Flawed Dogs (12 page)

“They say poodles are the smartest breed. Alas, dear, departed Sam.
’Tis true.
”

Sam backed from the pipe, startled. Cassius emerged into the moonlight and stood over the dachshund, now balanced awkwardly in the rocks of the frozen stream. “Move aside,” said Sam, regaining his composure.

“Poor, beautiful, perfect Sam the Lion. Your Heidy . . . she doesn’t love you now, dear boy. You’re . . . well, let’s review.” Cassius thought carefully, fluffing the curled fur around his ankles with his lips. “. . . Imperfect. Sick. Violent.
Ugly.
”

The words cut into Sam and found purchase in a mind still trying to make sense of the senseless. But he raised his head higher. “Move, Cassius. She still wants me.”

“No. She has
me
now,” said the poodle.

The words stung Sam as if they’d slapped him. The terrible truth behind the unspeakable events of the day came tumbling down upon Sam, and he grew dizzy. Everything had been a cruel hoax. Cassius was never after the baby. He was after
him.

“Move away, Cassius,” said Sam, desperation edging into his voice.

“You’re not clear on this, dachshund. She doesn’t want you now. You’re not the perfect dog you were.”

Sam looked at his reflection in the ice. A filthy, ripped face looked back, blood still caked to his fur.

“I will be again,” said Sam. But Cassius was already stepping toward him, the perfectly combed balls of poodle fur blocking the moonlight and casting Sam into shadow. Sam stepped backward while Cassius lowered his head, stared intently and spoke low, each terrible word falling from his mouth with a rolling puff of steam into the frigid air:

“You know, dear Sam, some believe that for the dirty, unwanted, broken stray mongrels of the world . . . there is a guardian angel. I think that must be true. Those lesser dogs have nobody else, do they? Nobody but an angel would want them. They say she’s quite beautiful . . . descending down a glimmering beam of blue light when death arrives . . . offering the flawed, unwanted souls a second chance. I think it’s time you met her.”

Cassius again stepped toward Sam, who again stepped backward. “I’m not unwanted!” Sam said, his voice rising. “And I’m not
flawed
!”

Cassius smiled oddly and forced Sam backward another inch.

“Yes. You are.”

At that precise moment, Sam’s left rear foot stepped back onto the trigger plate of an open steel leg trap, freshly set for the winter beaver season. The jagged metal jaws came together several inches above Sam’s foot, crushing the bone, the sound echoing off the Vermont hills like a rifle shot. Sam rolled onto his back, reflexively kicking the air, his mouth flying open in a tortured howl of pain swallowed up by the cruel silence of the falling snow in a day at long last exhausted of heartbreak.

A cold dawn broke slow and heavy over McCloud Heavenly Acres. Downstairs, Uncle Hamish sat silently at the breakfast table, alone in his thoughts. Violett brought him coffee, which he took without speaking. He took the cup but held her hand and stared ahead blankly. Violett laid her other thin hand atop his unruly hair and gently smoothed it. Upstairs, Mrs. Beaglehole stood stiffly in the threshold of Heidy’s bedroom door, peering in, as if waiting. In the large window seat before a dark sky, Heidy sat with knees curled to her chest, arms holding them tight. She stared out dully over the now white Vermont hills with spent eyes. There was simply no more moisture left in her body.

Cassius approached the girl silently. He sat and laid a long nose into the fold of her lap . . . and waited.

Heidy’s hand released her other and dropped slowly down, as if thinking on its own. Her fingers alighted on the smooth brow of the poodle . . . and remained on his head.

Cassius closed his eyes and smiled.

As did Mrs. Beaglehole, still watching from the hall. She slowly closed the door.

Nobody in the McCloud house at that moment knew that only a quarter mile away, two men stood just outside the estate walls peering down at their beaver trap, trying to decide what sort of critter they had caught.

“Looks like a rat,” said one.

“A blue ribbon big rat,” said the other. “Three-legged rat now.”

“ ’ Cept rats got naked tails. This one’s furry.”

When Sam let out a low whimper, the two trappers knew the creature was indeed something else. They pulled the halves of the trap apart and lifted the limp dog away. One wrapped a handkerchief around Sam’s smashed leg and secured it with a rubber band that had kept his matches attached to his box of cigarettes.

They carried Sam to their truck a mile away and placed him on the seat between them. In the warmth of the cab, the fog of Sam’s mind slowly cleared, although the sights and sounds around him still seemed like a dream. And in that dream he watched through half-closed eyes as he was driven into town, where more men met the truck and huddled with the men who had found him. The second group of men handed over a small stack of money to the first and then carried Sam over to a different truck, the back of which was filled with small steel boxes. Sam’s nose told him that they also contained dogs, unwanted and lost. He was placed inside a cage and the door closed and locked. Still too weak to stand, Sam peered through a crack in the steel door and watched the forested hills he’d explored with Heidy over recent months change to those far less familiar.

After many hours, the truck pulled up to a tall chain-link security fence that surrounded a vast array of very dark buildings with few windows. A sign next to the fence read:

As the sun set, the skies again became leaden, and snow began to fall as the truck pulled into the complex. The dogs in the boxes around him sensed a change, and one by one, each began to utter low mournful howls. Through the door’s crack, Sam watched as the gate closed behind him and the world beyond—the world of sunlight and dandelions and a girl’s laughter and everything he’d known that was right and fair and good—receded into the distance. He knew with absolute certainty . . . like dogs know that a distant storm is approaching or that a stranger isn’t to be trusted . . . he knew that world was gone forever.

The following year, spring came early to the leafy hills surrounding University Research Labs before burning out in its usual fiery finale in fall.

It did the same the next year.

No, there will be no details recounted here to describe the indescribable events experienced by Sam and the other animals living beyond those terrible walls during this time. No good will come from dwelling on such horrors, and they are best left to the nightmares of feverish children and the dark imaginations of bullies who pull the wings off flies.

When the leaves returned in the third year, it was in the warming, rainy night air of April that our story and our dachshund return.