Weary travellers

Travellers

After we got the car, we really went places. It started with short trips to the outskirts of the city. We were cramped in the back seat, frequently fighting for space. My mother trying to get in the front row to catch the best view, I, sticking my head through the window and letting the air comb my fuzzy hair. Several times we reached a trail system that surrounded a lake and extended through the hills and along a narrow creek. The smell of wild animals was evident, as well as their prints in the woods. We ignored the lake, crowded with fatty birds who couldn't fly, but refreshed our tired legs and swam in the creek. Human people discriminate against dogs as they sometimes do with themselves. we were forbidden to enter some parts of the trail system and we were forced to stay on a leash. However as we left behind the closest sections to the lake and the picnic area, humans became scarce enough to allow us some freedom. And that's how part of my dreams came true. I went after raccoons and I saw my first deer. It was a tall, gentle beast who looked at me without fear before vanishing down the hill.
Days got longer and we walked to exhaustion, gaining strength and endurance. The next summer we took on longer trips and I got to see the ocean for the first time. Eloisa likes the romp in the sand but never comes close to the water. The ocean is agitated and unpredictable, its water viscous like blood, entangled plants and beaten rocks wash ashore like the vomiting of a giant monster and indeed, Eloisa believes that something dark and voracious lives in there.
Two seasons later we visited another tribe in a chaotic city they call L.A. Eloisa has been there before and the only thing she remembers is being pregnant with me and having morning sickness. We got a room in the first floor of a big building and I broke lose in the corridor. My pack and the employees panicked for a minute. I never understood why humans get so nervous in the presence of a single dog off leash. When they finally calmed down and called me, I came back wagging my tail.
L.A. has more humans and dogs than the biggest army of ants I've seen. the visitors swarm in search of toys and food and then drop in the beach in a state of stupor. The local pack spend most of the time trapped in their cars trying to get home.The air is dirty and made me sneeze. But there is a place in particular that my mother love, because deep inside she dreams with royalty. Jack and Elena feed her delusion calling her " The Queen". It is a small section of the city devoted to expensive shops where wealthy humans and their pompous dogs waste their resources. Its name is "Rodeo Drive". Awe and excitement didn't prevent Eloisa from peeing under the window of one of those shops, while I slipped in the marble floor trying to get away. However,we didn't receive the angry looks I expected. Humans were in a relaxed state of mind and were mostly curious about our ancestry.
Next day, Elena said that we have had enough of that and we were heading to Indian Country.

Cars

Finally, Elena got a car that could run. Before that, we have been sad witnesses to the efforts of two old beasts Jack kept, motionless, at the front door. Their only service, was apparently restraining somebody else from parking in front of the house. Every winter morning, they growled and shuddered for a few minutes before falling asleep with a big spurting of smog. Jack talked and occasionally, insulted them, to no avail. Elena took public transport like the kids. I could tell she was going far away because she brought back the smell and seeds of different trees and cities in her shoes.
I Believed at the time that the two old cars were dying, but Eloisa was sure that they have never been alive. We had a long discussion about this while we were in the cages. if this seems silly to you, just imagine what else a reasonable person would do when forced to spend 12 hours a day in a crate in the living room with no other entertainment than background jazz music in the radio and toys that would bore a toddler.
The facts are that cars have the same general structure of animals. They have four short legs, eyes in the front, a belly and a back. You open the head and find convoluted tubes as you find inside the head of a squirrel, although even a car has bigger brains. People jump in their backs as they do with horses. Their butt is big and can be filled with all the trash humans carry around for no reason. Other features are anomalous. The mouth is round and narrow like a fish mouth, and is on the rear. They have also a pair of eyes in the butt, but perhaps they are fake, just like the false eyes of the butterflies in the wings. Cars have a history and go from young to old in no time, however they never grow or gain strenght, they only decay since the moment they are born. Cars cannot regenerate and heal their wounds as animals do and they don't move alone. This is the main point, Eloisa stated, that put cars in the realm of inanimate objects. they cannot move on their own volition. I refuted this argument, reminding her that I've seen cars running against people wishes, causing injuries and deaths. Eloisa still insisted that such events result from human fault, not from the car intentions. Vehicles don't smell like animals and have no plasticity of expression or emotions. they always look the same. But those assertions could also be applied to oysters.
It is not easy, in conclusion, to define life. It well could be the solid wall Eloisa imagines, separating the living from what is merely there, but also, as I believe, a fine gradient of states of being from the rock to the car to the dog, every modest thing with a hidden soul, teeming with intentions and dreams about the world.

