The Mere Wife_A Novel by Maria Dahvana Headley

Author:Maria Dahvana Headley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2018-07-17T07:00:00+00:00

22

Hark! Yes! Dogs on duty! Criminals, teeth! Robberies, noses! Drugs! Bombs! Riding in cars with heads out the window, official vests! We’re off with our agitated officer, ten dogs without leashes, the whole company met and released, inclined by right of nose.

Our officer blows a horn, and we sniff his secrets. He’s taken a few things to keep himself awake, bulk illegal from India. Pure protein and adrenaline, chewable fear. He’s been scanning a map of the mountain, an old one, and we smell that too, railroad, crumbling paper, oily fingerprints.

Hounds in a swarming pack, moving as one sleek body, leaping a wall made of stone, an interesting smell there. Four hundred years ago someone died on this rock, a hundred years ago someone hung from that tree, thirteen seconds ago there was a squirrel, run, run, yes!

Big mountain cat spray! Drop flat to the ground, creep, no, not above, look up, careful, branches? Oh, no, oh, no, silent slinking murdering cat, ah—

Never mind. Long gone. Housecat, tiny, fluff and flea powder. Scratch over that, dig a moment in disgust, show them your work, boys, show them.

Dogs can tell how many times a person’s heart beats, how many breaths they’ve taken, whether they’re sick, whether they’re dying. Dogs can find the secrets their people don’t know, tip them over, spill them onto the ground, roll in them.

Dogs can feel this officer and his cowardice, making him miserable. He doesn’t want to find the things we’re looking to find. The world is full of secrets no one cares about, no one but dogs. Sniff it. He’s scared of the woman in this mountain, but he has a long yellow hair stuck to his jacket. Fur of a different beast. We sniff it. Officer has been roaming.

We huff the target sweater again. Boy, chocolate, poison divine, lick, yanked back! Dirt, bloodied knee, soap?

Sometimes we’re in a cage for days. Sometimes we’re at a café for days, waiting, biding time, eating clandestine crumbs with tongue out, casually tasting toddlers. We are rarely used to our full sniffing capacity.

“Rub his nose in it, there you go, get him the scent good.”

We already got the scent. We had the scent before you knew there was a scent, from three towns away we had the scent!

We’ve been hunting this boy for two weeks. We travel on perfume lines, drink them out of the air like you listen to the radio. Put our heads out the window of the speeding car and smell someone touching someone else five lanes over, blow job, string cheese, tequila, and a new wedding ring. Respect. Ears back, grin on, yip.

“Rub his nose in it again, yeah, he’s lost the scent, there’s a good boy.”

We never lose the scent. Scents don’t disappear the way you think they do. We tug them like ropes.

Hounds running uphill, a wall of the correct smell. That sweater again. We know it by now, don’t we, and every day it smells more interesting. Now it’s coffee, doughnut,

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