Huck

by Janet Elder

  The houses in this area were all set up on a hill. Rich and I climbed the hill, which was slippery because the grass was wet from the downpour the night before. Even though the sun was breaking through, it was still too early for the ground to have dried. Rich reached the top of the hill first and turned to see how far I was lagging. As soon as I reached the top, we walked into the yard behind the house.

  Rich started quietly saying something, over and over, something he would say to Huck at times when they would play around on the living room floor: “Are you a good boy? Yes you are a good boy.” It was one of those nonsensical, rhythmic things people suddenly find themselves saying to pets. It was a term of endearment. Rich was hoping Huck would hear it and come back to us.

  Startled, I grabbed Rich’s arm to keep myself from screaming. There, just standing there, was Huck. He was about twenty-five feet away.

  Huck looked weary and his hair was matted. He looked at Rich, who then started to get down on his knees, but before he did, Huck turned and trotted away. Huck didn’t run, which made me wonder if he was injured. We were about to follow, when Rich’s cell phone rang.

  It was Dave calling from the other side of the house. “Michael sees Huck,” he said. “Huck is about thirty feet away from him.”

  The moment Michael saw Huck, he summoned all of his self-control. He did not make any quick movements. He squatted. Then he gingerly reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of bologna. He put it on the ground in front of him. He ever so slowly put his hand back in his pocket and managed to open the tub of cream cheese enough to stick his finger into it, intending to rub the cream cheese on the bologna. Michael had managed to go from squatting to kneeling without making a sound.

  “Huck is now about twenty-five feet away,” Dave whispered into the phone.

  Rich and I behind the house on one side of the yard, and Dave, out of our line of sight, on the other side, each stood frozen in place.

  “Hi Huck, how are you, boy?” Michael said softly. “I’ve missed you. Are you hungry? Do you want some cream cheese?”

  “He is now about twenty feet away,” Dave whispered into the phone. “Now he’s about fifteen feet away.”

  “Hi, Huckie boy.” Michael kept his soft-spoken entreaty to Huck going. “You want some cream cheese?”

  It was all Michael could do to hold himself together. He wanted to swoop Huck up in his arms and cry and laugh with abandon. But he was as controlled as a major-league player about to make the winning play in the last at bat of a World Series game.

  Rich, with the phone pressed to his ear, stood somewhat bent so that I could have my head right up against his, even though I could not hear a thing.

  Dave whispered into the phone, “Huck is now ten feet away from Michael.”

  “Huck is ten feet away from Michael,” Rich repeated to me, as he did after every report from Dave.

  “He’s about eight feet away.”

  “He’s about six feet away.”

  “Huck is about four feet away.”

  Huck took another step toward Michael and when Michael reached for him, Huck took several steps backward. Michael feared he would run.

  “Huck just backed away,” Dave said.

  It was an eternity before Rich and I heard another update over the phone from Dave.

  “We thought he’d run, but he didn’t. Now I’d say Huck is about five feet away.”

  “Huck is about four feet away.”

  “He’s three feet away.”

  “He’s two feet away.”

  “Michael has Huck in his arms.”

  Rich and I went tearing around to the other side of the yard. Michael was hugging his dog, his best friend, his most trusted confidante, the pet he had longed for his entire young life, the antidote to his mother’s brush with death. “I love you, Huck. I missed you so much. Where have you been, boy?” he said sweetly.

  Huck, licking Michael’s face, his lips, his cheeks, his nose, even his eyes, was too busy to answer.

  Dave, who was filled with emotion, spoke in a louder voice than Michael had ever heard him, “Let’s get him in the car and close all the windows.” He was fearful Huck would bolt again.

  At the sight of our son and his dog in the backseat of Dave’s car, finally reunited, with Michael smiling and laughing and Huck licking him and climbing all over Michael’s head, Rich and I were each overcome with tears of joy.

