Zeus, Dog of Chaos Read online

  She continues, “Oh, and I’d like to talk about the upcoming JDRF walk, Madden. I want to get a team together.”

  “Mom, no!” Madden’s mood shifts from anger to stubbornness, a scent like two-day-old fish. “A fund-raising walk for diabetes? Don’t do that. Gah.”

  The lieutenant is unblinking. “Diabetes is part of who you are, Madden. Who we are. That won’t ever change. I want to support the organization that helps fight it.”

  She bends back into the mouth of the truck and clang bang clangs her tools against the teeth of the machine.

  Madden tugs my limp leash and mumbles so low I know the lieutenant and her tiny, ineffective human ears can’t hear him: “Diabetes is the worst part of who I am.”

  My heart droops, bringing my ears and tail with it. Madden doesn’t have worst parts, only different parts. There is no worst in you, I say, but of course he can’t hear me.

  All this sadness feels like cold wind, wind that whisks away and erases all the glorious scents.

  ★ 7 ★

  Joy through Nostril Explosions

  Who wants to go for a walk?” Madden asks later, after this boring part of the day called homework, and I feel like every strand of fur on my body explodes into an exclamation point!

  ME I WANT TO GO I DO ME PICK ME I AM SO SO GOOD AT WALK!

  I bark. I spin in circles. I wag. I wag so big my tail knocks a potted plant off a table, and earthy black soil flies everywhere. I scowl at my tail, but tails don’t listen. Tails don’t have ears. You can’t change a tail.

  Tails are invisible—humph. Tell that to my hind end.

  Madden huffs and fetches the growling tornado machine humans call the vacuum. He vacuums the soil off the white carpet while I cower in the corner. (Well, cower might be a strong label here. Perhaps watch on bravely while whimpering at high alert is more accurate.) The soil is stubborn. Madden moves a table and covers the soil art I made.

  “Do you think she’ll notice?” Madden says, looking at the table now standing in the middle of the living room.

  Absolutely, I say, proud of our teamwork. She will love how we’ve redecorated the place.

  At last Madden gets my blue leash off a hook. I can’t stand it anymore, and I get so excited I put my booty on the small piece of carpet near the door and scootch scootch scootch until Madden whispers, “Zeus, no!”

  I stop midscootch, back left paw hovering in the air. What?

  Madden scowls at me. Scowls are smelly like cow pies. He picks up the rug and takes forever minutes to put it in the spinny water machine humans call the washer. That thing growls like a monster. At last he returns, sighs, and clips the leash onto my vest. Out we go!

  I soon forget about the smelly scowl because walk! The air is chilly enough that our breath poofs, and the sidewalk is cold beneath my paw pads. The world today smells metallic, like frosty earth and crystal ice and—oh! There’s apparently a cat nearby who likes to use the neighbor’s flower bed as his litter box. I make a mental note to return later to terrorize him. From a distance, of course, because claws.

  Walk! I get so excited my back feet start moving faster than my front feet, and I scuttle sideways until I can get those back paws of mine to obey.

  Madden chuckles, and the sound is like the tinkling of the xylophone in band earlier today. And he must start thinking about band, too, because he says, “You know what, Z? My mom made me get you in exchange for being in band. She says band is stressful. Rigorous is her word, actually. And if I want to be a part of it, I had to ‘be better about managing my diabetes.’” He says this last part in a stiff voice, hard like cardboard, and he waggles two of his fingers up and down as he does.

  Rigorous. I like that label. It sounds important. But it sounds like it has claws, too.

  “Yeah, she says with something as physical as band, I need to be vigilant”—more wagging fingers—“about my health. ‘If you’re not going to calibrate your CGM, you get the dog.’” He says this in the stiff voice again, and it reminds me of the sound of sandpaper scraping against wood back in the prison workshop.

  “And can I let you in on a secret?” Madden asks.

  Well, I don’t know . . . I begin, because service dogs are by nature blabbermouths, and we find it very hard to keep secrets. But Madden presses on: “I actually chose the tuba because it’s the hardest and the heaviest and no one thought I could do it.”

  Madden smirks. “So it was either you or promise to wear a fanny pack stuffed with gear and snacks and stuff. You won over the fanny pack, Z. Congratulations.”

