The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach Read online

  At the door, I slid my sunglasses on top of my head and let my eyes adjust to the dim light inside. The concrete floor was covered with broken glass and puddles where the roof leaked. Across the room, I spotted a lifeless pile of bones and fur. I recognized him instantly. I was taken back to that first day at the beach, when I found what looked like a pile of seaweed or coconut husks in the sand that ended up becoming my new friend. The room grew blurry through the veil of tears in my eyes. I went to him and knelt by his side, caressing his face. I stayed like that for a long time, saying good-bye to this lovely dog who had worked his magic, found his way into my heart, and given me a new purpose.

  By the time I stood up, my feet had fallen asleep and my knees ached. The entire pack, about forty dogs now, stood around me. They followed as I walked to the truck to grab my shovel and returned to the boathouse, where I found a rubber pool liner hidden behind some old shipping containers. I wrapped Blue Eye in the liner, carried him to the burial ground, and started to dig.

  When the hole was large enough, I put my friend inside. As I threw the first shovelful of sand over his body, my courage and determination drained. I felt sick to my stomach and numb, like part of me had died and was being buried with him. I wondered how many more deaths I could bear. I thought of all the other dogs from the beach, of Tanya and Achates, of my father and grandfather.

  When it was done, I wrestled with the urge to run as I had as a boy. But I didn’t. Not this time. Instead, I just sat quietly with the pack and said good-bye to my friend. They needed me to be strong, and I was beginning to realize how much I needed them too. I was exhausted from emotion. I collapsed in the sand, leaning against a palm tree, drifting off to sleep, the pack hovering and watching over me.

  I was awakened when the dogs jumped up suddenly and bolted a few yards away. As I rolled to the side to stand up, I was stopped short by a hollow thump and an excruciating bolt of pain in my back and shoulder that left me breathless.

  “What the hell?” I turned to see who had struck me with such force. I expected to see one of the thugs I’d encountered earlier standing over me with a baseball bat. I only saw the dogs, concerned looks on their faces. Oddly, they hadn’t run for the jungle. That’s when I saw a fresh green coconut the size of a football lying in the sand next to where I’d been sitting.

  I learned a couple of valuable lessons that day. The first was never to sit under a coconut tree laden with fruit. The second was that dogs are way more aware of their surroundings than humans. I was lucky to have only a big bruise on my back and ribs rather than a fractured skull or spine.

  After that day, I made it a point to visit the boathouse as part of my daily routine. One morning I found five dogs lying dead next to the massive rusting shipping containers, against the fence of the west exterior wall of the building, one of the containers leaning precariously on an old tractor tire. Two of the dogs had been dismembered with machetes. The others had apparently been stoned to death, their skulls and chests crushed. I started back toward the truck for the shovel that I had become far too familiar with, when I spied a police cruiser parked along the side road parallel to the sandy beach. The cops may have dismissed me when I went to the station house, but it would be a lot harder to ignore me now. I could show them firsthand what I was talking about.

  I walked up to the vehicle, but it was hard to see inside past the palm trees reflected in the closed windows. I leaned in and shielded my eyes with my hands. The officer’s eyes were closed. I tapped on the window to wake him.

  The cop shot up in his seat like a rocket. So did a very young girl in a Catholic school uniform who was bent over his lap.

  In seconds, the cop had thrown open the cruiser door and was screaming at me while he fastened his pants. Once his zipper was secure, his right hand came to rest on the service piece on his hip.

  I took a step back, my hands in front of me in a supplicant’s posture. I didn’t understand a word he was screaming at me, but I wanted to defuse the situation as fast as I could. The girl in the passenger seat was crying, trying to straighten her skirt and blouse.

  After a few minutes the cop had yelled himself out and got back in the car. That was when I noticed that the dogs had been at my side the whole time, quietly growling, hackles raised. Between the girl and my pack, no wonder the cop backed off. As he sped away, spewing gravel and sand in his wake, I was sure I hadn’t seen the last of him.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  I think someone else is feeding the dogs,” I told Pam one night over dinner.

  I had recently started finding little piles of dog food in different areas of the beach. If it had been a onetime thing, I might have disregarded it as a fluke, some beachgoer taking rare pity on the dogs. But it was becoming a regular occurrence. The more I expanded my explorations of the area, the more I kept discovering the small mounds, hidden from plain view.

  One morning after doing my rounds with the pack, I followed the trail of kibble down the beach until I found the source. A short distance ahead, I spotted a young Puerto Rican woman holding a bag of dog food in her arms with several of my smaller dogs at her feet.

  I extended my hand to shake and said, “Hey, how’s it going. I’m Stephen.”

  She smiled and shook my hand warmly. “I know. Everybody knows who you are,” she said.

  Fortunately for me, Sandra, a local schoolteacher, spoke very good English, so I started to pepper her with questions. Her work with the dogs became even more impressive to me when she explained that she and her husband, Angel, struggled to afford their own food, let alone food for so many dogs.

  “Do you know why so many dogs get dumped here?” I asked.

  “It’s not just here. In the jungle too and other beaches and by the road. All over the island really.”

  “Why?”

  “One day the puppy is so cute, but then it grows up, it’s not so cute anymore. And it is too much trouble. . . .” She shrugged rather than finish her thought out loud. “I don’t ask too many questions. I don’t want no trouble. I just want to help the dogs.”

  It was enough. I understood.

  Finally I felt like I had an ally here.

  Late one afternoon, not long after I’d met Sandra for the first time, I bumped into another dog guardian at the beach. Like Sandra, Sonia was a schoolteacher by day, but in the evenings and on weekends, she volunteered at a privately run dog shelter in Humacao called El Faro dog rescue, which was run by a Catholic nun called Sister Nancy. Sonia had a huge heart, and the dogs really seemed to love her. It made me happy to know that someone else was watching over them too. Having her around as well as Sandra gave me hope.

  Three days before Christmas, I was doing my rounds when Peggy, a young mother dog, came running to me barking frantically. I could see fear and panic in her eyes. Until now, Peggy had kept her distance and made it clear that she didn’t trust humans. I could tell from her engorged teats that she had nursing pups hidden somewhere on the beach, but I had never been able to find her den.

  She whimpered and barked at me, then ran toward the main road. I dropped everything and followed her.

  On the edge of the road, a man was clearing the undergrowth with a backhoe. For the last few days, I’d seen a work crew widening the road to the beach. The jungle had closed in, scratching and damaging vehicles that dared to venture down it.

  Peggy darted past the workers and started digging frantically at the overturned soil. It took a split second before I understood what was happening and yelled, “Stop!” I barreled past the backhoe and joined Peggy, desperately scrabbling at the dirt, trying to unearth her litter. When the workers realized what had happened, they too began digging with bare hands and shovels. The first pup uncovered had a crushed skull. The next three were gasping for air, but okay. One was yelping in pain from an obvious compound fracture of his leg. The last one had been buried too long. I turned to look at the men. They stood quietly, heads down, tears visible.

  I needed help
, so I fired off a call to Sandra, but it went to voice mail. A short while later, she arrived and helped me find a safe place for Peggy and her surviving puppies. After we moved her brood, Peggy looked exhausted and desperate, so we let her rest.

  Unfortunately, it was Pam’s birthday. I called her while she was at work to explain what had happened with Peggy. I asked her if she would come to the beach after work, but she said she couldn’t. Even though Pam spent almost every weekend helping me with the dogs, birthdays were sacred for her. Plus, sometimes the events at the beach were too depressing for her to face.

  I stayed at the beach until five o’clock, stealing every last moment to fuss over Peggy and her pups until I had to go home and shower before Pam arrived. My heart was heavy and I just wasn’t into celebrating. When I reached the house, I drank an overpoured shot of scotch to take the edge off my shattered nerves before getting into the shower in hopes of washing away my day.

  I took Pam out to dinner at a French restaurant in Palmas del Mar. I tried not to talk about Peggy, but that left me without words. I’m typically a man who has a lot to say, so it was obvious I was struggling. I felt sad that, once again, Pam and her needs were being pushed to the back burner. I hated myself for doing it.

  After hearing about Peggy that afternoon, Pam had spontaneously booked a trip for the two of us to Saint Thomas, leaving Puerto Rico the day after Christmas. During the course of our marriage, it had often been like pulling teeth to get her to try my extreme sports, so she thought it would be a great surprise for me to get our open water certification in scuba diving. Normally I would have jumped at the opportunity, but after three months of living in Puerto Rico, I’d started to lose interest in things that used to be at the center of my life.

  “C’mon, we’ll get certified, spend some time together, just you and me.”

  “Who’s going to watch the dogs?”

  “You can’t be responsible for them every minute of every day, Steve. We need to get out of here, away from all this, recharge our batteries.”

  She was right. I needed to learn how to compartmentalize the events at the beach. The dogs were clearly beginning to take over my life and affect Pam’s.

  I finally relented.

  Early the next morning, Pam joined me at the beach. Peggy quietly greeted us; she seemed understandably worried and sad. She sighed as she soaked in our comforting caresses. I distracted her while Pam carefully extracted the injured puppy from her litter. She held him in a soft towel and, along with Sandra, we drove to a nearby horse farmer Sandra knew, hoping to get the pup some medical attention.

  When we arrived, Sandra explained to the farmer in Spanish what had happened.

  The farmer peeked inside the towel and shook his head, his expression grim.

  Sandra pleaded.

  The farmer finally gave in. He reset the shattered bone as best he could, then stitched up the gash in the pup’s skin where the bone had torn through. Although we tried our best to comfort the little dog, he whimpered and yelped in pain. Pam and I cried because we knew this wasn’t a real fix. The puppy’s bone was still severely broken, and there was nothing we could do about that. And although the care we gave would prolong his life, I knew it wasn’t going to save him, and that broke my heart.

  Back at the beach, Peggy sniffed at her sleeping pup’s leg, then calmly allowed us to nestle the puppy against her chest. A few days earlier Peggy wouldn’t come near us, but now she leaned her muzzle toward our hands so we could cuddle her face. I believe she knew we were trying to help her.

