Bloodlines

by Susan Conant

  As I stepped forward, the clouds opened, and I saw the white of the dog’s bared teeth, the flattened ears, the stiff legs, the low angle of his head and tail, the whole posture of fearful aggression. Carelessly and stupidly, I stared directly at him, and with an almost inaudible growl, he took two quick paces, the warm-up for a powerful lunge. By the time he hit the end of his chain, I’d backed up out of reach. I shouldn’t have stared at him, but I couldn’t help it. Even in the darkness, an Alaskan malamute is unmistakable. Besides, Rowdy and Kimi had dulled my reflexes. If you stare at either of them, what you’ll get is a highly polished see-how-cute-I-am routine designed to convince you that you’re the greatest thing to come along since Eukanuba. Their ridiculous and universal friendliness to human beings is as typical of the Alaskan malamute as the bulky muzzle, the brown eyes, or the plumy tail waving over the back; and, to my mind, bad temperament is a far worse fault in the breed than the snipiest muzzle, the palest eyes, or the shortest, baldest little whip of a snap tail. Where does it come from? Careless breeding. Human cruelty.

  I gave this guy the benefit of a doubt. “My God,” I whispered to him as I backed away, “what have they done to you?”

  Underfed him? Even in the darkness, his body was skeletal. And his thick chain was moored to bare ground. In a fierce blizzard, he could have nestled snugly in the snow, but he had no natural shelter from the rain and, worse yet, the summer sun, not so much as an empty barrel, not the poorest excuse for a doghouse. Inflict this misery on Rowdy, and how long would his lovely temperament endure? How long would Kimi’s?

  But they were safe at home. Where the hell was Missy? I turned away from the malamute. Showing him my back may have been a mistake, or maybe I suddenly gave off a scent of terror. In any case, since my arrival, there’d been a few low barks and growls, but nothing even approaching the deafening canine warning I’d feared, the sudden outbreak of cacophony: Intruder! Intruder! But now? And from a malamute? The breed that can bark, but almost never does? The world’s worst guard dog? His sudden roar must have doubled my heart rate. Within seconds, the pack was off my back, and my right hand was gripping a rawhide bone, knotted at both ends, shaped more or less like a wooden dumbbell. I’m no good with balls of paper, but even under pressure, I can hurl a dumbbell-shaped object through the air and place it in the exact spot I choose. Hardest part of teaching a dog to retrieve, right? Teaching yourself to throw the dumbbell. Dog training? People training. If the rawhide bone landed just beyond the dog’s reach, where he could see it and smell it? He’d stretch, bellow, and tear the ground to get it, and he might snap his chain.

  But I have dead aim. The malamute fell silent. How long had his alarm lasted? Ten seconds? A few more? I hoped that the dog barked like that every time a raccoon turned its back on him. I almost wished for the sound of a window opening in one of the bedrooms and the sound of Walter Simms’s voice hollering, “Christ, can’t you ever shut the fuck up!”

  But I heard nothing. Almost immediately, I headed toward the outline of the big ruined broiler farm, which turned out to house—if you can call it that—four more golden retrievers—three bitches and a dog—and five Norwegian elkhounds—four bitches and a dog. Males don’t actually produce puppies, right? Anyway, the nine dogs lived—if you call it that—on what my hand-filtered flashlight revealed as a small patch of mud and feces in a chicken-wire enclosure attached to the building. A ragged lean- to along one side of the wire offered more shelter than the malamute had. I caught a glimpse of an open sore on the head of one of the elkhounds, one of the goldens limped badly, and all the dogs were hideously thin, but this group was nonetheless in better shape than the first golden I’d seen.

