The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (21 page)

But probably if she hadn't stood up to the bottle, she'd be down the road somewhere in a heap, having stumbled and fallen into a snowbank. She'd be sinking, getting buried by windblown snow. She'd be getting frozen and she wouldn't even know, and then she'd be getting dead.

Mrs. Auberchon saw that she had something to work with. She was glad she wasn't about to be dead.

Suddenly she remembered how mad she was at Dora the Scottie for her lack of interest in that admirable, hardworking hedgehog. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle! Not only lack of interest but scorn!

Mrs. Auberchon gave herself a shaking to throw off the cape of snow she was wearing. With a burst of heated emotion, she propelled herself to the front door and, without knocking, pushed it open and huffed inside, fearing the worst. She'd never seen the part of the lodge she was walking into, so she stiffened to prepare for more shabbiness, more sadness, perhaps with an overlay of invisible dread and doom, like that hotel in the movie where Jack Nicholson becomes demented with an ax, which, she felt, no innkeeper or Warden should ever see. She'd watched it at the inn with Giant George, on one of those nights when he was new to the Sanctuary and often turned up, because he thought the way she ran it was homey and warm, not that he'd ever said so. After the movie she'd made him stay overnight in a guest room so she didn't have to be alone. He had screamed with laughter at the whole thing, while she was sitting there almost having a heart attack.

She remembered how that boy would plop himself down to be near her, like they were related, like maybe she was his grandmother. But then he took on his Great Dane symbol and didn't come anymore, needy and soft as a puppy.

She had worried for nothing. She found herself in the open area of a training room, crates clean, a comfortable brightness, colors, everything shipshape. No one was in sight, not that she expected a receiving committee, or Evie alone, busy with something or passing by on her way to an assignment, then stopping in her tracks startled, amazed, and actually, for once, speechless. There was no one at all. They must be at mealtime.

Mealtime. How quaint it was, putting it like that. But that was how they put things up here. “Oh, it's mealtime, Mrs. Auberchon,” one of them would say, hurriedly ending a phone call. It didn't matter which one was at the other end of the call. They even said mealtime for breakfast, as they said teatime, rest time, nail clipping time, outdoor play time, quiet reading time, brushing time, personal reflection time, meet-with-volunteers time, supervised play time indoors, go-to-bed time, and she'd giggle to herself for the efforts they made to turn their days into slots of moments to squeeze themselves into, when down at the inn, time was slippery and ever-changing. She was the Warden when a Warden was needed, for as long as it took. She was an innkeeper when she had guests (or just one). She'd been a baking helper on baking days, and all along in all the rest of her hours she was a woman on her own, unslotted,
free.

Well, here she was. She didn't know a dog was standing nearby, looking up at her, until she closed the door behind her and caught her breath. The dog, she realized, had been watching her approaching. He'd just turned away from a window.

She only ever looked at the dogs in confinement and sickness and early stages of arrival, but she knew who this was. The last time she saw him, years ago, six or seven years at least, he was still in his bloom of dog-manhood, still young enough to break the rule of never leaving the mountaintop without a human. He'd been an expert at sneaking away. She remembered what it was like to look out her kitchen and see him coming toward the inn in the loping sideways trot of a golden, his mane waving, his head high, his eyes shining because of course he knew she'd open her refrigerator to him. There were always guests in those days to pour compliments all over him, put their hands all over his fur, even people who only had cats, or nothing. He always knew she'd take her time making the call to the Sanctuary to say she had him.

It had ended so suddenly: arthritis, medical scares. The last time she had contact with him, it was pre-computer. They were using the walkie-talkies. She'd spoken to him as he lay in the infirmary, urging him to get well from whatever it was he was down with. He got well. Afterward he entered the group, like a breed group, of Sanctuary dogs who didn't need her.

“My goodness, you're Boomer,” she said, lowering herself to embrace him. She had to hurry and close her lips so he wouldn't French-kiss her. He slobbered all over her face. He didn't know she'd forgotten him.