  A woman, still in her bathrobe, came out of her house and stood on her front steps for a minute looking at Rich, who was jumping up and down and punching the air with his fists. “Did you find your dog?” she called to us.

  “Yes, yes, we did,” I called back to her, laughing at Rich’s antics.

  “We sure did,” Rich shouted. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Congratulations,” the woman said, smiling.

  Rich pulled something out of his pocket I didn’t know was there—Huck’s leash. When we were standing by Dave’s car, Rich knocked on the window of the backseat and told Michael to crack the window. He fed the leash through the window. As he did, Huck started licking the window. Rich told Michael to put the leash on Huck and wrap the other end of it around his hand. We were not taking any chances.

  Once Michael attached the leash and was holding the end of it securely, I carefully opened the other door to the backseat and got in. I was again overcome with emotion. With Huck jumping on us both, I hugged Michael. I then held Huck in my arms and kissed him before he licked my face. I handed him back to Michael. I was about to get out of the car when Dave got in and said, “Rich said you should stay in my car and we’ll meet him back at the house.”

  I felt badly that Rich, the field general, the optimist in chief, the tireless father and husband, had not yet had a chance to hold our newly found Huck. If not for his insistence that this could be done, that we could somehow find our puppy in the dense woods in the foothills of the mountains, the overwhelming joy of the moment would not have been ours.

  CHAPTER 15

  RICH GOT BACK to the Clarks’ house before we did and was waiting for us on the driveway. He motioned to Michael to stay in the car for a moment. Once Dave, Rich, and I had formed a phalanx next to the car door, Rich opened Michael’s door so Michael could get out while still holding Huck in his arms and keeping the leash tightly wound around his hand.

  Like Secret Service agents protecting a presidential candidate, we moved as a unit up the stone path and through the front door. In retrospect, it was a hilarious moment, but at the time, it seemed right.

  “Don’t put him down until we are sure the back door is closed,” Dave said.

  Barbara was in the kitchen making coffee. She came running toward the living room. The usually calm, take-life-as-it-comes Dave sent her back. “Make sure the back door is closed,” he said to her. “Lock it.”

  Barbara dashed back into the kitchen and then ran toward Michael and Huck. “Oh my God,” she said, tears running down her face. “Darian, come down here. Quick!” she called.

  Darian ran down the stairs in her pajamas and bare feet taking the steps two and three at a time. “Huck,” she yelled with glee at her first sight of him. “How did you find him?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she started petting Huck’s head and kissing him. Barbara could not let go of Michael who could not let go of Huck. Dave, satisfied the house was locked up, said to Michael: “You can put him down now.”

  But Michael didn’t. He turned and handed him to Rich. And for the third time that morning, I felt my eyes fill with tears.

  “Hiya, boy,” Rich said, taking Huck into his arms. Huck could not get enough of Rich, who was laughing. The laughter grew louder with every lick Huck planted on Rich’s face. Huck looked journey worn but seemed to be his sweet, open self.

  Rich handed Huck back to Michael, who carried him into the kitchen with all of us following behind. The anguish of the past few days had been replaced by pure happiness.

  We were all wondering who t
he man was who had called so early in the morning to alert us to Huck’s whereabouts. He had appeared like the angel, Clarence Oddbody, in the Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life, who materializes in George Bailey’s life at a moment of utter despair.

  “Barbara has his number,” Dave said. “His name is John something, and he lives right around where we found Huck.”

  John turned out to be seventy-three-year-old John Mantineo, a tall, humble man with white hair and blue eyes, the husband of Janet, and the father of six children, all grown and out of the house except for his twenty-seven-year-old son, Michael, who has Down syndrome. Many of John and Janet’s children are in helping professions and are married to people in helping professions—firefighters, police officers, teachers, nurses, emergency room technicians. Their photographs line the bedroom hallway and cover the white refrigerator in the family’s split-level yellow house on Deerfield Terrace, just off Fawn Hill Drive.

