The Dogs of Winter Read online

  “That’s it!” I cried, springing to my feet. “Come on!”

  I ran as fast as I have ever run to the train station. I raced down the stairs two at a time, skidding on the marble floor, Rip, Little Mother, and Grandmother streaming behind me, and Smoke and Lucky ahead weaving in and out of the coats and legs and boots and arms and bags and eyes that did not see us.

  Smoke stopped. Lucky skidded into Smoke. Smoke cocked his head to one side. I stopped and tried my best to hear above the crowds coming and going and the sigh and whistle and hum of the trains.

  And then I heard it — a young boy’s voice farther down the long hallway calling, “Puppies! Puppies for sale!”

  I ran and pushed my way through the crowds until we found Vadim. There he was, sitting at the feet of a statue, the puppies sleeping in his lap. Little Mother yelped with joy and began sniffing her puppies all over.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I screamed.

  Vadim shrugged and scratched at a sore by his mouth. “I just thought I’d get a little more money…. And besides, they’d be better off in someone’s home than starving on the streets with you.”

  I snatched the puppies from his lap. They whimpered in my arms.

  “They need to be with their mother,” I snapped. “They need her.”

  Vadim sprang to his feet. He pushed his face close to mine and growled, “What good do mothers do, Dog Boy? Tell me that.” His face was red and pitted with pain. “Do you see our mothers here?” he demanded. “Do you see anyone here taking care of us?”

  I wrapped the puppies under my coat. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “We can’t afford to have friends out here on the streets, you stupid little kid,” he said. “We can only look after ourselves.” He shoved me backward. Smoke and Lucky stepped toward him and growled.

  Vadim threw up his hands. “You’re crazy,” he said. “You with these dogs.”

  He pushed through the crowds of people, away from us. Then he stopped and shouted, “You’ll never make it, Sobachonok. The winter will get you or the gangs or the militsiya, but you won’t make it.”

  And then he was gone, lost amid a forest of legs.

  I slumped to the floor and took the puppies from my coat. The dogs hovered around us, sniffing and nuzzling and licking.

  I leaned my head back against the cold wall. The lights dripping like ice shone above us, each grand cluster marching in a straight line down the long hallway of the train station. I closed my eyes against the brightness.

  Where could I go now? Our Glass House was burned to the ground. I could not go back with the children beneath The City, I could not go back to the Sister of Mercy. I could not trust any of them.

  “What do we do?” I asked Smoke. Smoke sighed and laid his head across his paws. All of us were huddled in a far corner of the train station. We had gone aboveground earlier to buy food. The world above was cold, so very cold. The air cracked inside my lungs every time I breathed in. We saw few other children and even fewer dogs. The small, lifeless bodies of frozen birds littered the sidewalks. Before I could stop them, Rip and Lucky snapped up the birds and swallowed them whole.

  “Perhaps we can stay here in the train station,” I said. “Just for a while. Surely the police wouldn’t force us out into this cold.”

  And so we stayed for a time. We left the station only to buy food. Even Smoke, who normally went his own way, stayed close and slept. The cold marble floor was hard on Grandmother’s old bones. She limped and had trouble getting up from her sleep. So during the day, I gave her my coat to sleep on. It was not so cold in the train station during the day, and besides, I was a young boy and she was an old babushka.

  There were other people who came to the station for money. No children, but grown bomzhi. One old man came dressed every day in a tired suit and a big fur shapka on his head. Pinned to his skinny chest were grand ribbons and medals. In his hand he clutched a small tin.

  “Did you get those ribbons for running the fastest?” I asked.

  Clink! A hand dropped a coin in the tin held by the man of the ribbons and medals.

  The old man glared down at me and did not answer.

  “I have never been given a ribbon or a medal, but I can run very fast,” I bragged.

  Another hand stuffed a folded ruble in the tin. “Spasibo, sir,” said the man of the ribbons and medals.

  “My mother taught me to always say thank you too,” I said, nodding. “Do you still have a mother?” I asked the man.

