"Hey, I've got an idea!" Uncle Ted offered. "Hey, Janet! Call the dog, will you?"

"Here, Thor!" Mom answered from the kitchen. Thor looked up but didn't move.

"Thor!" Mom repeated. "C'mere!" Thor sat up at attention, but still didn't budge.

"Hey!" Dad snapped. He reached down and gave Thor a light slap on his rump. Thor looked around, startled. "Get out there!" Dad said, annoyed. Thor stood up and sullenly walked into the kitchen. The slow click of his claws on the hardwood floor spoke eloquently of his reluctance to leave the living room. As soon as he was in the kitchen, Uncle Ted called, "Now put him out!" Mom opened the kitchen door, and after some ordering, reordering, and angry foot-stomping, she dragged him onto the back stoop.

"Okay," Uncle Ted said, rubbing his hands mischievously and hunkering down in front of the stereo cabinet. "Where's the microphone for your ca.s.sette deck?" He and Mom had mailed each other ca.s.sette-letters back before there was e-mail, so he knew there was a mike around somewhere. Dad opened a drawer next to the cabinet and pulled out a cheap plastic Radio Shack microphone.

"Okay, here's what you do," Ted said conspiratorially, explaining his plan in hushed tones as if there were a spy in the room.

Mom thought it was odd that Thor didn't want to go out. He always wanted to go out, and yet this time he'd resisted. And when she finally got him out, there was another surprise; instead of joining the kids, who were playing in the backyard, he ran around the house and onto the front porch, for no apparent reason.

Mom went back to the stove, turned down the gas under the instant mashed potatoes, and started toward the living room to see what was going on.

Dad and Uncle Ted were snickering in front of the ca.s.sette deck as she entered the room. Dad had the microphone in his hand. He was about to record something.

"Look at that," Mom said, pointing to the window. Thor stood on the porch with his paws on the windowsill, watching them.

"What the . . ?" Dad said. He'd never seen Thor do anything like it before.

"Hm," Uncle Ted said, sounding disappointed. "We can't do this with him there. Let's see if the kids can get him to stay in the backyard."

Mom gave Dad a look that said, What's going on here? but Dad just shrugged. He was having fun and obviously wanted to try whatever Uncle Ted had suggested.

It wasn't easy, but they finally got Teddy to drag Thor into the backyard on a leash, where Teddy tethered him to a fence post. Throughout the operation, Thor's eyes and ears never left the house. He thought he heard Dad calling him at one point, and he barked and strained at the leash, choking himself in the process. Brett wanted to unleash him, but Teddy wouldn't let him.

"He's doing it to himself," Teddy said callously. "If he doesn't want to choke, he can stop pulling."

The m.u.f.fled sound of Dad's voice inside the house faded. Thor lay on the ground as close to the house as he could, with the leash pulled taut. He never once looked around at the kids playing in the yard.

Uncle Ted had not only insinuated himself into the Pack, he'd also managed to separate Thor from his Duty. Things were bad and getting worse. He watched the house and worried.

A few endless minutes pa.s.sed, and Mom stuck her head out the kitchen door.

"Okay, you can let him go!" she called. Brett undid the clasp at Thor's collar and he dashed across the yard and through the kitchen door, which Mom thoughtfully held open for him.

He ran into the living room in a state of high alert. When he saw everything was normal, he excitedly kissed Dad's hands and wagged his tail as if he hadn't seen him all day. He hardly glanced at Uncle Ted. His only concern was that Dad was okay.

Whatever they'd done, it didn't show. Everything looked and smelled the same as before. Dad and Uncle Ted sat in the same chairs, watching TV. Thor relaxed and made himself comfortable on the floor between them, and forgot about their mysterious behavior.

The rich soup of aromas from the kitchen became overwhelming and Mom called everyone in for dinner.

Thor lay on the floor a few feet from the table, ignoring the food in his dish. He didn't have much appet.i.te lately, and even the promise of table sc.r.a.ps for dessert couldn't arouse his interest.

"So what's the big secret?" Mom asked Uncle Ted after settling into her seat.

"You'll see," Uncle Ted said, smiling mischievously. "After dinner."

