How the Dog Became the Dog by Mark Derr

Author:Mark Derr [DERR, MARK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PET004000, NAT044000, SCI027000
ISBN: 9781590209912
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2011-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

The scene fades and shifts over untold thousands of years through worlds I don’t recognize, although they are of this one, until finally I see a blur—

She is the Kate, springing upward, stretching as she ascends, twisting for more altitude until at the moment of full extension, she realizes she has gone too high. She jackknives, plucks the ball from the air, and then partly rights herself for a vertical reentry. Bobbing to the surface, she swims toward the pool steps with all the calm and grace of a retriever, three small children attached to her tail. She’s been at this game since she arrived at the party, by special invitation, an hour ago.

Tennis ball is her passion. She invented this particular game of toss and catch after realizing that one wall of the pool was higher than the other, and therefore, if she could persuade M to pitch the ball right down the middle line, she could make a daring leap and catch it before hitting water. At this pool there is no high wall and the diving board is an unpredictable launching pad. She improvises. After the first hour, with food being served and her audience dwindling, the Kate climbs out of the pool, looks around to make sure the right people are watching, and trots up to a young man sporting a geometric Maori tattoo from the late Anglo-American Era on the left side of his face, and a new, heavily waxed purple mohawk. He has talked to no one, simply sat watching the Kate without affect. She places the ball on his plastic chair in such a way that it touches his leg and is guaranteed to succumb to gravity at the slightest perturbation in its space. It falls, and the Kate snaps it up after one bounce, then positions it in precisely the same way. She turns and sprints for her spot by the pool. The boy understands the game. He stands and throws it, turns back for his chair. The Kate brings him the ball. He hesitates. She barks at him once, twice. …

The boy’s mother comments that he’s never done anything like that before. “Like never played with a dog before?” M asks. She shrugs.

Leaving, the boy tells his mother, “I want a dog like that kelpie, that wolf.” The Kate looks for all the world like a small wolf or dingo.

His mother looks at him as if he were an alien being. The Kate has turned her attentions to an older man, another guest’s dyspeptic father. It is a wonderful party—for her.

That was the deal, and it did not take long to reach. The socialized wolf who remained close to humans got attention, which it craved, sexual freedom, a steady food supply, and considerable reduction in time spent raising the young and hunting. Even if the gruel was thin, it was better in lean times than what the wild wolf might get. The human got a guard against things that went “Boo!”

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