HENRY HITZ - WOOF

Henry Hitz taught pre-school for 30 years in the San Francisco public schools and recently retired from 15 years of organizing parents in the Oakland public schools. He lives in Oakland with his wife, his son, two sisters, two dogs, a cat, and various Airbnb visitors and spends an increasing amount of time in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He was recently elected treasurer of the California Writers Club Berkeley Branch. He has published stories in Cube Literary Magazine, Magnolia Review, Scarlet Leaf, and Moonfish. His first novel, Tales of Monkeyman, won the Walter Van Tilburg Clark Prize. His novel White Knight was published in January 2016 by Wordrunner Press. 

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WOOF
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​They call me Herziger, but my real name is Woof. They call me a dachshund, but in reality, I am just a dog. I live with my mother among a pack of wild humans in a big house on a lake.
Mama (they call her Tootsie) is always complaining about the humans. "They chase us around in their deadly cars, beat us with newspapers when we do what comes natural to us, and feed us raw horsemeat and stale, dry, tasteless kibble," she tells me.      
"Mama," I tell her. "You're the one who chases cars."     
"That's just my way of getting even."    
It's true we've had to train them to feed us. It's fairly simple. We howl our heads off. They hate that. They hate our noise. We can get them to do lots of things just by making our noise.     
Are we free? This is a question that has puzzled canine philosophers since the dawn of legend. I don't know if we're free. Humans keep us behind closed doors which only they can open. But you'd be surprised how effective a good howl can be. We almost always get what we want, and that's certainly one definition of freedom.     
I think Mama exaggerates how bad things are for us. She just likes to complain. We've got it pretty good. I'm inclined to think we are free. "We could always run away," I argue with Mama.     
We know of dogs in the woods who have run away and now run quote unquote wild, who spend all of their time hunting rabbit to feed themselves. They're slaves to their hunger. It's a trade-off. The humans provide us with food and shelter, and in exchange, we don't eat them.
  The really wild thing is: they love us. Humans! What a breed! They are so starved for love that all we have to do is curb our natural hostility toward them just a bit, and they slobber all over us with their love. I have this one human, they call him Barney. I call him "Hmmmm," a high-pitched squeal. He's young for a human, maybe 70 in dog years. (We don't know how long they live, but there's one in my pack that is at least 350.) The boy just can't keep his hands off me. He is always hugging on me. He's up on me so much, sometimes I hump his leg just for a joke. He doesn't get it.      
Mama and I are very close. I'm the only one left of her only litter. She has just started telling me things, now that I'm 14. She tells me how for years, when her Time came, the humans would just lock her up, even though all her male friends came around, and she would have given her canine teeth to mate with any one of them, or all of them. Then one spring they took her all the way to this awful prison to breed her, with a complete stranger, a dachshund who cared only about getting off and nothing for her. My father. Whom I will never meet.     
She tells me she had five pups, but that all of them but were sold off. "Did they give you the money at least?" I ask her.     
She laughs. "No, son. They let me keep you. That's all."    
"Why me?" I ask.    
She nips my neck gently. "Because you’re cute. Because that boy, Hmmmm, liked you."
I remember my brothers and sisters dimly. I do remember frolicking with them, and cuddling with them at Mama's teats, wallowing in the sticky smell of warm milk.     
Mama tells me that it is one of the many oppressions we dogs suffer at the hands of men that we cannot breed freely with whomever we like. When I hear this, I grow defiant. "We'll see about that," I snarl. I'm just beginning to notice some powerful fragrances in the air.     
I tell my friend Wow – what humans call a great dane but we just call a giant dog –  what mother has told me. He scoffs at her weakness. "I suppose small dogs do have problems," he says. When I'm with Wow, I imagine we can do anything. No mere human can stand in his way. He's bigger and stronger than any of them. He smells as fresh and powerful as the woods. We roam around the lake, looking for adventure, sniffing for bitches.     
One day we find a big house giving off the sweetest scent imaginable. We know her, of course – we know all the dogs in the area –  Wa-Wa the poodle, and is she hot! The smell brings tears to our eyes. It's sweet and pungent and hangs in the air. It tingles like the smell of lilac blossoms, but with the mouth-watering sweetness of a dog who has just rolled in dead fish.
