Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing (10 page)

Diana sat down beside me. “I should have boarded Cormac.”

“Now, Sonny,” Diana said, “you’ve never boarded him. It’s no one’s fault Cormac ran away. You know that. He’s run through the fence before. It’s just that we’re not there today. I think we’ll find him.”

“I shouldn’t have left him with Drew,” I repeated.

“And do what? Not go on your book tour? That would be silly.”

“I know that,” I said. “But Cormac’ll be in Alaska by the time I get home.”

“Okay,” Diana said, speaking more softly and deliberately. “We are not going to let this devolve into a fight between you and me.” She got up and went back to the window again, this time standing and staring through the glass. She turned to me. “I’ll be flying home tomorrow. If Cormac’s not back—if Drew doesn’t find him—the boys and I will go door-to-door in the neighborhood. We’ll put up signs. Monday, I’ll phone the vets around town. We’ll find your dog.”

My dog? That was the first time she had referred to Cormac as my dog. I had never called him my dog. I’d thought of him as our dog. He shared his company with Diana and John Luke and Dylan, of course, but it was true Cormac had become my friend, constantly at my side.

Cormac was my first puppy.

Cormac was the only dog since my first dog as a boy who would not get handed off when he became, as my grandmother would say, a “handful.” Though never spoken, that had been a vow understood in Jack Bennett’s front yard; it had grown into a promise of the heart.

Now with him gone, with this crazy futility pressing down and no reasonable chance that I could go home before this tour was over to look for him, it was plain to me: Cormac had been my dog from the first day I saw him.

And it was I—not my wife Diana, not my sons John Luke or Dylan, not my friend Drew—who had let Cormac down.

Those other times he’d run through the fence, I’d been ignoring him because I was on a single-minded quest to write a book. I stood up and joined Diana at the window. “For some reason,” I said to her, “I find myself thinking about Bailey next door. Was he watching when Cormac dashed across the yard, going God-only-knows where?” Did Bailey, I wondered, hear him yelp as he raced through the shock barrier, watch him pick up speed when the thunder followed him?

“Now the transmitter thing’s there,” I said to Diana. “I can’t believe I just let that go.” This time she didn’t have anything to say, only looked away. I went to the closet and got my jacket. I told her I needed to take a short walk. The hotel door closed behind me. I walked to the elevator and pushed the button. I put my hands in my pockets and leaned my shoulder against the wall as I waited. Down on the sidewalk, I held it all in until I’d gone two blocks.

IN ATLANTA, Cormac was still missing. In Nashville, Cormac had not been found. I left Tennessee, headed for Blytheville in Arkansas. My days became a kind of absentminded shorthand between towns, one name on a map to another. I took a detour to drive on the Natchez Trace. I just needed to drive along that pretty road at the 50 mph speed limit.

I did not need to read a book while driving.

But I did.

I held open in my right hand Cormac McCarthy’s new book, No Country for Old Men. I held onto the steering wheel with my left hand. I set the cruise control at 47 mph and I drove down that pristine highway while I read McCarthy’s novel.

I wondered if Mr. McCarthy would be sorry my dog was lost.

While the miles clicked past on the Jeep’s odometer, my mind slipped off the road, kept getting all wrapped up in the reddish-brown dog whose absence was a pressure in my chest. I saw him beside me as I drove, his face out the window, speed-reading the wind. I saw him frantically scanning the ground for a leaf to pick up so he could talk to me. I thought of Drew telling me Cormac just wanted to bring me something.

I made my stops at the bookstores, gave my readings, answered questions from the audiences. Cormac was gone now for ten days. From my cell phone, I called the same veterinarians that Diana had already called. I called the Fairhope animal shelter, the dog pound.

To each who answered the phone I repeated: “My name is Sonny Brewer from Fairhope. I’m missing a Golden Retriever, a dark-red male, not neutered, last seen wearing a green electronic collar in the Moseley Road area of Fairhope.”

From each who talked to me I got the same answer: “Sorry. We don’t have your dog.”

I called Drew and asked him to go again to the grocery stores to check the bulletin boards. He said he’d already done that, said he’d also been to the convenience stores where Diana and the boys had taken the missing dog flyers. No luck. I kept driving. I wondered if Cormac was still on the move, too. I did four more bookstores. In New Orleans I told the crowd about Cormac. They had more questions and comments about my dog than about my novel. One lady offered to give me a new dog.

