The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (16 page)

“Here's what we're doing,” he told me. “We have to be obsessed, completely obsessed, with being worried a cop will pull us over and ask me for a license. That way we don't have to worry about anything else.”

“You're planning to speed, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“I can obsess,” I said.

We went down the hill fast and smoothly, as if we were on a toboggan, my ears full of engine and heater and the purring, still-new muffler, plus bits of Walt Disney tunes popping up from the memory vat of my childhood, all from
101 Dalmatians.
It never occurred to me to ask Giant George what the plan was, or if he had one. I just stayed tense and watched for a cruiser or sheriff's car. But hardly anyone else was out.

We didn't speak until we approached the village.

“I want you to tell me your real name,” I said.

He must have had a soundtrack of his own going on in his head, probably something all-guy: electronic, boomy, screechy. It took him a moment to answer me. His real name was Giant George, he told me, and would I please not ask him any questions, and would I please promise him right now I'd follow his lead and do what he told me to do? I promised, but I needed to know a vital piece of information.

“Just tell me if this is your first rescue, not counting watching one on a laptop,” I said.

“It's not my first one. Remember the sled pups?”

“You were in on that?”

“I ran it. That wasn't my first one either.”

“Was your first one, like, on yourself?”

“Stop talking, Evie.”

The change in his manner wasn't the same as the brief time before, in the dining room my first night, in front of the screen where the rescue I was banished from took place. It seemed to me then that he had changed himself magically from a big teenage boy to a man, not that it lasted. I remembered how he'd tricked me the morning I lied about walking on snowshoes. I saw, and felt in all my senses, that the change in him now wasn't only from being a kid to being a grown-up. It was the change of a kid playing soldiers or cops to actually being a cop or a soldier. It was the change of a hobbit to a human, a shaggy, bulky, drooly, awkward young Newfie to, yes, Giant George, a Great Dane.

“I'm stopping talking now,” I said. “But first, if I was a dog, what kind do you think I would be? Don't say a mix. I'm just curious.”

He didn't hesitate. “You're totally, totally Tasha,” he said. “I mean, not counting, like, in size.”

He thought I was a Rottweiler!

And suddenly he was saying, “We're almost here,” and he was turning the Jeep into a postcard of a neighborhood just beyond the supermarket and a row of shops. Or maybe not a postcard, but a came-to-life picture of a perfect place in America to live, from the days when the president was Eisenhower. It was a short street of six or seven houses on each side, all Capes with a couple of ranches, tidy and friendly and solid in the sunlight and snow. Towers of maples and oaks were everywhere. The front yards were squared by shoveled sidewalks and cleared, paved driveways. The backs were white carpets at the edge of woodsy pines, towers too, green and snow-fleeced and gorgeous. Most driveways held cars or pickup trucks, or both. It was a Saturday. No one was outside, but people were home.

The house Giant George stopped in front of was a dark brown ranch. In the windows were lacy curves of tied-back drapes and hanging plants looking happy from light and water and love. The shrubs along the foundation were covered by wooden tepees of winter protection. Absolutely everything was saying, “Decent, normal people live inside these walls.”

We pulled parallel to the sidewalk. We couldn't enter the driveway. A big heavy Buick was there, its fender just a couple of feet from the road.

“That's the car,” said Giant George, turning off the Jeep. “Come on.”

“Come
on?
Like we're just walking in?”

“They're not here. See that house?” He pointed down the road to a Cape, where chimney smoke chugged upward in wide, thick streamers.

“The husband and wife who live here,” said Giant George, turning sideways to face me, “got invited to that house to watch a movie.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because, Evie, Mrs. Auberchon knows them from, like, forever. She got them to do the inviting. They have a new TV. It's a huge one, the biggest one there is. And they pulled down their shades, and they're ordering pizza. And they've got a bar, like in a real bar.”

I noticed that smoke wasn't coming from the chimney of the ranch. But I was getting scared, and I was doubtful.

