A Dog's Purpose

{ TWENTY-FIVE }

Geoffrey! It’s okay; we’re going to get you out of there!” Maya yelled at him. Heedless of the water, she knelt in the street, straining to reach the boy. The water had pressed him back away from the small opening, and he was clinging to the far wall, the terror coming off him so strong it was blinding. Right behind Geoffrey, a black tunnel sucked in the rainwater with a loud roar. Grunting, Maya pushed in as far as she could, but she couldn’t reach the boy.

“How did he get in there?” the policeman shouted.

“It’s a tight fit; he must have squeezed in before it started raining. God, it’s really coming down!” Maya’s voice was full of frustration.

A circular iron plate was set into the concrete right above Geoffrey’s head. The policeman pried at it with his fingers, muttering. “I need to get a tire iron!” he bellowed. He handed the flashlight to Maya and ran off, his feet sloshing in the water.

Geoffrey was shivering with cold, and his eyes were dull when they looked into the beam from Maya’s flashlight. He had the hood of his thin yellow rain slicker pulled up over his head, offering him scant protection from the chill. “Hold on, okay, Geoffrey? You hang on; we’re going to get you out of there, okay?”

Geoffrey didn’t respond.

The patrol car’s siren came on and within less than a minute it was whipping around the corner, sliding a little as it came to a stop next to us. The policeman jumped out and ran to his trunk.

“Fire and rescue are on the way!” he hollered.

“There’s no time!” Maya shouted back. “He’s slipping into the water!”

The policeman came around the trunk with a bent piece of iron. “Geoffrey, hang on; don’t let go!” Maya yelled. The policeman went to work on the circular plate with his tool. When Maya jumped up to watch I went with her, which was how I saw the spatter of mud fall on Geoffrey’s face when the iron plate was knocked aside. He lifted his hand to wipe it away, and as he did so he lost his grip on the wall and fell into the water. For a brief second he was looking up at us, and then he was swept into the tunnel.

“Geoffrey!” Maya screamed.

I was still on Find, so I didn’t hesitate, plunging headfirst after him. The second I hit the water, the brute force of it carried me into the tunnel, and I swam in that direction.

It was dark in the tunnel, and as I bobbed up and down in the current my head struck the cement above me. I ignored all of it, concentrating on Geoffrey, who was ahead of me in the darkness, soundlessly fighting for his life. His scent was faint but there, vanishing and reappearing in the deadly waters.

Without warning the floor fell away beneath me, and in complete darkness I rolled and bounced—the smaller tunnel had joined a much larger one, the water deeper, the sounds louder. I zeroed in on Geoffrey’s scent, swimming strongly. Though I couldn’t see him, he was just a few yards in front of me.

A second before he went under I knew what was going to happen—how many times had Ethan pulled this same stunt on me, waiting until I was close before dropping down into the pond? And, just as I always knew where to find the boy in the dark depths, I now had a clear sense of Geoffrey, tumbling just below me. I dove, straining, my mouth open, blinded and battered by the rushing waters, and then I had his hood in my mouth. Together, we burst through to the surface.

There was no way to go in any direction except the way the water was taking us. I concentrated on holding Geoffrey’s head out of the water, pulling back on the hood. He was alive, but he had stopped kicking.

Some weak light from up ahead flickered on the wet cement walls—the tunnel we were in was square and six feet across, with no way out. How was I going to save Geoffrey?

The light grew stronger, and as it did my ears filled with a loud roar, echoing back toward us. The current seemed to be accelerating. I kept my grip on Geoffrey’s hood, sensing that something was about to happen.

We burst into daylight, tumbling down a cement chute and landing with a splash in a swift-flowing river. I struggled to keep us both on the churning surface, battered by the waves. The banks of the river were lined with cement, but as I tugged Geoffrey toward the nearest one, the current fought me, trying to suck us back. Exhaustedly, my jaw and neck aching from the effort, I dragged Geoffrey toward the bank, swimming as hard as I could.

Flashing lights caught my eye, and I saw men in raincoats downstream from me, running toward the bank. I would be swept past them before I could get Geoffrey to safety.

