play bows, which Top Dog ignored, and then Fast licked Top Dog in the mouth. This seemed to be sufficient apology, so, with that, Top Dog played with Fast a little, rolling my brother over and letting Fast chew at his neck before he abruptly walked away.
This was how Top Dog maintained order, by keeping us all in our places but not taking advantage of his position to steal food that was given to us by the men. We had a happy pack, right up until the day that Spike arrived.
After that, nothing was the same.
{ FOUR }
It was starting to seem to me that just when I had life all figured out it changed. When we were running with Mother, I learned to fear humans, I learned to scavenge for food, I learned how to placate Fast so he would be in what, for him, was a good mood. And then the men came and took us to the Yard and everything was different.
In the Yard I adjusted quickly to life in the pack, I learned to love Senora and Carlos and Bobby, and just when my play with Coco was starting to assume a different, more complex character we were taken to visit the nice lady in the cool room and the urgency I’d been feeling went completely away. I still spent most of my day chewing on, and being chewed by, Coco, but without the odd compulsions that had occasionally seized me.
In between the two worlds—the one outside and the Yard—stood the gate Mother had opened. I thought about the night of her escape so many times I could practically feel the metal knob in my mouth. Mother had shown me a way to freedom, if I wanted it. But I was a different dog than Mother. I loved the Yard. I wanted to belong to Senora. My name was Toby.
Mother, however, was so anti-social that no one seemed to notice she was gone. Senora had never even given Mother a name. Fast and Sister sniffed every so often at the depression behind the railroad ties where Mother had lain but never showed any outward concern about her disappearance beyond that. Life went on, just as before.
And then, with everyone’s status in the pack settled, with me feeding at the adult trough, with Carlos sneaking us bones and Senora handing out treats and kisses, in came a new dog.
His name was Spike.
We’d heard the doors on Bobby’s truck slam, so we were all barking, though it was so hot that day that some of us who were lying in the shade didn’t even get off our bellies. The gate opened and Bobby entered, leading a large, muscular male on the end of his pole.
Having the entire pack rush you at the gate was intimidating, but the new dog didn’t budge. He was as dark and broad as Rottie and as tall as Top Dog. Most of his tail was missing, but what little stub he possessed wasn’t wagging, and he stood with his weight balanced on all four legs. A low rumble emitted from his chest.
“Easy, Spike. Okay there,” Bobby said.
The way Bobby said “Spike,” I knew that was his name. I decided to let everyone else have a turn at inspecting him before I did anything.
Top Dog had, as usual, hung back, but now he emerged from the cool shadows near the waterspout and trotted forward to meet the new arrival. Bobby slipped the loop off Spike’s neck. “Easy, now,” Bobby said.
Bobby’s tension rippled through the pack, and I could feel the fur on my back rising up, though I wasn’t sure why. Top Dog and Spike were stiffly examining each other, neither one backing down, the pack in a tight circle. Spike’s face was covered with scars—teardrop-shaped pits and lumps colored a pale gray against his dark fur.
Something about the way Spike seemed to take us all in, every single one of us arrayed against him, made me afraid, though the result was as it should be. Spike allowed Top Dog to put his head over his back, though he didn’t bow or lower his stomach to the ground. Instead, Spike went over to the fence, carefully sniffed at it, and then lifted his leg. The males immediately lined up after Top Dog to do the same thing on the same spot.
Senora’s face appeared over the top of the gate, then, and a lot of the anxiety I’d been feeling went away. Several of us broke from the circle and ran over to her, putting our legs on the fence so she could reach our heads.
“See? He’ll be okay,” Senora said.
“A dog like him’s been bred to fight, senora. He is not like the rest of ’em, no ma’am.”
“You be a good dog, Spike!” Senora called over to him. I looked jealously in the new dog’s direction, but his reaction to having his name spoken was to glance over as if it were nothing at all.
“Sometimes they’re broke inside, senora. And nuthin’ will help ’em.”
Senora’s hand absently reached down and scratched behind Coco’s ears. I frantically shoved my nose underneath Senora’s fingers, but she didn’t even seem to know I was there.
Later Coco sat down in front of me with a rubber bone, gnawing on it industriously. I ignored her, still hurt that I, Senora’s favorite, had been treated so dismissively. Coco flipped on her back and played with the bone with her paws, lifting it out of her mouth and dropping it, holding it so lightly that I knew I could take it, so I lunged! But Coco was rolling away from me, and then I was chasing her in the yard, furious that she had gotten the game all backward.
I was so preoccupied with getting the stupid bone back from Coco because I was supposed to have it, not her, that I didn’t see how it started; I just registered that suddenly the fight I think we’d all known was coming was already happening.
Normally a fight with Top Dog was over quickly, the lower-status dog accepting his punishment for challenging the order. But this horrible battle, loudly joined and viciously savage, seemed to last and last.
The two dogs clashed with their forelegs off the ground, each vying to obtain the higher position, their teeth flashing in the sun. Their yowling was the most ferocious and terrifying thing I had ever heard.
Top Dog went for his usual grip on the back of the neck, where control could be exerted without doing
