Ruffly Speaking

supposed to... Why is he doing this?”
    She may have missed Steve’s reply: “I haven’t got a clue.”
    Yes, a single incident, one crash of a high jump, can ruin a high-strung obedience dog by making him refuse all jumps ever after. Hauled away from what he considered a vital task, Ruffly might learn a permanent lesson and never work again. So what! This was, for once, no time to discuss dog training. Ruffly’s life was more important than Stephanie’s need for his help. The fire patiently smoldered. It wouldn’t wait forever. Ruffly’s mad forays to the carriage house doors could place him inches from the building when the fire grew tired of this grimy, smoky waiting, gulped for air, found a spark, and exploded in glorious, greedy flames.
    Angrily brandishing the garden fork in the smudgy darkness, her flaming red-gold curls standing out around her head, Leah looked like a particularly beautiful devil venting its fury on the cinders of home. She stomped into the reeking smoke around the burning carriage house and, I assumed, toward Ruffly, who had quit flying around to station himself rigidly in front of the closed doors, where he’d be instantly incinerated when flames shot out or, if the building collapsed, excruciatingly crushed to death by falling timbers and slabs of slate. I remembered how decisively Leah had dealt with Willie and how effectively she’d cut off his yapping and nipping. She, at least, could act. Over her shoulder, she chastised us: “Don’t you people know the first thing about hearing dogs?”
    As I tried to think what the first thing was, Leah approached Ruffly. When she reached him, the smudge around us thickened. “Hurry up!” I shouted to her. “Grab him and run!” Leah bent down. Enraged, I realized that she was murmuring to Ruffly. Starting toward her, I shouted again, “Leah, grab him! Grab him and run! ” But instead of scooping up the little dog, Leah raised the gar-den fork waist high and began to poke at the big iron latch on the carriage house doors.
    “NO!” I screamed.
    Steve’s voice joined mine. “Jesus Christ, Leah, oxygen is—”
    Rowdy had caught the contagious excitement. My efforts to control his joyful bounding slowed me down. Before I reached Leah, she succeeded in lifting the latch. As the door swung open, Ruffly shot through and disappeared into a dense billow of smoke, visible even in the darkness of night, fetid, thick, and hungry for air.
    Doug took over the task of restraining Stephanie, who’d begun to scream; Steve appeared at Leah’s side and started dragging her away; and in one smooth, heart-stopping motion, Rowdy backstepped, twisted his head, and slipped his collar. I dashed after Rowdy and nearly caught him. Only a few yards from the gaping door to that smoldering furnace, I lunged for his tail, even felt its coarse guard hairs brush my fingertips, but there was no stopping him. Before I caught my breath in the smutty air, a streak of white trim and dark wolf gray zoomed after Ruffly, straight into the black smoke, straight into the furnace, straight toward fiery death.
    Burned alive.Rowdy. The crown of creation. The crown of...
    For a second, I froze. Crazed with fear, I groped desperately for smothered memories of fire-safety films and dormitory drill procedures. A lungful of smoke brought me a terrible vision of Rowdy’s thick, beautiful stand-off coat ablaze in an aura of crimson flames. The memories kindled and caught. Stay low. Avoid the real hazard: smoke. At the open door of the still-smoldering building, I dropped to my knees and crawled. Find something to breathe through. My black dress. I tugged the skirt up over my mouth and nose. “Rowdy! Rowdy, come! I love you!” The smoke ate at my eyes like drops of burning acid. “Rowdy, don’t do this to me, you son of a bitch! Rowdy, come! ” Blinded by smoke and darkness, I edged forward. My knee whacked a hard ridge in the floor. A sharp object that felt like iron sliced into my right shoulder. Then something hit me in the face and bounced off. Little dog claws cut through the jersey. A small dog, low to the ground. Ruffly! In seconds, he was gone.
    My chest ached, but the choking and coughing seemed to come from far outside my body. My left hand, searching, palm down, found cracks and grit. With no warning, huge, sharp spikes hammered so fiercely through flesh and tendons that I could have sworn my hand was being nailed to the concrete floor. When a bone-hard mass