Say No More (3 page)

Lise stepped up on the running board to lean in through the open window on my side. Clutched at her hip, their little boy Hunter tugged at his lower lip.

“Are you sure you want to take Halo with you?” Lise said. “She’s barely twelve weeks old. She’ll probably throw up. You won’t even let me eat carry-out in here. Besides, you really should have her in a crate. What if she climbs onto your lap while you’re driving? Puppies are distracting. You could crash, you know.”

“Seriously, Lise, don’t worry. I’m just going a few miles down the road. I doubt she’ll get sick in the amount of time it takes us to get to Dad’s house. Besides, if she’s going to be my dog, you said it was okay for her to ride shotgun with me when I went to do chores.”

“Yeah, but —”

He poked a finger in her direction. “You said she could, remember? At least I’m letting her ride in the cab. My dad used to make the dogs sit in the bed.”

Lise opened the rear door of the cab and buckled Hunter in his car seat. After shutting the door, she reclaimed her spot on the running board.

I dug at my new collar with the nails of my back foot.
Itchy, itchy!
It hung around my neck like a yoke of stone, a supposed symbol of my inferior status to humankind. I scratched furiously at it, waiting for her to realize how uncomfortable it was and take it off, but she simply hissed ‘Stop it!’ at me.

Lise’s nose crinkled as her gaze returned to Cam. “Okay, okay.” Subtly, she extended her hand over my head and dropped something beside me. It had a shiny metal clip on one end and a loop on the other. “You’ll keep a leash on her while you’re there, won’t you?”

What? And drag me around like a circus monkey? I don’t think so!

A barely audible sigh escaped Cam.

“Please?” Lise added, gripping the inside edge of the door.

“All right, all right. I won’t let her out of my sight.” He hooked the snap of the leash onto a link in my collar. I didn’t like it there. It was heavy. I bit at his hands to make him stop, but he pinched my mouth shut and gave me a firm ‘No!’

When he let go, I sneezed. Hunter laughed. I sneezed again, which sent him into a fit of delight. He had just turned five, so not quite old enough to go to school himself, which meant Cam’s mother, Estelle, would be taking care of him today while Lise went to work. Estelle and Lise had a tenuous relationship at best. It was easy to see Lise’s irritation every time she got off the phone with her.

“Don’t let her near the cows,” Lise said over Hunter’s laughter.

“Well, that’s kind of impossible, seeing as how I’m going there to help take care of them.”

“Cameron Scott McHugh, don’t you dare —”

“I got it, I got it. Don’t let her near the cows, right.” He slipped the key into the ignition and twisted it. The engine coughed, sputtered, and then roared to life. He yanked the shifter into reverse, but his foot was still locked against the brake. “I’ll be back by supper tonight. Mom and Dad have a dinner date with the DeLeons at 5:00.”

Lise stared at the side of Cam’s face until he turned his head.

“What?” Cam said. “Did I forget something?”

“No, just ...” — she stepped down from the running board so I couldn’t see her anymore and patted the outside of the door twice — “just be careful today, okay? And tell Estelle to keep an eye on Hunter. His asthma’s been acting up lately.”

“I will, hun. See you at 4:30.” He blew her a kiss. Lise’s open hand appeared briefly through the window. Her fingers snapped shut, then disappeared.

“You can have your kiss back,” she said, “when you get home later.”

“Okay. Promise not to keep you waiting. Have fun at school today.”

“Yeah, right. We’re talking about second graders. The first rule is always survival.”

“See you later, then.”

“Bye now.”

“Bye, Mommy!” Hunter yelled. “Byyyyyyye!”

Chuckling, Cam eased off the brake. The truck rolled backward, jerked to a brief stop, then lurched forward. Through the open window, I saw the clouds spinning. I hopped over to the door and planted my paws on the armrest to raise myself up and look out. Trees whizzed by, low branches slapping the sides and top of Cam’s big black truck as we rumbled down the lane.

In the little mirror next to the window, Lise stood before the house, its crisp white clapboard siding a stark contrast to the flaking green shutters. A minute ago she was very big. Now she was tiny. And how did she get inside the mirror? This confused me. Next to her sat my mother, Bit, looking very unimpressed with the fact that I was flying as fast as a bird down the lane in the big wheeled monster Cam called ‘The Ram’.

