Margaret Atwood Underbrush Man

As part of our specially commissioned series of short stories, Atwood tells the comic tale of a dog's very unexpected discovery
Jack russell terrier dog
Photograph: JRWPhotography/Getty Images/Flickr RF


Light returns, oh how simple faith is justified! I do count on it and anyway there is always hunger, even if it stayed as dark as holes, as coals, as under the sofa, hunger would come back regardless and tell me what to do. Up, up, one foot and then the other. Mouth wide in a yawn, teeth bared to the air, tongue curled out and downwards, rump on high, stretch of the forearms forward; then a subsidence, a wriggle of the spine, a realignment. Bailey is still asleep, dreaming, legs twitching, uttering small yelps. I nip him and he groans. Even in sleep he knows who is top dog.

Up the stairs, clickety click, scratch and whine at the closed door. No response. Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark! A twist of the shoulder, a push, the door flies open, the pillow hurtles out; I dodge it, rush inside, leap onto the bed and apply the wet and delicate and appreciative tongue lavishly to the face of She-who-ought-to-be-a-dog. Jesus Cripes Molly get the hell off me, you really stink!

It's nice to be noticed.

She-who-ought-to-be-a-dog doesn't taste the way a dog should; she tastes sweetish and greasy. But I'm used to that. I do some tugging and some hard slobbering and panting, because there's no free lunch and if you want the brass ring you have to put in the work, and it's first thing the walk and then She regurgitates the food, pre-chewed, and coughs up the bones, though not in the usual way, and no walk, no breakfast; so the main thing is to get her onto her feet. At last She rises up, pale and mostly hairless – she must have a bad case of the mange – and does the usual morning stumbling around.

Eyes aglow, tongue at the loll, I note her every movement: She likes a display of interest. It's a wonder we ever make it out the door at all, the way She fumbles and fiddles and mumbles and piddles, but we do. The leash is a bore but that's the price you have to pay. Sniff sniff sniff sniff, there's been a lot of activity along here since last we passed this way! Cat piss everywhere, dog piss ditto, and Bailey of course has to add his two cents' worth to every conversation; he's not speaking with the cats of course, as they are not worth talking to.

Come on Bailey, come on Molly, you can go faster than this, it isn't a funeral for heaven's sakes!

Oh little does she know. This and that and he and she and it have died during the night; I smell a rat. Down the slippery musty fungusy steps into the ravine, with its rivulet of running sewage; along the gravel path; old paper bag, cheese in it once, old beer bottle, a skunk, a woodchuck, enough to make you sneeze. Along comes a man in shorts, running, lightly pelted legs up down, up down; waves of sweat roll off him, damaging the air. He does not merit a growl. Dog poop everywhere, over among the leaves, and several items on the main path, already stepped in and moistly squashed. Some people never look where they're going. Bailey and I are happy to contribute; we squat and roll our eyes and grin. Scratch scratch scratch, snuffle snuffle. One likes to leave one's autograph, make one's little scented mark, however evanescent. For heavens' sakes don't be so disgusting Molly, that is not Play-Doh and this is not kindergarten, and don't take all day about it!

Jauntily along, ears forward, end of spine in the air, gracefully back and forth; on the lookout. No one alert but me, because She-who-ought-to-be-a-dog has no more sense of smell than a pigeon, what would She do without me? To serve and protect. Useless relying on Bailey, who'd be more functional as a lawn ornament.

Wuff wuff! What's this? It's a something, no, a somebody. In the shrubs, leg sticking out! Smells all wrong, a wrong smell – not like old bottles, worse. Hackles up! Hark hark hark!

Molly, you bad dog, get out of that! Now what have you found? Leave him alone, Molly, good girl. Leave the nice man alone.

What is it, what's wrong? Oh no! There's blood!

Hark hark hark hark hark!

