The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach Page 4

  “Whoa, man, there are a lot more here than I expected,” he said as we pulled into the parking lot near the boathouse. The pack had nearly doubled since I’d first described it to him.

  The dogs, with their uncanny sixth sense, immediately pegged Brandon for a good guy and bonded with him right away. We spent the morning hanging out with the pack, and Brandon helped me name a few dogs that I hadn’t been able to come up with appropriate monikers for yet. Then we hit the road.

  I’d never been to the place we were going, and the incomplete, cartoonish road map Pam and I had gotten from the car rental depot in San Juan was no help whatsoever. Most of the roads we needed to travel weren’t even on it, and Brandon wasn’t much help since he’d never been outside the continental United States before. So we tooled around Fajardo, the community near where the Seven Seas Beach was supposed to be located. After several wrong turns through some questionable neighborhoods, we found our spot, a beautiful crescent-shaped bay begging us to get in and explore.

  We parked on a side street, grabbed our snorkeling gear, and made for the far end of the beach on foot, knowing there’d be better snorkeling by the reef. Since it was a weekday, there were just a few folks walking the shoreline. We would have the water to ourselves.

  In the distance, waves were breaking over the barrier reef. We jumped in and swam out to where the action was. We spent a good hour snorkeling through the intricate paths of coral mapped out on the sea floor, using the gentle surges and currents to propel ourselves through the valleys of undersea architecture. Every few minutes, we surfaced to compare notes.

  “Dude! Did you see the sea turtles back there?”

  “Amazing, man! Or the big manta ray?”

  “I know, so awesome!”

  “Let’s keep swimming, man!”

  We seemed to be seeing and thinking the same things. It was fantastic.

  Then we noticed some men spearfishing on the reef closer to shore. We weren’t anywhere near them, so we didn’t give them another thought, focusing instead on the incredible theater below.

  The next time we surfaced, the men were standing on the reef right over us, homemade tridents and spearguns in their hands.

  “Hey, how’s it going, man?” we said, and gave them a friendly wave. The men said nothing; they just stared at us coldly. They didn’t seem to be fishing anymore. I had that foreboding feeling I’d had many times in the past, right before things went south. Something wasn’t right.

  During my short time on the island, it had already become apparent that Puerto Rico was struggling between two worlds. Since it’s an unincorporated territory of the United States, the residents are American citizens, but they don’t have all the same rights that Americans living in the States do. They can’t vote for the president and aren’t even represented in Congress, but they can be drafted into the military. Approximately half the islanders want to be independent from the United States, and the other half want to be the fifty-first state. The former group tends to be pretty hostile to non-Puerto Ricans living on the island. Anti-American demonstrations weren’t uncommon during our time there. The international school in Palmas del Mar, where we lived, and another in San Juan were shut down due to bomb threats more than once.

  Living in this strange limbo has taken its toll on the Puerto Rican people. The crime rate was already high, but got worse when the military shut down its bases on the island. During the twentieth century, there were as many as twenty-five different installations, but the Air Force and Navy left, leaving just the U.S. Coast Guard and Puerto Rico National Guard facilities. Those bases had been a boon to the local economy, as were big companies like the one my wife was working for, but they were starting to shut down their local facilities too. For all the protests about the weapons training facility that had been located on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, when the military pulled up stakes there and elsewhere in the early years of the millennium, a lot of residents felt it in their pocketbooks. The median income in Puerto Rico is about half what it is in Mississippi, the poorest of the fifty states.

  But the vast majority of people don’t react by threatening visitors. The spearfishermen might have been pissed off that we invaded their locals-only space, but I had a feeling there was more to it than that.

  “C’mon, man, let’s get outta here!” I said to Brandon.

  “Naw, let’s keep swimming, dude!” He clearly wasn’t getting the bad vibe I was from our new neighbors.

  “Brandon,” I said a little more urgently, “we need to get back to our stuff.” We’d left some gear and our towels on the beach.

  He quit arguing, and we started making our way back to shore through the maze of coral. But after just a few minutes, we looked up and saw the men standing on the reef right next to us again.

  “Aw, shit,” I said under my breath. Brandon had continued swimming and was a short distance away from me now, still exploring the reef. “Brandon! We need to go . . . now!”

  I felt something sharp poke my lower back. I pretended not to notice. I put my snorkel in my mouth, dropped my face into the water, and started to swim.

  A harder jab this time, on the back of my surf shorts. I looked up to see one of the guys with a trident towering over me.

  “How’s it going, bro?” I said. “You catch any fish yet?” I smiled and waved. “Have a good day, man!”

  Brandon was starting to catch on, and we swam away as fast as we could, slipping through narrow coral pathways we normally would have avoided. But these fishermen, or whatever the hell they were, obviously knew the reef much better than we did. At every turn, these assholes were right behind us or alongside us.

  We put our heads down and made a last hard push to get to shore as quickly as possible. As we sprinted out of the water and looked around, the men were gone.

  “Where the hell are they?” I said, catching my breath from the swim.

