Dogs

Every morning at eight o'clock, the dog began barking in the yard next door. The yard was surrounded by a high plank fence; because of this, I never saw the dog. I peeped several times through a knot hole, but saw only a stake in the ground with a chain leading away to someplace I could not see. I had thought of getting a ladder and climbing up to look over the fence, but there had been robberies and burglaries in the neighborhood, and people would call the police at the slightest provocation. For some time, I let the source of the barking remain a mystery. It became entertaining to spin theories as to what sort of dog might be responsible for the incessant noise.

I had never developed, in my mind's sight, any concrete image of the dog. I certainly had not dwelt upon details such as its hair or coloring. The barking was high-pitched, so I thought that the dog must be small. Other than that, there were no clues.

There were clinking sounds with the barking, and there was tinkling and chain-rattling even during intervals when the dog was silent. I surmised it was a restless creature. The barking went on every day, almost without exception, from eight o'clock until dusk, and this distracted me from my work. There were days of respite--cold or rainy days, or days with high winds--and thus I began to look forward to foul weather. I was also happy that the dog was quiet at night. At least sleep was possible. The dog's master, who I envisioned as a bespectacled lump of a middle-aged oaf with a dilute attempt at a mustache and lips that never closed completely over uneven teeth, had the mercy to yield at times. I imagine I was not the only one of his neighbors grateful for this bit of latitude that he displayed, this chink in the Kevlar of his insensitivity.

But most days are fair in South Florida. Most of the time, the dog was out in the yard, clinking its chain and barking.

The mournful sound of the barking made me feel sorry for the dog. Why would a dog bark on beautiful days? Might it be to relieve the boredom of being allowed a universe radius of but a few feet? Might it be surprise or fright at birds, butterflies, falling leaves, or people? Maybe the barking was an act of joy, a hymn to life. Perhaps it was sensuous expression. Maybe the dog just liked to hear itself bark, as some people enjoy listening to themselves chatter.

Or could the barking be nothing more than a reflex? Or might it be perversity that drove the creature, an awareness that it was causing irritation, pleasure in hammering at the ears of unseen victims who might gnash their teeth, as I sometimes did, at the seemingly unlimited endurance of those vocal fibers? It must have been erotic for the monster to contemplate the distress of its unwilling listeners. I never asked the dog about this, never shouted at it through the fence, and knew I would get no reply if I did cry out, except intensification of the barking.

Upon final analysis, I surmised that the dog was unhappy. Agony, boredom, or misery, like the barking of this creature, can rage indefinitely; pleasure is transient. The noise sometimes echoed from unidentified objects, accentuating its dark resonance. I concluded that the barking was the yammer of the infinitely bored, the neglected, the automaton whose programmer has degenerated beyond recall. It had to be, at best, a neutral reaction to the Cosmos, and at worst a hellish ranting from a black hole of despair. The pitch would often descend in long paroxysms, devoid of hope, calling to no one, and expecting no answer, ever.

Imagine my surprise when I finally saw the creature, its barking having driven me, one day in the middle of May, to stare through the knot hole until my curiosity was satisfied! I saw, not a dog, but an old woman, chained to the stake, wearing rags. Had the stake been moved to a new location? Or had I missed seeing her in the past on account of a series of coincidences? No matter; there she was. My initial disbelief was so powerful that I momentarily thought I might make her vanish by sheer rejection of the facts. But no. There she was, and there she remained, barking.

The woman's hair was unkempt. She crawled on all fours within the circle that the chain allowed. The circumference of her world was marked by a ring of worn-down lawn. I knew she spent much time at this outer circle, because it was eroded to a rut. She must have crawled around for miles a day to have worn it down so much. There had evidently never been a dog in that yard. It must have always been the woman, because she made noises just like those that I had been forced to endure for so long. She moved her mouth; the barking was synchronized with her lips, leaving no question about the source of the noise. It took several minutes, while I stared and listened, for me to accept the truth. Finally the woman turned toward the knot hole through which I watched with one unblinking eye.

