“That’ll be Travis, punctual as usual,” says EJ.
A moment later the moon-faced Travis appears in the doorway. An old-school winter Patriots hat bearing an angry minuteman in a three-point stance sits askew on his head. “Come check out this cat fight, hey,” he says.
EJ and I meet him at the door. EJ flicks on a spotlight that floods the parking lot, where Bedard’s cat faces a sleek, black animal that appears half cat, half weasel. They don’t react at all to the light or to us; they’re consumed with each other.
“Weird-looking thing,” says Travis.
“It’s a fisher,” I say. I know because Nick came home all excited once with photographs of a fisher. They’re hard to photograph because they’re reclusive, he said.
This fisher is lean and powerful, with a squarish head, a tail as thick as nautical rope, and claws so long I can make them out from here.
Bedard’s cat hisses and yowls. The fisher swipes at the cat but misses.
“Damn,” says Travis. “That thing’s nasty.” He sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles. Both animals crouch and look at us. Cold air swirls inside the open door.
Ahab shoots from his dozing spot and gallops for the door, mouth open, eyes blazing.
“Ahab, no!” I grapple after him. I leap and grab for his hind legs but hit the floor hard, arms empty.
Ahab is a black-and-white torpedo. He knocks aside Travis and EJ.
“What the—,” says Travis, catching his balance. “Where’d the racin’ dog come from? That dog’s got balls.”
Ahab yelps when he hits the lot’s jagged, frozen gravel. But he doesn’t slow down. He’s got two targets now and gallops full speed for them. Stones kick up behind him.
The fisher bolts, a black blur. It darts for the trees and scampers down the ravine at the end of the lot.
Bedard’s cat ducks low. It cries and spits and swipes a paw. Then it, too, springs into the woods and disappears down the slope.
Ahab gathers speed.
“Cappy!” I sprint across the gravel. Footsteps sound behind me—EJ gives chase, too.
“I’m staying right the fuck here is what I’m doin’,” Travis shouts. “Haven’t you ever heard of cat scratch fever? That’s a real thing, hey.”
Ahab pauses at the edge of the woods. He sniffs the air where, seconds ago, the cat stood. Cap’n’s ears point tall. He’s as still as one of Trudy’s statues.
I slow to a walk, not wanting to startle him. EJ creeps up next to me, breathing hard.
“Ahab, cookie time!” I sing. I hope he’ll turn to me, looking for a dog biscuit. “Cookie time; cookie time for you!”
The snow thickens. It looks like a thousand white-beaded curtains.
I’m five feet from Ahab. Four feet. I hear his teeth chatter. I see muscles quiver under his fur as snowflakes land there.
Three feet. I reach out my arm. “Cookie time, Cappy,” I whisper. My fingers are one foot from his rump. “Please.”
He looks over his shoulder and blinks his big brown eyes.
“Sorry, Zell,” I whisper. “But I’m a braver beast than that milksop, and I’ll prove it. By the Almighty’s balls, I’ll prove it! Yarr!”
“Gotcha!” EJ leaps for Ahab but slips. He thuds to the ground with a groan. “Shit.”
Ahab scampers down the slope. I trot to the edge, but I can’t see much. The crashing of frozen leaves and twigs fades away, fades to silence.
“ I’M SORRY,” Travis says as I follow EJ to the Muffinry van. “I didn’t even know that thing was in here.”
“Just stay here and man the shop ’til I get back, Trav,” EJ says.
We drive all around town as the sun comes up. EJ leaves his window rolled down and calls for the Captain. His voice is pretty loud, even without his meaty hand cupped around his mouth.
He trolls slowly down Main Street a few times, which isn’t a problem this time of day, because there aren’t any cars. When he turns onto a side street, the glove compartment pops open, and an almost-empty bottle of cologne tumbles to the floor. The cologne was a Christmas present from me and Nick a few years ago; EJ always complained about the smell of muffins that seemed a permanent part of him. I shove the bottle in the glove compartment and slam it shut.
“I’m sorry, Zell,” EJ says. “I’m so sorry. Ahab’s just so quiet. I totally forgot he was there.”
I start to say it’s okay but stop when I feel my eyes well up.
