Nop’s tail went still.
On the fourth day of Nop’s stay at the shelter, T. T. Raines got a phone call. T.T. was then in New Jersey where the rodeo was booked into a vast sports coliseum.
T.T. took the call in the office. He was wearing his apron and little paper cap.
Mr. Doug Whitenaur said he’d seen the Littlest Buckaroos on TV and wondered if the dog—after that unfortunate incident—maybe he was for sale?
T. T. Raines thought.
Mr. Doug Whitenaur said the dog reminded him of a real good dog he’d seen once. Dog belonged to a man called Grady Gumm.
“I’ll be damned.” Though T.T. had mixed feelings about Grady, the mention of his name put things on a more familiar plane. “That’s the dog. That was ol’ Grady’s dog before he sold him to me. Look, I’ll tell you true. I ain’t got the dog with me this minute. I got somebody, uh, takin’ care of him for me. How much you thinkin’ of payin’?”
Doug Whitenaur thought he’d pay as much as two hundred dollars for the dog.
“Two fifty.” Damn, T.T. was havin’ a bit of good luck for a change.
“I’ll wire the money. You get the dog out to the airport and there’ll be a ticket for him.”
T.T. laughed. “I never heard of no dog riding an airplane. Soon as I get my two hundred fifty dollars I’ll call my friends and have them take the dog to the plane. Send the ticket to the Sioux Falls airport.”
The director of the shelter didn’t care for T.T.’s longdistance adoption, but the volunteer argued. T.T. was the original owner and, she added, “The dog’s already been here four full days.”
“Oh my. Oh dear.” The director put his hand to his mouth. Like the other volunteers, he liked the dogs he so often had to put to death.
“Mr. Whitenaur handles Border Collies at trials. Mr. Raines said that about him.”
The shelter director seized on that bit of evidence with relief. “Very well then. Would you … I’m afraid we have no way to get him to the airport.”
Nop rode quietly on the floorboards. This woman was not his master but she was capable and he would obey. He trotted beside her into the terminal, oblivious to the passengers, all the new sights and sounds, and lay at her feet at the ticket desk until she got things straight.
The clerk brought out a molded plastic crate and Nop entered through the little chrome-plated door and it was latched behind him.
The clerk set it on the luggage belt. Nop whined when he started moving in a way he’d never moved before. The cage brushed through a heavy curtain and tipped and slid down the chute into a big room full of other luggage but no other dogs.
At the bottom the crate tottered but ended upright. Other suitcases clattered on top of it and Nop lost much of his vision when a red two-suiter blocked the door. He scratched at the metal.
Noises—motors—tractor motors, the whine of electric forklifts, the whine of rubber wheels.
He was swooped into the air and set on a baggage cart. The jerk dropped him on his haunches.
He heard roars, men’s voices, a tremendous thundering sound. He smelled rubber and scorched kerosene.
The volunteer watched from the observation deck as the luggage was lifted into the belly of the airliner. She raised a hand in farewell. “Good luck, doggy.” If people who loved animals didn’t man the shelters, who would? That was her thought as she turned away.
Nop’s flight was loud, terrifying, uneventful; buried in the dark beneath the baggage of Flight 167 he flew from Sioux Falls to Cincinnati.
He had a tough time keeping his feet on the spinning baggage carousel and sprawled when someone jerked him roughly to the floor.
A face pressed right against the door of the crate. “You are him,” the man said. “You’re Nop!”
Nop’s ears perked at the sound of his own name but his eyes were blank as mirrors. Border Collies give affection easily, but he’d seen a few things.
Leaving the airport, Doug Whitenaur drove too fast. Whitenaur felt happy and godlike. The two best stockdogs in America and he owned them both! He wouldn’t be able to trial Nop (the trial world was too small), but that squarehead, Burkholder, wouldn’t be trialing him either.
Owning him would be enough. Keeping him out of competition. “Like,” Doug said, “a dog in the manger,” and laughed and pounded the steering wheel. Somewhat off key, he sang: “And nothing can stop the Army Air Corps.” Pounded the wheel again. He was halfway home, speeding down the Strip, when a thought occurred to him.
