With

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She had been bad. He had told her to watch the truck, to stay with the truck, to guard the damn truck, and she had done her best, patient as only she knew how to be patient, as he had gone away with his arms full with a box and then had come back by and by and had taken another box and disappeared once again and then kept on doing that, box after box, and she had yearned to go with him, the late afternoon had been coming on, and he had been gone such a long, long time, and she had convinced herself that there was nobody else around, nobody was going to bother the stuff left in the truck, she couldn't catch the faintest wind of any person anywhere for miles, and therefore what harm could it be if she just explored a little bit, not going far from the truck, keeping it always within range, and keeping a closer guard for the first sign of his return? But a deer with two fawns had come into view and she had been thrilled to pieces, especially by the fawns, so cute and innocent and curious, and before she had realized what she was doing, she had followed them off into the woods for a considerable distance before she had realized that she had completely lost touch with the truck.

And when she had returned, he had been there, and he had been furious. The very tone of his voice had hacked and slashed her, and then he had taken a stick and had beaten her with it. She had protested and whined but he had kept on beating her until she could hardly stand up. Then he had told her to get back onto the truck and stay there and not even think about leaving it again. He had taken another box and gone away once more, and she had lain in the truckbed among the few remaining boxes and had inspected some places on her ribs and her legs where he had actually drawn blood. She had been very sad. She had understood why he had beaten her, and she was terribly ashamed for having disobeyed him and abandoned the truck, and she had been miserable in her guilt and in her unhappiness.

The next day he had done the same thing, going into a town to a store and loading up the truck and driving it back and up, up the mountain road so rough and bouncy she was nearly thrown out of the truckbed, more than once, and then making her stay with the truck all afternoon while he unloaded it, box by box, sack by sack. And the next day, the same. And the next.

Now she thought and thought about the whole situation, and felt a nagging wonder about the possibility that somebody else might be a lot nicer to her than he was. Mostly he was good to her, but ever since he had taken her away from her mother he had not shown her much affection or even much attention, except when he had needed her for something. He had provided a good home for her, and had fed her well, and she had liked the place a lot, but now it appeared that he was getting ready to move, and she didn't think she wanted to move. Why else would he be toting all those boxes and sacks up here to the different place? Once or twice (or was it three times?) in the beginning he had allowed her to walk with him to the different place and look it over. The truck could not get to it, or even near it, and she managed to understand why. The road ended at a deep gully where rains had washed the road away. And even if the road had not been washed away there, the road later fell to pieces all over the place, and they had to go down into deep ravines, so steep she sometimes slipped if she didn't watch her footing, and very hard to climb out of, and once they climbed out of it they were on a very narrow bluff ledge that scared her with its height and danger. She tried to picture him alone with his arms full of those boxes and bags trying to climb down into those ravines and then back up out of them and across that awful bluff ledge, and she could almost understand why he would be in such a bad mood that he would beat her unmercifully. Then after trekking up and down through all that rough rocky land and across that bluff ledge and into the deep dark forest again, the road, or path, what barely remained visible of it, climbed sharply and trickled out for good, rising to an old homestead in a bramble-clogged meadow on the very top of the mountain. She had been stunned by her first view of the old house, and of the house's view of distant miles of mountains. She could tell that nobody had been up there for a long, long time. It was in her nature to search, upon first seeing any strange house, for signs that might betray any information about the inhabitants. But there was no information whatsoever there. After he had taken her inside the house and she got a whiff of the interior, she began to sort through a cluster of old stale smells, not one of which was familiar to her, except that of rodents. Clearly whoever had lived here had departed ages ago.

Behind the house, near an orchard that was swallowed up in brush and briars, were the remains of an old barn, and there she could detect the fact, barely, that it had once been inhabited by a cow and a pair of mules. There was the rodent smell again. Another building, smaller than the barn, but unlike it not in danger of collapse, was just an open shed with benches along its walls and an assortment of round wooden drums or casks unlike any in her acquaintance. There was one other tiny little building by itself between the barn and the house, its door ajar, and inside she saw a bench-like seat that had two large holes cut in it. There was a distinct odor of fresh poop overlying an assortment of ancient poop-smells, and she assumed that he had been using this little building to do his business.

