Dog Days
(Saturday, July 30, 2016)
8: A Vision Softly Creeping
Saturday dawned bright and so hot that Dipper and Wendy curtailed their morning run to only thirty minutes down the Mystery Trail for a mile and a half and then back to the Shack. They came in gasping. "Whoosh!" Wendy said as they mounted the steps to the porch, "How hot's it gonna be today?"
"Hot," Dipper said. Inside, they tuned the TV to the weather net, keeping the sound very low. "Oh, man," Dipper groaned as he flopped onto the sofa next to Wendy, "look at that!"
The local forecast for Central Oregon predicted highs of 102-105 degrees coupled with unusually high humidity for the lower elevations, in the nineties for the west side of the mountains. "We a lower elevation?" Wendy asked, her head thrown back so she was staring up at the ceiling, her long neck glistening with sweat.
"About as low as you can get, here in the valley," he muttered. They heard the attic door open, and a moment later Tripper came bounding down the stairs, all energy and excitement. Behind him came Mabel, who had not slept in Dipper's room the previous night but who had evidently gone up to check on the dog.
"Hi," Mabel said with a yawn. "Hey, Dip, little favor, before you go out in the mornings, walk the dog, OK? He woke me up scratching on the door."
"I did walk him," Dipper said. "First thing when I got dressed to run. Not even an hour ago."
"How'd he do?" Mabel asked.
Fanning himself with his trucker's cap, Dipper glanced at his sister. "What do you expect? He did what he was supposed to," he said. "See, he doesn't even want to go out now. Look at him. He just wants to be with us."
"I've been thinking of making him a sweater," Mabel said, leaning down to scratch the dog's chin.
"Oh, girl, wait until it's cooler!" Wendy told her. "Weather like this, you'll give him a heat stroke."
Mabel agreed: "Yeah, I figured, so I'm gonna make him a little tee shirt instead. And on the back it will say, 'I pooped, I peed, I got the tee shirt!' What do you think?"
"I think Soos will order a thousand of them and give you a quarter for every one he sells," Dipper said.
Mabel bounded in her chair. "Ooh, that would be so cool! So I'll add a little line that says 'Mabel Pines Creations' down at the hem! Of course to be cost effective, I'll have to have the ones we sell printed, not embroidered. Great business idea, though! Thanks, Broseph! Hey, hey, I haven't made it yet, you little wiggle worm!"
A squirming Tripper had jumped in her lap and was enthusiastically licking her face and chin and neck, and she couldn't hold onto him to calm him down. "OK, OK, I'm gonna get some jeans and shoes on, and we'll go visit my pigs and you can run round and round and round! Is that good?"
Surprisingly, Tripper yipped—and it sound like enthusiastic agreement. Mabel went down the hall to her room to change. Tripper jumped onto the sofa and wedged himself in between Wendy and Dipper. "Dude," Wendy murmured, "that would be so sweet if your body temp wasn't over a hundred degrees! Here, I'll give you some room." She scooched over a few inches.
Dipper idly tickled the dog's ears, which he seemed to enjoy. "You like that, boy?"
Again Tripper yipped, very quietly. "Huh," Wendy said. "Sounds like he's trying to answer you."
"Hang on a minute. Down!" Dipper said. The dog obediently jumped off the sofa and sat looking up at him expectantly. Dipper thought for a second. Then he leaned forward and touched one of the dog's paws. "This is your left paw," he said. He touched the other. "This is your right paw. Left. Right. Right. Left. Do you know which is which?"
A yip.
"Show me, boy. Pick up your right paw." Tripper only did a doggy "Huh?" head-tilt, nothing more.
Wendy, still leaning way back, murmured, "Dip, maybe he doesn't get 'pick up.'"
Dipper leaned down again and gently raised the left paw. "Pick up your left paw. Left." He repeated with the right one and then did each twice more. Then he straightened again and said, "Pick up your right paw."
Tripper raised his right foot and let it dangle. Dipper leaned forward again and nudged. "Down. Good boy. Now pick up your left paw."
Tripper raised his left paw.
"Down."
Dipper did a series of four, randomizing them. Tripper never made a mistake.
"This is an amazing dog," Wendy said.
Dipper said, "Tripper, if you can understand what I'm saying, pick up your right paw."
Up it came.
Dipper and Wendy stared at each other. "He is amazing," Dipper said.
But before they could test Tripper's understanding further, Mabel came in. "OK, Trip," she said. "We're gonna go visit the pigs. If I don't put on your leash, will you behave yourself and not run away?"
The right paw came up again.
"He says yes, Mabes," Wendy told her.
Mabel giggled. "Yeah, right, what are you, the dog whisperer? Come on then, but you be a good boy or I'll bring you right back in."
"This . . . is kinda creepy," Dipper said as soon as they were gone.
