Huck

by Janet Elder

  Ben was in his thirties, a vigorous, handsome man, with dark hair, and dark eyes, who was unusually open and friendly, even for Ramsey. “We saw you in the woods and it looked like you were looking for something, rather than just out for a walk, so we thought we’d ask.”

  Rich introduced himself and Michael and started explaining what, or rather who, they were looking for, and how they happened to end up in the woods bordering the side yard of the Mamola home. Ben seemed to be listening intently to Rich’s every word. It made Rich, who had long tired of repeating our tale, want to tell Ben every detail—all about the cancer, and getting Huck, and going away on vacation, and losing Huck. He told him about our close call of last night.

  Rich’s unfailing devotion to his family, his ardent and relentless search for the family dog, touched Ben deeply. Ben could feel Rich’s anguish. Madly in love with his own wife, Ben kept mulling over what it must have felt like for Rich to have had a sick wife, to have taken her away to celebrate good health, and then to have had the celebration fall apart.

  Then Ben’s older son, Ben Jr., a boy of about five or six, volunteered the family: “Dad, let’s help them look for their dog.”

  “We’re going to,” Ben replied. “This is the oddest thing,” he said to Rich, “but it feels like I’ve known you all my life. Let me help. We know these woods really well. Why don’t you let us look here, and then we’ll get in the car and head up toward Mahwah.”

  Even though so many people in Ramsey had gone above and beyond the niceties, had been far more than merely polite or courteous, had truly befriended us outsiders, Ben’s offer of turning over his Saturday afternoon to help us look for Huck still struck Rich as extraordinary.

  In a twist on the character played by Jack Lemmon in the movie The Out-of-Towners, an abrasive man who had kept a log of names and phone numbers of people who had wronged him and his exasperated wife on their trip from Twin Oaks, Ohio, to New York, Rich was keeping a log of all the names and phone numbers of people who had helped us, with the intention of thanking them when our saga ended. No matter how it ended. The list was long. Now it included Ben Mamola.

  “That would be a huge help,” Rich said in response to Ben’s offer. “But are you sure? I’d hate for you to lose the better part of Saturday afternoon.”

  “Not a problem at all,” Ben said. “My wife is away on a church retreat. The boys and I were going to do some errands this afternoon, but the errands can wait.”

  “You are a great guy. Thank you so much,” Rich said as he put his arm on Ben’s back in a gesture of warmth and gratitude. “Let me give you a copy of our flyer, which will give you a picture of Huck and also all of our contact numbers.”

  Ben and his wife, Catherine, were active participants at St. Paul’s, Ramsey’s Catholic church. Catherine was spending the weekend at a women’s church retreat called “Cornerstone,” at which the participants give testimony and talk in depth with each other about their own singular life-changing events. For some of the women, coming to terms was painful; for others, it was a chance to give thanks.

  Ben had met Catherine on a blind date of sorts on a warm night in May of 1993, at a bar in Clifton, New Jersey, called Yakety Yaks. “I took one look at her and thought, this won’t work, there’s got to be something wrong, she’s too beautiful,” Ben said, as he recalled the first moment he laid eyes on the pretty, blond Catherine.

  But it did work. He introduced her to his parents over the July 4th weekend, and they were engaged by October and married the following August. The two of them succeeded at one career after another. She, having given up a Manhattan-centered career in marketing to stay home with their children, then took up oil painting and established herself as an artist, selling her works through a gallery in Rhode Island. And he, giving up Wall Street for private investing, then gave that up because he wanted to feel that he was actually making something. He had been trained as a chemical engineer, and after meeting someone at church who sparked an idea about using omega-3 in consumer products, he started Zymes, a company on a mission to do just that.

  Rich was grateful to Ben, for his undaunted spirit, and the selfless way he made himself and his sons available to help us do the impossible—find our small dog in the warren of streets and woods.

  Ben also made an impression on Michael. “Wow. I can’t believe how nice that guy was,” Michael said to Rich as they walked back to Pine Tree to get the car. “He said he’s not just going to look in the woods by his house, but go to Mahwah, too. That is unbelievable.”