Chihuahuas

My mother has always been fond of little fellows. Every time she had the opportunity to go unnoticed through the neighborhood, she went to chat with the smallest dog I've ever seen. He lived two blocks from our home and spent the afternoon in the front yard watching people pass by and waving his tail. Sometimes his guardian was around, seated in a reclining chair, drinking beer and laughing with friends. Sometimes he was alone, anxiously looking back to the house and asking for company. My mother would stop by and comment about the trivial matters of the day. In occasions she talked about me and about how I was becoming a difficult youngster with a short temper. On my part, I considered the Chihuahua something amusing, delicate and fragile like a toy but he could never command my respect.
I came to be irritated by the attention my mother gave to him. One day, I stopped in my way home and he greeted me with the usual joy. I started boasting about the wild games I played, how I destroyed the sofa and spent a few months in confinement. His face suddenly turned serious. He shaked his head and said in a whisper,
" You are a lucky guy, many other families would have ejected you from home; not to the streets, where you have some chance to survive on your own, but to those prisons where they keep the orphans and rejected. And I tell you, boy, if nobody picks you up in a week, is very likely you will be killed there. They give you some poison and you are dead before you can beg for mercy"
The whole tale made me very upset, no less than the fact that he called me boy.
" Whoever wants to kill me", I replied, "will pay with blood. I am part wolf, can you see it?"
He laughed at that.
" You are no wolf, you are just a mutt. I have pure blood. Everybody who looks at me knows that I am a Chihuahua and knows where my ancestors came from. But whoever looks at you, cannot tell what you are"
I growled, the hair in my back, suddenly upright,
" I can eat your head with one bite, wolf or not"
By that time, my mother was between us, trying to cool the situation. Just to be graceful to her, he changed his tone,
"It was not my intention to hurt your feelings", he said," Just to give you a dose of reality, being you so young and impulsive. I am an old soul, my friend. I couldn't help but notice that you are not neutered, and that may be the reason of your behavior. If you want to keep your balls, be gentle. Be like me. I am so small and good natured, that nobody considers me a threat. That's why I am still a man. But start looking around, in the park, on the street, and you'll see the sad reality of our emasculated race. To have power, don't be like a wolf, be like a cockroach. They are not feared but thrive in every house and cannot be eradicated.
Listen to a grown fellow. All those German shepherds around us, are eunuchs. They started just like you, howling in the nights and calling their ancestor, the wolf. Dreaming about gaining the Alfa position in the pack and getting all the ladies."
My ears were down when I returned home. Not a dog but reality has grabbed me by the neck.

