Flawed Dogs (16 page)

“Well, now,” said the new dog without taking his eyes off their assailants. “Guess yer pretty glad I got ya out o’ that bit o’ trouble down there, Sammy lad.”

Sam glared at the dog. “How did you know my name was Sam?”

“Well, now. It’s not Maurice Tenderboogers, is it?”

“No.”

“Bubbles Graboff?”

“No.”

“Peaches?”

“No.”

“Good, ’cause that’s my name. That leaves Sam.”

Sam ignored this curious logic because the men were getting closer and they were holding wooden clubs and slapping them on their sweaty hands. Within moments they and the rabid pack of cats would be upon the filthy, disheveled, mud- and sweat-caked little pair.

“Looks like it’s curtains for us, Sammy,” whispered Peaches, staring at their approaching attackers. “You and me, we’ve been through a lot together. Experienced all the ups and downs o’ life. I’d like t’ just say that if you and I ’ave to depart this cruel world . . .” He licked his paw and smoothed the clot of lawn sod on his head. “. . . we’ll be goin’ out lookin’ our very best.”

Sam twitched.

Going out lookin’ our best . . .
repeated Sam to himself.

And then in the span of a single second . . . in the same tiny amount of time it takes for the most complex adventure to spool out in a dream—it all just popped into Sam’s mind:

How to get to Cassius.

Born instantly in all its devious complexity—whole and complete:

Sam’s face lit up, in a dark sort of way.

Sam looked around. He spotted what he was looking for. Jumping onto the low wall, he swung the steel ladle on his stump up and hooked it onto a telephone cable stretching down to a junction box at the street four floors down. Hanging upside down by his chrome foot in the driving rain and holding on to the wall, he was about to let go when he looked back at Peaches.

“You want to come or do you have other plans?”

The strange dog turned around to see what looked like the army from hell coming for them. He turned back to Sam.

“Depends. Where we going?”

“To destroy the International Westminster Dog Show in front of the world.”

Peaches blinked.

“Or we could just hide in a Dumpster,” said the mutt.

The men and feral cats were running at them now, hands and claws stretched out.

“Alas,” said Peaches, staring at the looming mob. “No time.”

Suddenly a white figure dashed in front of them from the left, skidding to a halt between the dogs and their pursuers. The huge pit bull killing machine Sam had just vanquished moments before stood there, legs apart, head low, teeth flashing and drool pooling on the pavement below his curled lips.

But he faced the men and cats, who wisely started backing up.

Turning his great square, bruised head back toward Sam, he said “GO!” Then he grinned and added, “Before I tried to kill you, you asked if there was anything I’d rather be doing. It came to me: Musical theater! Go!”

Sam saluted the bull terrier, turned and leapt for the telephone cable. He hooked the soup ladle on the wire and hung upside down. He looked back at Peaches and said, “Plane’s leaving!” Peaches leapt onto Sam’s upside-down back and sank claws into Sam’s belly, making him wince. Sam let go of the wall and the three-legged dachshund and frazzled, doggy dust mop slid down the rain-soaked cable below a silver soup spoon, down into the driving storm, down toward the flooded street that led away from town and away from trouble and directly toward far, far more.

In the basement of the old stone fort on the edge of town, the eight depositees of the National Last-Ditch Dog Depository were awakened by a sound different from the muffled sounds of the summer storm they’d heard all night.

As always for the last many years, they’d slept in a pile, so untangling was a bit of a chore. Pooft yawned, politely minding where his inflammatory opposite end was pointed. Wee Willy pulled himself out from between Tusk’s toes, where it was always warm. Ol’ Blue stretched a lavender leg. Bug rubbed his eyes with a paw, being careful not to knock one out. Fabio hopped onto his remaining two feet, stretching like a ballerina. And Madam adjusted her self-sewn Great Dane muzzle as she climbed out from below the blanket that was Jeeves’s left jowl.

They all heard the same thing coming from outside the bars of their cage. The television. A little boy’s voice:

“Lassie, you’ve come home!”