Dad asked Uncle Ted about the Amazon Basin, where he had once spent over a year photographing insects, and the table conversation quickly led off into geography. The big secret was almost forgotten by the time everyone finished eating. Mom was collecting the plates when Uncle Ted brought the subject up.

"Okay," he explained, "the best way to do this is to move the table, so we can all see the living room from our seats. That way, we can act like nothing is going on while we watch." He and Dad lifted the table and scooted it into position as the kids followed with their chairs. Brett got Mom's chair for her while she put the last dishes in the dishwasher.

"Ted," Uncle Ted said (winning a few points with his nephew by not calling him "Teddy" or "Little Ted"), "would you go into the living room and press the 'play' b.u.t.ton on the ca.s.sette deck? Everything is set up, so all you have to do is start the tape, then come back and have a seat. Janet, come on and sit down."

Teddy did as he was asked and joined the family at the table. No sound came from the stereo.

Then, about thirty seconds later, Thor was startled by the sound of Dad's voice in the living room.

"Here, Thor!" it called out cheerily. "C'mere, Thor!" Thor scrambled to his feet, looked briefly at Dad, then dashed to the living room, looked around, and looked back into the kitchen, where Dad sat smiling at the table. From behind him in the living room, Dad called again. "Thor! Come here! C'mere, Thor!"

Thor ran to the left stereo speaker and peered at it quizzically with his head c.o.c.ked at a forty-five degree angle. Except for the difference in breed and color, he looked just like Nipper, the dog in the old RCA Victor trademark, "His Master's Voice." But just as Thor was examining the left speaker, Dad's voice said, "Over here, Thor!" from the right one.

Thor jumped and ran to the right speaker, just as Dad's voice came out of the left speaker again. "No, no. Over here!" Thor stayed put and looked into the kitchen, where Dad sat at the table, laughing with the rest of the Pack. "Come here, Thor!" Dad's voice said from behind him. Thor spun around and barked angrily at the speaker. The Pack laughed so hard they appeared to be in pain. Tears rolled down Mom's cheeks, and Brett was literally rolling on the floor, holding his stomach.

As Dad's voice continued to beckon him, first to one speaker then to the other, Thor decided the correct response was to ignore the stereo as he'd always done. It wasn't easy. The voice in the speakers wasn't Dad, and yet it sounded just like him. The timing, the inflections, the pitch and timbre . . . But it still wasn't Dad. Dad was in the kitchen, in plain sight. With great difficulty, Thor resolved to ignore the phantom voice of Dad.

Besides, he didn't like being laughed at.

Thor did plenty of things that made the Pack laugh, but it was never like this.

The first time he pulled Teddy's b.u.t.tons off for teasing him, Dad had just about laughed himself to death. But Dad's laughter wasn't ridiculing him - on the contrary, it told Thor that Dad was proud of him, impressed by his resourcefulness.

This laughter was different; it said that the Pack was amused by his confusion.

Thor did nothing to show his feelings, but inwardly he was mortified.

He walked back into the kitchen, ignoring the laughter and trying to act as if nothing had happened, while the tape-recorded calls continued to beckon from the living room. Thor grunted and plopped down sulkily on the floor, and Dad told Teddy to turn off the stereo.

"That's the funniest thing I ever saw," Dad said as he wiped tears from his face.

"Yeah," Uncle Ted agreed. "It was nice to get a little reprieve, too."

Dad looked at him oddly.

"What do you mean?"

"Haven't you noticed?" Uncle Ted asked.

"Noticed what?" Mom said.

"Watch," Uncle Ted said. He got up and nonchalantly walked to the living room window, where he stood gazing at the street. A few seconds later, Thor got up as if he were bored and just looking for a change of scene. He wandered into the living room and lay down on the floor with a view of Uncle Ted.

As soon as Thor made himself comfortable, Uncle Ted turned away from the window and walked back into the kitchen. Thor immediately got up and followed him back, with his nose not more than six inches behind Uncle Ted's heels. Thor never took his eyes off the floor the whole time.

