The "Must Read" Novel by R. A. Conroy

An hour later, Peggy and the dog were lost. With the cold knifing through her coat, she feared the two of them would freeze to death before they found help.

That’s when she heard it. A dog barked. Then another. Peggy trotted the dog towards the barking. She passed a lone sign reading simply - SHELTER - a bullet hole piercing its center, then followed a narrow driveway between an empty mill and a brick firehouse. The narrow corridor finally opened into a small parking lot. She stopped and looked around. Surrounded by abandoned warehouses, she faced a dilapidated structure that reminded her of a covered bridge. Capped with a tin roof and fronted by empty, rusted dog runs, it looked like an ancient prison yard. From within the building she could hear an occasional whine.

Peggy hurried the dog through the gate between the dog runs to a massive green door and rapped on it. An explosion of barking sounded within. When no one answered, she shoved on it and stumbled inside, the dog right behind her. Barking reverberated off of cinderblock walls and she clapped her hand over her ears. Spotting a door at the end of the kennel, she ran the dog toward it and wrenched it open.

“Shut the bloody door!” a woman’s guttural English accent hollered.

The dog pulled Peggy inside and she slammed the door shut - just as a ferret leaped over her head to a shelf, knocking books to the floor. A petite, wrinkled old woman tottered after it, swinging a fishing net.

“There he goes!” A buxom black woman popped up from behind a chair, a phone receiver in each hand. “Sheltah,” she snapped into one, while the other jangled. “Say what? Well, what you want us to do ’bout it? Excuse me, I said ’scuse me! Why ain’t you spayed that bitch, yet? Un-natural? I tell you what be un-natural! Them thousand bastard puppies put to sleep every year insteada you!” She banged the phone down hard.

“’Ang ’em by the bollocks, Betty!” cried the old English woman, thrusting the fishing net at Peggy. “You there! Get ’im or get out the way!”

Peggy’s first impulse was to flee. She yanked on the door, but the knob popped off in her hand. The ferret used her head as a springboard and dove to the floor at her feet. Two big hands grabbed her ankles from under the counter and Peggy yelped, falling backwards into the waste basket.

“Oh!”

“Oh!” A middle-aged man exclaimed, like an echo, looking up at her, just as surprised. He wore a rumpled khaki uniform, with the word Warden sewn in big yellow letters over his pocket. Trying to extricate himself, he smacked his forehead smartly under the counter top. “Blast it! So sorry! Which way did he go?” His English accent had a more refined sound to it, unlike the old woman’s dialect.

Stuck like a cork in the waste basket, Peggy gulped and pointed past his shoulder. The ferret dashed across the counter, just ahead of the old woman, who slapped the fishing net down, catching nothing but frigid air.

“Bloody, buggery bollocks!” she cried and took off after the escapee, cornering her own wig that had fallen to the floor. “Here kitty, kitty, kitty!”

“Clara?” the warden beseeched her, “the prisoner’s to be taken alive!”

Peggy watched the three people bumble about, colliding with each other, while the ferret tore around, snatching food from their half-eaten breakfasts. Squeezing herself out of the waste basket, she pulled the empty peanut butter jar from her coat pocket and while they surrounded the old woman’s wig on the floor, lured the ferret into a cage, latching it.

Hearing the clinking latch, the warden turned, and laughed. “Hello! How did you do that? We’ve been at it all morning, and in one, two, three, you nobbled him!” He grinned at the ferret behind the bars. “Houdini here gives us a go at least once a fortnight.” He lowered his voice to Peggy, confidentially, and nodded to the old woman. “Clara forgets, you see. Thinks he’s a cat and you can imagine the confusion. But, never mind, here you are, just in the nick of time!”

He handed her a big orange cat. “Would you be so good as to find a cage for George here, and..” he handed her a second, striped cat. “...another for Tiger?”

“Oh!” Peggy juggled the two squirming cats in her arms. “ But I - I ––”

“Anywhere you find room. I daresay it won’t make a tinker’s dither at this point!”

“But I ––” It was all she could do not to drop the cats, so Peggy wandered about the cramped office after the warden. The dog dutifully followed along behind her.

