Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing (16 page)

I looked over at the doggins, Sir Cormac the Mickins, and said, “And to you, best dog in the world, I promise to never lose you again.”

I wondered how Cormac felt to be together with me again. Maybe like this:

I sit on my tail, but it wants to move and I stand as we go and my eyes see the one who has come for me and I lick his hand and it goes onto my head and if he wanted a ball I would get it for him. I will walk close to him. I will lie down to sleep at his feet. We will be together.

I LIED ABOUT NOT ever losing Cormac again. Two years later I’d take him for a walk in the woods back of my house, just this once without a leash, get distracted studying a twisted root, and look up thirty seconds later to find him nowhere in sight. And spend one miserable Saturday afternoon, evening, and night, calling and driving and walking, my ship being driven farther and farther onto the rocks with each passing hour.

Driving around town, I saw Pierre. “Dogs’ll wander, you know,” he said. Pierre’s nonchalance bothered me.

“And some folks will go looking for them,” I said quickly.

I kept checking the front and back doors until one in the morning. I went to bed, but didn’t sleep until just before daylight. I was still in bed next morning when John Luke came to find me. He tapped me on the cheek to awaken me. “You were snoring, Dad,” he said. “It was loud.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Where’s Mommy?” I asked.

“Making pancakes,” he said. “Plus, Cormac’s outside.”

“What?”

I jumped out of bed and ran to the front door in my underwear. I swung open the front door. On the street out front, wet and muddy, grinning, but not about to cross that strange boundary where he would get zapped, was the doggins.

I almost ran out, thought of my pants, dashed back to the bedroom to put them on and ran to the middle of the street. I stood with him, cussing him only a little. I told John Luke and Dylan to get their wagon, and I invited Cormac to jump in and we made it safely to the porch for a good toweling.

“Cormac, I thought we had a deal,” I said. I made a plea for him to cease the wandering, once and for all. He grinned. I shook my head. Your dog thing, Pierre had said. My dog thing, indeed.

WHEN THE CELL PHONE rang inside my jeans pocket, Cormac cocked his head toward the ringtone as nearly like a bell as I could find from among the device’s myriad choices. The interstate was unusually clear and I’d let my speed move past seventy-five, and it was noisy in the Jeep. I slowed to better hear the phone. I guessed it was Diana calling me back. I’d left a message that I had Cormac and we were coming home.

“Hello,” I said in singsong.

“Mr. Brewer, this is Tiffany Hale.”

“Oh, hello,” I said, thinking now what?

“Will you be at the bookstore in the morning?” she asked.

“Sure, ah, I can be there,” I said.

“I’ve got the day off and I need to talk to you,” she said.

“What time?”

“Ten o’clock?”

“I’ll be there,” I said. “Can I ask what this is about, Tiffany?”

“I’d rather just talk to you in the morning, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” I said.

I ended the call and put the phone in my pocket. “What in God’s name now?” I asked aloud. Cormac had his eye on me, as though he knew all that business was about him. “We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

I got my phone out again and called Emily at the university to tell her I’d found Cormac. She wanted the whole story, and by the time I’d brought it to the point where he sat beside me in the Jeep, southbound from Birmingham, we were almost home. I also phoned Todd Coverdale, but he was in court, so I left a message with his receptionist.

I ruffled Cormac’s ears and rubbed his neck. When my fingers touched the collar, I took note of it for the first time. It was red, and all of a sudden it looked completely out of place, visible remains of his handling and care and keeping by others. “Look, Mr. Mick, I have to tell you you’ve got a new collar waiting at home,” I said, as I unsnapped the red collar and dropped it on the floor of the Jeep. “It’s the kind that buzzes you, I’m afraid, and the biggest buzz they sell.”

He seemed to listen carefully to all that I told him about how his borders were now more secure than ever. He didn’t take his eyes off me, at least. I told him I was sorry, but I knew there would be at least one correction coming his way.

It was the middle of the afternoon when we drove up to our little welcome home party. Diana and John Luke and Dylan were standing in the driveway with Lou and Pierre and Drew. I thought Cormac was going to jump through the open window of the Jeep before Diana got the door open. He bounded out onto the concrete and became such a twisting, turning, moaning blur of red fur that it was hard to distinguish his head from his tail.

