The Fast and the Furriest (4 page)

Another click and the note went off to the Paw Patch proprietors, possibly to the creepy pirate herself. Kevin then fell back in his chair and yawned. He looked over at Cromwell, curled into a tight ball of brown and white fur, snoring softly.

“The things I do for you, Cromwell.”

The clock read 2:37 a.m.

Kevin sleepily wheeled himself to the bedroom door in his rolling desk chair, wishing he could glide all the way to the kitchen. Instead, he slowly stood up
and walked downstairs, occasionally disturbing one of the old house’s floorboards. He flipped on the kitchen lights, poured a large serving of Peanut Butter S’more Crunch cereal into a bowl—he didn’t have the energy for the three-cereal blend—and then filled the bowl with chocolate milk.

“Hello, my old friend,” he said, greeting the snack with a smile.

Kevin snatched a serving spoon from a drawer, then carried the cereal back to his room, milk sloshing onto the floor as he climbed the stairs. He placed the bowl on his desk, lowered his face to the rim, and began to eat.

“Mmmm.”

As he wiped chocolate milk from the corners of his mouth, a small pinging noise caught his attention. Kevin looked up at his computer screen. An icon was blinking in the lower right corner. He brought up his in-box.

From: [email protected]

Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2:38 AM

To: [email protected]

Subject: Thank you for your interest in Paw Patch, Inc.

Dear Mr. Cromwell,

I salute you. Through either unfettered enthusiasm or subtle manipulation, you have led Kevin to Paw
Patch. A wise choice. You are a discerning pupil. Our summer session starts on Wednesday. You may visit us anytime. Full sessions are $200. I look forward to our meeting.

Also, if you would be so kind, please inform Kevin that his interest in my program is not optional.

Elka

    Kevin had stopped chewing. Milk dripped from his chin onto the desk.

“Psyyy-cho,” he said quietly. “Who e-mails a
dog
in the middle of the night?”

Kevin finished the cereal and pushed the empty bowl aside.

Then again
, he thought,
who sends an e-mail on behalf of their dog in the middle of the night?

Kevin shut down his computer and wheeled himself over to his bed. He pulled back the Bears comforter and crawled in.

Cromwell produced a sequence of low, dreamy woofs and squirmed a bit.

“We’ll check her out, though, Crom.” Kevin smiled at his dog. “
If
you’re still possessed.” Kevin yawned. “But it’s probably just a phase.”

A
fter the initial late-night e-mail exchange, Elka continued to write … but only to Cromwell. She asked that he—the dog—relay messages to Kevin.

When the Wednesday in question arrived, Kevin buckled Cromwell into an old bike stroller and latched the contraption to his eighteen-speed. Kevin would have walked, but he was afraid he’d wear out Cromwell and render him completely unimpressive.

After picking up Zach, he, Kevin, and Cromwell rode to a rather industrial-looking stretch of North Clark Street, stopping halfway so that Kevin could get a snow cone and Mr. Pibb. Zach purchased a lime Push Pop and a Yoo-hoo. They arrived at Paw Patch just after ten a.m., sticky from Popsicle residue. The building’s exterior didn’t exactly suggest
that there were happy, well-trained dogs within. It seemed more like a place where people sent their old machinery to be repaired. Or a place where prisoners were tortured. Either way, it didn’t scream “cute, cuddly dogs inside.”

But it was definitely the right place. There were black letters affixed to the building’s metal door:

“Just as spooky as its owner, really,” said Zach. “Maybe she does have a peg leg.”

Kevin gulped. He was unusually nervous. He removed Cromwell from the stroller and dropped him onto the sidewalk. Cromwell wagged his tail, sniffed the air, and barked.

“Good boy,” said Kevin.

Cromwell barked again.

Kevin locked up his bike to a nearby rack, then pushed hard on the building’s front door. It creaked open reluctantly.

Cromwell shot inside like a hairy, overweight bullet, with Kevin chasing after him.

Kevin and Zach went down a narrow, dark hallway. Kevin smelled the distinct scent of dog, but
didn’t hear any barking. Cromwell sniffed excitedly at the dirty linoleum floor and pressed on. He dragged Kevin behind him and pawed at another metal door. Kevin slowly turned the knob.

A high-pitched, gleeful noise emerged from Cromwell’s brown and white mouth.

“Whoa,” said Zach quietly, looking around.

An enormous white room was lined with airplane-hangar-size windows. Fluorescent lights glowed at the top of forty-foot ceilings. Green AstroTurf covered the floor. It reminded Kevin a bit of a Bears practice facility that he’d once toured with his dad, except that no one was shouting obscenities at sulking athletes.