Slid into the parking lot beside Billy’s Temptation and clipped Nop to a steel lead. Nop followed him inside, well mannered but dubious. Hack and Sandy were gone somewhere. Toledo, someone said. Billy, the owner, was genuinely offended Doug brought a dog in his place. Billy thought Whitenaur was showing great disrespect.
Billy’s anger made Nop very nervous and he might have bitten the owner if Whitenaur hadn’t snubbed him up tight.
Getting 86’d from Billy’s Temptation drained every bit of pleasure from Whitenaur’s coup. What use was this dog if he couldn’t brag about it?
He could breed Nop and Bit O’ Scot. Though he could never run the dog, he could run the bitch and her puppies. He’d send the most promising pups out to Jack Knox in Wisconsin or Bill Crowe in Virginia or maybe to Bruce Fogt. Whitenaur was no trainer, he was a handler. He belched. His stomach was full of gas.
He pushed Nop into the kennel right next to Bit O’ Scot. He didn’t think to put out food before he left and the only water was rain water that stagnated in the gutters. The water looked awful and smelled worse but Nop was very thirsty.
The bitch pressed against the chain-link fence that formed their common boundary.
Like many breeds, Border Collies are great snobs and prefer their kind to any other. Nop smiled. He sniffed. He dropped into the invitation-to-play.
Her ruff was blue merle. Both her ears lay flat along her skull. Her tail was fluffier than Nop’s and her eyes were sweet dark brown. She laughed at him and made a mock lunge.
Nop’s tail curled over his back and he forgot. Forgot fear, anger, exhaustion. His spinning brain slowed to a stop.
“Thou art she,” he said, panting with joy.
“Thou art fool,” she replied, tossing her head disdainfully. She then sniffed at a dark spot on the floor. What an interesting spot! How rich in fascination!
Nop sat slack-jawed with disappointment.
Bit O’ Scot (“Bit”) was a long-bodied bitch. Her chest was not as broad as Nop’s; she was built more sleekly. The tip of her tail was blue merle.
She extracted every iota of interest from her feigned fascination and put her nose to the wire.
Two dark wet noses touched and Nop lost his heart.
Her scent was rich with new and good things, redolent of her warm heart, her joy in her own speed. She withdrew and licked at her flank. So glossy! So neat!
Nop marched to the far corner of his kennel, without taking his eyes off Bit. He hoisted his leg against the stanchion, somewhat more jerkily than he’d intended because it had been a long plane ride.
They had no bones or toys in the kennels and this afternoon, like so many others, there wouldn’t be any food either.
“Dost thou work woolies?” Nop asked. He’d not seen her that day, so long ago, at Innisfree.
“I do. I chase them about. They do as I wish, even the rams. In my home country my master was Jock but I was sold and my master is Douglas. I wish I was back in my home country.”
“Dost thou work woolies, work woolies, work woolies?” Nop had no word for many. He knew the difference between herding a great flock of sheep and working three sheep at a trial but had no word for his understanding.
“The master has no woolies. I travel to woolies. When I do work well, Douglas gives me food. When I do badly, he puts his hands to me and hurts.”
“Oh, I will work woolies too,” Nop said, happily, because there was no way he could understand Whitenaur’s intent to never work him agai
n. If a dog is trained to work woolies, why, working woolies is its work and a dog must do its work; that was how Nop thought. Sometimes he was much too direct for the world he inhabited.
Until recently, Whitenaur had owned two stockdogs: Bit and another imported dog, Sweep. Sweep was a red dog. He’d been a brace champion in Scotland.
In brace trials, two dogs are worked at once, like a mirror image. Until Sweep’s arrival in this country, Whitenaur hadn’t known that the dog was trained to reverse commands. For Sweep, “come by” meant “go right” instead of “go left.” Thus, with one command two dogs would go out on both sides of the sheep. Whitenaur didn’t have patience to work the reverse commands or retrain Sweep. He fooled with him for a month or two, placed badly in a couple trials and sold him for half what he’d paid for him.
“I only keep winners,” he said at the time.