A few of the small things which he had already moved into this place had come from his house, and thus she managed to understand that he was indeed planning to transfer the contents of that house, her home, to this place. She didn't like it. Or did she? Strangeness, unfamiliarity in any form disturbed her at the same time that it piqued her curiosity. She was adaptable and could easily learn to enjoy life here, if that was what he wanted. But why did he want it?

Why was he going to take her away from her home and move her into this strange, stranded dwelling-place? So many times already he had taken the truck, empty, to huge stores in big towns, where he had loaded it up and brought it up here and slowly unloaded it, a box or a bag at a time, and carried it to the remote house. Maybe he just liked all the exercise. But why did she have to stay with the truck? In the beginning it had been fun to watch but now it was old and dull and she was tired of it. And she had no idea how much longer it would go on. He had been mean to beat her so cruelly. She began to think seriously about the startling idea of running away. First she had to think seriously about where she would go if she did run away, and to consider what her chances would be of an alternative existence elsewhere. Then she had to make a mental list of all the things she didn't like about him.

What he called her, for instance. Bitch. On the surface, there was nothing wrong with that, because that's what she was, but it was such a neutral name, no affection in it, and the way he said it sometimes made it sound like he was cursing her. She had a perfectly nice name, Hreapha, and it was a great pity that he would not call her that. Probably he just couldn't pronounce it properly. It was a name that she liked to declaim to the entire world, enthusiastically or warningly, depending on the occasion. "Hreapha! Hreapha!" she often declared. It was what she told him whenever he returned to her after one of his foot-trips to carry boxes to the old house, but when she'd said "Hreapha" after his return the time she'd gone to watch the deer and fawns she had meant for the sound of it to carry abject apology, and yet he had beaten her viciously anyway.

The name had been given to her by her mother, whose name was Whuphvoff. Her mother had taught her everything she knew about the world, especially how to fight and take care of herself. She had never known her father, whose name was Ralph-Alf, but her mother had often described Ralph-Alf as beautiful and irresistible, albeit not half her size. Her mother had spent most of her life in dwellings; her father was strictly the outdoor type. Hreapha had sextuplet brothers and sisters, but while still young one by one the others had been removed from the family until only Hreapha remained to enjoy her mother's company and instruction, and this she had for a long time, until her mother had taught her everything she knew about the world.

Then one day he had taken her away from her mother and quite possibly Hreapha had never forgiven him for that, and she made note of it now as one more reason for running away. He had never even bothered to tell her what his name was. She had grieved for her mother unceasingly, but he had said, "Bitch, you aint never gon lay eyes on your maw again, so you might as well snap out of it." And oh, if only he had done anything to help, like taking her out for a run or a walk or even playing fetch with her in the yard, but he just left her all alone to endure her loss. Her mother had explained to her the enormous benefits of being loyal and devoted to one's master, but Hreapha had rarely taken pleasure in any such benefits with this man.

He had two vehicles, and when he took the truck he always made her ride in the back, even in the coldest part of winter. Riding in back was not without its satisfactions: she had a full exposure to all the fascinating smells and sights that ordinarily she could only get by sticking her head out the window, which she couldn't do when he kept the window rolled up because of the cold. When he took her, as he sometimes did, in the other vehicle, she was permitted to sit on the seat beside him and sometimes, if it wasn't too cold, to stick her head out the window on that side. The other vehicle had no back end like a truck, just a back seat, with a wire fence separating it from the front seat. That vehicle also had lights on the roof that sometimes flashed. When the lights flashed there sometimes came from deep within the vehicle a hideous screaming sound as if the vehicle was going through angry death throes. Then the vehicle would stop behind another vehicle alongside the highway and he would get out and go over and talk not nicely to the other person and give that person a slip of paper.

He usually did not take her with him on these trips in the flashing, screaming vehicle, in which he departed nearly every morning, leaving Hreapha to entertain herself in the front or back yard. But one time she happened to be riding with him when the person he stopped and spoke not nicely to took a metal thing that he pointed and it made a loud explosive noise and caused the windshield over Hreapha's head to be punctured in three different places, and then her master had taken another metal thing and pointed it at the man and made the loud explosive noise and the man had fallen down. He had searched through the other vehicle for a long time, and from its trunk had taken a large canvas bag and put it into the trunk of his own vehicle. Returning to her, he had remarked, "Well, now, Poochie-wooch, me and you are in the goddamn clover!" She had no idea what he meant but she was delighted that he had called her something other than Bitch.