The boys sat on the driveway and Cormac knocked them both over trying to crawl into their laps. We were all laughing. All the guys traded high fives with me. Diana gave me a big hug. When Cormac finally took his leave to answer nature’s call, I told the story of hiding out inside the restaurant until I knew it was Cormac who’d hopped out of the van.

“It’s him, Dad!” Dylan said.

“It’s our doggins,” John Luke added.

“He sure is,” I said. You could not have crow-barred the grin off my face. I saw in my head the missing dog flyer Diana and the boys had made on the computer with the help of our neighbor, Janet, and her Golden, Bailey. Above three pictures of Cormac, they had written MISSING; beneath the photos they’d put REWARD!! CORMAC THE WONDER PUPPY.

I’d not ever told any of them about Rex the Wonder Dog.

But someday I would.

Right now the wonder was named Cormac. With a stick in his mouth, he told me just how good it is when some circles are redrawn unbroken. And the reward was being richly paid out to us all.

IT WAS THAT very same day when it happened. Cormac rocked back and forth on his haunches, building his courage to charge the fence line with Dylan and me watching. We sat in chairs on the front porch talking. “Would you look at that?” I said. “Cormac’s going to try to cross!”

Before either of us could move, Cormac made a dash forward. The shock hit him hard and it surprised him that it didn’t work as it had in the past. He yelped and squealed and barked and ran to our feet, still whining. Then Dylan got angry with me, and asked why didn’t I just put up a real fence.

“I’m afraid he’d dig out, son. I don’t want to lose him again. Besides,” I said to Dylan, “I’ve got an idea he won’t try it again.”

John Luke had come around the corner of the house to see what the fuss was about. He patted Cormac on the head and sat down with him on the grass. He, too, took it up with Dylan. “It doesn’t hurt that much. It mostly scares him,” John Luke said as though he knew this for certain. Dylan challenged John Luke to shock himself with it.

“You’re a scaredy cat,” Dylan teased.

“Should I, Dad?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, John Luke,” I said. But when Dylan taunted him, John Luke insisted. So I told them I’d slapped an electric fence when I was a boy, just to prove to my cousins I could do it. “My grandfather watched from the back porch,” I told them. “I walked past three or four cows in the pasture straight to the electric fence. Just walked right up and with my open palm I patted the wire.”

“What happened?” the boys asked in unison. I took off my hat and rubbed the bald spot on top of my head, remembering how my grandfather laughed about it for days. “I squealed like a little girl,” I said. “It knocked all the hair off the top of my head, and now I have to wear a hat on cold days to keep my head warm.” Naturally, they both wanted to know if Cormac was going to have a bald ring around his neck, and I told them that it was a consequence only for humans.

“The main thing is, I never touched the electric fence again. And I don’t think Cormac will try to cross his again either.”

John Luke decided not to risk going bald then, though on another day, he’d come in with a pleased look on his face and claimed to have taken a zap from the collar. Dylan confirmed that he had, his eyes big with awe and respect. Dylan wanted to know how quickly his brother’s hair would start to fall out. I confessed to my tall tale, but told them to do no further testing with the collar, and that was, indeed, the end of their experimenting.

Also, in all the days from then until now, Cormac has refused to experiment and continues to demonstrate his superior intelligence by keeping well away from the edge of our yard.

“I’VE BEEN WANTING to call you, sir. But I was nervous. I’ve got your dog’s collar. I wasn’t trying to steal it,” the young lady said, her words tumbling as if any hesitation would suspend her voice. Tiffany Hale handed me the collar as though she were handing off a snake. Cormac practically stood on his hind legs to sniff it. I gave it to him. He took it and put it down on the floor. He stood over the collar studying it.

“It was just there in the office and your dog was gone and I heard them say it cost two hundred dollars and I thought maybe I could get some money for it and—”

“Wait. Hold on, Tiffany,” I tried to settle my thoughts. “So, did it have an ID tag on it?”

“No, sir. But I found it out in the parking lot. That’s how I got your number.”

“The ID tag was in the parking lot?”

