THE GREYHOUND

THE FOUR DOGS leapt at the gate, whining and crowding one another. Their beautiful, elongated paws caught at the steel mesh. Bony tails thumped loudly against the fence and each other’s haunches. Ears flattened appealingly against long, smooth skulls. Deep eyes glowed with a golden, friendly light.

“They all belong to the same kennel,” said Sharon, “or they’d be fighting.” She reached through the gate and snapped the leash onto a collar. “Somebody had a rotten weekend at the races.”

“They bring them when they don’t win?” asked Phillip. He was pushing the other dogs back as Sharon drew her captive through the gate. Freed from the necessity of competing, the greyhound drew itself up in dignified pleasure at being singled out.

“Yes,” Sharon said, giving the high neck beside her one reluctant stroke. “I don’t know the magic number, but after a while they get rid of the slow ones. It’s not like horses, where each one is a huge investment of time and money. There are so many dogs.…”

“Horses are also good for something besides racing,” Phillip suggested, following Sharon and the dog across the parking lot.

“Yes, you can always retrain a racehorse. But these guys—”

“Don’t they make good pets?”

“Well, yeah, they do. I’ve got one. They’re great dogs—but people don’t know about them, or they’re not into greyhounds, or … I don’t know. People are scared they might chase cats because of the way they’re trained to run after rabbits. They do have the chasing instinct, though mine hasn’t … but, anyway, there are just so many. You’ll see.”

Sharon seemed very matter-of-fact about this, and Phillip wondered if he, too, would learn to be.

Growing up on a farm, he’d always known that veterinarians worked as much with death as with life. Unlike doctors, vets were always killing in the course of a day’s work. They brought suffering to a peaceful end. They rid the world of surplus pets, and they killed for the convenience of owners who didn’t want to be bothered anymore. He’d always known that much of it was dishonorable.

But he didn’t think he’d seen or heard of anything more dishonorable than this: the production of hundreds of thousands of beautiful animals for the sole purpose of providing people with something to bet on, and the casual disposal of the ones who proved less fit.

He was supposed to be learning how to do this, so he opened the door for Sharon and watched her lead the reluctant dog into the grooming room, where Dr. Rossi waited with a syringe in her hand.

Sharon made all her movements big and clear so he could understand them. She knelt at the greyhound’s side and hugged it around the chest. At the same time she grasped the right foreleg with one hand and pulled it forward. Dr. Rossi approached and took the stiffly offered paw. The dog flattened its ears, still hoping for the best.

Dr. Rossi held the needle pointing straight toward the ceiling a moment as she studied the slender, corded leg. Then she slid the steel point neatly into the bulging vein and depressed the plunger. The dog whined and a second later collapsed.

Dr. Rossi stood up, twisting the disposable needle out of the hypodermic and looking down regretfully at the body. Then she glanced at the needle and tsked to herself. “I keep forgetting, there’s no need to preserve sterility.” She was a small, fortyish lady with a country-club look; hair just so, face beautifully painted. But her eyes were real, and sad. She turned away to the table for a fresh needle and a refill.

“Pick them up like this,” Sharon said in a small voice. She gripped two handfuls of loose skin, at the dog’s neck and farther down the spine. The dog hung away from her fists, horribly slack. “And carry them out to the incinerator.”

Phillip cleared his throat. “Is it heavy? D’you want help?”

“No, I’ll get this one. You can take the next.”

The three remaining dogs stood and wagged their tails when the door opened. Sharon carried their companion across the blacktop and left it in the shade next to the incinerator. She unsnapped the leash from the dead dog’s collar.

“Okay, next dog!” She was trying to sound cheerful. Phillip wondered why.

Now only three dogs leapt at the fence in happy, jealous expectation. They seemed to have no inkling of what had just occurred, and Phillip was slightly surprised. Many times he’d seen dogs deeply distressed at the death of a friend. Maybe the greyhounds were too excited about going for a walk to pay attention to the smell of death.

Sharon snapped the leash onto the collar of a beautiful fawn greyhound, who bounded joyfully out when Phillip opened the door. Phillip felt helpless and dazed. He looked through the chain-link fence at the two remaining greyhounds, and he wondered what would happen if he let the gate stand open, and walked away. But he didn’t do that. He dropped the U-bar with a clank and slowly followed Sharon.

