Woof Read online

  “This is St. Roch,” Birdie said as we walked away from Gaux Family Fish and Bait and headed into town. “Did you know he was the patron saint of dogs?”

  I did not. In fact, I had no clue about what Birdie was saying. But it was nice walking along beside her, even with the rope thing going on. Some humans just sort of mope along, no fun to walk with at all, but not Birdie. We liked the same pace, nice and zippy.

  “Here’s Markie’s Market, where we buy our groceries, except for fish, of course, and also bread, which Grammy bakes herself. This is the town hall, where the tourists get their fishing license. That’s my school, closed for summer, thank heaven. And here’s Claymore’s General Store, owned by my friend Nola’s mom.”

  Claymore’s General Store was like a much bigger version of Gaux Family Fish and Bait—kind of run-down, with a big porch in front—except for the smells, not nearly as powerful or interesting. But wait! Bacon bits? The merest whiff, but no doubt about it, and coming through the open doorway on a wave of cool, air-conditioned air. We went right inside. What a day I was having, everything going my way at last! Starting with Birdie and ending with … who knew? Who cared? The kid was off the charts.

  A short, round woman was up front, hanging blue jeans on a rack, her upper lip glistening with sweat.

  “Hi, Mrs. Claymore,” Birdie said.

  “Hey, Birdie,” said Mrs. Claymore, turning to us. “What you got there?”

  “My birthday present. His name’s Bowser.”

  Mrs. Claymore gave me a narrow-eyed look. “Gonna eat—” she began, then started over. “Gonna be sizable when he fills out.” She raised her voice. “Nola! Come see what the cat dragged in.”

  Whoa! I had a quick look around, spotted no cats, which I already knew from the complete absence of cat scent in this place, maybe the best thing about it. I’ve had adventures with cats in the past, none good. They have a way of yawning right in my face that really gets me going. And when I get going, I can charge like you wouldn’t believe! I’d scare the pants off anybody—although it’s my opinion that humans look better with their pants on. But back to cats. They’re amazingly quick with their front paws. Zip, zip, and before you know it your nose is bleeding, and the nasty dude with the fast paws is gazing down at you from the top of a piano or high up in a tree. Here’s one thing you can count on: No cat will ever drag ol’—what was my name again? Bowser? Yes. Hey! I liked it!—ol’ Bowser anywhere at any time, no how. Do you get an allowance? Bet it all on me going places under my own power, dragged by nobody, especially of the cattish type.

  A girl came hurrying from the back of the store. She was maybe a little taller than Birdie, also somewhat darker skinned—as was Mrs. Claymore, come to think of it. But why bother? Me and my kind rock way more colors than you and your kind, and we don’t think anything about it. What matters is the smell. This particular girl smelled good—basic human girl plus a nice mix of honey and lemon.

  “Hi, Nola,” Birdie said. “Meet Bowser.”

  Nola took one look at me and said, “Oh, he’s so cute.”

  “Cute?” said Mrs. Claymore. “Looks more like a rough customer to me.”

  “Come on, Mom,” Nola said. “Check out his eyes.”

  “Gentle, right?” said Birdie.

  “Exactly,” Nola said. “Can I pat him?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  Neither did I. Pat away! Nola reached out, started patting. There’d been no patting in oh, so long, until today. And what a talented patter Nola was turning out to be! Plus a not-too-shabby scratcher between the ears, an often-itchy spot I can’t get to no matter how hard I try. Meanwhile, a conversation started up all about Black Jack, and Grammy and Snoozy and the sheriff, and cigars, and—hey, this was interesting—what a good detective I was!

  Soon after that I was trying on collars and then we were out of there, me sporting a brand-new leather collar that smelled vaguely of cattle but would soon be all mine, smell-wise. Birdie was on the other end of a new leash, both the collar and the leash bright orange so someone—I didn’t quite catch who—could never get lost. As for the bacon bits, they never appeared. There are disappointments in life. The trick is to forget them fast. I’m maybe the world’s champ at that.

