Robert Calder - The Dogs

When the bitch returned them to the den after an hour's play, they squeezed together in exhaustion and went immediately to sleep, soundly, and for a long time. The bitch was then free awhile, to relax, to run.

She didn't worry overmuch. If they woke, they'd call for her, growing querulous if she didn't answer, but they wouldn't brave the outside world without her. A few days ago the biggest one, the dominant pup who looked like Orph, growing daily bolder and more aggressive, had climbed the tunnel to the mouth and emerged into the sunlight blinking and immensely pleased with himself. But the bitch seized him by the scruff of his neck and lifted him off the ground and shook him furiously, growling, until he screamed in terror. Then she brought him back down and left him to cower with his litter mates He had not courted such cataclysm again.

This morning, the pups played themselves silly after they breakfasted and wearily allowed her to shepherd them back into the burrow without protest.

They promptly fell asleep. The bitch padded restlessly up and down the treeline with the males, who were ready to set off hunting. She whined. She missed the tension of the stalk, the thrill of the pursuit, the heart-pounding frenzy of the kill. She had been shackled to the burrow an unendurably long time. Orph was unhappy with her distress. He circled the clearing, looking at the burrow, at the woods, nuzzling the bitch. The black and the spotted were waiting.

Orph moved into the trees with them.

The bitch watched them go. She could stand it no longer. She barked.

They stopped and turned. She barked again. Orph answered. She ran to them. She butted muzzles with all of them in a nervous round. The spotted dog yipped and went racing away. The bitch shot after him.

They ran with flat bodies in a wide fast circle, tearing up the ground with their nails. Orph and the black joined the game. They raced, they leapt over dead falls plunged into the brush in a follow-the-leader game. The bitch was exhilarated. Her spirit infected them. When they finally stopped, they panted happily with long tongues hanging.

Orph began to cast for a scent. He found something of interest and angled off between a pair of dead gray trunks. The other males followed. The bitch hesitated, anxious, then launched herself after them: to hunt, to run, to be free-until the twin ties of time and distance that bound her to the burrow stretched too taut and brought her back to her litter again.

Bauer wrestled up from the twisted sheets sweat soaked and chilled, wrenching toward consciousness, hearing himself cry: "I didn't do anything.

God I didn't!"

His cheeks ran with tears. His breath sobbed.

He sat in the early Sunday stillness with his arms wrapped around himself, feeling the bewildered, annihilating agony of a child whipped for no reason it can understand.

The dream had vanished, leaving only the sickening residue of emotion.

He closed his eyes and tried to empty himself of feeling.

He rose and went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, toweled the sweat from his torso.

Santo DiGiovanni's letter was on his dresser. He unfolded it and read it again.

I tried to find what was right, and I failed, old man.

I tried to explain, Ursula, but I couldn't find the way.

Orph, I could not see you, only what I wanted in you.

Suddenly, he ripped DiGiovanni's letter to pieces and hurled them away.

"But I didn't shoot those poor black bastards."

He swung his arm across the dresser top knocking off wallet and change and crashing a lamp to fragments on the floor.

"You bitch! I didn't walk out on you when you needed me! I didn't condemn you for my own disappointments."

He spun to the window, through which the hump of a mountain was visible.

"And you-I didn't repay your love by tearing your son's face apart."

He balled his hand into a fist. His forearm trembled. He hammered his fist against the wall. "You bastards!.. Bastards!..

Bastardsl" He wept in rage and grief.

He leaned his head against the wall and rested. He dressed. He made breakfast. He sat in the living room, drinking coffee. His camp gear was laid out along a wall. He looked at it.

Am I going? he thought.

He wondered if he had been enacting a hollow drama for himself.

Should I go?

For a moment, a sense of Orph loomed over him, a nearly palpable presence.

He was drawn into it, felt the pull of the inevitable.

He shook it off.

The presence subsided, but would not disappear, lingered as a soft murmur in his awareness.

He smiled. That's my good boy. Yes. You were true to your own self, you were false to no man. Ahh, Orph.

Wind scraped a branch against the house.

You never sought to hurt anyone. Do I come for you, Orph, or do I wish you long life, your life, your way, with your kind?

The wind gathered strength, coming down the mountain from the north, and increased its velocity as it swept unobstructed through the channel of the valley, and struck the house like a blow, making it shudder and rattling the windows.

They skipped sunrise meditation and set right to breakfast, then most everyone piled into the van and headed off toward Wintergreen. The theater department was staging a medieval fair on campus. Ed and Billy had helped carpenter booths, Josie had sewn pennants and made costumes.

Billy was going to wander the grounds as the ascetic monk leader of a heretical sect. Pancho would play his flute as a strolling musician.

The fair had received generous attention in newspapers and on radio-even a jousting tournament with papier-mache lances was planned-and it looked as if the turnout would be large. It promised to be great fun.

Only Harriet and her son Hero, both of whom disliked crowds and noisy bustle, and Ed and Josie remained. Josie had menstrual cramps and a headache. Ed preferred to work in the garden awhile and then just lie around in the sun.

Harriet packed sandwiches, an apple, and some rock candy into a bag and at midmorning set out with Hero to wander in the woods. They tramped aimlessly, Hero listening with interest while Harriet named trees and flowers for him and told him stories of the Indians who used to live here long ago, and how they loved the land and lived in peace with it.

Eventually they began to follow the course of a small stream, walking up the gradual incline of the lower mountain shoulder along the banks, where the going was easier. Hero threw stones in the water and floated sticks on it. They snuck up on deep pools and Hero was able to catch sight of trout hanging suspended with slowly beating fins before the fish saw them and darted off.

The big pup woke up yawning. He hadn't napped long, but he wasn't tired. He lay quietly a few minutes, then tried to rouse the other pups. They groaned and rolled over. He succeeded in waking only one, a female, and she was crochety and bit him on the foot, then crawled to the other side of her litter mates and promptly went to sleep again.

The big pup nosed around the burrow awhile, but he knew each part intimately and it no longer held any fascination for him. He stretched out and gnawed on an old bone. There wasn't much taste left in it and he wasn't hungry anyway and digging his new teeth in stopped pleasuring his gums shortly so he pushed the bone aside. He grew bored. He tried the other pups again but none would wake. He crawled halfway up the burrow and began to call for his mother. She didn't answer. He worked himself into a loud fit of self-pity, and close after that, indignation. He moved closer to the den mouth. And then he became excited. He could see out the hole, to an immensity of interesting things, and he was overcome with lust for the outside. He trembled, recalling the terrible punishment his first independent venture had brought him. He edged closer, stopped just short of the mouth and yelled until he reached a pitch that had him shaking all over. He poked his head out, ready to duck back instantly if his mother rushed him, and yipped inquisitively.