"Yeah, but he's real cute," Wendy said.
"That's no reason to put up with creepiness," Dipper told her.
She grinned at him. "Hey, I put up with you! Thin ice, Dip!"
He chuckled. "I didn't mean we ought to get rid of him, but a dog like that—how much should we tell Ford?"
"Nothing right now," Wendy said firmly. "Tripper's too cute and too young to have to be locked up in a lab and studied and poked and prodded. And just think, you may be exploring new breakthroughs in canine-human communication!"
"I wonder," Dipper said. "Ever hear of the Clever Hans effect?"
"Nope," Wendy said, flopping her head back again and sighing. "But I'll bet you I'm gonna."
Resisting the urge to go into a full Ford lecture, Dipper said, "OK, there was this horse in, I think, Germany back around 1890 to 1900. Horse's name was Hans."
"Shoulda been 'Hooves,'" Wendy said.
"You sound like Stan. Anyway, Hans's owner thought he was an extra-smart horse and experimented with him. I mean, he asked him questions, and the horse answered correctly."
Wendy nodded thoughtfully. "I think I understand. Like, the guy would ask the horse 'Are you a human?' and the horse would say, 'Nay!'"
Dipper rolled his eyes. "Don't channel Mabel, either. No, it's like he'd ask the horse a math problem—how much is three plus six, for example. And the horse would stamp his foot nine times. He never got an answer wrong. And he could even tap out words. They put a blackboard up with all the letters numbered, like A was one, B was two, and so on up to Z, which was twenty-six taps. If they asked Hans 'Who wrote this piece of music' and then let him hear the beginning of the Fifth Symphony, he'd tap out 'B-E-E-T-H-O-V-E-N."
"Must've taken a long time to tap out a word."
Dipper admitted, "Yeah, it did, but still, he never made a mistake. Sort of like a slow telegraph operator, I guess."
"So since I never heard of this horse, I'm guessing it was all a fraud?" asked Wendy.
"Not exactly," Dipper said. "It turned out that the horse's owner, a guy named, what was it, Oscar something, was giving the horse little signals, but he didn't know he was doing it. Like when the horse was counting, when he got to the right answer, his owner would give just a tiny little nod, not even meaning to, and the horse would see it and stop."
"Like a poker tell!" Wendy said. "Dude, I get it!"
"Right, and so the horse—wait, what? How do you know about poker tells?"
"I've been to a casino before," Wendy said, a little smugly.
Dipper blinked. "What? You're not old enough!"
"But I look old enough," Wendy said complacently. "And when I went with Stan, nobody checked my ID."
"When did you go with—" Dipper put his thumb and forefinger against his eyes, the way Ford did when concentrating. "Tell me later. I was saying, supposedly the horse could also read math problems written on a chalk board. As long as Oscar could see them, the horse got the problems right. But when the horse could see them but the owner couldn't, he messed up every time. It took a lot of study before scientists discovered what was really going on."
"OK," Wendy said, standing up. "So you think Tripper may be picking up on, like, unconscious cues?"
"Might be," Dipper said. "When we don't have a work day ahead, let's test him."
"But still, don't tell Ford."
"Not yet," Dipper agreed.
"Good, that's settled. Let's shower and change clothes. I want just a light breakfast, gonna be so hot today, so think of something."
Mabel and the dog had come back in by the time Wendy and Dipper were ready to eat. They settled on cornflakes with chopped strawberries, plus whole-grain toast with a smear of peanut butter. All the time they ate, Tripper sat beside the table licking his chops and looking forlorn. Dipper glanced at him. "You mooching for a treat?" he asked.
The dog tilted his head.
Wendy said, "'Mooching' means 'wanting,' dude."
Up came the right paw. Dipper finished his breakfast and gave Tripper a doggy chew as a treat.
Tripper ran a lot during the morning, whenever Mabel could go out and watch him, though when the thermometer topped a hundred he declined to go outside. Then he snoozed on the cool floor in the gift shop. He was excellent with children, patient and very gentle. Little Soos and Harmony loved him, and he tolerated their hugs and giggles and Little Soos's vain efforts to pick him up. Not once did he complain.
About half the tourists who came through that day wanted to pet the cute little doggy. Others admired him. A few didn't like dogs. Not being a cat, Tripper didn't force his attentions on that last group. That Saturday the Gnomes also came in to do their dance act.
At first they were all wary of Tripper—Jeff said, "It looks like a fox!"
"No, he's a dog," Mabel corrected. "But he's a good dog, see? Tripper, these are our friends the Gnomes. Be nice to them!"
Only Shmebulock was brave enough to come up and tentatively pat the dog, but Tripper treated him more or less as a young human—nuzzled him and wagged his tail—and finally Jeff got brave enough to come and stroke the puppy's neck. "This is a dog, huh," Jeff said, not making it a question. "We've seen some before, you know. There's a lot of mean dogs in town—I don't think they have homes or human friends. They chase us sometimes. Luckily, we can climb faster than they can run."