Ahab will come back to me. Ahab will come back.
EJ returns to Main Street. We scan the trees between the nail salon and the video store, where a GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign dominates the window.
“Nick sure did love that dog,” he says quietly.
Balls.
I take a few jagged breaths as the tears spill over. I turn to the passenger window and press my forehead on the cold glass.
“Shit.” EJ rubs my back a little, but when I don’t respond, he stops. “That was the wrong thing to say,” he says.
“It’s just that I thought for sure we’d find him by now,” I say.
“Well, it’s only been twenty minutes or so since we started driving around.”
“I know. But I thought we’d hop in the van and cruise around a little bit, and see him walking up the road. And he’d run up to us.”
“That could still happen. Let’s give it a few more minutes.”
I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my coat and notice Bedard’s cat strolling down the sidewalk in front of Big Yum Donuts. “There’s the cat,” I say.
“If I ever get my hands on that thing,” says EJ, which makes me smile just a little, in spite of everything, because EJ wouldn’t hurt a flea in that cat’s mangy fur. He pulls over, and the cat takes off down the sidewalk. EJ hops from the van and chases it, shaking his fist. “A-hole!” he yells.
I get out and walk in the opposite direction, calling, “Ahab! Ahab!” My nose is numb; my voice is hoarse. I trot down a side street, where little Cape Cod houses are closely set. I jog past a few driveways. I look all around, and my tear-stained face stings in the cold.
In one driveway a car runs. In another house the kitchen lights flick on, and I hear a radio announcer give a weather report. At the next driveway a man wearing a ski coat over his bathrobe stoops to pick up the daily. Old lift tickets flutter from his zipper as cold wind blows.
“Excuse me, have you seen a dog?” I ask. “Tall, skinny, black-and-white?”
“Sorry,” he says, his voice scratchy with sleep. He goes inside.
The Muffinry van creeps along beside me. The passenger door swings open. “Get in, Zell.” EJ pats the seat. “You’ll find him, but just not right now. Come on. I’ll take you home.”
I HAVE TO PEE SO BAD, I zip straight to the powder room. When all the coffee’s out of me, I wash my hands, gazing at Ahab’s likeness on the wall. Young, speeding Ahab. I blow my nose on a length of toilet paper and shudder a few teary sobs; I think I’m done crying, at least for now.
“Zell?” Garrett says through the wall. “Everything all right?”
“Ahab’s gone.”
“Gone?”
There’s a pause. Then he says, “I’ll be right over.”
I meet him on the porch. He wears fake shearling slippers, and the hood of his BU sweatshirt is pulled up over his head. “What happened?” he asks.
And after I tell him, he offers to drive me around, just like EJ did.
I hesitate, feeling needy and pathetic. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’ll drive around by myself.”
“Two pairs of eyes are better than one,” he says. “I don’t mind. Really.”
“It would make me feel better,” I say. “But what about Ingrid?”
“She’s still at Nature’s Classroom.”
“Oh. Right.” I’d forgotten.
And a minute later I’m hopping into Garrett’s truck. “I told work I’d be late,” he says.
We drive Ingrid style: heat cranked, windows down. At my su
ggestion we scour the high school campus first. We drive around all the buildings. We peruse every parking lot and circle the bleachers a couple of times. Next we troll the outskirts of town. We hang out the windows and call for Ahab every ten seconds or so. I sing the “Cookie Time” song; Garrett picks it up and belts it as he drives.
He takes Route 331 past Trudy’s house. At the mountain he turns around and heads down Old Rutland Road, and we zigzag slowly along the turns. At the site of the accident Nick photographed on his last night in Wippamunk, someone erected a makeshift shrine: a white wooden cross that bears the name Dylan Mead and the date he died, the letters and numbers formed in black electrical tape. A small wreath of plastic flowers leans against the cross.
After about an hour and a half of searching, we head back. It’s prime commuting time now, and the traffic is steady—dirty cars and trucks speed along in slushy, sandy snow. We take our spot in the stream of traffic. Something is different about Main Street, something about the telephone poles.