Carol Plumridge Dodd

Too light too soon. Might as well be noon. Turn face to the wall, better this way. Darker and more oblivious. Back to the dream, daydream because it's day, because it's May, wonderful May, I planned it for then. Sewed the dress myself, peau de soie and a fingertip veil, walking down the aisle with the bouquet, three calla lilies because it would be different, and some roses and baby's breath and his aunt from England said Where I come from we only use those for funerals. All the same I was happy then, an end to anxiety or so I thought. Where came next? The honeymoon. What a name for it, I never did know what it meant. Moonlight all sticky and golden on the skin.

Damn dog scratching, no need for an alarm clock, she always gets the door open sooner or later, Jesus Christ Molly get the hell off me, you really stink! That's the thing about dogs, you can say anything you like to them and they still love you. Wish I'd been able to say that to Bert, at the end when he'd taken up with that bitch Wynette and thought I didn't know; but no, I couldn't, too polite. Molly, I love you really.

Still, I could do without the slobber.

Same with Bert.

All right, all right, I'll get up. No help for it, damn dogs run my life, they've got their own time clock, it's worse than at work. What have you done with Bailey? Where's Bailey, eh? Have you finally murdered him? Wag wag wag, playing dumb, Who me? Innocent as a newborn babe. Less work though.

I bet he's downstairs humping his favourite chair. Sex, sex, sex, that's all they think of. And food, of course. Doesn't even have to be another dog. Could be just a piece of furniture. Like Bert; I mean you wouldn't think of that slut Wynette as a human being. More like a sofa. Overstuffed. What a name anyway, Wynette. Like one of those crocheted toilet roll covers.

Oh well. Anyone who'd prefer that bimbo to me is a jerk anyway. Better off without him.

Must get some exercise. Do more walking. I say that every day. Two more pounds; it can't be the food, I eat like a bird, it must be just fluid retention. I should drink more coffee, they say it's a diuretic. Oh for a coffee and the morning paper on the back deck, such as it is, but no, they'd never let me get away with that, not before the walk. Try it once and they'd both crap on the carpet, such as it is. They take an unholy interest in functions anyway. That's what my mother used to call it: functions. She used the same word for church teas.

Molly, you do not have to come into the bathroom with me, can't I even pee in private? No! Get your nose out of there! Down! Bad girl! Overexcitable. Like the time she bit Wynette. Only time she ever saw her; got it right first crack. For that alone I will love her forever. Bert of course wanted Molly put down. Told him, If anyone should be put down it should be you and your hot patootie, that dog is not rabid she only has good taste, you touch one hair of her head and this will not be an amicable separation! I'll go after you for every stick and stone, in every way, shape or form, in this life and the next, so back off buster! I'm poor maybe, but Molly is alive.

Now where did I leave those runners? Need a new pair; down at heels. Can't afford them. Down at heels, what my mother used to say. Down at heels, seen better days, something wrong with my plumbing. Plumbing! Couldn't admit anything was made of flesh and blood. Not her, anyway. Not me.

Here's one of them, at least. Molly? Molly! What did you do with the other shoe? Oh, thanks a bundle. They're so much nicer with drool on them.

One leash, two leashes. Here, Bailey! Good dog. Don't forget to bolt-lock the door; too many addicts and perverts around here, it's practically a slum, used needles and condoms on the lawn every morning; not that you'd call that thing a lawn. Well, it's what I can afford right now. The kids have to sleep on the sofa when they come to visit; at least they're through school now, at least they've got jobs. Jobs of a sort. Thank God they were old enough to cope when that Wynette thing happened. I wasn't old enough to cope, myself, but that's another story. What my mother used to say: That's another story. Which she then wouldn't tell.

Packing up to move out on him, I remember I filled up a green garbage bag with clothes to give to the poor. Didn't know I was going to be the poor. What a joke.

Get out of that, Molly, that's a garden! Only one on the street. A few moth-eaten pansies. Maybe I should start a garden again. Had one once; I was good at it. Good at that, at the cooking, at the cleaning. Then I lost interest and things died.

