Say That Again (2 page)

They were all so reckless. Running to greet the strangers. Falling all over each other like drunken buffoons. Their plump little nubs wagging deliriously. Each time, I hung back, observant. Not afraid, but cautious. The Tall Ones called me fearful; they couldn’t have been more wrong. I was simply thoughtful.

One by one, the others had left. I was glad for that. No more razor sharp fangs piercing my ear flaps. No more being dragged around by the scruff, even as I protested. It was my dream come true. But even as I bade my brothers and sisters good riddance, I looked on with envy.

They had been chosen. They had a home.

Secretly, I craved what I had so long eschewed: a Forever Home. That place where you are surrounded by your own family of Tall Ones who shower you with love, play with you, rub your tummy, keep your kibble bowl endlessly full, and lay biscuits on your bed at night.

Maybe it was foolish of me to dream of such a thing when I had never known anything like it, but I was sure such a life existed. That somewhere out there was someone for me. A person I could call my own. This need to attach myself to a human was, I’m sure, programmed into my genetic code.

So when the last set of strangers came that day, I tried. With all my heart, I tried. This was my chance to become an ‘only’. To perhaps go off to a place better than the dark, cluttered garage I had known, filled with the odor of engine oil and gasoline, fertilizer and molded grass clippings. Somewhere besides the muddy confines of our cramped pen, where the wind blew cold and sharp through the tall weeds outside the ramshackle fence.

I dreamed of being inside, where it was bright and warm and always dry. The Tall Ones had taken us there whenever the strangers came. Inside, in a place they called the kitchen. A place smelling of food and filled with unfamiliar sounds. It both intrigued and terrified me. Given time, though, I might have grown accustomed to it. Given time, I could have proven myself capable of so much.

Right now, I just wanted
down
!

I kicked my legs and let out a howl. The stranger’s hands clamped tighter around me, compressing my ribs. He brought my face close to his, breathing stale breath into my precious air.

“Don’t like that, do you?” He pressed his warty nose to mine.

I took it as a challenge, growling. Which, I have since learned, was perhaps the wrong thing to do. Hindsight and all that. But I was trying to send a message, which he didn’t seem at all interested in listening to. So I took it as my place to teach him something new. You squeeze; I warn you to stop.

He plopped me down so fast the air whooshed from my lungs with a visceral grunt. Message received, then. Certain that death was imminent, I scrambled under the table legs to tuck myself against the wall.

The stranger turned his back on me and mumbled at the woman who fed me every day.

“Wait!” She shuffled after him as he went from the kitchen. “You can have him for free. No charge, really. We just want him to have a good home — and you seem like such a nice man. A dog lover, for sure.”

Stopping in the front doorway, he pulled a rough hand down over his beard and looked my way. “I’ll talk to my wife and let you know. She kinda wanted one of them spotted ones.”

The door groaned shut. The woman leered in my direction, stomping toward me, and then peered under the table. Her mouth pressed into a scowl. “What are we going to do, Ed? No one wants him.”

“Told you — everybody wants the merles. Told you that when you got the bright idea of buying the mother from that gal in Campbellsville and breeding her to Toby Updegraff’s boy.”

Straightening, she turned toward Ed. “He’s a pretty dog.”

“He’s got no papers. Papers matter.”

“Folks don’t care about papers. They just want purebreds.”

Snorting, Ed pulled out a chair and sat. “Purebred Australian Shepherd? Who could tell? The runt sure doesn’t look like one to me. You sure that bitch didn’t get loose and get herself bred by a black Lab or something?” He popped open the tab on his beer and guzzled. “Anyway, can’t blame that guy for leaving just now. The little one’s always watching me. I bet he turns out meaner than snot.”

“Scared of his own shadow, more like.” She paced about, banging drawers and clanging pots. “Shame the mother ran off.”

“I say we’re lucky she did.”

Every chime of metal reverberated down to my bones and scraped at my nerves. Overcome by the noise, I quivered uncontrollably. Growing up in the garage, except for our mother’s barking and the squeals of my littermates, there had been abounding quiet. If I was afraid now, it was only because there was so much I didn’t know. Everything here was new to me. My senses were assaulted every second. I was acutely aware of every movement, every scent, every boom and screech and bellow. Without knowing what any of these things meant, I had only one instinct — and that was to stay safe.