Two of the men plunged into the water. They were tied together, and the rope went back to all the other men, who braced themselves. The two men stood hip high, straining their hands out to catch us, and I put everything I had into aiming for their arms.

“Gotcha!” one of the men shouted as Geoffrey and I slammed into them. He grabbed my collar as the other man hoisted Geoffrey into the air. The rope went taut and we all thrashed our way through the water to safety.

Once I was on land, the man released me and knelt down over Geoffrey. They squeezed his little body and he vomited up a gush of brown water, coughing and crying. I limped over to Geoffrey, and as his fear drained out of him it took mine with it. He was going to be okay.

The men ripped Geoffrey’s clothing off him and wrapped him in blankets. “You’ll be okay, boy; you’ll be okay. Is this your doggy? She saved your life.” Geoffrey didn’t answer, but he looked briefly into my eyes.

“Let’s go!” one of the men shouted, and they ran Geoffrey up the hill and into a truck, which took off with its siren screaming.

I lay down in the mud. My limbs were shaking violently, and I, too, vomited, a clean pain slicing through me. I was so weak I couldn’t really even see. The cold rain pelted me and I just lay there.

A police car pulled up, cutting its sirens as it did so. I heard doors slam. “Ellie!” Maya screamed from the road. I raised my head, too tired to even wag my tail. She frantically ran down the bank, wiping at her tears. She was soaking wet, but I could feel her warmth and love as she hugged me to her chest. “You are a good dog, Ellie. You saved Geoffrey. You are such a good dog. Oh God, I thought I’d lost you, Ellie.”

I spent the night at the vet’s, and for the next several days I was so stiff I could barely move. Then Maya and I did school, only this one was all adults her age. We sat with lights in our eyes while a man talked in a loud voice, and then he came over and put a silly collar around my neck while even brighter lights, the ones like silent lightning, popped on and off all around us, the way they did when I was with Mom, after the fire that hurt Ethan’s leg. The man also pinned something on Maya’s uniform, and everybody clapped. I felt pride and love coming off of Maya, and when she whispered to me that I was a good dog I felt proud, too.

Not long after that, a new mood swept through the house. Maya and Al were excited and nervous and spent a lot of time having conversations at the table.

“If it is a boy, why can’t it be Albert?” Al asked. “That’s a good name.”

“It’s a great name, honey, but then what do we call him? You are my Albert, my Al.”

“We could call him Bert.”

“Oh, honey.”

“Well, what are we going to call him, then? Your family has so many people in it, you’ve used up every name there is. We can’t call him Carlos, Diego, Francisco, Ricardo—”

“What about Angel?”

“Angel? You want my son to be named Angel? I think maybe we shouldn’t trust the naming of this child to a woman who named her cat Tinkerbell.”

The cat, who was sleeping against me, didn’t even raise her head at the sound of her name. Cats are like that; you can’t get their attention unless they want to give it to you.

Maya was laughing. “How about Charles?”

“Charley? No, my first boss was named Charley,” Al objected.

“Anthony?”

“Don’t you have a cousin named Anthony?”

“His name is Antonio,” Maya corrected.

“Well, I don’t like him. His mustache looks silly.”

Maya collapsed into giggles at this. I thumped my tail once in recognition of all the hilarity. “George?”

“No.”

“Raul?”

“No.”

“Jeremy?”

“Of course not.”

“Ethan?”

I jumped up, and Al and Maya stared at me in surprise. “I guess Ellie likes it,” Al said.

I cocked my head at them, uncertain. Tinkerbell was giving me a surly look. I trotted over to the door, lifting my nose.

“What is it, Ellie?” Maya asked.

There was no sign of the boy, and I was no longer sure I had heard right. Outside, some children rode past on bicycles, but none of them were Ethan. What was I thinking, that Ethan, like Jakob, would suddenly reappear in my life? I knew instinctively something like that would never happen to a dog. Still, Maya had said the boy’s name, hadn’t she? Why would she do that?

I went to Maya for reassurance, then eased down with a sigh. Tinkerbell trotted over and pressed up against me, and I glanced away from Al’s knowing look, a little embarrassed.

