Huck: The Remarkable True Story of How One Lost Puppy Taught a Family--and a Whole Town--about Hope and Happy Endings (16 page)

A few blocks away, Michael was arriving at the police station with Rich and feeling some of what I was, a sense of desperation about the way we were spending our time. He was grateful, too, but with every offer of help, Huck seemed farther and farther away. Michael hoped to find some answers at the police station.

As father and son walked together over the mat that said
WELCOME TO THE RAMSEY POLICE STATION
, Michael had some trepidation, wondering if there might be prisoners inside and what he, a twelve-year-old boy, was doing there. It felt just a little bit scary.

Inside was a small waiting area. There were a few metal chairs and a counter topped with a smoky glass divider that reached the ceiling, behind which were several desks and a television. The concrete brick walls in the waiting area were filled with plaques, all testaments to the police department’s tireless work in caring for the town’s well-being. There was one from Don Bosco Preparatory High School, a local Catholic school for boys. The plaque was identical to one posted in the school gym as a “lasting tribute to all the men and women who daily risk their lives in the line of duty.”

There was a plaque from the county in recognition of Ramsey’s dedication to victims of domestic violence, a reminder that even this bucolic little town struggles with darkness.

Most of the plaques, though, about a dozen or more, had to do with the police force’s involvement in the state’s Special Olympics. The largest of these plaques had a three-dimensional torch on it. The plaque read:

Every year thousands of law enforcement officers run throughout New Jersey carrying the Olympic torch—or flame of hope—to spread awareness of the abilities of children with mental retardation and other closely related developmental disabilities.

Rich went over to the glass divider and explained to the police dispatcher sitting on the other side of it in front of a console why he had come. “That’s a tough break,” the dispatcher said. “Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll notify an officer.”

While they sat waiting, Michael and Rich started talking about what it takes to spend your life serving others in the way police officers do. They talked about all the brave policemen and policewomen in New York who had lost their lives on September 11. Before the conversation got much further, Michael and Rich were ushered into a back office. There were no prisoners in sight. A tall, burly, round-faced police lieutenant appeared. There was something about him that was both comforting and intimidating. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

After hearing the story from Rich, the whole story of our runaway dog, Lieutenant Mark Delhauer sprang into action. He said he’d alert the entire Ramsey force and he’d go one better. He’d radio all the police officers in neighboring towns. He’d use the flyer to give them a description of Huck and tell them to be on the lookout. He said he would also post it in the squad room so the officers on all shifts would see it. Michael was beginning to feel hopeful. Finally, some real help. A man with power, with a true ability to mobilize a lot of people was going to help us.

Rich asked Lieutenant Delhauer the same thing I had asked Doreen. “What usually happens in cases like this?”

“Ninety percent of the time, the people get their dog back,” he said confidently.

“Thanks very much for all your help” Rich said, as he extended his hand to the officer.

“You’re very welcome,” Lieutenant Delhauer said, returning a firm handshake. And then putting a hand on Michael’s shoulder, he added, “We’ll do everything we can.”

Walking out of the police station, back over the welcome mat, Michael turned to Rich: “He was really nice. This is the best I have felt yet.”

But Rich, while comforted, had his own nagging worries, one of which was raising Michael’s hopes, while also preparing him for the possibility that we might never see Huck alive again. “I liked him, too,” Rich said.

“Ninety percent is a high number,” Michael said.

“It is. Those are good odds,” Rich responded, but then cautioned: “Keep in mind, though, Huck did not run away from his own house, he ran away from a house he is not all that familiar with. That could lower those odds a bit.”

Michael’s newly found high spirits were undiminished. Lieutenant Delhauer had inspired him. Michael was now a full partner, committed to fanning out, getting our flyer before as many eyes as we could. He was ready for Northern Highlands High School.

As Rich and Michael drove through the winding streets on their way to the school, Michael’s eyes kept searching the wooded areas for Huck. The trees were still bare, which was a blessing. The woods were so dense that seeing into them would have been just about impossible if it had been spring or summer and the foliage full.

“The principal is not available for a while,” the secretary in the high school administration office said to Rich and Michael. “Would you like to meet with the assistant principal, Mr. Occhino, who could see you now?”

Rich and Michael looked at each other and said “Yes” at the same moment.