It was too quick and too easy to kill these dogs. He didn’t like what that said about life, and he thought of his father, who was shrunken and damaged yet seemed essentially himself. While he seemed himself, they counted on the continuation of things as they had always been. Yet these dogs, so full of life and self one minute, were dead in the next, almost without transition. He thought for a second of calling home.

But that was Not Done; just as it was Not Done to leave the gate open, nor was it Done to fling yourself in Dr. Rossi’s way and shout, “Stop!” So he stood again and pretended to study how Sharon held the dog, and then he had to take it by its warm, loose skin and lug it out to the incinerator, its long beautiful legs dangling and bumping against his own. Then he had to take off the leash and go put it on a long beautiful neck like a column, like the neck of a doe, and he had to lead the third dog in to Dr. Rossi’s needle.

Dr. Rossi’s sad brown eyes found his face and studied him as he stood beside the dog, waiting.

“The needle isn’t the worst way to get rid of a dog,” she said. He understood her to mean that if they did not do it, someone else would, someone less scrupulous and less efficient. She understood his stubborn, mute look in answer, for she nodded. “Yes, it stinks. But hold the dog, please.”

He wrapped the leash around the muzzle as he’d seen Sharon do, not meeting the sad, worried eyes. He knelt and hugged the dog. Its hide was smooth like polished wood. The leg he grasped in his hand was warm, and he felt the pulse jump.

Dr. Rossi approached with the needle, and the dog flinched back.

She stopped and looked straight at him, very serious. “You must hold quite firmly, Phillip. Otherwise the needle will slip out before the full dose is given, and that’s horrible.”

Phillip, to his surprise, felt tears spill over his lower lids. He gripped the dog’s leg more firmly and stretched it forward. Quite close to his face, only slightly blurred, he saw the needle enter the round vein, saw the plunger depress under Dr. Rossi’s pretty, lacquered thumb. In a few seconds the dog went limp, like a puppet when the strings are snipped. It seemed to melt out of his arms, sprawling on the floor. Phillip stood up, wiping the palm of his hand across his eyes. Sharon came forward and picked the dog up for him. He followed her out into the sunshine, hearing Dr. Rossi’s quiet voice behind him: “Good job, Phillip.”

His whole head felt prickly and faraway, as if it floated above his body on a string. He had no thoughts; only followed Sharon on feet that seemed faraway, too, on legs that felt like rubber bands. Through a haze of small black dots he saw the last greyhound on its feet, far to the back of the run.

“I’ll get her,” he said to Sharon, taking the leash.

He went through the gate, carelessly leaving it ajar. But Sharon was there to push it shut behind him. He walked down the long, long run. The diamonds of chain link blurred past his unfocused eyes.

The greyhound sat as he approached, bony tail clamped between her legs. The golden-brown eyes regarded him gravely for a moment, then shifted away, as if to spare them both embarrassment. She flattened her ears but otherwise ignored him as he snapped on the strong black leash. His hands seemed faraway—everything was faraway.

“Come on,” he said, tugging deferentially on the leash.

The greyhound rose to her feet with dignity, still not looking at him, and paced quietly at his right side as he went back down the run. Her head was turned away. She watched the cars on the busy road out front. Her nose twitched as she sniffed the breeze. She did not turn to look at her dead companions, piled near the incinerator. Phillip felt she deliberately did not look at them.

His palms were sweaty on the leash. It could easily slip through his hands. Very slowly, as if at gunpoint, he slid the loop over the wrist for greater security, thinking, It only gets worse. This is the worst yet.

He was careful to address none of his thoughts to the dog. What could he say except, “Sorry, I have to do this”? That seemed craven, because in fact no one held a gun to his head. There was only the force of the people around him, doing a certain distasteful thing in which he had agreed to participate for a fee.

They walked across the sunny driveway and came to the door of the grooming room.

Phillip opened it, but the greyhound hesitated, looking at the sky and the trees behind the building. She couldn’t really know—she seemed unhappy, but she couldn’t know. It was only her beautiful form that gave each movement such significance. He was reluctant to tug on the leash. But Sharon was coming, and so he did. The greyhound turned and came with him into the room.

Dr. Rossi waited with the needle. She looked beautiful, too, in an older-lady way; standing in her long green lab coat under the harsh light. You couldn’t blame Dr. Rossi.