  And that’s when we noticed that our stuff was gone as well. They’d taken everything, even our shoes and towels. Fortunately, I had stashed my truck keys under a rock a few yards from where we’d left our things on the beach. Otherwise, we’d have been screwed.

  “Aw, man. They took all our shit,” Brandon said.

  “Forget it, man. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  We hightailed it down the beach toward the truck, wondering if the guys were going to jump us along the way. The beach was hot as hell and covered in pebbles and small shells, tearing and cutting into the soles of our feet. At the entrance there was a small park and a lookout area with benches. Sure enough, the ass-hats were sitting there, waiting for us.

  “Amigos! You looking for something?” They said something else in Spanish, but hell if I knew or even cared what it was. One of the men held up my gear bag, a big shit-eating grin on his face.

  “What are you going to do, man?” Brandon asked me, as if I were actually going to take on a couple of guys carrying spearguns.

  “Not a goddamn thing,” I said.

  I’d learned before we even moved to Puerto Rico that most robberies and thefts are committed against tourists because they’re suspected of carrying more cash than the locals. Local thieves also know that foreign visitors generally don’t pursue charges once they find out what’s involved. In order to press charges or file a theft report, the victim must be willing to sign a contract with the police stating that if the criminal is apprehended, the victim will return to the island for the trial at his or her own expense. If for some reason the victim will not or cannot return to testify, the Puerto Rican government will issue an arrest warrant for the victim for failing to appear. And who’s going to take the time and incur the expense of coming back for a lost camera or, worse, risk going to jail themselves?

  In other words, I knew these guys were going to get away with it—and I knew they knew it too.

  “We need to get to the truck fast, okay?” I said. “On three, you run your goddamn ass off. You drop something, you leave it behind. Am I clear?
”

  One of the other men waved more of our things at us, laughing.

  Brandon and I looked at each other. “Three! Go! Go! Go!” I may have been a lot older, but I could still outrun a teenager when I needed to. The men stood up and raced after us.

  I clicked the door locks open with the remote, and we jumped in and locked the doors behind us. Safely inside, the engine running, we realized the men had given up the chase about halfway to the truck. We should have been relieved, but we quickly realized we’d been outmaneuvered again. The road we were parked on dead-ended fifty yards up the road at the entrance to a lighthouse located at the end of the peninsula. There was only one way out. And not only were the men standing across the two-lane road in front of us blocking it, but they had evidently picked up a few friends.

  “Let’s see how they do against twenty-five hundred pounds of metal and plastic.” I put the truck in gear and floored it, heading straight for the human roadblock. “You up for a little bowling?”

  Brandon was too scared to laugh and smiled nervously.

  The human chain parted at the last second, and we flew through the gap. Gobs of spit splattered the windshield, and we heard the sounds of their hands slapping the sides of the truck as we passed. My heart was beating in my neck. Brandon’s had practically stopped beating. Escaping hostile spearfishermen and bursting through human roadblocks weren’t exactly the extreme sports he’d had in mind when he came to visit.

  After we’d returned home and told Pam what had happened, she said, “What makes you think you’ll be able to get away safely the next time something like this happens? This could have ended so badly, Steve. This just freaks me out.”

  The stress of finding and burying dead dogs each day, along with tending to the sick, injured, and starving that were somehow still alive, was beginning to take a toll on me—and Pam was starting to question my judgment. She knew me too well.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Early one morning after Brandon left, I stood leaning on my shovel, looking out across the grassy field between the beach and the boathouse. It was the area I’d designated as the graveyard. An elderly local fisherman named Carlos and his wife, Dominga, approached me.

  “Are you okay, mi hijo?” Carlos asked in his gruff voice.

  Up until that moment I had been lost in thought and not really aware that anyone else was there. Apparently they’d seen me carrying one of the dogs across the parking lot to bury her.

  “I’m okay, thanks,” I said, without really looking up.

  “We’ve seen how you are with the satos, feeding them and taking care of them. You’re a good man.” Carlos patted my shoulder. “I know it’s hard when they die like that.”

  By now I’d learned that sato was the local term for a street dog, which some Puerto Ricans tended to use with a dismissive sneer. It essentially translates to “street mutt,” and I never used it myself. I had come to think of the dogs at the beach simply as my dogs. At that point, I thought that no one else was willing to take responsibility for them, so they were mine.

  “Be careful here, son,” his wife said. “There are people who come to this beach who could kill you if you get in their way, and they won’t bat an eye at doing it.”

  I wondered who could possibly want to kill me simply for taking care of innocent strays. But as we talked further, I thought of the sketchy-looking people I’d seen hanging out in the shadows of the boathouse. The interactions were pretty quick—cars drove up, people passed objects I couldn’t make out through the windows, and they sped away minutes later. I’d even seen police cars roll up and meet with the shady characters in the darkness of the dilapidated structure. I assumed the figures were drug dealers because I couldn’t fathom any other reason people would come to this derelict dead-end part of the world. But I minded my own business like I hadn’t seen anything. If they passed close by, I’d give a friendly wave. But my instincts, which had sharpened again since moving to Puerto Rico, were telling me to be more careful.

