The Dogs of Winter (22 page)

I no longer waited in the limbs of the birch tree for the Woman in the Hat. I sat at the base of the tree and listened. I knew now the sound of her footfall and the rustle of her skirt even before she crossed the boulevard. Rip and I would meet her halfway to the tree and carry her big bag of everything, which always included food.

Now she brought me my own pad of clean white paper and a box of crayons.

After I tired of drawing pictures of the firebird and Baba Yaga, I drew a picture of the Biggest Pig in All of Russia.

I handed her the drawing of the pig with its glowing red eyes and cruel tusks. I'd drawn how the hair bristled on its back like the spiked hair of the Crow Boys in The City.

She pressed her hand to her chest. “My goodness,” she said. “That's a fine boar.”

“We killed it,” I said, puffing out my chest with pride.

“Who killed it?” she asked.

“We did,” I said. “The dogs and I.”

She frowned. “I don't think a little boy and a couple of dogs could kill a creature like that.”

I leapt to my feet. “But we did! These are not all the dogs, and besides, I am not a little boy.”

She smiled. “No, indeed not.”

I could tell she did not believe me.

I snatched the pad of white paper back and drew furiously. I drew the dogs leaping on the back of the boar and grabbing its ear. I drew the boar tossing Smoke aside with one toss of his tusk. I drew myself, arm raised high overhead, smashing the club on the skull of the boar. I drew the boar lying on its side, blood trickling from its mouth.

I thrust the pad in the woman's face. “See here and here,” I said, pointing to each picture. “This is how we killed it.”

She peered closely at each picture, touched them one by one with her finger. “These are remarkable,” she said. “You've moved from drawing fairy tales to drawing picture tales.”

She pointed to the club in the drawing. “That's quite the weapon.”

I nodded. “It came from the leg of a huge deer.” I held my hand level with my waist. “It was this big.”

“My,” she said. “And did you and the dogs kill it too?” she asked with a little smile.

I shook my head. “The Others killed it.”

She laughed and shook her head. “You do have quite the imagination. Can you draw me a picture of this giant deer?”

I hesitated. I only knew it from its bones. And then I
remembered the beautiful animal we had seen in the forest once, with its long legs and great spread of antlers.

I bent over my pad and drew. I held the picture out when I was finished.

“Ah,” she said with surprise. “I'd heard there were elk here. That's why they call this park Elk Island.” She shook her head. “But I can't imagine what could kill a creature that big.”

“The Others could,” I said.

She shook her head again. “You and your picture tales.”

She looked up at the sky and sighed. “The days are getting short again.” She pulled a sweater from her bottomless bag and draped it around her shoulders. “Soon it will be too cold to come.”

My mouth went dry. I did not want to think about the cold and the snow and not seeing the Woman in the Hat or hearing the beautiful music every night in the Ferris wheel park.

“It is not too cold yet,” I said.

But all too soon, it did turn cold. The leaves fell from the trees. The limbs of the birch tree spread like black fingers.

“Mowgli,” the woman said, “where do you go in the winter? Do you have a warm place to go?”

I concentrated on drawing Smoke's eyes. I could not seem to get the color just right.

For only the second time, the woman touched my shoulder. I did not pull away. “Mowgli, child. You cannot live here in this cold.”

Not looking at her, I said, “We will stay here until the snow comes. We keep each other warm,” I explained.

She threw her hands up. “
Who
is
we
?”

I threw my hands up too. “I've
told
you! The dogs.” I showed her the drawing. “This is Smoke.”

She looked at the drawing for a long time. Then in a sad voice, she asked, “And where do you and the dogs go when the snow comes?”

I did not mean to make her sad. “The City,” I said. “We ride the trains all over The City. It's warm on the trains and mostly safe.”

She frowned. She pointed at Smoke's eyes on the white page. “Child, is this another one of your fairy tales?”

I frowned. “I have never told you a tale.”

The next day, I hurried along the path to the birch tree. Food was getting harder to find in the park and I was hungry. Every day was colder; every day there were fewer people.

Lucky stopped just before the thicket on the other side of the birch tree. He raised his head, his nose searching the air. The fur rose on the back of his neck.

I listened. Yes, that was the sound of the old woman's skirt and her footfall on the dead leaves, but another walked with her. This one's footsteps were heavy and impatient. I smelled a cigarette.

I wriggled under the thicket and listened.

“Here, this is where we always meet,” the Woman in the Hat said. I could see only her skirt and her feet. A pair of gray trousers and shiny boots stood next to her skirt and legs.

“Well, I certainly don't see anyone, Mother,” a deep voice said.

“He
always
comes.” The old woman's voice was fretful. “You'll see.”

Her son sighed and flicked his cigarette onto the ground, right in front of my nose.

