The Pound
by Mark LaFlamme
The girl’s name was Amy and it was clear she was about to cry. The chin quivered. The eyes became glazed with the sheen of newborn tears. A tiny hand toyed furiously with a neat blonde braid. The five adults around her prepared for it. And sensing this, Amy uttered the first sad sounds of an eight-year-old in distress.
“Amy. That’s okay, we’ll get this worked out. Don’t cry, sweetheart.”
Bending down and clutching her shoulder, that was her neat, prim dad. The plaid shirt buttoned to the top, the white slacks belted too high on his waist.
Her mother stood next to him, mouth drawn in a frown. Dark hair in a bun. No makeup, face pale.
The other couple, not quite as neat, shuffled uncomfortably. They busied themselves at nearby cages, pretending to care about the other dogs.
“This is a pickle,” said the pound manager, a slight man in a green uniform. He removed his ballcap and scratched his head as he said it. “I really wish one of you would find another dog so I don’t have to make a decision here.”
Amy’s dad stood up straight, pulled his pants impossibly higher on his trim frame.
“Now, fair is fair,” he said, looking at the pound manager and ignoring the couple who had suddenly regained interest in the conversation. “My daughter said she wanted this dog and there was nobody around to say she couldn’t have it.”
“But we expressed interest in it earlier,” said the chubby woman who just moments ago wanted nothing to do with this matter. “I don’t want to be mean about it, but first come, first serve."
Her husband, chubby and bald, nodded enthusiastically. Amy began to blubber, tears spilling down flushed cheeks. She turned and pressed her face into her father’s shirt, clutching his arm as if she might fall down.
“But this is the dog I want,” she said, in an unsteady voice and one that was meant to be heard only by her father. “You said I could have any one I wanted.”
She cried harder and tried to bury it in her father’s plaid, ironed shirt.
Her father clutched her with one arm and implored the other couple with his eyes. “Please. This is breaking her heart.”
The chubby woman looked at her chubby husband and shook her head just as he did. The pound manager removed his hat once more and scratched his scalp.
“What do you say” he said to the portly couple. “We have thirty three other dogs in here. Maybe look around a bit longer?”
“I’m sorry,” said the chubby man. He looked at the pound manager and then at Amy’s father. “But the markings of this one are quite unique. We decided right away that this was the dog we want to take home. And that was 45 minutes ago.”
“And then you wandered off,” said Amy’s mom, who had come around to the other side of her daughter. “That’s hardly official.”
“Now see here,” said the rotund man, and he held his hands up as he did so. “It’s not like we need a letter of intent to prove that we wanted this dog. We mentioned it to one of the young ladies cleaning the cages.”
The doughy man and his wife looked this way and that way, as though the cage cleaner might dash into view to verify this account.
The pound manager sighed. The animal over which this polite argument had erupted sat in his cage looking from one face to the next. The cage rose from floor to ceiling. There was an identical pen to the left of it and another to the right. It was a long wall of cages and there were more on the other side of the narrow hall. The barking of dogs echoed constantly and the clamor seemed to be everywhere at once; the thunder of big dogs, the tiny squeaks of ankle biters, the yelps of dogs that were somehow neither big nor small. Everything in this dog prison was gray, either naturally or by design. It smelled of animal waste, wet fur and an over abundance of cleanser.
The dog in question was a black Labrador with a perfectly round white circle around his left eye. All black but for that one eye. In his previous life, he had been called Popeye by the drunk man who took care of him. It had been a miserable life, marked by beatings and neglect; Popeye had better recollections of the time spent as a stray. Even the pound was better than cowering hungry under tables as the drunk man raged.
In the way of dogs, the lab was earnestly interested in the drama unfolding around him.
“I want to name him Bobby,” Amy declared, sniffing back tears, pulling away from her father so that she could gaze upon the animal of her desire. “I want him to sleep on my bed so I can tell him stories – all the same stories that Bobby used to tell me.”
Now her sobs came in deep gulps and she buried her head in plaid again, in shame and indignation. Her father clutched her under his arm. Her mother stroked her blonde head. The pound manager looked confused.
“Bobby? Who’s Bobby?”
The tubby couple raised their eyebrows in unison, a mark that they had been married a long, long time.
Amy’s father swallowed painfully, as though he were swallowing a thumb tack. He shot a look at his wife, who gazed at the floor.
“Bobby,” he said, “was our son. Three years older than Amy here. We lost him six months ago. Very suddenly and unexpectedly lost him.”
Amy began to cry harder into the shirt. The pound manager looked horrified. The fat couple heaved identical sighs.
“Oh, brother,” the chubby man muttered. He looked at his wife. She nodded and smiled thinly. It fooled nobody. The smile indicated that they had been bested, not that they agreed the other family was rightfully entitled to this singular animal.
“Okay,” her husband said, shaking his head. “The dog is yours. I’m sorry about your brother, little girl.”
