Fight for Life (9 page)

I need help.

“What are you doing after school?” I ask Sunita.

The bus ride home is loud and bumpy as usual. What’s different is that Sunita is sitting next to me instead of her usual seat behind the driver. She has to shout so I can hear her.

“Even with both of us it could take days!” she hollers.

“What do you mean?”

She opens her binder to a page of calculations. “I did the math. Fifty names per column, three columns per page, three pages of columns equals four hundred and fifty names. Even if each phone call takes three minutes, it will take the two of us more than eleven hours!”

“You’re joking.”

She shakes her head.

“What if Brenna helps us?”

She slides her calculator out of a special pocket in her binder. How does she keep a notebook that neat?

“Seven point five hours.”

“And if we add Zoe?”

“About five and a half.”

That would still take two afternoons of calling. Gran wouldn’t let four of us stay on the phone from 3:30 until 9:00 P.M. I look at the back of the bus. David is making faces with his buddies, turning up his nose and crossing his eyes. I can’t believe I’m going to do this.

“And David?”

“If there are five of us, taking ninety names each, three minutes a name, it comes down to four and a half hours. That’s less than half of what it would take if there were two of us. Oh, and if you do it alone”—she pauses for a quick calculation—“it will take twenty-two point five hours.”

I have to take back what I said to my teacher about math being useless.

Each time the bus stops, I scoot down the aisle to talk to one of the others. Brenna is drawing a peace symbol on the back of her left hand with a green marker. She agrees instantly. Zoe is two rows back sitting with the Conover twins, who are the coolest kids in fifth grade. When I ask her if she’ll help, she smiles and says, “Sure. Mom always said I was good at talking on the phone.”

As I step to the back row, the boys freeze. I still can’t believe I’m doing this.

“David, do you want to come to the clinic? We need your help.”

His friends erupt into screams, hoots, and hollers. He blushes, which makes matters worse. I turn to walk away. This was a stupid idea.

David yells loud enough to be heard over the noise.

“I’ll be there!”

I stumble back to my seat and sit back down next to Sunita. “Remind me again why we’re doing this,” I mutter.

The bus lets us off at the corner. We troop into the clinic, me at the head of the pack and Zoe bringing up the rear. Dr. Gabe is searching through the piles of paper on the receptionist’s desk.

“Hi, Gabe. Where’s Gran?”

“She’s out on a call to Mr. Barber’s,” he explains. “Hoof rot. Again.”

“Mr. Barber will talk forever,” I say. “We have all the time we need.”

Sunita hands out the photocopied phone lists, and I assign people to the telephones. David gets the house line in the kitchen, Zoe takes the phone in Gran’s bedroom, and Sunita calls from the phone in the lab. Before she starts, she disconnects the modem and attaches it to an old phone, so Brenna and I each have a phone to use at the receptionist’s desk. And there is still one phone line open for incoming calls. Having six telephone lines is another advantage of living next to the clinic.

“OK, guys, listen up,” I say as we gather around the kitchen table. “This is really important. If we can find the puppy mill, then we can rescue the rest of the dogs and shut this guy down for good. But first we have to find out where they are. Don’t rush, and make sure you call every number.”

“What do we say?” Sunita asks. “I’m not a very good liar.”

“You don’t have to lie. Just ask if they have puppies for sale. Say you got the number from a friend.”

“Which is the truth,” Brenna points out.

“Those puppies are counting on us. Start dialing!”

We get to work. Dial, ask, and hang up. Dial, ask, and hang up. Brenna is great at this. Her voice sounds so confident. I’m having trouble. I keep getting wrong numbers. I always get wrong numbers.

Brenna hangs up her phone and watches me dial. After a minute she says, “You’re not dialing the numbers on your sheet. You’re switching them. Instead of 463-9257, you just dialed 436- 2597.”

“Darn. That happens a lot ... Wait. That means—oh, my gosh! I know what happened to Mitzy!”

“What are you talking about?” Brenna asks.

“Where’s that piece of paper I gave you, the one with the feeding instructions?”

“Taped to the cupboard back in the kennel. Why?”

No time to explain. I sprint to the kennel and find the chart. I take a deep breath and carefully read what I wrote.

Yep, I was right. I switched the numbers. Brenna fed Mitzy exactly what I wrote down, but I wrote down 5.2 scoops of dry food a day instead of 2.5 scoops a day. We’re lucky it wasn’t more serious.

I lean against the wall. Mitzy got hurt because of my mistake. I put a patient in danger—

“Maggie, Maggie!” Sunita shouts. “David found the puppy seller!”

I
t only took a few minutes to explain what we found to Gran, but it took a couple of days for her to pull together “the necessary arrangements.” At first, I didn’t want to wait, but then I could sort of see her point. She wanted to do things properly so the animals would be taken care of and the authorities would go along with us.

But Brenna grumbled about it all week. She thought we should just swoop in and rescue the pups. Sneak in at night and steal them if we had to. Even I could see that was a bad idea. David and Zoe cooked up a scheme to notify the television stations so we could be on the news, but Gran put an end to that one.

Finally the big day is here. As we drive through the pouring rain out to Lafayette Road, Gran goes over what we might see one more time.

“Good breeders raise animals properly. They provide them with clean cages and plenty of food and water. They vaccinate them, and they are careful to breed only animals who are strong and healthy, and have good personalities.

