Wiener Dog

Dottie always ran past the big red and white house on the corner, the one with the mean dog that barked at her. Every morning and afternoon there it was, loose in the front yard, trotting toward her. This morning she hoped that maybe the dog wouldn’t be there, but it was always there. And, sure enough, there it was waiting for her. She crossed the street but it made no difference. From across the street, it barked and barked and trotted and ran a little and then stopped and barked. Always it was barking, snarling, and growling. She could hear its growl pushing up from its stubby brown throat through its long brown snout and out through its shiny white teeth. She knew one day it would come after her. Its barking got louder and angrier every day and so each day she ran past the house faster and faster.

Chris, she thought, would find the dog funny. He got a ride to school, so he never saw it. She would see a glimpse of him in the red Suburban as it passed her. She always waved, but he never noticed. She wouldn’t be nearly as afraid of the wiener dog if Chris were walking with her. He’d laugh at it and then she would too. Dottie had to admit it wasn’t really a scary looking dog. It was, after all, a wiener dog. And who ever heard of a scary wiener dog? It didn’t run so much as wobble, front to back, when it saw her. Chris would make fun of it and she wouldn’t be scared anymore. Together they would laugh at it.

It was raining that morning. Dottie wore her shiny long red raincoat to school. She wore a new pair of rubber boots and, having run past the dog, she was now happy. She splashed through every puddle she could to test the boots’ water-tightness. Sometimes she’d jump in because, well, you never knew, jumping in might make them leak. She didn’t hesitate to jump right in to the very center. No leaks and no dog.

At recess the sun came out and everyone went outside. Dottie watched Chris and some other boys take turns throwing rocks at the side of the red brick school building. Chris was so cute. He had the blackest hair. He was clever too. He said funny things, so she’d sneak over to the group of kids that was always around him when he was talking and joking and she would laugh quietly from behind someone else. Chris was a great talker, but he wasn’t very good at throwing rocks. He clearly thought throwing rocks was an interesting thing to do. Dottie was disappointed in him. Why did boys do things like rock throwing?

After they got tired of throwing rocks they started picking up gobs of mud and throwing those at each other. Dottie went over by the door of the building and waited for recess to be over. Mud tossing was even less interesting than throwing rocks. It was boring, and anyway, she’d get yelled at if she came home with mud on her clothes. When a gob whizzed past her ear, she knew she needed to get away. She looked around for Mrs. Kilgas and saw her talking to the other teachers. Scott was also waiting by the door so Dottie didn’t immediately walk over to it. She didn’t like Scott. He would chase the girls around and try to kiss them. That was worse than getting muddy. Dottie remained still until she was hit in the arm with a mud missile. She decided to risk Scott and try the door to see if she could get in the building. She didn’t think the door would be open, but it was. No one was in the hallway so she went inside and into her classroom even though she wasn’t supposed to.

Dottie pulled out a piece of paper and started writing a letter. The letter was to an advice column in Seventeen magazine. She knew she was a little young for the magazine, but she hoped the advice lady in there wouldn’t mind and could tell her how to get Chris to notice her.

Dear Seventeen,

I’m not seventeen yet, but I hope you can help me anyway. There’s this boy I really like. I think he is so cute and funny. I think that sometimes he thinks I’m funny too because he laughs when I say something to him. I think he has very nice hair. It’s so black and straight, like it’s the opposite of mine which is curly and red. I hate my hair but I really like his. And I like when he smiles. But sometimes I don’t like him as much, like today when he was throwing rocks. I don’t know why boys like to do that, it is just not a good thing to do because

He could break a window

He could hit someone

He could throw out his shoulder or back or something

He could get in trouble if a teacher saw him

I like him and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him, so I’m writing to you for help. I don’t want him to throw rocks anymore. I think he is too smart to throw rocks. What can I do to make him quit throwing rocks and how can I make him like me back?

Thank you!

Dottie

Dottie used a heart to dot her “I” because this was a letter about Chris and she hoped the advice lady would notice that she really liked him. Chris would never see this letter, so she felt safe. She folded it up really tiny and put it in the pocket of her red raincoat. She would try to mail it at home somehow, or maybe she’d keep it and put it in her jewelry box.

Recess finally ended and nobody noticed that she’d come in early except for maybe Scott, but the teacher wouldn’t listen to him if he told, so Dottie wasn’t worried. Scott whispered, “Oooh, I’m telling,” as he passed by her desk, but she pretended she didn’t hear him.