But when Ed reached for me, there was no safe place. No retreat, no recourse. Gruff fingers pinched the skin at the back of my neck, yanking me across the slick floor. He hoisted me by the scruff, swinging me under his arm.

“Tell you what, Carol,” he said to the woman. “I’ll take care of him. I’m damn tired of cleaning up after the rodent.”

Carol followed us to the back door, concern furrowing her ragged brow. “Where are you taking him?”

“For a ride.” He chuckled and kicked the door open.

The knot inside my stomach drew tighter.

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—o00o—

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H
e didn’t stop driving until I upchucked my breakfast. Had I known he would take that as a signal, I would have done it sooner.

I’d never been in a car and couldn’t say I liked it. Too much noise. Too much vibration. Too much of objects flying by at impossible speeds. Too much of too much.

I was thankful when we stopped and he pulled me out.

Until I saw the water, far,
far
below. Big water. Dark water. Fast water.

I stole one last look at his face before he dropped me inside the crinkly white bag. In the constriction of his eyelids, the hollowness behind his pupils, I saw my first glimpse of cruelty. It was a glance through a tunnel that led to a heart of granite.

That was when I knew that not all humans were the same. Still, I clung to the hope, however unproven, that some were good — and that I would come to know them, even as the bag closed above my head and I felt the rush of air beneath me as gravity carried me down.

Down, down, down. Down to the water.

And the end of my beginning.

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C
old blasted through me. Infiltrated every cell, every molecule of my bodily existence. Like rubble bearing down in an avalanche, water surrounded me. Sucked the oxygen from my lungs and squeezed the blood from my heart.

When you dunk your paw into a bowl of water, water is fluid and soft. When you’re plummeting from a hundred feet up into a raging river, it is like hitting a concrete barrier at incredible speed. I was sure every bone in my body had been shattered.

Yet if that had been so, I would not have found myself kicking, struggling upward. A little pocket of air had formed at the top of the bag — and that is how I knew which way was up. But the more I clawed, the more air bubbled out through the little hole where Ed had closed the bag up. And the more I fought to free myself, the more my body yearned for oxygen.

I gulped, drawing water into my mouth, flooding my lungs. The river closed in around me and also filled me from within. I was being crushed and suffocated all at once. My heart threatened to burst. My lungs were ready to explode.

The instinct to survive took over. I felt myself pawing. One front leg slipped through the opening. I stuck my nose there, pushing. But it would not loosen. No matter how hard I tried.

I hurt. Everywhere. Outside and inside. Ears, eyes, toes, ribs.

Hurt like I had been beaten with a thorny branch and run over by a car. Every bone pulverized. My skin flayed. Arteries and veins collapsed in on themselves.

But pain, when all-consuming, propels the spirit to another plane. A place where it becomes separate from the body, then fades, gloriously, away.

It was as though I had just laid my pain-riddled body onto a giant leaf and set it adrift on calm waters. With a breath, I blew it away. Let go. Floated through a haze of bliss, my body weightless and free of pain. And drifted to where the light shone down, a cone-like tunnel to up above.

Who are you?

The voice had come from the light. The words, however, were not the language the Tall Ones had spoken. Still, somehow I knew the meaning behind the sounds. I understood.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

“Nothing to be afraid of?” I said, although I hadn’t really said it, only thought it. But I heard my words.
Heard
them.

That’s right. You’re safe.

“Safe?”

You sound like an echo.

“Echo?”

Yes, Echo.

And like that, my name became Echo. Although I still wasn’t sure what it was I should be afraid of.

Of not letting go,
the voice said.

“Not letting go?”

You want to go toward the light, yes?

“Yes, I do.”

Why?

“Because there is no pain there. It’s a beautiful place. Peaceful.”

It is. But you have to stay.

“Stay ... here? In the water? But I can’t breathe. I’m not a fish.”

Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be a fish. It’s very, very boring.

“Then what? I don’t understand.”

