of this, but when I trotted over to investigate she slid off and vanished.

  I became uneasy when Ethan unlocked the gun cabinet, something he had never done without Grandpa being there. Guns made me nervous; they reminded me of when Todd threw a firecracker and it banged so close to me I felt a percussion against my skin. But Ethan was so excited, I couldn’t help but prance around at his feet. He put some cans on a fence and shot the gun and the cans went flying. I couldn’t quite understand the connection between the cans and the loud bang of the gun but knew it was somehow all related and, judging from the boy’s reaction, gloriously fun. Flare snorted and trotted to the far end of her yard, distancing herself from all the commotion.

  After that the boy made dinner by warming up some succulent chicken. We sat in the living room and he put on the television and ate off of a plate in his lap, tossing me pieces of skin. Now this kind of fun I understood!

  At that moment, I didn’t care if Mom ever came back.

  After I licked the plate, which the boy left on the floor, I decided to test the new rules and climbed up in Grandpa’s soft chair, looking over my shoulder to see if I’d draw the expected “Down!” command. The boy just stared at the television, so I curled up for a nap.

  I drowsily registered the telephone ringing and heard the boy say “bed,” but when he hung up he didn’t go to bed; he sat back down to watch more television.

  I was in a solid sleep when a sudden sense of something wrong roused me with a jolt. The boy was sitting stiffly upright, his head cocked.

  “Did you hear a noise?” he whispered at me.

  I debated whether the urgency I sensed in his voice meant that my nap was over. I decided that what was needed was a calming influence, and lowered my head back on the soft cushion.

  From within the house there was a light thump. “Bailey!” the boy hissed.

  Okay, this was serious. I got off the chair, stretched, and looked at him expectantly. He reached down and touched my head, and his fear leaped from his skin. “Hello?” he called. “Is someone there?”

  He froze, and I emulated his posture, on high alert. I wasn’t at all sure what was happening, but I knew there was a threat. When another thump caused him to jump, fright rippling over his skin, I prepared myself to face whatever or whoever was the problem. I could feel the fur rising on my back, and I gave a low growl of warning.

  At the sound of my growl, the boy moved soundlessly across the room. I shuffled after him, still alert, and watched as he opened the gun cabinet for the second time that day.

  { ELEVEN }

  Holding Grandpa’s rifle in his trembling hands, the boy crept up the stairs, down the hall, and into Mom’s bedroom. I was right on his heels. Ethan checked her bathroom and under the bed, and when he whipped the closet door open he yelled, “Ha!” scaring me half to death. We repeated this examination in the boy’s room, Grandma and Grandpa’s room, and the small room with the couch where Grandma slept when Grandpa made his loud rumbling noises at night. Before leaving on the car ride, Grandma had been in this room doing more work on the flip, trying to fix it at Ethan’s direction, and it was called the sewing room.

  The boy checked the whole house, Grandpa’s gun out in front of him, and he rattled every knob and tested every window. Passing through the living room, I walked hopefully over to Grandpa’s chair, but the boy still wanted to explore the house, so with a weary sigh I accompanied him on a check of the shower curtains.

  Finally he returned to Mom’s room. He worked the doorknob, and then he dragged her dresser over in front of the door. He set the rifle down next to the bed and called me up to lie with him. When he clung to me, I was reminded of how he sometimes came out to the doghouse in the garage when Mom and Dad were shouting. He felt full of the same lonely terror. I licked him as comfortingly as I knew how—we were together; how could anything be wrong?

  The next morning we slept in and then had a fabulous breakfast. I ate toast crusts and licked scrambled eggs and finished his milk for him. What a great day! Ethan put more food in a bag, along with a bottle that he filled with water, and slid the whole thing in his backpack. Were we going for a walk? Sometimes Ethan and I would go for a walk and he’d take sandwiches for us to share. Lately, his walks always seemed to take us down by where the girl lived; I could smell her scent on the mailbox. The boy would stand and look at the house, and then we’d turn around and go back home.

  The fear from the night before was totally gone. Whistling, the boy went out to take care of Flare, who wandered over to eat the bucket of dry, tasteless see
ds or whatever they were that she munched on when she wasn’t trying to make herself sick with grass.