  Still, he would not look at me, he would not answer.

  I stroked Lucky’s ears. “I had a mother,” I said. “I have not seen her in a long time — since the leaves were just beginning to fall. I am starting to forget her.”

  The old man of the ribbons and medals glanced down at me. He rubbed a dirty finger behind his glasses. “Chto delat? What is to be done?” he said with a sigh.

  He took the folded ruble from the tin and handed it to me. Then, without a word, he walked down the long hallway, up the stairs, and to the world beyond.

  Days passed but the bitter cold did not. It was so cold, the great river that wound this way and that through The City froze solid. It was too cold to snow, I heard people in the shops say. “I did not think such a thing was possible,” I said to Little Mother as she nursed her growing puppies. The cold was endless, like winter in the Snow Queen’s eyes.

  I began dreading my trips aboveground for all the frozen bodies now lying in gutters and next to the heat grates: not just birds now but cats and dogs and puppies. One day I saw a crowd gathered around a spot on the sidewalk. I pushed my head through the forest of legs. There, curled next to a doorway on a piece of cardboard was a small girl. She could have been just taking a nap, resting after playing in the snow at the park. But her face was gray and her lips were blue and her eyes with the dark half-moons beneath stared at nothing. A great sadness swept over me. The Snow Queen had stolen her away in sleep. Where was God, where were the angels and the saints when this girl lost her way?

  A siren wailed in the distance. Rip, Lucky, and Smoke threw back their heads and howled a sad, sad song of good-bye to the frozen girl.

  I thought of Vadim’s words: “You’ll never make it, Sobachonok. The winter will get you or the gangs or the militsiya, but you won’t make it.”

  One morning, I awoke to a beautiful sound filling the train station. It was not the hiss and whirr of the train track, or the whistle of an approaching train. It was not the whoosh of the train doors opening and closing or the click click of boot heels on the marble floors. This sound brought to mind summer and painted wooden horses going up and down and round and round in a circle, and the circuses I had seen on TV. This sound soared and swooped and dipped like swallows.

  I jumped to my feet and clapped my hands. “Do you hear it?” I asked the dogs. “Music!” Lucky yawned and wagged his tail. The dogs and I followed the sound.

  The maker of the music was a man with a long white beard. Against his chest he held a box with yellowed piano keys and shiny buttons. One hand swept across the keys while the other hand pushed the buttons. All the while, his arms squeezed the box in and out. It breathed, the box did, in great sighing, singing gulps like a dragon without fire.

  “What is it?” I asked the man.

  He turned his face in my direction but looked past me. “It is an accordion,” he said to the air beside me.

  “I think the accordion is the most beautiful sound on earth,” I declared. The man smiled and nodded and played.

  I sat at the feet of this man and listened. I rocked and smiled and sometimes even danced. The dogs yipped. Lucky tried to sing along.

  And always the clink clink of money in his tin.

  At the end of the day, the Man of the Accordion folded his stool and put the money from the tin into a small leather bag.

  “Where are you, boy?” he asked, his milk-colored eyes passing over me.

  I laughed. “Why, I am right here.”
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  He gave me a handful of rubles. “You brought me luck today.”

  “Thank you very much!” I had not seen so much money in a long time.

  The Man of the Accordion unfolded a long white cane with a red tip. “You’re most welcome, young man.” He slung his accordion over his shoulder and tap tapped his way down the long hallway to the stairs.

  Again he was there the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. And always, I sat with him and listened to his music.

  “Good morning,” I would say to him as he unfolded his stool and folded his long white cane.

  “Good morning to you too, my young friend,” he would say, smiling in the general direction of my face.

  Halfway through his day of playing, he would hand me a wad of rubles and say, “We need food and drink if we are to play and dance the rest of the day. Do you think someone is selling pirogi today?”

  Up the stairs the dogs and I would dash in search of pirogi. I liked my pie filled with cheese. The old Man of the Accordion preferred his stuffed with potatoes. After the second day, he gave me an extra coin and said, “The dogs need lunch too.”