  My jowls pull into a wide smile. I’ve never heard of a panny fack, but I can tell I’ve defeated a formidable foe.

  My nostrils perk. Twitch.

  Is that . . .

  It is!

  Ducks.

  We round a few more corners, and there it is: a shimmering stretch of glassy pond, covered with a thin layer of gorgeous green icy scum. And on the far shore, huddled in a cloud of stink and poo and feather dander: ducks.

  I stiffen. Madden unclips my leash. My heart races, and I think back to the drum in band. Why do I keep thinking about stupid band when there’s walk? Madden looks at me, jerks his head. “Go ahead. Run.”

  My skin twitches. I shiver. I . . . can’t.

  Madden’s eyebrows tighten and his scent washes into a wave of frustration, like a sausage treat that is juuuuuust out of reach. “Go on, Z. Run!”

  I can’t!

  A whimper-whine rises in my throat. Stop being such a puppy, Zeus, I tell myself. But I can’t help it. A high-pitched cry squeaks out of me.

  Madden crosses his arms. Narrows his eyes.

  I flatten my ears. Narrow my eyes.

  Then, at last, he gets it. “Oh, your vest!” He unclips the red cloth I’ve been wearing since my bathroom break at school, and the moment that third clip is loosened, I wriggle free and push off my back paws and roofroofroof around the edge of the pond, breaking through thin glassy ice at points, straight into the cloud of ducks.

  WHAT? WHO? YOU! YOU! YOU! NO! They honk at me.

  Here’s the thing about ducks: I don’t want to catch them. They’re horrible creatures, what with their waxy bills and weird feet. Plus, feathers taste like a mouthful of sand. But the ducks don’t know that. So I roofroofroof and they toss cuss words over their shoulders at me (ducks are foul fowl) and they paddle out to the middle of the pond. If the water were warmer, I’d chase them in. Instead I just leap and bark and splash and sneezesneezesneeze—choo! choo!—because sometimes the joy can’t get out any other way except through nostril explosions.

  Madden picks up rocks and starts chucking them sideways at the surface of the pond like Frisbees. Some of them skip across the surface—plip plip ploop!—before sinking. Some slide across the thin film of ice and skid to a rest on top. Both are infuriating—how am I supposed to retrieve those?

  You throw, I fetch—don’t you know how this game works, Maddening?

  The icy breeze blows a very specific scent across my nose—sweet, like lollipops. My ears perk. I stand straighter.

  That smell: it’s Madden.

  His blood is too sweet.

  I race back around the edge of the pond, and the closer I get to him, the more I can smell it: Yes, definitely too sweet. Thick, like honey. I need to alert him.

  Madden pauses in his rock-chucking suddenly, and I can smell his demeanor change. “Oh!” He lifts a corner of his shirt, twice pumps a button on the box attached to his belly. I can smell the chemicals stream into his body, mixing with his blood. It’s salty. It smells like beef jerky. But it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s making his blood less sweet.

  I reach him just as he plops onto a bench. I pant. He looks me in the eyes.

  “Did you know?” he whispers, his breath a cloud.

  Know what? I feel like I don’t know anything about this human.

  “Hmph. It coulda been just a fluke. I don’t know that you actually knew my blood sugar was high.”
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  Oh, that? Yes, of course I knew.

  Madden sits back, sighs. “Mom would wring my neck if she knew I bolused without testing my exact levels, but I didn’t bring my test kit.”

  Ring his neck? It sounds like another band instrument. Like a painful, awful band instrument.

  Madden turns to me with of look of . . . pity? Pity is the worst, as awful as drinking salt water. “See, Zeus? I felt that. That sugar high—I knew my blood was getting out of whack. That’s what I mean. I don’t really need you. I don’t need anyone. See?”

  Of course I see; I have two eyes. Do I understand? Absolutely not. He felt his blood sugar climbing that time, sure. But what about the next time, or the next, or the next? What about the times it climbs so fast he never feels it coming, and wham!

  I don’t like to think about what happens after wham.

  Madden scoops up my vest from the dry grass and clips it on, click click click. He clasps my leash into the metal ring on my back. I bark a teasing Bye-bye, birdies over my shoulder at the ducks. The ducks honk obscenities back at me. Rude.

