My dog was out there somewhere, but goddammit, he wouldn't come to me. I peered carefully into the expanse of trees, standing at the edge of where the lawn changed to a jumble of leaves and weeds. Shadows stood like silhouettes, pasted on top of each other. My little dachshund was in there somewhere - a long, low patch of dark brown with a sheen like oil, hidden in the black woods. Tears started to prick my throat and my heart pounded harder as I listened vainly for any noise, any sound. The leash hung from my right hand, the collar still clipped to the end. No jingle of metal to give him away. When I tried to call him, my voice sounded thin and weak - the whiny sound of a scared kid. It wasn't the woods I was scared of. He could stay in there all night if he wanted to. But on the other side of the patch of woods, there was another fence and, beyond that, a road where I could see cars rolling by with an incessant drone, broken occasionally by the rumble of trucks and their headlights the size of dinner plates. The fence that stood at the edge of the treeline had come loose from the earth, the metal tines curled up, pointing to the sky. I had slid under there coming home from middle school many times. If I could get under there, so could my dog.
When we were inside, he always came to me. He loved to wrestle or play games where I'd pin him on his back, or trap him under the table or chase him from the living room through the front hall and around to the kitchen, his back legs scrabbling on the linoleum as he tried to negotiate the turns. When I pulled him into bed at night, he'd stare at me with his wet chocolate eyes. What's in your head? I'd ask him. Of course I did my best not to hurt him, but he was solid and strong and he never bit me back, even when things got a little rough.
I finally took a step into the woods, the darkness falling over me like a hood. At the same moment, noise burst from my left beyond the edge of the house - the little dog charged out of the shrubs, kicking up a tiny cyclone of twigs and leaves. I pivoted and raced toward him. At the same moment, he turned to me. We closed the gap in a matter of seconds. Racing towards me, his mouth dropped open into a massive grin with his tongue trailing along the side of his face. Our eyes locked. I fell to a knee and opened my arms. And then he turned - a sharp, hard turn to my left - the kind of turn only a creature with six inch legs could make. I grabbed at him and missed, falling forward. Getting to my feet, chasing him around the edge of the house toward the front, I started to shout. I wanted to fall on him, knock him off balance, throttle him, hug him, carry him inside and wrap him in blankets so tightly he wouldn't be able to get away again.
I sprinted into the front yard and he was already leaving me behind. Like a race horse, he charged forward, his shoulders and hindquarters rippling in the chilly air - 10 feet ahead, then 20 - the gap was widening. Ahead of him, pools of electric light warmed the surface of the street. Beyond that, house after house robed in black. Pools of shadows yawned like pits - an eternity of places for my little dog to hide. Panic broke over me and tears burned in my eyes.
And then, as if waiting for his cue, a massive creature slipped out of the night and under the streetlamp - a huge, black dog standing like a living shadow framed in yellow.
My dog cleared the curb at a dead run and charged the giant. The big dog blinked at him as he rced up and then began to sniff - sniffling and whuffling his way around the giant and then rolling onto his back, legs up, eyes wide. I snuck up and slipped the collar back on, but he never even looked at me. And he wouldn't get up until the black dog planted a snort in the center of his barrel chest and walked away, back to the shadows where his owner waited.
My dog got out plenty of times over the years - sometimes he slipped his collar, sometimes he got through the front door before I had shut the screen. But I didn't chase him anymore and I didn't raise my voice. As my little dog escaped into the brush, I just walked over to my neighbor's house, asked permission to walk that old black dog and took him down the center of the street so the streetlights picked us out from the shadows. Eventually, my dog would come to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment