Percival's Dogs

By Steve Haskin

"Percival's dogs howled all night, howled like pain itself coming in over the hills."

So begins twelve-year-old Madeline Ellis's journey to save Percival Parrant's dogs from the horrible abuse--dog fights staged in his barn, leaving his poor pit bulls, Blackie and Red, battered and bloody and trapped in a cage on Percival's farm. Madeline and her best friend, Larue, sneak out at midnight to find out why the dogs cry all night and discover the dog fight in progress. Madeline intervenes, trying to save the dogs, but is chased from the farm with the dogs still in danger. Madeline and her father report the crime to the sheriff of their small Arkansas town, only to find the sheriff is in cahoots with Percival. The Humane Society calls in the State Police. The dogs are rescued and given to Madeline to care for, but she finds that Percival is involved with even worse crimes, and she vows to stop him. Percival's Dogs is a coming-of-age story full of action, chases, and the bravery and determination of a young woman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662476907

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Percival's Dogs

Steve Haskin

Copyright © 2023 Steve Haskin

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 978-1-6624-7689-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7690-7 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

About the Author

Chapter 1

Percival's dogs howled all night, howled just like pain itself coming in over the hills. Daddy said they howl because they're lonely, but I think there's something wrong—something far worse than loneliness. They're starving or in pain, but Daddy said Percival would never hurt his dogs. They're all he had except that brown bottle he emptied into himself each night, trying to fill himself with something besides his sorrow and loneliness. He had nothing but his dogs, so he wouldn't hurt them or starve them. Yet they howled each night. Howled like they were calling me—calling me for help.

I am Madeline Ellis. I am twelve years old, and I have never cried. Oh sure, maybe when I was too young to remember, I could have cried but never since. My mother is dead. She turned old before our eyes and then turned young again. Young as an infant, a babe, lying in a white bed in the white room, curled on her side and unable to move, staring at the white wall before her, with her cracked lips moving silently, trying to say, Goodbye. Then, her lips became still, a year ago, and she slipped away.

That night, I lay in bed myself. My own lips whispered, trying to ask God, Why? and Why?

And…no answer…never an answer. Even then, two years ago, when her illness was diagnosed, the dogs were howling out over the hills as if they were sad for my mother. And the night she died, Percival's dogs howled. But then, that night, I heard something else, something worse, terrible, just a murmur, like water slipping down a drain. I couldn't understand where the sound was coming from. I stood in the hallway, and from behind my father's bedroom, I heard it—like terrible soft laughter. My father was crying, crying because my mother was gone—dead, dying after her long year of pain, and even after a year, he cried. I could almost see him in his bed, alone forever. I imagined his hands gripped into fists or trying to grasp the air—something—because he thought he would be alone forever. I went back to my room and closed the door and said to myself, I will never cry. I will never cry again.

Did you hear the dogs last night?

No, I didn't hear them.

They howled all night.

How do you know ‘all night'?

I set my alarm for two, they were howling; and three, they were howling; and four, all night. Papa, we gotta do something.

There's nothing to be done, Maddie. Sheriff's been there. The dogs are caged and well-fed. They howl. There's nothing… And he trailed off as he does so often now and stared out the window at the rain.

We were in the kitchen. It was the room my mother loved the most in our small house. It was painted her favorite color—yellow. She painted it herself, and when the sun came through the east window in the morning, the room seemed to shine with the sun. She always sang in the morning. She had wanted to be a singer. Instead, I came along, but she said I was better than any song. She said she didn't need to sing to anyone but me. I was her audience, her fan club, and I sang too. I thought we would sing forever. Instead…

Can I at least go and see for myself?

What? No. The dogs? Why always the dogs, Madeline?

I think they're hurting or something. I just—

No. Madeline, forget the dogs. Percival is not a nice man, I'll give you that, but those dogs are all he has. We've talked about this before, Maddie. I'm not sure how he came to live all alone on that farm but imagine his loneliness. Why, those dogs are his friends, his family. He wouldn't hurt them. He looked back out the window.