Instead, a row of dogs were sitting obediently in front of similarly obedient owners. Kevin’s eyes stopped on an icy-looking woman in a steel gray business suit standing behind a pristinely groomed King Charles spaniel. Next to her, a woman in apple green overalls stood at attention, her shaggy golden retriever wearing a bandanna that matched her overalls. Everyone’s eyes were open wide, but no one was looking at Kevin or Cromwell. Their gazes were fixed on the bizarre figure at the head of the class.

Elka Brandt stood in the center of the room on a low platform. She had on a headscarf with a wild
print—a babushka, as Kevin’s grandmother would have called it. She wore weathered military-style boots that approached her knees, khaki shorts, and many bracelets on her arms. Surrounding her were neatly sequenced obstacles: a seesaw, pylons, wooden hurdles, a windmill, a series of plastic rings much lower to the ground than the tire swing, a kiddie pool, a long nylon tube, and a ramp.

Cromwell whined anxiously. Kevin cleared his throat, but Elka spoke first.

“Hello, Cromwell.” She squinted at the dog.

Cromwell whined louder and wagged his tail frantically.

“Um … hello,” offered Kevin.

Elka smiled.

“You’re late,” she said. “This class begins promptly at ten o’clock.”

“Sorry,” Kevin said softly, wiping snow cone residue from his hand onto his shirt. “There was … um … I had to stop. And I’m just here to watch. We’ll stay out of your way—”

But Cromwell was apparently not in a stay-out-of-the-way sort of mood. He lunged forward suddenly, which caused Kevin to drop the leash. Cromwell ran onto the green turf, up the ramp, through the kiddie pool, into the tube—which rolled no less than six feet with Cromwell inside—and then
hopped through the rings. The leash bounced behind him.

“Cromwell!” shouted a horrified Kevin.

Elka seemed undisturbed. The other dogs and their owners kept still. Eerily still. Statue-still. Cromwell woofed and ran for the seesaw. Elka watched from her platform with a bemused expression. Cromwell raced up the seesaw eagerly, but when it began to tip, he tried to stop. And he wasn’t any good at stopping. He rolled off, landed on his back, and let out a small, frightened cry. Then he backed up against the slowly turning windmill. Having no miniature windmills in his natural environment, Cromwell was startled.

So startled, in fact, that he knocked the wooden structure over with his meaty behind, then ran for his owner.

Kevin raced toward the dog, but stepped on a tiny hurdle that cracked under his weight. His ankle rolled and he fell to the AstroTurf, where he emitted a helpless
“Waaaahh!”

Cromwell climbed on top of him. The dog whined, then licked Kevin’s face, then whined again.

Elka clapped lightly.

Kevin cleared his throat. A youngish guy with crispy hair and an oversized polo shirt did his best to hide a laugh, but couldn’t quite manage to. Even his schnauzer seemed to be smiling. Zach’s amusement
was more obvious. He was laughing so hard, he wasn’t making any real sounds.

Kevin turned to Elka and, not quite looking at her, said, “Um … very sorry.” Every inch of him was producing cold, nervous sweat. The windmill lay on its back, its arms still slowly churning. “Totally, completely sorry. This is clearly not for us.”

“Well, it’s definitely for Cromwell,” said Elka. “He was brilliant.” She smiled and nodded at the dog. “You, Mr. Pugh, are a different story.” Elka gave him a firm, disapproving glance and adjusted her babushka.

Kevin looked toward his dog—his energetic, ambitious dog—and realized that getting thwacked in the face by a kickball in front of his dad’s coworkers wasn’t actually his lowest moment. Being shown up by his blob of a dog was much, much worse.

“I could … um …” Kevin cleared his throat and rubbed his ankle. “I could clean up the mess over there.”

“No, no,” said Elka. “Mr. Brockman will restore the course.” She shot a severe look at the curly-haired guy, who recoiled, then hurried onto the green turf to rearrange the obstacles.

“Are you injured?” Elka asked Kevin.

“No,” Kevin said softly. “I don’t think so.” He placed Cromwell on the ground, then sheepishly
stood up. He felt an urge to flee. “I suppose you wouldn’t mind if we just, um …”

“If you stayed?” said Elka, locking eyes with him. “Please, gentlemen. I
insist
upon it.” She clapped her hands once and smiled warmly at Cromwell.

“But do try not to hurt yourself, Mr. Pugh.”

