ONE

SCENT

The Rough-Handed Man carried him through crowded rooms empty of heat and kindness. The hands were shaking, but not from the cold. He became aware that the man was whispering to him: “It’s our turn, little buddy, little tough guy. I know you can do it. I need you to do it. You’re not so big, but you got a big stubborn heart bigger’n all of . . . of . . .”

The voice paused.

“Well, it’s bigger’n mine.”

He was small for a dachshund and was being held upright like a fat salami on end. His bony spine lay against the man’s chest, his front feet bobbing before him. His broken rib required that he be carried this way. His fourth leg was not a leg at all but a steel soup ladle taped to his stump.

He curled his tongue up to lick his nose, dry and cracked from the cold. He was aware of being carried past more men—all mutts and mongrels, no purebreds—-bustling and shoving about him with arms tattooed, grimy, wet.

Human-being smells enveloped him like a foul blanket: Smoke. Sweat. Chewing tobacco. Alcohol. Roasting meat.

And money.

The human beings’ money smells of all those other things. Among all the stuff they love so—cars, kids, wood floors, driveways, socks, hair, teeth, feet, plums—only their money they don’t wash, he thought.

They should.

And this time, it smelled of something else.

Something new.

He couldn’t identify it, this scent so unfamiliar. Long ago in a different life he could put a nose to the June breeze and tell you that the marigolds in the North Meadow had bloomed and new paint was on a fence somewhere and the furry-shoed Fat-Fingered Lady three miles down the road had just pulled a blackberry pie from the oven, sprinkled it with nutmeg and then farted.

But here, now, he didn’t know this new scent. He knew he didn’t like it. He also didn’t care. He was past caring about anything.

The man bore him through the jostling crowd, down some stairs, into more darkness, before entering a large space with a soaring ceiling filled with more men in shadow that he could not see but he could smell. And hear.

They shouted and argued and spoke harshly and waved paper in their hands. There it is again. Money.

He was lowered over a plywood wall formed in a circle, down farther until he felt dirt below his three paws. Dirt. At the bottom of a room in a building at the edge of a concrete city, how strange to feel dirt.

He would have thought about this more if he hadn’t raised his eyes to see fifty pounds of bull terrier opposite him, five body lengths away, both front feet lifted off the ground. A reddening human hand held the collar and much of the huge beast’s weight as it strained forward, the muscles of his neck bulging and looking to explode. Pulses of hot mist shot into the frigid air from a gaping pink throat: a slobbering murderous locomotive building up steam. The eyes were unblinking and wild and fixed forward on a single point opposite the terrible mouth.

“You want to kill me,” the dachshund said aloud.

“I do,” said the other dog.

“Isn’t there anything you’d rather do instead?”

The big bull terrier stared at him, thinking hard. He’d never considered that question.

But the dachshund understood now why he was here, in this dirt, in this pit.

He looked up and found the face of the Rough-Handed Man staring down at him, looking crazy scared. “Ya gotta fight, little buddy!”

Fight.

The man might have just as well said, “Float.” Or, “Fry up a haddock.” Better would be, “Faint.”

He backed up until the wood planks found his tail, which folded below his rump as he pushed back, back.

At that moment he also knew what that new smell was. He looked down and saw it, a dark crimson ribbon woven amidst the filthy dirt and food wrappers.

It was blood. It was life.

But here, spilled and dried in this terrible place, it was death.

And here, finally, he knew it was the end of a long, unexpected road. He would go no further. Here I stop.

And here I die.

Slowly, he dropped his head and laid his long bony back down along the curved wall, three stubby brown legs out straight as if stretched on a porch on a hot day.

One of the men in the mob yelled out: “He’s a-gonna take a snooze!”

The crowd hushed into stunned silence as they stared.

Then they exploded into twice the frenzy, waving their smelly money harder. The raging dog across the pit twisted against his restraints. The Rough-Handed Man leaned over the wall, waving at him: “Up! Get up! UP! Ya can’t lie down, Little BUDDY!”

Watch me.

He dropped the side of his head flat against the dirt and looked sideways at the end of his world. He looked for something—anything—to fix his eyes on rather than the drooling, corrupted fighting machine soon to be upon him with its broken fury. His gaze went up to a single arc bulb overhead flooding the pit with light. Blue, cold and blinding; yes, this would do.

He stared at it and then closed his eyes. A new light took its place: the sun on a cobalt sky above the rolling green hills of another time and another world long ago. It was dazzling. It’s warm, he thought, and closed his eyes tighter. He traveled back and felt wild grass below his paws and breathed other, less cruel scents on the wind while he ran in a blur through a forest of exploding dandelions. And he heard her voice calling his name. “Sam! Sam the Lion!”

Her voice!

Heidy.

Above in the roiling crowd, the Rough-Handed Man looked down in the fighting pit at the three-legged dachshund lying still on its side, eyes clenched shut, and saw something out of place. He squinted and leaned closer and looked.

No. Can’t be. Not here and not on a dog:

A smile.

Excerpted from FLAWED DOGS: THE NOVEL: The Shocking Raid on Westminster © Copyright 2012 written and illustrated by Berkeley Breathed. Reprinted with permission by Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group. All rights reserved.