  We walked through St. Roch, if St. Roch was the name of the town. Don’t rely on me for details like that. It was a nice town, not big, not fancy, but watery for sure, with canals, bayous, ponds glittering from time to time between the trees and the houses.

  “Here’s our street,” Birdie said, and we turned onto a narrow road full of potholes and just about down to the bare dirt by the time we reached the end. “Gentilly Lane, and we’re the last house, number nineteen.”

  I liked the house from the get-go. It was low and white, with shutters the color of the sky and a big shady tree in front. The only problem was that one of my kind had laid a mark on that tree. There were going to be some changes around here, big-time. I set off for that tree pronto—“Bowser! You’re pulling me!”—and laid my mark on top of his in no uncertain terms. I was now officially in charge of security at 19 Gentilly Lane. The news would get around fast, which was how these things work in my world.

  “Wow!” said Birdie. “You’ve really been holding on.” She looked at me. I looked at her. “What are you thinking behind those nice eyes of yours?”

  Absolutely nothing. My mind was pleasantly empty at the moment.

  We moved toward a sort of open part of the house that split it in two. “This is the breezeway, Bowser. That side of the house is Grammy’s. This side is mine and Mama’s.” She took a key from a zipper pocket of her shorts and opened a door on one side of the breezeway. We went into a kitchen. “I’ll bet you’re thirsty.” Birdie unclipped the leash and hung it on a wall hook, then got a bowl from a cupboard and started filling it at the sink. While all that was going on, I followed an interesting smell over to a trash barrel by the door. It had an odd kind of swinging plastic top that really didn’t keep you from sticking your head in the barrel if you suddenly wanted to do that very badly, which I did.

  The next moment I’d snagged practically a whole burger, tossed away for no reason I could think of since it was still perfectly good. I made quick work of it, and was just standing by the trash barrel doing nothing in particular when Birdie came over with the water bowl. “You weren’t poking around in the trash, by any chance?” she said, setting the bowl at my feet.

  Nope. Not me. I sat nice and still, my behavior as good as anyone would want, or better.

  “Must have gotten that mustard on your nose someplace else,” she said, wiping my snout with her hand. She laughed. Laughter’s the best sound humans make, in my opinion, and Birdie’s was off the charts. I had to have done something to make her happy, and when I figured out what it was, I planned to do it over and over again. “Drink,” she said.

  I drank. In fact, I lapped up the whole bowl.

  “Thirsty, huh?”

  The truth was I hadn’t cared for the water at Adrienne’s, hard to say why. Birdie refilled the bowl. Even though I wasn’t really thirsty anymore, I took a sip or two, just being polite.

  “Come on. I’ll show you around your new home.”

  I knew that was a good idea from the way my tail started up. It helps to have a tail to tell you when a good idea comes along. Not sure how you’d manage without one.

  We left the kitchen, went down a hall. Birdie opened the first door. “Mama’s room.” I glanced inside: nice and tidy, with a made-up bed, a hard hat hanging on a hook, and framed photos on the walls. Birdie went over to one that showed herself with a smiling woman who wore her hair in a ponytail. “That’s Mama,” Birdie said, touching the image of the woman. “She’s an engineer on an oil rig off Angola, but she’ll be back next month.” She pointed to another photo, where the ponytail woman was standing beside a big man in a uniform. “And that’s my daddy.” Birdie turned to me. Her voice got very quiet. “All I have is one memory of him, Bowser.”


  I moved in a little closer, sat on her foot. It was all I could think of to do.

  “How come we have this big blank where our earliest memories should be?” Birdie said.

  I had no idea. As for big blanks, I live with plenty of them, no problem.

  “Want to hear my one measly memory?” Birdie said.

  I sure did. In fact, I wanted to hear anything that came out of her mouth.

  “It’s not a memory of his face,” Birdie said. “Just his hands. I had these little blue shoes with silver stars on them. One of the laces had come undone. He bent down and tied it. A perfect bow, I can still see it, and how beautiful his hands were, big and strong. And then he said, ‘No loose ends, Birdie.’ ”

  HERE’S THE BATHROOM,” BIRDIE SAID, “and this”—she opened the door at the end of the hall—“is my room. Our room, now—yours and mine.”