Wa-Wa lives in a big white house with a perfect lawn rolling down to the lake. An old man, the one they call a caretaker, is riding a little tractor around on the lawn, cutting the grass, but the dogs get so thick cavorting in front of him that he has to stop. Thank goodness. Machines like that give off a high-pitched whine that drives us dogs crazy. The house is surrounded by dogs. Collies, spaniels, setters, labradors, schnauzers, beagles – to us (since we don't make these foolish distinctions), big dogs, little dogs, black dogs, brown dogs, gray dogs, spotted dogs -- you name it, all the males in the neighborhood have come courting here. The noise is terrific.     
At first, the dogs content themselves with pissing around chunks of rival territory. It's like a game to see who can piss the most the fastest, but it's in the spirit of fun, and the lawn in front of the house eventually divides fairly evenly among the dogs.     
Then the old man yells, "Get out of here, damn dogs! Go home!"     
Wow and the bigger dogs discuss attacking the man, but decide that such an attack would only bring retaliation. Instead, they satisfy themselves by crashing through the perfectly arranged flower beds and knocking over the largest blossoms. The man retreats into the house, mumbling ineffectually, "Git! Git, dogs! Git!"     
Frustration runs high. Near the door to the house where the smell is especially strong, a couple of dogs are play-fighting, and the rest of us are surrounding them, egging them on with our barks. The dogs get rougher and rougher, and after a while we all forget it's just play. The fight turns real and the salty, intoxicating scent of blood fills the air.     
But good old Wow, our natural leader by virtue of his size, steps in and, with a bark that terrifies both combatants, breaks up the fight. We all laugh at ourselves for getting so carried away, and thank Wow for keeping a cool head.     
As the dogs begin to realize that no matter what they do, the bitch is not coming out, they turn their ardor on each other. Wow and I make quite a scene when I stick my butt in the air so he can hump me. He gets his big pecker all the way in there too. It hurts, but the smell of his hot breath on my neck is delicious. The dogs surround us and laugh their hard-ons off.  
 Just then the old man comes out of the house again, carrying a shotgun. "Fuck with my garden will you!" he growls. BLAM! He fires into the air. BLAM! BLAM!    
There are enough hunting dogs among us to know what guns can do, and they recommend we disperse. We scatter like a flock of chickens, taking care to run through and destroy as much of the flower beds as we can.     
One day when Wow isn't around, Mama asks me if I want to go down the road with her to see our friend Ruff. There's nothing else to do, so I go along. It's a hot muggy day and our tongues hang out even when we stand still. A car speeds past, ignoring us. Mama has to chase it of course, "Yip-yip-yip-yip." I hang back and wait for her senses to return. "One day you'll be sorry," I tell her. We cut through the woods to avoid the hot alfalfa fields.     
Ruff, a rare dog whose human name and dog name are the same, lives in a tiny farm house that smells of potatoes and manure. The old man who works for Wa-Wa's humans lives here too, but he acts completely different around Ruff. You can't figure humans.     
Ruff is what humans call a mutt, what dogs would call a medium-sized, shaggy, gray dog. Mama tell me Ruff smells like her Time is coming soon. She gives me a wink.
"Mama," I whine. I'm not interested. Somehow, anyone Mama recommends doesn't really turn me on. Besides, I've known Ruff since we were pups. She's like family.    
Ruff is in the house, but she starts to howl when she smells us coming, so her human lets her go just as we scramble out of the woods into her piss perimeter. She yips and yaps in greeting and bites necks all around. We sniff rears. I can't tell about her Time, but I'm sure Mama knows about these things. We chase around the farmyard. We chase the cat until it creeps under the house to a place we can't squeeze. We scare the chickens. We sleep for a time in the shade of the barn.      
I have a dream about Wow licking me off, and I wake up with my slick pecker sticking out of its sleeve. What the hell, I think. Mama's asleep. Ruff is stirring in her nest of hay. I sidle over to and mount her.     
Ruff goes berserk. She jumps out from under me, spins around, and snaps at me, catching a piece of my ear in her pearly teeth. I smell my own blood. Ruff glares at me, growling softly but fiercely. "How dare you just jump me like that!" she growls.     
