Carolyn Parkhurst - The Dogs of Babel

Finally, I reach the pound. I park my car and go inside. There’s a young woman sitting at the front desk. She looks like a kind person. She’s wearing a name tag that says Grace.

“Hello,” she says when I approach the desk. She smiles at me. “Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” I say. “I heard from the police that they brought some dogs in last night. I think my dog might be one of them.”

“Oh,” she says, her face falling a little. “You mean the dogs from the animal abuse case?”

“Yes.”

“That’s such a terrible story. I’m glad they’ve arrested those guys. If you could see what they’ve done to some of these…” She trails off. “I’m sorry. What kind of dog is your dog?”

“A Rhodesian Ridgeback. A female. Her name is Lorelei.”

“That’s pretty. We do have a female Ridgeback. I don’t know if it’s the right one—there weren’t any tags or collars on any of the dogs. But she’s a real sweetheart. I was sitting with her most of the morning. We’ve become pals.”

“Is she okay?” I ask.

Grace looks down. “Well, she’s… she’s okay, don’t worry, she’s going to be fine. But they did some surgery on her. We had our vet examine her this morning, and it appears that…” She looks up into my eyes. “They removed her larynx.”

“Oh, God,” I say. “Oh, God.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But it’s not so bad. She’s recovering fine. The vet said the surgery was done really well, if that’s any comfort. She’s going to be fine. She just won’t be able to bark or anything.”

My eyes are filling with tears. “She won’t be able to talk,” I say. And suddenly I laugh at how ridiculous it sounds.

Grace smiles uncertainly, but when she speaks, her voice is gentle. “No,” she says. “She won’t be able to talk.”

I nod and bow my head, willing the tears to stop running down my cheeks.

“Oh,” Grace says. “Oh. Don’t cry.” She stands up, plucking a few tissues from a box in front of her, and walks around to stand beside me on the other side of the desk. She puts her hand on my arm and squeezes it lightly. “It’s okay,” she says, handing me a tissue. “It’s okay.”

She gives me a moment to pull myself together. I wipe my face and blow my nose, ashamed to be behaving this way in front of a stranger.

“Shall we go take a look,” she says, “and see if this is your dog, after all?”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

She leads me through a locked door into a corridor full of cages. It reminds me, sadly, of the kennels at Remo’s house. Dogs jump up on the bars of their cages, yelping and barking as we walk past. I can see that some of them are hurt, their wounds dressed with clean white bandages.

“She’s in the second-to-last cage on the right,” Grace says.

I quicken my steps, looking ahead, trying to see into the right cage. And then I’m in front of the cage, and there she is, my sweet Lorelei, my sweet puppy dog. She’s lying down in the back of the cage, but when she sees me, she jumps up and leaps into the air, spinning her body around in a circle. She propels herself toward me with great force, landing with her front paws propped high on the bars. She looks me right in the face. I can see that her throat is freshly bandaged. She makes a sound, sort of an empty whistling whine, like the sound of air rushing through a hollow reed. I put my fingers through the bars, and she licks them furiously.

“Lorelei,” I say. “What a good girl! What a good girl! I’m so sorry, girl.” I laugh as she sticks her tongue through the bars, trying to reach my face.

Grace is smiling. “I’m guessing this is the right dog,” she says.

I smile back, feeling happier than I have in some time. “Yes,” I say. “This is the right dog.”

I take Lorelei home with me, back to our little house. I give her her dinner and check her bandages, according to the vet’s instructions. Afterward, she settles down in her favorite corner and falls into a deep sleep, her paws twitching and jerking as she dreams. I wonder if her dreams, such as they are—I suppose I’ll never know, after all—have been changed by what she’s been through. As she lies here safe in our living room is she dreaming of men with knives, men who lock her in cages and make her throat burn like acid? Why would they do this to her, these men whose goal was to enable dogs to speak? And then, suddenly, it hits me, and I feel so sick I have to sit down. It’s because of me. I remember now that Remo and Lucas looked at me when the police broke through the door. They knew I was responsible for leading them there, unwitting fool that I was. It was all my fault. And they couldn’t silence me, so they silenced her. Whether they meant it as a message to me—did they know they’d get caught?—or whether they simply wanted to take their revenge on her, I don’t know. But it’s my fault, just as everything seems to be my fault, and I don’t know how I’ll ever make it up to her.

Lorelei begins to make noises in her sleep, gaspy, wheezing sounds that might have been yelps at another time in her life. I kneel beside her and stroke her flank until she jerks awake and stares at me with wide, unrecognizing eyes.

“Shh, girl,” I say. “It’s okay.” She sighs and puts her head down again, settling into a quieter sleep.

A few days later, Lorelei and I head back to the animal shelter for a follow-up visit with the vet who examined her throat. On our way out, Grace at the desk calls us over.

“I was hoping to see you guys,” she says, coming around the counter and stooping to say hello to Lorelei. “The police sent over some collars they found at—well, you know, at the crime scene. One of them might be Lorelei’s. Do you want to take a look?”

“Sure,” I say. “I’d like to get that back. She’s had it practically since she was a puppy.”

Grace retrieves a cardboard box from underneath the desk and sets it before me.

“You can just look through them,” she says.

I begin to sort through the collars. There are thirty or forty of them, nylon collars, leather collars, collars sparkling with rhinestones. One of them has the name Oliver spelled out in silver dog biscuits. It seems very sad to me. All of these dogs had owners who loved them, and not all of them were as lucky as Lorelei and I were. Finally, I spot Lorelei’s thick leather collar. It’s buckled into a circle, as if it were still on her neck. I pull it out of the box.

I unbuckle the collar and turn it over. I can see that there are words written in felt-tip pen across the underside, and a sudden jolt runs through my body when I see them. It’s Lexy’s handwriting. It takes me a minute to make sense of it. What it says. What it says is this: You are my finest knight.

I feel my breath nearly stop, and I feel the world nearly stop, and I sink down to the floor and hide my face in Lorelei’s bare neck. I whisper into her fur and thank her for telling me what she’s known all along.

I look up at Grace. “My late wife… ,” I say. “I never knew… I just never knew.”

I stay on the floor with Lorelei for a few moments more. I hold on to her, solid and warm as a rock in the sun, until I’m ready to stand up and fasten her collar around her neck and take her home again.

When we get into the house, I go directly to my study. I understand now, I think I do, what I’m supposed to be looking for. And there it is, and I can’t believe I never saw it before.

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