School

In spring, I discovered where the kids spend the day. It always baffled me that the morning was so empty of them. In my evening walks I had seen them in crops, laughing, screaming and jumping on each other, their toys spread like casualties of war in the small gardens in front of the cookie cut houses and the playgrounds. I could hear them whispering at night, forced to stay in bed, talking to their siblings or their stuffed animals in the darkness. But early in the morning, the parents or a mysterious man in a big yellow car shipped them away for the day, bending under the weight of backpacks and books. I imagined that the children were confined, just as I was, while the adults were out hunting or as they call it, working.
One morning, being the sliding door of the kitchen inadvertently open, we managed to escape. After being in the cages, we have become experts at seizing opportunities to get lose and were thirsty for the world we have missed so much in winter.
My mother and I ran the first two blocks and then walked quietly, hiding behind the cherry trees lining the street, to avoid being detained by the neighbors.
We traced the smell of the children to a park we knew very well. We were often taken there to exercise by Jack and Elena. In those days, it was empty except for a few other humans with dogs. But that particular morning it was full of kids, grouped by age or size, pouring from the cars and the yellow bus. They ran fiercely for a while before being herded into a flat building where they spent some time, quietly seated, fixing their tired eyes in books or drawing in papers. That's a very strange human activity. They call it studying and seem to consider it of utmost importance, as if their future and position in life depends on it. The same monotonous exercise continued until a friend of mine spotted us in the playground. He suddenly left his seat, went to the window and pointed in our direction. The woman in front of the class, didn't pay attention, perhaps believing the child was trying to distract the others, but soon, all of them were on that window, jumping at the realization that we were playing and having fun while they were inside toiling with their innate burden of responsibilities. I can say that we almost started a revolution. They were eventually left out for a break and played with us. We took special care in being far away from the grown ups. That morning, my mother also taught me to hunt moles from the ground. After a meal of raw meat we came home just in time and closed the door of the backyard. When my family returned we were sleeping a siesta. The two kids next door told them about our adventure. But when they looked at me, I just stretched my back and walked away with a lazy wag of my tail as saying,
"It's just a fairy tale".

Second Year

" Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. It is too dark to read inside of a dog"
Groucho Marx

Gifts

we receive a bag of treats during the longest night of the year.

Celebrations

As winter approaches, people engage in celebrations. It is not easy to understand the meaning of that sudden frenzy. It begins with the harvest of big fruits. there are thousands around and they are placed in front of the houses, probably to boast about the crop. However, nobody eats them. They are too hard for most animals to rip open (I have only seen some ducks working at it) and their smell is not very appealing. By the same time, children in scary costumes get candy everywhere. Later, when it's too cold to get outside in disguise, humans start killing big birds and gattering to eat them (I love that tradition because we participate in the feast). People you have rarely seen before show up just for the food and then vanish as soon as they get full only to reappear after another circle of the seasons has been completed.
They don't like darkness. As the night subjugate daylight staying longer each time they feel threatened and create lights on their own. The fronts of every house and street are ablaze in a big cold fire and the trees are posted as guards of the light until the sun returns. For unknown reason they also kill trees. Enough of them to populate a forest. Sadly in the morning, the pungent smell of their blood comes as a reminder of the slaughter. Perhaps all this is a festival of the forest, perhaps is a sacrifice they offer for the morning to return. The families put the dead tree inside and hang glass balls, toys and even more color bulbs on them. Humans treat those things with respect and protect them, but as soon as the light returns, they are dismissed, considered an old annoyance and tossed in the streets. I was terrified when I saw this for the first time, thinking that I could shared that destiny. if you pay enough attention, you realize that almost everything among humans is dealt with in the same way. But we are exempt, forever sheltered in the pack. We don't like to kill trees and put instead a fake plastic figure. I seat underneath with Eloisa, and have fun watching how Jack or Elena play with it and waiting for the bag of treats they always reserve for us in the longest night of the year.