“It's too cold for a child to be playing in the woods, Mother. He's probably gone back to wherever he lives.”

“I'm telling you, he lives
here
! He and those smelly dogs,” the old woman snapped. “He doesn't
play
here like some schoolboy. And of course it's too cold. That's why I'm so worried about him.”

I smiled.

The man in the trousers and boots paced back and forth. He lit another cigarette.

“Oh dear,” the woman said. “Where could he be?”

I closed my eyes and imagined wriggling out from the
bushes and standing up straight and tall. I would smile and she would hug me to her in relief.

“We've waited long enough, Mother. It's too cold for you to be out here and I have to get back to work.”

She would show me to her son, her eyes filled with pride. She would say, “This is Mowgli. He's a very good boy. Very good.”

I opened my eyes, my heart light. I pushed myself out from under the bushes and stood.

The clearing beneath the birch tree was empty.

The next day, snow dusted the ground. Still, just as the sun topped the trees, I went to the birch tree. The Woman in the Hat did not come. More snow fell the next day and the next.

Then, as sometimes happens in the late fall, the weather warmed. A salty breeze came from the ocean. The dogs played and hunted. I took the path to the tree.

I smelled his cigarette before I even got to the thicket. I crouched in the shadow of a tall pine and listened.

I heard voices rising and falling. I heard rough laughter. I did not hear the old woman's voice.

I climbed the pine tree. It still had its needles and hid me well. From a branch high up, I could see over to the small clearing with the stream and the birch tree.

Three men in tall black boots, gray coats with shiny buttons, and red and black hats stood in the clearing.
Militsiya!
One of the men was the son of the Woman in the Hat.

“So your mother's been having trysts in the woods with a wild child?” the shortest of the three laughed.

“She's not having ‘trysts,'” her son snapped. “She comes here to paint and she says he comes here too, with a pack of mangy dogs.”

“Probably one of those kids from over at that dump,” the third man said. “It's disgusting how many
bomzhi
live over there with their kids.”

“I say we round up all the filthy
bomzhi
and their children and ship them off to Siberia,” the shortest one said.

The Woman's son said, “I told her no child could live out here with a pack of wild dogs, but you know how mothers are. She won't let it alone until I find this boy.” The other two men nodded.

“There's thousands of them street children,” one of the men said. “They're everywhere, like fleas on a dog.”

The three policemen smoked in silence and scuffed their shiny boots in the dead leaves as if I might be hiding underneath.

The old woman wanted to find me! She had sent her son and
militsiya
to look for me. But why hadn't she come? Perhaps it was too cold for her now with the snow on the ground. Perhaps, like Babushka Ina, she was afraid of falling on the ice.

Then a thought seized me and wouldn't let go: perhaps she was readying her house for us! Yes, she must live in a very big house if her son is a policeman! She would bring the dogs and me to live with her. She would clean us and feed us and cook porridge on her stove. I would have real books to read. I would again sleep in a bed (which I would, of course, share with the dogs) and eat out of a bowl. And I would be the very best boy.

A cold wind set the branch I perched on swaying.

“Well,” the old woman's son said. “Let's go roust some
bomzhi
over at the dump and ask around about the boy.”

They flicked their cigarettes into the snow. The short one asked, “How are we going to know which one he is?”

The son took a piece of paper from his coat pocket and unfolded it. “Here,” he said. “She drew a picture of him.”

The men looked down at the paper. The third policeman shook his head and said, “He does look like a wild child.”

The short man hooted with laughter.

I frowned. We'd see who'd be laughing when I had a bath and new clothes.

The son folded the paper over and over. “
She
calls him Mowgli. It's driving my wife crazy. I don't know what I was thinking, bringing her to live with us.” He clamped his hat to his head against the wind. “Three adults plus two kids in a two-bedroom apartment …” He shook his head.

My heart fell.

“What do we do with him if we find him?” the third
militsiya
asked.

The old woman's son stuffed the drawing of me — her Mowgli — into his pocket. “An orphanage, of course,” he said. “What do you think? He'd come live with us?”

The men howled with laughter as they walked away.

I held tight to the tree limb as the word dropped like a stone into my stomach.

Orphanage.

That night I cuddled closer with the dogs than I had in a long time underneath our tree. “You were right about the Woman in the Hat,” I whispered to Little Mother. “You and Smoke and Moon were all right. I should have listened.” Little Mother washed and washed my face as if saying,
Never mind that now.

I stroked Moon's face. “It was just so nice to have someone to talk to, who talked back,” I said.

Smoke shifted against Rip.
She did not love you, Malchik.

“I know,” I whispered. “I thought perhaps she would love us and give us a home where we would be warm and safe.”

I felt Smoke's breath on my face.
We are where you belong.

I did not return to the birch tree. Mowgli was gone.