  Later that day, Pam’s growing concerns about my health were vindicated. I came down with a serious case of shingles that covered my back and left side. When I visited the doctor at Palmas del Mar, she exclaimed as soon as she met me, “You’re the guy from the beach with the dogs.” It seemed I was gaining a reputation. She noted that shingles are often sparked by “extreme emotional stress.”

  Just like mange in dogs, I thought.

  I was not going to let it interfere with our trip, partly because of my commitment to Pam but also because I obviously needed to relieve my stress. We headed to Saint Thomas for our diving lessons on December 26. As the small plane took off from San Juan and headed over the eastern side of the island, I felt like a neglectful father leaving his children in need. I didn’t talk the entire flight.

  The first few days, I was too embarrassed about the hideous rash covering my body to let go and enjoy myself. Even on vacation, I felt like a leper.

  But by the end of the week, I started to feel like my old self.

  “Hey, Pammie, why don’t we come back here every month? It’s not far. We could totally do this!”

  But when we got back to our lives in Puerto Rico, I resumed sliding downhill.

  Since the event with her puppies, Peggy never let me out of her sight. She followed me around the beach while I did my rounds. She needed to know where I was all the time. She proudly showed me her puppies every day, allowing me to pick them up and enjoy them with her. She savored my contact, always breathing a sigh of relief at my touch.

  But, as with so many of these dogs’ stories, our interventions only went so far. A few months after we rescued Peggy’s litter, Peggy wandered away from the pack and me during the morning feeding. Suddenly I heard a screech of car tires on the road. I was filled with dread. I ran toward the sound and found Peggy lying limp on the side of the road. I would bury another friend that day.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  I still ran into Carlos and Dominga, the old fisherman and his wife, from time to time, and they never failed to warn me to be careful. But one morning, their tone was different.

  “There are men looking for you, asking a lot of questions: when you come to the beach, where you park, if you’re alone.”

  “Really? What else do they say?” I asked the couple.

  They shook their heads in unison. “We don’t want to get involved, Stephen. It’s not safe.” I knew they were concerned for my safety, but fearful about their own as well, so I didn’t push the issue.

  “Thank you for warning me,” I said. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

  “Keep your eyes open, mi hijo. The men driving Yabucoa municipal cars and the pickup trucks from the refinery up the road are asking about you. So are the people from the hotel down the other end of the beach. You gotta watch your back.”

  Dominga gave me a hug and Carlos offered a steely handshake before they walked off to fish for their food for the week.

  I walked the beach with my pack, my thoughts consumed with what they’d told me. For the past few weeks, I’d had a bad feeling I was being watched. Now my suspicions were confirmed. It was reassuring to know I hadn’t become totally paranoid, but this meant that there were in fact strange men tracking my movements. Quite frankly, I think I’d have preferred paranoia.

  Heeding the warning—in my own way—I started carrying a billy club and a machete on my belt when I went to the beach. I was worried not just about myself, but about what this meant for my dogs. At least I had a better idea who was watching now.

  Or I thought I did.

  The area of the beach where I spent my days with the dogs may have been remote, but Playa Lucia is also home to a couple of resort hotels. One day I wandered off my stretch of sand toward the hotels, looking for a few of the dogs that had gone missing a few days before. As I poked around, three hotel employees wielding machetes approached me.

  They said something to me in Spanish, and I made out a few phrases: “You’re on private property, man. . . . You need to leave.”

  Taking the nice-guy approach, I responded, in English, “No worries, bro. I’ve just gotta find my dogs and I’ll be on my way.” I smiled and gave them a polite wave.

  Then they shouted something at me. I had no idea what the words meant, but given the irate tone of their voices, confrontational body language, and raised machetes, I was pretty sure they weren’t offering to buy me a drink at the poolside bar.
r />   I’ve always believed you shouldn’t escalate a situation by drawing a weapon except when you plan to use it, but I was quickly formulating a plan of attack if things went bad. It was one machete against three.

  With my hands in front of me, palms facing them to communicate that I wasn’t a threat, I asked politely, “Do any of you speak English?”

  “A little,” one of the men said.

  “I don’t want any trouble, man. I’m just taking care of some sick dogs over at the old boathouse a mile up the beach, and a couple of them wandered off.”

  The man’s expression softened. He turned to the others and translated what I said. They lowered their machetes.

  “Have you seen my dogs?”

  The English speaker nodded. “Dead.” He pointed to an area at the edge of the jungle with his leathery hand. “Over there.”

  I knew not to ask who did it, or how. The uncomfortable expressions on their faces said it all.

  The men were looking over their shoulders, as though they feared getting in trouble for talking to me.

  “A local hotel is trying to make the beach more beautiful for visitors. They told us to kill any stray dog on the beach and stop anyone from feeding them.” He paused. “Including you.”

  “Really? The hotel owners know about me?”

  “They want you to stay away. Or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  He didn’t answer. He wasn’t trying to threaten me as he had at the start of the confrontation. And while I appreciated that they were cutting me some slack, I also knew they meant business and I needed to be more careful about venturing to this part of the beach.

  “Can I please get the dogs so I can give them a proper burial?”

  They looked anxious and talked among themselves for a minute.