I shouted, "Hey there!"

The woman heard me and turned slightly away, then back, and spoke: "Eh? Arf! Arf! Bow wow! Who there?"

"Over here!" I shouted. She did not seem to see me. I realized that the hole was tiny, and that she might not have seen me even if she had known I was there all along. "Here!" I repeated. "The little hole in the fence! Here's a finger!" And I thrust my index finger through the hole and wiggled it around.

There was silence for awhile. I put my face back against the hole. She gazed in my direction and narrowed her anthracite eyes to be sure there was someone looking at her; then her expression changed and I knew she saw my eye. She relaxed visibly, slouching even lower to the ground, if that were possible, and said, in perfectly normal English, "Go away."

"Plug up the hole, if you don't want me to stare at you," I said.

"Go away!" she repeated. "I can't reach the hole. The chain is too short. You plug it up. Then don't you ever, ever bother me again."

"It's not my fence."

"Just because there's a hole doesn't mean you have to--Arf!--stare at me through it."

"It's easier to talk to you that way," I said. I tried not to laugh aloud. The sight of her, unaware of her ridiculous appearance, caused my whole body to quiver with mirth. She started to calm down as she saw that I was determined to stay at the knot hole. Her anger dissipated into the warm May air. She asked, "What do you want?"

I hadn't thought about what I might expect from her. I said nothing. She repeated her question with a tremor in her voice, a sign of feebleness in old age, a vestige of arrogance born of lost beauty.

"Why are you chained up?" I asked.

She hesitated, always peering at the hole. "Why not?"

"What!"

"Can't you see that I act like a dog?"

"You do a good imitation. You had me fooled a long time," I said.

"Arf! Bow!" she barked, as if to verify that she knew this and was proud of it. Then she ejaculated a hideous "Row-row-row-wow-wow-woo-oooo," a seizure copyrighted by Satan.

"I didn't mean to insult you," I said.

"It's all right. My father lives in the house here, and he--"

"Your father!" My thoughts of her master, or keeper, changed to a vision of a shriveled wraith, hardly able to stand, with lips that never opened to expose the fact that all his teeth were gone.

"Yes. My papa. He lives in the house here, and he thinks I'm a dog. Leastways you'd think he does. He's treated me like one for so long. Arf! Bow-wow-wow-wow!"

"What!" I shuddered.

"Bow!"

"I've a notion to call the cops right now and report the man," I said. "He ought to be in jail. Or in a nut ward. And you, you too ... never mind."

The woman turned away and let out a loud, staccato bark. It reverberated all over the neighborhood. I had wondered in the past how a small dog could bark so loudly; now I marveled at the fact that this little person's voice could have such force. I was puzzled, too, that no one before me had noticed this woman in the back yard of an otherwise ordinary residential home, chained to a metal rod, barking all day long almost every sunlit moment of the year. But, of course, that was the justification for having the high, opaque wooden fence: to keep anyone from seeing into the yard. In that neighborhood, as in most parts of Miami Beach, people thought twice before loitering around other people's property. The woman's condition could thus be hidden simply with a fence, but for the hole, the knot hole, the worm hole!--a link to and from the outside world, from and to a not-quite-autonomous little universe.

The dog woman turned back toward my knot hole, and I felt her gaze as if my whole body were in her sight.

"I guess I like you," she said.

"I like you, too," I replied, almost choking to control my incipient laughter.

She was silent, watching the hole, her eyes steady, seeming to look through me at some galaxy a billion light years away.

"So I'm on your approved list?" I asked.

"It's nice to speak words for a change," she said.

"Don't you ever talk with your father?"

"The animals and the birds don't talk, and they don't understand human words," said Dog Woman, ignoring my question. "I might-a forgotten how to speak if it had been enough years."

"No. You'd never forget that."

