A Dog's Purpose (25 page)

Maya glanced around. “Here? Everything’s collapsed; it’s too dangerous. Tell you what, though, it would be fun for her to chase you a little. Go up the street a little bit and call her, and I’ll let her off the leash.”

I didn’t pay attention to Vernon as he trotted away. My focus was on the person hidden in the rubble. I could smell fear, though the biting odor from the chemicals was clawing at my nose the
way I’d once felt the spray from a skunk. Maya unsnapped my leash. “Ellie? What’s Vernon doing? Where’s he going?”

“Hey, Ellie! Look!” Vernon shouted. He started to run slowly up the street. I stared after him: I wanted to chase him and play, but I had work to do. I turned back to the collapsed building.

“Ellie! No!” Maya called.

Had it been Jakob, the word “no” would have stopped me dead, but Maya didn’t command me with the same hard tones. I dove headfirst into a narrow space next to the dead person, digging my way forward. My feet encountered a wet spill and started to sting, and the smell from the chemicals was so intense it blotted out everything else. I was reminded of playing rescue with Ethan, how I could find him in the depths by the merest whisper of his scent in the water.

Choking, I tunneled ahead. Cooler air touched my face, and I squirmed though a hole and dropped into a narrow shaft. An updraft brought cleaner air into this area, though my nostrils were still aflame with the burning wet acid that had splashed on my snout.

After a moment, I saw a woman huddled in the corner of the shaft, pressing a cloth to her face. Her eyes were big as they regarded me.

I barked, unable to return to Maya to Show.

“Ellie!” Maya called, coughing.

“Get back, Maya,” Vernon warned.

I kept barking. “Ellie!” Maya shouted again, sounding closer. This time the woman heard her and started screaming back, the terror tumbling out of her.

“There’s someone in there, someone alive!” Maya yelled.

I sat patiently with the woman, feeling her fear turn to hope when a man wearing a helmet and a mask poked a flashlight into
the shaft and waved the light over both of us. My eyes were watering and my nose was running, my whole face still stinging from whatever it was I’d gotten on myself. Soon the sounds of digging and hammering reverberated through the space, and then a square of daylight broke into the shaft from above and a man lowered himself down on a rope.

The woman had obviously never practiced being lifted with a rope harness and was very afraid when the fireman tied her up and they hoisted her out, but I’d been through the maneuver several times and stepped unhesitatingly into the loops of rope when it was my turn. Maya was there at the top when they hauled me through the hole they’d dug in the wall, but her relief turned to alarm when she saw me.

“Oh my God, Ellie, your nose!”

We ran together to a fire truck, where Maya, much to my disgust, talked one of the firefighters into giving me a bath! Well, it was more of a rinsing, cold water flowing down my face and bringing some relief to the burn on my nose.

Maya and I took another chopper ride that day, and then a plane ride, and then we went to the man in the cool room, the vet, who carefully looked at my nose and put some cream on it that smelled awful but felt wonderful.

“What was it, some kind of acid?” the vet asked Maya.

“I don’t know. Is she going to be okay?” I felt Maya’s love and concern, and closed my eyes when she stroked my neck. I wished there were some way I could let her know that the pain wasn’t all that bad.

“We’ll want to watch for any signs of infection, but I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t heal up just fine,” he told Maya.

For the next two weeks or so, Maya would gently rub the cream into my nose. Emmet and Stella seemed to find this
pretty amusing, and would sit on the counter and watch. Tinkerbell, though,
loved
it. She came out of wherever she’d been hiding and sniffed at the cream and then rubbed her head against mine, purring. When I’d lie down, Tinkerbell would sit and smell me, her tiny little nose bobbing up and down, and she even started curling up against me to sleep.

It was almost more than I could stand.

I was relieved to get away from the cats and go back to work. When Maya and I got to the park, I bounded up to Wally and Belinda, who were excited to see me.