“You won’t see any of that where we’re going. Chances are it’s going to be filthy. The dogs will be underfed and sick. The people who run these places don’t care about the health or happiness of the animals. They just want to make money fast.”

“Sounds scary,” says Zoe.

“You can stay in the van if you want,” Gran offers. “There’s nothing wrong with making that choice.”

I look back at the others. David is anxious, Brenna outraged, Sunita worried, Zoe concerned. No one is backing out. We’re going to see this through to the end.

We pull in a gravel driveway and drive past a hand-painted sign that says PUPPIES 4 SALE. The animal shelter van and a sheriff’s car pull in behind us. They are here to help us. Captain Thompson heads up the local shelter. He retired from the army a few years ago. His full name is Zebulon P. Thompson. Whenever I ask him what the
P
stands for, he always has a different answer. I mostly call him “sir.”

His volunteers will take any healthy animals we find to the shelter. Then they’ll try to find good homes for them. The sheriff is here to make sure that everything is done legally.

We park next to a two-story farmhouse. In front of us is a small barn missing some windows and desperate for a coat of paint. A wet cat darts past the van and hides under the front porch. I can hear a bunch of dogs barking. They are not happy barks. They are pained, sad barks.

A man runs out of the house without a coat on. He must be the owner. Mrs. Nestor was right—he is skinny. Mean-tempered, too.

“What do you people think you’re doing?” he screams as he bangs on my side of the van. “Get off my property. I don’t want you here!”

“Do you think he has a gun?” Sunita whispers.

“I don’t care,” says Brenna boldly.

“I care,” David says. “I care a lot.”

“David’s right,” says Gran as she turns off the engine. “You should care. Wait here, kids, until I make sure it’s safe for you to get out.”

The sheriff and Gran talk briefly, then she knocks on my window.

“You can come out if you want.”

The puppy mill owner shakes his finger in the sheriff’s face as we all get out of the van.

“Sheriff, I want these people arrested right now,” he demands, shaking with anger.

The sheriff crosses his arms over his chest. Rain drips from the front of his hat and makes a puddle at his feet. “They made me get a warrent, Larry. It’s about your dogs. Bunch of people filed complaints. We need to take a look at them now. If they’re in bad shape, the doc here can take them away.”

Larry, the puppy mill owner, looks behind him, toward the sound of barking, howling dogs. “I haven’t had a chance to clean ’em up today. The rain and all, you know,” he says. “Come back tomorrow.”

The sheriff looks at Gran. “It would be nicer to do this in better weather,” he comments.

“Then he’ll fix everything up,” I interrupt. “That’s not fair. We—I mean Gran—has to inspect the dogs now!”

“She’s right,” Gran says.

“I’m calling my lawyer!” Larry yells. He turns around and stomps toward the house.

“Let’s get this over with,” says the sheriff.

Captain Thompson and his volunteers walk toward the front of the barn. Gran heads the other way, around the back of it. Brenna and I follow Gran. Sunita, David, and Zoe follow Captain Thompson.

From the sound of the barking, I figure there will be four dogs, maybe five, plus a few puppies. I am completely unprepared for what we see as we turn the corner.

It looks like a jail, a horrible jail for dogs. Dogs are crammed into small wire kennels, two rows of them. I count ten kennels per row. Brenna and I walk down the middle of the aisle, speechless. This guy has been breeding chocolate and yellow Labs, collies, and a few terriers. There are so many animals that look hungry and dirty, I don’t know where we should start.

The kennels are awful. There is nothing protecting the animals from the rain. The dogs are crowded into the wire cages and have to go to the bathroom right where they sit. The stench is horrifying. Their food bowls are disgusting. I see worms everywhere. A scrawny Lab is struggling to lap up water from a puddle.

A few dogs bark wildly at us. The rest look too malnourished to make any noise. Some have open sores where their fur has been rubbed away, probably from rubbing up against the cages, trying to get out.

I blink fast to get rid of the tears in my eyes. How could anyone treat animals this way?

“I wonder how he’d feel if we locked him up in a cage,” Brenna growls.

“He doesn’t have feelings,” Gran mutters.

David runs around the corner of the barn. “We found puppies in the barn!” Sunita and Zoe follow, each cradling a terrier puppy in her jacket.

“Oh, my gosh.” Zoe is stunned at the sight of the kennels.

“Are those... ?” begins Sunita. She covers her mouth with her hand.

David can’t say anything. He’s speechless.

“The owner must keep puppies in the barn for a few days to clean them up and put some weight on them before he sells them,” Gran says.

“Let’s get them out of here,” I say. “Let’s get them home.”

It takes more than an hour for Captain Thompson’s volunteers to remove the dogs from the kennels. Gran does a quick examination and decides who is healthy enough to go to the shelter, and who needs to go to the clinic. They are all hungry. As the volunteers load up the shelter van, Gran tells Captain Thompson how to feed them properly. The shelter van has to make two trips.

When Gran is ready to take the sick dogs and puppies back to the clinic, she starts up the van and turns the heat on full blast.

“Get in out of the rain,” she tells us. “You are all going to have to be puppy incubators.” We jump in the van and she starts handing each of us three puppies bundled in a towel. “Hold them close. They need your body heat.”