“Can you stop a sec?” I say. Garrett puts his hazard lights on and pulls over, and I step onto the snowplowed sidewalk and approach a pole. At eye level is a sheet of paper featuring Ahab’s likeness. I instantly recognize the photo: Ahab leans against the dented back bumper of Dennis’s rattletrap of a car. Nick took the shot a few years ago, on a brilliant September day when I walked Ahab to the Wippamunker Building to meet Nick for lunch.
Garrett’s at my side now. I smooth the paper against the splintering wood of the pole and read.
Missing greyhound. A black-and-white male answering to the names Captain Ahab and Ahab. The beloved pet of longtime Wippamunker photographer Nicholas Roy, who died last year during an interfaith mission trip comprised of local churchgoers helping rebuild homes and churches in New Orleans. Anyone with information as to Captain Ahab’s whereabouts should contact Ms. Rose-Ellen Roy of 111 High Street, Wippamunk, or Officer Frances Hogan at the station.
I glance up and down Main Street. Every third telephone pole sports eye-level pinups of Ahab.
“That was fast,” Garrett says. “That was really fast.”
“Would you mind stopping at the police station?” I ask.
FRANCE SITS AT THE DISPATCHER’S DESK. Her black boots are propped up, her hands laced behind her head. A cup of yogurt waits next to a big olive green panel with all sorts of knobs and dials. She smiles sadly when I enter. “You like?” she yells through the bulletproof glass that separates the dispatcher’s desk from the lobby. “Did you see them?”
“I like,” I say. “Thanks.”
“EJ called me, so I called Dennis. He has some of Nick’s old photographs on file at The Wippamunker. He doctored up a flyer and photocopied it. He and the new guy drove around town and put them up all over the place.”
“But it’s only been, like, not even three hours since he went missing.”
France gives a little shrug. “What can I say? When Munkers get behind something, they get behind something.”
“He was wearing a fairy charm.”
She twists up her face. “Huh?”
“Ahab. On his collar. You know. It’s silver. Handmade. Little different-colored beads. Looks like a little fairy. With wings.”
France scribbles the detail onto a notepad. “Little silver and glass fairy with wings. Got it.” She spoons some purple yogurt into her mouth. “Was he microchipped?”
“Yes. All the greyhounds at the adoption place were microchipped before being placed in homes.”
She nods. “That’s really good. The dog officer was just here, and he said dogs with microchips have a really high chance of returning. It’s a proven statistic.” She stands and presses her palm to the glass. “We’ll find him, Zell.”
GARRETT DRIVES ME HOME. I thank him the whole way and beg him to let me pay for gas, but he refuses. “This was for the Captain,” he says.
He walks me up the porch steps. At the door he embraces me, a real hug, long and full, and I let myself sink into his body, his warmth.
“You’ll get him back, Zell,” he says into my hair.
I want to say that I believe this. That in a few hours Ahab will get bored of the hunt and start making his way back here. But the truth is, I’m not sure. I’m just not.
“Breakfast?” asks Garrett, smiling gently.
“Breakfast.”
I SHOWER AND BREW MORE COFFEE. I go to draw a hip socket—femur head rotating smoothly inside pelvis’s ridgelike acetabulum—but I sketch, instead, Nick. He guards an icy outcropping, and his soldier-angel wings are azure and orange, like the flames that unfurled from the present in my oven. And at his side, Ahab, in full dog-battle regalia, peers over the ledge.
EJ
Every morning before work EJ cruises the streets of Wippamunk, searching for Ahab. He shines his high beams into dense patches of underbrush. Some days he even hikes a little into the woods, which makes him realize how out of shape he is.
He searches in the daylight, too, leaving Travis in charge of the Muffinry. Travis is capable. Punctual, no, but capable.
It’s two in the afternoon, and there’s the usual lull in traffic, after the lunch rush and before the end-of-the-school-day rush. Past the Blue Plate Lounge, EJ catches a whiff of French fries, which reminds him of the old-grease smell in the cafeteria where they slept in New Orleans. Pastor Sheila sequestered herself in a corner, out of courtesy, because she snored, but EJ thought her snoring actually was kind of cute. Father Chet took over another corner, and Chief Kent was by himself, too. Dennis and Nick put their sleeping bags close to each other toward the middle of the room, so they could talk about Wippamunker stuff, and mull over ideas for their story and photo spread. Nick showed Dennis the days’ shots on his camera; it was sort of their before-bed ritual. And the remaining three—EJ, France, and Russ—hunkered together. Some nights they giggled and whispered like kids at a slumber party.
