Dirk the

Protector Gary Paulsen

F or a time in my life I became a street kid. It would be nice to put it

another way but what with the drinking at home and the difficulties
it caused with my parents I couldn’t live in the house.
ANALYZE VISUALS
Examine this painting.
What can you infer
about the boy’s life?
I made a place for myself in the basement by the furnace and hunted
and fished in the woods around the small town. But I had other needs
as well—clothes, food, school supplies—and they required money.
I was not afraid of work and spent most of my summers working on
farms for two, three and finally five dollars a day. This gave me enough for
school clothes, though never for enough clothes or the right kind; I was conventional
(kEn-vDnPshE-nEl) adj.
10 never cool or in. But during the school year I couldn’t leave town to work usual; traditional
the farms. I looked for odd jobs but most of them were taken by the boys
who stayed in town through the summer. All the conventional jobs like a CAUSE AND EFFECT
working in the markets or at the drugstore were gone and all I could find What causes Paulsen
to take the job at the
was setting pins in the small bowling alley over the Four Clover Bar. a bowling alley? Keep
It had just six alleys and they were busy all the time—there were reading to find an effect
leagues each night from seven to eleven—but the pay for truly brutal of working this job.

Boy with Orange, Murray Kimber.

270 unit 2: analyzing character and point of view © Murray Kimber/Illustrationworks.com.
 work was only seven cents a line. There weren’t many boys willing to
do the work but with so few alleys, it was still very hard to earn much
money. A dollar a night was not uncommon and three was outstanding.
20 To make up the difference I started selling newspapers in the bars at
night. This kept me up and out late, and I often came home at midnight.
But it added to my income so that I could stay above water.1
Unfortunately it also put me in the streets at a time when there was
what might be called a rough element. There weren’t gangs then, not
exactly, but there were groups of boys who more or less hung out together
and got into trouble. They were the forerunners of the gangs we have forerunner (fôrPrOnQEr)
now, but with some singular differences. They did not have firearms— n. person or thing that
came before
but many carried switchblade knives.
These groups were predatory, and they hunted the streets at night. predatory (prDdPE-tôrQC)
30 I became their favorite target in this dark world. Had the town been adj. given to stealing
larger I might have hidden from them, or found different routes. But from or hurting others
for one’s own gain
there was only a small uptown section and it was impossible for me to
avoid them. They would catch me walking a dark street and surround me
and with threats and blows steal what money I had earned that night.
I tried fighting back but there were usually several of them. I couldn’t
win. Because I was from “the wrong side of the tracks”2 I didn’t think
I could go to the authorities. It all seemed hopeless. b b POINT OF VIEW
And then I met Dirk. Reread lines 35–37.
What does Paulsen tell

T
the reader about his
he bowling alley was on a second floor and had a window in back attitude toward himself
40 of the pit area. When all the lanes were going, the heat from the pin and his situation?
lights made the temperature close to a hundred degrees. Outside the
window a ladder led to the roof. One fall evening, instead of leaving
work through the front door, I made my way out the window and up the
ladder onto the roof. I hoped to find a new way home to escape the boys
who waited for me. That night one of the league bowlers had bowled
a perfect game—300—and in celebration had bought the pit boys
hamburgers and Cokes. I had put the burger and Coke in a bag to take
back to my basement. The bag had grease stains and smelled of toasted
buns, and my mouth watered as I moved from the roof of the bowling
50 alley to the flat roof over the hardware store, then down a fire escape
that led to a dark alcove3 off an alley.
There was a black space beneath the stairs and as I reached the bottom
and my foot hit the ground I heard a low growl. It was not loud, more a
rumble that seemed to come from the earth and so full of menace that it
stopped me cold, my foot frozen in midair.
1. stay above water: survive.
2. “the wrong side of the tracks”: the less desirable part of town.
3. alcove (BlPkIvQ): a small hollow space in a wall.

