CHAPTER 6

So, I observed after Nibble had refreshed himself at the water bucket, it was through this strange twist of fate, a one in a billion chance you and Crystal would be born into the same litter, that you were able to confirm once and for all that you weren't dreaming,

"Twist of Fate?," Nibble sighed, "what is twist of fate? For all I know it's still a dream... 'row, row, row, your boat, life is but a dream'... sometimes the only way I stayed sane during the next few months was to keep telling myself that I was dreaming But yes, you're quite right... being able to communicate and recognize each other made us feel real, made us remember our human past which was a great relief after what we'd been through."

I can imagine.

"Yes," continued Nibble, "But unlike dogs born in kennels or nice homes, it was soon made clear to us that we were not pets. Our master, Dexter Scoggins and his grandfather may have been worlds apart on most things but on hounds they were united. In that part of the world training hounds was a way of life. For miles around a network of men and dogs existed. Every man knew the voices of his own dogs and very often those of his neighbors; doctored them when they got hurt, returned them if they strayed too far, but never fraternized. In North Carolina dogs were dogs and men were men."

"Grandpa Scoggins would rock back and forth on his cabin porch eying us new pups and muttering things like, ' Why can't you train y'r own hounds? Y'r gonna get eight hundred dollars a piece for 'em, why do I have to do it?' "

I'll help you Grand-pappy, Dexter would reply, but you know y'r the best doggone trainer in these parts so why shouldn't ye?'

'Truth is y'r too damed stoned to do it," the old man would snort. Now it's not that-a-way with whiskey... whiskey and dogs they go t'gether, ye can't tell me no different. Dogs train better when a man's a little drunk...got a healthy respect for a drunk man. But ye get stoned on that reefer and get liver hearted and them dogs they take advantage of it'

"The old man, considered an authority on training hounds, was a severe disciplinarian and though he'd killed many a dog in the process, he'd turned out champion black and tans for over forty years, and had reason to believe that when his grandson got stoned on reefer he allowed his champion female Bluebell to crawl in bed with him... a capital offense."

'How can ye keep the respect of a dog if you let it sleep with you?' he would mutter. It was considered the worst thing, even on a cold night when a dog beside you would keep you warm - in fact it was considered a big mistake to let them inside the house in the first place. 'Give dogs an inch and they'll take a mile, give you no peace of mind 'till finally you'll have to leave y'r own home.' "That was the wisdom of Grandpa Scoggins... gives you some idea of what Crystal and I were soon to be up against".

Sounds heavy, I replied.

"Heavy was not the word for it, Nibble groaned. 'Aside from the training Army Dogs get, it's probably the worst dog training you'll find anywhere. Crystal and I were penned up outside the old man's shack which stood in the middle of a jumble of cages and battered dog houses containing about twenty five yelping hounds, including us. In our cage, a chicken wire partition separated us male pups from the females. The food was terrible and I suspected we were being starved so we'd train more easily. At first Crystal and I made no attempt to communicate with our litter mates, and it was due to the loquacious nature of Debbie, one of the females of our litter, that we finally got acquainted with our brothers and sisters. 'God this food is awful,' she would complain. 'Think of all the times you pushed a cart down the aisles of your beautiful supermarket,' she would whimper. ' Every night I'm having these food dreams, they're driving me crazy !' "

"From our side the pup who called himself Danton would whine,"

'Even in the days of Le Salut Publique, and the terrible famine the food was not this bad.'

'Could be worse, we could be really hungry,' a pup whom we came to know as Wayne observed sadly, 'You gotta remember we're dogs now with humans controlin' us You want to run away? Juss try... you'll find food is harder to come by than you think. We've got no money to buy it and we're not trained to kill your own.'

"Crystal's nose twitched. 'If only I couldn't smell all those delicious odors coming from Georgina's kitchen - she used to give us such good table scraps.' "

"Often Crystal and Debbie would curl up in a corner together refusing to eat, while two pups who had been bugs in their previous life and for whom no one had yet found names, would greedily devour every morsel of the disgusting gruel we were given. 'If you'd been a bug,' one of them screeched one day while gulping down globs of rancid lard, 'you would know how delicious this tastes.' "

'If I had hands,' Danton would say. 'I would certainly throw it back at that dirty old man.'

"I have to say I agreed with Danton and one night I got my nose under the corner of a food pan and turned it upside down. If he sees we don't like it, I whined naively,' perhaps he'll catch on and change it.' "

Later that evening out of the dark, something landed on my back, whomp, and on my rear end, that sent me reeling across the pen. Wayne cowered in a corner his tail between his legs.