But unlike me, he's completely alone. I'm luckier that way because, you see, he paused and smiled, I have you.

He knelt, put his hands on my shoulders, and looked in my eyes. You, Madeline. I have you. But poor old Percival, he's got nothing but those dogs. He wouldn't hurt them, Maddie. They're all right. He smiled again, and I was happier than I'd been in a long time to see him smile. Then, he frowned in a silly way. Say, don't you have school?

Daddy, it's summer. There's no school till fall. How can you forget?

Ha! I did forget. But I have school. I have a class at noon, and before that, I'm putting out more nets, banding more of my little friends.

The yellow warblers?

Yes. Your mother's favorite bird and mine too.

And mine.

And I have class at noon, so I better get started. He smiled again. And you, what are you up to today?

Me and Larue are building a tree house on Spindle Creek.

You are? Well, good. You take me to see it when it's done. I'm working along Spindle Creek too, up north, where it goes into the hills. He began to gather his things: his field gear, a pack, his binoculars, and his brief case for his class.

Say, I wonder where my glasses are? Have you seen them? He tilted his head toward me.

They're on your head, silly. Right there. I stared at them.

Well, so they are. Thank you, Madeline. What would I do without you?

*****

When I first met Larue, it was like looking into a mirror or like looking at another and seeing yourself. It wasn't that she looked like me, although there was a faint resemblance. It was her ways, her demeanor. Her way of walking with her hands stuffed into her pockets and the dreamy way she stared ahead of herself as she walked as if there was something beckoning her, when there was nothing there at all. And the way she dressed: always jeans, never a dress. Jeans and a white T-shirt. Her hair was cut so short that from behind she looked like a boy. A boy, until you saw her face. Not cute like a little girl but almost beautiful, like a movie star or a magazine model.

That's the way I look too. Not beautiful because I know I'm rather plain but boyish. My hair has been short since Mama died. Long, it just takes too long to dry, and it gets caught in things when I'm running around in the woods. I don't even own a dress anymore. The two I owned I threw away after Mama died. She liked to see me in them, and she loved to comb my hair and called me her beautiful little girl, although I knew I wasn't a beauty. Cute maybe but beautiful? No. But I let her dress me as she wished. The way she wanted me to be or maybe the way she wanted to be. But she couldn't because men wouldn't respect her if she dressed like a model. That's what I heard her tell Daddy.

She dressed plainly, without makeup, to be seen as a man's equal, not a beauty. But Daddy said he loved her just the way she was: jeans and a T-shirt, sandals and her blond hair long and straight. He called her an old hippy. I loved to hear them talk of the old days when they met during the protests against the Vietnam war. They loved each other, and their love brought me into the world. But the beautiful days didn't last—the war ended and with it, the idealism its protest had created. My father finished his PhD in ornithology and found work at the university in our little town. I grew up in the forests and creeks of Arkansas. It was there I met Larue.

Larue and I were so much alike. You would think when we met, we would have greeted each other like old friends, like we had known each other forever. Maybe in past lives we had known each other. Soon after meeting, we became inseparable. We met two years ago, just after my mother's illness was discovered. We were both ten years old. Sometimes I wondered what if we had met in school, dressed in our school clothes, and behaving differently, wanting to fit in and not be singled out as tomboys? I think our rapport would have been less intense. Instead, I first saw Larue in the top branches of the tallest tree that I knew of in the forests around our town, far down Spindle Creek almost to where it widens before entering the White River.

It was midsummer, and I was sad because of Mother's illness. And lonely because the other girls all played with dolls indoors, and the boys would have nothing to do with a girl. So I spent the long hot weeks of June alone along the creek. I am an explorer. I know the creek as well as any human, and I longed to know it as well as the coons and possums I met along its banks and said, Howdy do.

Spindle Creek was sandy and straight. Straight for a creek that is. It followed the curve of the hills, but there was no looping or deep curves. It seemed determined in its course toward the river. Straight, with a few gentle windings, except