A Dog's Purpose

by W. Bruce Cameron

  “Soon we’ll be going to the farmers’ market on Sundays; now, that’s a fun time. My tomatoes fetch a pretty price,” he said.

  One afternoon I got bored with the digging in the dirt game and wandered into the barn. The mysterious black cat was long gone—there was no scent of her left anywhere, and I felt a little disappointed, somehow. She was the only cat I’d ever met whom I enjoyed knowing.

  No, that wasn’t really true. Though I’d mostly found it irritating, Tinkerbell’s unabashed affection for me had ultimately been gratifying.

  In the back of the barn I found a pile of old blankets, molding and rotting. When I pushed my nose into them and breathed deep, though, I could very faintly pick up a familiar, comforting smell. Grandpa. This was where we used to come to do our chores together.

  “It’s good for me, to get out, take walks,” Ethan told me. “I don’t know why I didn’t think to get a dog before. I need the exercise.” Some evenings we’d circle the farm on a well-worn path that smelled of Troy the whole way, and others we’d stroll down the road in one direction or the other. I always felt something from the boy when we passed Hannah’s place, though he never stopped or went up to the house to see her. I wondered why I could no longer smell her, and remembered Carly, in the dog park, positively covered in Hannah’s scent.

  One such evening, as we passed Hannah’s house, I was struck by something that hadn’t before occurred to me: the pain I could feel burrowed deep inside the boy was very similar to what I had sensed inside Jakob, long ago. There was a lonely grief, the sense of having said good-bye to something.

  Sometimes the mood lifted completely, though. Ethan loved to take his cane and smack it against a ball in the yard, sending it flying down the driveway for me to pursue and return. We played this game often, and I would have worn the pads off my feet to keep him so happy. When I caught the ball on a high bounce, snagging it out of the air like a piece of meat dropped through a fence, he would laugh in delight.

  Other times, though, the dark swirl of sadness would overtake him. “I never thought my life would turn out this way,” he said to me one afternoon, his voice hoarse. I nuzzled him, trying to cheer him up. “All by myself, no one to share my days with. Made a lot of money, but after a while the job didn’t give me much pleasure, so I more or less quit, and that didn’t give me any pleasure, either.” I ran and got a ball and spat it into his lap, but he turned his face away, ignoring it, his pain so sharp it made me want to yelp. “Aw, Buddy, things just don’t always go as planned.” He sighed. I dug my nose after the ball, shoving it up between his legs, and finally was rewarded with a weak toss, which I pounced upon. His heart wasn’t in it. “Good dog, Buddy,” he said absently. “I guess I don’t feel like playing right now.”

  I was frustrated. I had been a good dog, I had done Find, and I was back with the boy. But he wasn’t happy, not the way most people were at the end of Find, when Jakob or Maya and the others would give them blankets and food and reunite them with their families.

  That’s when it occurred to me that my purpose in this world had never been just to Find; it had been to save. Tracking down the boy was just part of the equation.

  When I lived with Jakob, he harbored this same dark feeling inside. But when I saw him later, when Maya and I were doing school, he had a family—a child and a mate. And then he was happy, happy the same way that Ethan used to be when he and Hannah sat on the front porch and giggled with each other.

  For Ethan to be rescued, he needed to have a family. He needed a woman and to have a baby with her. Then he would be happy.

  The next morning, while Ethan worked the dirt, I trotted down the driveway and out onto the road. Though the goat ranch was gone, I’d learned new scent markers on my car rides, so that finding my way into town was as easy as touring the back acres of the Farm. Once in town I quickly located the dog park, though I was disappointed Carly was nowhere around. I wrestled with some dogs in the yard, no longer afraid of being spotted by people—I was Ethan’s dog, now, I was a good dog, I had a collar, and my name was Buddy.

  Late that afternoon, Carly came bounding up to me, thrilled to see that I was back in the park. As we played I luxuriated in Hannah’s scent, fresh and strong throughout Carly’s fur.

