Flawed Dogs (9 page)

Cassius looked up into the sky while the winter’s first good whopper of a storm began to move in, the darkness descending across the rolling hills. A gathering gale pushed frozen rain bouncing off windowpanes, sounding like needles falling on glass. The poodle’s black eyes became even blacker.

It is time,
he thought.

As always, Sam woke up for his 5:55 A.M. pee. He uncurled from Heidy’s inner knee, slipped from her bed and padded down the stairs and outside through the kitchen dog door.

Sam stood on the top step and sniffed with distaste the freezing dawn gloom beyond the porch overhang. Winter’s first snow was falling fast and thick.
“How uninviting,”
he said. He turned and looked at the rows of potted petunias that Uncle Hamish kept safely out of the weather, near the warmth of the house.

He lifted his leg and watered the one on the far right. It looked the most needy.

Returning inside to the kitchen, he was surprised to see Cassius, who normally slept until noon in his curlers. The poodle trotted up to him with a look of deep concern on his face.

“Missing?”
said Sam.
“He can’t even crawl. Do human babies fly?”

Sam sprang with urgency. He turned and tore back through the kitchen dog door, into the driving snow and toward the eastern ridge beyond the aspen grove. He was forced to bound like a rabbit, his short legs struggling in the deepening drifts. He was past the aspens and close to the crest of the ridge before it even occurred to him how preposterous a thing it was that Cassius had just said. Come to think of it, Cassius was built perfectly for bounding around in a Vermont blizzard—plenty of fluff for insulation and pole-like legs.

If anyone was suited for becoming a dogsicle in the snow, it was Sam, not Cassius.

Just as this bit of obviousness was breaking through the early-morning fog of his still-sleepy brain, he saw the baby.

As soon as Sam left the house, Cassius turned and loped back behind the kitchen to the cook’s quarters. He entered Miss Violett’s room and stopped. He could hear the measured breaths of the woman and confirmed that she was still asleep. He continued into the adjoining small sewing room that had recently been turned into a nursery for Bruno. He looked at the crib, its front wall hanging down, exposing the empty interior. His chew marks were all around the clasp. Bruno’s blankets were ripped apart and strewn about the room just as Cassius had left them a few moments before.

Cassius decided the scene needed a coup de grace . . . a final colorful brushstroke to the masterpiece.

The poodle knelt down and took his right paw into his mouth. He hooked his sharpest tooth between the tough pads and sank it deep into the softer pink flesh below . . . just enough to break the surface. Then he rose on his hind legs until his front feet lay on the baby’s bedding. He held his paw over the white linen adorned with colorful cartoon characters . . . and carefully let three bright red drops of his own blood fall just to the side of a stuffed bear’s head.

Cassius stepped back, satisfied. He looked toward the still-sleeping Miss Violett in the adjoining room. He set his feet wide, arched his back, adopted a convincing expression of alarm on his bony face . . . and began barking.

Miss Violett’s screams started very soon after.

At the top of the eastern ridge, Sam looked down through the blowing snow at the bundle of blankets tucked into a small blueberry bush. With a long nose, he prodded the folds until Bruno’s little face emerged. The baby yawned, stretched and looked up at Sam. He smiled as the snow tickled his nose.

Sam was confused. But only for a second, for his own nose had picked up a familiar scent as he pushed the blanket open, a scent easily identified in a house with only two dogs.

Cassius.

His mouth. His saliva. His
hair spray.

The morning fog suddenly cleared in the dachshund’s now-racing brain. The fur along his backbone stood up as the final scent he sniffed overwhelmed his senses:

Danger.

What Sam didn’t sense at that moment was that the threat wasn’t to baby Bruno . . . but to himself.

Sam pulled the blanket folds back over the face of the giggling Bruno, grasped the material and pulled the heavy bundle from the bush and onto the soft snow.

He heard Cassius barking.

Turning at the sound, he saw Miss Violett in the distance stumbling up the ridge and through the storm, toward them. Behind her came Uncle Hamish and Heidy—everyone in their nightclothes despite the cold.

But Cassius was ahead of them all, barking, baying. He would reach Sam and the baby in seconds. One thought crowded out all others in a dachshund brain still churning, trying to make sense of it all:

Sam spun and ran down the opposite side of the ridge, his neck muscles bulging as he struggled to keep his head high, the bundled baby dangling under his mouth.

Miss Violett saw this and screamed again. Behind her,

Heidy and her uncle pushed through the snow with frantic urgency. “SAM! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? SAM!!” screamed Heidy, her voice hysterical and breaking from a swirling mix of confusion and fear.

Sam reached a low stone wall, which blocked further retreat. He set baby Bruno carefully against the wall and turned to face the quickly closing Cassius. Violett, Hamish and Heidy reached the top of the ridge and looked down on the two dogs, now facing off.

Sam was outmatched and he knew it. The poodle was five times his size and weight. The little dog planted his feet wide, placing himself between Cassius and the child. He put his head low.
“I don’t understand any of this,”
Sam said.
“But I know you’re not touching the baby again.”