The Adventures of Zoe, the Wonder Dog
Chapter 9
By Carrie Jacobson
The story so far:
Zoe, an elderly, blind lhasa apso, was left at the Pike County Humane Society by her owner, James Dunning, who has lost his job and been forced to move in with his wife’s mother, who is allergic to dogs of all kinds.
Distraught, sad, embarrassed, James left Zoe at the shelter in the middle of the night. Before dawn, she was freed by Kaja, a big red dog who’s been living on her own for a few months. Zoe and Kaja have set out to make their way back to Middletown, to try to find James.
The sun wakes Zoe, and she opens her eyes to find that Kaja is gone. Zoe stands, and stretches. The sun is up, she can tell that much, but the morning is damp and cool, and she curls around herself and goes back to sleep again.
When Kaja nudges her awake, the sun has come up and the day has warmed, and Zoe finds she’s hungry. They walk out of the woods and stand at the edge of the road until there are no cars coming. Then they cross, and Kaja leads Zoe up the road, and then down a driveway and around the back of a little house to a trash can that’s been turned over.
This is a first for Zoe. All of this is a first for her. She’s been a pet, all these years. Even her first family, even though they hit her and kicked her, they gave her dog food – when they remembered.
Now, she’s eaten a rodent that Kaja killed, and now, she’s eating trash.
And it’s not so bad.
They find water in a bucket, then, and drink, then trot through back yards until they come to a small grove of trees and thick grass. They curl up and sleep for a while. When they wake, they walk along the edge of the road, heading away from the afternoon sun.
Zoe can smell the river, and it frightens her. It smells like water, and like mud. It smells like fish, and like the wind, and somehow, it smells like cars, too. And it is noisy. The water sounds fast and strong and deep, and the noise scares Zoe, makes her tremble.
They get closer to the river, and the noise gets louder. And now, Zoe can hear people shouting, and laughing. She can’t see them, can’t see the rafts and canoes they’re riding in, but she can hear them, calling to each other, crying out in glee, and rushing downstream with the current.
Kaja stops then, and sniffs at the wind. She listens, head cocked, one ear up. She looks down the road and up the road, and then she nudges Zoe onto the pavement. She steps in front of Zoe and walks down the roadway.
And then, she steps onto the bridge.
It’s an awful bridge, made of slats of wood so thin and so loose that it seems impossible they could hold a dog, let alone a car. But Kaja has seen it, she’s seen cars go across this bridge. The bridge hasn’t fallen down, the slats haven’t fallen in, the cars haven’t fallen through.
Kaja looks over the edge, and sees the river, far, far below, and she feels her legs shake. The little dog can’t see, Kaja knows this, and she thinks that maybe, for once, that’s a good thing.
She sets a paw on the bridge. The wood feels somehow soft, somehow warm. She pushes the little dog to the middle of the span, and walks beside her. This way, the little dog can’t fall off, and Kaja doesn’t have to look at the river.
They are about halfway across when Kaja feels a thrumming in the pads of her feet. She looks up. There’s a car, inching onto the far edge of the bridge.
She makes Zoe stop, and then she runs at the car, barking as loud as she can, barking and barking, baring her teeth – and the car stops.
The driver sees her, and then sees the little dog beyond her on the bridge, and stops the car.
Kaja trots back to Zoe, nudges her up and along, and they trot up to the front of the car, then go around it and then finally, trot off of the bridge and onto the solid soil of Barryville.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
Tags: Carrie Jacobson