She cleared her throat, as if speaking were a strain compared with barking. Then she barked again, so loud that I jumped.

I asked, "How can you stand the confinement? It'd drive me--"

"What confinement?"

"Look at you, chained to a stake in the earth," I said. "Your whole world is forty feet across."

"How big is your world?" she asked.

I did not answer.

"My father is kind," said Dog Woman. "He takes me in when it's too hot or cold, and at night, and when it storms. He feeds me and comforts me, and he won't let me suffer."

"What! To chain you up! To let you writhe in the dirt!"

"Dogs all do that. And I do other things in the dirt too." Then I noticed that there were small mounds within the circle, near the center, and that the grass was thicker and greener in their vicinity. Somehow this did not surprise me. I'll never be surprised at anything again in my life. I turned away from the hole for a moment, as if I feared I might smell the excrement if I kept looking just then. But a gust of wind came and only the scent of new-mown grass teased my nose.

Then I put my mouth up to the knot hole, so the woman would hear me perfectly.

"I have a good job!" I shouted. The woman replied with an energy-charged series of barks. "I chose my profession. There's a big demand for computer programmers. I can go anywhere in the country. I'm as free as anyone can get. I can't imagine how you can live the way you do. Even slaves were treated better than you are."

Now, at last, the woman had no rebuttal.

"And to think you believe your father is kind! He's crazy. He's evil. It's illegal, what he's doing here. I'm going to call the police. I'm surprised no one else has. They'll lock him up."

"Don't you dare!" shouted Dog Woman.

"For God's sake, why not?"

"I like life this way. It's all I know."

"What!"

"Go work yourself to death for the rich man. See if I care. Do I say you're crazy? Do I try to change your life because I wouldn't like to live as you do? Leave me to live the way I want to live. Go ahead and work for corporate entities"--her tone dripped with disdain--"that siphon your blood and feed you just enough to keep you from shriveling up from anemia. Arf-arf-arf! Better you should die this instant! Bow-wow-wow-wow! I get steak every day! Arf-bow-wow-wow!"

I thought then that I might want to ask for higher prices for my work. I asked, "How old are you?"

"Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow! Life is mine to live. I watch the bugs and the birds and the lizards and the frogs."

"When's your birthday?" I asked.

"May fifteenth," she said. "The ides of May."

"Day after tomorrow," I let her know.

"Is it?"

"Yes. Happy birthday. What would you like? A bone?"

"Arf! Bow-wow! Arf-arf-bow!"

I looked at her. Nothing I said was significant. She gazed upon me as if the fence were transparent and she could see my whole body. Then she turned away.

Dog Woman cackled at the trees on the far side of the yard, "I'll live like a dog, and I'll die like a dog. Have yourself chained to Mother Earth, by someone who cares enough to do you that favor! Bow! Arf-arf! Bow-wow-wow-wow!" The barking echoed off the side of the house, off the trees, and off the bugs and lizards and frogs and birds. End of conversation.

Several days later I called my landlord and asked him to let me out of my lease. I could no longer work in that cottage knowing the source of the barking that went on all day, almost every day of the year. I tried to compose some programs but could envision only a woman, crawling in the dirt, chained up, gray cloth hanging from her limbs. No logical thought processes could get started. My landlord allowed me to quit the cottage; if he had not, I don't know what I would have done. I found an apartment where none of the neighbors are allowed to keep pets.

But it is impossible to avoid dogs at all times and in all places. Occasionally I hear barking while I'm out walking or riding my bike. Even if the barking is so distant as to be almost unrecognizable, my whole consciousness focuses on it. I see Dog Woman being thrown a raw steak by a stooped old codger. I see Dog Woman slobbering at the bloody meat with her body belly-down on the ground, yelping as she gnaws and chews and swallows. But I keep on my course, maintaining my composure, and after a little while I am out of range of the sound.

Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 by Francisco Carrera.