  But maybe Walter Simms had something against motherhood. Jammed into a wire-floored rabbit hutch —honest to God, a rabbit hutch—at the corner of the building, I found a Norwegian elkhound bitch with a litter of three puppies. You know what an elkhound is? Well, if not, this isn’t the time to tell you in detail. Gorgeous breed, wonderful dogs, but for now, let’s just say that an elkhound would remind you of a half-size gray malamute, at least if you didn’t actually know anything about dogs. This elkhound bitch was jailed in a space that would have cramped a chihuahua. She had no room to stand up, and if she’d been able to rise, the wire floor would have cut into her pads. The pups actually seemed to be nursing, though, and both the bitch and her litter looked better fed than the other dogs I’d seen, which is to say that they weren’t skin draped on bare bone. If Simms liked her enough to feed her, I wondered, why confine her to this cage, with its pile of droppings underneath where they had fallen through the wire? Why feed this one? Then the explanation came to me, cruel and sick: She was fed while she nursed the puppies, then and only then, while she was preparing the merchandise for the clean fiberglass cages of Puppy Luv and the spotless concrete runs of Your Local Breeder. After all, customers see the puppies. But who sees a puppy mill brood bitch? Who even imagines her?

  The elkhound bitch watched me suspiciously, and when she began to growl, I moved on. Where the hell was Missy? The male malamute was chained in the open. The bitches, too? I’d first seen him as one of a series of dark lumps, the one that moved. Should I check out the others? Or try the two little sheds I hadn’t yet entered? The sheds had one advantage over the open ground: I could use my camera inside without the risk that Walter or Cheryl would make an early morning bathroom trip and catch sight of the flash. I wanted Missy, but I also wanted more evidence than I’d been able to get so far.

  I headed in the direction of the sheds, back toward the woods from which I’d emerged. The shack I’d already entered, the one that held the golden, was to my right. The other two were clustered together to my left. My progress toward them was maddeningly slow, mainly because the direct route led across what seemed to be Walter and Cheryl’s private dump. The handgun at my hip was loaded; I couldn’t afford to fall. The ground was littered with beer cans that no one had bothered to turn in and the spilled contents of what seemed like a few thousand torn plastic trash bags. To detour around the heap without tumbling into it, I simply had to use a flashlight. With my hand blocking most of the beam and my heart hammering, I picked my way along. Want a survey of the Simmses’ product preferences? Oreo cookies, Kraft macaroni and cheese, generic potato chips, and—I swear—Lysol air freshener. The family beer was Miller Lite. Cheryl used tampons with pink plastic applicators. The headline of a soggy but legible tabloid newspaper caught my eye: “The Curse of Elvis Strikes Lisa Marie!” Poetry, right? At every supermarket checkout aisle. No wonder nobody reads Robert Frost anymore.

  In spite of my maddening circuit around the garbage, I again had the sense of reaching my goal more quickly than I’d expected. These sheds were smaller than the first. For no particular reason, I’d intended to begin by checking out the one on the left. I’d even begun to search for the door, but the sudden eruption of frantic thumping in the other shed changed my plan. A dog was in there, a dog trying to batter down the door, which turned out to open outward and to be barred shut by a piece of two-by-four suspended on heavy metal hooks. I had the bar off in no time.

  Missy? But I was as careful as I’d been at the first shed. I held the door, braced it, and began to inch it open. I had nothing to fear, though. A big, familiar-feeling creature knocked the flashlight from my hand, scoured my face, bounced at my feet, leapt up, popped down, and nearly made it out the door before my groping hands sank into a thick double coat and finally grabbed a leather collar. I gripped it tightly, retrieved the flashlight, and trained the beam directly on that full mask so much like Kimi’s, the black cap, the bar down the nose, the goggles around the eyes.

  My relief was so great that a wave of exhaustion suddenly swept over me, but Missy—thank God, Missy—was all energy. Her powerful body swept back and forth, and her tail sailed joyfully above her back like a plume waving, exactly as the breed standard says. I pulled the leash and collar from my pocket, snapped the leash to one ring of the nylon cho
ke, and slipped it over her head. One goal accomplished. I swept the light over the interior of the shed. The floor was dirt, and Missy had, of course, been forced to soil her quarters. She’d tried to free herself, but had succeeded only in digging a series of holes before she’d repeatedly hit chicken wire. Was there evidence to photograph? The absence of food and water? Weak evidence, at best.

  But the third shack, only a few steps away? Because I hadn’t wanted to use the flash outdoors, I’d taken photos of only one dog, a starving dog cruelly confined, of course, but only one dog. Were those photos enough? I was taking Missy with me, but I couldn’t free all of these dogs, not by myself. The elkhound bitch and her three puppies? I couldn’t carry the puppies while leading Missy and the bitch, could I? And the two bitches, oblivious to my purpose, might decide to go for each other’s throats. The golden? Pregnant, emaciated, maybe dying? She was the legal property of Walter or Cheryl Simms, and if my evidence proved inadequate or insufficient, so she would remain.

