Mountain Dog (2 page)

splintered

stinky

spiderwebby

nightmarish

hard

wooden

doghouses.

This place is different,

even though it's not a real

house, just a two-room cabin,

with one whole room

for me.

The knotty pine walls

are filled with pictures of trees

and animals—no family photos, no

pictures of Mom when she was little.

I wonder what she was like.

Was she already fierce, or did she

look shy and scared

like me?

Tío's brown dog claims my bed,

dropping his weight over my ankles,

as if to keep me from sprinting

away

in my dreams.…

Life is so weird. Gabe is a happy,

almost-as-smart-as-any-human

creature, while I feel like a worn-out

zoo beast.

I lie awake for a long time,

gazing out the cabin window at stars

that seem to be cradled by branches.

Our drive up the mountain

was so long and dizzying

that I can't even begin to imagine

how far away

from my other life

I am now.

When I finally sleep, I dream

of a funny future. No fangs

or claws. Just me and Gabe,

only he's a serious human,

and I'm the playful pup.

Then it's morning, and Gabe

starts begging to go outside,

but when I glance out the window,

my view of a forest is so unfamiliar

that I stay where I am, motionless

and silent.

Pretty soon, my uncle is up

and breakfast is ready, the morning

already a flurry of surprises.

No one has ever cooked for me.

Not once. Oatmeal might not be

my favorite, but today it tastes

warm and comforting.

Tío says his cabin is so remote,

so high in the Sierra Nevadas,

that I'll have to go to an old-style

three-room mountain school—

grades six through eight together

in one class. I'll be with big kids,

and even though I'm tall, I'm only eleven

and a half. How am I going to survive

around twelve and thirteen-year-olds?

The worst part of picturing myself

at a new school is those moments

at the board, showing everyone

that I can't ever

do any

of the math.

I'm nervous around fractions

and percentages, but word problems

about money are the ones

that really terrify me.

The social worker says it's because

at home, when I showed that I knew

how to count, Mom made me keep track

of greedy bets

at the growling, snarling,

bloodthirsty dogfights.

So instead of practicing numbers,

I just learned letters, and then

I figured out how to keep my words

to myself.

Now, right after breakfast, Tío invites me

to help him take Gabe for a rambling walk

in the woods, where wild pine trees

smell like Christmas, even though

it's springtime.

The forest is shadowy green,

with spiky red flowers sprouting

from bright patches of snow.

My first snow.

My first mountain.

My first off-leash dog.

No chain.

No muzzle.

No scars

or scabs.

Gabe follows a scent, nose to the ground,

nose in the air, back and forth, tracing

a pattern as he follows a smell

toward its source.

He's so thrilled that I soon share

his excitement, racing to catch a sniff

and a glimpse

of the deer or squirrel

that left this mysterious trail

of drifting air.

I wish my stupid human nose

understood all the invisible clues

that Gabe can follow! Dogs inhale

the scents of sweat, breath, skin,

poop, and pee, but they can smell

emotions, too—anger, sadness, fear,

happiness, love, hope.…

Dogs can even smell a tricky lie

or the soothing truth.

Gabe bounces along the trail

of mystery scent, leading me

from a scared-of-life mood

to one that feels

like music.

Tío runs and laughs with us,

but the next day, on our morning walk,

when I sit on a tree stump to rest,

he suddenly turns serious,

reassuring me that he really is

Mom's uncle—my great-uncle—

a true relative. He says he cares

what happens to me.

He tells me what happened to him.

He came to this country on a raft,

just like Mom, but years earlier,

when she was still a child.

His raft drifted, then washed ashore

and crashed on rocks, leaving him alone

and stranded on a tiny, nameless isle

for weeks, a castaway, marooned,

just like Robinson Crusoe.

He had to learn how to survive

by eating seaweed, drinking rain,

and breathing hope.…

I wonder if he remembers my mother

when she was tiny. I hope she was gentle,

sweet, and kind. I hope she loved animals,

and liked everybody,

and was too young to know

that life can be dangerous.