After Reading and Spelling and Art the school day finally ended. The sun was still out, but it was really humid. Dottie tied the arms of her raincoat around her throat for the walk home. It wasn’t the easiest way to carry the coat, but this way she could pretend it was a cape, and she was Dottie Dynamite, superhero, savior of the suffering, friend to the friendless. Wearing her cape made her feel brave and fearless. Today when she reached the red and white house she didn’t cross the street. In her cape with her confidence and her superpowers, the mean wiener dog wouldn’t bark at her.

Dottie reached up and tightened the knot around her neck. She took a deep breath and slowed down. She focused her eyes on the long straight sidewalk in front of her. She passed the mean dog’s yard, step by confident step. No barking. No growling. No dog. She was… past. And then, just as she began to feel elated about her freedom and her bravery for walking through the dog’s territory, she gasped as her throat was pulled tight. She spun around. There, at the end of her cape, was the furious brown sausage dog. Clamped on to her red raincoat, it was biting and growling and pulling with all of its compact wiener dog strength. She twisted around and pulled at her coat. She yelled and then she screamed. She was no longer aware of anything around her except for the dog pulling her in one direction and choking her as she tried to get away in any other direction. But the dog held on firmly. Dottie pulled and moved forward as though she were swimming in mud. She tugged at the knot at her throat as she slowly dragged her encumbered raincoat homeward. She couldn’t get loose, but she yelled and dragged. She couldn’t stop; to stop moving might allow the dog to bite her instead of just her coat.

Her salvation appeared in the form of a paperboy. He wheeled up next to her on his bike and jumped off, rolled up newspaper in hand. He began whacking the dog with the paper, yelling at it, as Dottie dragged and screamed. The dog let go at last and headed home. Dottie couldn’t believe it was over. Her raincoat was ripped. Her throat hurt. The paperboy wanted her to come with him to tell the people in the house about their dog. But Dottie was too afraid. She thanked the paperboy and said she had to get home, had to, right now, she had to.

Dottie was still shaking and couldn’t untie the arms of her coat. She pulled the loop over her head. She could see the holes and rips in the raincoat and didn’t want to ever see it again. She knew that it could never be a cape now, nor would she ever be Dottie Dynamite. She didn’t want it anymore. She decided she’d claim to have left it at school until her mother forgot about it. Then when she did remember, when it rained again, Dottie would claim that it was stolen. She knew her mother would think she’d lost it, but really, she just couldn’t stand to look at it ever again.

Dottie took a right at the next block to get to the ballpark. When she reached a trash barrel, she threw the wadded up coat inside. The barrel was empty and black and her shiny red coat looked like dying embers deep inside. Dottie trudged home, worrying about her missing raincoat, afraid of what the wiener dog would do next time. She didn’t know how she’d ever feel safe enough to pass the wiener dog house again. Not ever.

When she got home, she went straight up to her room so her mother wouldn’t notice her raincoatlessness just yet. She lay on the bed and curled up into a tiny ball. She fell asleep and didn’t wake until her mother called her down for dinner. They ate shepherd’s pie, Dottie’s favorite meal, but tonight she didn’t build little mountains out of the potatoes and use bits of hamburger as tiny houses on the slopes. She just ate quietly and thought about her day. She remembered Chris throwing rocks, and remembered the letter she wrote about him, and remembered her walk home, and remembered the wiener dog, and remembered that the letter was still in the pocket of the raincoat and remembered she’d have to pass the mean dog’s house again tomorrow on the way to school. She didn’t remember moving from the kitchen table to the living room for TV and then to her bedroom. It seemed she was just suddenly there, in her nightgown, in her bed, in her room, bathed in the faint blue glow of her nightlight.

Dottie didn’t think she slept at all. Still, one second ago it was dark and then suddenly her alarm clock was buzzing next to her ear. She pressed the snooze bar and sat upright, somehow wide awake and instantly anxious. She hated yesterday, but she preferred it to today. Today she would go to the baseball field and take her letter out of her raincoat pocket. She would run past the mean dog that she knew would finally bite her. She’d have no cape this time and he’d come running across the street with his short legs. He’d look funny, but she wouldn’t laugh. She would just be standing there, petrified, waiting to feel his sharp white canines sink into that narrow place above her heel between her Achilles tendon and her ankle bones. The wiener dog would hamstring her and she wouldn’t be able to get away. She hoped the paper boy would rescue her again today, but she knew that wouldn’t happen.