Mama rouses herself, and with her infallible instincts, figures out exactly what's going on. She tramps right in between us and prances about with her laughing bark. Then she swings by the house and comes back with a juicy bone in her mouth. When Ruff sees her, she squeals, "Hey, that's mine!" and takes off after her.     
We play "Get the Bone" for the rest of the afternoon. We've all forgotten the tension between Ruff and me, though when we part to go home for supper, I look at her differently. On the way home, Mama grumbles about me being so insensitive. "First, son, you have to wait until the scent is really ripe, and even then you let her make the first move!" I don't say anything. I'm annoyed because now I can't seem to help thinking about that stupid Ruff.      
On the way home, Mama is quiet and keeps her distance. She seems inordinately mad. I know her moods. I know she gets depressed sometimes. I usually leave her alone. But for some reason this time I catch up with her and give her a questioning look.     
She slows down and cries a bit. "I never told you what happened to me after you were born, Woof. The next time my Time came, they took me to the vet, you know, the one who gave you those shots. He gave me a shot. I fell asleep. When I woke up, my belly ached and there was a cut in my gut. He had done something that changed me. That delicious yearning just went away. My scent went dry as kibble. My Time stopped coming. It just went away and never came back. It's a terrible feeling, Woof, like a hole where love used to be." She whines some more.  When we get back to our own piss perimeter, she stops. "I can't face them right now, Woof. You go back home. I'm going for a run in the woods for a while."    
I know she's lying. What she's really going to do is go out on the highway and chase cars. I know that's how she lets off steam.     
By the time I get home, it's dark, and the humans make a fuss over me. They feed me my horsemeat and kibble and call Tootsie. They call and call and call.     
Mom, the human female, is funny. Some days she bustles about and takes care of everyone. Some days she forgets to feed us. After dinner she takes off on foot into the night to look for Mama. She doesn't find her of course. Mama comes back herself before Mom does. When she does get back, Mom pats us both and closes us in the play room where Mama and I sleep on a human size bed.     
A few days later, I meet Wow at the top of the wooded hill behind the house. It's another hot wet day. We can smell the coming rain, so we chomp a bit of grass, but the sun is still blazing in the sky. We decide to stick to the shade of the woods.     
We tromp slowly through the underbrush, our tongues hanging out. We chase everything that moves – squirrel, chipmunk, rabbit, field mouse, butterfly – but without much conviction. We rest in the shade of a rusted water tank, in which we can smell without difficulty a soggy dead rat.     
As soon as I open my mouth, I regret it. "Ruff's Time is coming," I say.  "Mmmmmm," says Wow. "Now that's a choice morsel."     
The way he says that rubs me wrong. Somehow, Ruff isn't just another bitch in heat. So I drop it.     
Wow doesn't though. "So," he says. "Shall we go for her?"    
I stammer. "Um, I said it was coming, it's not here yet," I say.     
"Oh," he says with a funny, hurt look. I've seen the look before, when I've hesitated to share a bone with him. It is generally followed by an angry growl which persuades me not only to share the bone but to eagerly offer him the whole thing. Not this time buddy, I think to myself.     
The next puff of wind from the other side of the hill brings with it the strong pissy smell of a deer. "Mmmm," says Wow. He gives me a look. Few animals challenge Wow the way deer do. Rarely does he encounter an animal anywhere near as big and fast as he is. And one that eats only vegetables is irresistible, since it offers no threat.     
On the other hand, deer are boring to me. They way over my head, with my pitiful stubby legs. I'm a good sport though, and I lumber along after Wow as he takes off at full speed after the deer scent.     
It isn't long before I lose him completely and find myself all alone in the woods. It's too hot to run anyway. I wander a bit, not really sniffing for anything, just enjoying the woods. I even find myself ambling away from the diminishing scent of Wow and the deer. Toward something, but I don't know what.     
At the bottom of a ravine, I'm hit with a smell I've smelled before but never known what it was. It's a dog smell, but it's not a dog smell. The piss is sweeter, fresher, as though eats live game. And the smell just sits there, hanging in the air. I follow it, curious, but careful. It's coming from a tree. I sniff around the bottom of the tree. There's a hollow under the tree and among the roots, such as bunch of rabbits might make, but larger. I should know better, but I'm bored, so I bark, poised to high-tail it out of there if it's a skunk or a weasel.    