Bailey! Put that down! Too disgusting! Whoever said a dog's mouth is clean has never watched what they put into them.

Maybe I should place an ad in the Personals. What to write? Gay divorcee – no, not gay, that means something else now – sprightly divorcee, blonde, petite, likes outdoor sports and cozy fireside evenings with a glass of scotch. Or else the truth: Sorry but zero interest in another man, they are too much work and too self-centered and they think you exist for nothing but their own personal convenience, and they can't tell a woman from a rubber blimp or their dick from a posthole digger and they guzzle up the scotch like there's no tomorrow, and they never clean out the ashes after the cozy fireside evenings. So piss off.

Nevertheless I get lonely. Sometimes. At night. I talk to myself too much. Or else to the dogs. Well, they never argue.

Down the steps, watch it, they're damp, you could slip and break your neck and then what? Along the path, smell the spring air, assorted florals and eau de sewer, give thanks for small mercies, at least it isn't raining. Molly, not on the path! I suppose I should pick it up, but this is practically a forest and nobody picks up after the foxes and wolves and what-not; anyway nobody's looking. Hurry up, doggies! That's the way! Give it the old heave-ho! Good doggies!

I bet this place seethes with the homeless, at night. Eating whatever they eat, drinking whatever they drink, under a bush or bridge. The homeless, the feckless, the gormless, the witless. I shouldn't be so condescending, one slip at work and I'm out of a job and then I'll have to join them. Hi fellows, I'm your homeless person for today. I could sit on the street with a tin cup and a sign: Respectable mother of two. Wonder how long I'd be respectable. Wonder how long I'd last. No dental plans for the homeless, I'd lose my teeth in a shot and then I'd have to live on dog food, everything pre-chewed. I wonder if I got really hungry, whether I'd eat Molly and Bailey. Or whether if they got really hungry Molly and Bailey would eat me. I bet the homeless would get all of us first, though. Tramps, my mother would have called them. That means something else these days. Wynette, now there's a tramp for you. I seriously thought of killing her, once. Pulling her plug, letting out her air, then he'd've had to send away for another blow-up rubber dolly.

But why kill her – why not kill him, for heaven's sakes? She couldn't have taken the initiative, a piece of furniture does not take the initiative; he must have taken it himself. May I put my hand on your cushion? No answer means yes to Bert, it always did. At least he had the grace to tell me it wasn't serious, though that didn't make it any better. So, you threw away our twenty-one years of marriage for something that wasn't serious? Way to go, Bert, you creep.

Oh well, it's always the woman you want to kill, that's how it is. Unless you're a man of course; then you want to kill the man. Or both of them; might as well do her too for good measure. Amazing I let myself get so worked up over a shit like Bert, but twenty-one years of a happy marriage and garden included will do that to you. Or everyone else thought it was happy. Fun once, though. The honeymoon.

Molly, you bad dog, get out of that! Now what have you found? Legs. Some guy under a bush. A homeless person. A tramp. Probably into the aftershave last night and sleeping it off. Shouldn't be disturbed; he might leap up in the grip of a violent hallucination and run me through with a paring knife. They've let them all out of the loony bins to save money and that certainly accounts for a lot. Provincial politics for instance. Leave him alone, Molly, good girl. Leave the nice man alone. Damn nosy-parker dog. I'll just take a peek …


Jesus Cripes.

Miriam Rosenberg-Lee

Miriam sits in her favourite spot, the breakfast nook overlooking the ravine. Her dad's birdwatching binoculars are nearby in case anything interesting happens, but so far today it's only the usual. Joggers go past; there's an old man asleep under a bush. Dogs scrabble in the leaves.

Miriam likes to get up before everyone else and have her breakfast early, so she can think in peace. So she doesn't have to listen to her parents dumping on her with their version of how she should spend her day. Is your math done yet? What about your French? Isn't that the third movie you've been to this week? Why can't Marjilane come over here to do her homework, why does it have to be the Kaffay Nwar at two-fifty for a lousy cappucino? Well, if that's how you want to waste your allowance I suppose it's your own business.

