It’s cold-to-the-soul raining. But when you’re a tool and not a pet, you stand under a tiny portable room called an umbrella. It’s a terrifying piece of squeaky colorful plastic. The raindrops ping against it like rocks. The wet air but not-wet me is puzzling. My whiskers twitch at the noise of the rain on the plastic. The Colonel doesn’t care for the sound, either, based on his drumming heartbeat. But he’d apparently rather endure the bone-rattling patter than get wet.
Humans are daffy.
“But I have a car,” Colonel Victor says to Alex. Today Alex is mowed grass—a fresher, lighter green but still sticky and itchy and sneezy.
Alex nods under his umbrella. A dozen tiny rivers snake off the roof of his plastic room and splash down on my head, my paws. I shiver.
“Like I said before, we’re taking the city bus today for training,” Alex says, his voice an impatient ticking clock. “Nothing will challenge Daisy as much as the bus. It’s only two weeks until her test. We have to challenge her every way we know how.”
Micah doesn’t carry an umbrella. He has a hood on his jacket drawn tight around his berry cheeks. He splashes—kaPOOSH—into puddles like a pigeon. Water radiates from him like glinting silver pinwheels. He’s grinning and rather enjoying himself. It looks quite pleasurable, honestly. It would be nice to have fun in a puddle again.
Fun. How frivolous of me! I’m no more focused than a hamster. I concentrate on what the Colonel is saying. Need is heavier than fun. My need is to be a tool. Tools do not splash in puddles.
“I haven’t been on a bus since . . .” Colonel Victor stops his words like he’s been tripped. His jaw clamps alligator tight. He doesn’t finish his sentence. Unfinished sentences feel like lingering ghosts. I get the feeling his last bus ride has something to do with his last pack.
The bus hisses to stop in front of us. It sends a wall of water over me and Colonel Victor’s feet. The Colonel spits a tack-sharp word. I shake-shake-shake and Alex and Micah glare at me.
The bus doors scream open. Alex and Micah duck inside the silver tube. The Colonel tugs the leash, instructing me to get on. The steps are steep and slick and rubbery, like mossy rocks at the pier. I slipped on those once, looking for food. My paw hurt for a long time after that.
The woman behind the wheel pig-grunts. “No dogs on the bus.”
Colonel Victor looks to Alex, asking him to explain, which surprises me. Alex arches an eyebrow at the Colonel, telling him this is all you, which surprises me more.
Colonel Victor swallows. “It’s a service dog.”
The driver’s pig snout twitches. “She ain’t wearing a harness. She doesn’t get on unless she’s wearing a harness.”
The man in the front row of the bus looks at his watch and huffs snooty cat impatience.
“Harnesses are for seeing-eye dogs,” Colonel Victor says, his voice getting pointier and darker on the edges. “She’s a different kind of service dog.”
“Yeah?” The pig woman snuffs. She’d make good bacon. My hackles twitch at her. I start panting because the last thing I need is to get angry here, now. “Why do you need a dog?” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”
The other passengers on the bus are seat-shifting uncomfortable now, a park full of pigeons fluttering over thrown seed. Micah grits his teeth, places his ear muzzles over his ears.
The Colonel’s heart rate is thrumming. I can hear the words he’s trying to get loose from his desert-dry throat.
The seconds last for minutes.
“This dog,” the Colonel says at last, his words like daggers, “keeps me from killing you.”
We got kicked off that bus.
Like a stubborn flea itch, Alex insists we catch the next one. The new driver never even turns his mirrored sunglasses our way. I wonder if he can see at all; his body angles never change, not once, while we climb aboard. If he can’t see, I suppose we’ll be just fine with this bus driver, then.
And oh, dogs in heaven, this bus stinks. Wet feet and unbathed human armpits and old cigarettes and brown and yellow and moldy green stains. It’s torture, an assault. I’m unsure how these humans aren’t keeled over vomiting in the aisle, but based on the smell, someone has. There’s no place for me to lie down, not really, so I’m balled up at Colonel Victor’s and Micah’s feet. And when we start to move, it’s nothing like riding in a car. It’s a herky-jerky, chipmunk-twitch movement, all starts and stops. My stomach heaves, but I manage to choke everything back.
One woman with skunk-gray hair coos at me, her sounds fat and round and lazy like guinea pigs. Another guy with a wad of brown goop crammed in his cheek makes ghouly, teethless faces at me. I’m trying to stay focused on Colonel Victor and his cracking knuckles, his grinding jaw. But it’s hard to focus when the kid in the seat in front of you is on her hands and knees poking you with a plastic doll.
If the test will be like this, I will have a thorny time with it. My stomach twists, and I start panting.
“Aw, so sweet,” one lady who wears a nostril-burning amount of perfume says as she passes. “Can I pet your dog?”
“No,” Colonel Victor says. His answer is a bullet. The woman’s eyebrows draw together at his warning shot.
Micah shifts, his face rearranging. “Daisy is a service dog,” he says to the woman. His voice is floaty, a soft white cloud. The opposite of a bullet. “She’s at work now. So no petting. Sorry.”
The woman softens. It’s amazing to watch how different her face looks after Micah says this, transforming from purple to yellow, a healing bruise. “Oh, I see. Well, I hope you let her off work soon. Poor girl needs the chance to be a dog, too.”
The woman surfs away on a wave of perfume. The Colonel, ever so slightly, elbows Micah, the tiniest of thank-yous. Micah’s face pulls into a half grin. He gives off the faintest scent of satisfaction.
And then, and then, Micah breaks a rule. He inches the toe of his wet sneaker forward and nudges me on the chin. An identical nudge to the one the Colonel gave him.
I am tail-chasing confused. Why would Micah thank me? I’ve done nothing for him. In fact, I admit: I go out of my way—like, lost-scent out of my way—to avoid him.
I am not Micah’s tool.