  Madden smells like he’s thinking a lot of thoughts, like a pot of stew simmering. Almost boiling. He sits back down on the bench.

  “I didn’t really know my dad,” he says at last, and the thought feels like a meteor crashing to earth, all weighty and fiery. (I know all about meteors thanks to the astronomy class Dave and I took in prison. It was an embarrassing class because I thought the label for the rock that the teacher showed us was meatier. Let’s just say I pooped pebbles for weeks.)

  “My old man,” Madden continues. “The only thing he ever gave me is diabetes.” He chuckles at that, but it’s a plastic chuckle. There he is, being plastic again. That can’t be his label, plastic. It can’t.

  “Seriously, though, I don’t remember him at all. He died a long time ago.” Madden smells bittersweet when he talks about his dad. Like . . . like something I can’t quite place. “Sometimes I feel like I remember him, but I think those might be stories other people have told me.”

  Just today in Language Arts, the Glorious Study of Labels, I learned about a thing called tense. It means when things happen. The way Madden’s talking, I know his dad is in the past tense.

  And I get it. My dad is in the past tense, too. He was at Canine College when I was a pup, but he moved on. He works far away now, doing important scent work for the FBI. My bloodline of bloodhounds is long and impressive. (Bloodhounds isn’t entirely accurate. We’re all German shepherds, me and my relatives.) But Madden’s past tense somehow feels more past, and definitely more tense. Anyway, we have that in common. I know how past tense feels.

  Past tense feels like missing, like longing, like a favorite tennis ball thrown over a tall fence.

  “When I first got diagnosed, Z, I stayed in the hospital for four days. I was nine. I hated needles so much. They made me practice giving shots on an orange. I stuck that thing so many times! Juice was all over me, for days. Even got in my eyes. Man, that hurts! So sticky and sweet—ugh. I still hate orange juice. Hate it.”

  I think about that label, hate. It smells slick and angry and green.

  “Anyway, since then I’ve been stuck with millions of needles, I’d guess. Test kits and glucose monitors and insulin pumps—all needles. And I’ve been okay.”

  Now there’s a label that smells positively bland: okay. Like ice. And I feel okay, too. I didn’t actually help Madden, just now. He realized his blood was too sweet all on his own. I’ve been with him almost one full day now, and so far, the only thing I’ve done is listen to him. That doesn’t seem helpful at all.

  “So I don’t really see how you’re gonna be any better at this than those things, Zeus. I mean, how can an animal beat science and technology? Plus, you are freaking HUGE and really obvious and a lot of work. No offense.”

  Oh, I take offense.

  Off. Opposite of on. Sometimes yelled at a dog to keep them away from the good furniture.

  Fence. A terrible outdoor wall that keeps dogs from running fast like the wind.

  So basically, taking offense means I feel terrible, like I’ve been yelled at, penned in.

  Madden shakes his head. “But diabetes really stresses my mom out. I mean, I get it . . .”

  His voice drifts off. His scent flutters back to the bittersweet smell he wears when he talks about his dad, and I realize what it smells like: the musky smell of a dandelion wish as it’s carried away on the wind. He blinks. “If having you around means I finally get to do the stuff that all the other kids do, like band . . .”

  Again, he doesn’t finish his sentence. I sniff harder, trying to figure out what those two sentences floating off together might mean.

  “So yeah. I don’t need you or want you, Zeus, but I’m stuck with you.”

  Stuck. That word feels awful, like gum in fur. My head hangs. My tail tucks. I’m stuck with Madden.

  Madden stands again. He picks up my leash and we head toward our bleachy-clean home. I think back over what Madden said, and I realize: Madden and his mom aren’t exactly the best of chums. They play tug-of-war constantly: they grumble and circle and tug to and fro.

  Which is usually great, except in this game, I’m the rope.

  ★ 8 ★

  I Broke the Hikers

  Maddening: when we get back to the house, Madden’s mom asks, “How was the walk?” and he just grunts and leads me upstairs. In his room, I sit on his bed and watch the orbs spinning on his ceiling while he finishes his homework. Their movement is like the poetry our Language Arts teacher Mr. Nance recites: round floaty words that slip past one another, silent and circular. The whole thing feels almost too big to label, but the word home keeps swooping through my noggin.

