The Why and the How
by Amita Basu
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Minerva and Ulysses trot up the street between the empty lots. These lots used to stand unwalled; people used to toss rubbish here. Now they’re walled off and rubbish-free. Lesson: if you love something, wall it up and sprout big buildings. Minerva studies them, an expert after ten years in the ever-expanding suburbs. Soon there’ll some people living here. People from big buildings seldom feed street dogs, but there will be more shops now, and where there are shops, there are scraps.
The two patrolling dogs reach the eastern end of their territory. They survey the shops.
Grocer’s. Nothing for them here, unless a pack of biscuits slips from a shopper’s bag, and Minerva’s teeth can perforate the plastic.
Greengrocer’s. Again nothing. As they approach, a stunted adult dog, all shame forsaken, is gnawing a disintegrating turnip. He looks up. His chin lowers in obeisance down to the pavement strewn with wilted cabbage leaves; his tail wags as if rotoring for liftoff. Pre-emptive appeasement at 180 mph, guarding his beggar’s breakfast.
“Greetings, mistress!” he cries feebly. Minerva casts him an imperious glance. “Off on morning rounds?”
“Yes,” she signs.
“Don’t suppose I could join you?”
Minerva looks away. She hates saying no. Has he no shame, begging her every day?
“No, I’m not worthy,” the stranger sadly concludes. Minerva and Ulysses walk on. The stunted dog calls out, “Tell me, mistress! How can I become like you?’
Minerva stops and glances over her shoulder. “Suppose you’re starving,” she postulates, hating herself for saying ‘suppose.’ “You can either swallow a rotten turnip nobody wants, or fight other dogs for a scrap of meat. What do you do?”
The stranger glances at his half-gnawed turnip, then up at Minerva, caught between a lie and a wrong answer. “I’d love to be brave like you, mistress...” he begins.
“Bravery has nothing to do with it.” She prances on; Ulysses in tow throws back a smirk.
“So you won’t tell me how?” the stunted dog calls after them.
They’re halfway down the road. “I couldn’t stomach vegetables, not even if I were dying,” Minerva calls. “That’s how.” What she doesn’t add is: vegetables don’t make good milk. Let him think it’s pride.
Ulysses is surprised that Minerva deigns to acknowledge the stunted dog. He would be astonished if he knew they’ve had this conversation often before. The stunted dog asks. She replies. Nothing changes.
Dairy booth. Smells good, and the plastic milkbags are thin, but the carriers are careful never to drop one between the refrigerated truck and the cartons stacked outside the booth.
But this dairy-booth-owner also makes tea. Customers stand around blowing on the tiny hot glasses, munching biscuits, dropping crumbs. Occasionally someone throws Minerva half a biscuit, if she begs right. The morning tea-crowd has gathered. Minerva decides they’ll stop by on the way home.
And here, at the end of their territory, stands the chicken shop. Minerva’s pack shares this with two others, who’ve also arranged their territories wisely.
Early customers survey the dirty-white chickens stuffed into the stack of filthy plastic crates stacked outside the shop. Dogs from the other packs are queueing, wagging furiously whenever the butcher steps outside to retrieve another chicken, skinny throat in well-pecked fist.
The queuers snarl warnings at each other not to jump rank. Dogs don’t queue in a line, as humans do; what sensible creature would let out of sight the object it’s after? Dogs queue in a semicircle, but everybody knows his place, though he may in desperation pretend to forget it.
The other packs’ dogs greet Minerva and Ulysses with lifted lips. Bad timing. The butcher steps doorwards and flings out a fistful of entrails. Minerva leaps to catch midair the liver, still hot and palpitating, blood still flowing. Liver in mouth she sprints away, legs tucked under belly, newcomer in trail. The other dogs growl and bark, but can’t give chase, too busy fighting over the remaining scraps.
Safely around the corner, Minerva stops to eat. At a respectful distance Ulysses stands drooling, not daring to beg. She closes her eyes so as not to see him, pretending to close them in delectation. He must learn to fend for himself. She’s not his mother. Good thing for him I’m not, she thinks, half-vicious, half-sad.