Joe Occhino, a stocky man with an athletic build, a quick smile, and an intense look in his eyes, invited Michael and Rich into his office. They took in his impressive collection of Yankees paraphernalia—hats, balls, signs—sitting on a shelf above his desk. Turns out, twenty years earlier, Joe had ventured to the Yankees’ team tryouts in Florida to try his luck. In the process of showing off his skills, he had managed to break a bat belonging to Graig Nettles, the legendary third baseman.

But alas, Joe did not become a professional ballplayer. Before becoming assistant principal of Northern Highlands High School, Joe had been a physical education teacher, a baseball coach, and a guidance counselor. He had an unflinching belief that “you will only be remembered for the person you are and the lives you touch,” as he told Rich and Michael on that cold afternoon in March.

His only regrets had to do with the children he could not help, who somehow passed through his school unnoticed or unreachable. The part of his job he never expected, the toughest part of his job, was weathering the loss of kids taken from this earth, teenagers who got behind the wheel of a car drunk or went careening down a black hole after experimenting with drugs.

Prominently displayed on his desk was a photograph of a young blond boy walking down a dusty road with a dog. In large letters was the word
GUIDANCE
. Underneath it, “For our children, the road to happiness and success is usually paved by our example.”

The walls and tabletops were filled with tokens from students whose lives he had affected. They vowed to never forget the teacher who had helped them navigate the rocky shoals of adolescence.

Two girls who had recently graduated had left a plaque behind. It said:

Mr. Occhino, A Special Person.

In the world there are few people who are truly special. They go around caring for others before themselves. They have a smile on their face and love in their heart for everyone. They ask nothing in return. I see all this and more in you.

Rich and Michael knew they were sitting in the office of a man who understood children. They imagined he had a light touch with his students, able to reprimand without damaging self-esteem.

As Rich spun out our story, Joe kept looking at Michael. “I’m moving this to the top of my priority list,” he said to Rich and Michael. He said he saw sadness in Michael’s eyes. Joe decided in that moment that everything else he had been doing that day had to come to a stop.

He asked the secretary in the outer office to make a hundred color copies of the flyer. “I’m going to give these out in senior study hall,” he told Rich and Michael. “And then I’m going to the cafeteria where right now about half the student body is eating lunch. These kids like to help people. These are the kind of kids who gave up having a day off on Martin Luther King Day to work in a soup kitchen.”

After a quick good-bye and an exchange of handshakes, Joe moved quickly through the school library and upstairs to a classroom full of seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, many of whom welcomed the interruption to their studies. “What’s it worth, Mr. Occhino?” one of the boys asked Joe.

“You find this dog and you won’t have to serve detention for the rest of the year,” he promised.

Joe then went to the cafeteria and personally handed out all but a few of the remaining flyers, which he taped to the walls by the school’s main entrance. As he did, he thought about Brandy, the small dog, half sheltie and half miniature collie, beloved by his daughters. When the girls were young, Brandy had squeezed under the fence and run away. The young family’s frantic search had turned up no trace at all of Brandy. Night after night, Joe left the gate open, hoping the dog would find her way home. Three days later, on a Saturday morning, Brandy walked through the open gate and stood barking at the back door. Like the storied Lassie, Brandy had found her way home.

Outside Northern Highlands High School, on his way back to the car, Rich tried to reach Annette Augello to see if any progress had been made over at Ramsey High School. His cell phone kept dropping the connection.

He and Michael drove back into Ramsey, with Michael again searching the woods with his eyes for any sign of Huck. “Let’s go find Mom,” Rich said to Michael. “Let’s see how many signs she was able to get posted in Ramsey.”

On the way to Main Street, they saw a sign on Wyckoff Avenue for the Hubbard School, the school whose grounds we had searched in the dark the night before. “Let’s see if people in this school will help us, too,” Rich said to Michael. “Then we’ll find Mom.”

The school was set far back from the road. They drove down Hubbard Lane, parked the car, and eagerly headed toward the front of the yellow one-story brick building. The flagpole, whose empty hooks had clanged against the steel pole the previous night, was now festooned with an American flag, snapping in the breeze. They walked past a row of bicycles, some spanking new, others finely aged, none of them locked, many with helmets hanging off the handlebars.

Rich and Michael were shown into the principal’s office. Michael E. Gratale had a bowl of Hershey kisses on his desk. He was a short, powerful-looking man, with a graying beard, a former woodworking and mechanical drawing teacher who had spent most of his decades-long career in the Ramsey Public School system.