272 unit 2: analyzing character and point of view

 I raised my foot and the growl stopped.
I lowered my foot and the growl came again. My foot went up and
it stopped.
I stood there, trying to peer through the steps of the fire escape. For a time
60 I couldn’t see more than a dark shape crouched back in the gloom. There was
a head and a back, and as my eyes became accustomed to the dark I could see
that it had scraggly, scruffy hair and two eyes that glowed yellow. c c CAUSE AND EFFECT
We were at an impasse. I didn’t want to climb up the ladder again but Reread lines 52–62.
Make an inference
if I stepped to the ground it seemed likely I would be bitten. I hung there about what kind of
for a full minute before I thought of the hamburger. I could use it as beast is under the stairs.
a decoy and get away. What’s causing the
The problem was the hamburger smelled so good and I was so hungry. beast to growl?
I decided to give the beast under the stairs half a burger. I opened the impasse (GmPpBsQ) n.
sack, unwrapped the tinfoil and threw half the sandwich under the steps, a situation in which no
70 then jumped down and ran for the end of the alley. I was just getting my progress can be made;
stride, legs and arms pumping, pulling air with a heaving chest, when a deadlock
I rounded the corner and ran smack into the latest group of boys who decoy (dCPkoiQ) n. a
were terrorizing me. person or thing used
There were four of them, led by a thug—he and two of the others to distract others or
would ultimately land in prison—named, absurdly, “Happy” Santun. lead them in a different
direction
Happy was built like an upright freezer and had just about half the
intelligence but this time it was easy. I’d run right into him.
“Well—lookit here. He came to us this time. . . .”
Over the months I had developed a policy of flee or die—run as fast
80 as I could to avoid the pain, and to hang on to my hard-earned money.
Sometimes it worked, but most often they caught me.
This time, they already had me. I could have handed over the money,
taken a few hits and been done with it, but something in me snapped and
I hit Happy in the face with every ounce of strength in my puny body. puny (pyLPnC) adj.
He brushed off the blow easily and I went down in a welter of blows weak and small
and kicks from all four of them. I curled into a ball to protect what I
could. I’d done this before, many times, and knew that they would stop
sometime—although I suspected that because I’d hit Happy it might take
longer than usual for them to get bored hitting me. d d POINT OF VIEW
90 Instead there was some commotion that I didn’t understand and the Reread lines 79–89.
As Paulsen describes
kicks stopped coming. There was a snarling growl that seemed to come the attack, what else
from the bowels of the earth, followed by the sound of ripping cloth, does the reader learn
screams, and then the fading slap of footsteps running away. about him?
For another minute I remained curled up, then opened my eyes
to find that I was alone.
But when I rolled over I saw the dog.

dirk the protector 273

 I t was the one that had been beneath the stairs. Brindled, patches of hair
gone, one ear folded over and the other standing straight and notched
from fighting. He didn’t seem to be any particular breed. Just big and
VISUAL VOCABULARY

100 rangy, right on the edge of ugly, though I would come to think of him
as beautiful. He was Airedale crossed with hound crossed with alligator.
Alley dog. Big, tough, mean alley dog. As I watched he spit cloth—
it looked like blue jeans—out of his mouth.
“You bit Happy, and sent them running?” I asked.
He growled, and I wasn’t sure if it was with menace, but he didn’t bare brindled (brGnPdld): adj.
his teeth and didn’t seem to want to attack me. Indeed, he had saved me. light brownish yellow or
grayish with streaks or
“Why?” I asked. “What did I do to deserve . . . oh, the hamburger.”
spots of a darker color
I swear, he pointedly looked at the bag with the second half of
hamburger in it.
110 “You want more?” e e CAUSE AND EFFECT
He kept staring at the bag and I thought, Well, he sure as heck deserves Reread lines 105–110.
What is the cause-
it. I opened the sack and gave him the rest of it, which disappeared down and-effect relationship
his throat as if a hole had opened into the universe. Paulsen explains here?
He looked at the bag.
“That’s it,” I said, brushing my hands together. “The whole thing.”
A low growl.
“You can rip my head off—there still isn’t any more hamburger.”
I removed the Coke and handed him the bag, which he took, held on
the ground with one foot and deftly ripped open with his teeth.
120 “See? Nothing.” I was up by this time and I started to walk away.
“Thanks for the help . . .”
He followed me. Not close, perhaps eight feet back, but matching my
speed. It was now nearly midnight and I was tired and sore from setting
pins and from the kicks that had landed on my back and sides.
“I don’t have anything to eat at home but crackers and peanut butter
and jelly,” I told him. I kept some food in the basement of the apartment
building, where I slept near the furnace.
He kept following and, truth be known, I didn’t mind. I was still half
scared of him but the memory of him spitting out bits of Happy’s pants
130 and the sound of the boys running off made me smile. When I arrived at
the apartment house I held the main door open and he walked right in.
I opened the basement door and he followed me down the steps into the
furnace room.
I turned the light on and could see that my earlier judgment had been
correct. He was scarred from fighting, skinny and flat sided and with
patches of hair gone. His nails were worn down from scratching concrete.
“Dirk,” I said. “I’ll call you Dirk.” I had been trying to read a detective
novel and there was a tough guy in it named Dirk. “You look like
somebody named Dirk.”

