puppy paws. Yesterday the snow was wet and mushy. It caved
in, dropping him into grey hollows where he couldn't keep
his balance. Today it holds him. He barrels forward, steadier
now. Sometimes he stops to lick the crust of the snow.
That morning his hunger drove him a long way, despite
his exhaustion. Big drifts had blown up against the cabin. He
couldn't get close to it. Slowly he continued up the hill, resting
now and then on the crust, panting. He kept looking up
towards the barn. When he reached it he sat down in front
of the door. He looked at it. But nobody came. He yelped
and whimpered but no voice answered. He curled up against
the door. He didn't fall asleep but lay looking out across the
marsh, sniffing. He caught a scent. Soon he also saw something
white bounding through the newly planted pines. It
was a hare. The pup rose stiffly and made his way down the
slope. He thought that where there was movement he might
find the high voice or the deep one. Or his mother. There
might be food.
The scent was still there, rich and pungent among the
small pines, but the hare was long gone. At least it had left
something behind. He gobbled up several pellets of warm
hare droppings. He started off again in search of more. That
was when he heard a voice. It was forceful and stern and
kept repeating one single sound. By now he had reached the
marsh, and where he was standing the birches and the little
waterlogged pines were so sparse there was nowhere to hide.
He crouched, belly to the snow crust, hearing the voice
again. It was scolding him. When he peered up he saw outspread
black wings, wings he already had inside him, an
image that was deep down and signalled danger. He dragged
himself towards a small pine tree but it had so few branches
he could still see the silhouette of the crow. All of a sudden
there were more voices and more black, circling bodies.
They left him alone, though. They were after something else
they couldn't find in the expanse of white, covered with a
thin layer of ice, still so hard from the morning chill that it
held his weight.
He padded across the snow, on his guard against the ones
up there, ready to lie flat if they dive-bombed. But what
made him keep going and overpowered his fear was something
his sense of smell had picked up and that kept growing
THE DOG
stronger. The scent was coming from the snow. It made him
start digging with his paws and poking with his nose. The
crust was sharp but he broke through it quickly and the
smell, the wonderful smell, the smell of food, wafted up. The
snow had receded, packed down by the thaw. It was heavy
and grey but he didn't sink into it the way he had the day
before. Head and forepaws deep in a hole, he dug out the
snow the storm had brought. Suddenly he got his first taste
of whatever had smelled so good, though it was just a little
scrap. He went on digging all the way down. Finally he sank
his teeth into a frozen flank with a bristly hide. He had got
through. It was food.
The crows were carrying on. They saw he'd got hold of
the thing they were after, concealed from them by the
snowstorm. They circled closer, settling in the tops of the
pines, scolding loudly. But he wasn't prey for them. When
they came too close he growled, his body all muscle and
determination now, arched over the big frozen mound of
food in the snow. They couldn't know the white teeth he
bared were just puppy teeth. Eighty-four dawns were
behind him when the sun rose, and he wouldn't have
made it through a single day more if he hadn't found the
moose carcass in the marsh. No one can live long; on hare
droppings.
The nights were very cold. He sought shelter as close to the
food supply as he could, but found none in the marsh. He
had to head up the south slope where enormous spruces
spread out their protective skirts. From there he could see
the place where the snow was spotted with fur. At dawn, as
soon as he heard the crows, he left the shelter.
In the mornings the young birches and pines were covered
with white hoar frost and the crust held all the way to
the food spot, where the crows were circling, flapping and
screeching. A few days earlier he had cowered in fear of
them. Now his belly was round and he stayed warm all night
and angry all day. When he curled around himself with his
muzzle tucked up under him he kept that vital spark of life
burning inside. In the mornings he was hungry but not
worn out. When the screeching awakened him he was cold
and sluggish with sleep, but when he saw the crows sitting in
the snow tearing at his food his anger woke up as well.
Within a few mornings he had realised they'd fly off when
he approached, and he took the time to pee before heading
toward them. Urinating on the crust of snow, crouching like
a female, he glared at the big-beaked thieves.
As the sun rose higher in the sky the frost on the trees
melted and dripped. 'By midday the water was streaming and
the sun beat down. It warmed his back. Bulging with food,
he needed somewhere to rest. He lay against a spruce trunk
in the sun and, what with the warmth and the dizzying sense
of satisfaction, he couldn't keep his eyes open, even when he
heard rustling and chirping nearby. He slept in the comforting
sunlight, squinting with one eye when he heard pine
cones fall or branches snap. There weren't many sounds in
the forest in the middle of the day. The soft chirping of the
titmouse, the willow-tit's constant activity in the spruces
above him. Murmuring water. Dripping branches. It made
him drowsy.
In the engulfing, deep blue twilight the cold crept up
stealthily. He needed to eat again. His gums were bleeding
from the new teeth coming through. A fresh crust formed
on the snow and at night, when the stars shone bright over
the jagged spruces, the temperature dropped. He went back
to his shelter and carefully chose a spot for sleep, tramping in
a circle and finally curling up with a deep sigh.
Sometimes at night he heard howling. He raised his head
and shivers of anticipation ran through his body. He was riveted,
but as the tension receded a dull sense of discomfort
was left in its wake. Only sleep could make that go away.
The howling was hoarse and piercing, carried by the
wind from off the lake. It wasn't the right howl: his mother's.