That had been the last time that the flashing, screaming vehicle had ever been used. From then on, he didn't go off to whatever his dealings were each day but stayed home, day after day. As the weather warmed he even went fishing, and took Hreapha with him, and she greatly enjoyed that although she could not begin to imagine why anyone would want to eat a fish. But then he gave up fishing and started taking the truck to those huge stores in several different towns and loading it up with all those boxes and bags. In the beginning, at least, she had loved all that travel.

Hreapha understood how important the boxes and bags must have been to him. So he could almost be forgiven for his anger at her for her failure that one time to guard the truck constantly. She told herself she could let that go, his beating her. But there were so many other things she couldn't let go. One of them had happened not too long ago on a night so cold she had dreaded the thought of trying to sleep in the backyard in the crude little house he had made for her, lined only with a stinky old blanket. He had surprised her by, instead of putting her out at the usual time, suddenly saying to her, "Hey, Bitch, how'd you like to sleep in the house tonight?" His breath had reeked of the beverage that made him stumble when he walked.

Hreapha had never slept in a house, and she knew that only masters and mistresses and their children were allowed to do that. She could not for the life of her understand why he was making such an invitation, and she could only sit and stare quizzically at him as he repeated himself. She got up and walked in a circle twice as if searching for a proper place to lie down and spend the night. It didn't matter. The hard kitchen floor was good enough, and warm enough. He pointed to a place there. She licked his hand, and then lay on the floor. He poured some more of his brownish liquid into his glass and then poured some into a saucer, which he set before her, saying, "Here, old gal, try a snort." Dutifully she dipped her tongue into the liquid but it was penetrating and burning, and she left it alone. "Hey, come on!" he said, "Let's us me and you tie one on!" She whimpered, as if to tell him thanks just the same but she really didn't care for any of that beverage.

After a while during which he repeated his invitations to drink, he became unhappy with her. "Goddamn," he said. "Thankless mutt. I got a mind to leave you here when I move away." Then he kicked her. He opened the kitchen door and kicked her again, and as she scampered out of the house he kicked her several more times. "I hope you freeze to death!" he yelled, before slamming the door on her.

The memory of that night remained with her now as she pondered the decision to run away. She was tired of living in dread and expectation that he might hurt her again, as he had then, and recently when he'd beaten her with the stick for failing to guard the truck. She knew that he had increased his use of the beverage that made him stumble when he walked. She had been in the back of the truck when he had stopped at the places where he obtained the beverages. They were in two different towns and he had to drive a long way to get to them. But she knew they were the beverage-places because as soon as he had loaded the truck he opened one of the boxes and took one of the bottles to the truck's cab and began drinking from it. He had loaded many, many boxes of the bottles into the truck, and later had carried them, laboriously, carefully, into and out of all the ravines, over the rough trail that led up to the new place. Hreapha bore no illusions about her intelligence but she knew she was smart enough to realize that if several sips from the bottle made him get loopy and rocky, then he had taken possession of enough entire boxes full of bottles to cause him to fly over the moon or kill himself, whichever came first.

Part of her felt an obligation to stay and protect him, if she could. Her protective instincts were all-consuming and she was even proud of them. But a stronger part of her, perhaps not a natural part of her, was self-protective and therefore selfish.

There was only one box left in the truck, and he would soon be coming back to get it. She jumped down from the truck. She had thought about which way to go; her compass or simply her sense of the whereabouts of her in-habit told her that the tiny town that had become her home lay south but that south was also the direction of the different place, albeit uphill. So she had better head north, and go downhill. She decided to wait until he came back into view, so he could watch her taking leave of him.

Her mother had once explained to her the meaning of a most common imprecation of people: bad dog. Her mother had told her that she could expect to be called a bad dog if she ever, ever did anything contrary to the best interests of people. Her mother told her that the imprecation was meant as a corrective but it usually just had the effect of causing undue guilt and remorse and anxiety. Her mother had advised her to always remember that regardless of how good she was, she would always be somebody's bad dog.

Now he came back into view. She watched him as he approached the truck, and she said "Hreapha!" to him in a way that clearly meant "goodbye." And then she said, Bad man. And turned and ran.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from With by Donald Harington Copyright © 2004 by Donald Harington. Excerpted by permission.
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