Uncle Ted sat down, and Thor dropped himself onto the floor. Uncle Ted got up and walked back to the living room. After a moment's pause, Thor got up and followed. Before Thor had a chance to sit down in the living room, Uncle Ted came back into the kitchen. Thor followed so closely that Mom was afraid Uncle Ted might accidentally kick Thor's nose with his heels. Uncle Ted sat back down, and Thor sat behind his chair.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on here?" Dad asked without a trace of amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice. He'd never seen the dog do anything like it before.

"I don't know," Uncle Ted lied. "But he's been following me around all day. Even when I'm over the garage, he's on the back stoop, watching the apartment door."

"Jesus," Dad whispered, and slowly shook his head.

No one else said anything, but Brett's skin broke out in gooseflesh. He'd been feeling funny about Uncle Ted lately. It wasn't a strong feeling at first, and he'd tried to shrug it off. Even when it blossomed into a genuine sense of foreboding, he hadn't told anybody about it. h.e.l.l, he was supposed to be outgrowing his childhood fears, not adding to them - he was still afraid of the dark, for example, though he would eat hot coals before he'd admit it.

Thor's actions seemed to confirm and legitimize the shapeless dread Brett felt around Uncle Ted. Without knowing why, Brett was secretly glad Thor was shadowing his uncle.

"I can't believe this," Dad said. He rubbed his chin and thought for a moment, then said, "Teddy, go follow Uncle Ted, but don't let Thor leave the kitchen. Ted, do it again."

Uncle Ted got up and left the room, this time with Teddy. As Uncle Ted walked through the kitchen door, Teddy hung behind. Thor got up and started toward the living room. Teddy stood in the doorway and blocked his path. Thor tried to use his snout as a wedge to push his way through, but Teddy held fast to the door frame. After a few tries, Thor grunted and plopped down on the kitchen floor just inside the doorway. He made no show of watching Uncle Ted, but he'd positioned himself in line of sight with the man.

"Let him through," Dad said. Teddy stepped aside. Thor didn't move. "Step away from the doorway," Dad said. "Come in here and sit down." Teddy returned to the kitchen table. By the time he reached his chair, Thor was in the living room.

"Now go back to the doorway and this time, keep him out," Dad said. Teddy positioned himself and Dad called Uncle Ted back in.

Uncle Ted came back, and as before, Thor was right on his heels. But as Uncle Ted stepped through the kitchen door, Teddy stepped into the doorway.

This time Thor was not so easily put off. It was one thing to let Uncle Ted go off by himself unsupervised, but quite another to let him be alone with Mom and Debbie and Brett. Thor pushed hard with all his weight, and Teddy had to grip the door frame with all his strength to keep from being pushed aside. The harder Thor pushed, the tighter Teddy held.

Uncle Ted stood watching about halfway between the doorway and the kitchen table. He took a step toward the table and Thor growled. Mom's eyes opened wide and Uncle Ted stopped. Thor stepped away from the door and barked sharply at Teddy. Teddy was startled by the unexpected rebuke, but held his ground.

Uncle Ted took another step toward the table and Thor barked viciously. It sounded like a last warning. Teddy held firm.

What happened next took less than five seconds from start to finish.

Uncle Ted walked to the table and sat down between Mom and Debbie. Thor lurched at the doorway and pushed his head through before Teddy's thigh slammed his neck hard against the door frame. Teddy reached for the ring in Thor's collar. In a move as fast as any the Pack had ever seen, Thor withdrew his head from the doorway and snapped at Teddy's hand. He caught the boy's wrist with a bite calculated to hurt without breaking the skin. Teddy shrieked in alarm and s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand back. Thor knocked him over and shot through the doorway as Teddy pulled back. He charged into the kitchen as Dad leaped from his chair.

"What the f.u.c.k?" Dad yelled, springing at Thor and slapping his face in a blind rage. "What are you doing? Bad Dog! Bad Dog!"

Before Thor knew what was happening, Dad had snagged his collar and yanked hard, cutting off his wind and lifting his front legs off the floor.

Dad was flying on instinct. His only thought was to get Thor away from his family.

Thor choked and gagged but offered no resistance as Dad pulled him toward the cellar door.

He'd lost his head and he knew it. He was in fact the awful thing Dad was calling him over and over again.

Bad Dog.

