Mountain Dog Read online

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  For Curtis and the dogs,

  with love and gratitude

  —M. E.

  To Misha, a great mountain dog,

  who helped our son to find his path

  —O. I. and A. I.

  FIDE CANEM (TRUST THE DOG)

  —Ancient Roman search-and-rescue proverb

  THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE

  —Official motto of search-and-rescue teams all over the world

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigram

  1. Tony the Boy: No No No Maybe

  2. Gabe the Dog: Yes Yes Yes Always

  3. Tony the Boy: Scent Trails

  4. Gabe the Dog: Word Smells

  5. Tony the Boy: Trail Angels

  6. Gabe the Dog: Roundness

  7. Tony the Boy: Invisible Clues

  8. Gabe the Dog: Hide-and-Seek

  9. Tony the Boy: Fences

  10. Gabe the Dog: Togetherness

  11. Tony the Boy: The Rescue Beast

  12. Gabe the Dog: Teamwork

  13. Tony the Boy: Loser

  14. Gabe the Dog: Boy Training

  15. Tony the Boy: Lonely Smells

  16. Gabe the Dog: Sniffing School

  17. Tony the Boy: Insect Math

  18. Gabe the Dog: Dog Truths

  19. Tony the Boy: Uno

  20. Gabe the Dog: Smelly Rhymes

  21. Tony the Boy: Walking with Bears

  22. Gabe the Dog: Chasing the Moon

  23. Tony the Boy: Dancing Elephants

  24. Gabe the Dog: The Smell of a Voice

  25. Tony the Boy: Found and Lost

  26. Gabe the Dog: Sharing

  27. Tony the Boy: Shorelines

  28. Gabe the Dog: Beach Dreams

  29. Tony the Boy: When Elephants Jump

  30. Gabe the Dog: My Wishful Nose

  31. Tony the Boy: Dog Years

  32. Gabe the Dog: Explosions

  33. Tony the Boy: Trail Names

  34. Gabe the Dog: Search!

  35. Tony the Boy: Rescued!

  36. Gabe the Dog: Winners

  37. Tony the Boy: Puppy Testing

  38. Gabe the Dog: Full Moon

  39. Luz the Dog: Finding Home

  How to Stay Found in the Wondrous Woods: By Gabe, Luz, and Tony

  A Note to Readers

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Illustrators

  Copyright

  1

  TONY THE BOY

  NO NO NO MAYBE

  In my other life there were pit bulls.

  The puppies weren’t born vicious,

  but Mom taught them how to bite,

  turning meanness into money,

  until she got caught.

  Now I don’t know where I’ll live,

  or what sort of foster family

  I’ll have to face each morning.

  I dread the thought of a new school,

  new friends, no friends, no hope.…

  No! No no no no no.

  But the social-worker lady doesn’t listen

  to NO. She’s like a curious puppy, running,

  exploring, refusing to accept collars and fences.

  She keeps promising to find a relative who will

  give me a place where I can belong.

  I don’t believe her.

  There aren’t any relatives—

  not any that I’ve ever met.

  I know I’m right, but family court

  makes me feel dumb, with judges

  and uniforms

  wrapped up in rules.

  It’s a world made for grown-ups,

  not unlucky kids.

  Even the angriest pit bulls

  are friendlier than my future.

  Everyone talks about dog years,

  but all I can see now is minutes.

  Each impossibly long dog minute

  with the frowning judge

  and cheerful social worker

  feels like it could go on and on

  forever.

  Mom’s cruelty to animals

  was her fault, not mine, but now

  I’m the one suffering, as if her crimes

  are being blamed on me.

  When the social worker keeps smiling,

  I find it hard to believe she’s actually found

  a relative, a great-uncle, Tío Leonilo.

  What a stupid name!

  Maybe I can call him Leo the Lion,

  or just tío, just uncle, as if I actually

  know my mother’s first language,

  the Spanish she left behind

  when she floated away

  from her native island

  with me in her mean belly.

  The social worker promises me

  that although Tío is old—nearly fifty—

  he’s cool.

  He lives on a mountain, rescues lost hikers,

  guides nature walks, and takes care

  of trees. He’s a forest ranger.

  She might as well say he’s a magician

  or a genie who lives in a bottle.

  I’ve spent all my life in the city.

  All I know is Los Angeles noise, smog,

  buses, traffic, and the gangs, and my mom,

  the dogs, fangs, blood, claws.

  Nothing makes sense.

  Why would a cool uncle want to share

  his long-lost relative’s kid-trouble?

  This can’t be real.

  Real life should feel real,

  but this feels all weird and scary,

  like a movie with zombies or aliens.

