Shelby's Story Read online

  She barked and jumped at the flying water, and I joined her for a bit. Then I lapped up a drink from a puddle. It did not fill up my belly like the meat and milk from yesterday, but it helped.

  Now, food. This was the world, and it should have some food in it. We’d already found chicken here, and meat, and bread, and milk. We’d find something else. I was sure of it.

  And this turned out to be true. But it was more work than I’d expected. We walked and walked. The hard path ended, houses became much more spread apart, and the road went from being smooth to having holes and ruts and gravel and dirt. We were so far from Mother, now, that I could almost feel her worrying about us. I think Splotch and I both were ready to turn back, but time and time again the smell of food would lure us on.

  Sometimes the food that we found was a bit of paper or cardboard with a little meat or sauce smeared on it. Sometimes it was a crinkly bag with crumbs of something salty inside. Sometimes it was a plastic cup with sweet drops sticking to its sides.

  Every now and then a person would come out of a house to shout something at us, and then we’d run away. More rarely, someone would speak gently to us and maybe toss some food on the ground—a piece of bread with cheese and tomato, or a scrap of meat with tangy sauce.

  Splotch and I inched closer to grab the food and then darted away to safety to eat it. We had been learning that people were not to be trusted, not even if they gave us something to eat. You never knew when they might shout or throw rocks.

  We were hungry. I loved Splotch and the only way I could keep my mind off my hunger was to play with her, but we both seemed to tire very quickly.

  Some days we found almost enough to quiet our bellies and let us sleep in peace. Some days we did not.

  The best days were the ones in which we found a large plastic container. They were marvelous!

  Inside them I could smell all sorts of things. Meaty, cheesy, spicy, sweet, greasy, fabulous smells. Smells that made my tail wag wildly and drool drip down from my muzzle to the ground.

  The trouble was that the smells were inside and my sister and I were outside. That was frustrating, and the opposite of how we wanted things to be.

  The big bins had lids, but sometimes plastic bags full of delicious smells were piled high, forcing the lids open. Splotch and I would try to climb up to snatch the bags at the top of the heap, usually stepping on each other. As irritating as it could be to have Splotch’s paw on my face, I forgave her if she fell back, pulling a bag with her. We were experts now in tearing open the plastic to get at the morsels of food within.

  The best was when there would be a bag on the dirt next to the bin. We’d rip into that in an instant. Then we’d dig into all the treasures that poured out. After a while a human would usually come running over and yell at us, and then we’d take off. But our stomachs would be full, at least for a little while.

  When darkness came, we’d sleep under bushes or near cars with missing doors and the clear smell of neglect mingled with the vines twisting through the rotting seats. We were warm enough if we curled up together, except when it rained.

  I did not like rain.

  I remembered it from the yard, tiny bits of water falling from the sky. I hadn’t minded it so much then, because I could curl up with my mother, pushing deep into her fur, and stay warm even if I was wet.

  But when it rained on my sister and me, we got cold. Always. We just weren’t big enough to keep each other warm. There was nothing we could do, however, but wait and shiver until the rain stopped and the light returned.

  Then we’d go back to work filling our bellies. It was hard. But we didn’t know anything else to do.

  * * *

  My sister and I had lived out in the world for quite a while when something happened that showed how right we had been to stay away from people.

  Splotch and I had seized a plastic bag from a container and torn it open. I had my head inside it, trying to reach a particularly succulent bit of flat bread soaked in sweet, sticky sauce when I heard my sister bark sharply.

  I pulled my head out and turned around. A small truck had pulled up next to the container, and a man and a woman had gotten out. They were walking slowly toward us. The woman had a long stick in her hand.

  “These look like the dogs we’ve gotten so many calls about,” the man said. “Hey there. Don’t worry, now. We’re here to help.”

  I backed up, even though my stomach was empty and it was hard to leave the bag with all its enticing smells. Splotch backed away, too.

  But we had our eyes on the man who was talking to us, and we’d forgotten to watch the woman with the stick. She had moved quietly around behind us, so we were backing up right toward her!

  Splotch yelped in panic, and I spun around to see that the woman had lowered her stick until one end was near my sister’s face. On that end of the stick was a loop of wire, and she slipped that wire right over Splotch’s neck!

  Splotch was crying and twisting as she tried to get loose. The woman was talking to her gently, but the gentleness of her words did not make the stick any less terrifying.

  “Get the other one, Tom!” she called out.

  Hands in thick gloves were reaching out toward me. I dodged away. The man stumbled, falling down on one knee.

  Splotch was still flinging herself wildly from side to side. “There, there, don’t worry, sweetie; it’s going to be better soon,” the woman told her, but I didn’t understand her words. All I knew was that Splotch was frightened and that the loop around her neck was hurting her. I wanted to run to her side and help, bite at that wire loop and make it go away.

  But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Even stronger than the urge to help my sister was another feeling inside me—a feeling that told me to run as far and as fast as I could.

  The man grabbed at me again, and I darted to one side. I yipped once to let my sister know that I was sorry, but I had to go.