Two phones rang nonstop. Betty broke open an inhaler, stuck it up a nostril and inhaled deeply, then snatched up a phone receiver. “Sheltah!” She sneezed, searched for a tissue in the desk clutter, gave up and blew her nose on a pink invoice. “Hold on––I said hold on!” Cupping her hand over the receiver, she hollered to the warden. “Mistah Riley say he ain’t gonna touch the boilah ’til we done paid up from last time.”

Peggy noticed that it was nearly as cold in the office as it had been outside, and everyone wore heavy coats and hats.

The warden handed Betty a box of tissues. “What say we give friendly persuasion a go?”

“Friendly whoozit? On what planet do that work? Which die-mention?” Blowing her nose, she returned to the phone. “Mistah Riley? We go troo this every damn wintah. You fix the boilah, we write you a check, the boilah break down, we stop the check. What? Oh please! When hell freeze ovah and done thawed out again, maybe we’ll pay that bill. Git yo’ butt ovah here!” Slamming the receiver down, she picked up the other one and sneezed into it. “Sheltah, make it quick, it be closin’ time!”

The warden confided to Peggy, “Betty is our P.R. point person, our ambassador of good will, if you will.”

“Say what?” Betty exclaimed to the caller. “You want us to sell yo’ eight bastard puppies? This ain’t no pet shop! Ain’t ’nuff homes fo’ half what we got now ’cause of nimrods like you!”

Peggy darted a dubious glance at the warden.

He merely smiled at her. “Dear me, here we are, taking advantage of your time and we never even asked––how may we help you?”

Peggy coaxed the dog out from behind her legs. “I found this-this dog.”

“Dog?!” the old English woman cried, shielding a tabby cat in her arms. “This here’s the feline sanctuary! No dogs in here! Good for nothing, slobbering, cat chasin’––”

“He’s hurt. Somebody beat him.”

The old woman fell quiet, and the warden’s easy smile caught at its corners. He kneeled beside the dog.

“Ah.” A vague weariness clouded his gray eyes. “Hello Lucky,” he murmured, scratching the dog’s ears.

“You know him?”

“His name’s Boy, of all things, but we call him Lucky. Betty? Any word from Harrison?”

“Do you not see me on this here phone?” Betty shot back, but on seeing the dog, a similar shadow passed over her face.” Hmph! Since when do that butt wipe give diddly-squat ’bout that dog? I am not callin’ him, so don’t axe me!” She snatched up the other phone. “Sheltah. Ten to six. I said, read my lips––six o’clock!”

The warden turned to Peggy with an apologetic smile. “Bit of a hectic day. Why don’t we settle Lucky into a run?” Reaching to open the door for her, he stared at the hole where the knob should be.

Peggy pulled the doorknob from her pocket and handed it to him. “Sorry.”

“Oh! Not to worry!” He wrenched the knob back into the door. “Been meaning to fix that.” Pulling a Polaroid camera down from a shelf, he gestured her into the kennel. “After you.”

Peggy lifted a flap to peek in the box. Instantly, a Rhode Island Red rooster burst up and out in a shriek of flapping. People screamed and scattered. Peggy did, too. Dropping the box, she ducked under the counter. She heard horns honking and popped her head up to the window.

A red Jaguar and the shelter van barreled down the driveway. Each vied for the right of way, barely missed hitting the firehouse, the warehouse and each other. At the last moment, they both swerved, just missing old Mr. Riley, the handyman, stomping angrily out the gate. Behind the wheel of the Jaguar was Dr. Paul Hayward!

“Oh no!” Peggy lamented.

The rooster squawked, and with a squeal she grabbed the broom as it dive-bombed past her with a flutter of feathers.

Screeching into a parking space, Dr. Hayward yanked on the parking brake and jumped out of his Jaguar. “That was a red light back there, you moron!” he shouted at Joe, then slipped on the ice and landed on his backside.

At the gate, Mr. Riley slapped his knees, wheezing in toothless, helpless laughter.

Slipping and sliding back to his feet, Paul looked down on his muddied coat and ripped Italian wool slacks. Snatching his medical bag from the car, he slammed the door closed and strode past Joe and Mr. Riley, through the gate and up the walkway.