  “Listen, mi hijo,” Carlos said. “You’re not in the States anymore. You had better watch your back. You could go missing here and no one would ever find you. It happens all the time.” He sounded like he was pissed off at me, but I knew he was actually being emphatic out of concern.

  I thanked them both and assured them I would heed their warning and try to be careful.

  But first I had to find the puppies of the mother that the old couple had just seen me bury. I went back to where I had found her lying at the edge of the parking lot near the tall grass. I was pretty sure she’d made her den there. I’d found her with a half-eaten hot dog in her mouth; she’d clearly been poisoned. By then I’d heard that people on the island fed unwanted animals something called “two step,” which caused a fast but violent death moments after ingesting it. I needed to see if the pups had made it or if they too were gone.

  I rummaged through the grass, listening for sounds of life. And then I heard it: the telltale squeaks and grunts of baby dogs. The grass was so thick I couldn’t see them, so I had to be careful where I stepped. I dropped to my hands and knees, feeling around until I finally found three little ones. I estimated them to be a couple of weeks old at most. Their eyes weren’t even open yet. I gently gathered them up and put them inside my shirt to keep warm and hear my heartbeat. They yelped, squeaked, and grunted for their mother. They would die if I didn’t do something.

  A few days earlier, I’d discovered another nursing mother, who had made a den in the safety of the jungle just off the main road. A couple of her pups had died. She had whimpered and whined when, not wanting her remaining puppies to get sick, I took the dead ones out from under her. I hoped I could introduce these new pups to her and she would take them as her own. I had seen this done when I was kid, and I had a feeling it would work now if I handled the introductions properly.

  As I approached, the mother dog immediately noticed the puppy noises coming from inside my shirt. She nudged at the squirming bundle, and sniffed their little bodies stem to stern. After a few minutes, she settled down with her own puppies and gave me a look that seemed to say, “I’ll take them. Those are my puppies now.” I placed the orphans by her side, and in no time they were nursing happily. The mom licked, cleaned, and prodded at them as they suckled. I stayed with her and the puppies for the rest of the day, my heart swelling with elation as I watched the puppies heal the mother and the mother save these orphans.

  But a dark thought clouded my happiness: Was I really doing these puppies any good, or was I just postponing the inevitable?

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  I had become a creature of habit, going through my daily routine without fail. I arrived at the entrance to the beach every morning after dropping Pam off at work. I combed the long road, looking for newly dumped dogs. I put out the dishes for food and water, working to gain the trust of the new arrivals. The new ones were usually scared, hungry, thirsty, and badly abused, so I was very careful about introducing the new dogs to the pack before they were ready.

  I figured their abusers were most likely men, so I knew I had my work cut out for me to gain their trust. The existing pack already respected me as their alpha, and I needed to make sure there was harmony among the members at all times. It was important that the new ones found their proper place in this ragtag family without too much trouble. If they fought after I left each evening, the injuries would mean almost certain death due to infection, so I did everything I could to ensure that didn’t happen. I’d often stay for hours into the evening after an already long day spent working with the dogs, correcting problems before they escalated, like when a new dog’s skittishness stirred up the pack. But there was power in the pack; if there was cohesion among the dogs, they would protect one another when I wasn’t there to help them. Like people, dogs don’t do as well alone; they survive better as a pack.

  Determined to do something to stop the human violence, I decided to pay a visit to the police statio
n in Yabucoa to ask if they’d conduct more patrols of the beach area to deter whoever was killing the dogs. Their response: “Sorry, no English.” Even when I returned armed with the correct Spanish phrases, I still received blank stares.

  Puerto Rico has no animal control officers or dog registry, and no government agency is assigned direct responsibility for the strays. While animal cruelty laws do exist, they’re simply not enforced. To many people, especially those who live off the land, an animal is just an animal. And it’s not just dogs, it’s all animals—horses, cats, roosters, manatees.

  A family might even adopt or buy a puppy or kitten only to find the expense and time involved in owning a pet too much to handle. Then they’ll abandon their pet to the wild or even kill it. There are only a handful of privately run shelters in Puerto Rico, and, as I was coming to learn, Playa Lucia was far from the only place where dogs were abandoned. This island paradise, home to four million people and host to another three million tourists each year, had something on the order of a quarter of a million stray and abandoned dogs roaming the streets and jungle, looking for food and shelter. It seemed there was nobody in this community, or any other for that matter, willing to do anything about it.

  It was becoming a nearly overwhelming effort to drag myself out of the house in the morning because of what I’d likely find when I got to the beach. I often wished I had the fortitude, or maybe the callousness, to walk away from the mess and go paragliding or kite surfing. The death toll kept climbing. Every drive to the beach was filled with the dread of wondering which dog would be missing that day.

  And then, one morning, it was Blue Eye who didn’t show up. The first dog I befriended on that godforsaken beach and, until that day, still the first to greet me when I arrived each morning. There had been a bad rain the night before, and, as was often the case after a storm, the dogs were acting a bit off. I’d learned by now that they often took shelter in the boathouse when the weather was bad. I decided to have a look to see if Blue Eye, who was still in pretty rough shape, was hiding out there.