" What was that? I whimpered hoarsely.

'I told you to watch it, friend,' Wayne whimpered. 'That was the hickory stick... one of his teaching aids. You don't have no hands... you don't have no weapons... don't reckon you can teach him anything. Next time you'll get it on the head and you won't get up. And if you don't learn certain things that old man wants you to learn, and if he gets mad enough and drunk enough, he'll just beat y'r brains out. I seen it happen many times with hounds, I know what I'm talkin' about. Hounds is stubborn and we are now Hounds. The man who can train us is gonna be stubborner than us and mean too.' "

"We crouched there trembling as the old man cleaned up the spilt food and took away the dish."

'There now,' Wayne whispered, 'You see that? Now he's gonna let us go hungry. You'll get so damn hungry you'll eat his shit before he's through with you.'

'Most governments, they treat their citizens the same way, ' Danton observed.

"Perhaps the girls would like to share their dinner with us boys. I ventured while gazing soulfully through the chicken wire partition."

' Me share with him! ' Debbie yelped.

' She wouldn't share with her own mother, that tight-ass'd bitch,' Wayne growled"

" Debbie howled."

'Keep quiet, wait till you come in heat.' Wayne yipped, 'I hope I catch you then, maybe a whole gang of us will catch you.'

'That's not a very nice way to talk to the mother of your children,' Crystal barked.

'You should know about our poor kids,' Wayne whined, 'She hated them.'

'That's what you say, dog,' Debbie yelped angrily, ' You always was a dog and now you are one ! ' "

'Yeah, that's what I say - I say you were the worst mistake I ever made.' Wayne explained, looking cross eyed at me over his big black nose. 'She was a model... got into it through her boyfriend, a pimp called Miles, who sent her pictures into one of them pussy magazines. At that time she was just a bar maid in Tucson... Miles, he was an ex-football jock who hustled rich queers. When she made the centerfold, they landed up in L.A. where she got her tits siliconed and all that... I met her down t' Newport Beach on somebody's boat... don't know what got into me but a week later we were gettin' married in Palm Springs. .. flew her down to Acapulco, bought her a house there... flew her out to Hawaii... bought her another house. Built her a house up in Montecito and a ranch near Gaviota... we had kids they grew up... but all those years she kept in touch with this Miles... sent him money... made out with him whenever and wherever she could.,, with my money kept him in real style. When I found out I felt wasted, man, like she had trashed the best years of my life... so I beat the shit out of her and she ran off for awhile. When she came back for her things, though, I got her... played to her vanity.... 'juss one more time, baby, Y'r so gorgeous I gotta have you one more time.' Got her in t' bed that way... had my Colt 45 under the pillow. Death in the Saddle man Whoeee!... what a way to go.'

Debbie rushed at the chicken wire partition snapping her little white teeth. 'You tricked me, that's what you did,' she barked, 'and just see where it got you you stupid redneck asshole.'

'Got me?' Wayne growled licking his penis. 'where's it got me? You think I mind bein' a dog?... Hell no... always envied my dogs... while I was workin' my ass off they was always lazin' around. I'm gonna be one champion stud before I'm through, you'll see. Gonna have one hell of a time, fuckin' everything in sight. I shit you not, honey.'

"I sidled over to the partition and lay close to Crystal on the other side.

'Quite a set of characters,' she murmured, 'two suicides... that awful Danton...'

"And that one they call Drifter, the one on your side who never talks?"

'Says he was a politician, claims he was assassinated.'

"Perhaps he was a Kennedy?"

'Or Julius Caesar - has anyone asked him?'

'Debbie did... he can't remember... claims this is his second time around as a dog... all he remembers is he was very famous.'

"We must have something in common with them - what is it? Why have we all come back as dogs?"

'Maybe where you go has something to do with the way you die. We all died violently.'

"You wouldn't call me the violent type, would you?"

'Not that, stupid,' Crystal sighed. 'You were shot... and as for being a violent type don't you call shooting those creatures of yours a little violent?"

"Those things! But that's another matter... I created them and had the right to get rid of them, didn't I?... you think they had souls, or something... come to think of it, I wonder if they did? I'd say the violent part was creating them in the first place. But how about those two former bugs, they don't seem violent."

'You can be sure they didn't die of old age, insects have pretty violent lives... think of flies eaten by birds, think of female scorpions.'