  “Well, hello, doggy, I haven’t seen you in a while. You sure look handsome,” the woman on the bench said. “Glad they started feeding you!” She felt tired, and when she stood after just half an hour she pressed her hands into her back. “Whew. I am so ready,” she breathed. She began making her way slowly down the sidewalk, Carly coursing back and forth in front of her. I stuck with Carly, the two of us sending several squirrels scattering in terror.

  When after two blocks the woman turned up a walk and opened the door to a house, I knew better than to follow Carly inside. I settled down on the stoop after the women shut the door, content to wait. I’d played this game before.

  A few hours later, a car swung into the driveway and a woman with white hair slid out of the front seat. I trotted down the steps to meet her. “Well, hello there, dog, are you here to play with Carly?” she greeted me, putting out a friendly hand.

  I knew the voice before I smelled her: Hannah. My tail wagging, I rolled around at her feet, begging for her hands to touch me, and they did. The door to the house opened.

  “Hi, Mom. He followed me home from the dog park,” the woman said, standing in the doorway. Carly bounded out and tackled me. I shouldered her away; I wanted the girl’s attentions right now.

  “Well, where do you live, huh, boy?” Hannah’s hands fumbled for my collar, so I sat. Carly shoved her face in the way. “Look out, Carly,” Hannah said, pushing Carly’s head to the side. “ ‘My name is Buddy,’ ” Hannah said slowly, holding my tag.

  I wagged.

  “ ‘I belong to’—Oh my.”

  “What is it, Mom?”

  “ ‘Ethan Montgomery.’ ”

  “Who?”

  Hannah stood. “Ethan Montgomery. He’s a man . . . he’s a man I used to know, a long time ago. Back when I was growing up.”

  “Like an old boyfriend, that kind of man?”

  “Yes, well, sort of like that, yes.” Hannah laughed softly. “My, um, first boyfriend.”

  “Your first? Oh really. And this is his dog?”

  “His name is Buddy.” I wagged. Carly chewed on my face.

  “Well, what should we do?” the woman asked from the doorway.

  “Do? Oh, I guess we should call him. He lives out near the old place, just down the road from there. You sure are a long way from home, Buddy.”

  I’d had enough of Carly, who didn’t seem to grasp the whole situation here and was busy trying to climb on top of me. I snarled at her and she sat down, her ears back, then jumped on me again. Some dogs are just too happy for their own good.

  I had utter faith that Hannah would take me back to the boy and that when Ethan saw her the girl would no longer be lost to him. It was complicated, but I was doing a sort of Find/Show, only it would be up to the two of them to put it all together.

  Which they did. An hour or so later, Ethan’s car pulled into the driveway. I jumped up from where I had Carly pinned to the grass and ran over to him. Hannah was sitting on the stoop, and she stood uncertainly as Ethan got out of the car. “Buddy, what in the world are you doing here?” he asked. “Get in the car.”

  I bounded into the front seat. Carly put her paws up on the car door, straining to smell me through the window as if we hadn’t been nose-to-nose for the past four hours.

  “Carly, get down!” Hannah said sharply. Carly dropped.

  “Oh, it’s okay. Hi there, Hannah.”

  “Hi, Ethan.” They stared at each other a minute, and then Hannah laughed. Awkwardly they hugged, their faces coming together briefly.

  “I have no idea how this happened,” the boy said.

  “Well, your dog was in the park. My daughter Rachel goes there every afternoon—she’s a week overdue, and the doctor wants
her to spend a little time on her feet every day. She’d do jumping jacks, if it would help.” Hannah felt nervous to me, but it was nothing like what was happening to Ethan—his heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in his breath. The emotions coming off him were strong and confusing.

  “That’s what I don’t understand. I wasn’t in town. Buddy must have gone all that way by himself. I have no idea what would make him do such a thing.”

  “Well,” Hannah said.

  They stood there looking at each other. “Would you like to come in?” she finally asked.

  “Oh no, no. I need to get back.”

  “Okay then.”

  There was more standing. Carly yawned, sitting down to scratch herself, oblivious to the tension between the two people.

  “I was going to call you, when I heard about . . . Matthew. I’m sorry for your loss,” Ethan said.

