Bella's Story Read online

  I landed on the sidewalk in a heap. Quickly, I jumped up and shook myself.

  I was out of the car and off the leash. I lifted my nose and trotted away. I would do Go Home, like a good dog, but first there was something else to investigate.

  I went toward the smell of food.

  There were cars and people and buildings and streets all around, so I knew I was in a town. But it was not the one where I lived with Lucas and Mom. It was not the one I had visited with Uncle José, either.

  As I followed my nose, some people called to me from windows or open doorways. They seemed friendly, but I did not believe they would take me to Lucas, so I did not go close to them.

  I did, however, detect something sweet on the sidewalk and I ate it quickly. Then I crunched up some dry bread next to it. What a nice town, to leave treats out for good dogs to find.

  I could smell that many dogs had walked over this sidewalk, and I could hear barking in the distance. As I walked along, I saw a dog with a chain that went from his collar to the wall of a house. He barked and lunged at me. I passed him, and then I smelled something interesting—several dogs, all moving together. I headed for them.

  When I rounded a corner, I came upon a pack.

  In the pack there were two male dogs, one small with crazy hair that stuck out in every direction, and one big with a single tooth that poked out of his mouth even when it was closed. There was also a female with scruffy fur, a fluffy butt, and a keen, alert look in her eyes.

  They were sitting behind a store, and out of that store a delicious smell poured. Saliva pooled in my mouth as I trotted closer.

  All the members of the pack were staring hard at a doorway, but when I got near, their heads whipped around. Small Male ran straight at me, then pulled up, lifting his snout as he stopped. I turned so that we could sniff each other, nose to tail.

  I moved stiffly, not prepared to bow and invite a play session with these strange dogs. But I wagged my tail, to show that I was friendly if they were.

  Big Male moved a little bit away and lifted his leg on a railing. Small Male did the same. I politely sniffed. Fluffy Butt had not moved from where she sat. Her eyes stayed fixed on the store’s doorway.

  Then the back door opened, and a cloud of smells poured out—cooking meat and fresh bread and melting butter. It was fabulous. A woman stood in the doorway. “Hello, pretty dogs!” she sang out.

  The males ran over to do Sit at the woman’s feet. I followed, though I held back a little, careful not to crowd the other dogs.

  What was about to happen? And did it have anything to do with that wonderful smell?

  The woman had a marvelously greasy paper rolled up in her hands. The paper rustled—what a lovely noise!—as she reached inside it and plucked out fatty pieces of cooked beef. Starting with Fluffy Butt, she went down the row of dogs, handing each of us a large chunk.

  “Are you a new friend?” she asked when she came to me. “What’s your name?” She held out a delectable slice. I took it delicately from her fingers and ate it in two or three bites, so none of the other dogs would have a chance to take it from me. Nothing had ever tasted so good—except, of course, a T-i-i-ny Piece of Cheese.

  “That’s all I have tonight, lovies. Be good dogs!” the woman said.

  She went inside and shut the door behind her.

  We all sniffed the ground to see if any of us had dribbled any delicious bits of meat. Fluffy Butt approached and sniffed me all over. Small Male bowed, with his front legs flat on the ground and his rear end up, tail wagging. We wrestled for a moment, and then they all moved on.

  I followed. It felt good to be with other dogs. We had greeted each other, smelled each other, played with each other. I was in the pack now.

  We walked down a narrow street behind a row of buildings. There were several large metal containers that clearly contained scraps of edible things, but the pack didn’t stop until we reached a square plastic bin.

  Big Male reached up with his nose and knocked the lid off of the bin. Odors poured out—cheese, meat, grease, sweets. I breathed in hungrily.

  Then Fluffy Butt did something amazing! She leaped up so that her front paws and head were inside the bin. Her back paws scrabbled at the plastic side. She fell back almost at once, but now she had something in her mouth—a cardboard box. Small bundles wrapped in plastic spilled from it all over the ground.

