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 to 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
“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 to 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
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