I hear some rustling from inside the tree and draw back behind another tree to watch. After a while, an animal does emerge from under the tree. It's very quiet. Its eyes are sharp like a cat's, and blink against the light. It's about the size of Ruff, the shape of a dog but with a long bushy tail tipped with white. Dogs are color blind, but this creature is the color of a setter I know whose human name is "Red." It moves like a cat, too.    
I've heard both human and dog legends about such a beast, though I've never seen one before. Dogs call it "Er-er-er," which means something like "wild night grandfather." Humans call it a fox.          
It slinks right up to me, without saying a word. I bark to scare it, but that er-er-er is not afraid of anything. It stares at me with an utterly unnerving confidence. It yawns. Politely but firmly, that yawn says, "Please go away. I'm sleeping."    
I don't argue. This thing is too much for me with its silent stare. I move on. The fox returns to its den.     
But it has upset me. For some reason. Its stare speaks of a purity of life that I can barely imagine, mired as my life is in the compromise with humanity. I know what it is: freedom. Freedom from having to be somewhere to get fed. Freedom from the cloying “love” of humans which is more about them than it is about us. A sense of being a part of nature, not imprisoned in some artificial habitat. 
I strut about as wild as the fox. I close my mind to the sophisticated thoughts of dogdom and listen only to my instincts. I stalk through the woods as if looking for prey, for rabbit, for squirrel. I perk up my ears and sniff my nose to be flooded by the sounds and smells of the woods.     
The next thing I know I'm hit with a blast of the dead fish smell of ripe bitch, and not just any bitch either. Ruff. I'm right up on her piss-perimeter.    
Before I see her, I can hear her in her yard licking herself. What a smell! Holy dogshit.      She smiles at me coyly. My tongue hangs out and slobbers, and not just from the heat. I feel the air against my unsheathed pecker. She squeals a greeting. I try to squeal back, but I'm speechless. I sniff her awkwardly. She laughs and moves away. Did I do something wrong? My heart's beating so fast I can't hear myself think. I do hear Mama's voice in my brain saying "Wait," but I'm up against the power of nature itself.    
I approach Ruff again, questioningly, tentatively. She giggles, moves away, and sits again. I can see that her hind parts are swollen and juicy. It's all I can do to keep myself from jumping her. I think she even wants me to, but I can't quite believe it either. Me? I'm too little for her. My little thing will never satisfy all that yearning I smell. And why does she keep moving away? I manage her name. "Ruff." She lets me get closer next time but she moves away again, though not as far. My balls are throbbing. I can't stand it. Finally I get one leg up on her. She bites my neck, but it doesn't hurt. She pulls away again, but only about half my length. I swing the other leg over.     
Just then there's a raging bark swooping down from the hill from the way I'd come. Ruff jumps out from under me. Both of us turn toward the sharp noise. My body stiffens as my pecker goes limp.    
It's Wow. Any other time, the sound of his deep, sharp bark would delight me, but not today. I poise myself toward the sound of him crashing through the underbrush as if it was my worst enemy. When he hears I am not greeting him, he slows his approach.    
I won't glance at Ruff for fear she'll somehow show me she'd rather have him. Who wouldn't? Besides, dog law says he's the biggest, he goes first, friendship or no friendship.      But I say, law or no law, he doesn't.     
He strides up to us and laughs at my fierce stance. "Hey, Woof, it's only me," he says.      I growl at him and stare with all the confidence of that fox.     
Wow ignores me. He goes right up to Ruff and struts around her, licking his chops disgustingly as he sniffs her fragrant rear. His big thing hangs down the length of my tail, the girth of my leg.    
"No," I yap at him with all the ferocity I can muster. He does glance at me and pause his obscene dance, but only for a tail-wag.     
I refuse to look at Ruff, but it sounds like she's reacting to Wow with the same kind of infatuating tease that she used on me, damn her soul. I lose my head.     
I leap at Wow's neck and manage to break the skin of his shoulder. He stares at me, first in amazement, then in fury. He knocks me silly with his huge paw and shows me that he can fit my whole head in his mouth. But I'm inconsolable. I go for his underside and sink my teeth into his balls. This enrages him still more and soon we are all over each other, no holds barred.     