  Those bundles smelled like food!

  Each dog snatched a meal and darted away from the pack to finish it off. When I tore off the plastic, there was meat and bread inside mine, coated in a tangy sauce that made me sneeze.

  Fluffy Butt dove into the bin again and again. Sometimes the things she pulled out were not interesting at all—little pieces of vegetables or scraps of crumpled paper. But a few times she found more to eat. I was the youngest, so I held back, letting the two males and Fluffy Butt snatch up what they wanted. That was the rule of the pack.

  Once we’d gotten all we could out of the bin, the two males trotted away. Fluffy Butt and I followed. We made our way to another door with fantastic smells behind it. I was not as hungry as I’d been earlier, when I’d met Warren and Dude in the woods. But I would still be happy to have more to eat, if anyone wanted to offer it to me.

  Small Male and I wrestled while Big Male lifted his leg and left his mark on a wall. Then there was a noise from inside the door, and we all ran expectantly to it and did Sit, being very good dogs.

  The door opened. “Well, hello there. Are you here for a handout?” a man called. He did not hand us treats, as the woman had done earlier. He tossed them at us, one dog at a time. The piece of crispy, salty meat that he pitched at me bounced off my nose, but I jumped on it and gobbled it up before any of the others could get it. Bacon!

  The man shut the door. “That’s all I have for tonight. Go on home, now. Go home.”

  I stared in amazement. How did this man know about Go Home?

  The pack trotted away, and I followed, but I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to stay with them. I was very far from Lucas, and I had just been commanded to do Go Home.

  It felt like a physical pull inside me, as if the invisible leash pulling me toward Lucas had just tightened up.

  Fluffy Butt left us. One moment she was with the pack, and the next she simply turned away and trotted up a walkway toward a front porch.

  And then Big Male went away too. Small Male marked a tree while Big Male went straight to a building and climbed up a few steps to a metal door. I heard a rasping sound as he dragged his claws over the door’s surface. After a moment, a small boy opened the door and Big Male went inside.

  The door shut.

  Small Male sniffed me. He turned toward a house, and then turned back to look at me, wagging. He spun in a circle, his eyes bright.

  Inside the house I could see two children. They ran past a lighted window again and again. They were playing Chase-Me.

  I knew that Small Male wanted me to follow him. But I understood something now. The pack was doing what Bacon Man had said. They were doing Go Home. They had houses and families and people, just like I did.

  The difference was that they were close to their homes, and I was still far away from mine.

  I could not go with Small Male because my person was not in his house or his family. My person was Lucas.

  I turned my nose in the direction I knew would lead me to Lucas. That way there was no town. There were hills and streams and trees, and I could smell the sharp tang of something very cold. If I wanted to do Go Home, I would have to travel through those things. I would have to be without a pack, without people, maybe for a long time.

  Small Male barked once and headed toward his house. Part of me wanted to join him. He had the smell of more than one human hand on his fur, and it would be so nice to sleep on a soft bed and be petted by Small Male’s people.

  But I could not be with my boy and also with Small Male. I turned away from him, breathed in a deep whiff of the night, and went to
find my Lucas.

  12

  I felt uneasy as the lights and noises and smells of the town faded away behind me. I missed the pack. I missed people.

  I missed treats. Very much.

  I spent the night by a river, in a place where a scooped-out spot on the ground was shaped like a dog bed. Several times I awoke at the sound or smell of small animals, but none of them came near me, and none were familiar to my nose.

  The path I was on did not always take me in the direction I needed to go. But I found that, if I stayed on it long enough, it would twist back until it was headed toward Go Home.

  There were people on this path, too. They always let me know that they were coming with their voices and loud footsteps, so I knew when to duck aside into tall grass or leafy bushes.

  People who were not Lucas were nice and they had food, but they would not help me to do Go Home. I knew that now.

  Go Home was my job. It was up to me.