Sweep’s buyer—who was about to own a brace champion for less than two thousand dollars—said, “We’ll see what we can do with him. Perhaps I can work with reverse commands.”
“Better you than me,” Whitenaur sneered.
And Sweep’s purchaser agreed but bit his tongue.
Sweep and Bit had been kennel mates and when the big friendly dog was taken away, Bit sorrowed for days.
Now, despite her show of indifference, she was delighted to have a pal again. Perhaps they couldn’t nip and race around each other, but they could lie side by side and doze and commune.
She wasn’t alone anymore.
In the next few days, Whitenaur came out to the kennels frequently. He spent time admiring the two animals and, by extension, his own ruthless cleverness.
Whitenaur enjoyed the symbol more than the fact. He never was genuinely fond of his dogs.
Nop and Bit loafed through the long drowsy days and once in a great while an insect came into the cage and they’d chase it with great ferocity, and once a black wasp stung Bit and after she killed it, angrily, she licked at her sore paw for an hour and complained bitterly about the pain.
They attended to the few noises that drifted to the kennels from the suburban street. At night they watched the halo that glowed over the distant city.
It rained and cleaned the runs. Twice Doug Whitenaur hosed the kennels down.
They lay side by side, on each side of the heavy mesh.
One morning Bit woke before her habitual time and began to pace.
“What worries thee?”
She snapped right back at him. “It is none of thy concern, dog.” She sat and licked her vulva.
She was restless and snappish and kept herself extremely clean. Nop had never bred before but the smell from the next kennel took him by the nose. He drooled. He pressed against the wire mesh. He invented conversations but forgot what he meant. “How lovely is thy tail, thy black nose, thy … What a stud dog am I, that chases woolies, I … Thy teeth, how sharp, how able to crush the large bones of thine enemies …”
And she’d snap at him when she was too greatly annoyed and Nop would retreat, quite abashed, quite chagrined. “Thou art cruel.”
“Thou ruffian, why should I not be cruel? Thy manners and thy fur, they both offend me.”
That evening when Doug Whitenaur came by to feed he was wearing blue velour pants and a light yellow ruffled shirt. “Well now,” he said. “Well now. The two best stockdogs in America.”
Though there was no guarantee that their pups would be special, the odds were good. When he stepped inside Bit’s cage, she was so pleased she jumped up, muddying his pants legs and he smacked her down hard, a reflex. She cowered and an angry Nop hurled himself at the chain link.
“Maybe you’d like a beating?” Whitenaur inquired, savagely. “Maybe you’d like to feel my hand?”
Nop growled. Bit whimpered and cowered away.
It was Nop’s lucky day. Doug Whitenaur was due at a party in forty minutes—his family again—and now he’d have to change clothes. “Just you wait,” he threatened.
The entire incident flew right out of Whitenaur’s mind and, though he was slow to feed the next day, he didn’t beat either dog and, in fact, inspected Bit to see how far along she was in her heat.
Bit’s scent was driving Nop crazy. Her aroma was perfectly delicious, familiar, unfamiliar and exotic. It befuddled him. No more did he pounce on the insects that happened into his run. The loudest street noises didn’t penetrate. He was quite carried away.
He thought of tall cool rooms with plush pillows. He thought of spring grass before it was cut for hay, when to stand in it was to be blind in a green world. For the first time in months he thought of his mother’s nipples, so white and supple and how they felt when he nursed and pushed at them with his feet, a perfect little eating machine.
The heat cycle takes twenty-one days. The bitch will accept the male dog for four of those days.
One morning Doug Whitenaur came into Nop’s kennel, grabbed his collar and dragged him in with Bit.
Bit was on Nop in a flash, snarling and nipping.
He went over on his back, presenting his belly. He wagged his tail when he thought it wouldn’t offend too greatly.
Whitenaur stayed for just a moment. He had more important things to do than watch dogs mate.
He left them together.
For several days Bit was as kind as Ivan the Terrible, nipping Nop when he came near, flying at him for the slightest provocation. He tried to play and sometimes he could intrigue her into a romp for a moment but, quickly, she’d lose interest and lick herself or slash at him and push him into the farthest corner of the run.