  I was surprised, though, when the boy fetched a blanket and a shiny leather saddle from the barn and affixed them to the horse’s back. We’d done this a few times before, with Ethan climbing up to sit high on Flare’s back, but always with Grandpa there, and always with the gate to Flare’s yard firmly closed. Now, though, the boy opened the gate, hoisting himself up with a grin.

  “Let’s go, Bailey!” he called down to me.

  I followed, feeling surly. I didn’t like that Flare suddenly was getting all the attention and that I was so far away from the boy, forced to walk beside the huge creature, who I had come to conclude was just as dumb as the ducks. I especially didn’t appreciate it when, with a flick of her tail, Flare dropped a smelly pile of poo on the road, narrowly missing me. I lifted my leg on it because it now, after all, belonged to me, but I felt fairly certain the horse had meant the thing as an insult.

  Soon we were off-road, in the woods, walking along a trail. I chased down a rabbit and would have caught it if it hadn’t cheated by suddenly changing direction. I smelled more than one skunk and haughtily refused to take even a single step in that direction. We stopped at a small pool and Flare and I drank, and later the boy ate his sandwich, tossing me the crusts.

  “Isn’t this great, Bailey? Are you having a good time?”

  I watched his hands, wondering if his questioning tone indicated he was going to feed me some more sandwich.

  Aside from the fact that we had Flare with us, I was really enjoying myself. Of course, just getting away from the stupid flip was reason in and of itself to celebrate, but after several hours we were so far from home I could no longer smell any sign of it.

  I could tell that Flare was getting weary, but from the boy’s attitude I concluded we still had a way to go to reach our destination. At one point, Ethan said, “Do we go this way? Or that way? Do you remember, Bailey? Do you know where we are?”

  I looked up at him expectantly, and, after a moment, we continued on, picking up a trail that had many, many animal scents on it.

  I’d marked so much territory my leg was sore from being lifted into the air. Flare stopped and let loose with a huge gush of urine, which I felt was entirely inappropriate behavior, since her scent would obliterate mine and I was the dog. I wandered up ahead to clear the smell from my nose.

  I topped a small rise and that’s when I saw the snake. It was coiled in a patch of sun, sticking its tongue out rhythmically, and I stopped dead, fascinated. I’d never seen one before.

  I barked, which caused no reaction whatsoever. I trotted back to the boy, who had Flare underway again.

  “What is it, Bailey? What did you see?”

  I decided that whatever the boy was saying, it wasn’t go bite the snake. I slid in next to Flare, who was plodding along expressionlessly, and wondered how she would react when she saw the snake curled up in front of her.

  At first she didn’t see it, but then as she approached, the snake suddenly pulled back, lifting its head, and that’s when Flare screamed. Her front legs came off the ground and she spun, kicking, and the boy went flying off her back. I ran to him at once, of course, but he was okay. He jumped to his feet. “Flare!” he shouted.

  I watched sourly as the horse retreated at a full gallop, her hooves pounding the dirt. When the boy took off running I understood what was needed and ran ahead in hot pursuit, but the horse kept going and soon the gap between me and my boy was too great and I turned back to be with him.

  “Oh no!” the boy was saying, but the “no” wasn’t for me. “Oh God. What are we going to do, Bailey?”

  To my utter dismay, the boy started crying. He did this less and less as he had gotten older, which made it all the more upsetting now. I could feel his utter despair, and I shoved my face into his hands, trying to comfort him. The best thing, I decided, would be for us to go home and eat more chicken.

  The boy eventually stopped crying, looking blankly around the woods. “We’re lost, Bailey.” He took a drink of water. “Well, okay. Come on.”

  Apparently the walk wasn’t over, because we set out in an entirely new direction, not at all the way from which we’d come.

  We went a long way into the woods, at one point crossing our own scent, and still the boy plodded on. I grew so weary that when a squirrel darted out right in front of me I didn’t even bother to chase it; I just followed the boy, who I could tell was also getting tired. When the light began to fade from the sky, we sat down on a log and he ate the last of the sandwiches, carefully feeding me a hunk. “I’m really sorry, Bailey.”

  Just before dark, the boy became interested in sticks. He began dragging sticks over to a tree that had blown over, stacking them up against the wall of mud and gnarly roots. He piled pine needles on the ground underneath this canopy and stacked more sticks on top. I watched curiously, ready despite my fatigue to chase one if he threw it, but he just stayed focused on his task.

  When it became too dark to see, he climbed in on the pine needles. “Here, Bailey! Come here!”