  My eyes get heavy. Droop.

  Madden nods at me. “Me too, bud. Let’s go to bed.”

  Last night, I slept on a new, stiff dog bed in the corner of Madden’s room. The tags are still sewn into it, and they are crinkly and uncomfortable, like sleeping on poking fingers. The thing smells like a factory, too, like the poofy white fuzz I love to rip out of toys. It is too small for me.

  So when Madden points to the too-tiny pallet and says, “Bed, Zeus,” I don’t jump down. My heartbeat speeds and my mouth gets dry and my paw pads sweat—I am being disobedient! But I’m so tired after this first full day, and I want to sleep here, in the big human bed. Madden sighs and shoves me to the side (I grunt, pretending to protest) and crawls in beside me.

  Yes! I smile, my tongue lolling. I won! The Battle of the Bed. I am legendary, and puppies will study my tactics for years to come.

  We sleep. I dream of ducks, and I feel myself twitch! They cuss and poop. Silly fowl.

  My dream turns to Madden, and I imagine him floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean, fingers dipping into the sea. He lifts and lifts and lifts, curling into the arc of a huge wave. I startle awake.

  My nostrils perk.

  It’s Madden. He snores lightly next to me, and his blood is too salty and falling fast. He is awash in salt, drowning in an ocean.

  I nudge him. Nothing.

  I nudge harder, press my cold, wet nose on his cheek. He grunts, swipes at the smudge I left behind, and rolls over. His scent darkens, a sea wave curling over our heads.

  Wake up, Madden!

  I leap off the bed, bite the corner of his blanket, and tug, tug, tug. Madden yanks back but remains asleep. The wave tightens its curl around us . . .

  Wake UP, Madden!

  I shake, rattling my tags to get his attention, and realize with a start that I can make music! But even that doesn’t stir him.

  I want to bark, and I even feel grumbling in my belly. One huge, bellowing bark would do the trick. But I’m a service dog. Since we can’t bark when we are in public, we are trained to never do it to get our human’s attention. Barking is for show-offs. It is obvious. My dad always said so.

  My eyes scan the dark, shadowy room for something that might wake him up. Then I see it: the h
ikers!

  I reach my paw out, sigh heavily, and tap! I knock the photo over.

  It crashes to the floor, the glass in the frame shattering.

  I broke the hikers.

  Madden sits up with a start, as if a part of him were shattering. He looks bleary, confused, and I know it’s not just from being sleepy—his blood is way too salty.

  “Zeus, no!”

  But I don’t have time to feel ashamed, to tuck my tail and wind into a small ball. I lick his hands. Nudge him again. I can taste how salty his skin is.

  “Do I need to check?” he asks. I lick him, Yes!

  Madden pulls a black cloth case from beneath his pillow. He zips it open. Dozens of smears of blood coat the inside of the case. He pulls out a thing—a small tool that looks like a screwdriver—and staples the side of his finger, caCHUNK. The noise is loud in the quiet room.

  I circle and pace, pace and circle as Madden squeezes a dark red drop of blood onto a tiny piece of paper, then slides the paper inside a small black box. A blue screen on the box lights up. Madden has a lot of black boxes with blue screens in his life. So far I’ve counted three.

  “Sixty-five?” Madden says, blinking. “Wow. That’s low.” His blood needs more sugar. He reaches under his bed, grabs his basket of snacks, and pops five gummy bears in his mouth. I circle and pace, pace and circle.

  Madden’s murky vision washes off him like the sea pulling backward into itself, and his eyes clear. He grabs another of his black boxes, scans a small plastic patch attached to his upper arm. More plastic.

  Beep! Madden studies the screen on this black box, the blue light washing over his face. “Huh. My CGM says I’m fine. Says eighty-two. I wonder why it didn’t pick up that low?”

  He looks at me, circling and pacing. His blood is starting to sweeten, but I can’t sit. Not yet. He’s swimming toward the shore, but he’s not safe yet. I’ll tackle him and drag him to safety by his pajama collar if I have to.

  Madden puts all his devices and snacks away and leaps out of bed. He lifts the photo of the hikers off the floor. He gingerly removes the photo from the brokenness and tosses the frame in his garbage can. He dusts shards of glass off the hikers’ smiles.