  The rain, which had been threatening all day with periodic drizzle, was now turning into a steady shower. I had put up flyers inside their plastic covers all the way down Ramsey’s Main Street and onto Wyckoff Avenue until I ran out of them. My hands were sore from driving the nails into poles and trees. I made it back to the Clarks’ house just before the rain teemed down. Rich and Michael came through the back door and into the kitchen shortly after me.

  Barbara and Dave were sitting at the kitchen table staring down at the map with Dave’s markings. “Do we have anything new to add?” Dave asked.

  “No,” Rich and I said at the same time.

  “I met a guy who saw him all afternoon on Friday, before we did,” Rich started to explain. “And then that other guy I told you about who heard him in the yard last night. And we just met another guy in the same neighborhood who said he was going to take his sons and look in those woods back on Pine Tree and then take a ride up in the Mahwah area where Huck was this morning,” Rich said. “But no, we have no new sightings.”

  “Yeah, but the guy who saw Huck on Friday afternoon is a new sighting,” Dave said. “It is not recent and it is the same area where we know he was on Friday evening, but still, it is another sighting, another point on the map.”

  “That’s true,” Rich said. “Let’s look at the map and see if we can figure out whether or not it makes sense for us to go back up to Fawn Hill Drive.” While we all stood poring over the map watching Dave trace Huck’s movements, or at least what we knew of Huck’s movements from the reports we had, Michael went upstairs to find Darian.

  Assuming their war general pose over the map, Rich and Dave were at a loss. “It is hard to know, but I think it makes the most sense right now for us to go back to the streets surrounding Fawn Hill Drive,” Rich said. “That is the last place he was seen alive, and we don’t have any other sightings that would suggest he’s moved out of that area.”

  The lousy weather was not a deterrent for me and I knew it would not be for Rich. But I didn’t want Michael out, walking around in the freezing cold rain. I thought it best if Rich and I went alone. The challenge would be convincing Michael.

  “Just go,” Barbara said. “Michael’s upstairs with Darian. I’ll let him know you went.”

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “I have to tell him we are going.” I did not have to look at Barbara to know she was rolling her eyes.

  To my surprise, when I broached the subject with Michael, he was amenable to staying behind. What he was not amenable to, though, was having lunch. Over the past few days, he had eaten some, but very little, certainly not enough for a growing boy. I was constantly worried about it.

  Rich and I borrowed a couple of umbrellas from Barbara, got in the car, and drove back to Fawn Hill Drive and the neighborhoods of Mahwah, the town that encircles Ramsey. On our way, we passed many of the signs we had put up that morning, all of which were holding up well despite the weather, thanks to Rich’s foresight and the plastic sleeves.

  We started out by the house where Huck had last been seen, by the piles of wood covered with tarp. It was still raining. Traveling now on foot, we searched that street and the ones nearby. We explored every yard and every tree-filled empty lot, desperately looking for Huck. We rang doorbells and stopped cars. We looked behind garages, around garbage cans, under slides and swings, inside open shed doors, underneath anything that might provide a small frightened animal shelter from the elements. A
s we trudged through the mud and stepped ankle deep into puddles, we called to Huck again and again, our voices begging him to come out from wherever he might be. Minutes turned into hours, and the afternoon turned into early evening. Darkness was falling.

  By the time we decided to get back in the car, I was hoarse. I sat next to Rich in the front seat looking at how thoroughly drenched he was. I could see even now that his mind was racing, trying to figure out what else we could do in the waning minutes of daylight. I knew he could not stop. I, though, drenched and distraught, was again wondering how much longer we could all go on this way. And then I pictured Huck, cold and soaked through, somewhere, and wondered how much longer he could go on.

  We agreed to drive around some, to use what precious little daylight was left to keep our eyes trained on the landscape. It was no use. We both knew it was no use. After the man saw Huck by that woodpile this morning, Huck seemed to have vanished. We had put up all of our signs and no one had called. The trail had gone stone cold.