She noticed the crate with his name on it. How many times in his youth had he left the mountain for a home he was adopted into, only to come back? She didn't remember how many times. It was always something. He had the bad luck of drawing adopters who in spite of their applications and interviews turned out to be people who should only have a dog that was stuffed and bought in a toy store. He was too big, adopters said, or he was a bolter, he was mouthy, he was addicted to dirty underwear. He stank of rotting things he had rolled in, he collected dead leaves in his tail, he did way too much shedding. If you threw him a stick, he refused to return it, and instead lay down and ate it, an entire stick at once, as children eat licorice, and he'd moan with a bellyache, and the vet bills were out of control. He refused to stop jumping on people, and he was terrible as a guard dog, for he only barked if he felt like expressing his feelings, and the list went on and on. Mrs. Auberchon had seen it in his files when Giant George put everything online, for Sanctuary people's eyes only.

But Boomer never came back from a failed adoption with his tail between his legs. It was impossible for him to believe anyone wouldn't want him, just as it was impossible for him to think Mrs. Auberchon had done anything, since their last connection, but wonder how he was. That's what he was saying to her with his tongue, with the nuzzle of his big head against her, with a paw on her knee as she knelt beside him. He was telling her too that old as he was, he was healthy, and also, he remembered every item of human food she used to give him, although he felt it was tragic that she had nothing in her pockets or purse to give him now.

She saw she'd interrupted him on the verge of napping. She wished him sweet dreams and watched him bend his stiff legs to the floor. A moment later he was asleep.

How she knew the way to the infirmary, she had no idea. She saw a hall and went down it. She turned a corner, went down a flight of stairs and down another hall, looking straight ahead all the while, not rushing but hurrying purposefully, professionally, all Warden.

There was the familiar dog-hospital whiteness, the tiled floor, examining tables, wall cabinets, cages, bright cotton window curtains donated from a chain of pet stores, with pictures a sick dog might find cheering or arousing: socks, meat bones, balls, cats, food bowls, biscuits, squirrels, little mail trucks of the United States Postal Service. She didn't seek out the shelf that held the equipment where her voice came out. She knew it would only rattle her to see hard evidence that she was now on the other side. She couldn't let herself become distracted.

Two volunteers, young women, in smocks embossed with the Sanctuary's logo, were sitting on the floor on either side of the dog bed the little dog lay on. She lay on her side, her eyes half lidded. Her belly was pinkly pale from the shaving. The stitching was gone. The scar was a statement of excellent healing. Yet the manner of the two volunteers was that of watchers by a patient in danger, as if Dora had had her surgery just minutes ago and the chance was strong she might not survive it.

The volunteers were not from the village. They were strangers to Mrs. Auberchon, and they were murmuring to Dora and patting her with expressions of such sweetness, such anxious concern, such
loving,
it crossed Mrs. Auberchon's mind that the Scottie was having the time of her life in here. She must be imagining herself a queen in a fairy tale. Mrs. Auberchon never read stories of royalty to dogs, because she believed in democracy. But really. No wonder that dog put on airs!

Mrs. Auberchon stamped her foot to get everyone's attention. Dora opened her eyes, but she didn't lift her head until Mrs. Auberchon spoke. She knew the voice, although she'd never heard it sound like this.

“Dora! You cut that out! You cut that out right now and get up on your feet, or I will throw that bed in the snow with you wrapped up inside it!”

That was the opening salvo. The volunteers gasped, horrified. They also looked a little afraid, as if they thought the Sanctuary had a secret wing that was used as an asylum, and this madwoman had escaped from it.

“Excuse me, but who are you?” asked the bolder of two.

“Oh, I'm just another volunteer,” Mrs. Auberchon said, for it would take too long to explain herself, and anyway it was none of their business who she was. She took a step closer and talked to Dora again, this time more quietly.

“Dora, up,” she said. “I'm telling you to come. Now. I
mean
it. You
come.
”

And suddenly the black and gray dog took possession again of her staunch little wire-fur body. She let out a sigh. A quick little twitching began in the upward points of her terrier ears, like a sign of complaint for being addressed so commonly, so roughly, and then she got up. One of the volunteers had to move to give her space. She stood wobbly. The volunteer held out her arms, ready to catch her, but Dora didn't fall.