Bit and Lise got smaller and smaller and smaller. I looked toward the rear of the truck. There, I saw them only a moment longer before they disappeared beyond the cloud of dust billowing out behind the truck’s big rear wheels. We turned a corner and the house, too, vanished.

I leaned out further, wind beating against my face, my ears flapping back. I smelled clover, freshly cut grass, manure from those stupid creatures, or sheep, that Lise called ‘The Girls’, which she said were for training and keeping the grass down. That was when I saw them on the far side of a pasture as we drove by — ten big puffs of wool on skinny stick legs. Eating, like they constantly did. Around them were about a dozen miniature versions, the lambs, bouncing and bucking through the tall grass. They did this every day. Sometimes they stopped, looked up, and bleated franticly when they realized they’d lost their mothers. The ewes bleated back to give their location and the lambs leaped to them, suckled a bit, and then got lost again. They were even dumber than their mothers. No wonder Bit had to help Lise put them away in the barn every night so the coyotes didn’t get them.

Cam snagged my collar and yanked me back down to the seat. He flicked a switch on his side of the truck and the glass in my window slid upward, so I couldn’t stick my head out anymore. I stood on the armrest and pressed my nose to the glass, watching new sights appear with every passing second. Who knew the world was so big? That there was so much to be discovered and explored?

A few weeks ago, most of my brothers and sisters had disappeared one by one, until only Scout and I were left. It always began the same. The dogs outside would erupt into a chorus of barks, alerting everyone to visitors. Lise or Cam would poke their head out the back door and shout, “Knock it off!”, which was our cue to be silent so that they could assess whether or not there was any threat of danger. In my opinion, they often made those decisions too quickly. Humans were shifty creatures. They could open doors with their long, nimble fingers, and they apparently communicated with one another through small devices held to their heads or stuck right inside their ears. With those capabilities, who knew what they might try to steal from us? Any one of them could snatch a bag of our kibble, toss it inside a car, and be gone in seconds.

Now they were stealing puppies. I’d be darned if they took me away from Lise and Cam. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Cam turned the radio on and fiddled with the knob until he got to a certain song. “Ah, my man Keith. Lise loves it when I sing Keith Urban songs to her.” He peered into the rearview mirror at Hunter. “Wanna sing with me, Hunter?”

He cranked the volume up and began to croon. Hunter waved his hands above his head and joined in, but the words came out a little differently than Cam’s.

“Take yo’ wreckers, take yo’ feet home,

Take yo’ mommies, I don’t eat ‘em ...
”

I was about to howl along with them when we pulled onto a bigger road and gained speed. The world blurred past. Suddenly, I saw a hundred things that needed investigating: buildings of different sizes and shapes, endless fields of hay, rows of wheat and corn and soybeans, thick patches of woodland, and then more houses, crowded close together. Cam slowed to a stop at a flashing red light where two roads crossed. He flipped a bar beside the steering wheel and an odd ‘click-clack, click-clack’ came from somewhere up front. I cocked my head sideways, listening, then tilted it the other way, trying to zero in on the sound. Cam laughed at me and ruffled the fur on top of my head.

A car pulled up beside us. In the front were two full-grown humans, but in the back I saw a little face peering up at me. A boy-child. Younger than Hunter. His mouth opened in an ‘O’, and he pointed a chubby finger at me. He had an honest face. Plump cheeks and a small nose. His smile matched the joy in his eyes. I would trust him. We could be friends. I barked a hello. The boy flapped a hand at me and smiled. But soon the car pulled ahead, and the boy disappeared from view.

I was jerked back down onto the seat when Cam turned the truck onto another road. The houses became more spread out, the people fewer, and again the land opened up to far-reaching fields and expanses of rolling pasture. Beasts, bigger than the sheep but less shaggy, clustered near a muddy stream. Their great black eyes were vacant and lacking in intelligence, but one glance told me they were sturdy creatures who could shatter a dog’s ribs with one well-timed kick of their hooves.

The truck slowed, turned down a bumpy lane like ours at home. A tall white house sat atop a hill at the end of the lane, framed by two enormous trees. Cam’s dad — or Ray, as Lise called him — was standing on the front porch, one hand gripping the handle of his cane, the other clutching an old smoking pipe at his hip.