F
or the remainder of the class, Kevin maintained a tight, unrelenting death grip on his dog’s leash. He was like a mountain climber holding a rope. Cromwell seemed spellbound by the parade of leaping dogs. Kevin was no less impressed, but he also felt anxious and humiliated. When the class ended—despite his amazement at the talents of the various humans and canines—Kevin and Zach bolted. He later e-mailed Elka, both to thank her and to repeat his apology. Elka replied (again to the dog) and complimented Cromwell on his effort.

In the days that followed, it became perfectly clear that Cromwell was obsessed with agility. It was not merely a phase, but an addiction. He dropped his leash at Kevin’s feet constantly. He ran phantom
courses in the backyard. He lodged himself in the tire swing daily. It was mid-June and oppressively hot, but not even a series of 100-degree days could stop the dog. At times, Kevin would simply sit in a lawn chair, spraying himself with the hose, while Cromwell made run after failed run at the tire swing. Zach accompanied them on what Kevin felt were murderously long walks. At Montrose Beach, Crom well ran through obstacle courses that Kevin constructed from abandoned tin pails and shovels; in Horner Park, the dog routinely broke free of his leash and tore through picnics and volleyball games; on the lakefront path, he chased bikes and terrorized pigeons. (Or maybe he just amused them. Tough to tell with pigeons.) He was an entirely new—and an unrelentingly active—Cromwell Pugh.

Kevin knew that they should really commit to Paw Patch. If they were going to keep up the dog agility nonsense, Cromwell needed more direction than Kevin alone could provide. All that remained was to convince his parents, who, Kevin figured, had always wanted him to be sportier anyway.

But Howie was a skeptic.

“Okay, just so I’m clear,” he said over breakfast on Sunday morning, “you want me and your mother to pay for a class for Cromwell …”

“And me,” said Kevin. “I’m in the class, too.”

“Sorry. And you,” acknowledged his dad. “We pay for a class where Cromwell
and you
get trained. But it’s not sit–stay–fetch–roll over training? Or clean-your-room training? It’s jump-through-a-hoop-and-leap-over-tiny-fences training?”

Howie, chewing, stared at his son across a plate of waffles. Each square on each waffle was filled with an equal volume of syrup.

“Yup,” Kevin said.

“Cromwell’s not going to start fetching things, though?” Howie continued, a waffle fleck flying from his mouth. “This is like dog show training?”

“Um, no.” Kevin cleared his throat. “No, we won’t be competing or anything. But it would make Cromwell happier.”

“He’s been depressed?” Howie asked before putting a perfect square bite into his mouth.

Cromwell was sniffing the floor for breakfast droppings, wagging his tail and occasionally pouncing on a speck of something.

“Well, no. Not depressed. But he hasn’t really moved for the last few years. Now he’s like a brand-new dog.” Kevin could sense that his argument was getting thinner.

“And without a single class.” Howie spoke and chewed simultaneously. “Why can’t you two just keep up the walks? Let the dog keep whackin’ himself in the head with the tire in the backyard or whatever.”

Kevin folded his arms across his Cubs jersey. “If Izzy wants to sign up for soccer in Malaysia, it’s no problem. We’ll get vaccinated against six diseases and book a flight. I want to sign up for dog training in Wrigleyville and you’re like, ‘No way.’”

“Listen, I didn’t say ‘No way.’” Howie paused. “You know I’m happy to pay for anything you’re into—but
you
, not the dog.” He speared a strawberry, swirled it in whipped cream, and then scooped up a waffle chunk and rammed the fork in his mouth. “And c’mon. You can’t compare Cromwell jumping over stuff to Izzy’s soccer.”

“Why can’t I?” Kevin insisted.

“Because soccer’s a sport—not a particularly American sport, I’ll grant you. It doesn’t involve much scoring or violence,” Kevin’s dad continued. “But there is
some
scoring, and there’s fake violence. More importantly, it has a ball.”

Kevin’s eyes widened.
“What?”

“Soccer is played with a ball, Kevin,” Howie explained. “All sports involve balls. They can be kicked or thrown, doesn’t matter.”

Kevin stared at his dad for a moment, dumbfounded.

“So,” he said at last, “surfing is not a sport?”

“Negatory, Kev. It’s an exhibition,” Howie declared.

“How about fencing? Or bull-riding? Or ice-skating?”

“Nope, nope, and heck no. Ice-skating? C’mon, Kev. You’re gonna make me ill over here.” Kevin’s dad made wet smacking sounds as he chewed.