INSTALLMENT IV

OMENS

CHAPTER13

Rat Terriers maintain no holidays. There is no date I set aside to honor others, or to respect my relatives, or to demonstrate my appreciation that the Object of My Devotion was born at all. I try to keep these thoughts in mind and act upon them every day. Neither, though there is much to remember, has our breed established annual celebrations to commemorate the events of our distinguished history. Nor do Rat Terriers set aside a day of rest, since opportunities for leisure present themselves to us on the hour and by the minute. The Object of My Devotion and his kind, however, must appoint dates to remind themselves to repent or to rest or to revel.

As to the holiday called the Fourth of July, its relationship to the summer moon named for Julius Caesar is fiction. Nor do I, who have had a choke-chain around my neck, take the claim too seriously that it celebrates Independence.

Nevertheless, I looked forward to this Fourth of July as an occasion for the Object of My Devotion to abase himself before his Begetters. He had been all too self-satisfied lately, receiving praise from his employers at History’s Mysteries, and winning from them some assignment he spoke about in hushed whispers. An arrangement connected with this work somehow concerned the Begetters, to whose House we were returning.

It had been arranged that we would depart for the country-side late on the morning of the holiday. An over-sized piece of tatty luggage stood ready on wheels beside my carrying case. What with the usual hunt for missing keys and, though the weather was muggy and warm, the last minute packing of a woolen coat, by the time we looked back at the sky-line through the window of the departing train, the sun was a red ball bouncing up one last time before rolling underneath the horizon.

We reached the House of the Begetters by nightfall. I was released from my carrier on the front porch where the Object of My Devotion dropped our bags. The place was dark and looked deserted. I detected something I hadn’t noticed before: the pervasive smell of salt.

A small distance away the street terminated at a high dune which we crossed up and over by means of a sturdy wooden foot-bridge. There were grasses below us, from which I felt the tingle of a dozen spying eyes.

As I stepped off the bridge’s last slat my toes sunk with pleasure into sand. The salt air blew everywhere, heightened by a smack of iodine. I did my business at once, and with relish, scratching, digging, and sending up a giddy spray. When I had done, though, I was seized by a feeling of dread.

CHAPTER 14

It was dark as I dug that first time by the foot of the dunes. Indigo clouds overhung the moon. In the gloom I could sense a vast animal lay crouching. I could not see it; nonetheless, I knew it to be there for I heard its heavy heaving breath. It lay crouched, unseen, on the edge of the sand. It was chewing the earth. I could feel that beneath my toes. The rhythm of its bite repeated the steady way one crunches bone.

A crowd assembled. The Object of My Devotion picked me up so I would not be trampled on in the shadows. From the safety of his arms I could sense we waited for the weather to clear. All grew silent as the disc of the moon slowly pierced the clouds. In the hush I could hear the vast animal squat in the dark heaving in expectation.

Something now flew overhead. It ascended invisibly into the warm night air, screaming as it rose as signal for the vault of the heavens to crack open, setting the stars there to flare and crumble. Sparks shot out from the shattering lights. Streaks of fire chased each other up and down the sky. The space beneath the bursting lights could be seen now reflecting the flash. The ground had been liquefied by the heat of the explosions in the sky above. The vast animal at the edge of the sand was gone, fled, terrified that the dark place where it lay huddled was now a heaving mirror of flames.

The noise was as thunder. To a puppy used to the noises of the city, sudden explosions were nothing much. Nevertheless I was startled by the evidence of my eyes. That the stars in the sky could crumble to cinders seemed to me as unlikely as the spot on my butt changing place with the speckles on my belly.

Our crowd roared with pleasure, foolishly thinking itself safe. All the while the sparks from heaven dropped hissing where we stood. It was as if a broom, a thing in itself so horrible as to invariably provoke me to bark, had swelled to monstrous proportions and risen to the hands of an evil giantess sweeping the ashes left by the fire-storm. The Object of My Devotion held me tight; his fingers sought the reassurance of my fur.

All at once the sky, the sand, and the crowd fell back into gloom and silence. I was carried over the bridge towards the house where I hoped Lilly lay waiting for me.

