Chapter Fourteen

Pax was bewildered. Boxed, freighted, handled by strangers, then brought to this place of dogs to endure the relentless cacophony of the displaced. He had no idea what was happening, or why. All the dog knew was that he had no clear mandate, no orders. Francesca had clung to him and then ordered him into a crate. She’d asked and he’d willingly entered the crate, turned around, and watched quietly as a stranger fastened the door closed. The crate was lifted into the back of a truck and Pax couldn’t see over the tailgate. Couldn’t see that Francesca wasn’t following. The rumble of the heavy engine obscured any sound that she might have been making, calling him back.

The crate went from truck to train, and back to a truck. The air was different here, warmer and filled with the scent of other dogs and men. Pax stood in his confinement and barked out a greeting. He was taken out of his crate and he wriggled with anticipation, so many men. Surely Rick was here; surely Francesca would appear to take his leash in her hand. A veterinarian examined him, patted him on the head, and handed the leash to yet another stranger. And then another stranger attached him to a doghouse and left him there with a full bowl. But neither Rick nor Francesca appeared.

During the long night, the cooler air dragging thousands of new scents to him, Pax lay awake and grieving. He understood it now: He’d been sent away. The only people he trusted had turned him out of the nest as if he were a weanling puppy being chased off by a newly pregnant mother.

The only recourse for his battered spirit was to resist. A growl, a show of teeth, a bite, and these unfamiliar men knew enough to back away. He would not capitulate. He would not wag his tail for that bowl of food; nor would he eat it if anyone watched. He would not submit to being touched and he snapped at the hand of the first person to try to touch him. Even without the sense of abandonment, Pax’s nature wasn’t open to strangers. He’d tolerated Rick’s pals, always polite, but always aloof. Francesca had been the only other human to penetrate that singular devotion. Rick was gone and now she had sent him away, and these strangers thought that they could lay hands on him and make him do their will. Not once in his short life had Pax ever bitten anyone until he bit the arm of the second man to think he could dominate the unhappy dog. That’s when they put him in this isolated kennel.

This third man came and simply waited for him. He sat beside the enclosure, talking quietly. He tossed bits of meat to him, but Pax disdained touching any that didn’t fall close by. Wounded in spirit, the dog would not be seen accepting his gifts. He growled when the man stood and defiantly opened the gate to the kennel. Pax showed his teeth and the man gave him the win when he stepped back out of the enclosure. The man came back and did it again, and again Pax growled to warn him away. The man knew that he had the upper hand, however, because he still held the food bowl in his hands. The bits that had landed beside Pax were not enough to satisfy his hunger. The man sat back down, and the two considered each other, the wires of the cage separating them.

Pax lay still on the hard ground and studied this man sitting purposefully in front of him. Their eyes flicked over each other’s forms, the dog reading the man’s youth easily; the man comprehending the dog’s simmering rage. The dog locked eyes with the man and recognized that he, too, was a solitary creature, not given to connection. When the man didn’t look away, the dog knew that they were equals. The man, like the dog, would not submit. When he came into the enclosure one more time, the bowl held out like an offering, a thin suggestion of caution came from his skin, and Pax admired that. The man wasn’t afraid of the dog, but he respected him. Pax let him push the bowl to him, although he didn’t eat until this patient man walked away.

The next day, it was just the same. A bowl of breakfast, fresh and still smelling like food and not carrion. The heat that reflected off his coat drove him to pant, his jaws wide, tasting the scent of the man’s sweat, a scent that was working its way into the dog’s thoughts. It told the story of what he’d eaten, and that he’d had beer the night before. Pax breathed in deeply; the familiar odor reminded him of Rick, who always poured a little beer into a saucer for him. He loved the grainy taste, like eating some kinds of good grass. Rick had been gone for a long time. The scent of the beer on this persistent man’s skin made Pax long for the companionship of those hot summer nights when Rick would come home after a game and tell Pax all about it.

Pax had protected Francesca, and acknowledged her as his responsibility, but while Rick was there, his heart was always his. Man and dog. A dignified and purposeful relationship of equals. But Rick was gone and Pax had no way of knowing if he’d ever come back. So much time had passed, and with it the expectation of reunion, that Pax had thrown his heart into Francesca’s care. Taking care of her and being loved by her. And then she, too, was gone. Like his mother so many years ago, vanished.

Here was this new man, cautious and patient, not reaching out to touch, respectful and smelling delicately of last night’s beer. As long as the dog had been isolated in this hot, humid, strange kennel, he hadn’t slept deeply enough to be rested. Like his wolf antecedents, he was on a perpetual high alert, ready to defend himself, a captive. But an unlikely relaxation came over him on the third day of this man’s unwanted companionship. Pax fell into a deep sleep, his body shaded by the doghouse, his sense of being threatened gone for the short time he slept.

Waking abruptly, he knew that the man was still there. He raised his head, sniffed the air to gather in the man’s now-familiar scent, and, satisfied, allowed himself to go back to sleep.