Before Michael had a chance to sit down next to his father, the principal asked him to wait outside. Rich thought it odd. And what happened next was even odder. Once Michael left the room, Mr. Gratale leaned across his desk, looked at Rich, and asked: “Okay, what is really going on here?”

In very measured tones, Rich explained our predicament.

“I understand now,” the principal said. “I could sense your distress when you walked in and I just wanted to be sure everything was right about this situation. I see a kid not in school and a distraught man and I have to wonder,” he said. “But I understand now what is going on. This is surely one special dog. We’d be happy to put up one of your signs.”

Rich thanked him and left a sign, collected Michael who had been sitting in the outer office, and headed back outside to the car. The air was starting to warm, and Rich took a minute to take a few deep breaths.

“Why did that guy throw me out of his office?” Michael asked.

“Well, I guess they are not used to having a father and his son walk into their school in the middle of the afternoon and ask for this kind of help. Maybe they thought we were up to no good. It may have all seemed strange to him, and he didn’t want to ask me about it with you in the room,” Rich said.

“That sounds really crazy to me, Dad.”

“Well, it was a little crazy,” Rich said, now starting to see the humor in the exchange with the overzealous principal. He started to laugh.

“I mean, what did he think?” Michael continued. “That you were some kind of weird guy or something?” And now he, too, started to laugh.

“How could anyone be scared of you, Dad?”

C
HAPTER 11

I
HAD BEEN
at it for hours. In the past hour alone, I had been to the hardware store, the gas station, the nail salon, the pizza shop, the florist, the meat market, and Shanghai Gourmet. All of the shopkeepers were sympathetic, all took flyers, and all wanted to help. Many people told me their own harrowing tales of runaway pets. Anyone who walked down Main Street now could not get from one end to the other without feeling as though they’d seen Huck’s picture everywhere.

Tired and thirsty, I finally sat down on a bench. I called Rich and Michael to confer about our next step. They were not far from where I was on Main Street and said they had enlisted more help, met some fantastic people, and were on their way to pick me up.

Soon after, they pulled up right by the bench and I stood up wearily, pulling my bag behind me. Just as I got into the car, Rich’s cell phone rang. He was hoping it was the woman from the Board of Education getting back to him as she said she would.

“Hi, my name is Tina. I just saw your sign at Young World. I think I saw your dog.”

Rich was thunderstruck. “Oh my God—where? Did he look okay? When did you see him?”

“I saw him sitting by a mailbox on West Crescent, just sitting there, yesterday afternoon, while I drove my sons home from school. I thought it was strange that such a young-looking puppy was just out like that, by himself. He is such an unusual color; you couldn’t help but notice him.

“I just saw your sign now at Young World, so the boys and I came home and got cream cheese and went back over to West Crescent to see if we could find him again. We looked around. He wasn’t there.”

“Did you happen to get the house number?” Rich asked.

“I don’t know the number, but there is a curve in the road, and a green house with kind of a swampy pond next to it,” Tina explained. “There is a mailbox by the driveway, close to the road. That’s where I saw him.”

Rich, who by now had reason to believe most people in town would do anything to help us, didn’t think twice before asking Tina if she would mind meeting us where she had seen Huck, just to be sure we went to exactly the right spot. Without hesitating, she agreed.

Rich hung up and pulled out a map Dave had given him earlier, repeating to Michael and me the details of his phone call while he checked and double-checked the location of West Crescent Avenue. “A woman saw the sign at Young World and called to say she had seen Huck. Unfortunately, it was yesterday afternoon,” Rich quickly explained. “But it is still a sighting.”

“Let’s go. Let’s go,” Michael yelled from the backseat.

I was astounded. I don’t know which surprised me more, that someone had seen both Huck and the sign and had gone to the trouble to call us, or that Huck was alive as of yesterday afternoon. I echoed Michael’s excited scream, “Let’s go.”

Rich’s phone rang a second time. This time it was Ray Leslie, the boy in Kim Romans’s home ec class. “Did you find your dog yet? ’Cause if you’re still looking, I have some time and I can help you look.”

“That’s incredibly nice of you. We’re just heading to West Crescent where someone saw Huck,” Rich said.

“Okay, I’ll catch up with you at some point,” Ray said.

