The Kennels, Chapter 1

1.

‘Here it is, Ickfield Road.”

Tom watched ahead for any car coming from the opposite direction and turned to the bumpy road leading to the kennels. It was a dreadful drive, with deep holes that seemed to be always pooled with water, and mounds that shook the car passengers around like sand in a rattle. There weren’t any lights, and the windows of the neighbouring farmhouses seemed to be lurking from their hiding places behind the trees like evil cat’s eyes. It hadnt’ rained for a while, but now a ragged white mist seemed to be setting down.

‘What a ghastly night.’ said Tom, as he struggled with the wheel to keep the car from smashing into the wooden fences flanking the road. Jack clutched his handle and didn’t say a word. He was always nervous around cars anyway, and a bad road like that made him feel like he should have gotten a better coverage on his life insurance policy. The drive turned amidst big empty fields sprinkled with construction materials and machinery. ‘I believe they’re looking to enlarge the business’ said Tom. They passed two huge gravel pyramids over six feet tall. ‘I think they’ve been meaning to fix the road for a while but haven’t gotten round to it yet.’ None of that helped Jack, who was very sorry already for having asked for a drive home from Tom after he had told him that he needed to pick up the dog from the kennels on the way from the airport.

The road ended abruptly past the gravel mounds, to a couple of blindingly bright stadium-like lights pointing to the road. If you managed to see past them, there was a long one-storey old house and a sizeable compound of open air spaces delimitated with metal grid and concrete columns. It looked like Guantánamo prision. Tom parked next to a huge, muddy 4x4 and turned off the car.

‘You wanna come?’ he said to Jack.

‘I’d rather wait.’ said Jack, without much thought.

Tom dismounted and walked to the long flat house, feeling his pockets for his checkbook and trying not to tread on the many mud pools in the way. Jack shuffled a bit in his seat, his back already pretty knackered from the flight and now all but done for from the drive. It was very cold and the tip of his nose felt like an egg right off the fridge. He hated that. The stadium lights went right into his eyes. He pulled the visor down but it only helped a little. He wanted to go home. He looked to the long flat house for Tom. It seemed to be taking him forever.

In the corner of his eye a glimpse of movement caught his attention. A little shadow had blocked the lights for a second, perhaps a bat. He noticed then there were long fenced corridors between each space. He couldn’t see any dogs inside the cells from where he was, but Tom had said they were always full. ‘Great facilities you see. Each dog gets a big space to run and a heated refuge. The other place where I used to take Baloo had only a couple of square meters and they promised to walk them twice a day, but you never know if they do, do you. This is a good place. But you need to book with weeks in advance, they’re very popular.’ Jack wasn’t really interested but had nodded out of politeness. Now he was bored, so he got off the car, buttoned up and took a couple of steps in no particular direction, his hands deep in his coat’s pockets, his nostrils smoking white steam. He approached the nearest cell. A hysterical stream of high-pitched barking greeted him. He didn’t like dogs or know much about them, but he could tell a Yorkie when he heard one. Annoying little buggers. The fenced space was as muddy and empty as the fields around. Scattered around where old shoes, leather bones, rubber balls and cloth rags. He didn’t know whether they belonged to the dog or to the kennels. He couldn’t have said for the life of him how long had they been there. Mud seemed to date everything there to the times of World War I.

The yorkie shutted up and peace was restablished. Jack cherished the silence. After a couple of minutes, though, he realised that it was strange. Didn’t Tom say it was always full? Didn’t dogs got excited by other dogs barking? Why was it so silent?

A metal clank clanked behind him. It was the door of the metal shed attached to the fence, which now he saw was like a protected passageway. A young man came out of it covered with a padded jacket, a cap and a blanket, rubbing his black paste framed glasses in his t-shirt. ‘Y’alright?’ he said, striding towards the long flat house and putting the glasses back on. Jack could have sworn without seeing them that they would be greasy and blurry. The bloke went in and he went out in about a second, back in the metal shed, clanking the door shut behind him. Tom came out of the house.

‘Alright?’ he said to Jack. ‘We’re almost done. They’ve gone to fetch him.’

Jack nodded, blowed steam.

‘The owners here’ said Tom in a murmur ‘they’re a middle aged couple, they always seem to be at each other’s throats.’

It started raining. Jack went back in the car.

Ages later, the bloke in a padded coat and cap came out of the metal shed with a bundle of blankets and a dog tied with a rope leash. It was a handsome black labrador, very nervous and very boisterous.

‘Oh, bugger.’ said Jack to himself in the car, with scenes of chaos and mayhem in his mind, in which a black labrador jumped on Tom in the middle of the motorway causing a dozen cars road accident with ten dead and fourty injured.

Tom put his own leash on the dog, who tried to stay put for the operation but was simply too excited to be able to sit still. Tom had never managed to train him properly, but it was a good dog and Tom liked being greeted with such a display of joy. Padded-coat and cap removed the rope leash.

‘’Kay then, see ya.’ He turned and went back into the metal shed.

Tom lead the dog pulling and jumping to the back of the car. The happy labrador tried to jump onto the boot before the door was fully open and banged his head. Jack cursed to himself again. Baloo the dog jumped in successfully the second time and sat down wagging his tale, pretty happy with himself. Tom shut the boot, got in the car.

‘Off we go then.’ said Tom, feeling cheerful. Even though it was so dark and his gesture would probably go amiss, Jack felt the need of smiling to Tom.

They wrestled the road back. Baloo in the boot didn’t make a sound. Jack was tempted to feel relief but reserved judgment. Animals are unpredictable.

They left the road between the farmhouses and entered a more civilised roadway. A few minutes later, already on the motorway, with the constant, almost soothing rubbing of smooth pavement under the wheels, it became starkly obvious that there was no conversation. When Tom spoke again, Jack could have sworn he was just looking for something to break the silence. He wasn’t.

‘How quiet he is, Baloo I mean. How strange.’

Jack nodded and mmmhed.

‘No, I mean it. Do you think he is ok?’

‘Leave him be, he must be tired.’ Jack said, begging that his driver would focus on the road and solely on the road.

‘Tired from what?’ replied Tom, rhetorically. ‘Baloo!’ he called. ‘Are you alright Baloo?’

Oh for Christ sake, cursed Jack inside his head. Do you expect him to reply?
‘Oh, there he is.’ said Tom eyeing the rearview mirror, with a relief people like Jack could never feel or understand.

Jack turned back his head –not even he could tell why- and was startled: there it was, Baloo’s head emerging from behind the back seats, looking at him. He wasn’t panting or moving at all for that matter, just staring right into his eyes.

‘Christ!’ mumbled Jack. ‘He scared me!’

Tom laughed.

‘He wouldn’t harm a fly.’

He eyed the rearview mirror again and Baloo’s eyes confronted him there. Tom realised he understood what Jack had meant, but didn’t mention it.