bent and picked the dog up, carrying him inside.
I felt myself powerfully drawn to the man and was struck with the sudden thought that this could be a home for me. The man loved his dog, Leo, and would love me. He would feed me, and when I was old and weak he would carry me back inside his home. Even if I didn’t do Find or school or any other work at all, if all I did was devote myself to the man in the house, I would have a place to live. This crazy, purposeless life I had led as Bear would be over.
I approached the house and did the sensible thing: I ate Leo’s dinner. After the weeks of tasteless, gritty dog food at Lisa and Victor’s home, the succulent, meaty meal in Leo’s bowl was the best thing I’d ever tasted. When it was gone I licked the metal, and the clang of the bowl against the side of the house alerted the dog inside, who woofed warningly. I heard him approach his side of the door, wheezing, a low growl mounting in volume as Leo became more sure I was there.
It didn’t sound as if Leo would be very receptive to the idea of me living in his house.
I bolted off the steps, so that by the time the light flicked on to illuminate the yard I was already back in the trees. The message in Leo’s hostile growl was clear; I would have to find my own home. And that was okay—with my hunger sated, my longing to live here had gone away.
I slept in some tall grasses, tired but much more content, my stomach full.
I was hungry again by the time I found town, but I knew it was the right place. The approach fooled me; I passed so many houses, their streets bustling with cars and children, where my memory told me there should have been only fields. But then I came upon the place where Grandpa used to sit with his friends and spit vile juices out of his mouth, and it smelled the same, though there were sheets of old wood over the windows and the building next to it was gone, replaced by a raw, muddy hole. At the bottom of the hole was a machine that pushed great piles of dirt in front of it as it moved.
Humans can do that, take down old buildings and put up new ones, the way Grandpa built a new barn. They alter their environment to suit themselves, and all dogs can do is accompany them and, if they’re lucky, go for car rides. The volume of noise and all the new smells told me that humans here had been very busy changing their town.
Several people stared at me as I trotted down the street, and each time I felt like a bad dog. I had no real purpose, now that I was here. A bag of trash had fallen out of a big metal bin, and it was with a huge sense of guilt that I tore the bag open and pulled out a piece of meat covered in a sticky, sweet sauce of some kind. Rather than eat the meal right there, I ran behind the metal bin, hiding from people just as my first mother had taught me.
My wanderings eventually brought me to the dog park. I sat at the edge, under some trees, and watched enviously as people threw soaring disks for their dogs to catch in the air. I felt naked without a collar and realized I should hang back, but the way the dogs were wrestling in the middle of the big yard drew me like a magnet, and before I could stop myself I was out there with them, rolling and running and forgetting myself in the sheer joy of being a dog at play.
Some dogs didn’t come out to wrestle; they stayed with their people or sniffed along the perimeter of the park, pretending that they didn’t care how much fun we were having. Some dogs were drawn to tossed balls or flying disks, and all of them eventually were called away by their people and given car rides. All except me, but none of the people seemed to notice or care that I didn’t have anyone there with me.
Toward the end of the day, a woman brought a big female yellow dog to the park and let her off the leash. By this time I was exhausted from all the play and was just lying in the yard, panting, watching two other dogs wrestle. The yellow dog excitedly joined them, interrupting the play for sniffing and tail wagging. I lurched to my feet and went to greet this new arrival and was shocked by what I smelled along her fur.
It was Hannah. The girl.
The yellow dog grew impatient with my feverish examination of her scent and spun away, eager to play, but I ignored her inviting bow. I excitedly dashed across the park to the dog’s owner.
The woman on the bench was not Hannah, though she, too, carried Hannah’s smell. “Hello, doggy, how are you?” she greeted me as I approached, my tail wagging. The way she sat reminded me of Maya, shortly before Gabriella the baby arrived. There was a sense of tiredness, excitement, impatience, and discomfort, all mixed together and focused on the belly just below her hands. I thrust my nose at her, drinking in Hannah’s scent, separating it from the woman, from the happy yellow dog, from the dozens of odors that clung to a person and were a jumble to a dog not trained in Find. This was a woman who had spent time with the girl very recently; I was sure of it.
The yellow dog came over, friendly but a bit jealous, and I finally allowed myself to be drawn into a tussle.
That night I folded my black body into the shadows, watching alertly as the last cars pulled out of the parking lot, leaving the dog park in silence. My stealth came to me so easily it was as if I’d never been taken from the culvert, as if I were still there with Sister and Fast and Hungry, learning from our first mother. Hunting was easy; trash cans were brimming with containers full of delicious scraps, and I avoided headlights and pedestrians with equal caution, hidden, dark, feral once more.
But there was a purpose to my life, now, a sense of direction even more powerful than the one that had brought me to town in the first place.
If, despite all the time and changes, the girl Hannah was here, then maybe the boy was here, too.
And if Ethan was still here, I would track him. I would Find Ethan.
{ TWENTY-NINE }
After more than a week, I was still living in the dog park. Most days the woman with Hannah’s scent would bring her happy yellow canine—Carly was the dog’s name—to the park. The smell of the girl reassured me, somehow, made me feel that Ethan was nearby, though Carly never had the boy’s smell on her fur, not once. Seeing the woman and Carly always brought me racing joyously out from the bushes; it was the high point of my day.
Otherwise, I was a bad dog. Regulars to the park were starting to act suspicious toward me, staring at me and radiating caution as they pointed at me and spoke to each other. I no longer approached their dogs for play.
“Hey there, fella. Where’s your collar? Who are you here with?” a man asked me, reaching out with gentle hands. I danced back from him, sensing his intention to grab me and not trusting the name Fella. That’s when I felt the deep suspicion in him and realized my first mother had been right all along—to remain free, one had to steer