There was sonrething dangerous about it that came through
despite his weariness. Even in his sleep, all his muscles were
quivering slightly. Finally the howling ceased. All the tension
left his body and his sleep was deep and oblivious.
Day followed day and between them cold fragments of
nights penetrated his sleep with the hooting of an owl or the
snapping of a frozen branch. But he didn't connect the days
in a series. His life and his memory were images upon
images, fading in and out, scraps of days with bright skies,
sharp scents to follow, disconnected cries wafting one by one
through the woods until they attached to an image deep
inside him. There was baying darkness that turned into grey
dawn and blustering, biting snow that forced him back into
the hole; there were days and nights of hunger when he
shivered from the cold and damp, days of gluttony with the
hot sun on his back. The others down by the marsh moved
in and out of these images: a white, long-eared shape bobbing
in circles among the trees; the enormous grey creatures
with long legs making their way across the marsh; the
screeching black forms; the little peepers and busy chatterers
in the spruces; the black, heavy ones perched in the tops of the birches; other grey animals that left such straight tracks
among the tree roots. He never got really close to them but
their paths criss-crossed his memory, the trails of their scents,
their calls and chirps, the hoarse howls of the invisible one
who was sometimes down on the lake.
By now he knew he must never stop guarding the food
spot. Sounds penetrated his deepest sleep, making him raise
his nose to pick up a scent from the marsh. He fell asleep
again but slept uneasily. His puppy sleep had been heavy; he
had given himself up to it, abandoning any claim to the life
that had satisfied him, until he woke up eager for warmth
and a full stomach. Now his sleep was tattered and ragged,
with sharp, easily awakened hunger, with alarm and muffled
excitement, with sudden readiness that instantly flooded his
primed muscles with coursing blood. Sleep and calm
returned to him when it was quiet again or when the tantalising
smell had drifted away.
Sleep and calm came from a full belly and the warmth of
the sun, absorbed by his healthy, dry fur. But even then he
was waiting.
He didn't have an image or a name for what he was
expecting. But he would recognise it when he heard it or
caught its familiar scent. He lived in wait like the lumptish
living in the cold, cloudy, turgid water of the stream underneath
the ridges and rough patches in the ice.
One night he was awakened by a sound so familiar it
called forth an image in him: bones cracking between powerful
jaws. He pulled himself out of the hole and sat rigidly
attentive under the spruce. The teeth went on crunching
bones. He waited for a scent to complete the image, turning
the crunching into his mother's teeth and the shadow down
in the marsh into his mother. The moon was out and the
crust of snow was gleaming. Branches cast a pattern on the
white surface. He took a few steps across the expanse of crust
and emerged from the shadow of the spruce. Now he could
see the shape over by his food. He wanted it to be her, and
his memory stretched and twisted to turn this long, thin
back and the far too bristly tail into his mother. On the
verge of terror, he took small, cautious steps until he couldn't
make himself go on. He was torn between vigilance and
anticipation. Then he started off again, and what propelled
him along the last stretch was sheer longing. But when he
got close enough to see the long, thin legs, the triangular
head with the long snout and pointed ears, he stiffened and
stood still. The blood froze in his belly, bringing on waves of
nausea. Terror made his fur rise. He saw eyes gleaming in the
moonlight, reflected on the crust, and the look in them was
alien and hostile. Now he caught the scent of fox.
He wanted to turn tail and flee back to his hole. But
between the paws of the fox was a piece of the moose meat.
When that smell reached him he had the urge to run up and
bare his teeth. The fox didn't move. It stood still, a full
grown male with thick winter coat and bushy tail, every hair
on end, filling a large space in the moonlight. A large space,
a large body, he emitted wave after wave of pungent presence
without moving.
The dog sat down. He sat suddenly and clumsily as if plopping
his backside down on the kitchen linoleum. He lifted
one back paw and began scratching his ear. He scratched and
scratched as if he didn't have a care in the world other than his
madly itchy ear. And the fox, mouth still open and upper lip
pulled back, withdrew into the undergrowth. There he stood
still and the pup continued scratching, his paw thumping the
hard snow. The fox slipped away and was gone, reappearing
down on the marsh: a back, a long tail, a vanishing streak.
The pup didn't know how he'd managed to get the fox
away from his food. But the fox was gone and now he
walked stiffly, sniffing its tracks. He left a few drops of urine
here and there. This was the first time he peed standing up
with one hind leg raised. Then he gnawed at the rib bone
the fox had pulled out of the snow.
When he had finished he sat listening for sounds in the
bright night. Then he started to bark. The sound rang out
between the trees, high-pitched and tentative. He listened to
the echo and barked again. Finally he was overcome by
sleepiness and loped back in his own tracks to the hole.
The hoarse howls from off the lake often woke him at night.
His body tensed and he growled. As he drifted back to sleep
his throat and lungs would sometimes let out an instinctive,
involuntary response. His own howling woke him up. He sat
up straight and threw his head back, baring his throat. He
bayed. At the tip of his muzzle his lips formed a small, round
opening through which he pressed the air.
He walked on the crust of the snow now. His paws were
still large and clumsy but his legs had grown longer. He flew
forward. Now and then he stopped, listening for the hoarse
cries from the lake. Behind him there were no longer any
memories.
From the pasture in front of the cabin he could see the
lake. The frozen surface reflected the moonlight. The ice