“I hear you are the hero dog, Ellie! Good dog!”

I wagged, excited to be a good dog. Wally then ran off while Belinda and Maya sat at a picnic table.

“So how are you and Wally doing?” Maya said. I sat impatiently—if we went after him now, we could Find Wally right away!

“He’s taking me to meet his parents over the Fourth, so . . . ,” Belinda replied.

“That’s good.”

I groaned at all this conversation. Humans were capable of so many amazing things, but too often they just sat making words, not doing anything. “Down, Ellie,” Maya said. I reluctantly lay down, pointedly looking off in the direction Wally had taken.

After what seemed ages, Maya and I were finally allowed to Find. I joyously took off, not having to slow down, because she was able to keep pace with me.

Wally had done an excellent job of disguising his scent! I lifted my nose, searching for any trace of him. There were few odors on the air today to distract me, but I couldn’t Find Wally. I coursed back and forth, returning to Maya for direction. Carefully
she worked the area, and when I didn’t pick up a scent she moved me to a new place and I tried there.

“What’s the matter, girl? You okay, Ellie?”

Oddly, though the wind was coming from behind him, I actually heard Wally before I smelled him. He was walking straight toward us. I rocketed forward until my nose told me it was him, and then returned to Maya, who had already started talking to Wally, her voice a shout.

“We’re having sort of an off day!” she said.

“I guess so. I’ve never seen her fail before. Hey, Ellie, how are you doing?” Wally said to me. We played a little with a stick.

“Tell you what, Maya. You focus her attention away from me. I’m going to go over that ridge, there, and double back a little. Give me about ten minutes,” Wally said.

“You sure?”

“She’s been out of action for a couple of weeks; let’s allow her to have an easy one.”

I was conscious of Wally leaving, even though Maya had handed me the rubber bone and was now trying to get it away from me. I could hear him and knew he was hiding again, which made me happy. When Maya finally shouted, “Find!” I took off eagerly, heading in the direction I’d heard him go.

I ran up a small hill and stopped, uncertain. I didn’t know how he was doing it, but somehow Wally was keeping his scent out of the air. I ran back to Maya for direction, and she sent me off to my right. I snaked back and forth, searching.

No Wally.

Then she directed me to the left. Again, no sign of Wally. This time, she had me return left and walked with me, leading me around the base of the hill. I was virtually upon Wally when I
found him—he moved, and I alerted. There was no need to run back, because Maya was standing there.

“This isn’t good, is it?” Maya asked. “The vet said she should be fully recovered by now.”

“Well . . . let’s give it another week, see if she gets any better,” Wally said. He felt sad, for some reason, so I nuzzled his hand.

Maya and I didn’t work very much over the next couple of weeks, and when we did, Wally continued to fool me, disguising his scent so that I could only pick it up when he was right there in front of me.

“What does it mean that Ellie is decertified? Does it mean you will lose your job?” Al asked one night. I’m not a big fan of feet, but I allowed Al to take off his shoes and rub my tummy with his toes because they didn’t smell as bad as usual.

“No, but I’ll be reassigned. I’ve been on a desk for the past several weeks, but I’m not really cut out for that. I’ll probably request a transfer to go back out on patrol,” Maya replied.

Stealthily Al dropped a tiny piece of meat on the carpet in front of me. It was the main reason why I liked to lie in front of him at dinner. I silently licked it up while Stella gave me dirty looks from the couch.

“I don’t like to think about you being on patrol. It is so dangerous.”

“Albert,” Maya sighed.

“What about Ellie?”

I looked up at my name, but Al didn’t hand down any more meat.

“I don’t know. She can’t work anymore; her sense of smell is too damaged. So she’ll be retired. She’ll live with me. Right, Ellie?”

I wagged, pleased with the way she said my name, full of affection.

After dinner we took a car ride to the ocean! The sun was setting, and Maya and Al set a blanket out between two trees and talked while the waves came in.