He shoved the front door open and, bombarded by the din of barking dogs all around him, fell back against muck-coated fencing. “Dammit!” He launched himself past the runs towards the office and yanked on the door. The doorknob popped off in his hand. “What the…”

He shouldered the door open, and stumbled across the threshold just as a huge rooster flew at him. It collided with him, and together they fell on the floor, wrestling to be free of each other. Feathers fluttered everywhere, and people stampeded over him, screaming to get out.

Livid, Clara shielded a fat cat in her arms and shook her gnarled fist at him. “Keep that cock away from me pussy!”

Joe barreled through the front door and skidded to a stop before them all. “Aw, Jeeze!”

“Don’t just stand there!” the young vet hollered. “Do something!”

Joe reached down and yanked him up by his collar and tossed him into the office, followed by the squawking bird. Slamming the office door, he chased the rooster into a cage.

Dr. Hayward scrambled to his feet, spitting feathers. “Who’s in charge here?”

“He-he’ll be back any minute. He promised.”

Paul whirled around to find Peggy, standing on a chair and wielding a broom. “Who promised what?”

“Terry...Mr. Brannan. He-he––”

Paul held up a hand. “Just point me to...oh great. Perfect.” He examined his cracked watch face.

Peggy gulped. The young vet looked pretty miffed about his broken watch, and she noticed a tic spasm at the corner of his left eye.

“Which way to my office,” he sighed.

Peggy blinked at him. “Office? This-this is it.”

His eyes widened. “This is my office? You can’t be serious! It’s...it’s a pig sty!”

Peggy glanced between the stunned crew members. Were they just going to let him insult them––and Terry–– like that? She squared her shoulders. “Doctor, we-we may not look like much, but we-we’ve got what it takes. Wh-where it’s counted. I mean, where it counts!”

“Oh? And where’s that?”

His scathing look stripped her of her voice. Peggy looked to the others. Betty nudged Joe. His voice cracked like a teenage boy’s.

“Uh...how ’bout a tour?”

“Oh good. There’s more.” The vet held up his hand, again. “First, where’s your lavatory?”

“The who?”

“The restroom!”

“Oh. The pyros leave their back door unlocked for us.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, see we don’t got a john, so we use the one in the firehouse.”

Dr. Hayward glanced out the window and across the parking lot to the firehouse, where a number of firemen still stood in the windows, watching, sipping coffee.

“Don’t worry,” Clara grinned. “So far, it’s only a rumor ’bout the peep hole.”

Joe sputtered out loud, but stifled it when the vet turned a sharp eye on them.

Peggy still stood on the chair, frozen in place. When his humorless gaze finally rested on her, a small schnauzer poked its head out from under her chair, and barked at him.

“What’s that dog doing loose?” he demanded.

“S-sorry.” Peggy climbed down and encouraged the dog out from under its hiding place. She scooped it into her arms. “He’s afraid of the dogs.”

“He is a dog. And loose dogs in a public office...full of cats, I see, is also not in keeping with health department…” He blinked at Houdini the ferret, twitching its whiskers at him from his cage. “Are you aware ferrets are now illegal to own as pets in this state?”

Joe snorted another laugh. “Why you think he’s behind bars?”

Dr. Hayward leveled him with a dour look. Then, the rooster crowed. With a roll of his eyes, he tossed Joe the doorknob. “Let’s start with the dogs.”

Joe passed the knob off to Peggy and kicked the door open. He backed up to let the doctor pass him, then whispered to the crew, “Jeeze!”

The phones began jangling again, but were ignored. The crew gathered around the door and watched the young vet disdainfully pick his way through the kennel room.

“Well,well, well,” Betty sniffed. “Somebody got hisself a ’tude!”

“Prince o’ peahens, if you please!” Clara agreed.

“What do he think he gonna do out there, wiffout Terry?”

“Nuke the whole house, what you wanna bet?” Joe hefted up his pants and headed into the kennel.

“Bah. Five’ll get you ten he’s gone in fifteen,” Clara said, and laid a dollar on the counter.

Betty rummaged in her purse.

Peggy glared past them to the arrogant young vet, already inspecting their dogs. Who did he think he was? She deftly inserted the wayward knob into place and led the schnauzer out into the kennel, closing the door behind her, hard.

“This...this is abuse.”

The women of the Upper Farroway Women’s Club gasped collectively, their manicured and gloved hands fluttering to blood-red painted mouths. The image projected onto the screen showed the bleeding, pus-weeping lacerations that crisscrossed a dog’s boney back. The poor creature hung his head in abject terror, looking at the camera with sorrowful eyes.