One night, toward the end of the trip, after Pastor Sheila and Father Chet flew home early, EJ couldn’t stop thinking about the woman they met the first day, Verna, who told them about her neighbor’s corpse caught on a telephone pole. He thought about the bronzed baby shoes of Verna’s only son, who died in Vietnam. He laid awake and imagined random scenes from her life. Verna carrying a big tub of potato salad to a backyard barbecue. Verna draping tinsel on a Christmas tree. He supposed about an hour had passed since everyone turned off their flashlights. Then he heard his name whispered. It was Nick.
“I’m awake.” EJ clicked on his flashlight to see Nick, in his sleeping bag, worm toward him.
“How about that church today,” Nick said. They’d worked all day, rebuilding a parish hall next to a Baptist church. They swung hammers alongside a local imam, and a rabbi, and a Catholic priest.
“Yeah,” EJ said.
“I wish I was handier,” Nick said. “I’d like to learn more about carpentry and stuff.”
“You should come with Charlene and me.”
“Where?”
“She wants to show me her new church. They’re building it now. It’s gonna be really big, and they’re making the outside look like Noah’s ark.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Nick said. “I would like to see it.” He paused, then said, “I miss my woman, Silo. I miss her a lot.”
“How is she? How’s her heart?”
“I guess the tests so far are inconclusive. They still haven’t figured out what’s going on. But I have a feeling everything’s gonna be just fine.”
EJ’S PHONE RINGS. Real time, real place. It’s Charlene.
He blinks the water from his eyes, pulls over to the side of the road, and clears his throat. “Hello, sweetness,” he answers.
“Hey, big guy. Find the dog yet?”
“Oh, man.” He switches hands and turns down the radio. “Ahab’s chances aren’t looking too good. So many things could have happened to that dog. What if that fisher bit him and gave him rabies? Or what if the fisher scratched him, and he got a blood infection, an
d crawled under a bush somewhere and died of a fever? Or what if he froze? Zell makes him wear a coat and boots even when the thermometer reads fifty degrees. And it’s in the twenties lately.”
“You’re torturing yourself with these thoughts,” Charlene says.
EJ closes his eyes at the sound of her warm-honey voice. He feels washed with sudden gratitude: Dogs go missing; people fight, divorce, and die; but he can call Charlene any time, day or night, and she consoles him.
“It does you no good to think about these things,” she says.
“Nick loved that dog. Zell, too. I mean, they loved that dog.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault. Dogs chase cats. That’s the nature of things.”
He sighs. He taps his phone on his forehead a few times, then returns it to his ear. “Would you hate me, Charlene? I’m pretty sure I would hate me. But I’m a man. You’re a woman. Would you hate me?”
“She’ll come around, EJ.”
“I miss Nick.”
“I miss him, and I only met him a few times.” Her breath sounds funny—drawn out and deliberate.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“Out back, doing a little yoga.”
He chuckles. He doesn’t even really know what yoga is, but he pictures her stretching her arms overhead, her eyes closed, a soft smile on her face. “I’d bet you look pretty cute doing yoga,” he says.
“Well, then, you’d stand to win a lot of money, sugar.” She inhales slowly, exhales slowly. “Listen. Life isn’t simple. But the beauty of it is, you can always start over. It’ll get easier.”
“Oh yeah?” He rolls down his window and waves, urging a car to pass. “When?”
Nick
November 7, 2006
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hiya, Rose-Ellen. Russ here, your friendly neighborhood mailman, or to be politically correct, your friendly neighborhood “mail carrier.” Just wanted to write hello, we are working hard and having a lot of fun, too. I’m handing your husband’s laptop back to him now cuz he’s looking at me like he wants to kick my scrawny butt, never get in the way of a man and his woman, ha ha, see ya, over and out, Russ #1 Mailman in Central Mass, or as EJ would say, #1 Mailman West of 495, ha ha.
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