  When a man in a forest green uniform

  walks into the courtroom, he hugs me

  and calls me Tonio, even though Mom

  never called me anything but Tony

  or Hey You or Toe Knee.…

  Out in the hall, Tío shows me a photo

  of a dog, a chocolate Lab—goofy grin,

  silly drool—not a fighting dog,

  just a friendly dog, eager, a pal.

  Tío walks me out of that crazy

  scary courthouse, into a parking lot

  where the happy dog is waiting

  in a forest green truck.

  I have to meet Gabe’s welcoming

  doggie eyes and sniffy nose,

  even though I’m not ready to meet

  nice dogs, cool uncles, or anyone else.

  Well, maybe just one sniff is okay.

  When I pat Gabe on his soft, furry head,

  he gives my hand a few trusting,

  slobbery licks.

  Yuck.

  2

  GABE THE DOG

  YES YES YES ALWAYS

  The boy sees how I sniff, and he breathes too, smelling the deep odors of night and bright fragrance of day. Time is all mixed together in one long, endless pleasure of sniffing. We open our noses, inhaling everything—all we need is in the air.

  I love the sound of his boy voice. Tonio. Tony. Not a very hard name to remember. I love the smell of his hands. The finger scent rhymes with good smells, food smells, friendly smells. Only his shoes hold an unfriendly odor. Bad dogs have walked near him. Strange dogs. Dangerous dogs. Their stench rhymes with bear scent and lion scent and the stink of rough places where stray dogs are caged.

  The boy moves his head in slow circles, ey
es closed, nose open.

  The truck roars up our mountain. Aromas rush in. We lift our noses

  together, pushing our heads out the wide-open window

  into a wild place

  where only scent

  matters.

  We sniff.

  We share the road,

  the window,

  and clear

  invisible

  air!

  We will always be friends.

  Always.

  3

  TONY THE BOY

  SCENT TRAILS

  I’ve slept in plenty of ugly

  splintered

  stinky

  spiderwebby

  nightmarish

  hard

  wooden

  doghouses.

  This place is different,

  even though it’s not a real

  house, just a two-room cabin,

  with one whole room

  for me.

  The knotty pine walls

  are filled with pictures of trees

  and animals—no family photos, no

  pictures of Mom when she was little.

  I wonder what she was like.

  Was she already fierce, or did she

  look shy and scared

  like me?

  Tío’s brown dog claims my bed,

  dropping his weight over my ankles,

  as if to keep me from sprinting

  away

  in my dreams.…

  Life is so weird. Gabe is a happy,

  almost-as-smart-as-any-human

  creature, while I feel like a worn-out

  zoo beast.

  I lie awake for a long time,

  gazing out the cabin window at stars

  that seem to be cradled by branches.

  Our drive up the mountain

  was so long and dizzying

  that I can’t even begin to imagine

  how far away

  from my other life

  I am now.

  When I finally sleep, I dream

  of a funny future. No fangs

  or claws. Just me and Gabe,

  only he’s a serious human,

  and I’m the playful pup.

  Then it’s morning, and Gabe

  starts begging to go outside,

  but when I glance out the window,

  my view of a forest is so unfamiliar

  that I stay where I am, motionless

  and silent.

  Pretty soon, my uncle is up

  and breakfast is ready, the morning

  already a flurry of surprises.

  No one has ever cooked for me.

  Not once. Oatmeal might not be

  my favorite, but today it tastes

  warm and comforting.

  Tío says his cabin is so remote,

  so high in the Sierra Nevadas,

  that I’ll have to go to an old-style

  three-room mountain school—

  grades six through eight together

  in one class. I’ll be with big kids,

  and even though I’m tall, I’m only eleven

  and a half. How am I going to survive

  around twelve and thirteen-year-olds?

  The worst part of picturing myself

  at a new school is those moments

  at the board, showing everyone

  that I can’t ever

  do any

  of the math.

  I’m nervous around fractions

  and percentages, but word problems

  about money are the ones

  that really terrify me.

  The social worker says it’s because

  at home, when I showed that I knew

  how to count, Mom made me keep track

  of greedy bets

  at the growling, snarling,

  bloodthirsty dogfights.

  So instead of practicing numbers,

  I just learned letters, and then

  I figured out how to keep my words

  to myself.

  Now, right after breakfast, Tío invites me

  to help him take Gabe for a rambling walk

  in the woods, where wild pine trees

  smell like Christmas, even though

  it’s springtime.

  The forest is shadowy green,

  with spiky red flowers sprouting

  from bright patches of snow.

  My first snow.

  My first mountain.

  My first off-leash dog.

  No chain.

  No muzzle.

  No scars

  or scabs.