I rolled into my driveway on Good Friday. I spent Easter weekend losing confidence I’d ever get him back. Emily was home from college, staying at her mother’s for the weekend. She dropped by on Sunday. “I’m just hoping now,” I told her, “that Cormac hasn’t been struck by a car and killed.”

“Maybe,” Emily said, “someone has a new pal for themselves. That’s better than what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah, a handsome reddish-brown doggins of noble lineage and gentle heart,” I said. “A good dog.”

When the gaggle of kids had had their egg hunt, and Easter Sunday’s feast had been eaten and the dishes washed and the tables cleaned, and when all the kinfolk had gone home, John Luke and Dylan came and sat with me on the sofa. I think Diana sent them. One boy on either side of me, a tiny hand on each of my knees, two faces searching mine. I don’t remember a time when so much was said without a word being spoken.

“Let’s shoot some hoops, guys,” I said and stood up. They dashed for the door. When I suggested we play a game of horse, Dylan said, “What about a game of D-O-G? Maybe that will bring Cormac home.”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s worth a try.”

“I’ll shoot first,” John Luke said, dribbling under the goal for an easy layup.

“Daddy,” Dylan said, “I’m sorry Cormac is lost.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Maybe you’ll find him before you have to leave again,” John Luke said. I had to go back on the road Wednesday.

“He’s probably looking for you, too,” Dylan said. “And he can find things with his nose.”

“He sure can,” I said. “We’ll just meet in the middle somewhere.” Both boys seemed satisfied that would happen. When we went inside I told Diana the boys believed I’d find Cormac.

“Of course they do,” she said. “So do I.”

After sunset, Diana and I walked out on the back porch. We stood there looking across the yard, listening into the dark. Diana said she’d get the boys ready for bed. I told her I’d be inside soon to tuck them in. When I was alone, way off I heard a dog barking. For a brief moment, I allowed myself to think that it was Cormac, fenced-in in someone’s backyard, desperate to get home. But soon enough the night was quiet. Tomorrow, I’d go knock on some doors.

I DROPPED THE BOYS at school and went to the bookstore. I’d check in there first, then get down to the business of asking the people down my street for information about Cormac. Pierre and Drew were at the store. Drew shook his head as soon as he saw me.

“Man, I am sorry about Cormac,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But don’t think for a minute—”

“I don’t,” Drew said, anticipating that I was about to absolve him. “But I still feel bad it happened on my watch.”

“It really didn’t, though,” I said. “It happened in the months leading up to your watch. I should’ve stayed on point with the fence people. Maybe I should have got Cormac the doggy downers from Belle.”

“Maybe, shmaybe,” Pierre said. “Cormac’s a dog, fellas.”

“More than that to me,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” Pierre said. “A woman came in here yesterday asking to put up a flyer about her missing cat.” He pointed toward the window beside the front door. “Cat. Dog. Whatever. They have minds of their own,” he said. Pierre told me every day someone came in to ask about Cormac, had I found him?

Drew agreed. “The network is so wide by now,” he said, “wherever he is, he’ll be ratted out sooner or later.” Both men could tell this line of talk was only going so far with me. Pierre changed tack, told me Eddie Lafitte had come by and left a letter for me.

“About what?” I asked.

“I didn’t read it,” he said. “What kind of friend do you think I am?” Pierre winked and got the letter from beside the cash register. “You know how Lou is about animals,” Pierre said. “I bet it’s something about your dog.”

“Why wouldn’t he just meet me for a cup of coffee?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Pierre said. “Just read the letter.”

Drew said he was late to meet a plumber at a job site. “Cormac’s in the pipeline, pal,” Drew said. “Lots of eyes are looking for that red dog. We’ll find him.” He squeezed my shoulder, nodded to Pierre and left. Pierre said he had to do a couple of book searches online before the customers phoned this morning. I said I’d check back with him later in the day. I looked at the envelope in my hand, wondering what Lou had written.

I first met Eddie “Lou Garou” Lafitte in the company of Pierre. Loup-garou is the French name for werewolf, and Lou, as his friends call him, is a hairy man. Pierre said he had a pelt, which was ironic given that Lou had been a teenage fur trapper in the Louisiana swamps. He was a Cajun, a six-foot-nine-inch walking book on the outdoors, had a master’s degree in forestry, and had once hosted his own outdoorsman reality show on cable television. Lou loved dogs everywhere, and particularly Jenny, his brindled Catahoula. Media people loved him, and he was frequently the authority on some wild creature issue for Animal Planet on the Discovery Channel. Eddie Lafitte narrated a public television special on the return of brown pelicans to Mobile Bay after nearly a quarter-century’s absence.

