André Alexis - Fifteen Dogs

Naturally, this all contributed to Benjy’s feeling that he was in control.

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In total, Benjy spent six months with Randy and Clare, neither a long time nor a short one.

In the weeks immediately preceding his death, his life was just this side of perfect. He had the run of a house. Clare worked during the day on most days. Randy stayed at home but spent much of his time in the living room before the television, out of Benjy’s way. When he remembered Benjy or if Benjy prompted him, he would put food down in a bowl — human food, mostly — or let him out the front door so Benjy could relieve himself on the lawn. Otherwise, Benjy was left to his own devices. This was more than a dog of his size and stature could have hoped for: food, a den with humans he could manipulate or evade, and an outside world that was not threatening. If it is possible to grow feral through an excess of civilization, then Benjy grew feral. Ignoring his instincts, abandoning his natural caution, confusing self-indulgence for dominance, losing himself in the twists and turns of his own calculations, he lost sight of the true indicators of dominance.

Randy and Clare should not have been a puzzle to Benjy. They were not complex. What they were was inconsiderate, crooked and above all selfish. In a word, they were very like Benjy himself. When, five months after taking Benjy in, Clare lost her job, the two were three months in arrears on their rent. Randy refused to work at anything that did not involve his ‘profession.’ (He thought of himself as a musician, though he was actually, from time to time, a roadie. In fact, he did not like music and, being almost proudly shiftless, he had been fired by every band he had ever managed to work for.) Clare, peeved, refused to look for work until he did. Their impasse was unpleasant and tense, but the two agreed on one thing: they would abandon the house rather than pay the rent they owed. In the middle of an October night, taking only what they wanted — and what would fit in their Pontiac Sunbird — they would leave Toronto for Syracuse, where Randy’s brother lived.

And so, Benjy’s death began sotto voce . The trees had changed colour. Along Rhodes, the leaves on the branches that hung over the street were orange and yellow. Nothing unusual about that. Clare was home during the day, but that was no threat to Benjy’s routine, so he thought nothing of it. Randy and Clare began to put things in cardboard boxes, but the things they packed held no significance for Benjy, so he was unimpressed. A tension crept into Randy’s and Clare’s voices. Benjy noticed the change in their demeanour, but as he now thought himself pack leader, it would have been beneath him to acknowledge the shift.

To their credit, on the night they stole away, Randy and Clare tried to take Benjy with them. They had quietly loaded the Sunbird with pots, pans, clothes and lamps. Around one in the morning, when they were ready to leave, they tried to coax Benjy out from under the bed. He refused to follow them. Clare pled their case, but Benjy did not respect Clare. In fact, he was deaf to any counsel but his own.

— Leave the little twerp right there, said Randy. We’ve got to go.

— We can’t leave Benny. He’ll starve.

— No, he won’t. Menzies’ll find him. Besides, I’m tired of his pissing on the pillows.

Clare sighed.

— Stupid dog, she said.

They left the light on in the kitchen. They put down a bowl of water and a bowl of pasta and tuna for the dog. Then they left for their new lives. Clare wept as they walked away from what had been, for five whole years, their home.

The sound of Clare’s crying troubled Benjy’s dreams. He felt something of her emotion and, roused from sleep, he lifted his head and breathed in. All smelled as it should have and the house was quiet, so he settled back into a dream of quick rats.

The following day, Benjy woke early. Sometime in the night, he had climbed onto the bed. Had he noticed the humans were not there with him? He certainly noticed in the morning. He was alone at the head of a bed without sheets, the light of an autumn morning coming through the now uncurtained bedroom window. He jumped down and cautiously explored the house, the only sounds being the loud hum of the fridge, the clicking of his nails on wood (bedroom, living room, dining room), linoleum (kitchen), ceramic tile (bathroom). There were also the sounds from outside: cars, mostly, and distant voices.

For the first time in a while, Benjy called out Randy’s name.

— Rrr-andy!

The sound did not quite echo, but it held in the air a little longer than usual. It was as if words persisted when there were no humans around to hear them. He was not upset. Randy and Clare had not got his permission to leave. They would return. He ate a few bites of pasta and tuna, drank from his water bowl, then returned to the bed. He peed in the place on the bed where Randy’s pillow should have been before going back to sleep.

That was, more or less, how the first days passed. Benjy slept, padded about, drank from his bowl (and then the toilet), waited. The days were measured by the slowed passage of time, by darkness and by light. But as time passed, he grew more and more hungry. The first morning, Benjy had been less than thrilled to find pasta and tuna in his bowl. He’d nevertheless eaten every bit by the end of the day. By the end of the second day, he had licked the bowl so clean there was no hint of tuna left on the porcelain. From that moment, the house became a place in which to search for food.

The fridge, so fascinating when Randy or Clare opened it, was inaccessible to him. He understood how the door opened. He could put his paw on the magnetized strip — the indentation — between the body of the fridge and its door. What he could not do was open the door. He could not get a proper angle or produce the necessary torque when standing directly in front of the door. The kitchen cupboards were at first as inaccessible as the fridge, but Benjy hit on the idea of pushing a chair over to the counter. He jumped onto the chair, then onto the countertop. Standing up on the countertop, he was able to open the cupboard doors. Little good that did him, though. He could smell a number of things, but the bottom shelf of the cupboard was all he could reach. For all his trouble, the only things he managed to knock down were an opened bag of uncooked macaroni and a can of mushroom soup.

He ate the macaroni at once but the can of soup was no more than a toy to bat around.

The third and fourth days were dire. All speculation about dominance or dignity stopped. He understood at last that he had been abandoned — he knew it — and although the thought wounded him he put it aside. There was still water when he flushed the toilet. That was good. But he grew desperate for something solid. Remembering words that Majnoun had taught him, words that humans always responded to (said Majnoun), Benjy went to the front door and cried out.

— Help me! Help me!

For what seemed like days, he cried the words out. He spoke the words clearly and he was heard by a number of pedestrians. Unfortunately, circumstances conspired against the dog. To begin with, it was Halloween. Along Rhodes Avenue, a number of houses were done up in ghastly fashion. There were pumpkins on ledges, witches and zombies on lawns and porches. Some of the witches cackled as one approached them. Some of the zombies groaned loudly and moved their outstretched arms up and down. Given all that, Benjy’s high-pitched calls for help were not alarming. Of those who heard his cries, a good number took his words for a witty reference to an old film in which a man is transformed into a fly.

It would have been better had Benjy simply barked. The sound of a dog in distress would not have amused anyone.