“Yes, sir. That woman who brought him there to the pound, I saw her kind of flick something, but I didn’t think anything of it, like maybe it was a cigarette or something.”

I said excuse me to Tiffany. “I need to sit down,” I said, and walked past the bookstore counter to an overstuffed and ugly chair near the historical novels section. I was glad Pierre had offered to step outside for this meeting. He said he’d walk to the bank and to the post office. I sat down. Cormac followed and lay down at my feet. I listened closely to what the young woman said.

“Then,” Tiffany continued, “when that big man came down here asking about your dog and the collar, I got scared about having it. Also, when he left was when I went looking and found the tag.”

“Tiffany. Listen, if you were just then seeing the tag, how did people know Cormac’s name?” I didn’t want to get into the Cognac misnomer at this moment.

“Well, I head that woman say this one will answer to, ah…something. What did you say?”

“Cormac.” Cormac raised his head.

“Or something like that,” Tiffany said.

“Cognac?” I asked, saying it clearly. Cormac sat up. So, this new name had served as a familiar word to him on his adventure.

“Maybe that,” she said. “I really don’t remember exactly. But something like one of those names, I think.”

“Was she handing off the dog to Tara when she called its name?”

“No. Miss Mitchell was at lunch. George took him from the lady.”

“Who is George?”

“He’s just this guy who works down here sometimes. Not full time. But he’s been here longer than Miss Mitchell. At least that’s what George says.”

“Back to the woman. Have you seen her before at the shelter, bringing other dogs?” An unpleasant image of the woman in the red truck coalesced from the smoke swirling in my head: maybe she had appointed herself some kind of civilian dogcatcher.

“No, sir,” Tiffany said. “I’ve never seen her before. But, I’ve only been working there about six months. I could ask George.”

“If you would, I’d appreciate it. And, too, if she shows up again, would you write down her tag number and call me?”

Tiffany said she would do that, and asked if she was in trouble about the collar. “Will you tell Miss Mitchell?”

“No,” I said. “I think she’d give you some trouble if I did.” I told her I respected her for having the courage to bring the collar to the bookstore. “That’s a mighty big deal, Tiffany. And enough. I don’t think anything more needs to be said about it. I really appreciate that you came here in person to give me back the collar.”

The girl was relieved. She looked like she thought she should shake my hand, or something. “I’m really sorry,” she said. Only now did she acknowledge Cormac, now that her part in the little drama had completed its arc. She knelt down and called him. “C’mere, boy,” she said. Cormac went to her and nuzzled her hand, begging for more petting.

“Please don’t think about it any more,” I said. “Under the circumstances, all is well, as they say, that ends well.”

“Yep,” said Tiffany, “I guess he’s satisfied with the way it turned out.” She tugged on his ear and he rolled his eyes in pleasure.

“I think he is pleased, yes,” I said. The girl headed for the door. I followed, with Cormac right behind me. “You sit and stay,” I said. I didn’t have his leash, and I didn’t want him loose on the sidewalk. We stepped outside and I pulled the door closed behind me. I said goodbye to Tiffany and thanked her again. She turned and started up the street. I looked at Cormac, who stuck his nose to the windowpane of the French door. His breath blew little fog images on the glass, and I drifted into a Rorschach thing.

Suddenly, Ohmigod! ricocheted down the sidewalk. The voice was high-pitched and it startled me from my brown study. I jerked around and Tiffany Hale pointed toward a red truck passing on the street. “That’s her,” she yelled.

I looked into the cab of the truck as it drew even with me where I stood on the sidewalk. It was Ruth Baxter! The truck was a seventies’ Nissan in pristine condition, shining like a new one. Mrs. Baxter leaned too far forward, both hands gripping the steering wheel. I called her name loudly, but her window was up and she kept going. I wanted to give chase, but Cormac and I had walked to the store that morning. Pierre was still out. I stood there, transfixed by the knowledge that it was Ruth Baxter who had taken Cormac to the pound, that she had removed his tag, that she had lied to me straight in the face. All that about going inside to phone me.

And as it turned out, when I stood at her front door within the hour, her story was simply she did not like my dog. Cormac had been to her house not twice, but half a dozen times.