Somehow she managed to put on her jeans and her yellow silk shirt with the Yorkies all over it. Maybe if wiener could see that she liked dogs he would leave her alone. Or maybe she could be sick and stay home, this just occurred to her. Yes, she’d be sick!

Dottie plodded down the stairs showing as little energy as she could. Her feet dragged across each step, her heels traced down the vertical rise of the stair. She slumped her shoulders and hung her head. She moved slowly at first and became increasingly paralyzed the further down she got. Her mother called her twice as she dragged herself down, and each time she whispered, pitifully, “I’m coming,” and slowed even more. She let out several very large and long sighs. When she at last reached the living room she dragged her feet along as though she were caught in quicksand up to her shins.

Not for a second did her mother notice that Dottie was at death’s door. No, her mother never even looked at her, as Dottie ate tiny globules of egg as if they were foul medicine. It was no use, it seemed, she’d have to try harder. Dottie sighed. And sighed again. And then again. At last her mother did notice and said, “Stop that, I’m trying to listen to the news.” Dottie gave up and ate a piece of cold bacon with slightly more enthusiasm. Her fate was sealed; she might as well reconcile herself to it.

She walked toward school. She reached the house next to the red and white house. Being sneakier than she’d ever been before, she crossed the street right after a car passed. She stayed put and wasn’t going to move until another car showed up. A blue Honda came along. Dottie waited until it reached her and ran. She ran with all her might to keep up with the car, to pass the ugly house, to avoid being seen by the evil wiener dog. The car outpaced her but she kept running and running and running and wanted to stop but she thought she heard the dog snuffling behind her so she kept running. She ran as fast as she could, and she turned at the next street to get to the ball park because the dog would never run that far after her. She ran and was finally going to slow down, but she just knew the dog was still following her. She passed the ball field and she ran down a street she hardly knew on the other side of the field. She ran in front of a silver truck but she didn’t care, she barely noticed. She heard the truck honk but she was past it, it couldn’t hit her now.

Dottie reached an empty grassy field and slowed at last. She stopped. Her head throbbed with each gasping breath she took. Then she heard squealing tires and a wet thump. Dottie looked back from the deep grass she stood in. A man got out of a red Toyota. He had long greasy looking blonde hair, a black shirt, and a pizza sign on the top of his car. He was bending over something in the street.

She stayed there in the tall grass and watched the long haired man in his ripped and faded t-shirt look down at the pavement at something, something he reached for, something he picked up, something he walked away with. She bent her knees and sunk down into the warm grass. He carried the dog, the mean wiener dog, the silent, brown limp dog and laid it in the grass. Then he crossed himself and turned around and got back into his red Toyota pizza mobile. Dottie now understood. He had hit the wiener dog with his car and then moved the dog to the grass where it couldn’t be seen. And now he was just leaving it there.

Dottie hated the dog. But she wondered if the dog was okay. Because to be there, in the grass, in pain, a dog, an anything, well, it reminded her of last summer when she went to a farm. Her mother said there were kittens in the barn for her to play with. She went in and never found the kittens, but she did find an enormous pile of hay. She started climbing in it. She built herself a little house in the hay, a little Dottie-sized hole only she could fit in. The hay stuck her like tiny little knives all through her t-shirt and on her arms and legs and neck and face but she ignored that. She loved the sweet smell of the hay. She burrowed in it and hid like a mouse. She must have gone to sleep because the next thing she knew it was dark, and she heard her mother calling her, her voice high-pitched with worry. Dottie panicked and in her frantic thrashing she dug her way further into the hay at first. She struggled, yelling and then screaming to be found, until at last her mother found her and pulled her loose.

Who would find the wiener dog? How would anyone know where it was? Was the dog even still alive? Dottie sat in the tall grass that smelled a little like hay. She thought these anxious thoughts about the dog. She didn’t forget how afraid the dog made her, how it barked and growled like it wanted to rip out her throat. But still, she didn’t hear the dog growling now. She didn’t hear it barking. But as she sat there quietly, she thought she heard it whine.