“How do you know the husband and wife went over there?”

“Well, if they didn't, they'd be rushing out here to get rid of us. But I really know they went because, that was the first time anyone invited them to something. Mrs. Auberchon said they're kind of unpopular around here. Are you ready?”

“Just tell me if the people in the house with the new TV were the ones who delivered Dapple.”

“No. They didn't know there was a dog here. Mrs. Auberchon thinks the one who delivered her was one of their kids. They've got grown-up kids who moved away. But one of them came for a visit. Seems they don't do that very much. Take a deep breath, okay?”

I took a deep breath and thought, Rottweiler, and we got out of the Jeep. I followed Giant George past the Buick and up the driveway to the side door. He'd say later the door was unlocked, but his broad back was in front of me before we entered, and I was aware that it took him at least a minute, maybe longer, to get the door open. It also seemed to me that he'd taken out, and put back into his jacket pocket, something I couldn't see, which could have been a tool for a break-in.

We were in the kitchen of these strangers. I was looking at brightness, coziness, a teakettle with daisies, more potted plants, everything impressively clean. Giant George tried a door that turned out to be a broom closet, another that was a bathroom, then a third that was the cellar.

“Dapple,” he called softly down the dark stairs. “Dapple, Dapple.”

I heard her whimpering. She hadn't had her new name for long. But she knew it.

Giant George found the light switch. Down we went, landing in a section of what seemed a normal basement: a laundry area, patio furniture in storage, rakes, a leaf blower, gardening tools on a shelf. This area was separated from the other half by a wall of plywood, with a door in the center, and that was where the basement stopped being normal. Giant George pushed the door open and stepped inside ahead of me. A moment later he said over his shoulder, “I don't know if you want to see this. I won't think you're a coward or something, if you'd rather not.”

I went in. There was no ventilation. The glass of the narrow cellar window had a coat of black paint. I didn't see Dapple in her cage. My eyes were taking too long to get used to the dimness. She was already in Giant George's arms by the time they did.

There were two other cages, both empty. A half wall of rough boards divided this prison in two. I didn't know what I was looking at when I glanced there and saw rubber floor mats rolled up like hay bales, a table holding several metal containers, like freestanding medicine cabinets without mirrors, and in a corner, next to a makeshift counter, a sink on metal legs. It was a normal bathroom sink with two taps.

“I wonder how many litters she already had,” said Giant George. “I'm guessing she was scheduled for another one.”

His voice sounded strangled and far away. Dapple's head was pressed to his chest, where his heart was. I wanted to open the containers and see what was there, but Giant George blocked me. My job was to go ahead of him, opening and closing doors, all the way to the Jeep.

We'd forgotten to bring a blanket. Giant George took his jacket off. I climbed into the back to be with Dapple. We laid her on the seat and covered her. We covered her. We rode away with her head in my lap. I didn't think she'd ever stop trembling, but after a couple of miles she sighed and let herself fall asleep.

Giant George didn't speed when we reached the main road. I was so busy holding that dog, I didn't realize we'd gone by the turnoff to the Sanctuary and past the inn. But eventually I looked and saw that we were heading . . . where?

“Where are we going, George?”

“You'll see. It's not like we can take her back to our place.”

He said that as if he expected me to have figured it out on my own. But I liked the way he said
our place.
There was an
our
and it seemed I was in it. I really heard that. I didn't care that I'd been so ignorant about things like “people breeding dogs a certain way, based on orders from customers.”

“Dapple's asleep,” I said, my voice low.

“Good.”

“Was insemination stuff in those cabinets?”

“Yeah, insemination stuff. And probably birthing stuff too.”

“To sell puppies?”

“Yeah.”

“But why. . . .”