Each one of them has a long list of the chores their own parents made them do when they were her age. Not that she believes they ever were her age. They were born exactly the way they are now, Dad bald at the top and Mom into the hide-your-grey rinses, and both of them with bad feet. At your age I used to dust the whole house, top to bottom. And I mowed the lawn. But Mom, Bettina does the dusting and Green Pastures mows the lawn, so what do you want from me? Maybe I could scrub the sidewalk? Hey, I know, give me some matches and I can be the Little Match Girl and be really virtuous and freeze to death!

That's enough out of you, young lady, at your age I would have been sent to my room for talking back in that snippy way.

Oh cool, snippy! Oh, I am devastated! I am bouleversée, I am ecrasée! Call me a geek, call me a turkey, but don't call me snippy! How about calling me louche? At least it has a certain je ne sais quoi, n'est-ce pas, mon petit crapaud?

Fred, what's she saying?

Serves us right for sending her to that snotty school. An arm and a leg and what do you get? A kid you can't understand!

These conversations don't usually take place out loud. Miriam can just hear them going on and on, inside everybody's head. Sometimes she thinks her parents aren't her real parents at all. Sometimes she thinks her mother was impregnated by aliens but can't remember anything about it because she was unconscious at the time. Miriam saw a movie like that once.

She's eating her favourite breakfast, a big piece of the apple pie she made last night. She likes making pies; it's kind of a creative process. She taught herself to do it out of her grandmother's old cookbook, because the only recipe her mother knows is Let's go out for Italian. That's one thing her mother approves of anyway – Miriam's pies. Or she sort of approves of them. Look at the mess in this kitchen, who's going to clean it up, and let me tell you in advance that Bettina is not the answer. Though she doesn't approve of Miriam eating the pies for breakfast. When I was your age I had to eat a proper breakfast. Oatmeal porridge, every day. Even in summer. Miriam happens to believe that this is a lie; even in the past, nobody could be that gross.

She thinks maybe she'll get a tattoo, like her friend Marjilane. A tattoo, or else a belly-button ring. She's saving up.

Down in the ravine the joggers go past; pathetic, most of them. Middle-aged guys with earbuds stuck in their ears, they think they're so cool. Trying to work off the flab. At least her dad doesn't do that. Make a spectacle of himself in those lime-green spandex bicycle shorts, it's almost the same as walking around naked, all the bulgy parts showing. She'd die of embarrassment.

Here comes the blonde woman with the two dogs, the little yappy one and the other one, bigger and shaggier; they pass by at this time every day. The dogs always shit on the path, the woman always looks around to make sure nobody sees them doing it. Dogs are revolting. Dog owners are revolting. They have absolutely no shame.

Now the little dog is sniffing around the clump of bushes where the old guy is sleeping. Now it's barking. Bark bark bark, they can take out the smell glands on skunks so why can't they take out the barking glands on dogs? When Miriam rules the world she intends to make it a law.

Now – oh, this is getting good! The dog has just bitten the sleeping man on the leg, and now the old guy has jumped up and is hopping around with the dog still attached, and the woman is screaming her head off because the man's face is all covered with blood, or that's what it looks like through the binoculars; and now another man has jumped out of another bush and a third man out of a third bush, and the dog has come loose but is still barking, and now the woman has fainted. Or at least she's lying on the ground. Maybe one of the three guys knifed her.

Miriam watches with lively interest. Maybe it's a mugging! Maybe it's a gang rape! Now she's getting alarmed. Should she call the police? Maybe it's a major crime and she will have to appear in court as a witness. On the other hand, maybe it's a major motion picture. It's hard to tell.

John A Schweitzer

Up until this morning everything was going fine. They'd done two previous shoots this week, one in the Mount Pleasant cemetery, with the legs coming out from behind an ornamental shrub and a tombstone visible in the background – a subtle touch – and the other in a larger ravine, the one over by Summerhill.

