Last Stand
Andrew Coburn

Dogcatcher, a seasoned professional in his field, entered the unoccupied house off Main Street, peered into the depths of the living room, and saw a half-dozen dogs, all of whom he recognized in one way or another, collarless mongrels of varying shapes and sizes. Immediately a voice rose from the midst of the pack.

"What do you want?"

The speaker was the biggest of the lot, a rust-shaded cur, short-haired and heavy-pawed, definitely male, whose name seemed to be Ruff. At least that was the name that sprang from eyes that were blood-brown, warm, and full of a world that had never been easy and certainly not kind. The other dogs drew close to one another for anonymity.

Dogcatcher ignored the question and asked his own. "Whose house is this?"

"If it was yours, you wouldn't have to ask," Ruff replied easily, with a confidence not wholly real.

Dogcatcher didn't like back talk from anyone, especially from a canine. "You the leader?"

Ruff considered the question briefly. "We never voted on it, but yes, I guess you can say that."

The other dogs nodded in instant support. All were streetwise, but Ruff had instincts they didn't. He lived on the raw edges of himself and moved to no man's whistle. Dogcatcher stared hard at Ruff and used his most official voice, emphatic and unfeeling.

"Have you and your pack dirtied any part of this house?"

One of the other dogs, the runt of the bunch, a yapper who now was dead silent, cowered, for he had done business on a newspaper, but no one was about to divulge that. Ruff said, "If this was your house, you could ask. Since it isn't, you can't."

"Hell, I can't. Answer the flicking question."

Something in Dogcatcher's hard human voice stirred in Ruff a sense of fatalism that had burdened him since birth when he was one of an unwanted litter delivered in the stygian depths of a dirt cellar. "The house is clean," he said evenly.

Without moving, Dogcatcher glanced about. "It'd better be."

The other dogs shifted about nervously, snouts low to the floor so voices would shoot over their heads. A shaggy female who had recently lost all her pups shrank back. The sense of fatalism that burdened Ruff weighed on her. Ruff said, "Since you aren't staying, we won't ask you to sit down."

"You're playing for time," Dogcatcher said. "It won't work."

The pack grew more nervous, including Ruff, who carried the awful responsibility of leadership, a choke collar on his freedom, with failure of nerve never an option. He tried to look fierce, to present himself as a brute fact, but came across as super fiction. Dogcatcher spoke past him.

"You all know why I'm here."

The Animal Control van, parked curbside, was visible through the front window. Every dog in the room knew the vehicle's shape, size, color, and sound. All had lost kin to it, many put down before their prime, those not wary or wily enough to reach majority.

Ruff said, "You're enjoying this."

"Everybody should enjoy his job. Dogcatcher's smile seemed a misuse of his face. The man loved to taunt, to throw out sarcasm like a poisoned bone.

Ruff looked down at his front paws, one misshapen from an old accident that had nearly cost him his life. "Will you feed us?" he asked, as if resigned to reality.

"All the chow you want, and then some. No more scrounging. How's that sound?"

Ruff knew the man was a liar. In his six hectic years of life he had known no human who wasn't. "And will you treat us decently?"

"Of course. If you all come quietly, give me no shit."

Ruff was well aware of Dogcatcher's reputation for animal abuse, which in some instances did not stop short of maiming and murdering, almost as if the man were trying to prove something. Or to disprove something. There was scarcely a mutt in the area that didn't believe a trace of canine blood ran rich through Dogcatcher's veins. The belief had taken root after a collie-type glimpsed him peeing against a tree, one leg cocked.

Ruff said, "Then I guess we have no choice."

"You got smarts," Dogcatcher said with mocking superiority, which Ruff ignored.

"I have to get something first."

"What?"

Ruff did not reply. Nor did he allow himself a final look at the female whose pups had perished. Instead, swishing a tail, he trotted into the hallway, hastened his steps into the kitchen, past the paper the little yapper had crapped on, and planted himself in the pantry. His chest slowly heaved. He knew Dogcatcher would soon grow impatient and come after him. It was the only thing in his life he was sure of.

The other dogs, totally anonymous now, slipped one by one out of the house, fled through the streets, and regrouped in the alley behind a burger joint, where they knew they were safe, at least for the time being. The female, whose teats were still swollen and sore, said, "Will Ruff know where to find us?"

No one answered. They found ways to busy themselves, scratching flea bites, attending to old cuts, nursing wounds. The yapper had found an old burger wrapper and was licking up the grease until a bigger dog snatched it away.

Back at the house, Dogcatcher, who had nearly stepped in the yapper's mess, glared at Ruff with all the hate his eyes could muster. "You've tricked me, haven't you?"

Ruff nodded, if not with the pride of victory, at least with a sense of dignity. He was not a winner, never had been. But he was a leader.

Andrew Coburn is the author of twelve novels, three of which have been made into French films. His work has been translated into 13 languages.