Turning his face away, feeling things crack and groan within him, Phillip knelt on the concrete floor. He looped the leash around the greyhound’s muzzle and hugged her, reaching for the foreleg. She rolled her eyes at him. Deep within Phillip saw a golden light, grave but friendly. As he embraced her she slowly waved her tail.

“No,” he said. He dropped her leg as the steely needle came near.

Dr. Rossi’s sad eyes regarded him. “Phillip,” she said. “Phillip. We do six dogs a day some weeks. What are you going to do?”

Still hugging the dog, Phillip closed his eyes and let his breath go in an openmouthed sigh. He saw it going on and on. He saw himself carrying dog after dog to the incinerator. He thought perhaps he saw himself getting used to it. What are you going to do?

“I’m going to save this one,” he said, thinking, Then, even if I do get used to it, maybe it will be all right.

“Just this one,” he said.

They worked hard to persuade him, Sharon and Dr. Rossi. They said how much exercise a greyhound needed, and that she probably wasn’t housebroken. She might chase small animals, they said, and what about that little cat of his?

Thea! In his heart Phillip was cold with terror for her—Thea, his best friend. But it was already too late. He could only go forward and try very hard to make things work.

And no matter how hard Sharon and Dr. Rossi tried, their bright eyes watched him, and they were glad when he didn’t yield. Dr. Rossi gave his dog a worm pill and some vitamins. Sharon told him about her own greyhound, and the eleven cats she had saved from the needle in the past three years. He put his dog in the run farthest from the incinerator, out of sight of the dead dogs, and went back to finish his morning’s work with a warm, choked feeling inside.

Later it was different. When he took his dog out of the run on a borrowed leash and tried to get her to walk beside his bike, she was plainly frightened. She’d never seen anything like it before. Nor had she seen trucks rushing and rattling past her, garbage cans by mailboxes, houses and horses and garage doors surging open. She did not leap or whine, but she panted, with the corners of her mouth strained back in an ugly grin. Out here in the sunshine, he could see the unhealthy dullness of her hide. Worms, Sharon said. They feed them raw, rotting meat, she said. Phillip, wheeling his bike alongside a dog who whipped around in alarm every time a truck went by, began to feel he’d made a mistake.

He didn’t want to admit that. He looked hard at the greyhound and said to himself, “She’s alive.” So she was not as attractive to him just now; at least she wasn’t lying on top of that heap of legs beside the incinerator.

That was undeniable but didn’t make him happier. He began to think of shots and dog food, and the necessity to spay her. He thought of school coming up and how he would work after school, and then have homework. That left no time for long runs, and no time to train her; no time to get her used to Thea. Horrible scenes came up in his mind. He crushed them down by thinking what his mother would say, and of his father’s distress, that even a dog for his kid was so impossible.

His heart felt heavy, literally heavy, and his shoulders stooped with carrying it. When he looked at the greyhound, he felt only pain. But it was too late now.… He could not think clearly, but he knew there was no going back to Dr. Rossi and her needle. The life in this dog meant too much to him, even if the dog herself did not. He’d taken his stand against mortality … oh, hell. Oh, hell.

He wheeled his bike past the end of their street and the four streets beyond, heading for the mountain. Where the streets ended, he hid the bike in a bush and began climbing up a barely discernible scratch in the dirt that was the path. The greyhound panted behind him, claws scraping on the rocks. She walked awkwardly on this steep, uneven ground.

They came now to his spot. A piece of the mountain had sheered away here, leaving a bare face of stone twenty feet high, with a heap of shale and rubble at the bottom. It was ringed by trees from which the grapevines hung as big as anacondas. You could swing on them; he hadn’t yet, but Kris had, the day she’d brought him here.

That was three weeks ago, and so far as he knew, it was the best place around. Climb any higher and you couldn’t help seeing the little pastel houses, all laid out on their half-acre lots. Lower down, you started seeing the cars go by. Here was the only possible place to read Thoreau and think.

Think. He sat on a rock, and the greyhound gingerly stretched herself on the shale beside him. She rested her muzzle on her long graceful paws, but her eyes remained open, following the flight of birds and rolling every once in a while toward Phillip.

He stared at her, but he wasn’t thinking of her, nor of the three others who were dead, nor the dozens still to die. He wasn’t thinking of his lost home or his sick father. He was thinking of trains: hop on one, ride till it stops; hop off, catch another. He was thinking of country roads: just walk; at every crossroad take the fork that looks best.