  Among the photographs is a framed reprint of a newspaper article about his Michael, who at the age of thirteen, as part of a 4-H project, spent endless hours taking his own pets—cats, dogs, rabbits, and guinea pigs—to visit elderly people in nearby nursing homes. Michael has a way with animals. He’s won ribbons at dog shows and trophies for horseback riding in the Special Olympics.

  As a small child Michael had many pets. By the time he was in his twenties, he was working in the Franklin Lakes Animal Hospital.

  John and Janet raised their remarkable family on John’s salary as a field engineer for the Bergen County Parks Department where he went to work after he got out of the army in 1955. After he retired, he delivered flowers and did some carpentry work.

  Late in the day on Saturday, John had seen one of our flyers nailed to a telephone pole. He thought surely a dog that small would be nabbed by a wild animal. Just recently, Janet had thrown rocks at a crow to get the crow to drop from its beak the baby rabbit it had plucked right out of its mother’s nest. John knew there were not only birds of prey in the area but coyotes and foxes and bears. He had gone home to get a pen and a piece of paper and had come back to the sign to write down the number.

  The next morning, John did what he always did on Sunday mornings before the family went to church. At the crack of dawn, he got up for the seven-mile drive to Bagel Train in Suffern to buy bagels, remembering to include sesame bagels and everything bagels in his bagful.

  On this Sunday morning, his trip to the bagel store was interrupted when he saw a bedraggled, red-haired puppy sitting at the intersection. Certain it was the dog pictured on the flyer, he got out of his tan Malibu and called “cream cheese.” But the dog ran from him. John went home and called the number, waking Barbara and Dave.

  Later that morning, the Mantineos went to Mass at Immaculate Conception Church in Mahwah, where John and Janet volunteer as greeters and Michael is an altar server. “I like to be close to God,” Michael says of the experience. The next time they heard anything at all about the dog, it was that the dog had been found, thanks to John’s call.

  In the Clarks’ kitchen that morning, there was nothing but smiles and jockeying to get close to Huck. I wanted to get Huck something to eat, and somehow his dog food did not seem like the right thing. “Barbara, do you have any yogurt?” I asked, knowing it was something Huck loved and thinking it might be something he could easily handle.

  “I don’t,” she said.

  Dave and I decided we would go out and get yogurt for Huck and bagels for everyone else.

  Rich was already thinking ahead, reminding me we had to check out of the hotel and take down as many of the flyers as we could. Then his cell phone rang. It was Ray, who was up, ready to spend the day with us searching for Huck.

  “We found him!” Rich said triumphantly.

  “You found him? How? Where? Can I see him?” Ray asked all at once. “Where are you now?”

  “We’re still at my sister-in-law’s,” Rich said. “Why don’t you come over here and have bagels with us?”

  By the time Dave and I came back with the yogurt and the bagels, Ray had arrived and was sitting in the kitchen with everyone else, Huck still in Michael’s arms. Ray stood and shook Rich’s hand. “He’s the best-looking poodle I have ever seen,” Ray said, smiling broadly.

  I handed Michael a container of cherry yogurt and a spoon. He stirred the yogurt, but before he could put a small amount on the spoon and tempt Huck, Huck had already put his snout in the container, practically inhaling the creamy treat. He licked the plastic container clean, the telltale signs all over his face.

  When Michael finally put Huck down on the floor, Rich and I each noticed that Huck’s right eye was more closed than his left eye. “We really should get Huck to the vet,” I said. “It is possible we could get an appointment for today. I think Dr. Miller is sometimes there on Sundays.”

  I called.

  “As long as there is no emergency, you can wait and bring him in tomorrow,” said the young woman at the other end of the phone. “Is this about Huck?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes, it is,” I said, surprised that she knew Huck’s name.

