the skillet, and warm toast popping out of the toaster. It was a foul trick, he felt, a cruel thing to be doing to him in his present state of angst and semi-starvation, but he resisted the urge to go begging for scraps at the doors and kept on moving. Willy’s lessons had sunk in. A stray dog is nobody’s friend, and if he made a nuisance of himself in front of the wrong person, he’d be carted off to the pound—the place from which no dog ever returned.
If he had developed the habit of hunting and foraging for himself, he wouldn’t have felt so helpless now. But he had spent too many years at Willy’s side, knocking around the world in his role as confidant and chien à tout faire, and whatever lupine instincts he had been born with had long since atrophied and disappeared. He had grown into a soft, civilized creature, a thinking dog instead of an athletic dog, and as far back as he could remember his bodily needs had been taken care of by someone else. But that was the bargain, wasn’t it? The man gave you food and a place to sleep, and in return you gave him love and undying loyalty. Now that Willy was gone, he would have to unlearn everything he knew and start all over again. Were changes of that magnitude possible? Mr. Bones had run into homeless dogs in the past, but he had never felt anything but pity for them—pity, and a touch of disdain. The loneliness of their lives was too brutal to contemplate, and he had always kept himself at a safe distance, wary of the ticks and fleas hidden in their fur, reluctant to get too close to them for fear that the diseases and desperation they carried would rub off on him. Perhaps he had turned into a snob, but he could always recognize one of those abject creatures from a hundred yards away. They moved differently from other dogs, gliding along with that grim mendicant’s lope of theirs, the tail cocked between their legs at quarter-mast, cantering down the avenues as if they were late for an appointment somewhere—when in fact they weren’t going anywhere, just traveling around in circles, lost in the limbo between one nowhere and the next. Now, as he turned another corner and crossed the street, Mr. Bones discovered that he was moving just like that himself. He had kissed his master good-bye less than half an hour ago, and already he was one of them.
By and by, he came to the edge of a traffic circle with an island in the middle of it. A large statue rose up from the island, and as Mr. Bones studied the work from a distance, he concluded that it was supposed to be a soldier on horseback with his sword drawn, as if about to plunge into battle. More interestingly, a flock of pigeons had alighted on various parts of the soldier’s body, not to speak of several places on the huge stone horse, and with several other species of birds in attendance below—wrens, sparrows, whatever you called them—Mr. Bones wondered if this might not be a good moment to test his prowess as a killer. If he couldn’t depend on people for his food anymore, what choice did he have but to depend on himself?
The traffic had increased by then, and it took some nimble footwork for Mr. Bones to cross to the other side: dodging cars, pausing, rushing forward, waiting again, timing his moves so as not to get hit. At one point, a man on a motorcycle came roaring past him, a bolt of shining black metal that seemed to have materialized out of thin air, and Mr. Bones had to jump aside to avoid him, which put him smack in front of an oncoming car, a big yellow job with a grille like a waffle iron, and if Mr. Bones hadn’t hopped back to where he’d been a second before (returning to the spot the motorcycle had just vacated), that would have been the end of him. Two or three horns honked, a man stuck his head out of a car window and yelled something that sounded like “funderflew” or “chuck and chew,” and Mr. Bones felt the sting of the insult. He was ashamed of himself, humiliated by his
If he had developed the habit of hunting and foraging for himself, he wouldn’t have felt so helpless now. But he had spent too many years at Willy’s side, knocking around the world in his role as confidant and chien à tout faire, and whatever lupine instincts he had been born with had long since atrophied and disappeared. He had grown into a soft, civilized creature, a thinking dog instead of an athletic dog, and as far back as he could remember his bodily needs had been taken care of by someone else. But that was the bargain, wasn’t it? The man gave you food and a place to sleep, and in return you gave him love and undying loyalty. Now that Willy was gone, he would have to unlearn everything he knew and start all over again. Were changes of that magnitude possible? Mr. Bones had run into homeless dogs in the past, but he had never felt anything but pity for them—pity, and a touch of disdain. The loneliness of their lives was too brutal to contemplate, and he had always kept himself at a safe distance, wary of the ticks and fleas hidden in their fur, reluctant to get too close to them for fear that the diseases and desperation they carried would rub off on him. Perhaps he had turned into a snob, but he could always recognize one of those abject creatures from a hundred yards away. They moved differently from other dogs, gliding along with that grim mendicant’s lope of theirs, the tail cocked between their legs at quarter-mast, cantering down the avenues as if they were late for an appointment somewhere—when in fact they weren’t going anywhere, just traveling around in circles, lost in the limbo between one nowhere and the next. Now, as he turned another corner and crossed the street, Mr. Bones discovered that he was moving just like that himself. He had kissed his master good-bye less than half an hour ago, and already he was one of them.
By and by, he came to the edge of a traffic circle with an island in the middle of it. A large statue rose up from the island, and as Mr. Bones studied the work from a distance, he concluded that it was supposed to be a soldier on horseback with his sword drawn, as if about to plunge into battle. More interestingly, a flock of pigeons had alighted on various parts of the soldier’s body, not to speak of several places on the huge stone horse, and with several other species of birds in attendance below—wrens, sparrows, whatever you called them—Mr. Bones wondered if this might not be a good moment to test his prowess as a killer. If he couldn’t depend on people for his food anymore, what choice did he have but to depend on himself?
The traffic had increased by then, and it took some nimble footwork for Mr. Bones to cross to the other side: dodging cars, pausing, rushing forward, waiting again, timing his moves so as not to get hit. At one point, a man on a motorcycle came roaring past him, a bolt of shining black metal that seemed to have materialized out of thin air, and Mr. Bones had to jump aside to avoid him, which put him smack in front of an oncoming car, a big yellow job with a grille like a waffle iron, and if Mr. Bones hadn’t hopped back to where he’d been a second before (returning to the spot the motorcycle had just vacated), that would have been the end of him. Two or three horns honked, a man stuck his head out of a car window and yelled something that sounded like “funderflew” or “chuck and chew,” and Mr. Bones felt the sting of the insult. He was ashamed of himself, humiliated by his
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