Confinement

All the measures attempted to keep us quiet outside have failed. A machine under the roof emitted a sharp, stirring noise, anytime my mother started speaking loudly and menacing the birds. She considered it just another bird song and kept shouting at them. Next, they vested us with collars sensitive to voice. Anything more than whispers, produced a similar noise. They called them "barking control devices". Whatever their function, they turned up useless.
Inside the house and alone we survived only a week before the destruction of the sofa. It was unclear to me why Jack was so upset, running after us, trying to catch us under the beds, belt in hand. Then, I figured that nobody could seat in front of the TV, thanks to my actions.
There were consults with the experts over the phone, conducted in whispers, glancing at us, the guilty part, with disappointment and despair. Two horrible cages were brought into the house. When displayed, they occupied the whole width of the living room, spacious enough to "provide us with humane living quarters and safe confinement until we could figure out why we were there"
Every morning, before leaving the house, Jack and Elena put my bed into the cage, along with food, water and toys and left me locked until the afternoon. Being so young I didn't care much, as long as my toys were available. My mother, on the other hand, was deeply affected. She entered the crate against her will and howled and cried until she was sure they couldn't hear us anymore. She refused to eat before she was freed and was in short, miserable.
My memories of those days are blurry. I've been always prone to dreams. A secure place of my own, separated from others and everything, gave me the perfect chance. There was something in me I could only glance in darkness and it had no name. It was the seed of the wolf. It was waiting in silence to become what I was planned to be. Chewing on a piece of rope I could imagine the thrill of being far away, hunting and mating, roaming the hills and wading the creeks. I would come back in the morning with thorns in the back and blood in the mouth, jumping with joy, shivering under the crisp air of winter. But it was also possible that such a part of my soul could never be free. Even If we managed to get out of the cage, our spirits would be forever restrained, contained behind the invisible bars of societal rule. I got this at last but I didn't cry. As everybody else, I found a cozy place to rest and kept playing with my toys until I fell asleep. The next day, they let me out.

Started as an innocent game..

Reckless

My name is Copernicus. They started calling me by name only when it was obvious I was going to stay. The name belonged to a human person. When they mention him, they show respect, as if they were talking about a wise dead man. I was a quiet kid, my mother says, with a keen sense of observation. I was always looking above, Jack and Elena say, lost in the sky. So they gave me the name of a wise man with a pompous foreign name.
It happens when you grow up that the confines of your home are not enough, not even the sky above you is enough. I gained strength and height and started dreaming about great adventures. I exercised my nascent teeth in the furniture of the house while I imagined myself chewing the leg of big game, being king of a pack. For that innocent reason, they put us outside during the day, our beds carelessly thrown in a small room in the patio. that was fine until the fall and the beginning of the rain season. Then, things turned miserable. I was wet half of the time. The humans were out of the house for long hours, hunting who knows what. Even the food went wet if the ants didn't eat it first. Eloisa was mad at me for this adverse turn of fortune and in her distress, started chasing the birds out of the backyard. For the obvious reason that they have wings, her efforts were futile. She drove me nuts sometimes and in my desperation I turned my own bed into rags. Because of half heard conversations and arguments I deciphered, I knew that some neighbors were complaining about us. the kids were friendly but their parents were a different breed. They didn't adore us anymore. Like fallen idols, our limbs were ripe to be torn apart by a disappointed crowd. I saw people in uniforms quietly coming to observe us and write mysterious reports for their chiefs. People left papers with those garbled lines they call written reports giving advise about us. In the end, we were placed inside again but the familiar landscape of the kitchen and the living room have disappeared in favor of a bare bunker where all the plants, furniture and books were covered and protected from us. I didn't enjoy being alone for so long, now that the days were short and darkness fell on us so early. With that non descriptive longing of youth, I missed a world I didn't know beyond my imagination, paced the house almost in tears chewing empty bottles and old socks, wasting my adolescent courage in useless despair, while prey and mates were outside, out of my reach. What was I guilty of to be left in prison? Why everyone was annoyed about my transformation in a dog person instead of some parody of a boy or a toy? In my heart I felt that Jack and Elena enjoyed having a wild beast in the family, but they couldn't support my behavior in front of their big pack. Human people have too many regulations and fears, they remind me of an army of frail ants instead of the big animals they really are.
One day, at the end of winter, they forgot to cover the couch. We started an innocent game with Eloisa, just pulling some cushions to the floor. At some point our tug of war turned rough and all the energy I have repressed for so long, came out; it was an altered state of spiritual inebriation, a symbol of joyful violence, a remembrance of the feeding frenzy of a victorious predator. It was all this until they came back. It was just shame in the months ahead.