“Don't ask. I don't know why. I mean, if you start wondering why people do things to dogs, you could go crazy. But maybe they were into a type of breeding where you want to put different breeds together and see what you get. Dapple's a hound, so maybe they had orders from hunters to fill. That's as far as I can go with guessing. Like maybe there're hunters who would love to have a mix that combines great things from purebreds, or other mixes. Maybe the people in that house were filling orders. Or maybe it wasn't for hunting. It could be a competition thing, where people really like to win prizes. Or maybe it was totally something else.”

“Like what?”

“Evie, I don't know.”

“Maybe it's a sort of lab,” I said. “Maybe they're experimenting with mixes, like they're trying to make a new breed of hound. I
hate
them.”

“Hate can be a good thing, sometimes,” he said.

A few more miles went by: high snowbanks, evergreens, a cleared pond where people were skating, most of them children. I saw four free dogs paw-skittering on the ice and another one at an edge, prancing about.

I said, “What about the empty cages?”

“I don't know anything about them.”

“Would you think I was crazy if I said I smelled something weird in there? Like, a smell that wasn't dog poop or pee?”

“I didn't smell anything weird.”

“Well, when I smelled it, I had the feeling that dogs were in those cages not so long ago. I had the feeling they were sick. And maybe they even . . .”

I couldn't say any more. Giant George took a hand off the wheel and reached back. I put my hand in his. His skin was sweaty and warm when he squeezed my fingers.

“I wish we could know what movie they're watching on the huge TV,” he said. “You know what I wish it is?
Zoltan: Hound of Dracula.
Or, even better,
Cujo.
Or both of them, back to back. That would be perfect. You ever see those?”

“I never did,” I said.

“How about
Pet Sematary
?”

“No. I was thinking more,
The Hound of the Baskervilles,
” I said.

“That's not scary. That's just boring Sherlock Holmes. The only thing interesting about Sherlock Holmes is, he got addicted to co . . .”

The second hard
c
stopped as if cut with a knife. I could feel him saying to himself, uh-oh. I had to wonder how many times he'd reminded himself not to bring up that word. It almost didn't matter, not even the surprise of it, not when a dog who came out of a hell was resting her head in my lap. I was sure she knew this was the last time she'd need to be rescued. Her gentle breathing seemed to me the softest, sweetest thing there ever was.

I finished the word for Giant George with my hands on Dapple and my eyes not meeting his in the rearview.

“Cocaine,” I said.

He looked embarrassed. “Well, yeah. I really didn't mean to bring it up. We don't have to talk about it.”

“Then we won't.”

“Okay. But Evie, I just want to say, don't be thinking anyone snooped around in your life. I just heard them, like, discussing you. It was a couple of days ago. It was only about one minute. I don't even know anything.”

“I don't want to talk about it,” I said.

“Don't be mad.”

“I'm not mad.”

A gas station was up ahead. He signaled and pulled into it. But he didn't drive to the pumps. He went to the side near an air machine, where a burly, rough-looking man in a puffy black parka was putting air in the tire of a van, the kind of delivery van that doesn't have windows. On his head was a kerchief, tied in place like a pirate's.

“Welcome to the Network,” said Giant George.

“The what?”

“Network. Just watch.”

What happened next happened so quickly, I felt like an extra in a movie of pure adrenaline and action, and no one had shown me a script. As soon as we came to a stop, the pirate finished what he was doing and waved to us. It was a signal. Giant George leaped out of the Jeep, flung the back door open, and reached inside for Dapple, pulling her away from me. Her eyes opened wide. I saw her terrified look, heard her gasping, then Giant George's calm voice as he whispered, “It's okay, it's okay.”

The pirate went into the driver's side of the van. Someone else was in there, opening the side panel from inside. I saw arms of another parka, an orange one, bright orange, neon. I saw Giant George placing Dapple in those arms. I saw his jacket tossed out to him.

The van reversed, turned. The direction it took off in was opposite the direction of the Sanctuary.

I returned to the front seat, a regular passenger again, and that was when I started crying. I couldn't stop myself from thinking about those empty cages. Giant George patted my knee clumsily. He was back to being a big teenage boy.