He was thinking that he’d never get anywhere. There wasn’t anywhere for him. And, anyway, he’d be smashed going through a tunnel, or murdered by a motorcycle gang, hit by a truck. He knew that the worst thing in the world can happen, has happened, will happen. No reason why not. Nothing to stop it.

He was thinking how the needle went into the veins of the dogs’ legs, how quickly the dogs collapsed. Looking at the foreleg of the dog he had saved, he saw the very vein Dr. Rossi would have used. He reached out, and the dog raised her head to watch him. He put his fingers on the jumping pulse. He looked at the veins in the back of his hand, big and round, and then he turned the hand over to look at his wrist.

He no longer knew what he was thinking.

Perhaps it was a long time, perhaps a moment, before the dog broke in upon his state by turning her head downhill, pricking up her ears. Phillip closed one hand over the wrist at which he had been staring, and followed the dog’s gaze.

Kris was coming up through the woods, in jeans and a butter-colored shirt. The sun was bright on her pale hair, and she moved so quietly that he did not yet hear her.

It was extraordinary to see her coming. He could have cried. He wanted to rise up and hug her, press her to his aching chest. But they were not on such terms. He hugged his greyhound instead, for the second time, and laid his cheek for an instant on the smooth dome of her skull.

Kris stepped into the clearing. She stopped and looked at them, saying nothing.

Phillip saw her putting two and two together, knowing that today was his first day of work, perhaps remembering how he saved the mole, maybe knowing something about greyhound racing. She didn’t ask questions, just came slowly forward and extended her hand, index finger folded in the shape of a dog’s nose for the greyhound to sniff.

The greyhound’s long nose twitched. She looked up, and the two regarded one another. They looked alike: tall and strong and racy; hunting creatures.

“Why did your mother ever name you Kris?” he asked, thinking, but people aren’t called Artemis anymore!

She looked swiftly at him, starting to smile at the strange question. But the smile slid away.

“My mother doesn’t know anything about me!”

Phillip gaped at her. He felt exceptionally strange, as if the world around him had been frozen and was now coming to life. He felt almost seasick, and very small. The three of them were so small under the bare cliff and the thick trees hung with grapevines.

“What’s the matter? I thought you two got along OK.”

“Oh—get along!” Kris looked off into the trees. “What’s getting along, anyway? It’s easy to get along with somebody who doesn’t pay any attention.”

“I thought your father was the one.…”

“Dad at least bothers to fight! Mum just tunes out—it’s like I’m not even real to her, like I’m one of her kindergarten kids. My mother turns me into nothing!”

Phillip shook his head. Nobody could turn Kris into nothing, though she might feel that way for a time. But it would be sappy to say that. The best thing to do for Kris was to change the subject.

“I saved this greyhound’s life,” he said, “and now I don’t know what to do with her.”

The black look fell from Kris’s face, and she listened while he told the story, growing full of indignation, and proud of him. “Good for you!” she said, and shook his hand. Meanwhile her left hand lay quietly on the greyhound’s smooth skull, fitting perfectly.

“I don’t think I can keep her,” Phillip said. “I’ll just take her home awhile and see if I can find somebody to take her. Somebody who doesn’t have cats.”

“That lets out Aunt Mil,” said Kris. She had started to look excited but sobered again, eyes on the greyhound. “I’ll ask around—” Her voice suddenly shut off.

Phillip saw her cheeks brighten, and a bold, proud, and challenging sparkle grow in her eyes.

“I’ll take her.”

“I thought your father wouldn’t allow pets.”

“I don’t think,” said Kris, feeling her way accurately along the thought, as you feel along a fish bone with your tongue, “I don’t think he’d actually kill the dog, or take her to the Humane Society. I think he’d rather fight me about it, and I think I can win.”

“This leash belongs to the clinic,” said Phillip, handing it over.

“I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.” She was already starting off downhill, impatient for the confrontation. The greyhound rose and followed her, before the slack of the leash was taken up.

Gratitude for you! thought Phillip, watching them go. He was alone again, and he felt cool and light. His heart still ached, but he almost liked the feeling. He was alive and growing.

Far down the hill, beyond the dark lace curtain of tree trunks and big black grapevines, Kris in her yellow shirt turned in a patch of sunshine. She raised one hand in a wave like a salute. The greyhound turned against her leg to look back, too, panting a little.

“Thanks!” Kris shouted to him. “Thanks!”