Lou’s affinity with animals was legend. The day I met him I watched the legend spread as a scene unfolded before a group of people seated on the gallery of the Pink Pony Lounge in Gulf Shores, Alabama, on a certain sunny Sunday afternoon five years ago.

Pierre had come by the bookstore the previous Friday afternoon, and asked me to join him and his friend Lou on Sunday for a ride over to the Gulf beaches, maybe grab a beer, watch some football on television.

On Sunday, just past noon, Pierre and Lou showed up. I got into the car with them and we drove south a half hour until we arrived in Gulf Shores, and went directly to the Pink Pony. The sun was out, though the wind blew a little chilly. Still, we decided to take our beers to the deck facing the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico waters. The game between the Saints and the Bears had not yet started. Kickoff was in forty-five minutes.

We were about to sit when I noticed a seagull down at the surf’s edge. Weird, it seemed, just sitting there as though hatching an egg. I usually saw seagulls in flight, or running on the beach toward a morsel dropped there by a sunbather, sometimes floating on the waves. I didn’t remember seeing one sitting stock-still on the sand.

Lou detected the seagull’s broken wing first. He called it to my attention, since he saw me looking in its direction. Even then I couldn’t see the damaged wing. But when the bird got to its feet, I saw the short, jagged bone protruding from matted feathers at its left shoulder. “Look at that,” I said. Lou said nothing. Pierre asked, “What?”

Then he, too, saw the heavy-seeming and lifeless wing hanging at the gull’s side. The bird might have been a child’s toy with its gimpy motion. It wobbled along for ten feet and had to sit again. I cut my eyes around to other patrons on the deck. Some were aware of the bird’s plight and pointed toward the water’s edge, to the gull still sitting on the sand. Some, I could overhear.

“You know,” said a small-breasted woman with straight blond hair to the man beside her who nursed a draft beer in a mug, “you really should do something for that poor bird, Charles.”

“Certainly, Jen. And what do you suggest? A quick surgical procedure?” The other couple at their table chuckled. The woman, Jen, was not amused. Charles raised his mug and tilted it, draining the beer down his throat in a single long pull. He set the mug down heavily on the table, and raised two fingers in something like a Boy Scout oath gesture, his proper signal to the waitress that he wanted another beer.

“Must you always be such a jerk, Charles? I asked you a perfectly reasonable question. Is there nothing we can do for that poor bird?”

“No,” said Charles. “We’ll pretend we’re not here and allow the bird to do whatever the bird would do in nature, if, in fact, we were not here. Use your imagination to decide what that would be, Jen.”

That was as much as the burly man at my table listened to before slamming down his own beer mug with such energy that it got the attention of everyone on the deck. When he stood, his height commanded authority. No one looked away as Lou hard-booted to the steps that led down to the beach. His footfalls on the board stairs were solemn and heavy.

Out of the windshadow of the Pink Pony, the onshore breeze whipped Lou’s black-and-silver hair and beard. Several yards ahead of the marching Cajun, to his right and just at the water’s edge, the bird sat, not even moving when the foaming wave crawled up the beach toward it. Two other seagulls swooped down and congregated on either side of the wounded and disheveled one. The smaller of the two latecomers actually rushed the gull with its broken wing and when it tried to rise to flight it fell, fluttering. The other gull also approached as if to attack. I had never witnessed this kind of behavior among gulls.

The north wind curled over the roof of the bar, down into Pierre’s face, blowing his hair around, sending a chill down my back. I drew up my shoulders. Lou slowed his pace as he drew near to the wounded gull. We watched our friend. Everyone watched. There was complete silence on the deck. Only the wind made a small sound, shushhhh as it shifted through the chair legs, around the umbrellas.

I wondered if the gull would try to get away from Lou, what he intended to do. By now he stood over the injured bird. It lifted its head, cocked its eye to watch Lou, but otherwise did not move. The big man bent at the waist, his two hands cupped and outstretched. He took the bird into his hands and lifted it to his chest. He stroked its head with his thumb and rocked side-to-side, almost imperceptibly.