Neither of them ate very much though both were terribly thirsty. Nop sprinkled his urine all over the shared kennel, creating a wall from his own body through which no bad magic could come.
Much of the time she ignored him, treating him like he was a nondog, like he was a crude, overlarge object placed in her kennel by mistake. She even objected when he sniffed at her fresh urine. She’d rush on him growling until he retreated.
Nop admired her so. Her silky fur, her grace, her perfume, the gay set of her tail. His brain was slack and helpless. They rarely spoke. Their present preoccupation was too rich for talk.
Nop became erratic. In sparse droplets he urinated incessantly. He invited play. He feigned indifference.
One morning she woke him with a nudge of her nose. Nop rose and made the obeisance to the dog god with which he started every day.
She wagged her tail. She grinned. Her brown eyes were full of fun. Before he was quite awake, she nipped him on the very tip of his tender nose, turned and ran.
He bounced after her. Her scent had been musky, slightly acrid and hot. This morning it was clear as a distant church bell. She was what she was. Nop pranced around her, high on his toes, like a dancer. His shoulder bumped her and, wonder of wonders, this morning she did not bite him or growl or insult him. “Thou art he,” she said.
How Nop pranced! How they circled! When he rolled her over in their rough and tumble, she allowed him to grasp her by the ruff and allowed too his dominant growl.
She got up, feigned indifference, thumped idly at her ear with her foot and Nop circled; something to be done, something to be done. He wrapped his forelegs around her and hugged her.
She threw off his embrace. “Thou fool,” she said, but there was no sting in her words.
His circlings grew narrower and quicker. His tongue lolled. She held her tail to one side, exposing herself as if by accident. He embraced her and slipped back when she turned. He hugged her around her ribs and she simply walked away, dropping him onto his forepaws. He growled but she ignored him.
Again she stood, again he hugged her and his loins moved precisely.
Bit grunted. She panted. She grunted again.
As his excitement grew, he knew less and less until he totally became dog instinct—not the specific instinct bred into stockdog but the ancient instinct that guides the Miniature Poodle and the Great Dane alike. Nop was witless in the power of his brillia
nt instinct.
Nop became her mate, fastened himself upon her, created the tie.
While his dogs mated, Whitenaur was having a glass of champagne down at Billy’s Temptation. A couple regulars had got hitched and the joint was closed for the reception. Drapes were drawn across the front window. The sign on the door said PRIVATE PARTY.
Toasts were drunk to regulars who’d moved to New York or the Coast. Epic drunks and epic feuds were remembered fondly. Like the holidays—when regulars brought kids into the joint—the reception transformed an ordinary gin mill into something rather more important—a club, a loyalty, a community, a better family than one’s own blood.
Someone said, wonderingly, “There’s people here I never saw in daylight before.”
Hack was at the bar banging down free champagne.
Sandy was circulating, putting his arm around the men, hugging the women. He never got too close to Hack; Doug noticed that. “Howdy,” Sandy said and plunked himself down and his champagne glass was untouched—Whitenaur noticed that too.
Doug was feeling light and fast and very much on top of things. He was in the know. “Didn’t go well in Toledo?” he asked.
Sandy made the same kind of face Hack made when his stomach was bothering him. “Buy me a drink,” he said.
And Doug said, “Sure,” and popped his fingers and, surprised, a waitress came right over.
When Sandy had his Chivas (rocks, water back), he said, “Better times,” and upended it.
Doug wanted to hear about Toledo, but Sandy started an involved tale about some businessman he knew (“He’s straight, honest to God. Pays quarterly taxes, everything”) who needed a loan (“Just a little cash-flow problem. He’s good for it, Mr. D. Thirty thousand dollars. You know what the vig is on thirty K? You and me, Mr. D. You put up the scratch and I make collections”). Sandy was sweating underneath his hairline.
“You want another drink?” Doug popped his fingers again but didn’t catch his waitress this time. He said, “How about Hack? Would he be in on it?”
“You’ll have to ask him yourself,” Sandy said.
“So what went wrong? I thought you two were palsywalsy.”