The boy eventually stopped crying, looking blankly around the woods. “We’re lost, Bailey.” He took a drink of water. “Well, okay. Come on.”
Apparently the walk wasn’t over, because we set out in an entirely new direction, not at all the way from which we’d come.
We went a long way into the woods, at one point crossing our own scent, and still the boy plodded on. I grew so weary that when a squirrel darted out right in front of me I didn’t even bother to chase it; I just followed the boy, who I could tell was also getting tired. When the light began to fade from the sky, we sat down on a log and he ate the last of the sandwiches, carefully feeding me a hunk. “I’m really sorry, Bailey.”
Just before dark, the boy became interested in sticks. He began dragging sticks over to a tree that had blown over, stacking them up against the wall of mud and gnarly roots. He piled pine needles on the ground underneath this canopy and stacked more sticks on top. I watched curiously, ready despite my fatigue to chase one if he threw it, but he just stayed focused on his task.
When it became too dark to see, he climbed in on the pine needles. “Here, Bailey! Come here!”
I crawled in beside him. It reminded me of the doghouse. I ruefully remembered Grandpa’s chair, wondering why we couldn’t just go home and sleep there. But the boy soon started to shiver, and I put my head on top of him and eased my belly onto his back the way I used to lie on my brothers and sisters when we were cold.
“Good dog, Bailey,” he told me.
Soon his breathing became deep and he stopped shivering. Though I wasn’t exactly perfectly comfortable, I carefully lay in a position to keep him warm as possible through the night.
We were up when the birds started to call and before it was even fully light were already walking again. I sniffed hopefully at the sack, fooled by the smells, but when the boy let me put my head inside I found nothing to eat.
“We’ll save it in case we need to make a fire,” he told me. I translated this to mean “we need more sandwiches” and thumped my tail in agreement.
The nature of our adventure changed that day. The hunger in my belly grew to be a sharp pain, and the boy cried again, sniffling for about an hour. I could feel anxiety wafting through him, followed by a sullen, lethargic apathy that I found just as alarming. When he sat down and stared at me with glassy eyes, I licked him full in the face.
I was worried about my boy. We needed to go home, now.
We came to a small stream and the boy flopped down on his stomach and we drank thirstily. The water gave the boy both energy and purpose; when we set off again, we were following the stream, which twisted and turned through the trees and, at one point, through a meadow full of singing bugs. The boy turned his face to the sun and increased his pace, hope surging through him, but his shoulders slumped when after an hour or so the stream reentered the dark woods.
We spent that night clinging to each other as before. I smelled a carcass nearby, something old but probably edible, but I didn’t leave the boy. He needed my warmth more than ever. His strength was leaving him; I could feel it ebbing away.
I had never been so afraid.
The next day the boy stumbled a few times while he walked. I smelled blood; his face had been whipped by a branch. I sniffed at it.
“Go away, Bailey!” he yelled at me.
I felt anger and fear and pain coming from him, but I didn’t back away, I stayed right there, and knew I had done the right thing when he buried his face in my neck and cried some more.
“We’re lost, Bailey. I’m so sorry,” the boy whispered. I wagged at my name.
The little stream wandered into a boggy area, losing all definition and making for mucky travels. The boy sank up to his calves, so that his feet made a sucking sound as he pulled them out. Bugs descended on us, landing in our eyes and ears.
Midway across the swamp the boy just stopped. His shoulders sagged, his chin dropping. The air left his lungs in a long, deep sigh. Distressed, I picked my way across the slimy area as quickly as I could, putting a paw on his leg.
He was giving up. An overwhelming sense of defeat was building within him, and he was surrendering to it. He was losing his very will to live. He was like my brother Hungry, lying down that last time in the culvert, never to get back up again.
I barked, startling both the boy and me. His dull eyes blinked at me. I barked again.
“Okay,” he muttered. Lethargically he drew his foot out of the mud and tentatively set it down, sinking again.
It took us more than half the day to cross that swamp. When we picked up the stream on the other side of the bog, it moved water with more purpose, becoming deeper and faster. Soon another trickle joined it, and then another, so that the boy had to make a running start to leap across it when a downed tree blocked his path on one side or another. Each leap seemed to make him tired, and we wound up taking a nap for a few hours. I lay with him, terrified the boy wouldn’t wake up, but he did, rousing himself slowly.
“You’re a good dog, Bailey,” he told me, his voice hoarse.
It was late in the afternoon when the stream joined a river. The boy stood and looked blankly at the dark water for a long time, then aimed us downstream, pushing through grasses and thickly choked trees.
Night was just starting to fall when I picked up the scent of men. At this point Ethan seemed to be walking without purpose, his feet scuffing numbly in the dirt. Each time he fell, he took longer and longer to get back up, and he registered nothing when I darted ahead, my nose to the ground.
“Come on, Bailey,” he mumbled. “Where you going?”
I think he didn’t even notice when we crossed the footpath. He was squinting in the fading light, trying to keep