All I know about her is that

after growing up and floating away

from her island, she reached a rough city

where she met mean people

who used drugs and dogfights

as cruel ways to make money.

Tío swears that if he'd known

where she was, he would have tried

to help her, he would have struggled

to help me.

When he's finished talking,

I shake off the tears, and he asks

if I want to sing.

That makes me grin, but he's not joking,

so we pile into the truck with Gabe,

and we whirl around mountain curves,

until the steep road ends at a jumble

of barns and corrals

beyond a crooked wooden sign

that announces

   COWBOY CHURCH

   DOGS & HORSES WELCOME

I've never been to any church at all before,

and I've certainly never imagined a God

who likes horses and dogs.

Gabe treats the place like a feast

of scent, sniffing boots, jeans, hoofs,

and manure. Even the yucky smells

make him smile. He turns out to be

the kind of dog that loves to laugh

and howl.

When the cowboys and forest rangers

start to sing, Gabe joins in, off-key,

and everyone ends up chuckling,

especially me. I never thought

I could have so much fun

so soon after trading

my tough-pit-bull

real life

for this temporary

foster home

in a wild forest

that somehow feels

so much more gentle

than the city.

 

4

GABE THE DOG

WORD SMELLS

After horse smells and howling, we run, race, leap, noses open, eyes open, mouths open, until the floaty aroma of a passing hawk almost disappears.

Low flying. Foresty. Swoop. Chase. Hunt. Hawks leave winged trails of hunger in midair.

Snow. We're tired. We flop, dance, flap, flutter, flip. We make shapes in the softness. Tony's patterns of snow are four limbed, just like mine when I roll from side to side. Only my shape is bigger and more wispy, because it has a tail.

Snow angels. I love it when the boy shouts words with cold, clear meanings that I can smell and taste!

I twitch my nostrils, inhale deeply, swallow meanings. I make the sound, smell, and taste of each new word my own, filling my hunger for friendship. I breathe the bumpy surface of words that rhyme with the scent of humans, the aroma of happiness.

 

5

TONY THE BOY

TRAIL ANGELS

I'm afraid to sleep, terrified

that the same old nightmares

of fangs

and claws

will keep coming back …

but beside me, Gabe woofs,

then drifts

into a running-dog

dream

that leads my tired mind

toward a race

where I am four legged

and fast

so swift that I can

almost

fly!

It's not a real dream,

just a half-awake

fantasy,

but it helps me feel

safe enough

to doze.

In the morning, I wonder

why people always assume that dogs

just want food. Walks are the reward

they really crave—movement,

adventure, new smells.

So I get up and take Gabe out

to sniff the forest while I wish

for a way to avoid my first day

at a new school, and a way

to visit Mom without seeing her

in a prison uniform.

An hour later, my wishing ends.

Small yellow school bus.

Tiny, splintered-wood school.

So how come it seems like a ton

of huge, scary faces?

The old-fashioned building

is plopped in a rocky patch

of flowers that smell like wildness.

Right away, a loud girl shouts

that she saw me at Cowboy Church.

Good dog, she yells, and even though

I know she must mean Gabe,

I feel strangely praised.

Mom knew what she was doing

when she trained me to obey.

So I tell myself to concentrate

on this new-school reality.

My future. My torment.

Which boy will be the first

to trip me? Which girls

can't wait to laugh?

I avoid eye contact.

If there are bullies here,

they'll take a bold gaze

as a challenge.

I've been through it so many times

that I have a reputation for battles,

even though fighting

is the last thing

I've ever

wanted

to do.

The teacher is old and friendly.

The students are young and curious.

I don't even try to learn names.

Why bother? As soon as Mom gets out

of prison, I'll have to move back

to my pit-bull life, the place

where I've always felt

muzzled

and caged.

By the end of that first long day,

all the kids know that I live

with my uncle, who has a search-

and-rescue dog. The loud girl

doesn't keep secrets.

She claims she's a reporter

for the school paper.

She wants me to join her staff,

get a press pass, help her write

stories about four-footed

trail angels.

I don't know what she means.

Are trail angels like snow angels?

Do people lie down and wave

their arms and legs