With both hands on the wheel, Rich sped down Wyckoff Avenue. He turned right onto West Crescent, a heavily wooded street with houses set far back from the road. Just where the road winds sharply was a two-story, blue-green house with a big bay window and a low stone fence lining the long driveway leading up to it. The house’s side lawn sloped down into Van Gelder’s Pond, a marshy-looking body of water filled with bramble. To the side of the driveway’s entrance, at the point in the road where cars have to slow in order to safely take the curve, was a mailbox, the mailbox where Tina had seen Huck sitting forlornly twenty-four hours earlier.

Rich parked the car at the end of the driveway. Just then, Tina drove up with three of her children in the backseat. Without getting out of her car, she motioned toward the mailbox. “He was sitting right there,” she said. “You might ask the people who live there if they saw him. Call me if you need any more help. You have my number now in your cell phone.”

Rich, Michael, and I stood looking down at the pond. Unspoken, but understood, was the terror that Huck, whose instincts were still those of a puppy, still not fully developed, might have mistaken the branches and leaves clouding the water for solid ground and tried to walk on them, or lost his footing at the pond’s edge while trying to drink. I was nearly paralyzed with fear.

After a moment, I started down toward the water, stepping carefully. Soon I was ankle deep in leaves, though still on solid ground. It was just about impossible to see tracks of any kind of animal, let alone those of a small dog. I stood looking at the dead body of water trying to assure myself that dogs, even young ones, instinctively avoid danger in the natural world. Maybe they’d run into traffic, but they wouldn’t fall into a swamp.

Protecting Michael from what might have been a slippery slope, from the danger of the water and the fear of what we might find there, Rich took him and headed toward the house. They climbed the stone steps and rang the bell. No one was home.

We met back at the car. “There was no real reason to think Huck would still be here,” Rich said as we all got back in the car. “But the one thing we learned was that as of yesterday afternoon, which was about eight hours after he ran away, Huck was still alive. That was an important phone call.”

Rich was right; there was no reason to think we would find Huck still sitting by the mailbox on West Crescent Avenue. We had, though, been so euphoric that someone had responded to our flyer, that someone had actually seen Huck, that we had gotten our hopes up in a way that was out of proportion to the slim news we had received. We were now deflated.

We headed back to the Clarks’ house to see if either Dave or Darian was home yet. There is strength in numbers, and we knew we needed more boots on the ground.

When we got there, we found them both home. Dave still had the map spread out on the kitchen table. Rich stood next to Dave, pointing to where Tina had seen Huck. Dave took a pencil and marked the location of the mailbox. As he watched Dave draw an X on the map, Rich realized that the streets he had spent so much time walking during the early morning hours, the ones where he had met Kim, and Harris, and Lorraine, were all on the opposite side of Wyckoff Avenue, far from where Tina had seen Huck. The thought that he might have wasted the morning only made him more anxious.

The day was disappearing. It was late on Friday afternoon, about 4:30 or 5:00. All we had accomplished was getting the word out, getting the flyers around. It had taken an enormous effort and had yielded only one phone call, a lead that was too old to be meaningful. It was hard to rally and it would soon be dark.

Rich had been in motion all day, not allowing himself the time to sit down and have a meal. He had not had a minute to collect his thoughts or figure out what he was going to tell Michael if our worst fears were realized.

As he moved toward the kitchen sink to get a glass of water, his cell phone rang. He barely said hello when a frantic voice at the end of the phone screamed: “We just saw your dog. If you go right now, you’ll find him. He’s standing in the woods with another dog. Go to the woods on Deer Trail. Go now!”

“Thank you, thank you so much!” Rich yelled into the phone. And before he had a chance to get her name, or tell her that if we found Huck, the reward would be hers, she hung up.

“Dave, do you know how to get to Deer Trail? Huck is there right now!”

“Sure. It’s not too far. Let’s go in two cars,” Dave said. “Janet can ride with me. You take the kids and follow us.”

“Michael, Darian, come on,” I yelled to them. “We just had another call. Get in the car. You can both ride with Dad.”

They came dashing down the stairs, nearly falling over each other. We all ran out of the house, knocking over a small table and a green-and-white ceramic vase near the front door.