  The days passed now with music and dancing and hot pirogi. I did not feel bad taking some of the old man’s money at the end of every day. He said I brought him luck. “Who can resist an old blind man and a young boy with dogs?” he said, as I walked him up the stairs to the world above.

  That night, the wind was sharp as a knife, but it had warmed up enough to snow. “Ah,” said the old man. “Perhaps that killing cold has finally broken.”

  I nodded.

  His hand gripped my shoulder. “But what about you, my young friend? Where do you go at night?”

  “Go?”

  “Do you have a home?”

  “This is my home,” I said. “Mine and the dogs.”

  He sighed like his accordion. “I have heard of children like you — bezprizorniki — the neglected ones. It is Russia’s dark shame.”

  I shrugged. “We are warm, the dogs and I, and not as hungry thanks to you.”

  The old man shook his head, his long white beard waggling. “You must be careful, my friend. It is not safe for a young boy like you. There are gangs of teenage boys just looking for someone weaker to prey upon.” He shook his head again. “Very bad, these boys. They are like wolves.”

  I had seen these gangs of boys the old man talked about. They wore chains and leather and their hair rose in impossible ways. From time to time, they would approach me, flinging hard, nasty words in my face. If I had spoken those words, my mother would have slapped me. But I was not afraid of these gangs: The dogs never let them get close.

  I touched the old man’s hand. “Don’t worry. The dogs watch over me.”

  Two days later, I once again searched for the best pirogi for me and the Man of the Accordion, and meat for the dogs. The day was unaccountably mild. The brutal fist of winter had opened. The wind blew warm, soft air from the sea; the frozen branches of the sleeping birch and fir trees relaxed and dripped. Shop owners stood outside in the sun and talked.

  I will admit, we were gone longer than we should have been. Even the dogs turned their faces up to the sun. “We should bring Grandmother and Little Mother and the puppies up here to enjoy the warmth and the fresh air,” I said to Smoke and Lucky.

  Reluctantly, I took the steps down and down into the train station. Lucky and Smoke refused to leave their sunny spot on the sidewalk. “I’ll be back with the others soon,” I called to them.

  I had not gone far down the long hallway when I heard a sound that turned my blood to ice: the frantic barking of Grandmother and Little Mother. I dropped the package of food and sprinted down the hallway. The barking of the dogs mixed with cries of “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

  The sight that greeted me was this: the Man of the Accordion surrounded by four skinny, leather-clad things — like a gang of crows — with chains and impossible hair. At the feet of the old man were a growling, snarling, shivering Grandmother and Little Mother trying their best to protect him and the puppies.

  The gang shoved the old man off his stool. The tin with the coins and the rubles clinked to the floor. One of the boys swooped in and scooped up the money.

  “No!” cried the old man. “How can you steal from an old blind man?”

  “Get the accordion,” the tallest of the Crow Boys commanded.

  Grandmother stood over the old man, growling and snapping at the boys.

  A boot-clad foot flew out and kicked Grandmother in the side, sending her skidding across the floor.

  The sight unfroze me. “No!” I screamed.

  I flew at the Crow Boys with all my might. I whirled and spat and kicked and punched. “Leave them alone!” I cried.

  One of the boys punched me in the face. A warm, coppery taste filled my mouth. I spat out a tooth.

  “Don’t hurt them,” the old man pleaded.

  The gang turned their attention back to the old man and his accordion. The tallest of the Crows smacked the old man in the face and grabbed the strap of the beautiful accordion. “Give it to me,” the boy snarled.

  I rushed at the boy and slammed into the back of his knees. He folded in half. A hand grabbed the back of my coat and flung me aside like garbage. I grabbed a long, pencil-thin leg and bit as hard as I could. Little Mother bit the other leg.

