{ SEVENTEEN }

Cars are fast.

I never really knew this. Back home, before Marshmallow went away, she used to run down into the street, barking at cars, and they usually stopped, or at least slowed down enough that she could catch them, though all she ever did at that point was veer off and pretend she never wanted to attack them in the first place.

As I ran after the boy’s car, I had the sense that it was pulling farther and farther away from me. The scent of dust and exhaust grew thin and tenuous, but I picked up a clear sign of a right turn where the road became pavement, though after that I wasn’t sure I could smell him at all. But I couldn’t give up; I turned myself over to the mindless panic and continued my pursuit.

Ahead of me I heard the loud rumble of a train, clanking and shaking, and when I topped a rise and saw it I finally caught a whiff of the boy. His car, windows down, was parked on the road at the train crossing.

I was exhausted. I had never run so far or so fast in my life, but I ran harder still when the side door opened and the boy stood up.

“Oh, Bailey,” he said.

While every part of me wanted to tackle him and be loved, I wasn’t going to miss my chance, and I veered from him at the last second and bounded into the car.

“Bailey!” Mom laughed.

I licked them both, forgiving them for forgetting me. After the train passed, Mom started the car and turned it around, then stopped because Grandpa showed up in his truck—maybe he was coming home with us this time!

“Like a rocket,” Grandpa said. “Hard to believe he got this far.”

“How long would you have gone, huh, Bailey? You doodle dog,” Ethan told me affectionately.

It was with great suspicion that I jumped into Grandpa’s truck, though—suspicion that proved justified, because while Ethan and Mom drove on, Grandpa turned around and took me back to the Farm.

Mostly I liked Grandpa. From time to time he’d do “chores,” which meant we’d go into the new barn, toward the back, where soft hay was piled, and take a nap. During cold days Grandpa had a couple of heavy blankets he’d wrap around us. But the first few days after the boy left, I sulked in Grandpa’s presence, punishing him for bringing me back to the Farm. When that didn’t work, all I could think to do was chew up a pair of Grandma’s shoes, but that still didn’t bring the boy back.

I just couldn’t get past the utter betrayal of it all. I knew that out there somewhere, probably back home, the boy needed me, didn’t understand where I was.

Everyone was infuriatingly calm, seemingly oblivious to the catastrophic change that had struck the household. I became so frantic I even dug into the boy’s closet and brought out the flip, running down and tossing it into Grandma’s lap.

“What in the world is this?” she exclaimed.

“It’s Ethan’s big invention,” Grandpa said.

I barked. Yes! Ethan!

“You want to go outside and play, Bailey?” Grandma asked me. “Why don’t you take him for a walk.”

Walk? Walk to see the boy?

“I thought I’d watch a little of the game here,” Grandpa replied.

“For heaven’s sake,” Grandma said. She went to the door and tossed the flip out in the yard, barely sending the thing five yards. I bounded over, grabbed it, and then stared in absolute noncomprehension when she shut the door, leaving me outside.

Well, okay then. I spat out the flip and trotted past Flare, heading down the driveway. I went over to the girl’s house, which I had already done several times since Ethan left. I could smell her scent everywhere, but the boy’s scent was gradually fading away. A car pulled into her driveway and Hannah jumped out. “Bye!” she said. She turned and looked at me. “Well, hi, Bailey!”

I ran up to her, wagging. I could smell several other people’s scents in her clothes, but there was no sign of Ethan. Hannah did go for a walk with me back home, and when she knocked on the door Grandma let her in and fed some pie to her but not to me.

I often dreamed of the boy. I dreamed of him jumping into the pond, with me swimming down and down to play rescue. I dreamed of him doing the go-kart, how happy and excited he was. And sometimes I dreamed of him jumping out of the window, the sharp crack of pain rising in a shout from his lips as he fell in the flaming bushes. I hated those dreams, and I was just awakening from one of them one night when I saw the boy standing above me.

“Hi, Bailey!” he whispered, his scent flowing off of him. He was back on the Farm! I jumped to my feet, putting my paws on his chest to lick his face. “Shhh,” he told me. “It’s late; I just got here. Everybody’s sleeping.”

It was Happy Thanksgiving time, and life was back to normal. Mom was there, but not Dad. Hannah came over every day.

The boy seemed happy, but I could also feel that he was distracted. He spent a lot of time looking at papers instead of playing with me, even when I brought him the stupid flip to try to shake him out of it.

I wasn’t surprised when he left again. This was my new life, I realized. I lived on the Farm with Grandpa and Grandma, and Ethan only came home for visits. It wasn’t what I wanted, but as long as the boy always returned, I had an easier time seeing him leave.

