by Sonny Brewer
THIRTEEN
WE DISCOVERED the intruder the day before I was to go out of town, to fly to San Francisco and begin the book tour for The Poet of Tolstoy Park. Cormac and I went around the corner of the house to the garage.
Cormac knew something was up before I did. When I reached down to take hold of the garage door handle and twist it to raise the door, he became excited, jumping from one side of my legs to the other, trying to dash around me.
“Just hold on,” I said. He barked, and leaped into the air. “What the—”
When I raised the garage door he dashed inside, barking and racing to the farthest corner. That’s when I saw what he was after: a huge brown and gray squirrel sprang from one shelf to another, knocking a gallon of paint to the floor. Of course, the lid came off and pea green paint splattered and spread across the floor. Which, for the moment, I was able to ignore.
The chase was on. I became the kid from Lamar County, Alabama, who had hunted rabbits with a Long Tom twelve-gauge single-barrel shotgun. I forgot that I was a civilized man. I yelled in a voice that hearkened to my Scottish highlands ancestry, a battle charge cousin Rob Roy would have been proud of.
“Where is he, Mick?!” I flew to the corner where the squirrel was hiding. Cormac actually jumped into the air when the blasted critter ran into view, twitching its tail, chattering. It scampered to a higher shelf.
Did I say I don’t like squirrels? A squirrel in a park is okay. A squirrel in my attic or in my garage is not good. I’ve known them to eat through electrical wiring and start fires in homes. They gnaw rafters. They gnaw holes into air-conditioning ductwork. And, if they had hairless, slick, and gray tails like rats, neither would anyone else like these arboreal rodents (tree rats).
The previous year, squirrels had invaded the attic at either end of my house. They dug into the insulation, down to the ceiling board right above my bed, and above John Luke’s bed down the hall. Both of us had to listen to them scurry around up there, their sharp little claws scraping just above our heads. I finally had to go into the attic and remove the gable vents at both ends of the house and toss out their leaves and straw. No, there were no baby squirrels, or big ones, for that matter, at home when I evicted them and their ton of yard debris. Now this squirrel was maybe shopping for new digs in my garage.
“Where is he, Cormac?”
Cormac was up on his hind legs, his forepaws on a bottom shelf. His ears were high and his eyes wide. His tongue wagged out after each time he barked.
“Get the squirrel, Mick!”
But it was hiding somewhere in the assortment of stuff on the shelves, so I grabbed a broom. I don’t know if Cormac somehow, according to his hunting dog genetics, equated the broom with a duck hunter’s gun, but it was the signal for him to go into really high gear on the squirrel search. Between the two of us, we flushed it from hiding, but neither of us was quick enough to catch it before it made a break into the sunlight outside the open garage door.
I don’t know, of course, what we would have done, either of us, if we’d caught the squirrel. It’s not a good idea to take a squirrel in hand. Its long incisors can sink easily through flesh and bone. To this day, however, that one brief hunting experience is sufficient for Cormac to go into full retriever dog mode when I say, “Where is it, Mick?” Spoken urgently, those four words get him alert and wide-eyed, standing braced with his tail straight, whipping his head this way and that to spot a squirrel.
Last week, in the car line at school, waiting to pick up Dylan, I saw a mallard on the little pond just beside the road. “Where is it, Mick?” I asked in a rough whisper. He immediately spotted the duck and went on point. Interestingly enough, he did not bark at all, only froze, standing on the Jeep’s back seat, looking out the window, staring out at the duck. Good thing for Mr. Quack we were in the car and there were no brooms in sight.
FOURTEEN
“WHAT SHOULD I DO?” Drew asked. I was quiet. I didn’t know what to say. Then I asked how long he’d been missing. “He was here this morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky when I left and I decided to let him play outside. I got stuck at a job site. There were maybe, what, two thunderclaps before I could get to your place. Then the whole thing passed. It didn’t even rain.”
I felt as helpless as I’d ever felt. Diana and I were both two thousand miles from Alabama. I’d finished the novel, the publisher had accepted it, and I was on a book tour in San Francisco. Diana would be flying home tomorrow, but I had signings and readings booked in Miami, Atlanta, Nashville, Blytheville, Oxford, Tupelo, Jackson, and New Orleans. I wouldn’t be home for ten days.
“Drew, when I asked you to house sit,” I said, pouring my defeat into the phone, “I wanted you there in my house to watch my dog. The house is not going anywhere. I told you Cormac might panic and bolt if a storm came up.”
“Yes you did,” Drew allowed. “That doesn’t matter now. Let’s be smart here,” he said. “When Cormac’s pulled a breakout in the past, where’d he go? Can I call someone?”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Look up the numbers for Alan Trimble and George Wingfield. They’ve both got dogs. They live right down the street. I’ll dial the message service and see if they’ve called me.”
I phoned to listen to our messages. Diana paced the hotel room, returning again and again to the window to glance toward San Francisco Bay, like there was some news posted out there about Cormac. I sat on the hotel bed and listened to the recordings on our voice mail. Two were from the boys, who were with our friends the Meisters, as though their phone calls to our house would reach us wherever we were; one was from the underground fence man saying the parts for the upgrade had arrived; two were from Pierre who couldn’t find certain books for which internet orders had been placed; and the last message was from a woman who did not identify herself, but said our dog had been at her house. Her call had come in an hour and forty-five minutes before Drew phoned me.
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 t
o 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.
FIFTEEN
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.
SIXTEEN
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 te
levision 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.