Just stay. Be you. Trust that who you are is who you’re meant to be. And trust that you are meant for someone.

The voice trailed away. I blinked at the light as it, too, faded. A silver, forked tailfin flicked before me, then disappeared. Bubbles funneled upward in its place, as a murky wash of bluish-green surrounded me. My legs pulled in toward my body, then stroked the water, pushing it behind me. Green gave way to blue. Brilliant, sparkling sky blue.

My head broke the surface. I swallowed not water, but air, and then coughed up great gobs of phlegm. Foam swirled around me. My legs, numb to the cold, kicked and paddled. The shoreline came into view, rocky banks bordered by sandy mud flats. I strained toward it, but the river carried me farther downstream. So I let it take me. Bobbing and spinning. Until at last it deposited me on a sandy strip, littered with flakes of stone.

I lay sprawled upon the damp earth, the naked arms of trees scratching at a steel gray sky above me. Water lapped at my toes, its sound a steady rhythm, growing in volume. Cold seeped beneath my drenched fur, settling deep in my bones. I began to shiver. My teeth rattled. My muscles cramped, burning with fatigue from my efforts.

I had to go ... somewhere. Anywhere. Just not back there with them, Ed and Carol. So I lifted my head, looked around.

The world tipped and spun. I felt dizzy, nauseated, disoriented. Pulling my elbows beneath me, I rested my muzzle between my front paws and watched the river flow by.

How long had I been down there, beneath the surface? Where was the bridge? And why had Ed thrown me from it? These were things, I realized, I would never know.

What I did know was that I had defied death and survived. And I was no longer afraid of what I did not know, because what we imagine might happen is sometimes far worse than what comes to be.

Trust that who you are is who you’re meant to be.

I shook my head to jar the words from my mind. They meant nothing. They were merely a dream.

And trust that you are meant for someone.

Meant for someone? A human? Hah, not likely. What reason did I have to trust any of them?

Slowly, I stood. My legs trembled from weakness. As I walked away, I swayed, my steps twisting along a narrow trail that meandered beside the river.

Pausing, I lowered my nose and inhaled. Others had been here before me. But not humans. Some other kinds of animals I did not know.

A plump form scampered farther ahead across the trail. I hunkered low to hide behind a tuft of grass. It had a ringed tail, ticked fur, and a dark band across its eyes. It stopped, gazed back at me, and chattered in irritation before disappearing into the tangle of trees that spilled down into the valley from surrounding hills. I waited until the creature was long gone before continuing on.

The sun peeked between broken clouds, but it did little to chase the cold away. The only way to get warm was to keep moving. So I did. Mile after mile. Following the river. Going as far as I could from Ed and the bridge.

The promise of food and warmth urged me on. I didn’t know where to find those things; only that they weren’t here.

Thirsty, I went to the river and drank from it. It tasted of silt and moss and decaying leaves. As I turned back to the path, a lump of fur at water’s edge caught my eye. I watched it for a long, long time. It didn’t move. It wasn’t even breathing. Whatever it was, it was dead.

Crouching low, I crept forward. I had practiced my stealth hunting moves with my siblings many times. I was the best of all of them at it. I had often pounced, but never attacked. I refused to torture them as they had me.

The closer I came to the lump, the more it struck me as odd, out of place. It had one eye, which wasn’t really in its skull at all, but attached to the outside by a few loose strands of thread. Its tail and mane were made from thicker cords, tangled and frayed. And it appeared to have no mouth at all. Large brown spots covered its yellow body, its lanky legs almost comical compared to mine.

Aware that it posed no danger, I stood over it, curious as to what it was and how it had gotten there. I sniffed it and detected only the stink of river water. Then I nudged its body with my nose to push it away from the water. When it was safely away from the river, I gently picked it up in my mouth. The neck was oddly angled. I shook it and water flew in a broad arc to patter upon the dead grass. The head flopped side to side, almost separate from the rest of it.

This was my prize, my reward for having survived. In my short life, I had never come across anything quite so fascinating, so desirable, such a fountain of joy. As I trotted along the path, I lifted my head high, proud of this thing I had claimed. It was like having hunted without having maimed or killed.