  For a moment, Rich broke the silence. “Huck could be miles away from here, or we could be passing him right now and not even know it.”

  I didn’t want to add what we both had considered. Huck might be dead. We drove back to the Clarks.

  Barbara and Dave knew. They knew we would come home soaked to the bone and without hope. They did what they knew to do. They had a fire blazing in the fireplace, and Dave offered Rich a stiff drink, even though he knew Rich was not ready to let go.

  They reported that no calls had come in all day long. Michael and Darian came downstairs and joined all of us in the kitchen. Michael did not ask about our latest search. He just moved close to me and leaned his body into my lap without really sitting there, the way children that age often do.

  Barbara was moving between the sink and the refrigerator, sometimes for no reason at all. The rest of us were staring at the map, still spread out on the kitchen table, as though it would hold the answer to Huck’s whereabouts, to whether he was still alive, and to where we would see him if only we would look.

  Eventually, Dave folded the map and Barbara set the table for dinner. They had ordered a few pizzas and some salad from a local restaurant. None of us ate very much. After dinner, Rich and I sat by the fire. Barbara and Dave loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and then joined us in front of the fire. Michael and Darian went upstairs to watch the TV in Barbara and Dave’s bedroom.

  The phone did not, would not ring.

  Michael fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV and after he had been asleep for a time, I woke him and told him we had to head back to the hotel. We said good night to the Clarks and once again headed back to the Woodcliff Lake Hilton. All of the stores on Ramsey’s Main Street were closed and locked tight, just as they had been when Rich had set out early that morning.

  “I don’t want to go back to the hotel,” Michael said sleepily as we pulled into the hotel parking lot. “I want to keep looking for Huck.”

  It was heartbreaking. Somehow Rich found it in himself to assure Michael that we would be back at it tomorrow, that Huck had proven he could get through two nights, and that he would again. I don’t know where Rich was getting the emotional strength for this. I was empty.

  Rich offered to let Michael and me off in front of the hotel so we would not have to walk through the parking lot in the rain. It was absolutely pouring. But we declined, and we all parked the car together and walked in the rain together into the hotel and across the lobby’s marble floor to the elevator and up to our room.

  We each needed a shower. Michael went first, taking what was a specialty of his, a twenty-second shower. I settled him in bed. He was asleep instantly. I took a quick shower, too, though longer than twenty seconds.

  Rich plugged in his cell phone to recharge the constantly draining battery. Without thinking much about it, he turned the phone off. He was the last one in the shower, and he, too, was quick. I got into bed. When Rich came out of the bathroom, he slid in alongside me, and turned out the light.

  Depressed, my body aching, I closed my eyes, listening to the rain and the howling wind. I thought we ought to call the search off. I tried to imagine how I would tell Michael that these things happen in life and that we had tried as hard as we could to find Huck but that Huck was gone. I would tell him how sorry I was, how I knew how much it hurt, how I would be there to help him get through it. As painful as that would be for us both, I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought I’d be protecting him from this constant, day-in and day-out emotional upheaval we were in. I thought the time had come to help Michael come to terms with his devastating loss.

  Rich, too, had closed his eyes. But his thoughts could not have been more different. He was thinking about how long he could keep this going. He thought we’d stay in the hotel for a while longer and keep looking, keep running ads in the paper, keep putting up flyers, and talking to people as they went to work or brought their garbage cans to the road. We’d pay for radio ads. Rich had figured out that once I had to go back to work and Michael to school, he could continue to come out to New Jersey by himself whenever he could afford to take the time from his work. He thought we could afford to drain our savings of thousands more dollars. He had decided to search for another six weeks. Only then, he thought, could he really face Michael and tell him we had done everything we possibly could.

  Rich’s last thought that night was of Huck and the cold rain hitting the window of our hotel room. He knew Huck could make it through another night, could elude becoming the prey of wild animals, but he did not know how much more difficult survival would be with the addition of the driving rain. Rich fell asleep praying Huck was still alive.