  Gabe follows a scent, nose to the ground,

  nose in the air, back and forth, tracing

  a pattern as he follows a smell

  toward its source.

  He’s so thrilled that I soon share

  his excitement, racing to catch a sniff

  and a glimpse

  of the deer or squirrel

  that left this mysterious trail

  of drifting air.

  I wish my stupid human nose

  understood all the invisible clues

  that Gabe can follow! Dogs inhale

  the scents of sweat, breath, skin,

  poop, and pee, but they can smell

  emotions, too—anger, sadness, fear,

  happiness, love, hope.…

  Dogs can even smell a tricky lie

  or the soothing truth.

  Gabe bounces along the trail

  of mystery scent, leading me

  from a scared-of-life mood

  to one that feels

  like music.

  Tío runs and laughs with us,

  but the next day, on our morning walk,

  when I sit on a tree stump to rest,

  he suddenly turns serious,

  reassuring me that he really is

  Mom’s uncle—my great-uncle—

  a true relative. He says he cares

  what happens to me.

  He tells me what happened to him.

  He came to this country on a raft,

  just like Mom, but years earlier,

  when she was still a child.

  His raft drifted, then washed ashore

  and crashed on rocks, leaving him alone

  and stranded on a tiny, nameless isle

  for weeks, a castaway, marooned,

  just like Robinson Crusoe.

  He had to learn how to survive

  by eating seaweed, drinking rain,

  and breathing hope.…

  I wonder if he remembers my mother

  when she was tiny. I hope she was gentle,

  sweet, and kind. I hope she loved animals,

  and liked everybody,

  and was too young to know

  that life can be dangerous.

  All I know about her is that

  after growing up and floating away

  from her island, she reached a rough city

  where she met mean people

  who used drugs and dogfights

  as cruel ways to make money.

  Tío swears that if he’d known

  where she was, he would have tried

  to help her, he would have struggled

  to help me.

  When he’s finished talking,

  I shake off the tears, and he asks

  if I want to sing.

  That makes me grin, but he’s not joking,

  so we pile into the truck with Gabe,

  and we whirl around mountain curves,

  until the steep road ends at a jumble

  of barns and corrals

  beyond a crooked wooden sign

  that announces

  COWBOY CHURCH

  DOGS & HORSES WELCOME

  I’ve never been to any church at all before,

  and I’ve certainly never imagined a God

  who likes horses and dogs.

  Gabe treats the place like a feast

&
nbsp; of scent, sniffing boots, jeans, hoofs,

  and manure. Even the yucky smells

  make him smile. He turns out to be

  the kind of dog that loves to laugh

  and howl.

  When the cowboys and forest rangers

  start to sing, Gabe joins in, off-key,

  and everyone ends up chuckling,

  especially me. I never thought

  I could have so much fun

  so soon after trading

  my tough-pit-bull

  real life

  for this temporary

  foster home

  in a wild forest

  that somehow feels

  so much more gentle

  than the city.

  4

  GABE THE DOG

  WORD SMELLS

  After horse smells and howling, we run, race, leap, noses open, eyes open, mouths open, until the floaty aroma of a passing hawk almost disappears.

  Low flying. Foresty. Swoop. Chase. Hunt. Hawks leave winged trails of hunger in midair.

  Snow. We’re tired. We flop, dance, flap, flutter, flip. We make shapes in the softness. Tony’s patterns of snow are four limbed, just like mine when I roll from side to side. Only my shape is bigger and more wispy, because it has a tail.

  Snow angels. I love it when the boy shouts words with cold, clear meanings that I can smell and taste!

  I twitch my nostrils, inhale deeply, swallow meanings. I make the sound, smell, and taste of each new word my own, filling my hunger for friendship. I breathe the bumpy surface of words that rhyme with the scent of humans, the aroma of happiness.

  5

  TONY THE BOY

  TRAIL ANGELS

  I’m afraid to sleep, terrified

  that the same old nightmares

  of fangs

  and claws

  will keep coming back …

  but beside me, Gabe woofs,

  then drifts

  into a running-dog

  dream

  that leads my tired mind

  toward a race

  where I am four legged

  and fast

  so swift that I can

  almost

  fly!

  It’s not a real dream,

  just a half-awake

  fantasy,

  but it helps me feel

  safe enough

  to doze.

  In the morning, I wonder

  why people always assume that dogs

  just want food. Walks are the reward

  they really crave—movement,

  adventure, new smells.

  So I get up and take Gabe out

  to sniff the forest while I wish

  for a way to avoid my first day

  at a new school, and a way

  to visit Mom without seeing her

  in a prison uniform.

  An hour later, my wishing ends.

  Small yellow school bus.