Dottie, with her heart racing, followed the tiny whimpering sound and came upon the dog. It was lying in the tall grass, curled up like a roly-poly. It was unable to bark at her, apparently in too much pain to move at all. Dottie pulled down a stalk of the grass and bent it back and forth to tear it loose. She reached over with the end of the grass, the tufted part, and brushed the dog’s back with it. It didn’t seem to notice; just stayed there, whimpering so quietly she wasn’t sure she was really hearing it. She whispered, “It’s okay, Wiener,” but it didn’t twitch an ear in her direction, didn’t notice at all.

She left the dog there. Dottie went to school and hoped the dog would be okay, but quieter now, not wanting to chase her anymore. She carried the piece of grass with her, waving it around in the wind. She got to school and mostly forgot about the dog. She did all the school things. She went through Math and English and History. Lunch was fried fish, mushy green beans, Jell-o, carrot sticks and cookies and chocolate milk. She went to recess and became bored watching Chris take turns on the swing seeing who could get the highest. Chris never won. Scott chased her and other girls around and didn’t manage to kiss anyone. She had Reading and Spelling and Music, since it was Wednesday. And then the final bell rang and Dottie didn’t get up, not for ten minutes, not until Mrs. Kilgas told her to go home. She stood up and slowly gathered her spelling and math books. She had homework, even though she probably wouldn’t do it, but she might.

She walked home slowly. She should have been happy not to have to worry about the wiener dog biting her, but she wasn’t. She arrived home and sat in the living room watching TV and then ate dinner. It was funny; tonight her mother made hot dogs, split along the edge and stuffed with cheese. She loved these hot dogs. She ate two and a half and then she was full. She noticed it was dark outside and then she thought about the dog and wondered if he was hungry.

She got up and carried her dish to the sink. When she got there, she picked up the half a hot dog that was on her plate and slipped it into her pocket. Then she watched more TV and went to her room. She put the hot dog in her t-shirt drawer and changed for bed and slept very deeply.

The next morning she woke up ten minutes before the alarm went off. Her first thought was about the dog, she wondered again if he was hungry. And there, lying in her warm bed, she wondered if he was cold. She was nearly always cold when she got out of bed in the morning. She thought the dog must be cold. He must normally sleep inside at night. He had short hair, so how could he sleep outside at night in the cold? She knew he was hurt, she heard in his whimpering that he was hurt. He was cold and hungry and hurt.

Dottie got dressed for school. She was early getting downstairs, and ate a bowl of Rice Krispies before her mother even wandered in to the kitchen. She made an excuse about having to be at school earlier to finish a project in art class and provided way too much detail, until she could feel her words drifting farther and farther away from truth. She left the house early. She remembered to bring the half hot-dog with her. She walked to the baseball field and then beyond it. She reached the road where yesterday she ran from him, and yesterday he was hit by the car. She crossed the street. She was on the other side, in the edge of the grass. She didn’t hear the wiener dog but she knew where he was, a little straight ahead and to the left, in that spot where the tall grass didn’t look filled in. He wasn’t whining. She thought maybe he’d gotten up in the night and walked home. She hoped he had. But she had to see for herself. Was he there?

Dottie barely moved. She shuffled her feet forward, so slowly, over to the spot she knew he was yesterday. She whistled, wanting him to make some kind of noise if he was there. If she had to choose what would happen next she’d pick him not being there, followed by him being there but not so bad off, and then him in various degrees of pain and injury, followed by what she didn’t want, him there and dead, stiff from the cool night air.

She was close, about twenty strands of grass away, and she saw dark brown through the sandy weeds. So he was there. Now all she could hope was that he wasn’t dead, that he was just recovering. The brown dog bits she could see through the grass seemed completely still. She just knew he was dead. The dog was dead and it was his own fault because he was mean and he was chasing her and some part of her wasn’t sad, was actually happy about it. She was suddenly relieved that he was dead. She felt that she needed to see him dead, to really make sure, and then she’d feel safe at last.

And then she was there, right next to him. He didn’t move at all, and she thought, no, she knew, he was dead, a dead dog. Still, she’d brought him something and she reached in her pocket and pulled out the half hot dog. Dottie kneeled, three feet away. She held out the hot dog, holding it as though maybe he’d bite that instead of her, even though he was dead. But she offered him the hot dog; she leaned forward and put it a few inches from his nose. And then she saw his side lift up and his nose twitch. She leaned back, but didn’t run away. The mean dog opened his mouth and his tongue slipped out.