  “Thank you,” Hannah replied. “That was fifteen years ago, Ethan. Long time.”

  “I didn’t realize it had been so long.”

  “Yes.”

  “So are you visiting, for the baby?”

  “Oh no, I live here now.”

  “You do?” Ethan seemed startled by something, but, as I looked around, I saw nothing surprising except that a squirrel had come down out of the trees and was digging around in the grass a few houses down. Carly was looking the wrong way, I noted with disgust.

  “I moved back two years ago next month. Rachel and her husband are staying with me while they finish adding a room to their place for the baby.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’d better hurry,” Hannah said with a laugh. “She’s . . . big.”

  They both laughed. This time, when the laughter stopped, something like sadness came off of Hannah. Ethan’s fear bled away, and he, too, seemed overtaken with an odd gloom.

  “Well, it was nice to see you, Ethan.”

  “It was great to see you, too, Hannah.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  She turned to go back into her house. Ethan came around the front of the car. His mood was angry and scared and sad and conflicted. Carly still didn’t see the squirrel. The girl was on the top step. Ethan opened the car door. “Hannah!” he called.

  She turned. Ethan took a deep, shuddering breath. “I wonder if you’d like to come over for dinner sometime. Might be fun for you; you haven’t been to the Farm in a long time. I, uh, put in a garden. Tomatoes . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “You cook now, Ethan?”

  “Well. I heat things up, pretty well.”

  They both laughed, and the sadness lifted from them as if it had never been there.

  { THIRTY-TWO }

  After that day, I saw Hannah and Carly a lot. They came to the Farm to play more and more frequently, which was fine by me. Carly understood that the Farm was my territory, something she could hardly fail to recognize, since I’d lifted my leg on every tree on the place. I was the Top Dog, and she didn’t try to challenge me, though she was irritatingly oblivious to the benefits that the natural order bestowed upon our admittedly small pack. Mostly, she just acted like we were playmates and nothing more.

  She was, I concluded, just not very bright. Carly seemed to think that she could catch the ducks if she just crept up on them slowly enough, which was an exercise in pure stupidity. I would watch in utter disgust as she would slink through the grass, her belly in the dirt, moving just inches at a time, while all the while the mother duck watched her with an unblinking eye. Then a quick lunge, a huge splash, and the ducks would be airborne for a few feet, landing just ahead of Carly in the pond. She’d swim for about fifteen minutes, working so hard her body would nearly be lifted out of the water, and would bark in frustration whenever she felt she was within biting distance and the ducks flapped their wings and jumped through the air a few feet out ahead. When Carly finally gave up, the ducks would determinedly swim after her, quacking, and sometimes Carly would spin around and head back out, thinking she had the ducks fooled. I had no patience with any of it.

  Ethan and I occasionally went to Carly’s house, too, but this wasn’t as fun, as all there was to do was play in the backyard.

  The next summer, dozens of people assembled at the Farm, sitting in folding chairs to watch me perform a trick I’d first perfected with Maya and Al, which was to walk between the chairs at a slow, dignified pace, this time up to where Ethan had built some raised wooden steps so everyone could see me. He untied something from my back, and he and Hannah talked and kissed and everyone laughed and applauded at me.

  After that, Hannah lived with us on the Farm. The place was transformed so that it was almost like Maya’s mama’s house, with people arriving for visits all the time. Ethan brought home a couple more horses to join Troy in the yard, smaller ones, and the children who came to visit loved to ride them, even though, in my opinion, horses are unreliable creatures who will leave you stranded in the forest at the first sign of a snake.

  Carly’s owner, Rachel, soon showed up with a tiny baby named Chase, a little boy who loved to climb on me and grab my fur and giggle. I lay still when this happened, just as I had when Maya and I did school. I was a good dog; everyone said so.

  Hannah had three daughters, and each of them had children, too, so that at any given time I might have more playmates than I could count.