Peggy turned slightly away from the microphone to clear the catch in her own throat. “And abuse comes in many forms.”

Seated at the overhead projector, Paul switched out the photo for another. A half-bald cat looked up at the camera, its exposed skin red and oozing, scalded from burns, its left eye swollen shut.

More moans and exclamations of shock erupted from the audience.

Peggy winced, too, even though she was familiar with the image. She heard a woman somewhere in the second row openly weep.

“I’m sorry. I know these pictures are hard to look at. But, I don’t know what’s worse, seeing their suffering, or the fear in their eyes, when we try to help them. It’s even harder to hear the statistics––the reasons why people do it. One study says this, another that. Some blame poverty, some blame ignorance, some blame drugs and alcohol, some even blame the rise in violence on TV, but the truth is, we’re all to blame.”

Peggy took a moment to collect her thoughts, then looked up again to the crowd. “We arrogantly walk our dogs off leash where, in the blink of an eye, they could chase a squirrel into the street, in front of a car, or attack another dog, or cat, the mailman, our neighbors, all in a heroic effort to protect us––their family, their pack. We declaw our cats, and then let them outside where they can’t defend themselves or even escape danger by climbing a tree. We allow our unspayed cats and dogs to roam free, causing a crisis of overpopulation in shelters that requires weekly, sometimes daily euthanasias, nationwide. We’re too busy to take the time to train our dogs. Instead, we chain them outside, all day and all night in all sorts of weather, alone, where they pine away in loneliness. These social pack animals want and need companionship, a companionship that we deny, because we find it inconvenient. They mess up our house, our clothes, our stuff. We walk past stray cats and dogs picking through garbage on city streets, while kids throw snowballs at them, and don’t even think twice about it, because, well, it’s just a dog.

“We allow the wholesale breeding and sale of puppies in Midwest ‘puppy mills’, without caring about the ruination of the breeds from irresponsible breeders trying to make a buck, never mind the conditions of the animals’ housing and health issues, because we all want a Yorkie, Chihuahua or Golden Lab for under a hundred dollars. We bet on greyhounds confined in cages from birth, allowed no social interaction, and when they’ve outlived their usefulness on the track, we allow the owners to kill them. We allow our legislators to define animals as property, to do with as we see fit––and we––as a society allow our courts to classify such cruelties, as you’ve seen evidence of here, today, as a misdemeanor. We say nothing. We do nothing. There is no one else to blame.”

Peggy’s voice wavered. The audience barely stirred. She took a shaky breath. “Above all, we are to blame, because we know where it all begins. It’s no secret, anymore. The studies are out. It’s public knowledge. It all begins the moment a hand is raised in anger. Most especially, against a child. A seed is planted at that moment, and a vicious cycle takes root. When we do nothing to protect that child in harm’s way, we foster a legacy of abuse that’s handed down, like an heirloom, from one child to the next, creating generations of hurt, anger and loss. Every single photograph of animal abuse that you saw here, today, can be traced back to a child having been subjected to hurtful, humiliating, soul-killing neglect and abuse.”

Unable to swallow the lump in her throat, she glanced to Dr. Hayward.

He’d been listening, rapt, but started, when he heard a cough in the audience. Then it seemed to dawn on him, that she needed him. He cleared his throat and stood up.

“I think Officer Dillan makes an important point about responsibility. As a veterinarian, I am at the end of the line in that runaway train of societal failure. I can only try my best to stitch the animals back together. But, the deeper wounds, the scars that you may never see, they’re the ones that I can’t make better. And what’s frustrating, is that it need never have happened to begin with. The issue of abuse––no matter if it’s animal, mineral or vegetable––it’s everyone’s problem. And it’s one that can only be solved with education, involvement, and compassion. Any questions?”

Not a hand was raised, until Peggy raised her own.

“I-I have a question.” She looked out at the audience. “How many of you would sign a vet’s petition, calling for stronger laws that-that might help put a stop to what you saw up on the screen today?”

“Petition?” Paul repeated, unable to squelch the surprise in his voice.

Peggy raised her hand high. With an expanding wave of murmurs, one-by-one, hands rose, until a sea of them filled the auditorium.