It was on one of his visits, when the air was warm and leaves were freshly out, that Ethan and I went to see Hannah running around in a big yard. I could smell her, as well as other boys and girls, because the wind flowed off the yard and their bodies were sweating as they ran. It looked like fun, but I stayed by Ethan’s side, because it seemed that while we stood there the ache in his leg became more pronounced, spreading through his body. Odd, dark emotions swirled inside him as he watched her and the others run.

“Hey!” Hannah came over to see us. I licked her leg, which was salty with sweat. “What a nice surprise. Hi, Bailey!” she said.

“Hi.”

“My times are really coming down in the four hundred,” the girl said.

“Who was that guy?” Ethan asked.

“Oh. Who? What do you mean?”

“That guy you were talking to and hugging, you two seemed really friendly,” Ethan said. His voice sounded strained. I glanced around but couldn’t see any danger.

“He’s just a friend, Ethan,” the girl said sharply. The way she spoke his name, it sounded like the boy had been bad.

“Is it that guy, what’s his name, Brett? He’s certainly fast on his feet.” Ethan stabbed at the ground with his cane, and I sniffed at the tuft of earth that he overturned.

“Well, what is that supposed to mean?” Hannah asked, her hands on her hips.

“Go on back; your track coach is looking over here,” Ethan said.

Hannah looked over her shoulder, then back at Ethan. “I do, I do need to get back . . . ,” she said uncertainly.

“Fine,” Ethan said. He turned and limped away.

“Ethan!” Hannah called. I looked at her, but the boy just kept walking. The dark, confused mixture of sadness and anger was still there. Something about the place apparently made Ethan feel bad, because we never went back.

That summer brought some big changes. Mom came to the Farm, and this time a truck followed her up the driveway and men unloaded some boxes and carried them up to her bedroom. Grandma and Mom spent a lot of time talking quietly to each other, and sometimes Mom would cry, which made Grandpa uncomfortable, so he’d go out to do chores.

Ethan had to leave all the time to go to “work,” which was just like school in that I couldn’t go with him, but when he came home he smelled deliciously of meats and grease. It reminded me of the time, after Flare abandoned us in the woods, that Grandpa fed me food out of a bag in the front seat of the truck.

The biggest change in our lives, though, was that the girl no longer came around to see us. Sometimes the boy would take me for a car ride and as we passed her house I would smell Hannah, so I knew she was still around, but the boy never stopped or turned in her driveway. I found that I missed her; she loved me and smelled wonderful.

The boy missed her, too. When we drove past Hannah’s house, he always stared out the side window, always slowed down a little, and I could feel his yearning. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just drive up to her house and see if she had any biscuits, but we never did.

That summer Mom went down to the pond and sat on the dock and was very sad. I tried to make her feel better by barking at the ducks, but she could not be cheered up. Finally she pulled something off her finger, it wasn’t food and was made of metal, a small round thing that she threw into the water, where it slipped beneath the surface with a tiny plop.

I wondered if she wanted me to go after it, and gazed up at her, ready to give it a shot even though I knew it was hopeless, but she just told me to come, and the two of us went back to the house.

After that summer, life settled into a comfortable pattern. Mom started doing work, too, and came home smelling of fragrant and sweet oils. Sometimes I would go with her past the goat ranch and over the rumbling bridge and we would spend the day in a big room full of clothes and stinky wax candles and uninteresting metal objects and people would come in to see me and sometimes they would leave with items in bags. The boy came and went for Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas and Spring Break and Summer Vacation.

I pretty much had gotten over my resentment toward Flare, who didn’t do anything anymore but stand and stare into the wind all day, when Grandpa showed up with a creature who moved like a baby horse and smelled unlike anything I’d ever encountered before. His name was Jasper the donkey. Grandpa liked to laugh as he watched Jasper skip around in the yard, and Grandma would say, “I don’t know why you think we need a donkey,” and go back inside.

Jasper was not at all afraid of me despite my position as top predator on the Farm. I played with him a little, but it seemed as if I was so easily tired all the time, it just wasn’t worth investing myself in a creature who didn’t know how to pick up a ball.

One day a man named Rick came to dinner. The feeling from Mom was happy and embarrassed, and from Grandpa it was suspicious, and from Grandma it was ecstatic. Rick and Mom sat on the porch just like Hannah and Ethan used to do, but they didn’t wrestle. After that, though, I started seeing more and more of Rick, who was a big man with hands that smelled of wood. He would throw the ball for me more than anybody, so I liked him a lot, though not as much as the boy.

My favorite time of day was when Grandpa did chores. Sometimes when he didn’t do chores I would go and take a nap in the barn just the same. I was taking a lot of naps and no longer had any interest in going out on long adventures. When Mom and Rick took me for a walk, I was always exhausted when we got back.