The dogs stumbled out of their enclosure past the always-unlocked cage door and blinked into the darkness. As thunder rolled somewhere above and lightning flashed, the dark room exploded into brilliance. Madam coolly stared at a vaguely familiar spoon-legged dachshund sitting atop the desk in the middle of the dungeon-like brick room.

“Handsome,” purred Madam, “is back.”

The little TV was on and playing their only movie: the little boy on the screen hugged his achingly beautiful pet.

Sam turned down the volume with his mouth. He glanced at Peaches, watching from the shadows, and then faced the others. He pointed to the screen and spoke with a different, harder voice than he had years before.

“ ‘Lassie, you’ve come home!’ the boy says. He cries. He holds her. He hugs her. And he tells her again . . .”

Sam leaned in close to the dogs.

“ ‘ . . . You’ve . . . come . . . home.’ ”

Sam pushed the power knob and the picture went black.

“WE,” Sam roared, “WILL NEVER HEAR THAT!” The dogs jumped. Peaches ducked. Sam began to pace across the top of the table, throwing glances at his audience.

“They aren’t coming, you know,” said Sam. “The families in their big boxy cars and the kids piling out to come down here to this wretched hole, put their faces to the bars, point at your crooked, runny noses and say, ‘THAT one, Mommy. That’s the one we’ll take home and give a wicker bed and an old pillow to sleep on, the one we’ll give a lap to rest his head on while we read a book . . . the one who’ll curl up with us when we’re sick or sad or just in need of someone to
LOVE.
’ ”

Sam spat out that final word as if it was something disgusting.

The dogs looked at Sam with a look that was new for them. Something between shock and sorrow and a deep and mournful pain that comes from finally seeing something unthinkably awful that you’d struggled to ignore.

Sam continued. “They are not coming for you. Ever. Because they have been fooled. And seduced. And stolen from you by
the others.
” Sam dropped a rolled-up poster to the floor, where it unspooled. The dogs read it:

THE Westminster Championship Dog Show COMING TO NEW YORK IN THREE DAYS

They all gasped at the magnificent dogs illustrating the words . . . their noses and legs and ears and fur all breathtakingly
perfect.

They’d never seen such animals.

Wee Willy walked up closer to the poster and whistled a low whistle of awe. He was looking at a picture of Cassius, standing largest in the center.

“Zowie.
That’s
a dog.”

“Yes,” said Sam, cool, hiding his real emotions. “He is. And he . . . and all the rest of them . . . is why you will wait here forever while they take what should be yours
. Because you’re flawed and they’re not.
”

Sam snapped the movie on again. The boy was running toward the English horizon with Lassie at his heels, her shiny coat of fur flowing like threaded gold in a stream.

There then arose a sound new to the dark and terrible walls of the National Last-Ditch Dog Depository: a howling of a fresh and terrifying pitch . . . a cry not for food but of pride and vengeance.

Sam pointed to the Westminster poster. “In three days, they’re coming to their grand palace of perfection. They and their human beings who don’t want you. Who don’t need you . . .”

Sam moved closer to the dogs.

“. . . but I do.”

Peaches looked at the dogs’ faces. They were lit, glowing, alive. Sam’s voice rose higher.

“Help me! Help me go to their great house of self-worship in New York City . . . and before the whole world watching on their TVs, do to
them
what they’ve done to
you . . .”

The dogs sat rigid, waiting.

“. . . WRECK ’EM! WRECK
WESTMINSTER!
”

“WRECK WESTMINSTER!” they all chorused, leaping and bouncing. Even Madam showed explosive emotion, which for a cat means the subtle flaring of nostrils while looking bored.

Pooft backed up to the Westminster poster and shot a burst of flame from his afterburner, reducing it to glowing embers. He rocketed across the room in the opposite direction and hit a pail of dog food, exploding it like brown confetti.

From atop the desk, Sam and Peaches watched this gaggle of unwanted outcasts celebrate their new mission in life . . . pointing their noses high and howling to a moon they hadn’t seen in years . . . but soon would.