“We’ll try again later,” she reassures him, licking her lips. Meat makes good milk: her pups will drink well tonight. “Just dash in boldly and snatch the choicest morsel.”
“But ma’am,” Ulysses objects, “your timing was picture-perfect. Isn’t that just luck?”
“Ha! Today I did get lucky. But I snag a mouthful or two of entrails and fat even on bad days... Now, watch.” Back at the dairy-booth that sells tea, she sits, neatly on her haunches, forepaws together, head tilted, eyes as big as she can make them without popping them out of her skull. We bred dogs to be workers; now we want them to be toys.
“Sit as I do,” she mutters. “No, fool! Closer to me. Out here, you’re allowed right beside me. Act democratic. They like feeding democratic dogs.”
A man in a biking jacket, wielding a helmet that makes Ulysses flinch, drops two white-flour, dyed-brown biscuits before them. Minerva signs Ulysses to eat them both. He looks at her again to make sure and, on his behalf, she wags gently. Their benefactor saunters away, chest outthrust, as if he’s cured cancer. Minerva watches Ulysses eat.
He’ll do, she thinks, as they trot homewards. He smelled trustworthy the day he came crawling. He’s small but strong, like her, and he learns fast. He just needs confidence. That’ll come.
She needs new blood for her children to breed with. She’s nearing the end of her breeding days: running dry, forced to abandon half her annual litter, dodging the sterilisation brigade. If she can grow her pack, maybe someday they can monopolise the chicken shop.
On this street, too, big buildings are rising. People in big buildings eat more chicken and fewer vegetables. Maybe someday every pack will have its own chicken shop. Maybe someday dogs can stop fighting.
Back on their street she holds her head erect, staring straight ahead. But her eyes flit: first to her three pups, still alive, thank God. Why wouldn’t they be, well-fed, play-fighting with her last year’s daughter who moped when Minerva, pregnant again, cut her loose at nine months old. But she stuck around and made herself useful, becoming third in command. As the balmy morning breeze wafts from the rubbish dump upwind, the hundred-rainbow of rubbish fresh and stale, organic and plastic, Minerva’s eyes narrow with pleasure, and her mind mellows. She’s ready to start training her successor.
Next she surveys the adults. Nine including Ulysses behind her, all sterile but herself and her children and Ulysses. Soon she’ll lead them all out on feeding rounds. She always leads them herself. She’s a bitch of a certain age in a world where food mountains fester in landfills that were once villages: she can’t afford to delegate.
Finally, her eyes flit to the card...
It’s gone. The cardboard box of rejects with her two runts is gone. She’s so shocked she almost gives herself away, dashes away to go looking for them. But that would never do. All her pack up ahead are watching her, eyes indolent with morning languor, but watchful. Minerva walks onward, eyes forward.
Now that they’re back home, Ulysses has dropped from democratic personal distance to savage. Eleven feet behind her, he asks sotto voce, “How do you do it, ma’am? How are you so tough, and how can I become like you?”
The sneak! He’s watched her watching her runts across the street. But he won’t tattle. He can’t afford to.
* * *
There are two kinds of dogs.
Some dogs ask Minerva why she’s like this. Other dogs ask her how they can get like this. Neither kind is looking for an answer.
The dogs on the mansion-lined streets don’t ask her why she’s a bitch; they tell her she is one.
Neither are the dogs who ask her ‘how’ seeking a real answer. The turnip-gnawing dog chose his lifepath long ago. Now, his ‘how’ is not a request for a tutorial, it’s an expression of admiration, so that she won’t nip him; an expression of his gangster fantasy, so that she won’t utterly despise him.
But facing the humble-tongued, keen-eyed newcomer this balmy spring morning, Minerva feels expansive. “How?” she repeats. “Live my life, Ulysses, and survive it, that’s how. Now tell me: do you fancy any of my daughters? My youngest will be in heat soon.”
Ulysses wriggles with gratitude that she’ll let him stay, eat, breed. Minerva indulges his stammering thanks and allows herself one last glance at the spot across the street where her runts were. Wherever they may be now, they’re better off.
A mother knows.
Copyright © 2022 by Amita Basu