About the only thing that could make me excited was when the boy would come to the Farm for a visit. I’d still dance and wiggle and whimper, and I would play at the pond or walk in the woods or do anything else he wanted, even chase the flip, though the boy thankfully seemed to have forgotten where it was. Sometimes we went to town to the dog park, and while I was always glad to see the other dogs, I thought the younger ones were juvenile with their relentless playing and wrestling.

Then one evening the oddest thing happened: Grandpa set dinner down before me, and I didn’t feel like eating. My mouth filled with drool, and I drank some water and went back to lie down. Soon a thick, heavy pain came through my body, leaving me panting for breath.

I lay there all night on the floor by my food bowl. The next morning, Grandma saw me and called to Grandpa. “There’s something wrong with Bailey!” she said. I could hear the alarm in her voice when she said my name, and wagged my tail so she’d know I was okay.

Grandpa came and touched me. “You okay, Bailey? What’s wrong?”

After some conversation, Mom and Grandpa carried me to the truck and we went to the clean, cool room with a nice man, the same nice man we’d been visiting more and more often in recent years. He felt me all over and I wagged a little, but I didn’t feel very well, and didn’t try to sit up.

Mom came in, and she was crying, and Grandma and Grandpa were there, and even Rick came. I tried to let them know I appreciated all of their attention, but the pain was worse, and it was all I could do to roll my eyes to look at them.

Then the nice man brought out a needle. I smelled a sharp and familiar smell and felt a tiny jab. After a few minutes, my pain felt a lot better, but now I was so sleepy, I just wanted to lie there and do chores. My last thoughts, as I drifted off, were, as always, of the boy.

When I woke up, I knew I was dying. There was a sense within me of a rising darkness, and I had faced this before, when I was named Toby and was in a small, hot room with Spike and some other barking dogs.

I hadn’t given it any thought at all, though I suppose deep down I knew that one day I would wind up like Smokey the cat. I remembered the boy crying the day they buried Smokey in the yard, and I hoped he wouldn’t cry over my death. My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy. I didn’t want to cause him any unhappiness now—in that way, I decided it was probably better than he wasn’t here to see this, though I missed him so much at that moment the ache of it was as bad as the strange pains in my belly.

The nice man came into the room. “You awake, Bailey? You awake, fella? Poor fella.”

My name, I wanted to say, is not Fella.

The nice man leaned over me. “You can let go, Bailey. You did a good job; you took care of the boy. That was your job, Bailey, and you did a good job; you are a good dog, a good dog.”

I had the sense that the nice man was talking about death; there was a feeling of kind finality and peace emanating from him. Then Mom and Grandma and Grandpa and Rick all came in, and they hugged me and said they loved me and told me I was a good dog.

Yet from Mom I felt a tension, a sure sense of something—not danger, exactly, but something I needed to protect her from. I gave her hand a feeble lick and, as the darkness came from within me, I pushed back against it. I had to stay alert; Mom needed me.

The tension seemed to rise after another hour went by, first Grandpa joining in Mom’s mood, then Grandma, and then even Rick, so that just as I felt myself flagging, a new resolve to protect my family from this unknown threat would renew my strength.

And then I heard the boy. “Bailey!” he shouted. He burst into the room and the tension left everyone at once—this, I realized, was what they had been waiting for. Somehow, they’d known the boy was coming.

The boy buried his face in my neck and sobbed. It took everything I had to lift my head up and lick him, to let him know it was all right. I wasn’t afraid.

My breathing turned raspy, and everyone remained with me, holding me. It felt wonderful to receive so much attention, but then a shudder of pain shot through my stomach so sharp I couldn’t help but cry out loud. The nice man came in then, and he had another needle.

“We need to do this now; Bailey shouldn’t have to suffer.”

“Okay,” the boy said, crying. I tried to wag my tail at the sound of my name, but I found I couldn’t manage even a twitch. There was another jab in my neck.

“Bailey, Bailey, Bailey, I’m going to miss you, doodle dog,” Ethan whispered in my ear. His breath was warm and delightful. I closed my eyes at the pleasure of it, the sheer pleasure of love from the boy, love by the boy.

And then, just like that, the pain was gone—in fact, I felt like a puppy again, full of life and joy. I remembered feeling like this the first time I ever saw the boy, coming out of his house and running to me with his arms open wide. That made me think of diving after the boy during rescue, the fading light as I dove deeper, the way the thick water pushed against my body, just like now. I could no longer feel the boy’s hands touching me; I could just feel the water on all sides: warm and gentle and dark.