  We went in. Had I ever been in a room this nice in my whole life? Not even close. Perhaps a bit on the small side, yes, and was the ceiling kind of low? But the walls were the color of the sky and there were even puffy white clouds painted on them. Plus a rainbow! It was like being outside and inside at the same time. What could be better? Was this having your cake and eating it, too—something humans say from time to time?

  I wasn’t sure, and as for cake, the only time I’d actually tasted it, I’d ended up with a sticky lump on the roof of my mouth that led to some choking and gagging and possibly even puking. But why think about that now? I jumped right up on the bed, rolled over on my back, and did this wriggling thing that comes over me at times, paws up in the air, tongue hanging out the side of my mouth. Can’t tell you how good that feels!

  “What are you so happy about?”

  A big question. I went still, my paws possibly in a strange midair formation. You, Birdie, you!

  “Your eyes look kind of insane right now,” Birdie said. Whatever that was about, I took it as a compliment. All at once, her face lit up—it hadn’t been at its brightest since our visit to her mama’s room—and she said, “Bowser! Stay right there. Just like that. We’re going to try something.”

  What was the meaning of “just like that”? While I turned the problem over in my mind, Birdie got busy with her laptop, and the next thing I knew she was sitting beside me, saying, “Mama? Mama?” to a blank screen. Humans love gadgets. Sometimes they even seem as though they’re part-gadget themselves. Whoa! A scary thought. I tried to go back to whatever I’d been thinking about before, and at that moment a face appeared on the screen. I’m not at my best with faces on screens—why doesn’t the smell come through, answer me that—but maybe because this ponytailed woman was fresh on my mind I recognized her. She looked older than in the photo, and very tired, with dark patches under her eyes and downward grooves at the corners of her mouth.

  The woman’s lips moved. “Birdie?”

  “Hi, Mama. Did I wake you?”

  “Uh-uh. Just getting up, actually. Midnight shift. And I was thinking of you not two seconds ago.” Mama’s hair was light-colored, much lighter than Birdie’s, but her eyes were darker, more like the sky at night than the sky at day. “Did you get Grammy to come around on that birthday present?”

  “You’re way ahead of me,” Birdie said.

  She turned the laptop screen closer to me, still lying on my back, paws up and tongue out, total comfort mode. Mama’s dark eyes opened wide, seemed to catch a sparkle from somewhere, and she started laughing. A very nice laugh, if not in Birdie’s class.

  “Meet Bowser,” Birdie said.

  “Perfect,” said Mama. Her eyes narrowed. “Looks kind of sizable.”

  “That’s what everyone says.”

  On the screen a shadowy man in a hard hat appeared behind Mama. They had a quick chitchat, Mama disappearing for a moment or two, and then she was back.

  “You on the platform?” Birdie said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you see Africa from there?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Have you set foot on it yet?”

  “No, but I will when I fly home. Just thirty-three days, honey.”

  “Mama?”

  “Something on your mind?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then came a long silence, Birdie staring at the screen.

  “Out with it,” Mama said.

  Birdie took a deep breath. “How did … did my daddy die?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “I know the kiddie answer.”

  “The kiddie answer?”

  “I’m eleven now.”

  Mama nodded. “He was a police detective in New Orleans and he got killed in the line of duty.”

  “I know all that,” Birdie said. “But what actually happened?”

  “Why is this coming up now? Has Grammy been saying anything?”

  “No, Mama. I’m eleven, that’s all.”

  The hard-hat man appeared again. “Got to go, Birdie,” Mama said. “We’ll talk about this when I get home.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  The screen went blank. Birdie closed the laptop. “Push on over,” she said.

  Push on over? A new one on me. I stayed where I was. Birdie gave me a push. Oh. I got it. She squeezed in beside me. What was this? Nap time? Birdie was brilliant, just one amazing idea after another. I rolled onto my side, got my tongue back in my mouth. Only one problem: I wasn’t the least bit sleepy. And then, just like that, I was sleepy after all, my eyelids way too heavy to prop up for one more instant.