274 unit 2: analyzing character and point of view

140 And so we sat that first night. I had
two boxes of Ritz crackers I’d hustled
somewhere, a jar of peanut butter and
another one of grape jelly, and a knife
from the kitchen upstairs. I would
smear a cracker, hand it to him—he
took each one with great care and
gentleness—and then eat one myself.
We did this, back and forth, until both
boxes were empty and my stomach was
150 bulging; then I fell asleep on the old
outdoor lounge I used for furniture.

T he next day was a school day.

I woke up and found Dirk under
the basement stairs, watching me. When
I opened the door he trotted up the steps
and outside—growling at me as he went
past—and I started off to school.
He followed me at a distance, then
stopped across the street when I went
160 into the front of the school building.
I thought I’d probably never see
him again.
But he was waiting when I came out
that afternoon, sitting across the street Street Corner (1991), Daniel Bennett Schwartz. Oil on canvas, 91.4 cm × 71.1 cm.
Private collection. © Bridgeman Art Library.
by a mailbox. I walked up to him.
“Hi, Dirk.” I thought of petting him
but when I reached a hand out he growled. “All right—no touching.” hustle (hOsPEl) v. to gain
I turned and made my way toward the bowling alley. It was Friday and by energetic effort
sometimes on Friday afternoon there were people who wanted to bowl
170 early and I could pick up a dollar or two setting pins.
Dirk followed about four feet back—closer than before—and as
I made my way along Second Street and came around the corner by
Ecker’s Drugstore I ran into Happy. He had only two of his cohorts with cohort (kIPhôrtQ) n. a
him and I don’t think they had intended to do me harm, but I surprised companion or associate
them and Happy took a swing at me.
Dirk took him right in the middle. I mean bit him in the center of his f POINT OF VIEW
stomach, hard, before Happy’s fist could get to me. Happy screamed and On the basis of what you
know about Paulsen,
doubled over and Dirk went around and ripped into his rear and kept why does he say it
tearing at it even as Happy and his two companions fled down the street. was “one of the great
180 It was absolutely great. Maybe one of the great moments in my life. f moments in my life”?
I had a bodyguard.

dirk the protector 275

 It was as close to having a live nuclear weapon as you can get.
I cannot say we became friends. I touched him only once, when he wasn’t
looking—I petted him on the head and received a growl and a lifted
lip for it. But we became constant companions. Dirk moved into the
basement with me, and I gave him a hamburger every day and hustled up
dog food for him and many nights we sat down there eating Ritz crackers
and he watched me working on stick model airplanes.
He followed me to school, waited for me, followed me to the bowling
190 alley, waited for me. He was with me everywhere I went, always back
three or four feet, always with a soft growl, and to my great satisfaction
every time he saw Happy—every time—Dirk would try to remove some
part of his body with as much violence as possible.
He caused Happy and his mob to change their habits. They not only
stopped hunting me but went out of their way to avoid me, or more
specifically, Dirk. In fact after that winter and spring they never bothered
me again, even after Dirk was gone. g g CAUSE AND EFFECT
What is the long-term

200
D irk came to a wonderful end. I always thought of him as a street
dog—surely nobody owned him—and in the summer when I was
hired to work on a farm four miles east of town I took him with me. We
effect Dirk has on the
young Paulsen’s life?

walked all the way out to the farm, Dirk four feet in back of me, and he
would trot along beside the tractor when I plowed, now and then chasing
the hundreds of seagulls that came for the worms the plow turned up.
The farmer, whose name was Olaf, was a bachelor and did not have
a dog. I looked over once to see Dirk sitting next to Olaf while we ate
some sandwiches and when Olaf reached out to pet him Dirk actually—
this was the first time I’d seen it—wagged his tail.
He’d found a home.
I worked the whole summer there and when it came time to leave,
210 Dirk remained sitting in the yard as I walked down the driveway. The
next summer I had bought an old Dodge for twenty-five dollars and
I drove out to Olaf ’s to say hello and saw Dirk out in a field with perhaps
two hundred sheep. He wasn’t herding them, or chasing them, but was
just standing there, watching the flock.
“You have him with the sheep?” I asked Olaf.
He nodded. “Last year I lost forty-three to coyotes,” he said. “This year
not a one. He likes to guard things, doesn’t he?”
I thought of Dirk chasing Happy down the street, and later spitting
out bits of his pants, and I smiled. “Yeah, he sure does.” 

276 unit 2: analyzing character and point of view