He stopped halfway up the stairs and listened. Was that . . . ? Yes, familiar whining. He pounded up the stairs and lurched into the library bent over at a forty-five-degree angle, head turning like a cop in a police drama. The library was clear.
The upstairs felt wrong. You learned to sense where your dogs were at all times and the upstairs felt empty.
The master bedroom was also empty.
'Alice! Luther! Come on, babies!'
A sound like rocks falling on hollow walls - whock-whock-whock!
The basement.
Jesus, he hadn't even thought of the basement. He had been meaning to take the broom down and give the whole works a good spring-cleaning and refill the water softener system with salt pellets while he was at it, but, like most things he had been meaning to do, he had forgotten.
He took the front stairs two at a time, rounded the foyer and careened back into the kitchen, yanked the basement open and tripped over her.
Alice had been at the door, scraping her paws on the wooden steps and the door. His feet caught on her legs and he tripped, then skated down two more steps, his hand snapping the rail as he slammed down tailbone first, lost his wind, and slid down the six remaining stairs until his feet stopped against the foundation wall and sprawled him on the landing.
He saw more blood on the door above him and trailing from her as Alice came down after him.
She's on her feet, how bad can it be?
And where is Luther?
Alice's claws scratched his chest and legs as he stood and sucked in the first, pained breath, getting his wind back. He inspected her through watery eyes. He couldn't see a wound that required immediate attention, but she was shaking, her bristly brindle coat bunching up more in confusion than in pain. Maybe anger for being banished to the basement.
Then he saw her ear. The seam where the ear connected to her head was gaping pink and white tissue like a second, smaller mouth. Pat-pat-pat went the blood on the floor, but it wasn't flowing, so that was something.
'Okay, baby, calm down, calm down. Where's Luther?' Like she could tell him.
Conrad ducked under the ventilation ducts and wooden crossbeams in the basement proper, peeking around makeshift walls and unfinished rooms. There weren't many hiding places. He charged forward, knocking into the water heater and doorframes. The only closed room was Laski's abandoned workshop: a wall of pegboard, a plywood bench set upon four by fours, scraps of indoor-outdoor carpet. No blood.
There was another, deeper space left of the shop's entrance, with a separate light. Conrad flailed for the beaded string hanging below the bulb. Cha-chink.
Luther wasn't in here. There was still the backyard. On the way to the short wooden door that opened to the backyard, he stopped and pivoted, heading back to the one place he hadn't checked.
In the basement at the front of the house was a smaller space, lower to the ground, where the furnace was tucked behind the stone support wall under the fireplace and chimney. At the very front of that, in the deepest recess where the foundation floor became a pile of dirt and cast aside rocks, the ground sloped up as if reaching toward some forgotten cellar door or coal chute.
Conrad crouched, shimmied forth, and found his dog.
Luther was huddled in the corner, hopping gecko-like from one front paw to the other as if the ground were too hot to stand on. He was staring at the wall, like the teacher had called him a bad boy and sent him to stand in the corner.
'Luther? Luther!'
When Luther turned, the dog's eyes were two pinpoints of gleaming white, his black and white cow spots shivering. The dog had been intent on something on the stone foundation wall. Now he looked confused, and Conrad's skin crawled. He took a step and Luther growled. It broke his heart and worried him all over, but he needed to get past the dog's fear and tend to the wounds, if there were any.
Conrad came in fast but steady, speaking in his gentlest voice, 'It's me, Luther, it's okay, good dog . . .'
Luther lashed out in a snapping bark that missed Conrad's hand (the one that had just finished healing) by inches. Conrad scooped up his dog and crouch-dragged him backward, and it was like dancing in a cave with a wet seal. Finally they were clear and Luther stopped fighting and then it was a half-blind spree up the stairs into the kitchen.
He spent half a roll of paper towels trying to staunch the flow before he realized the dogs, in their agitated state, were going to bleed out before he got them under control.
Compared to Alice, Luther looked as if he'd attempted to tightrope walk a fence barbed with concertina wire. Luther's legs and paws were cut in at least six places. The front of his chest just below the throat was a coin purse, and Alice's ear was still hanging halfway off her narrow marbled head like so much furry lunchmeat.
Conrad snatched the keys from the kitchen table, scooped Luther up and bolted for the car. He left the front door wide open and Alice did not need to be told to follow.
He opened the rear driver's side door with one hand and spilled Luther into the backseat; Alice brought up the rear. Then he was behind the wheel, weaving up the street, the blood spattering on the seats and doors and windows and up to the passenger visor as the dogs jumped from backseat to front and back again. He yelled at them to calm down as he blew through the first stop sign and floored it past the Kwik-Trip. He had gone a mile up the old Highway 151 business loop before he realized he didn't even know where the vet kept offices, or if the town even had one.
She answered the door dressed in jeans and a faded Abercrombie tee, and for once his eyes did not settle on her belly. Her face went pale when she saw the blood.
'My dogs are hurt. Can you take us to the vet?' For one agonizing moment he saw the hesitation, that moment of distrust even the best neighbors have before they decide to jump into the scene of impending tragedy. 'Please help me, Nadia.'
God love her, she nodded quickly and followed him.
'You drive while I try to get them under control.'
'Oh, shit!' She saw the inside of the car.
'Yeah. Come on, I don't know where the vet is.'
Nadia stared at the stick shift.
'It's just dog blood,' he said. 'Move!'
'I can't drive stick!'
'Just put in second and pop the clutch when I say go.'
The car rolled down hill a ways. 'Go!'
Nadia popped the clutch. The Volvo sputtered . . . then shot down Heritage Street. Conrad crawled in back and tried to still his pets. By the time they reached the small farmhouse on the outskirts of town - it didn't even have a sign, just a wooden figure of a horse next to the mailbox - Alice had her nose out the window like she was enjoying a Sunday drive. Luther was in Conrad's lap, heavy with a kind of gulping motion sickness, eyes droopy.
'Easy, boy. Easy.'
Fifteen minutes after his wife phoned from the front desk, Dr Michael Troxler came in from the field wearing a pair of muddy wellingtons and Oshkosh overalls over a bright madras shirt. He had a streak of mud on the wire-framed glasses standing over thick gray moustaches. Dr Troxler was at least seventy years old, reeked of manure and moved like an aging linebacker who could still open-field tackle an errant calf.
'What do we have here, young man?' Troxler bent to scratch Luther's head.
'My dogs are cut up,' Conrad said, fighting the urge to scream hurry up you old goat-fucker! 'I think she's got just the ear cut, but Luther here is gonna bleed to death if we don't do something soon.'
'Okey-doke. Folla me.'
The examining room smelled of alfalfa and medicine. Conrad shot Nadia an evil look - are you kidding me?
'He bite?' Troxler had his back to the table, sorting bottles and syringes until he found the right combo.