  “You mean you found him?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “That’s amazing!” she screamed. “Wait ’til I tell everyone. We were all worried. Everyone will be so happy. Dr. Miller will be here at eight thirty tomorrow morning. Can you bring him in then?”

  “Sure,” I said, relieved to have been given the first appointment of the day and touched that the office staff was so concerned.

  We ate our bagels and watched Huck play on the floor, as though the harrowing adventure of the last few days had not even happened. But it did happen. And it had a happy ending. We learned a lot about the heart of a small town and the extraordinary level of concern one stranger can show another. We learned a lot about ourselves, too, about tenacity and grit and our devotion to one another.

  Our remarkable journey had brought countless kind and generous people into our lives. We had to start to say thank you. Rich took a napkin and started to pen a letter to the editor of the free local paper, the Town Journal, thanking the townspeople of Ramsey, Mahwah, Allendale, and Wyckoff.

  To the Editor:

  On March 22, my wife, son, and I left New York for a ten-day vacation following a year of coping with serious health matters. We left our dog, Huckleberry, a toy red poodle puppy we bought for our son in part to help with our coping, with my wife’s sister in Ramsey. One day into vacation we received a call that Huck ran away. We flew home and began a daybreak-to-darkness search. The generosity of the people of Ramsey, Mahwah, Wyckoff, and Allendale in terms of concern, prayer, and genuine assistance (people even changed plans to join in the search) was a life-changing experience. We believe in the basic goodness of people, but the people of those communities displayed deep empathy, even though it meant putting their own emotions on the line. Thanks to a tip, we found Huck seventy-two hours later. Along the way we found some terrific people, several of whom are now friends. We want to thank the people of those communities. We are deeply grateful for what you did.

  Richard Pinsky

  New York City

  “I think this is it,” Rich said, handing me the napkin. “I think it says what we want to say.”

  For once, I did not have anything to add or change, which is not always the case when one of us shows the other something one of us has written. Rich had said it all perfectly.

  I was eager to go home. I wanted to take care of what we still needed to do in New Jersey, and then I wanted to get back to our lives. Rich and I were both nervous about leaving Michael and Huck behind and out of our sight while we went to check out of the hotel. We were worried someone would leave the back door open or that Huck would slip out of the Clarks’ house in some other never-thought-of way. But we also knew we had a lot to do before we could pack our small family into the car and head back across the George Washington Bridge. And we knew that Barbara and Dave would be paying close attention to Huck’s every move.


  So we made quick work of checking out of the hotel. It was easy to pack, since we had never really unpacked. I paid the bill, while Rich got the car and loaded the suitcases into the trunk. He slammed it shut. “We are out of here,” he said gleefully.

  We drove past Elmer’s and back into Ramsey. We parked about halfway down Main Street and tore down one sign after another. It seemed like everyone who spotted us pulling a sign off a pole or out of a shop window knew our tale. Some would ask about Huck by name. “Did you find Huck?” or “Did you find your dog?” A couple of women hugged me at hearing the news. Others shook our hands, while others just shouted, “Great news,” or “Congratulations,” as they got in their cars and drove away.

  Some of the signs, like those in the schools or stores that were closed, would have to stay up until Monday, and we started making a list of people we knew we would have to call about them. We then headed for Pine Tree Road. We left a note for Brian O’Callahan, one of the men who had volunteered to look for Huck with his children, and another note for Dick Seelbach, the man who let us leave bologna on his driveway.

  We went to Carriage Lane, where we found Ben Mamola and his wife, Catherine, who had just returned from her church retreat, taking bags out of the back of one of their cars. When we told them we had found Huck, there was a lot of hugging. We had just met Catherine, but she already knew our story well from Ben. “We’ve all been praying,” Catherine said.

  “Even the boys, before they went to bed last night, prayed you’d find your dog,” Ben added. “Wait ’til they hear the news.”

  We thanked Ben for all his help and agreed to stay in touch. “You know,” he said, “I believe everything happens for a reason.”