"Can't buy it," I replied. "You're saying the way you leave a body determines where you go next... I can't see that... my idea is that where you go is determined by...... Suddenly, these lofty speculations were interrupted by a terrific row a few pens away. Our ears pricked up and our noses twitched. A light snapped on in old man Scoggins' cabin and he came running out. There were a few wild yelps and we heard him cursing. 'Damn bitch, you're gonna get it now, you good fer nothing' hound bitch.' There was the whack and whomp of the hickory stick and a moment later a full grown female hound came flying over the fence and landed on her back near Crystal."

'Irving, this is getting ugly,' she sniffed. 'Something tells me we're going to have to escape... after all... lots of dogs out there are having a great time - why should we suffer?'

Debbie sidled over to the new arrival but was repulsed by a low snarl. Attracted by her odor, Wayne and Drifter stood on their hind legs there front paws against the chicken wire.

'Fools,' Danton sneered from his corner. 'Can't they control themselves?"

"Guess not," I replied. "You'll have to admit there's something very intriguing about her smell."

'If you're a dog,' Danton growled haughtily, 'Me, I am not a dog, never have been and never will be one... some of my compatriots were dogs, but not me... you can be human and act like a dog... or you can be a dog and act like a hero. Me, I am a revolutionary hero and will always be so."

"In this place?"

'I intend to escape at the earliest opportunity,' growled Danton, 'a revolutionary act. I will get away with it too, you'll see... after all, is this not America... land of Thomas Paine... of Jefferson and Franklin? There are many high-spirited men here and I will find them.'

"You're a few hundred years too late, my friend. No doubt there were many good people here but things have changed."

'If you do escape, you must be careful of cars,' Crystal cautioned.

'Cars?' Danton asked.

"Horseless carriages," I replied, "run by machines inside them like the one Dexter Scoggins drives... they can kill you."

Danton shook himself. 'I'm not afraid of dying,' he exclaimed. 'After the guillotine, nothing frightens me but, I will never be my master's lackey, whether he be King Louis or this peasant you call Scoggins.'

'I wonder if Louis XVI managed to transmigrate?" Crystal whimpered.

Danton snorted. "If he came back at all you can be sure it was as the lowest and stupidest of creatures... escargot perhaps.'

"This conversation was interrupted by a loud snarl from the newcomer."

'Don't snarl at us,' Crystal admonished her. 'We're all puppies here, we aren't going to hurt you... come, what's your name?'

"I'm not sure," was the faint reply."

'You must have a name,' Crystal touching noses with her.

'How is it you can reach me with that human voice... where is it coming from?'

'You've never tried to communicate with anyone?" asked Crystal.

'I was raised alone in my cage... had no opportunity to speak with the other inmates of this place. I think I was once called Isabel."

'I thought I heard the old man call you Rita when he threw you in here."

'That's what He calls me, that monster, but I've had dreams, or perhaps they are remembrances... when I was younger they were very vivid... I was raped and tortured to death.'

Crystal nuzzled Isabel's ears sympathetically.

'And that's why I couldn't understand what was happening to me just now. They say I'm very beautiful. They want me to have many puppies for them so they put me in with that wretched beast.'

'What wretched beast?'

'An enormous old hound with vile smelling ears and scars all over his body,' Isabel replied... 'he's called Snorts. He kept drooling over me and trying to nip me but I'm faster... I bit him good.'

'I don't think I'm going to like it here,' Crystal sighed, glancing nervously in my direction.'

'You're right, you aren't,' Isabel, decisively.

'You must concentrate that you are only temporarily in this dog's body,' Danton bugled softly... 'your Inner One, it is better than the body you happen to be in... of that I am convinced... we must lay plans to escape."

'I certainly wish to escape,' Isabel replied. 'But they say I am so beautiful, so high priced, they will not risk letting me out to hunt. I would gladly let them train me in hunting... if I were allowed out, then surely I would run away.'

"You mentioned training?" I interrupted.

'Who are you?' Isabel sniffed.

'He's my friend,' Crystal told her. 'He's alright, his name was Irving... we were going to be married but we were murdered in New York."

'Poor things,' Isabel grokked sympathetically, 'New York, where is that?' I don't think I know of such a place."

"The training, " I persisted. "What can you tell us about the training?"

'Ah yes... Well... I have not myself been trained, as I told you, but of course I have heard the others complaining about it... I think you will not enjoy... It's very dangerous and in the process you may forget that you were once human... or whatever you were... if you want to forget, that's fine... if you want to remember it is not so good. You may lose your mind altogether... forget even that you want to escape.'

