André Alexis - Fifteen Dogs

The murder of the orange bitch was a signal event. After that, it was clear to all that Atticus was serious and that the conspirators wanted what Atticus wanted. It was also clear that the conspirators were a different kind of creature. The attack itself had been ruthless, swift and canine. Admirable, as Benjy thought. But what had preceded it, the offer of exile: why propose such a thing if it were not meant? The orange bitch had taken them at their word and they had murdered her. Why? Benjy could not see the advantage. The bitch had been no threat at all. To him, the decision to kill her had been perverse. And, in the end, it was this perversity that proved the conspirators’ strangeness.

As far as Benjy was concerned, Atticus, being unpredictable, was a danger to them all.

On top of that, with the death of Bobbie, it was clear that he and Dougie were now of lowest status. They were meant, it seemed, to scavenge and to be submissive. This was not necessarily a bad thing. Submissiveness was worth the trouble if one’s submission were rewarded by something valuable: protection, say. It remained to be seen, however, what good would come from Atticus’s reign.

(How quickly the dead pass from mind. Though they had been pack mates, neither Benjy nor Majnoun remembered much about Bobbie, save that her fur had been orange and shaggy and that she had smelled of pine even before they found the coppice. She had once defended Benjy from a mutt that attacked without warning but Benjy did not remember this. At her death, Bobbie imagined she was sinking in deep water, the sensation bringing her back to a moment as a pup when she had nearly drowned. She died in great distress, unconsoled.)

The first days of Atticus’s rule were exceedingly peculiar. Dougie was bitten hard when he inadvertently spoke in the new tongue. Thereafter, Dougie and Benjy were careful never to use words when the others were around. They barked. But this was disorienting. They were forced to imitate what they remembered of their old language. They were, in effect, dogs imitating dogs. This would have been less troubling if the imitation had been done for humans. Most humans cannot tell a benign growl from a growl that prefigures attack. Atticus, however, having demanded that the pack return to the old ways, now constantly judged how Benjy and Dougie were performing ‘as dogs.’ This made everything stranger still. Benjy and Dougie were dogs forced to perform a version of dogness convincing enough to please other dogs who had, to an extent, forgotten what dogness was. Were any of them actually barking or growling in the old way? Neither Benjy nor Dougie ever knew. Nor, of course, could they ask. They would have been bitten — or worse — if they had. Far from becoming more doglike, Benjy could feel himself becoming less so: more self-conscious, more thoughtful, more dependent on a language that he kept to himself. The safest thing was to imitate Atticus as best as one could.

In the beginning, Benjy and Dougie were protected when they went scavenging. One or two of the conspirators always went with them, attacking the occasional dog who stood up to them, watching as the smaller dogs got into places the bigger ones could not. At least for Benjy, it was a relief to discover that there was some purpose to his presence in the pack. He and Dougie were adroit finders of things humans had rejected. During their winter in High Park, the two were especially useful. It was rare for the larger dogs to be admitted to a human home, but Dougie and Benjy could sometimes charm their way in and steal useful things: discarded cushions, pieces of foam, old clothes, a moth-eaten blanket left in a yard, anything to make the coppice more hospitable.

After a while, the conspirators, either through laziness or unconcern, allowed the small dogs to go off on their own so that, as might have been expected, the relationship between Benjy and Dougie evolved into a friendship. At first, Benjy could not stand the schnauzer. The thing he felt most like doing, when he and Dougie were together, was to mount him. Not because he wanted to fuck Dougie. No, the desire to dominate when he himself was dominated was strong and instinctive and belonged to the unquellable depths of himself. At the same time, it was obvious that Dougie also wanted to mount him . None of this was personal. He wished Dougie no ill, and Dougie almost certainly wished him none. Each simply wanted to get on top of the other. And yet it was personal, too. At times, they fought bitterly over who had the right to mount whom. Their disagreements did not, however, affect the others. All of the others, including Rosie, mounted Benjy and Dougie as a matter of course. And both of them bore this because they had to.

Though the coppice was as hospitable as the dogs could make it, the winter in High Park was just short of disaster. The trees and bushes were adequate windbreaks, but the cold was so often unbearable the small dogs were forced to consider escape. One January night, Benjy wondered if he were going to die, so violent were his shivers, so loud the clacking of his teeth. The following morning, he and Dougie set out early, on their own. The other dogs were all asleep. Atticus, Max, the brothers and Rosie lay together on blankets in a warm congregation from which both Benjy and Dougie had been unceremoniously excluded.

On the January morning of their escape, the snow was almost impassable. The familiar world of smells and sounds and landmarks was lost beneath the snowfall. It seemed to the two as if some strange being had taken everything they knew, leaving only whiteness and the indistinct profile of a world they had once known. When they were far enough from the den, Dougie said

— I’m cold. I thought I was going to die.

— Me too, Benjy said. The others do not think about us.

— I believe you, said Dougie. I tried to sleep next to them and the leader bit me. It isn’t right for dogs not to care about dogs.

— They don’t want us, now that the ground isn’t what it was. They would let us die.

— I believe you, said Dougie. What can we do?

— I am going to find a human to let me in. Why don’t we see if there are humans who will take us both?

— Should we tell the others we are going?

— No, answered Benjy. I do not know what would happen.

— I believe you, said Dougie. The leader is strange. It is difficult to know when he will bite, and he bites hard. It will be better if we go on our own.

This decision brought them immediate good fortune. Making their way out of the park by Wendigo Pond, Dougie and Benjy trudged through the snow along Ellis Park Road. There, they were seen and hailed by an old woman.

— Here, doggies! Here, doggies!

Both recognized the tone but they were wary. For as many kindnesses as they’d had from perky summoners, there had been bewildering cruelties: stones thrown, beatings with sticks. They were desperate, however. They were cold and hungry. So they made their way toward her. A good choice, as it happened, because the woman had recently lost two of her six cats and her innate sympathy for all animals was heightened. When they entered her kitchen, she set down two bowls of cat food. And though the food smelled like fish and cinders, it was good.

That winter, Dougie and Benjy had shelter. They were well-fed and they were let out into a yard whenever they liked. The woman and her cats, however, were a kind of trial they endured together. To take the cats first: yes, Benjy and Dougie felt an antipathy toward the creatures. As far as Benjy was concerned, no reasonable being could feel otherwise. He was prepared to live in peace, but the cats that slunk about the old woman’s home were more pernicious than the usual felines: hissing constantly, arching their backs as if making themselves bigger could intimidate, jumping up and down with their claws out. They would not live in peace.