She didn't come, but you can't have everything your own way, felt Mrs. Auberchon. She walked around the cushion to let the other volunteer, clearly the one she favored, pat her and praise her. On a wall hook nearby was a new collar that looked her size, and a short leash. Mrs. Auberchon pointed to them and told the unfavored volunteer to put them on her. The command was obeyed at once.

“All right then. Take her upstairs,” said Mrs. Auberchon. “You can carry her on the steps, but otherwise, keep her walking.”

The favored volunteer looked alarmed, in spite of the fact that Dora was perking up. Her tail wasn't wagging, but it was out. It wasn't limp. Her legs weren't buckling under her. Her eyes were the eyes of a dog who's ready to be on the move. Mrs. Auberchon didn't take it personally when she realized that Dora's motivation to leave the infirmary was to get away from her. Instead, she felt moved with a secret admiration. She wished she could message her, human mind to dog mind. If she could, she would say, “I hope I never see you again,” and the meaning would be instantly known as I hope you're never sick; I hope you're never in Solitary; I hope someone adopts you soon, and gives you a crown and a throne.

Dora wouldn't look at her.

“But the vet! The vet said she has to take things really—”

The favored volunteer was doing her best to put up resistance. Mrs. Auberchon decided to interrupt her with a queenly little frown of her own.

“The vet,” she said calmly, “isn't here, and I am.”

She kept the frown until Dora started off on her exit, serenely and slowly, neither pulling on the leash nor being pulled. Right away the terrier took the lead, and when the favored volunteer stepped in line to follow, a procession was formed. It was going, Mrs. Auberchon knew, to a reunion and reception in the Sanctuary's upper chambers.

Her job here was finished. They didn't need her upstairs. She thought for a moment about looking around for Evie—but what was there to say, after hello, how are you, how are the dogs, how are things with your training?

On her walk up the road, Mrs. Auberchon had remembered the email from the Sanctuary asking her to take care of the problem of Evie not being in touch with people she was supposed to be in touch with. That was a potential subject. But not really. Too much time had gone by.

She couldn't talk to Evie about Mrs. Walzer's broken hip. Evie had never met Mrs. Walzer. She couldn't talk about Dapple's rescue, not even the part she had played in it, for it might raise the issue of why wasn't Mrs. Auberchon invited to go along, which she would have said no to, but it would have been nice to be asked.

What about Hank?

Absolutely not. She couldn't talk about Hank's adoption. She'd be too afraid of blurting out how she saw Evie that day with the jumping and the trashcan, which might lead to making an impression of herself as a lonely middle-aged busybody snoop, as if she had nothing better to do than spy out a window at a guest.

She didn't need to check up on Evie and see for herself how she was. She wasn't her mother! She didn't even
like
her!

In a corner of the infirmary was a small refrigerator. Mrs. Auberchon knew it contained refreshments for volunteers. She would need some fortification. She picked out a small bottle of apple juice and a couple of bars from a package of those fruity, nutty health-food things that didn't need refrigeration, but there was nowhere else to put them. She placed the refreshments in her purse, then stopped at the toilet for volunteers in the hall so she wouldn't have to pee in the snow like a dog. Going down, there'd be nowhere to give her shelter for a rest, but at the bottom was a copse of young hemlocks she liked to look at on her bus and cab rides to and from the village. She'd have to stand up in the snow, but that was all right. She trusted her boots. It would be just the right place for a little winter picnic for one.

She left the back way, stepping into the cold and the wind with the feeling she was a hiker who'd made it to a summit, and going down would be better than going up, even though she'd never in her life hiked anywhere before. When she rounded the lodge and entered the road, she wondered if Boomer, awake from his nap, was watching her out the window. Or if anyone else was. But she didn't turn around to find out. She wanted to spare herself another sight of all the
shabby.

This mountain did not deserve shabby! The dogs did not deserve it! The dogs were supposed to come here to learn to lift up their heads, be proud, become
renovated!