  The second night after my time with the pack, I found a flat area that smelled strongly of people. Many of them had walked here and sat at the wooden tables that were on the ground.

  Those people had food.

  The thing that smelled most strongly of food was a tall metal barrel. I came close to it, wagging my tail at the beckoning odors.

  I tried to do what Fluffy Butt had done to the plastic bin, leaping up and sticking my head inside the barrel. But all that happened was that my weight pulled the whole thing over.

  I felt guilty, but not for long, because food spilled out. Delicious food.

  I found chicken pieces and a thick chunk of sugary treat, and some dry biscuits that were not very interesting. The chicken crunched as I chewed through the bones, and I licked succulent juice from the inside of a plastic container.

  It felt so good not to be hungry anymore. Content, I curled up under a table and put my tail over my nose. Having a full stomach made me feel safe.

  The next day the trail took me steeply uphill. Before long, I was hungry again. Why was my stomach so demanding? It wanted to be fed day after day, when I just wanted to do Go Home.

  I heard a strange noise—a sudden, loud, cracking bang! It sounded a little like a door slamming, but mostly it sounded like a noise I had never heard before.

  A whiff of bitter smoke reached my nose, and a voice came to my ears. “She’s got to weigh a hundred fifty pounds!” someone shouted.

  I did not like the noise, or the smoke. But I was interested to see the people, or at least my stomach was interested.

  I would not get too close or go for a car ride. But they might have food. It was one of the best things about humans.

  I left the trail and pushed through some high grass. The sound of the voices became closer and closer. “Told you we’d get something today!” one said.

  I came up a small rise. Once I crested it, I saw the men.

  I was on top of a small hill, and down the slope below me was a stream. On the other side of the stream, the land rose into a much steeper hill, and the two men were hurrying down it, nearly falling over their own feet in their rush to get to the stream. Both carried long black pipes in their hands.

  “At least five hundred dollars!” one of them shouted.

  I started to go down the hill toward them, but just then the wind shifted. It brought me the strong smell of an animal. And also something else.

  Blood.

  I turned toward the blood scent, the men forgotten. I knew deep inside me that blood meant food.

  I did not have far to go. Just a few steps away, among some boulders, a creature was lying motionless.

  I cautiously approached. It did not stir.

  I sniffed at the blood on its chest. This animal smelled similar to a cat, but she wasn’t like any cat I had ever seen. She was enormous, larger than I was. And she was not moving.

  I had seen squirrels like this sometimes, on the road or under bushes. That kind of squirrel was not able to play Chase-Me. It was not alive anymore.

  Behind me, I could hear the men, both breathing loudly. “I need a break!” one said.

  “We better grab the thing and get out of here,” the other man said. “You know what happens if we get caught poaching a cougar?”

  “Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you shot it!”

  Their voices were excited and anxious. I decided that I did not want to meet these men after all. I was sure they would not give me any treats if I did.

  A movement in the nearby bushes caught my eye. There was something there, an animal, but the wind was blowing the wrong way for me to smell it.

  I stared, seeing round eyes and pointed ears.

  Then I realized what I was looking at: a cat. A big cat, bigger than many dogs I had met—although still much smaller than the dead cat lying so still.

  The way she held herself reminded me of the cats in the den where I had been born. She looked like they used to when they sensed a threat—the same rigid body, the same wide-eyed stare, the lips drawn back a little from the teeth.

  This cat was terrified.

  There was a loud shout from one of the men, and the cat cringed and backed into the bushes and darted away. I watched the skittering way she ran, and I realized something: Even though she was as large as a small-sized dog, she was not a cat. She was a kitten. A very big kitten.

  She did not go far before she stopped and crouched in the grass, now staring past me at the big cat with the blood on its chest.

  Kittens had mothers. Where was hers? Was the huge cat her mother?

  The sounds and smells behind me told me that the men were coming closer. I needed to go.

  I turned and padded quietly into the brush.

  The big kitten followed.