  CHAPTER 14

  AT 6:30 SUNDAY MORNING, the hotel phone rang in our room, startling all of us out of sleep. I was disoriented for a few seconds, but managed enough coherence to wonder who could possibly be calling so early on the hotel phone, especially since the signs all had Rich’s cell-phone number and so did the Clarks. I picked up the receiver and nearly inaudibly said, “Hello.”

  “Why isn’t anyone answering Rich’s cell phone?” Barbara shrieked at me. “Get up. We had a call; a man saw Huck just a few minutes ago. You have to hurry. Get to Fawn Hill and Youngs.”

  Before I really grasped what she was saying, and certainly before I told Rich where we were to go, I screamed at Rich and Michael, “Get dressed. Hurry up. Someone has just seen Huck. We have to move fast.”

  “Janet, Janet,” Barbara called, trying to get me to reengage in our phone call. “Dave has already left. Does Rich know how to get to the intersection of Fawn Hill and Youngs?”

  I called to Rich, “Do you know how to get to Fawn Hill and Youngs?”

  And without waiting for an answer, before Rich had a chance to get his socks on, I thrust the phone toward him and said: “Why don’t you get the information from Barbara?”

  Michael was in the bathroom and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He stood there for a second and thought, I’ll bet this is it. We might really find Huck right now. This has to be it. I can’t lose him again. He allowed himself a smile before he walked out of the bathroom.

  Rich was now off the phone with Barbara, tying his sneakers as fast as he could. “Damn it. I can’t believe I turned off that cell phone. What was I thinking?” he said into the air. “Barbara had to lose minutes finding the number of the hotel.”

  “Forget about it,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We were all in various stages of dress and no one had a jacket on. Rich grabbed the bologna and the cream cheese. “Take jackets,” I yelled.

  And with that, we were out the door. Michael was the last one out, reaching for his lucky green Yankees cap as he left the room. We ran down the hall. Anxiously, I pushed the elevator button again and again and again before it came. The three of us ran through the lobby toward the front door. The hotel manager called to us: “Stop. Slow down. Don’t run in the lobby. It is not allowed.”


  We completely ignored him. We flew through the lobby and then the puddle-filled parking lot and into the car. Michael was in the backseat. Rich handed him the bologna and the cream cheese.

  I have no idea how fast Rich was going, but I am certain he was speeding, past Elmer’s, down Main Street in Ramsey, and up to Fawn Hill Drive, the area where Rich and I had been late Saturday afternoon. At some point Rich looked in his rearview mirror to look at Michael and saw him eating a piece of bologna.

  “I’m glad to see you eating, lovee, but you’d better save that for Huck.”

  “Oh yeah,” Michael said with a grin on his face. He stuffed what was left in the package into the pocket of his jacket along with the cream cheese.

  Dave was already there, having parked his car on the Fawn Hill side of the intersection. Rich parked our car on the Youngs Road side. We stood on Fawn Hill Drive looking at the first house on that street. It was a ranch house, with gray-blue shutters. It had a deep, sloping front yard. But it wasn’t clear whether that was the house at the intersection or whether it was the white-shingled house at the end of Youngs Road.

  “I don’t know which house the guy who called meant when he said he saw him at the intersection,” Dave said. “Huck is obviously not out front, so why don’t we look around the back.”

  Rich and Dave were once again strategizing. “It looks like the yards run into each other. Why don’t you and Michael go around that side,” Rich said pointing to the far side of that first house on Fawn Hill. “Janet and I will approach it from Youngs.”

  As relieved and astounded as I was that Huck had made it through another night, a fiercely stormy night, I didn’t want to mention that I thought Huck was gone again. The man who called in the tip said Huck was at the intersection. Well, he wasn’t at the intersection. In fact, he wasn’t anyplace nearby that you could see from the car. We missed him. A fair amount of time must have passed between when the man who saw him called Barbara, Barbara called us, and we got there. For whatever reason, we just didn’t get there fast enough.