“It’s so beautiful,” Maya said.

I figured they probably wanted to play with a stick or a ball or something, but I was on a leash and couldn’t go find one for them. I felt bad that they had nothing to do.

Al got my attention by becoming afraid. His heart started to pound audibly, and I could feel his nervous energy as he wiped his hands on his pants over and over.

“Maya, when you moved here . . . so many months I wanted to talk to you. You are so beautiful.”

Maya laughed. “Oh, Al, I’m not beautiful; come on.”

Some boys down by the water ran by, tossing a saucer at each other. I watched it alertly, thinking of Ethan and the stupid flip. I wondered if Ethan had ever been to the ocean and, if he had, if he brought the flip and threw it out into the waves, where I hope it sank and was never found again.

Ethan. I could remember how he never did anything without taking me with him, except school. I loved the sense of purpose I got from work, but there were certainly days, like this one, when I thought of Ethan and missed being a doodle dog more than anything.

Al was still afraid, and I glanced at him curiously, pulled away from the sight of the boys by his continued alarm. Was there some sort of danger? I couldn’t see any; we were all alone in this part of the park.

“You are the most wonderful woman in the world,” he said. “I . . . I love you, Maya.”

Maya started to feel afraid, too. What was going on? I sat up.

“I love you, too, Al.”

“I know I’m not rich, I know I’m not handsome . . . ,” Al said.

“Oh my God,” Maya breathed. Her heart was beating now, too.

“But I will love you all my life if you will let me.” Al turned on the blanket, rising to his knees.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Maya said.

“Will you marry me, Maya?” Al asked.

One day Maya and Mama and all of the brothers and sisters and other family members came together in a big building and sat quietly while I demonstrated a new trick I’d been taught, which was to walk very slowly down a narrow path between wooden benches, mount some carpeted stairs, and stand patiently while Al removed something from a small pack I carried on my back. Then everyone sat and admired me while Maya and Al had a conversation. Maya was wearing a big fluffy outfit, so I knew we weren’t going to the park to play afterward, but that was okay because everyone seemed so glad at how well I’d done the trick. Mama even cried, she was so happy.

Then we went to Mama’s house and children ran around and fed me cake.

A few months later, we all moved into a different house with
a much better backyard. It had a garage, too, but thankfully no one suggested I sleep out there. Al and Maya slept together and, though they didn’t mind when I jumped up to be with them, there was frankly no room to get a good night’s sleep and anyway the cats kept climbing up there, too, so I eventually learned to lie on the floor next to Maya’s side, where I could get up and follow her if she awoke during the middle of the night and went anywhere.

Gradually, I came to understand that we wouldn’t be doing work anymore. I could only conclude that we’d Found everybody who needed to be Found and that Wally and Belinda had lost interest in the whole process. Maya still went running, though, and Al sometimes went with us, though he had trouble keeping up.

I was therefore surprised when Maya excitedly loaded me into the truck and took me for a car ride. It felt like we were going to do work, except that Maya’s mood was different, less urgent.

She took me to a big building and told me it was a school. This was confusing to me, as I had learned that school was something where Ethan went away—it wasn’t a
place
; it was a state of being without the boy. I stuck to Maya’s side, though, as we entered a big noisy room filled with children, who were all excited and laughing. I sat with Maya and watched the children who were doing their best to sit still. I was reminded of Ethan and Chelsea and the children in our neighborhood, always full of energy.

A bright light was in my eyes. A woman spoke, and then all the girls and boys clapped, startling me. I wagged my tail, feeling a collective joy washing off the children.

Maya walked me forward, and when she spoke her voice was
very loud and seemed to come from both next to me and at the back of the room.

“This is Ellie; she is a retired search-and-rescue dog. As part of our outreach program, I wanted to come to talk to you about how Ellie has helped find lost children, and what you can do if you ever become lost,” Maya said. I yawned, wondering what this was all about.