  Birdie put her arms around me. “Drilling platforms blow sky-high sometimes. Also, people fall off and never come back up.” And maybe more along those lines, but I was already far away in a world that smelled of cake, chasing flaming cats down a street paved with chocolate frosting.

  Knock-knock.

  I opened my eyes, and … and where was I? For a terrible instant, I thought I was back in my cage at Adrienne’s, but there was Birdie, fast asleep and lying beside me, her breathing soft and regular. Yes! As if that wasn’t enough, how about this wonderful bedroom, with the blue-sky walls with clouds and rainbow? Plus Birdie’s breath, which smelled kind of like fresh milk, a lovely smell although the taste of milk does nothing for me at all. Cats seem to like it, which just goes to show you that—

  Knock-knock.

  Someone at the door? Who was in charge of security around here? At first—my mind never at its clearest when I’m just waking up—I couldn’t remember. Then it hit me: me! I was security at 19 Gentilly Lane! You had to get past me, pal, and don’t even try. I jumped off the bed, trotted out of Birdie’s—make that our—bedroom, down the hall, and through the kitchen to the breezeway door.

  Knock-knock. A tiny current of air came curling up through the crack under the door, and right away I knew Nola was on the other side. I barked, not the fierce kind of bark I’d use on a stranger at a time like this, but with enough oomph to send a message. This particular bark sounded quite pleasant to my ears. I did it again. And once more.

  “Bowser,” Nola called through the door. “Cool it.” She raised her voice. “Birdie? You there?”

  Birdie came down the hall, rubbing her eyes. She opened the door.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Bowser was going nuts,” Nola said.

  Was that good or bad?

  “And his teeth are huge.”

  Birdie stuck out her hand, touched one of my front teeth. “I don’t think so,” she said. “They’re just the right size for him.”

  “You’re blinded by love,” Nola said.

  “So?” said Birdie.

  And then they were both laughing. How come? I had no time to figure it out because the next little current of air that blew my way brought with it a shocking smell. I—not barged, I wouldn’t want to call it barging—past Nola—

  “Ouch!”

  And moved onto the breezeway. From there, I had a good angle on the big tree in the front yard—a beautiful tree with a thi
ck trunk, waxy green leaves and whitish moss hanging from the branches—but none of that was the point. No, sir. The point was that it was my tree—its beauty simply a pleasant bonus—and someone had laid his mark on it again! I hurried over to the tree and—

  “Oh, no—is he running away?”

  “Bowser! Come back here this second!”

  I took a quick sniff or two, all I needed to establish an alarming fact. The dude who’d laid his mark on my tree this time was the exact same dude who’d done it before! As for me, I’d been … caught napping! Caught napping—a human expression I now understood better than any other. And there was more: Could it be that this other dude was of the opinion that the tree belonged to him? That was one of the worst thoughts my brain had ever come up with. I got myself right against the tree, raised one of my hind legs as high as possible—the highest mark wins, probably something you already know—and splashed away until I didn’t have a single drop left inside me.

  With my hind leg still raised, I looked back toward the breezeway, turning my head way, way around, just another of my talents. Birdie and Nola were staring at me, their mouths open.

  “What do you think?” Nola said. “Two minutes?”

  “He’s trying to kill the tree,” said Birdie.

  “Why?”

  “No clue. Bowser! Come!”

  Sure thing. I was on my way. No doubt they’d seen what a good job I was doing in the security department and wanted to give me a pat, or possibly a treat. Either was fine with me, and both would be better. I got myself right in between them, panting slightly, not from any exertion—it takes a lot of that to make me pant—but from being charged up.

  “What do you think he wants?” Birdie said.

  “Food, maybe?”

  “Adrienne—the shelter woman—said he gets one meal a day, at suppertime. Grammy’s bringing some kibble home after work.”

  “Speaking of your grandmother,” Nola began, but I had trouble concentrating on what she was saying. Adrienne, who fed in bird portions, was somehow still in my life? Yes, I could survive on one measly meal a day, but is surviving enough? Not for me! I want to live! And by living, I mean living large! And by living large, I mean living right here with Birdie!