  As I made my way through bushes and grass, I could track the scents of the big kitten and the huge mother cat on the ground beneath me. They had come this way before me.

  I did not feel happy.

  I was worried by what I’d seen. I did not quite understand what had happened to the mother cat, why she lay so still, why she was no longer alive.

  I did not know what the shouting men with the long black pipes had to do with all of this, but I felt that they were somehow connected.

  I was beginning to understand that not all humans are like Lucas or Mom or Olivia. Some humans are not to be trusted. I had a feeling that the men with smoky pipes were humans like that.

  The big kitten padded silently behind me. I turned and looked at her. She sat down, regarding me with her light-colored eyes.

  I wanted to keep going. I needed to move toward Lucas, toward my human who was safe.

  I took a few steps and then looked back over my shoulder. The big kitten was still sitting there. Still looking at me.

  Big Kitten was an afraid kitten. She needed my help. When I was small and young and in danger, Mother Cat had protected me. Now I felt a powerful pull to protect this kitten.

  When she moved off, I followed her, even though she was going in the wrong direction. Big Kitten jumped lightly over rocks and fallen logs, and I pushed along behind her. Before long, we came to a place under some trees where the smell of the huge mother cat was strong. She had spent a lot of time here.

  Another scent drifted up to my nose from the dirt under my paws: blood and meat. Something was buried there.

  I scratched eagerly at the earth. Big Kitten watched, and then came to help. Before long, we unearthed the carcass of a deer. The scent of the huge mother cat and Big Kitten was still on it.

  I had no idea how this deer had come to be under the dirt, but I was hungry, and I bit into it eagerly. After a time, making no noise at all, Big Kitten also began to feed.

  * * *

  That night I lay down on some grass near our meal. Big Kitten came right up to me and sniffed my face. I licked her, and she tensed and backed away. But when I put my head down on the ground, she came closer once more.

  Sniffing, she explored me up and down. I held still, allowing her to
learn all about me.

  Big Kitten began to purr, and I knew what she was going to do. Sure enough, she rubbed the top of her head against me, just as my kitten friends had done back in our den. Then she curled up against my side, and I felt the fear slowly leave her body.

  Once Lucas had taken care of cats. He had fed them and brought them water.

  I would look after this big kitten. I believed that it was something Lucas would have wanted me to do.

  13

  Big Kitten and I spent several days with the body of the deer, eating as much as we wanted. When we weren’t eating, we were playing. Big Kitten liked to pounce on me, and I liked to knock her on her back and chew very gently on her head until she twisted and dashed away.

  She also liked to sleep most of the day, but she would become oddly alert as the sun was going down. I’d curl up for the night and she would pad silently off into the trees. One time, to my amazement, she came back with the limp body of a small rodent in her mouth.

  I wondered who gave her such a thing.

  We ate it together.

  When all that was left of the deer was mostly bones, I could feel a restless urge to keep moving. It was time to do Go Home.

  Big Kitten went with me. I remembered how, before I met Lucas, my mother dog had been taken from me. How I had found a home with a new family, a cat family.

  I was Big Kitten’s Mother Cat.

  I found a trail going in the right direction and headed along it. Big Kitten did not seem to like the packed dirt with its scent of human feet. She would slink along nearby, hidden by grass and bushes. I could not see her, nor could I hear her, but I could smell her. She was never very far away.

  When we had been on the move for two days, I felt hunger gnawing away at my belly once more. Big Kitten was probably feeling the same thing.

  How could I take care of her? How could I feed her, the way Lucas had once fed the cats?

  I was worrying over this as I crouched by a stream, lapping at the water. Big Kitten came out from behind some rocks and joined me. She lowered her head and lapped silently. Cats don’t seem to enjoy drinking very much. When a dog is thirsty and drinks, it’s easy to tell that the dog is happy. Water flies everywhere, leaking from our jaws. Cats are so delicate it’s hard to see why they even bother.