Stay Keeper's Story

Though my growth to adulthood enabled me to protect Jack from the rats, it meant that I was no longer as reliable a source of income for him. My puppy fluff coarsened into thick adult fur which was not as soft to touch, though it was handsome fur in its own right, I felt, much like my mothers. My legs, once stubby, grew long, and rather than stumbling cutely over my large feet, I had grown to fit them and taken on the stance and gait of a mature dog. My repertoire of cute puppy mannerisms, like the small frightened yip and the tiny playful growl, no longer attracted passersby to smile at me and drop quarters into the hat.

But Jack was clever. One morning he carefully straightened the bent earpiece of a pair of sunglasses he found in a trash can. He added a cane to his costume, and when we took our place on the street, he changed his chant. No longer "Food for a hungry puppy," now his appeal was "Feed my guide dog, feed my guide dog," and the coins flew again into the receptacle.

In a way it was not completely dishonest. More and more, as time passed, I did become his guide, even though he could see. He was not well at all. He coughed uncontrollably in the night and seemed to lose his appetite for food. His bacon curls went unconsumed, at least by him; for me, they became an extra helping of dinner, and I believe the grease gave an added sheen to my adult coat.

One cold night as Jack slept, shivering, and I lay beside him, watchful and worried, I heard a new sound out beyond the dark perimeter of our space. My ears came to an upright position and I listened alertly. There was the constant scuttle, hiss, and chatter of the rats. But a new sound had been added. I heard furtive, heavy movements in the dark.

I sniffed cautiously. The abundance of smells—garbage, rats, the heavy pungence of a discarded oil drum, and the ongoing reek of the scummy river water—made it difficult to isolate and identify a new scent. But I lay very still, concentrating, using the full capacity of my ears and nose.

I knew suddenly that it was Scar. Since our initial encounter on the day I left home, almost a year had passed. But I had been imprinted then by an awareness of his power and potential for evil, and had encountered nothing since that had surpassed it.

What was he doing here?

Stealthily I wriggled out from under Jack's clasp, for he was sleeping heavily with his arm over my back and one hand draped across my neck. He didn't wake, though he stirred and coughed.

Stay!: Keeper's Story

Then, with my body lowered close to the ground, I inched forward in the dark, away from the cover of the tin sheet that formed our roof. The smell of my enemy became intense in the frosty night air, overpowering the stench of the rats, who seemed to have backed away, retreating to their home in the sewer pipe at the edge of the river. Very slowly I crept forward. I could see him now, his thick ungainly body outlined against the dark sky. I could hear the snap of his jaws as he tore at some edible object. In the frenzy of his eating, he was unaware of me.

So he had not come looking for me; he was not here to settle an old score, but simply because he had found some sort of meal that happened to be on my turf. I had a chance to take him by surprise.

I gathered myself, both courage and muscles, then sprang at Scar, landing on his broad back. Surprised, he dropped his meal and wrestled us both to the ground, his heavy jaws snapping as he tried again and again to grab my throat. He was still larger than I. But I was agile and quick and managed to keep clear of his grip. We fought silently in the night, the only sounds our panting breath and the occasional low growls from both of our throats. I felt blood flow when he bit my back, but I think that I injured him as well, with a quick snap to his ear that left me with bloodied fur in my mouth.

No one won. We both paused at last, exhausted, and he took advantage of the intermission in the battle. While I rested briefly, Scar grabbed the carcass on which he'd been feeding; I could see now that it was the body of a large rat. With the remains dangling from his mouth, Scar turned and loped away without looking back.

I limped back to our lean-to and huddled beside Jack in the dim light of early dawn. I assessed my wounds and licked my stained and spattered fur clean. The sky was pale gray, and it looked as if it might rain. The river surged relentlessly on, carrying with it all manner of filth. I watched the rats emerge nervously from the sewer, eyes aglitter and tails darting. Scar had disappeared, but there was a splotch of gore where he had been feasting on rodent.

The world seemed utterly miserable to me on that grim dawn, and I am not ashamed to say that I whimpered like a puppy in my despair. Gradually Jack woke. He stroked my neck and said "Lucky" in an affectionate tone, and I was glad that he had not seen what I had of the cruelty and foulness that surrounded us in the night.

I nudged Jack awake each morning and urged him up, but as time passed he seemed less eager to be out and about. His joie de vivre seemed to have been depleted. I trotted ahead of him, turning back again and again to spur him forward, in the manner of a legitimate guide, encouraging him toward the coffee shop where traditionally we began each day.

His hands shook all the time now, and his coffee spilled frequently. His trousers and outer coat were stained beyond hope or repair.

"You ought take care of that cough," the coffee shop proprietor told him. "Go over to the clinic, they'll give you something for it. Maybe you need a shot of penicillin."

But he paid no attention. And though I could guide him capably to his usual haunts and back to our riverbank home each evening, I did not know where the clinic was or how to get him there.

I could only stay by his side, huddle close to him at night to provide him with warmth, lick his hands free of grime, and protect him from nighttime predators.