  I hated to leave Missy in that shack, even for a few minutes, but, with a malamute on lead, it would be impossible to check out the other shed. To enter, I’d need one hand for the door and one for the flashlight. If the place, in fact, held a dog? I’d never manage to handle Missy and the stranger while using the flashlight, never mind the camera. So I barred the door on an eager, puzzled Missy, crossed to the neighboring shed, and located the door, directly opposite the one to Missy’s. Like the first shed, where I’d found the starving golden, this one had a door fastened with an oversize hook and eye. I repeated the cautious procedure I’d used to enter the other two sheds. With Missy almost free and the two of us almost safe, I didn’t want to get careless and end up mauled, maybe even too badly injured to get Missy away. As I eased open the door, I listened hard for the soft pad of feet or for the sound of a dog panting or simply breathing. I heard nothing. I inserted the flashlight and peered in. The other sheds had been barren. This one was piled with junk: a rusted wood stove, a pile of split logs, a chain saw, a pickax, a shovel, a couple of galvanized metal buckets. Still moving cautiously, I opened the door. By now, it seemed to me, my nose should have adapted to the pervasive stench, but when I stepped in, my rib cage contracted in deep, rhythmic waves of nausea. I pulled out the camera and tried to prepare for the sickening task ahead of me. There was a dog in here, after all, a dog beyond the suffering of the others. The dark, dirty shed reeked of death.

  With the camera in one hand and the flashlight in the other, I searched for the body. I found it at the far end of the place, shoved behind the wood stove. The body lay on the dirt floor, but the head and shoulders, weirdly encased in clear plastic, rested on a pile of logs, as if he’d stretched out to rest with his head propped up on a hard, rough pillow. His black shoes were muddy, and flecks of wood and bits of debris dirtied his dark suit. The plastic had slipped from the top of the head. The beam of my flashlight shone on crimped white-blond hair.

  I shot ten pictures one right after the other. Then I staggered outside and vomited. When I wiped my hand across my mouth, my own skin reeked.

  As always, a dog brought me to myself. Missy was thumping and scratching at her door. I closed and latched the door to the shed that held the corpse. Then I opened Missy’s door, grabbed her leash, shut the door, and barred it. Less than a minute later, she was dashing along the rough track that led through the woods and to my car. I stumbled after her.

  29

  Opponents of crate training point out that the ancestors of our domestic dogs were not denning animals, and it’s true that wolves are nomads who use the den exclusively as a nursery for their pups. When the pups are old enough to rove with the adults, the pack abandons the den until the arrival of a new litter. In many respects, both anatomical and behavioral, though, the domestic dog is like a juvenile wolf. Neoteny, it’s called, the retention of immature characteristics in adulthood, like the little wolf-pup teeth of grown-up dogs. Face licking? Food begging. And denning? Maybe. But neoteny is no excuse for cruelty; a den is a nursery, not a jail. A crate can be a portable den, welcome protection from car crashes and dog-show chaos, but the dog who’s crated half his life is a dog with atrophied muscles and an atrophied mind.

  Normally, then, I’m a crate training mugwump. When Missy and I reached the Bronco, though, I felt grateful to Enid Sievers for what I suspected was an overuse of the Vari-Kennel she’d tried to sell me. Although the crates in my car were wire mesh, not polypropylene, when I opened the tailgate, Missy hopped up and in like a show-circuit veteran and happily settled herself on a threadbare pink blanket. I gave her a drink of water and a handful of dog biscuits, replenished the supply in my pockets, and latched the cage. The rain had stopped. I pulled off the poncho, stowed it in the back of the car, and closed the tailgate.

  Then I headed back.