CHAPTER 15

Baby Lilly had retired earlier with one of her attendants according to the report given out at the House of the Begetters. The rest of the family had witnessed the same upheavals in the heavens as I, though from different vantage points, yet they were afraid to discuss what the omens might foretell. Talk was saved for the morning. Now it was time to huddle against the Object of My Devotion on a fold-out sofa, picturing upstairs my Lilly asleep beneath the sheets, her nose tucked under her tail, lying at her mother’s feet. Worn out with excitement I fell asleep.

I woke at daybreak with the Object of My Devotion. While the others slept he and I left the house and crossed over the little bridge of slats. At the height of its arc he removed his shoes, as Islamic people do before worship. We then descended to the sand, which sloped to what I had taken for a sighing beast in the night; by daylight the beast appeared to be the ocean. Though translucent at dawn, and bluey green, it still seemed treacherous.

The Object of My Devotion unhitched me from my leash and removed my collar from around my neck. In an instant I forgot the dangers of the sea.

I was eleven months old and I had never before been at liberty. I was now free of a leash, free of a collar, free to hurtle with my head down down along the shore, kicking up puffs of sand. An audience of seagulls wheeled overhead shouting encouragement. I burst over the dunes dipping my tail to pump my four legs faster, bounding up over driftwood towards the Object of My Devotion who stood as if learning something. Though the beach was bright, the sun had still to rise. Seaweed draped the edge of the shore.

I walked warily to the lip of the sea, it licked my toes with a cold salty tongue, one of many reaching out to taste what it meant to swallow.

I jumped back.

The Object of My Devotion seemed interested in my reactions and so I amused him a little, dipping another toe in the water and retreating in play, but the ocean seemed dangerous to me. The delicate blues and greens the beast assumed in daylight could not camouflage the menace revealed the night before.

The red ball of the sun bounced up. It was time to leave off and so I did leave a little something on the seaweed, which the Object of My Devotion was quick to take away in a plastic bag and dump. I resumed the bondage of the leash and walked up over the slats of the bridge. Once again I had the sensation of being watched by eyes hidden in the grass.

CHAPTER 16

At home breakfast had begun. The Object of My Devotion washed his hands and joined his brother at the table. He was sitting and eating with a silk leash knotted around his throat. The elder female, Lilly’s Grandmother, was frying unborn birds.

Bowls from which to drink and eat were ready for me on the floor. These were plastic, a substance I had never before encountered in a bowl. The Object of My Devotion scraped food off his platter and onto the heap of dry kibble that serves as backdrop to my meals. His mother raised objections, though I paid no attention, busy as I was picking out morsels of egg from where they had fallen among the tasteless pellets.

Lilly now entered on her grandfather’s shoulders. She was yet more enticing than I had remembered – though so early in the morning she was not yet as odorous. The younger of the males, Lilly’s Father, sat her into a tall throne with a little tray attached to it. Her Grandmother offered gruel, which Lilly thoughtfully threw on the floor to me. I lapped up as much as I could before I was pulled aside by the Object of My Devotion. He had tied his shoes, a hint we were meant to go now.

I was annoyed to quit Lilly’s company so soon, and relieved to hear I was asked to stay. I shied from the hand extended to pet me; I lay low as The Begetters accompanied their sons out the front door.

Alone with Lilly at last, I approached the foot of her high throne and licked where her gruel had lain. She threw down more. Her Grandmother overheard the splash and returned at a run grabbing for a mop. I recognized at once the portents of the Fourth of July and barked in alarm. Lilly howled, tossing out more food in my direction.

Barking still, in an awful re-enactment of the fiery apparitions from the night before, I was swept out of the kitchen and into an adjacent tiled chamber. Those flimsy plastic bowls were slid in after me and the door was shut though the room stayed lit.

With little else to do, I nestled on a fleecy mat and listened to Lilly bellow. Lulled to complaisance I overslept the hour for lunch. Though I scratched at the door no server appeared. I went back to sleep, miffed at my forgetfulness.

I woke some time later aware that the schedule appointed for my lunch, dinner, snacks, and walks, had gone by unobserved. At six o’clock and not a minute before the door to the tiled chamber opened and Lilly’s grandfather stood before me holding a chain.

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