  I crawled in beside him. It reminded me of the doghouse. I ruefully remembered Grandpa’s chair, wondering why we couldn’t just go home and sleep there. But the boy soon started to shiver, and I put my head on top of him and eased my belly onto his back the way I used to lie on my brothers and sisters when we were cold.

  “Good dog, Bailey,” he told me.

  Soon his breathing became deep and he stopped shivering. Though I wasn’t exactly perfectly comfortable, I carefully lay in a position to keep him warm as possible through the night.

  We were up when the birds started to call and before it was even fully light were already walking again. I sniffed hopefully at the sack, fooled by the smells, but when the boy let me put my head inside I found nothing to eat.

  “We’ll save it in case we need to make a fire,” he told me. I translated this to mean “we need more sandwiches” and thumped my tail in agreement.

  The nature of our adventure changed that day. The hunger in my belly grew to be a sharp pain, and the boy cried again, sniffling for about an hour. I could feel anxiety wafting through him, followed by a sullen, lethargic apathy that I found just as alarming. When he sat down and stared at me with glassy eyes, I licked him full in the face.

  I was worried about my boy. We needed to go home, now.

  We came to a small stream and the boy flopped down on his stomach and we drank thirstily. The water gave the boy both energy and purpose; when we set off again, we were following the stream, which twisted and turned through the trees and, at one point, through a meadow full of singing bugs. The boy turned his face to the sun and increased his pace, hope surging through him, but his shoulders slumped when after an hour or so the stream reentered the dark woods.

  We spent that night clinging to each other as before. I smelled a carcass nearby, something old but probably edible, but I didn’t leave the boy. He needed my warmth more than ever. His strength was leaving him; I could feel it ebbing away.

  I had never been so afraid.

  The next day the boy stumbled a few times while he walked. I smelled blood; his face had been whipped by a branch. I sniffed at it.

  “Go away, Bailey!” he yelled at me.

  I felt anger and fear and pain coming from him, but I didn’t back away, I stayed right there, and knew I had done the right thing when he buried his face in my neck and cried some more.

  “We’re lost, Bailey. I’m so sorry,” the boy whispered. I wagged at my name.

  The little stream wandered into a boggy area, losing all definition and making for mucky travels. The boy sank up to his calves, so that his feet made a sucking sound as he pulled them out. Bugs descended on us, landing in our eyes and ears.

  Midway across the swamp the boy just stopped. His shoulders sagged, his chin dropping. The air left his lungs in a long, deep sigh. Distressed, I picked my way across the slimy area as quickly as
I could, putting a paw on his leg.

  He was giving up. An overwhelming sense of defeat was building within him, and he was surrendering to it. He was losing his very will to live. He was like my brother Hungry, lying down that last time in the culvert, never to get back up again.

  I barked, startling both the boy and me. His dull eyes blinked at me. I barked again.

  “Okay,” he muttered. Lethargically he drew his foot out of the mud and tentatively set it down, sinking again.

  It took us more than half the day to cross that swamp. When we picked up the stream on the other side of the bog, it moved water with more purpose, becoming deeper and faster. Soon another trickle joined it, and then another, so that the boy had to make a running start to leap across it when a downed tree blocked his path on one side or another. Each leap seemed to make him tired, and we wound up taking a nap for a few hours. I lay with him, terrified the boy wouldn’t wake up, but he did, rousing himself slowly.

  “You’re a good dog, Bailey,” he told me, his voice hoarse.

  It was late in the afternoon when the stream joined a river. The boy stood and looked blankly at the dark water for a long time, then aimed us downstream, pushing through grasses and thickly choked trees.

  Night was just starting to fall when I picked up the scent of men. At this point Ethan seemed to be walking without purpose, his feet scuffing numbly in the dirt. Each time he fell, he took longer and longer to get back up, and he registered nothing when I darted ahead, my nose to the ground.

  “Come on, Bailey,” he mumbled. “Where you going?”

  I think he didn’t even notice when we crossed the footpath. He was squinting in the fading light, trying to keep from tripping, and I sensed nothing from him for several seconds when the grasses underfoot became a well-trod trail of dirt. I could smell several different men—all of them old scents but as clear to me as the track of children up and down the streets back home. Then suddenly the boy straightened, taking in a breath. “Hey!” he said softly, his gaze sharpening on the path.