  “Get off me!” the voice above the legs cried. He flung first Little Mother, then me against the wall. Little Mother let out a pitiful scream. I tried to rise, I tried to call to her, but I could not breathe. It was as if, like the old man’s accordion, all the air had been squeezed out of me.

  And then I heard two things: the faraway tweet tweet! of a policeman’s whistle, and the roar of angry dogs. Then I heard the frantic cries of the Crows. “Help!” “What the —” “Get them off me!”

  I pushed myself up on one elbow. Smoke and Lucky tore and lunged at the boys. Blood speckled and smeared the floor. Even though they were only two dogs, they fought like twenty.

  I crawled over to Little Mother and Grandmother, who cowered over the puppies.

  The tweet tweet of the militsiya’s whistle grew closer.

  A crowd had formed around the boys and the Man of the Accordion.

  Someone helped the old man up from the floor. Blood streaked his white beard. “They saved me,” the old man said, trembling. “The boy and the dogs.” Even though they could not see, his milky eyes searched for me anyway.

  The policeman trotted up to the crowd and blew his whistle one last time. “What’s going on here?” he barked. His tall black boots shone like black mirrors.

  I wanted to take the old man’s hand and tell him I was okay and that the dogs had protected his beautiful music and us. But I was no longer a stupid little boy. I knew the policeman would not help me. The police meant the orphanage or worse. The policeman would take me away from the only family I had.

  Quietly, while the crowd helped the old man, and while the policeman gathered up the Crow Boys, the dogs and I slipped into a bathroom and hid.

  I checked the dogs over for wounds. Grandmother was very sore on her side and would limp the rest of her life. Little Mother had a lump the size of a small potato on the side of her head. The puppies licked and licked her ear and her face.

  I slumped against the cold tile wall and cried myself to sleep.

  When I woke, I washed the blood from my face and hair. I poked my tongue in the empty space where my tooth had been. When I was a little boy living with my mother, I would have saved the tooth under my pillow for the tooth fairy. But I was no longer a little boy. I did not believe in fairies.

  It was unusually quiet on the train platforms. I had no idea if it was day or night or had become day again. I walked back over to the place where the old man with the snow-white beard had played his accordion. He was not there, but the bloodstains were.

  I knew then, he would not be back.

  Rip sniffed behind a trash bin near the bloods
tains. He looked at me, wagged his little tail, and yipped his come-see yip.

  “What is it now, Rip?” I asked, kneeling beside him. And then I saw it: a small white tooth glowed like a pearl in the train station light. My baby tooth.

  I picked the tooth up. “I should throw it away,” I said to Rip. “It is only a stupid baby tooth.”

  Instead, I dropped it in my pocket and ran my thumb over its bumpy hardness.

  A train eased to a stop. Smoke looked up at me. I looked at Smoke.

  The train doors slid open. I lifted the puppies into my arms. “Let’s go,” I said.

  And so in this way, and for the rest of that long winter, the trains became our home. And because the trains were our home, so The City was our home.

  The trains were warm and the trains were mostly safe. We learned we were most invisible when we rode them late at night and early in the mornings. The people who rode the trains at those ghost hours mostly slept or were too drunk to care about a small, dirty boy and his seven dogs.

  We learned the best stops to find food. At this stop, the garbage cans in the subway station were rarely emptied. At that stop, the butcher put out meat scraps and bones in the alley for the dogs. A kind grocer at a stop on the west side of The City saved old bread and expired tins of fish for me.

  And once a month, in the tumbledown buildings near the railroad tracks, the Christian Ladies came with food and clothes and, sometimes, doctors. Homeless children crept and ran and swaggered from every direction for a bowl of kasha or shchi — made with only cabbage and a thin broth — and hunks of bread.

  The Christian Ladies set up in the empty peasant market. “Come, children,” they would call. And come they did.

  They pushed and shoved and elbowed their way to the pots of porridge and soup and the loaves of bread. The dogs and I watched. When the crowd thinned and the children were busy eating, I took my turn. I held out a bowl and said, “Please,” and when I returned my bowl, I said, “Thank you.”