So he wasn’t dead. She left the hot dog next to his mouth, as close as she dared, and then she nudged it closer with her foot. It was now touching his hanging tongue, and she thought she saw his head shift toward it. But she knew she was going to be late for school if she didn’t leave now. And honestly, she didn’t like him, even if he was hurt. She got up and turned away from him and walked to school.

When she got there, waiting outside to be let in, she saw a couple of boys looking at her. They were snickering. Not that this surprised her all that much, but this time she didn’t know why. Usually she knew it was because she spilled her milk from lunch on her pants or she’d answered a teacher’s question strangely or she was chewing on her pen when it leaked on her lips and teeth. This time, though, she had no idea. She checked for the usual culprits. No, she looked okay. And she hadn’t even spoken to anyone yet today, so there was no way that she had said something funny. She ignored them. When class finally started, maybe she noticed some looks from boys, but probably she didn’t, she thought. And then it was lunch. Sitting at the table with her milk and Bisquick pizza, she remembered again the letter in her raincoat in the trash barrel at the ball park. She had forgotten to get it last night or even to look for it this morning. And for seconds, long long seconds, she wondered if the letter had been found, if that was why she was being stared at. But no, it couldn’t be. Could it?

Still, lunch wasn’t too weird. She thought she’d seen more glances, but mostly she didn’t pay attention, instead wondering about him, the dog. Half a hot dog, even if it had a slit side with cheese in it, wasn’t going to be enough for him. She wondered if dogs would eat pizza, even bad pizza, or peanut butter cookies. She took her napkin and put her leftovers in it and folded it up. Some of the boys were watching her. It didn’t matter; she wrapped her food up like a present and then held on to it as she put her tray away, as she went to her desk even though lunch wasn’t over. No one noticed. She put the napkin with food in it into her backpack. Her only important homework tonight was going to be taking this food to the wiener dog.

School passed for her. During recess, she found a quiet corner not too far from the door and she leaned against the brick wall and slid down it. She looked at the dirt near her feet and saw dusty pits dug out by ant lions to trap unsuspecting ants who wandered in to them. She dropped a tiny pebble in one. The dirt filled it up. She watched the ant lion toss the pebble away and dig out a new lair. She picked up an ant and dropped it into another funnel, but he climbed out, leaving the ant lion hungry. Then the bell rang and it was time for her to go in.

She could smell her packaged lunch leftovers for the rest of the afternoon. She couldn’t concentrate on long division, she just wondered if the hot dog would be gone and she hoped he’d eat the pizza she was bringing him. She was only distracted from these thoughts when a triangle folded note came hurtling her way. It was just paper football, but she leaned over and picked it up and saw “Dottie” written on it. She leaned her math book up slightly and slowly, slowly, she opened up the paper. Inside it said this:

Hi Dottie. Will you meet me after school by the swings?

Chris

PS. I think you are cute too.

Chris wrote her this note. Chris wanted to talk to her. Chris thought she was cute. Dottie’s face felt so warm. She slid the note between pages in her math book. She didn’t know what she was looking at anymore. She just stared at the book and thought about after school, and thought about Chris. And then she wondered why he said that about her being cute too. Her being cute too, like he’d read her letter. Did he? She felt her heart actually flutter in her chest like a little moth beating its wings against a window. Chris knew she liked him and he might like her back. At least he didn’t just hate her. He wanted to talk to her.

And then she smelled the pizza again. She thought about the dog. He must be so hungry. But part of her didn’t want to go see the hurt dog, because even though he was alive this morning, he wasn’t moving much and could be dead now. And how could she not wait for Chris when he wrote her a note? She would take Chris with her to see the dog! It would become their secret. The final bell rang. Dottie grabbed her backpack and walked to the door that led to the swings. She looked out the window and saw nobody. She quickly spun around and saw no one. It was just her and the empty swings and the food and a few blocks away, the sick mean hungry dog, all alone. And then she saw Chris. He was with a group of boys, walking to the swings.

Chris stopped and stood there, waiting for her, but he wasn’t alone. All the boys were going to make fun of her. She couldn’t trust him with the wiener dog. She couldn’t trust anyone. She walked down the corridor, past her classroom, past her locker, past the administrative office to the double front doors. Dottie put out both her arms straight in front of her. Both of her hands reached for the exit bars on the double doors and she walked faster and faster and her hands grabbed the cold metal bars and pushed them out and the doors opened for her. The dog was waiting for her, he needed her. Dottie was in the sunlight, blinking with the brightness of it, with old pizza and peanut butter cookies and a place to go.