  Then I ran. I heard heavy footsteps beside me, but I’d had a lot of practice at running. The man could not keep up with me. I dodged beneath a bush and raced into the woods. By then no one was chasing me anymore, but I ran anyway, until I was out of breath.

  I never saw my sister again after that. And I tried harder than ever to stay away from people. Even though they sometimes had food, it was not worth getting near them.

  It was colder at night without Splotch to sleep beside me, especially when it rained. And I could not pull the bags out of the bins by myself. My stomach became more and more demanding. It felt as if it were clawing at my insides. It made me a little angry. Keeping my stomach filled was such a big job that it took all of my time, and it still wasn’t satisfied!

  I kept an eye out for more of those plastic bags. They were the best source of food I had found yet. They were not there every day, or even most days. When they were, though, I could count on a full belly.

  The next time the plastic bags showed up beside the road, I was happy, especially since there were so many, all piled up around a bin with a lid. I was eagerly tearing one open when a big truck pulled up right next to me. Men jumped down from the truck, and I quickly darted away.

  To my surprise, the men picked up the bag and flung it into the back of the truck. So many rich, thick, powerful smells came pouring out of that truck! They made my head spin. I backed off farther and watched the men heave up the bin and dump its contents into the truck before jumping back on.

  The plastic bags had gone into the truck. I thought about that hard, and I stared after the wonderfully smelly truck as it rumbled slowly away.

  Those bags were full of food. That meant the truck was full of food.

  That meant it was a good truck, even if it did have people on it. And wheels.

  The truck headed steadily down the road. I followed it.

  3

  I followed the truck a long, long way.

  It did not go very fast, and it stopped often. I didn’t get too close, in case the men came at me and tried to grab me or to sna
g my neck in one of those long sticks. I didn’t need to keep the truck in sight, because even when it pulled away I could easily track the strong odors trailing after it.

  After a while there were almost no houses on the road and the truck didn’t make as many stops. I knew it was speeding away from me, but I was too hungry to gallop after it. I just followed my nose.

  My stomach was pretending to be a dog, growling at me from within. If it were a dog I would snarl back—I was doing the best I could!

  The smell led me down a long, narrow road. I stayed to the side as a car swept past me—wheels! I trotted along a muddy road that felt soft and comfortable to my feet. There were trees on either side of the road, and no houses or buildings at all.

  There was noise, though. Up ahead I could hear the growling noise made by trucks. It sounded like my stomach! I could also hear some crashing and banging and occasionally shouts.

  The sounds told me to go cautiously. The smell, though…, the smell was so enticing that I simply could not stop. There was food up there! It was buried under other scents—rubber, something burning, plastic, the foul smoke from the truck … but it was there.

  My goal was to get my stomach to shut up and stop growling, so I followed the food smell.

  I crept through an open gate in a tall fence, and just up ahead I saw something wonderful.

  Plastic bags. Lots of them. A mountain of them.

  The truck I had followed was stopped, the men watching as the back of it tipped, dumping bags out onto the ground in a huge pile. There were other piles, too. Many, many piles.

  My stomach demanded that I rush forward and grab the nearest bag, but I didn’t. Instead, I lay down in a clump of tall grass by the roadside and watched. I needed to make sure it was safe before I did anything.

  I did not like the truck. It was loud and noisy and belching out that foul-smelling smoke. The people who had taken my sister away from me had gotten out of a truck. I had to stay away from trucks.

  My stomach growled again.

  There was a pile of plastic bags not far away. Did I dare dash out from my hiding place and grab one? I was afraid.

  Then the truck moved on in that jerky way, so different from how dogs and other animals move.

  No other trucks were nearby, so that pile of plastic bags was free for the taking.

  Some birds seemed to think so, too. They were soaring overhead and beginning to swoop down low toward the bags. Some of them had even ripped a few bags open already. Less work for me!

  I darted out, sniffing hard, letting my nose guide me. There were so many smells it was hard to know where to look first! But a salty, greasy, meaty odor grabbed my attention, and I stuck my muzzle into an open bag and snatched at a chunk of chicken, just as delicious as the one Splotch and I had found the first time we’d ventured outside the fence.

  Then something in a roll of paper grabbed my attention. I seized it. I knew it! What a wonderful world, with chicken and all sorts of other food laid out for deserving dogs with angry stomachs! This was where Splotch and I had been heading all along, even though we hadn’t known it at the time. If only she were still here!

  The rumble of an approaching truck grew louder. My stomach told me to stay and find more and more and more to eat, but my feet told me to run. I dashed back to the clump of grass and ripped the paper open. There was meat inside! It was different from the chicken—crumbled beef and cheese and a sauce—and had a hot taste that burned my mouth, but I was too hungry to care. I gulped it down.

  The birds and I were not the only ones interested in the plastic bags and the amazing smells. I looked up from licking the grease off the paper to see a small animal watching me from a pile of dirt nearby.

  It was not a dog—it was smaller, and it had slick fur and tiny triangular ears and sharp, watchful eyes. I sniffed up its smell and could tell that it was a male, and not afraid, and hungry.

  I growled just a little, letting him know that the paper was mine.