He leaned down slightly toward her as he said it. Amy pulled her face free. The eyes were red and swollen, the cheeks were soaked with tears.
“Thank you,” she said in a thin voice, like creaky bed springs. She began to blubber again, unable to accept the graciousness with poise.
“Thank you,” her father said.
Her mother echoed the sentiment but nobody heard her.
The chunky couple wandered away sullenly and did not stop to examine other beasts in other cages as they went. The pound manager was grinning as he reached for a ring of keys at his belt. He began to open the cage holding the labrador and the dog, for the first time, began to jump and bark beyond the mesh. To all who beheld it, it looked like the dog was grinning, too.
“Tell you the truth, I wanted you to have the dog all along, little girl,” the pound manager muttered.
He pulled open the door just a sliver and stepped into the cage. He plucked a leash hanging from the mesh and expertly affixed it to a collar around the lab’s neck. He pushed the door open wide and stepped out, the dog bounding toward the girl at once, panting, tongue hanging, instant love.
Amy giggled and accepted the dog as it thrust front paws toward her chest, nearly toppling her. She tried to hug it while twisting away from the tongue that lashed at her face. She squealed, laughed, managed to get her arms around the dog’s neck, kissed him.
“Bobby!” she cried.
Above her, the eyes of her father had gone glassy. He smiled goofily and looked away, swiping a hand over his eyes as quickly and as unobtrusively as he could. His wife pulled a hand to her mouth before a sob could escape. Over her hand she was smiling and the tears were on the way.
“That’s right, honey,” she said. “That’s Bobby. That’s your dog.”
The pound manager felt like he might weep, as well. He took his hat off, cleared his throat, scratched his head once more.
On the drive home, they sat in silence, a handsome family in a handsome station wagon. Amy’s dad kept his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. His wife sat rigid next to him. Amy sat in the back, hands in her lap, silent and thoughtful.
The labrador – it had no name, really. Popeye was forgotten and Bobby was only a word listed on a heap of forms back at the loud and stinky pound – sat in the compartment at the back of the car, staring over the seat, grinning that dog grin, wondering when the love and affection would resume.
But it was silent in the car. Five miles were behind them before her father spoke.
“You did a real nice job back there, Amy. Exactly as instructed.”
From the backseat: “Thank you, Father.”
“You’re welcome. Your reward will come.”
Amy smiled thinly. “I can’t wait for that time to come, Father.”
He nodded at the rearview mirror, turned to his wife, nodded again.
Home. The black dog with the white eye was towed without ceremony to the garage. It looked up at the man as it was led from the car, eager for encouraging words, pats on the head, signs of love. It looked around for the small one, but the girl was walking solemnly up a neat path next to her mother. They glided across the manicured grass, past beds of bright flowers and toward a pristine, immaculate house.
The girl never looked back and in that way of animals, the dog felt sadness and bewilderment. It was thrust into a dark garage that was pungent with the smells of gasoline, paint and lacquer. It remained there for hours in the stifling heat, each moment spent wondering why affection had been heaped upon it and then snatched away. Wondering when the child would come again with giggles and hugs. Wondering when food might be delivered.
At last, just before sundown, the dog lay down upon an oily carpet and rested its head upon its paws, sad, confused, waiting for the good times to come again.
One by one, they descended into the basement, most wearing black robes, a few wearing red. They descended into a pit of flames, candles everywhere, the room hot with them. In rehearsed silence, they assembled themselves in a circle around a diagram drawn in black upon the floor. In the center of that diagram burned the hottest fire of them all, a tub filled with flames as a host of items burned within. Twigs, herbs, bones, dead or dying insects. Those present felt their faces warm from the heat of the flickering fire.
And then entered the high one, red robe hanging from his slender frame, hood over his head and hanging in his face. He carried with him the beast of promise, all black with but one eye, as demanded by the unholy scriptures. The beast squirmed in the high one’s arms, eyes gone large, a whimpering rising from its throat. But the animal was held fast, its legs snared neatly in the high one’s arms. It was carried into the center of the circle and the passion of its twisting increased as it neared the heat of fire and all the strange, faceless figures staring over it.
In terror now, the beast issued one long, frightened howl and twisted its head as much as it could, looking for the girl and the two bigger people to come and rescue it, to shower it with love again and take it from this frightening place.
But only two cloaked figures stepped forward into the circle. They came in red robes and with daggers held high. The dog once known as Popeye, destined to be called Bobby, had a moment to wonder one last time where all the adoration had gone. Then the blades slammed home and it offered a pair of high, rising cries before twisting helplessly one last time and then dying in pain, dripping blood into flames that seemed to reach for it.
In a room above the altar of sacrifice, Amy crouched on her bed, clutching her knees and rocking back and forth. She smiled when she heard the cries of the dog because she knew that the boon had been given over. She smiled ever wider because she knew her reward would come in time, and that she would be the one carried into the basement as a further offering of loyalty and devotion.