The plan is to catch the early joggers and the people walking their dogs, and to that end John has been getting up every morning at five. He doesn't have to worry about waking anybody else up: Serafina took off a month ago after throwing all the glassware at him and denouncing him as a megalomaniac sado-masochist who was insanely jealous of her own art; she does oversized renditions of catalogue-advertised sex aids, in macramé, epoxy, and woven panty hose. He'd laughed scornfully – him, jealous of that feeble, derivative crap? – and she'd burst into tears and claimed he secretly wanted to kill her. Then she'd stolen his bicycle. He hasn't had the heart to try again on another relationship. Perhaps he's doomed to be alone. Some days it feels like doom, and other days it doesn't: taking other people into consideration is always a strain. His apartment is a wreck, of course. Serafina wasn't the housewife type, and he himself hasn't had the energy to clean up. Perhaps it's time to move again.

One good thing about doing this piece is that he doesn't have to shave; over the week he's sprouted an impressive growth of stubble. He puts on the dirty rumpled suit and the falling-apart shoes, without socks, and checks the briefcase in which he keeps his makeup. Then he heads off for the rendezvous with Alf and Bruno, stopping for a coffee and a doughnut on the way. He likes to test the general effect: even without his makeup, he looks dingy enough so that the serving folk are markedly cool to him.

Once at the site, he parks his car and climbs into the back of Bruno's van. There he applies the fake blood, the bruise paint and the scar. The idea is to make himself look either seriously wounded or dead. While he fools with the finishing touches, Alf and Bruno set up, behind some bushes adjacent to the one John himself intends to use. Alf is the sound man, a Cockney who's been over here for ten years. Bruno is from Romania, and runs the camera; he likes to be called "the cinematographer." John doesn't much care what he's called as long as he gets the pictures.

John messes up his hair, checks the effect in the mirror, climbs out of the van, locks it up – you can never tell when a real derelict will emerge from the shrubbery and there's no point leaving temptation in their way – and joins the other two. Then he crawls under his bush, and the others coach him until he's in the right position – mostly concealed, but with enough leg sticking out so that a curious or concerned person might be tempted to take another look. Then Alf and Bruno hide themselves, and then they wait for the joggers and dog-walkers. It's strangely exciting, the waiting. Almost like hunting.

Alf records the sounds, which so far have been mostly feet crunching and people talking to their dogs, and a bit of whistling. Bruno films everyone – those who don't notice John's legs at all, those who notice and pretend not to, those who stop and frankly stare. In the two mornings so far, only one has actually come closer and made as if to take a real look; but she'd thought better of it and continued on. It's amazing to John how many people genuinely don't see him: they aren't concentrating on where they are at the moment, only on where they're headed.

When he's got three mornings' worth of video tape – which is all he can afford on this mingy little grant – John will be able to start on the really creative part of the project. He'll cut and splice and re-film, and digitally alter the heads of the joggers so they won't be able to sue him for invasion of privacy. Maybe he'll colour them – purple or green – and add a few extras, like flames shooting out of their ears, or big round bug-eyes. Then he'll put himself at the beginning, in his serious-wounds makeup, and explain that this is a visual rendering of indifference – the indifference of a society made callous by repeated exposure to degradation and suffering. The tape will run in a continuous loop as part of an installation he's doing: white plastic panels covered with found objects from the sous-sol of society, such as used junkie needles and discarded condoms and hamburger wrappers and crushed soft-drink cartons and shattered beer bottles. That sort of thing.

He used to do sculptures, but no one's buying those any more. At his age – not old, but no longer the wave of the future – he can't afford to seem passé. It's a cut-throat world out there; maybe that's why he's chosen to depict a cut on his throat. He'll get a few closeup stills of that and add them to the installation. He's calling the whole thing Underbrush Man, in a glancing reference to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground; also as a take on the Fuller Brush Man, to represent the hucksterism and crass commercialism of the present age. That's the way art is these days: intertextual. Not that anyone can be expected to get it. Like a lot of the other intertextualism floating around these days, it will have to be carefully explained.