  When there were no visitors, Ethan and Hannah often sat out on the front porch, holding hands while the evening air turned cool. I lay at their feet, sighing with contentment. The pain in my boy was gone, replaced by a serene, uplifting happiness. The children who came to visit called him Granddaddy, and each one made his heart soar when they did so. Hannah called him “my love” and darling as well as just plain Ethan.

  About the only thing involved with the new arrangement that was less than perfect was the fact that when Hannah started sleeping with Ethan I was summarily dismissed from the bed. At first I assumed this was a mistake—there was, after all, plenty of room for me between them, which was where I preferred to lie. But Ethan ordered me off onto the floor, even though there was nothing wrong with the bed upstairs and the girl could just as easily sleep there. In fact, after I performed my trick in the yard for all the people to see, Ethan had beds put in all the upstairs rooms, even Grandma’s sewing room, but apparently none of them were good enough for Hannah.

  Just to test it, though, every single night I put my paws on the bed and slowly raised myself up like Carly inching through the weeds toward the ducks. And every night Ethan and Hannah would laugh.

  “No, Buddy, you get down,” Ethan would say.

  “You can’t blame him for trying,” Hannah often replied.

  When the snow fell, Hannah and Ethan would put a blanket over themselves and sit and talk in front of the fire. When it was Happy Thanksgiving or Merry Christmas, the house would be so full of people I often felt in danger of being stepped on, and I could have my pick of beds where the children were delighted to have me sleep with them. My favorite child was Rachel’s boy, Chase, who reminded me a little of Ethan, the way he hugged me and loved me. When Chase stopped trying to walk on all fours like a dog and started running on two legs, he liked to explore the Farm with me while Carly fruitlessly hunted ducks.

  I was a good dog. I had fulfilled my purpose. Lessons I had learned from being feral had taught me how to escape and how to hide from people when it was necessary, scavenging for food from trash containers. Being with Ethan had taught me love and had taught me my most important purpose, which was taking care of my boy. Jakob and Maya had taught me Find, Show, and, most important of all, how to save people, and it was all of these things, everything I had learned as a dog, that had led me to find Ethan and Hannah and to bring them both together. I understood it now, why I had lived so many times. I had to learn a lot of important skills and lessons, so that when the time came I could rescue Ethan, not from the pond but from the sinking despair of his own life.

  The boy and I still walked around the Farm in the evenings,
usually with Hannah, but not always. I craved the alone time with Ethan, when he would talk to me, his gait slow and careful on the uneven path. “What a great time we all had this week; didn’t you have fun, Buddy?” Sometimes he used his cane to smack the ball down the driveway and I would joyously tear after it, chewing it a little before dropping it at his feet for another whack.

  “You’re such a great dog, Buddy, I don’t know what I would do without you,” Ethan said on one such evening. He took a deep breath, turning to survey the Farm, waving at a picnic table full of children, who waved back.

  “Hi, Granddaddy!” they shouted.

  His sheer enjoyment, his love of life, made me bark with delight. He turned back to me, laughing.

  “Ready for another one, Buddy?” he asked me, raising his cane to hit the ball again.

  Chase wasn’t the last baby to join the family; they just kept coming. Chase was about the age Ethan had been when I first met him when his mother, Rachel, brought home a little girl they variously called the Surprise, the Last One for Sure, and Kearsten. As usual, they held the baby down for me to sniff, and as usual, I tried to be appreciative—I never knew what they expected from me under these circumstances.

  “Let’s go play ball, Buddy!” Chase suggested. Now that I could respond to!

  One beautiful spring day I was home alone with Ethan, napping drowsily while he read a book in the warm sunlight streaming through the picture window. Hannah had just left in the car, and, at that particular moment, our home was uncharacteristically empty of visiting family members. Suddenly my eyes snapped open. I turned and looked at Ethan, who met my gaze curiously. “What did you hear, Buddy?” he asked me. “Did a car pull up?”

  There was something wrong with the boy; I could sense it. With a slight whimper, I got to my feet. Anxiety washed through me. He’d gone back to his book but laughed in surprise when I put my paws on the couch, as if to climb on top of him. “Whoa, Buddy, what are you doing?”

  The sense of impending disaster increased. I barked helplessly.