  He watched me for a while and decided not to argue. He slinked away, toward the plastic bags, dragging a strange tail, naked of fur, behind him.

  That was my first rat. I would meet many others.

  I watched the rat move off and decided that this was the place for me. Here I would be able to do my first, most important job—keeping my stomach quiet.

  I would stay here. It would be my new home.

  * * *

  I was not the only animal who wanted to make the place of plastic bags a home.

  There were the birds, as I’d seen before, mostly big gray and white ones, always soaring and swooping above the bags, diving in to grab a scrap of this or that. I ignored them. They did not come near me, and there was enough food for us all.

  There were rats, of course, and they were more interesting to me. At first I tried to chase them. It just felt like they needed to be chased. But rats were very difficult to catch. They could easily dive into holes in the ground or crevices between bags where I could not follow. So I gave up on chasing and let them be, only growling to warn them if they came too near me while I was eating.

  Sometimes, in the night, odd creatures with striped tails came waddling along to investigate the piles. I stayed away from them. They were not as big as I had grown up to be, but they did have sharp teeth. Since I hunted among the piles during the day and they came in the night, we did not have to argue over who was in charge or who got to keep which scrap of food.

  But I never saw another dog. I would have liked that. If another dog came here, maybe we could play, as Splotch and I used to. We could do Chase around the plastic bags or find a stick and do Tug-on-a-Stick. We could curl up close at night and keep each other warm.

  I missed Splotch. I missed my mother and my brothers. It didn’t seem right for a dog to be all alone, with only a growling stomach for company.

  Once I glimpsed a new animal among the bags—one bigger than the rats but smaller than me, with striped fur and triangular ears that stuck straight up on her head. A cat! She’d managed to rip open one of the bags and drag out a bone with meat still clinging to it.

  I was intrigued. Something told me that this was a different kind of animal from the rats or the nighttime visitors with striped tails. Maybe she was something that might be company.

  I went closer. She looked up and gripped the bone tightly in her small white teeth. She put her ears back flat against her head so that her face looked sleek and smooth, and her tail, straight up in the air, fluffed out so that it looked twice as big.

  She let out a hiss.

  I stopped. That noise was not a growl, but it was pretty clearly a warning. I put my head down low to show her that I was not going to try to take her bone away.

  Even though I would have liked it.

  But the cat didn’t understand what I was so clearly telling her. She backed up a few steps, keeping her wide eyes fixed on me, and then she leaped away and ran.

  She wanted to play Chase-Me!

  I was happy to oblige. It had been so long since I’d played with anybody! But even though she wanted to play, the cat obviously did not understand the rules, because she headed straight toward the trees that grew beside the plastic bags and raced right up one, snagging the trunk with her claws. In a few seconds she was perched on a branch above my head with the bone still firmly in her mouth.

  Unfair! I could not go up the tree after her, so how was this game supposed to work? I put my front paws on the tree and barked a few times, but she didn’t come down, so I lost interest and went back to the bags, looking for a bone of my own.

  I did not see the cat again. I guessed she was not good company after all.

  * * *

  I’d lived at the place of plastic bags for quite a long time before I first saw the man marching around, kicking at things on the ground.

  I did not understand it. Why couldn’t he leave this place to me and the rats and the birds and the animals with the striped tails? What was he even doing here? Clearly he didn
’t come for food. He never ate anything out of the bags. Even so, he seemed to act as if the entire place belonged to him.

  Whenever he saw me, he ran at me, yelling angrily and waving his arms. Of course. That seemed to be what people did, whenever they saw a dog near a plastic bag. It made no sense to me: Why put the food out for the dogs and then get so mad when the dog ate it?

  I stayed out of his way as best I could. It was hard to do, though, because the magnificent smell of all that trash covered up his scent until he was quite close.

  I got even more careful when I noticed that, sometimes, he carried a long stick.

  It was different from the stick the woman had used to grab my sister—thicker, not as long, shinier. Still, I did not trust it. One day, when I saw him coming near with that stick in his hand, I squirmed between two plastic bags and held still so he would not see me.

  “Where did that stinking dog go?” I heard him grumble as he came closer. “Got to get rid of it.”

  He kicked one of the bags near me, and I leaped out of my hiding place in a panic. I had to get away!

  The man seemed panicked, too. He jumped back with a harsh shout of amazement. He did not have to shout at me! I was already running.

  There was a sharp crack from behind, louder than anything I’d ever heard, and the dirt close by my face suddenly jumped up at me! It stung my eyes and hurt my muzzle, and I shied away, running in a new direction. Dirt had never done that to me before!

  The man shouted some more, but I dodged around a mound of trash and ran into a clearing behind a small stand of trees, where I knew he could not see me.

  I crawled underneath a bush and lay there, trembling.

  People. It was important to stay away from people and their sticks.

  I must always remember that.

  Thinking about sticks reminded me of the last time I saw Splotch, when that woman lowered her stick and snared my sister’s neck. I missed Splotch very, very much.

  So this was my life: Hiding. Trying to keep the rats and the birds away from my meals. Listening to my stomach complain. And always, always, avoiding people.