Before long we had a new person in the house: little Gabriella, who smelled like sour milk and seemed even less useful than the cat. When she first brought the child home, Maya carefully held Gabriella for me to sniff, but I wasn’t too impressed. From that moment on, Maya would get up frequently during the night and I would go with her and she would clutch Gabriella to her chest while I lay at her feet. The unrestrained love flowing from Maya during those moments always nudged me into a deep, peaceful sleep.

The aches in my bones were familiar to me; I’d felt the same way when I was Bailey and spent most of my time helping Grandpa do chores. Sights and sounds became dim, and this, too, was familiar.

I wondered if Maya knew that the day was soon coming when I would no longer be with them. It only stood to reason that I would die, the way Emmet and Stella died, because that was what happened. When I was Toby, when I was Bailey, it was the same thing.

As I lay in a patch of sun, pondering this, I realized that I had spent my life as a good dog. What I had learned from my first mother had led me to Ethan, and what I had learned from Ethan had enabled me to dive into those black waters and find Geoffrey. Along the way, Jakob had taught me to Find and Show and I had helped save many people.

This had to be why, when I left Ethan, I was reborn as Ellie—everything that I had done, everything that I had ever learned, had been leading up to being a good dog who saved people. It wasn’t as much fun as being a doodle dog, but I now knew why these creatures, these human beings, had so fascinated me from the moment I saw them. It was because my fate was inextricably linked with theirs. Especially Ethan—that was the bond of a lifetime.

Now that I had fulfilled my purpose, I felt sure I was at the end, that there would be no rebirth after this, and I was at peace with that. As wonderful as being a puppy could be, I wouldn’t want to share it with anyone but the boy. Maya and Al had little Gabriella to distract them, making me sort of an afterthought in the family, except, of course, for Tinkerbell, who thought I was the family.

I wondered briefly if cats also came back after death, then dismissed the thought because as far as I had ever been able to tell, cats do not have a purpose.

Embarrassingly, I had started to have trouble containing myself in time to make it outside and was more and more frequently leaving messes in the house. Even worse, Gabriella had the same problem, so that the trash can often contained both of our bowel movements.

Al took me on several front-seat dog car rides to see the vet, who petted me all over while I groaned with pleasure. “You’re a good dog; you’re just getting old,” Al said. I wagged at being a good dog. Maya was very busy with Gabriella, so more and more it was just me and Al, which was okay by me. I could feel his tender affection every time he helped me up so we could take a car ride together.

One day Al had to carry me out into the yard to do my business and I felt the sadness in him break sharply as he came to terms with what this meant. I licked his face in reassurance and put my head in his lap when he sat on the ground to cry.

When Maya came home she brought the baby outside and we all sat together. “You’ve been such a good dog, Ellie,” Maya said over and over. “You’re a hero dog. You saved lives. You saved that little boy Geoffrey.”

A neighbor lady came over and picked up Gabriella. Maya bent over her child, loving her, whispering something in her ear. “Bye-bye, Ellie,” Gabriella said. She held out her hand and the lady stooped so I could lick it.

“Say ‘bye-bye,’ ” the woman said.

“Bye-bye,” Gabriella said again. The lady took Gabriella into the house.

“This is so hard, Al.” Maya sighed.

“I know. If you want, I will do it for you, Maya,” Al said.

“No, no. I need to be there for Ellie.”

Al gingerly picked me up and carried me to the car. Maya got in the backseat with me.

I knew where we were going on this car ride. Groaning with all my aches, I collapsed on the seat, my head in Maya’s lap. I knew where we were going and was looking forward to the peace it would bring me. Maya stroked my head, and I closed my eyes. I wondered if there were anything I would have wanted to do one more time—Find? Swim in the ocean? Stick my head out the car window? These were all wonderful things—I had done them all, though, and that was enough.

I wagged my tail when they laid me on the familiar steel table. Maya was crying, whispering, “You’re a good dog,” over and over, and it was her words, and the sense of her love, that I took with me when I felt the tiny prick by my neck and then was washed away by the wonderfully warm ocean waters.