"Good boy, good boy," he would murmur to me often, the same words he had used when we met. He scratched behind my ears with his shaking fingers.

One morning—another cold day, windy and damp—he wouldn't get up, no matter how I nudged and whimpered.

"I think I'll sleep in today," he told me.

I wandered down to the river for a drink and then marked a few spots where I smelled interlopers, to remind them that this space was taken. I sat alone in the wind, feeling invigorated by it after the night in our stuffy hovel, and thought about poetry again. In my concern for Jack, I had done no composing for a long time. I began to write a poem in my mind. O Jack, be strong, be well, my friend!

Briefly I considered the rhyming possibilities offriend, but the only thing that came to my mind was end. It was such a discouraging thought that it virtually destroyed my creativity. Demoralized, I went back to where Jack lay. His breathing was very ragged.

I tried my playful pose, rump in the air, head down and tail wagging. It was the introduction to a game we had often played, a game with complicated rules involving ownership of a filthy, much-chewed piece of rope.

He smiled but declined the invitation. "I need rest," he said, stopping to cough. "Need rest."

So I nestled by his side and stayed with him throughout the long day. He talked to me from time to time and sometimes his thoughts wandered back to the days of home and family in the past. He seemed to forget that I was there, though his fingers lay against my neck and from time to time stroked my fur.

When I had lost my mother and siblings so long before, I had felt fear and frustration but at the same time a sense of independence and adventure. Now I was older. Now I knew I could survive alone. But I had a more adult understanding of the value of companionship and what I was losing as I lay there beside my friend and felt him slip away from me.

I tried again to write a poem, an ode to Jack. Only one word kept coming to me. Why? I said it to myself over and over again, searching for the rhyme that would go with it and turn it into a proper elegy.

But only one word surfaced, and that was the word that concluded what would be my shortest, and saddest, poem.

Goodbye.

Stay!: Keeper's Story

Stay!: Keeper's Story

Chapter 6

AND SO I WAS ALONE AGAIN. A pup no longer, but still awash with the yearnings of youth.

I could have curled beside Jack's body, mourning, and wasted away beside him in that grim setting. I have heard of dogs who do that out of loyalty, and are much admired for their sacrifice; they have statues and monuments erected in their honor. But such statues and monuments are always posthumous. I knew it was not what Jack would have wished for me.

"Lucky you are, and lucky you'll be!" Jack had said to me often, in better days when his spirits were high and his jug by his side. Lucky I am! Lucky I'll be!

I wonder what's in store up ahead!

Quickly, feeling foolish, I corrected the obvious error in the poem. In store for me, I amended.

Poetry is a difficult art, I thought as I neatened the area where Jack still lay. It was the least I could do for him, since I had decided against wasting away in his honor.

I rubbed my head affectionately against his lifeless fingers and whimpered a goodbye, adding why to make it into a variation on the elegy I had composed only a few hours before. Then I turned and left the hollow under the bridge, giving a final and very ferocious growl toward the sewer pipe, in hopes of keeping the rats unnerved. As I walked away from what had been my home during almost all of my formative first year, I held my head high in homage to Jack and all that he had taught me about life, adversity, and how to obtain food.

Upright, my tail! Forward, my feet!

The next line had not yet come to me, though I was considering fleet as an appropriate rhyme for a leavetaking, when suddenly I spotted something that caught my attention and wrote itself into the poem:

I see a child across the street!

It was true. In this most unsavory part of the city, beside a graffiti-covered board fence, a young boy wearing an odd hat stood alone, his hands in his pockets, a captivating smile on his face. He was clearly in need of protection, though his attitude was self-confident. I suspected that he did not know what danger might come to him if he loitered here. Glancing quickly both ways, alert to the vehicles my mother had repeatedly described as my greatest enemies, and as ever on the lookout for Scar, who might be lurking almost anywhere, I bounded across the street to the boys side.

Panting, I looked up at him, expecting a pat of welcome on my head. Humans always reach for the head, for some reason; it is actually the spot behind each ear that we dogs most prefer to have scratched. But we tolerate the head pat until we can maneuver ourselves into a position where the human understands the need. I planned to let the boy pat my head; then I would rub myself against his legs; then he would reach down and I would tilt myself into a position so that his hand would encounter the right place. It wouldn't take long to train him. Jack had learned quickly, and this human was much younger and therefore even more educable.

To my amazement, he did not pat my head at all. He kicked me.

It wasn't a painful kick, because he was wearing sneakers that were much too large and so the toes of them were empty. In truth, it was more of a foot-nudge. But it was a surprise, and a disappointment. It was contrary to every lesson my mother had taught me about children.

"Get lost!" he said.

And that was a surprise, too. According to my education, the first words a child usually says, upon encountering a new and appealing dog (I was assuming, of course, myself to be appealing. In my new maturity, I felt that my tail, in particular, had developed a certain plumelike quality; and as for behavior, I had certainly been on my best, though I must say the boy had not), are "Can I keep him?"