Ruff howls her head off at us, but I hardly hear. The blood smell has me crazed. I'll kill this dog. If I don't die first.     
From the corner of my eye, I see the old man come out of the house with his gun. "Stop it, dogs. Go away. Git," he yells. He fires the gun in the air, BLAM! Wow starts to leave like any sane dog, but I jump at his rear haunch and take out a kibble-sized chunk of flesh.
We keep at it, ignoring the old man. He fires a couple more times, then retreats into the house. Mostly Wow draws back his pointy-nosed self and tries to get me to listen to reason. "Only if you leave," I spit at him.     
"C'mon, Woof, the law's the law."    
"Eat your law."    
"If you don't stop, I'm going to have to hurt you," he threatens. Since I can't see out of one eye for the blood, it seems to me like he's already done this.     
I'm only vaguely aware, but I can smell other dogs arriving on the scene, amazed that the fight has continued despite the gun shots. They approach gingerly, but relentlessly, no more able to resist a good dog fight than a bitch in heat. Luckily for them, the other dogs don't come on to Ruff, no doubt waiting for Wow to have first dibs after doing me in. But they may be surprised.     
Then I hear my human, Hmmmm, running down the road, calling "Herziger! Herziger!" There is terrible fear in his voice. Out of the corner of my eye I see him plow into the pack of dogs surrounding me and Wow. But they're not about to let some toy-sized human mess up the fight of the century, the fight between the giant and the runt, the colossus and the dwarf. The other dogs jump Hmmmm, and soon it's his blood I smell.     
In other circumstances, I might have let sentimental duty snap me to my senses and jumped into the other fray to protect my human. But I have other things on my mind. I am going to win first dibs on Ruff or die trying.     
I'm holding my own with Wow. His size is not such an advantage when I can jump from underneath him and nip at his chest and his balls. I am tiring though. My eyes and mouth are filled with blood. I've only got three working legs. There are open wounds oozing all over my little body. I'm beginning to forget what the fight was about. I know it's too late for me to do much with, what's-her-name, Ruff.    
Then I smell a great cloud of dust and hear human Mom's car, followed by Mama's yip-yip-yip. Mama jumps right in between us, glaring back and forth at Wow and me with a look that makes us ashamed. I'm secretly grateful and pull back to lick my many wounds.   
I look around and discover that Ruff isn't even in the yard any more. I smell that she's gone inside the house. My body suddenly floods with pain. I see blood gushing out. I glance at Wow and see that he isn't hurt at all.     
Mom is making a big fuss over Hmmmm. He has a small bite in his leg. She's got a blanket on him and is carrying him to her car. When she has him lying down in the back seat, she turns her attention to me. "Look at you, bad dog. I suppose I have to take you to the vet. It looks like your leg's broken." She dumps me on the floor in the back, next to Hmmmm, who is crying.     
"Here goes the ambulance," Mom says as she takes off down the road. I hear Mama chasing after us, yip-yip-yip. She wants to come too. I whimper. "That damn Tootsie," Mom says. "Get out of the way, stupid dog!" The car swerves.     
Then there's an awful thunk and an ear splitting squeal. "Oh, no," Mom moans. "Not now."    
Mom stops the car, and in no time has Mama in the back with us. She's been hit by the car and she's hurt worse than me. Her eyes don't focus. She can't hold her head up. Her body alternately spasms and goes limp. She whimpers all the way to town. My eyes flood with tears. It's my fault, I think. Then I pass out.     
When I wake up I'm in a cage suffused with the sickly sweet smell of death. There's no smell of Mama anywhere near, though I can smell all kinds of other dogs, cats, and sick birds.  
When they finally take me home with bandages on my leg and ears, I still can't smell any more than the merest traces of Mama. Hmmmm, himself with a bandage on his leg, finally tells me, tearfully, "We had to have her put to sleep, Herziger. I'm sorry."     
Put her to sleep! You mean you killed her, I think. Some kind of love.     
That night the sky breaks open and the air fills with thunder, lightning, and rain. I curl up under Hmmmm's bed.    
After that, I don't see Wow or Ruff for a long time. I mope around pretty close to home. Sometimes I do go into the woods and visit the fox though. I love to look into his clear eyes and wonder what it would be like to have such dignity, such freedom, and to be so free from doubt.