Dad opened the cellar door with his free hand and swung Thor through the doorway, literally throwing him down the stairs.

"Bad Dog!" Dad shouted, and slammed the cellar door.

Thor couldn't believe what he'd done. He'd known, even as he'd opened his mouth to bite Teddy, that it was wrong, it was Bad.

He slinked into the darkest corner of the cellar and lay on the dusty cement floor, staring straight ahead at nothing, feeling the awful weight of his Badness press down on him. If the cellar door were to open, he would retreat deeper into the corner. He needed to be alone in his moment of shame. He couldn't bear to face the Pack.

He'd picked up a half dozen painful bruises on the way down the stairs, but was only marginally aware of the pain. His mind was overwhelmed with the wordless question: What have I done?

He ran the incident through his mind again and again, trying to find where he went wrong, where he might have done something else. He only knew that in trying to do what was right, he'd done wrong. He'd done the worst thing he could possibly do: He'd used violence against a Pack member.

It didn't matter that it was the kind of safe, symbolic violence that would be permissible in a wolf pack - it was not permissible in his Pack, and he knew it. But what else could he have done?

Uncle Ted was a threat. He'd approached the Pack. Thor had to be there. He couldn't leave the Pack unguarded with a threat in its midst.

Teddy had blocked the way. He had tried to get past Teddy, he had to. What else could he have done? He had to get into the kitchen.

But biting Teddy was wrong, and nothing could ever make it right. It was the worst thing he'd ever done.

He could hear the Pack talking about his Badness, and he heard no kind words or forgiving tones. He became convinced that the door at the top of the stairs would never open again. He would never again be welcomed into the Pack, never again feel the warmth of the Pack's love.

He felt a terrible emptiness inside, and his chest felt tight, as if something were squeezing it, keeping him from taking a full breath. His body trembled uncontrollably, though he didn't feel cold. He felt like he was shrinking inside. Somehow, he was getting smaller and smaller inside his own body.

How long could this go on? Could he possibly feel this horrible forever? Anything would be better than this enormous, oppressive aloneness that didn't let him breathe.

There was only one hope: forgiveness from the Pack Leader. The die had been cast, and his fate was in Dad's hands. If Dad didn't forgive him, he could never be part of the Pack again.

Time seemed to stand still while he lay in the shadows, trapped in the limbo of the unloved and unlovable.

Upstairs, the discussion wasn't nearly as one-sided as Thor imagined.

Dad examined Teddy's wrist. Two rows of deep indentations crossed his arm where Thor's teeth had caught it, but there was no break in the skin, no blood. Dad understood that Thor had bitten Teddy exactly as hard as he'd intended, as a warning and not to do serious harm, but he was still angry and worried. There was no reason for Thor's strange behavior, and his behavior was getting more erratic every day.

Why was Thor following Uncle Ted in the first place? He'd never seen Thor do anything like it before. What was going on? If only he could ask him . . .

But he couldn't, and Thor's behavior put a genuine scare into him. Was the dog sick?

And more important, was he becoming a danger to the family?

Dad didn't want to consider that last possibility, but once it entered his mind it wouldn't go away.

Nonetheless, he was not willing to believe it on the basis of what he'd seen. If it was true, and Thor was a threat to the family, there was only one thing to do, and he wasn't ready to do that yet, not by a long shot.

Besides, he told himself, it was a stupid mistake to tell Teddy to block the dog's way. He'd seen the way Teddy and Thor had fallen out lately, and he'd lectured Teddy more than once in the last month about not teasing the dog. Stupid, really stupid.

But Thor's reaction . . .

Once before, when Thor was a pup, he'd bitten Teddy the same way - tooth marks, but no blood - after Teddy had teased him too much. Dad had disciplined Thor and Teddy and the incident was never repeated - until today.

But Thor was a pup then, not a powerful brute capable of injuring or killing. If Thor were to go bonkers, he could conceivably kill the whole family.

It was Thor's love for the family and his deep sense of responsibility that made him safe to live with. Could those qualities be slipping?

It was too scary to think about. And too awful. Of course Thor could be trusted. Strange behavior or not, Thor loved the family, Dad was sure.