A Dog's Purpose

{ TEN }

Over the course of the next year or two, I noticed that when the children all played together Todd was often excluded. When he came around, an uneasiness went through the children, a mood change that Marshmallow and I could sense as easily as if one of them had screamed. Girls usually turned their backs on Todd, and the boys accepted him into their games with a noticeable reluctance. Ethan never went over to Todd’s house anymore.

Todd’s older brother, Drake, rarely came outside except to get in his car and drive away, though Linda soon learned to ride a bicycle and pedaled it down the street to be with little girls her age almost every day.

I took my cue from Ethan and never went near Todd again, though one snowy night when I was out in the backyard doing my business before bed I could smell him standing on the other side of the fence, back in some trees. I let out a warning bark and was pretty pleased when I heard him turn around and run away.

I didn’t much care for the concept of school, which was what happened most mornings at home. I liked it better when summer came and Mom and Ethan no longer had school and we would go to the Farm to live with Grandpa and Grandma.

Whenever I arrived at the Farm I took off at a run, checking to see what was different and what was the same, marking my territory, and reacquainting myself with Flare the horse, the mysterious black cat in the barn, and the ducks, who had irresponsibly decided to produce another batch of ducklings. I often could smell the skunk in the woods but, mindful of the unpleasantness of our last meetings, elected not to chase her down. If she wanted to play, she knew where to find me.

One summer night the whole family sat with me in the living room far past normal bedtime and everyone was excited, though Mom and Grandma were also afraid. And then they yelled and cheered and Grandpa cried and I barked, swept up in all the emotions. Humans are so much more complex than dogs, with such a broad range of feelings—though there were many times I missed the Yard, for the most part I was now living a far richer life, even though I often didn’t know what was going on. Ethan took me out into the night and gazed at the sky. “There’s a man on the moon right now, Bailey. See the moon? Someday, I’ll go there, too.”

He radiated such happiness I raced over and got a stick for him to throw for me. He laughed.

“Don’t worry, Bailey. I’ll take you with me when I go.”

Sometimes Grandpa would go for a car ride into town and the boy and I would accompany him. Before long I had memorized a scent map of the entire trip—there was a moist smell that carried with it the distinct odor of stupid ducks and delicious rotting fish, followed a few minutes later by a powerfully pungent scent that filled the car.

“Phew,” Ethan often said.

“That’s the goat ranch,” Grandpa would always reply.

With my head out the window I often spied the goats who were responsible for all the wonderful smells, and I would bark at them, though they were so dumb they never once fled in terror but just stood there, staring like Flare the horse.

Soon after the goat ranch a great rattle would seize the car as we drove over a wooden bridge and I would start wagging then, because I loved car rides to town and the banging rumble noise meant we were almost there.

Grandpa liked to go to a place where he sat in a chair and a man played with his hair, and Ethan would get bored and we’d wind up walking up and down the streets, looking at windows and hoping to meet other dogs, which I assumed was the reason we were in town in the first place. The best location for dogs was in the park, which was a big grassy area where people sat on blankets. There was a pond, but the boy didn’t want me to swim in it.

Everywhere in town I could smell the goat ranch—if I ever needed to catch my bearings, I would just turn my nose until the scent was the strongest, and that way lay home.

One day we were in the park and an older boy was throwing a plastic toy for his dog to catch. The dog was a black female, short, and all business—when I trotted up to her she completely ignored me, her eyes on the plastic toy, which was a thin, brightly colored disk. It would soar through the air and she would run and leap and snag it before it even touched the ground, which I suppose was a pretty impressive trick if you liked that sort of thing.

“What do you think, Bailey? Do you want to do that, boy?” Ethan asked me. His eyes were shining as he watched the little dog catch the plastic disk, and when we got home he went right to his room and got busy making what he called the “flip.”

“It’s like a cross between a boomerang, a Frisbee, and a baseball,” he told Grandpa. “It will fly twice as far, because the ball gives it weight, see?”

I sniffed at the object, which had been a perfectly good football before Ethan cut it up and asked Grandma to put new stitches in it. “Come on, Bailey!” the boy shouted.

We raced outside. “How much money can you make on an invention like this?” the boy asked his grandpa.

“Let’s just see how she flies,” Grandpa observed.

“Okay, ready, Bailey? Ready?”

I took this to mean that something was about to happen and stood alertly. The boy cranked his arm back and flung the flip into the air, where it twisted and fell from the sky as if it had hit something.

I trotted off the porch and went over to sniff it.

“Bring the flip, Bailey!” the boy called.

Gingerly I picked the thing up. I remembered the short dog chasing the elegant flying disk in the park and felt a pang of envy. I took it back over to where the boy was standing and spat it out.

“Not aerodynamic,” Grandpa was saying. “Too much resistance.”

“I just need to throw it right,” the boy said.

Grandpa went back inside, and for the next hour the boy practiced throwing the flip out into the yard and I brought it back. I could sense a building despair in him, so one time when he threw the flip and it flopped to the ground I brought him back a stick instead. “No, Bailey,” he said sadly. “The flip. Get the flip.”

I barked, wagging, trying to get him to see just how fun the stick could be if he would give it a chance.

“Bailey! The flip!”

And then someone said, “Hi.”

It was a girl Ethan’s age. I trotted over to her, wagging, and she petted me on the head. In one hand she carried a covered basket containing some sweet-smelling breads, which really got my attention. I sat down, looking as attractive as possible so she’d hand over what was in her basket. “What’s your name, girl?” she asked me.

“He’s a boy,” Ethan said. “Name is Bailey.”

I looked over at the boy because he said my name and saw that he was acting strange. It was almost as if he were afraid, but not exactly, though he had taken a half step back when he saw her. I looked back at the girl, who I really liked because of the rich-smelling biscuits in her basket.

“I live down the road. My mom made some brownies for your family. Uh,” the girl said, gesturing to her bicycle.

“Oh,” the boy said.

I kept my attention on the basket.

“So, um,” the girl said.

“I’ll get my grandma,” the boy said. He turned and walked inside the house, but I elected to stay with the girl and her dog biscuits.

“Hi, Bailey, are you a good dog? You’re a good dog,” the girl told me.

Good, but not so good as to get a dog biscuit, I discovered, even though after a minute I gave the basket a nudge with my nose to remind her of the business at hand. Her hair was light colored and she brushed at it while she waited for Ethan to come back. She, too, seemed the tiniest bit afraid, though I could see nothing that would give anybody anxiety except a poor starving dog who needed a treat.

“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.