We rolled to a stop in the generous shade of one of the trees. A haze of dust drifted around us, lit golden by the morning sun. Cam tapped at the switch, and my window lowered.

“Hey, Dad,” he called. “Like my new sidekick?”

Ray emerged through the brown veil of dust and peered into the truck. He was tall and lean like Cam, but with a gaunt face, sunken below his cheekbones, and eyes squinty from years in the sun. The pipe was pinched loosely between his teeth. It bobbed as he twisted his lips in thought. “The two-legged or the four-legged one?”

“The pup, Dad.”

He pulled out the pipe, spit into the dirt, and put the pipe back in. “Kinda scrawny, ain’t she?”

“She’ll grow.” Cam grabbed my collar before I could dodge his reach. He gathered me up, slid out his side, and put me on the ground before wrestling Hunter from his car seat. As soon as Hunter was out of the truck, he raced across the yard to the front door. His grandmother, Estelle, let him in. Ducking my head, I searched beneath the truck.

Beside Ray sat a hulk of mottled gray and black fur. Another dog. He dipped his muzzle to glare at me. Black lips curled in a snarl, and a low growl vibrated deep in his throat. I lowered my belly to the ground and flattened my ears to show my submission. His growl grew louder, until finally Ray tapped him with his wooden cane and told him to hush.

“Well, if’n she don’t,” Ray said, “them small dogs are good in the loading chutes, ‘cause they can get down low and snap at hocks to get ‘em moving. Big dogs ain’t quick enough to get outta the way. But she’s gotta have the attitude to make up for it. Her daddy, Slick here, is the toughest cowdog east of the Rockies. Sure hope she don’t take after her momma. Them show dogs don’t have the sense God gave a —”

“Bit’s a good chore dog, Dad. She does what we need her to.” Cam tugged on my leash until I stood. I considered resisting — I was utterly humiliated by having that rope slung about my neck and had meant to make a point of letting everyone know — but I decided I was better off going where Cam did for now.

Cam gave another pull and I trotted beside him, staying close to his leg for safety. I snuck glances behind me as Ray walked around the truck with Slick just a pace behind. As far as I could tell, the old dog didn’t seem to be watching me. Still, I was wary of him. I was even more wary of Ray’s cane.

Cam’s shin smacked me in the side of the head. I jumped forward, but it was in the wrong direction. Cam stumbled sideways. His foot came down on my paw. I let out a big yelp and he immediately jerked his leg away.

“Sorry, pal.” Stooping over, he looked me sternly in the eye. “I was walking a straight line. Guess you’ll pay better attention now.”

“Say, when’re you starting that new job?” Ray asked as he hobbled by. Slick barely glanced at me as he slunk along in Ray’s shadow.

“Next week. I’m looking forward to it. The commute on the last one was a killer. This one’s just fifteen minutes down the highway. Pay’s the same, but the vacation time and benefits are better.”

“Why didn’t you start this week?”

“Guess I figured you could use some help around here.”

Ray halted in front of the barn, slipped the pipe into his pocket. “I’ve been thinking ... I can’t hold down this place forever. Some days it’s just too much. Been trying to talk Estelle into buying a little house in town, then maybe you and Lise, you know, you could —”

“Dad, that’s generous of you. Really, it is. But it’s just not the life Lise and I want. After all, I’ve seen you struggle in the hard years. I know how a drought can crush all your dreams into dust, or a flash flood can destroy years’ worth of hard work.”

“It’s an honest life, Cameron. God’s work. This country don’t run without farmers and ranchers to feed everybody.”

“I know, Dad. I know. It’s just not for me. I like my work and taking care of a farm is more than a full time job. Plus, Lise and I want to be able to travel someday and —”

“Ain’t nothing stopping you from going places now.”

Cam studied the dirt at his feet. He had a look on his face like there was something stuck in his throat. “Well ... there
could
be, soon. We’re trying for another.”

Wherever this conversation was going they were both uncomfortable with it. The silence that dropped between them was more awkward than the argument they were having only moments ago. Whatever the deal was, Cam needed comforting. I jumped up and braced my front paws against his leg. He reached down as if to brush me away, but I licked at his fingers to let him know I was there. He smoothed the hair on top of my head, tweaked my nose, then glanced around. His eyes seemed to hone in on a large piece of machinery with two great big wheels in the back and two smaller ones up front.