As I jumped in the car with Dave, I actually allowed myself to believe we were about to find Huck. I could not imagine another emotional plummet. Part of me, too, was drained. I needed my family intact again. I wanted to be home in our small apartment playing one of our favorite family games, Apples to Apples, with Huck sitting at our feet. I wanted a hot shower and a decent meal. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and linger over coffee in the morning. I wanted to take Huck for a walk in Carl Schurz Park and watch the tugboats on the river. I wanted this nightmare to end. I thought it was about to.

But from the road, there was no sign of Huck. We parked. As we got out of the cars, a group of about six kids, all around the age of thirteen or fourteen, all on bikes, approached us. “Are you the people who lost the dog?” one of them called to us.

“Yes, we are,” Rich said. “Have you seen him?”

“No,” the boy on a blue-and-silver Mongoose bike said. “But we came out to look.”

“That’s fantastic,” Rich said. “We just had a tip from someone who said they saw him around here.”

“We’ll ride around and look.” And before he and the other boys pedaled away, one of them, a boy in a hooded black jacket, asked, “If we find him, do we get the reward?”

“Definitely!” Rich said.

The band of bikers took off.

To get to the dense woods, we first had to climb a hill. There were no clear paths into the woods. We decided to split up. Rich would take Michael and Darian in one direction, and Dave and I would go in the opposite direction. Rich and the kids were ahead of us. As I watched them disappear into the thickly packed, bare trees, I realized dusk was beginning to set in.

“Dave, I’m going to go back to our car and get a couple of flashlights,” I said. “Do you want to wait?”

“I’ll just start into the woods, but I’ll go slowly, so you’ll be able to catch up to me.”

Not wanting to lose a minute, I summoned the energy to run down the hill, raced for the car, grabbed the flashlights, and ran back up the hill. As I started to walk into the woods, I called to Dave who heard me and called back, but he was out of my line of sight. Rather than spend time trying to find him, I shouted to him that I’d go it on my own.

The air had grown cold again. I started walking, the sticks and underbrush cracking under foot. “HUCK, HUCK, HUCKIE,” I called again and again. None of us had heeded our own advice to strangers about the cream cheese. In our rush to get to the woods, we had left it behind. “HUCK, HUCK, HUCK, HUCKIE” I kept it up. My tone was loud, and by now, pleading.

Rich, Darian, and Michael had crossed a stream, slowed only by Darian’s momentary apprehension. They were now deep into the woods, also calling out for Huck.

Realizing nightfall was only minutes away, Dave found his way back out of the woods. He called Rich on his cell phone and told him to get the kids out, that soon it would be dark, and since it was overcast, there would likely be no moonlight to guide them.

While trying to retrace their steps and find their way back to the road, Rich heard my plaintive calls for Huck and saw me before I saw him. Standing there watching his wife, only months out of cancer treatments, wandering the woods in the cold and near darkness, screaming for our lost dog, he began to feel bad that he had led the family to believe that this could be done. Maybe the whole enterprise was taking too much out of all of us and sooner rather than later it was time to come to terms with a very harsh reality.

I knew I had to get out of the woods, and as I turned in the direction of the road, I spotted Rich and the kids. I gave Rich a flashlight, he took it and my hand, and sidestepping rocks and branches of trees, with Michael and Darian trailing behind us, we made our way out of the woods, without Huck.

“Are you okay?” Rich asked. “I’m worried about what this is doing to you.”

“It is taking a toll on all of us. But I’m okay,” I said. “Really.” And then I said what we both already knew. “In a way, these sightings are making it harder. It is impossible not to get your hopes up and then the disappointment is devastating. It is a real emotional roller coaster. It is tough enough for us, but I hate doing this to Michael and now Darian.”

Dave was waiting by the cars. In his usual unassuming way, he suggested that as long as we were in this particular area, we ought to look in the vicinity of the golf course, a few blocks away. He had to head home, but before he did, he explained to Rich how to get to the golf course and said he thought we should also look on the street that borders it, Carriage Lane. I drove so Rich would be free to look at the map and direct. Darian and Michael, whose high hopes had been so cruelly dashed, were sprawled across the backseat, thoroughly exhausted.

As I fastened my seat belt, Rich looked at me. “You know, we can pick this up tomorrow. We don’t have to go to the golf course. Or I can take you back to the Clarks and I can go,” he offered.

“No, I’m fine. Let’s all go,” I said. I felt better about actually looking than I did about putting up signs and asking people to be on the lookout and to spread the word. It just felt more productive. I felt closer to Huck.