A Dog's Purpose

At the sound of my growl, the boy moved soundlessly across the room. I shuffled after him, still alert, and watched as he opened the gun cabinet for the second time that day.

{ ELEVEN }

Holding Grandpa’s rifle in his trembling hands, the boy crept up the stairs, down the hall, and into Mom’s bedroom. I was right on his heels. Ethan checked her bathroom and under the bed, and when he whipped the closet door open he yelled, “Ha!” scaring me half to death. We repeated this examination in the boy’s room, Grandma and Grandpa’s room, and the small room with the couch where Grandma slept when Grandpa made his loud rumbling noises at night. Before leaving on the car ride, Grandma had been in this room doing more work on the flip, trying to fix it at Ethan’s direction, and it was called the sewing room.

The boy checked the whole house, Grandpa’s gun out in front of him, and he rattled every knob and tested every window. Passing through the living room, I walked hopefully over to Grandpa’s chair, but the boy still wanted to explore the house, so with a weary sigh I accompanied him on a check of the shower curtains.

Finally he returned to Mom’s room. He worked the doorknob, and then he dragged her dresser over in front of the door. He set the rifle down next to the bed and called me up to lie with him. When he clung to me, I was reminded of how he sometimes came out to the doghouse in the garage when Mom and Dad were shouting. He felt full of the same lonely terror. I licked him as comfortingly as I knew how—we were together; how could anything be wrong?

The next morning we slept in and then had a fabulous breakfast. I ate toast crusts and licked scrambled eggs and finished his milk for him. What a great day! Ethan put more food in a bag, along with a bottle that he filled with water, and slid the whole thing in his backpack. Were we going for a walk? Sometimes Ethan and I would go for a walk and he’d take sandwiches for us to share. Lately, his walks always seemed to take us down by where the girl lived; I could smell her scent on the mailbox. The boy would stand and look at the house, and then we’d turn around and go back home.

The fear from the night before was totally gone. Whistling, the boy went out to take care of Flare, who wandered over to eat the bucket of dry, tasteless seeds or whatever they were that she munched on when she wasn’t trying to make herself sick with grass.

I was surprised, though, when the boy fetched a blanket and a shiny leather saddle from the barn and affixed them to the horse’s back. We’d done this a few times before, with Ethan climbing up to sit high on Flare’s back, but always with Grandpa there, and always with the gate to Flare’s yard firmly closed. Now, though, the boy opened the gate, hoisting himself up with a grin.

“Let’s go, Bailey!” he called down to me.

I followed, feeling surly. I didn’t like that Flare suddenly was getting all the attention and that I was so far away from the boy, forced to walk beside the huge creature, who I had come to conclude was just as dumb as the ducks. I especially didn’t appreciate it when, with a flick of her tail, Flare dropped a smelly pile of poo on the road, narrowly missing me. I lifted my leg on it because it now, after all, belonged to me, but I felt fairly certain the horse had meant the thing as an insult.

Soon we were off-road, in the woods, walking along a trail. I chased down a rabbit and would have caught it if it hadn’t cheated by suddenly changing direction. I smelled more than one skunk and haughtily refused to take even a single step in that direction. We stopped at a small pool and Flare and I drank, and later the boy ate his sandwich, tossing me the crusts.

“Isn’t this great, Bailey? Are you having a good time?”

I watched his hands, wondering if his questioning tone indicated he was going to feed me some more sandwich.

Aside from the fact that we had Flare with us, I was really enjoying myself. Of course, just getting away from the stupid flip was reason in and of itself to celebrate, but after several hours we were so far from home I could no longer smell any sign of it.

I could tell that Flare was getting weary, but from the boy’s attitude I concluded we still had a way to go to reach our destination. At one point, Ethan said, “Do we go this way? Or that way? Do you remember, Bailey? Do you know where we are?”

I looked up at him expectantly, and, after a moment, we continued on, picking up a trail that had many, many animal scents on it.

I’d marked so much territory my leg was sore from being lifted into the air. Flare stopped and let loose with a huge gush of urine, which I felt was entirely inappropriate behavior, since her scent would obliterate mine and I was the dog. I wandered up ahead to clear the smell from my nose.

I topped a small rise and that’s when I saw the snake. It was coiled in a patch of sun, sticking its tongue out rhythmically, and I stopped dead, fascinated. I’d never seen one before.

I barked, which caused no reaction whatsoever. I trotted back to the boy, who had Flare underway again.

“What is it, Bailey? What did you see?”

I decided that whatever the boy was saying, it wasn’t go bite the snake. I slid in next to Flare, who was plodding along expressionlessly, and wondered how she would react when she saw the snake curled up in front of her.

At first she didn’t see it, but then as she approached, the snake suddenly pulled back, lifting its head, and that’s when Flare screamed. Her front legs came off the ground and she spun, kicking, and the boy went flying off her back. I ran to him at once, of course, but he was okay. He jumped to his feet. “Flare!” he shouted.

I watched sourly as the horse retreated at a full gallop, her hooves pounding the dirt. When the boy took off running I understood what was needed and ran ahead in hot pursuit, but the horse kept going and soon the gap between me and my boy was too great and I turned back to be with him.

“Oh no!” the boy was saying, but the “no” wasn’t for me. “Oh God. What are we going to do, Bailey?”

To my utter dismay, the boy started crying. He did this less and less as he had gotten older, which made it all the more upsetting now. I could feel his utter despair, and I shoved my face into his hands, trying to comfort him. The best thing, I decided, would be for us to go home and eat more chicken.