'You can say that again,' Wayne barked, panting at the partition, 'Hey Isabel... how about you and me gettin' together when I'm a little older that is... just wait, I'll finish off that Snorts for ya.

'Who is he?' asked Isabel.

Wayne cocked his head. 'Me... I'm California Wayne, tall, dark and handsome... how about it, Senorita?'

Isabel wagged her tail. 'I don't know what he's talking about but he is very amusing, is he not, Crystal? Perhaps Meester Wayne, fate will put us together in the same cage someday, let us see... meanwhile, if you see that horrible fleabag Snorts, I would appreciate if you would finish him off.'

"Isabel, the training?" I tried again trying to keep her on track. "You were telling us about the training."

'I can tell you plenty about it,' Wayne growled.

Isabel shook herself. 'Perhaps you know more than I do?'

'You bet,' Wayne replied. 'Us'ta run hounds... owned a pack of 'em... Blue Ticks, Walkers, Black and Tans like us...trained and hunted them since I was a kid.'

'All I can tell you is what happens here,' Isabel sighed, looking solemnly around at us pups. 'It begins with a piece of horrible smelling fur on a long pole... you'll see... tomorrow or the next day they'll take you out, tie the fur on the end of a long string and fasten it to a pole... then they'll drag it along in front of you.'

'I supposed our pup instincts will have us trailing along behind trying to pounce on it,' Crystal said.

"Sounds like fun," I said.

'I will not participate in these humiliating practices,' grumbled Danton stubbornly.

'You won't get no food then, you can count on that,' Wayne said.

'Precisely,' grimaced Isabel.

"Then what, please continue?" I asked eagerly.

'A few weeks of that and he'll take us out in the field,' Wayne said. 'If he wants to hunt coon, he'll have trained us with coon-scented fur... if he wants us to hunt bear he'll have bear hide on the end of the stick. The old man will take us somewhere and that grandson of his, Dexter, will go on ahead with the scented fur and we'll be expected to follow.'

'Sounds hard,' Crystal moaned, 'what happens if we can't do it?'

'Don't worry,' Wayne grunted, 'Black 'n Tans is cold-nosed.'

'What on earth does cold-nosed mean?' Crystal asked.

'Cold-nosed means we can pick up a scent fifteen days or more after it's been laid down.'

Ah, yes, Senor,' interrupted Isabel, 'but is that not the problem? Are not our noses so sensitive that we pick up too many of these odors, often go astray and lose our way?... you may be following one odor when another crosses its path and you become distracted.'

'That's where that hickory club comes in,' Wayne cautioned.

'Ah yes,' Isabel whined, 'too terrible... they say when you make a mistake that old man comes running after you with a club.'

'My teeth will be sinking into his leg before he gets me,' growled Danton.

'Then you'll be clubbed to death," Wayne. replied

'Not if he wants to sell me,' Danton growled again.

'He doesn't care about anything when he loses his temper,' warned Isabel.

Danton shook himself. 'We shall see - no one is going to club me without a fight.'

'That's not the worst,' Isabel continued.

'What else,' groaned Crystal.

'After that, I hear they take you out hunting... put on special collars... none of us know what they are made of but if you go off after the wrong thing you will receive a terrific pain from the collar... too terrible... not hot, not cold... you will collapse.'

'Lectronic collars,' Wayne explained. "Used 'em many times...like cattle prods but radio controlled... gives off a terrific shock. You'll be jumpin' ten feet in the air if you make a mistake.'

"There wouldn't be much left of me after that," I said.

'Brainwashing,' Crystal sniffed.

'You bet your life,' Wayne nodded. 'You'll have to get smart and stay smart then you won't get no shocks. It's real simple, you just gotta concentrate on the smell he lays down when you start out. If you do right, you get extra food.'

'Hard to believe that...' Debbie grumbled.

'How long does this training period go on?' Crystal asked.

'Until you learn to hunt I suppose...' Isabel shrugged. 'I really don't know ... you see I'm what they call a breeder.'

'Lasts about six to eight weeks...' Wayne yawned.

'I will not be trained...' Danton declared.

'We'll see,' Wayne warned. 'Even a revolutionary like you may have a few things to learn from these old Red Necks.'

I shot a mournful glance at Crystal, "At least we'll be able to be together when we're out in the field... a few hours a day outside this filthy cage would be worth almost anything."

© Elwyn Chamberlain 2009