Diaspora

You would believe that your actions and character will open a path for you. But what you intend it's not what others see, what you say it's not what they hear. And we live in darkness of each other.
I had one brother, as strong as I am, very assertive and brave, a nice young male. When he was able to survive without mother, he was taken by a neighboring family. It made me happy in two ways; I was staying home one more day and he was going to live nearby and visit . However, he returned in no time. Apparently he panicked being alone and started to cry. He was considered too young to be transplanted to a new home. Shortly after, another family came for him. It was always the same way. They looked at all of us and chose him. I could tell that family was an Alpha one. They were of fair skin and well fed, they had a male and female grown ups and only one child. You can smell wealth. My brother departed and for a time we were talking about how lucky he was. Jack and Elena took their information to track them but they never saw them again. Perhaps they moved, perhaps my family didn't want to know. The other kids in the block told us that they didn't have my brother anymore. Until this day I don't know if he is alive.
My second brother was a weakly one: short hair, wrinkled skin, thin body type. He was also very shy, always trembling in the presence of others. And was almost the last one to go. His family had darker skin and spoke with different words, like they do in the place where my mother was born, although they belong to a different tribe. They are called Mexicans around here. A man and woman with 2 children came to the house. They were quiet, bowed their heads when talking (as people who are not Alpha do) and smelled of dust and oil , since they bring home the traces of their labor. I felt sad for my brother, imagined he was going to sleep outside and share tasteless food. Several seasons later, somebody knocked at the back door. Couldn't recognize them until that smell triggered my memory. There was my brother, still thinner and shorter than me but shining with confidence, happy from nose to tail.
" We spoiled him" the man said.
Perhaps frailty secured his future, he bonded with the youngest child, and they grew up together. Because he was not menacing, he was not attacked. And when the howls of a hostile world finally ceased, they were intact.
One of my sisters became a favorite, she was a lot like me in appearance and demeanor,the kids competed to give her names and she was one day the Princess and the next "la Nina". Another Mexican family adopted her. That pack didn't have a father, there were several kids in the house but one girl loved her the best. She was also returned few days later, the little girl in tears and refusing to let her go. I don't know why and I don't pretend to understand human people. After a while the girl came back through the back door and put a purple collar on her neck indicating that she was going to become her guardian anyway. Her persistence payed off as she was finally given to her. In my late childhood I saw my sister several times. It seemed that the family took my house as an alternative dwelling every time they were too busy or have to go somewhere.
My youngest sister was furry and reckless. She spent the afternoon scratching the glass door of the patio and jumping around. No wonder she was called a "crazy bitch". A black family from two blocks away adopted her. They were two boys, a young playful one and a tall quiet one. Their mother provided for everyone. She asked many questions about my sister (finally named "Coco") and was very involved with her uprising. Frequently I found her in the playground. I know that Coco had a bad accident with a car and broke her leg, but she received tender care and recovered. Even now, that we are living far away we go to visit . The children, who have become young men, open the door for a few minutes and bring her outside. We touch our noses and laugh a bit at how the twists of life still keep us close, she looks at me with dark eyes almost buried in yellow hair as she couldn't believe her luck.
And what about myself?
For weeks I slept in fear, curled close to my mother. She believes in independence and responded by biting my ears and sending me away. I saw the kid next door saving coins to pay for me. He collected enough to pay for five ice creams, which made me proud. But Jack wanted to keep me and they never accepted any coins for us.
The family next door was also black and involved two children. The youngest one was rambunctious and hard to control, just like me at the time. His brother was a good mannered, gentle young man who was always fixing the problems his brother was so prolific at creating. they lived with their mother and uncle, a man who liked to grill meat outside, spreading a heavenly smell that made me wish for a while to move with him.
In the end it was decided I was going to stay and keep Eloisa company. I am glad I did. When I boast of being the chosen one, my mother shakes her head and warns me,
" Don't you think that good looks, courage, or even the wealth of a pack can save your skin"
And if I ask why then I am still here, she will say,
" Don't know, son, I guess is luck and love."