Thus John muses, lying beneath his bush, feeling the cool damp seep up through the back of his tattered suit, listening distantly to the passing feet. No one will stop and look; like the genuine homeless, he's invisible. It's a shame, really – just as he's finally got the hang of the scar, and is looking less like a Hallowe'en mask and more like a man who's been truly injured. Or perhaps murdered.

It's odd, lying here pretending to be dead. He wonders what his shrink – not the one he has now, the one of two years back – would make of this latest charade of his, this latest impersonation. This is a substitute for your suicide of yourself, no? You have killed yourself in your art so you do not have to do it in the real life, so much is evident. You see yourself as wounded. In the heart, no? You long for the departed Serafina, yes? You wish her to return. You wish to be a small sick boy, with some kind woman taking care of you.

Rocket scientist, thinks John. Don't we all? And besides, I am wounded.

All at once a new and different thing happens. He's being barked at by a dog; that's happened before, but this is serious barking. He opens his eyes and looks up to see a woman's hand parting the branches. Then a sudden pain shoots through his leg. The goddamn dog has bitten him! He leaps to his feet – What the fuck! – and explodes out of the bush. The dog-owner is a blonde, and his effect on her is more than he ever could have hoped for. She screams like a maniac when she sees the blood, and the next moment she has keeled over and is lying on her back in the path.

John hops up and down, holding his bitten leg. Alf and Bruno charge out from behind their own bushes. Did you get it? says John. Did you get all of it? Bruno reassures him. Alf says maybe the woman has had a heart attack. No, says John, looking down at her. She's just sensitive. She's fainted. He's intrigued by the idea of a woman who can still faint. Possibly she is the only caring woman in the entire city, because isn't she the only one who stopped?

Maybe he should pick her up in his arms and carry her to the van. He thinks he could manage it without giving himself a hernia, she doesn't seem too heavy. She looks like the kind of woman who could use a man in her life. A little worn around the edges maybe, but that kind are more appreciative. There are however the dogs to contend with; the little one is still growling at him. The woman could sue him for scaring the piss out of her under false pretenses, but then, he could countersue for grievous bodily dog bites.

You wanted to be wounded, says the voice of his former shrink. And now you are. It is dangerous sometimes to act out our fantasies, no?

John kneels beside the woman; she opens her eyes. Jesus Cripes, she says, I thought you were dead.

I'm not, says John. Are you all right?

Jesus Cripes is promising; this woman is of the earth, earthy – not some neurotic female artist. He's had it with neurotic female artists. This woman looks as if she knows which end of the vacuum cleaner the dirt goes into. Already he can see the two of them together, her pottering in the garden – he hopes she has a garden – or cooking dinner in the kitchen, while he explains to her the theory behind his latest project, or two, or three. She'll rearrange the closets; he'll run his tongue up her neck. Then they'll end up in the bedroom. It will be perfect.

She'll be there when he wants her, and not when he doesn't. She will have tact; she'll know about artistic freedom and the personal space he needs. She'll rub his back when it's sore, and won't insist on regular mealtimes, and if he requires an interlude with some other woman, to increase his spiritual range, she will be indulgent.

Perhaps she too is wounded. He will have to teach her how to trust again. They will teach each other.

Oh yes, there are the dogs. They will have to be tied up outside, in the yard. He hopes she has a yard. Or else they can be locked in the cellar. Or something.

You look like bloody hell, says the woman.

I'm supposed to, says John. It comes with the territory. He smiles. She smiles back. It's a beginning.

Margaret Atwood
Marco Secchi/Getty Images Europe

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist and essayist. Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize five times, she won in 2000 with The Blind Assassin. Other awards include the Giller prize and the Arthur C Clarke award, for The Handmaid's Tale. Her latest book is In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2011).