"Doesn't Gravity Falls have an animal shelter?" Mabel asked.
"Nope," Wendy said. "Don't think we ever did have one. Used to, if a dog or cat ran off from home, it didn't last long. There are critters around that think they're delicious."
"Werewolves love to eat cats," Jeff confirmed. "And the Woods Gaunts will grab up and eat anything smaller than they are. They used to eat a lot of loose dogs."
"The what?" Dipper asked.
"Woods Gaunt," Jeff said. "It's as tall as a large human male, like the lumberjack man, and it has a great big chest, a real skinny waist, two strong bowed legs, and arms that can reach twice as far as it is tall. Its head is like a bear's skull, sort of, but with a bigger gape and longer fangs. Almost no neck. They hang in the trees and snatch up animals that get too close to the trunk. You just find them up in the high hills. Oh, and a Killbilly will also eat a dog—"
Dipper made a written note of the term "Wood Gaunt" and a mental note to ask Ford about it later—as far as he recalled, and he recalled pretty far, Ford had never mentioned the creature in any of the Journals.
"That's awful!" Mabel exclaimed as Jeff finished his descriptions. "We gotta do something! We've gotta found the Mabel Pines Gravity Falls Humane Animal Center to take care of poor stray animals and find them good homes!"
"Luck with that," Wendy said.
"Don't you think it'd be a good thing?" Mabel demanded.
"It'd be a fine thing," Wendy said. "If you can get people to agree on it and find a place for it and money to build it and somebody who'd staff it and all. I mean, it took, what, thirty years after the dog park was built to open it up to dogs!"
"How'd that even happen?" Dipper asked.
Wendy shrugged. "According to Dad, old Mayor Befufftlefumpter had the dog park built but then thought it was so nice that dogs would only dirty it up, so he banned dogs from it."
"That was kinda nutso," Mabel said.
Wendy nodded. "That was Mayor Befufftlefumpter. Folks said he got a little senile after he passed the age of ninety, but Dad tells me he was always sort of off. Anyways, that was back before Gravity Falls even had a real town council, so the Mayor passed all the laws on his own. Dad says he remembers a time when he—my Dad, I mean—was little and the Mayor outlawed butterflies."
"What? Why?" Mabel asked.
Wendy frowned as she recalled. "Well, he started collecting butterflies and then showed them off at a county fair, only what he'd really collected was just a bunch of dry leaves that he'd cut up into butterfly shapes and pinned to a cork board. He got real mad when they wouldn't fly and in revenge, he banned butterflies."
"But that wouldn't keep them out," Dipper said.
"No, he found that out," Wendy said. "So he passed another law that said any butterfly sighted in Gravity Falls was legally a mutant moth."
"You have to sort of admire him," Mabel said. "He had an answer for everything!"
The work day ended, Teek and Mabel took Tripper to the now-available dog park, and Dipper and Wendy had another movie night. Except they didn't even try to watch a movie. The Corduroy house wasn't air-conditioned, and turning on a fan didn't help all that much. Too hot to joke about bad movies, they decided.
Instead they had one of their mental make-out sessions—they worked off a lot of tension that way—and then later went outside (the night was still sweltering), spread out a blanket on a grassy bank, and lay back and looked up at the stars, still dancing in heat-shimmers even at ten PM.
They held hands, shared thoughts and dreams and just . . . drifted. Had the temperature been fifteen degrees lower, it would have been perfect.
Because Teek and Mabel got back to the Shack first, Mabel fed Tripper and put him to bed, up in the attic. Dipper wasn't home—Mabel didn't expect him until midnight, the rapscallion—so Mabel stretched out on her old bed with Tripper beside her and read for an hour or so.
And Tripper fell asleep with an assortment of doggy sighs and huffs. And dreamed.
You've seen dreaming dogs. Their legs twitch as they chase imaginary bunnies. They may even woof to scare away a formless doggy nightmare. Sometimes they even wake themselves up and leap out of bed, wild-eyed, staring all around for whatever had disturbed their slumbers.
However, Tripper dreamed without any stir. He saw the cage in the woods with the golden thing inside it, and he sensed that it either stood on, or was, a chasm. A split in reality. Get too close to it and you might lose your mind, or be pulled through into horror. And something on the other side was trying hard to pry it open.
He didn't know what. Awful things. Things that hated his friends and meant them harm. Inchoate, half-formed monstrosities, hungry and furious.
And he was so small compared to them. But in the dream he stood guard, ready to give up his life if he had to, to keep his friends safe.
Something invisible growled a half-heard threat.
And in his dream, all Tripper could do was lift his right front paw over and over: No! No! No. . . .