  Why? Neoteny, maybe. I’m an honorary malamute now, but I was raised by goldens as a golden. If I abandoned that bitch? She could go into labor any time, and I wasn’t sure that she’d survive it on her own. The presence of a dead human body would immediately rouse the police, but would they also raid the puppy mill and save the dogs? A raid could involve the MSPCA, the Colley Society, local animal control officials, and the local health department, as well as the state police or a deputy sheriff. Also, a raid would inevitably mean the arrival of a veterinarian, and I was as worried about the vet as I was about delay. Euthanasia is a sad and sometimes necessary fact of raids on puppy mills; the attending vet euthanizes the dogs deemed beyond salvation. The golden? She was filthy, wasted, and miserable, but she’d shown no sign of acute illness or pain. I thought she stood a chance of recovery. But would the attending vet agree? The extra crate was sitting empty in the Bronco; the golden’s miserable, filthy shed was only a short distance from the edge of the woods; and I’d discovered a quick, smooth route that would get me there and back in under ten minutes. A faint prelude to dawn was just beginning to color the sky: I wouldn’t even need a flashlight. If she couldn’t walk? A mature golden retriever bitch weighs about sixty pounds. This one, although heavily pregnant, couldn’t be more than forty-five pounds; if she couldn’t cover the distance on her own, I’d carry her.

  It took me less than five minutes to reach the far end of the rough trail through the woods. The predawn light was already reducing the dimensions of the cleared land around the Simmses’ house. I glanced around, stepped into the open, and crossed rapidly to the shelter of the golden’s shed. Then I hesitated. If she’d started to whelp? I hadn’t promised to save her; I was here only to give her a chance. I pulled out my big flashlight, but, this time, instead of inching open the door, I walked boldly in. The golden hadn’t gone into labor, and she’d eaten the dog biscuits I’d left. Once again, she struggled to her feet.

  I slipped the training collar over her head, attached the lead, and whispered, “Good girl.” Then I patted my left thigh and added, “Let’s go!”

  And you know what? With a feeble wag of her tail, she followed me out the door. To delay the Simmses’ discovery of my visit, I stopped briefly, closed the door, and forced the hook into the eye. Then, leading the golden, I took a couple of steps and tried to assess her strength. Could she make it to the woods on her own? Or should I carry her? But if I stooped and lifted her, would she panic? Although she was pitifully weak, she seemed in no danger of losing her balance, and she was obviously willing to accompany me.

  “Let’s go, girl!” I murmured. “You can do it! Let’s go!” I moved ahead of her, and she gamely followed. Then I slowed down to match her pace; if she stumbled on the rough ground, I wanted to be at her side to support her.

  We’d covered about half the short distance back to the shelter of the woods when, for the first time, she began to totter a little. Just as I was leaning over to rest a supporting hand on her shoulder, a door clattered. I looked up. The back of the house was now in view and, beyond it, the top of the ragged wire fence that ran along the road. The only thing in motion was a speeding dog.
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  How fast can a healthy, young Rottweiler run? Thirty miles an hour? Forty? It looked like a hundred. Within seconds, Walter Simms’s big, sleek Rottie, Champ, was zooming toward us. If Champ was out, he’d been let out; the household was beginning to awaken. Walter and Cheryl Simms, though, were a distant threat. At the moment we had an immediate peril. About two yards from me, Champ slammed to a halt, his legs stiff, his jaws open to display a set of clean white teeth.

  Ever hear a Rottie growl? Very deep, very serious. And ever so slowly, he moved. Terror seemed to wire my pounding heart directly to my gut. Great dog expert, right? I had no idea what to do. I tried to avoid Champ’s glaring eyes, but he had no desire to avoid mine, and his growl grew louder and louder. When he began to circle, I went rigid. Then my hands started to shake. Time was up. In a second, he’d strike.

  In desperation, I used the only resource I had. Moving as slowly as Champ did, I eased a hand into a pocket, grabbed a fistful of tiny dog biscuits, and said softly and cheerfully, “Here, boy! Treat!” Then I tossed the biscuits behind the snarling Rottie. A trained guard dog would have ignored the food, of course, but Champ was startled. He took his eyes off me, veered around, sniffed, found a biscuit, and wolfed it down. I threw a few more biscuits, and, while he was distracted, I slipped off the backpack and fished desperately for one of the rawhide bones. The ploy had worked with the malamute, hadn’t it? What other option did I have? As if in answer to the question, the twenty ounces of Ladysmith suddenly felt like twenty pounds.