Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing (17 page)

I WATCHED HIM work the room. Being the only dog at a family Christmas gathering gave Cormac a leg up, so to speak, on the territory. In his affable way, he could claim every spot, curl up beside every chair, stretch out on every rug, take all the handed-down turkey scraps, and, more importantly, steal every heart for himself. It was, for the doggins, a gold mine. His dark eyebrows went up and down, flagging his delight.

I had married a good Catholic girl, and Diana’s fruitful family had multiplied and there were about sixty people now on hand at the Brewer house to celebrate the season. But the only one of God’s four-legged creatures in sight was that big, reddish-brown handsome hunk of a dog. I could see that Cormac would rule this yuletide afternoon, the same way he had taken over our house since his soldier’s homecoming. He slept on the bed every night with John Luke. He curled up on the floor with Dylan to watch ESPN.

He still got yelled at for stretching out right in front of the stove in the kitchen during mealtime, and he was not awarded sofa privileges, at least not often. I watched him move happily from hand to ear-rubbing hand, pat to pat. Somewhere on the floor, Cormac found a toy football and carried it in his mouth, making it easy for him to articulate his approval of these two-leggeds. Cormac smiled and yawned, and I thought he offered all of us a lesson in how to answer the season’s hustle-and-bustle: easy does it.

Cormac’s way was infectious, and I kicked back on the sofa. I was content to let the room buzz all around, without catching much of the buzz myself. And the more I relaxed, the more I fantasized about the hammock strung tight on my back deck. Christmas in coastal Dixie doesn’t have very many chestnut roasting days, and the hearth and mantel usually stay cool, lit only by candles, if hopefully festooned with stockings. Cormac ambled over to where I sat and presented his head for stroking.

Then, from the overstuffed chair to my right, Tim, boyfriend of cousin Sarah, asked, “So, Sonny, what’s the life expectancy of a Golden?”

There it was.

I did not answer right away because there in that benign query I was confronted with the thought of the end of days for my friend Cormac. Truly, I had never given it more than a passing nod, thinking Cormac would certainly live into his dog eighties or, like myself in my own wishful thinking, into his nineties. That would be, what, twelve or thirteen years?

“Oh I don’t know, maybe fourteen years.”

“I don’t think so,” was all Tim said, and crossed his leg. He pulled up his sock and fidgeted with the hem of his jeans. I sat for a few minutes, caught between watching Cormac wander through the people lazing around in the family room and examining this bone that had been dug up, its exposed nub nagging me with melancholic curiosity: what is the life expectancy of Cormac, the Golden Retriever?

Whatever further excavation I might have undertaken was delayed as I watched Cormac, like a playful child, walk straight over and plop down in the lap of Joy, mother of baby Maddie. Joy sat cross-legged on the floor, and the crook of her legs must have put Cormac in the mind of Christmases past when his was a puppy’s behind and a good fit for such an inviting Indian pose. It was a comical moment, and Joy’s new-mother heart provoked her to do what came naturally: wrap the big lug in her arms. I laughed aloud.

“Toss my digital camera,” I called to Diana, standing near the dining room table.

She did just that and my new camera came winging over the heads of cousins Lanny and Graham. I made a good catch, pressed the power button, aimed and snapped a photo of the scene. I’d use the photo as my screensaver image. Cormac left Jay’s lap and went to the kitchen to make sure the floor was clear of ham and turkey morsels. I closed the lens cover and slipped from the sofa and went to my study. I spun my black polycarbonate chair around and sat down in front of the computer.

I quickly found a webpage with information about Golden Retrievers. I scanned the topical index until I found life expectancy. There was a paragraph of copy that I did not read, because my eye immediately found the phrase, “…about 10-12 years.”

The whole screen immediately blurred in front of my eyes.

Cormac in the next room was already six. At the inside, I’d be losing my Mickins before my fifth-grade Dylan entered his sophomore year of high school, and at the outside before Dylan graduated. It did not help matters that one of the two brother Goldens at the top of the webpage looked a lot like Cormac.

And it all really went down hill when Cormac walked into my office. I saw, for the very first time, the whitening of the fur around his muzzle close to his lips. For me, that little thin line of gray there might as well have been a writ from the hand of the Almighty, telling me to bring my dog and a knife and come to the mountain.

“Come here, buddy.”

Cormac sat down near my chair, put his muzzle on my thigh and rolled his eyes upward. I thought about a friend who’d gone to a tattoo parlor in New York and had his dog’s name, Sadie, written on his thigh just where she’d rested her chin. It had cost him forty dollars. I had forty dollars on me at the moment. But it was Sunday and this was Fairhope. Another time, maybe.

I got out of my chair and sat on the floor beside the doggins. Cormac lay down and turned over on his back and looked at me, rolling his eyes to see better from that position. The whites of his eyes were exposed and it made him look kind of goofy, like he was clowning for a silly picture.

“Mick, damn ye, you’re not allowed to die!” His tail thumped the floor, and he seemed to grin at my foolishness. “You’re no help,” I told him. I got up and went to the hammock on the deck, Cormac trailing me. I took a pillow from John Luke’s bedroom, where Cormac sleeps on the bed with him every night now, and a thin lap blanket. At night in the family room, when John Luke is ready for bed, I say to Cormac, “Go with John Luke.” Cormac gets up and heads to my son’s bedroom, sometimes leading the way. I say to Cormac, “Go find Dylan.” Cormac will go find Dylan, and if in his bedroom, then jump onto my boy’s bed.

I rolled into the hammock and waited for Cormac to bring his face near. I didn’t have to wait for long. “It’s not fair, is it, Mick?” Cormac wasn’t buying into my funk, seemed more than content to live this one day that was his for the living. He heard a door open, and dashed off to inspect.

I fluffed my pillow and closed my eyes. I just lay there and studied the rope holding me up. I thought about people loving dogs and dogs loving people, which, proved—to me, at least—there was more than science in the universal scheme of things. If dogs just scratched, and people just went to work, maybe I’d doubt God. But with love floating around, senseless love abounding, then I don’t doubt divine Providence.

The next day I met Drew for lunch. In the jolly ambience of the noisy café, just a week short of Christmas, around hot and spicy spoonfuls of crawfish bisque, I told Drew I’d just learned Cormac’s life expectancy was shorter than I had thought.

“It’s like learning Santa Claus is a fake,” I said. “The world looks different after you get that little piece of news.”

“Didn’t you tell me Cormac lost his gonads in his big adventure up to Connecticut?” Drew asked.

“I did.”

“If you knew how a male Golden’s libido runs him down,” Drew said, “you’d know Cormac’s got the actuaries on his side for a longer life. Since he came back only mostly, missing key baggage,” he said, with a locker room wink, “he’s also less likely to get smacked by a car while he’s chasing girls.”

“You’re rationalizing this thing, Drew.”

“No, I’ve got this cousin, Smokey Davis, whose dog once left for a week on a romantic romp. The dog got so lost in lust and emaciated he didn’t make it all the way back. Smokey found him in the ditch a quarter mile down the road with his tongue out, his coat matted and muddy, nearly dead.”

Drew reminded me that Cormac, minus his “wobble sack” stood a better chance of being spared certain cancers and other ailments.

I looked at Drew. “I told my mother I’d present her with a scion of Cormac if anything ever happened to Puggy Bates, her Boston Terrier. Puggy Bates died of liver cancer a month ago, and now I can’t make good on my promise.”

“You’re kind of whining there, pal,” Drew said. “You got him back and that’s a miracle. You’ve been put on notice. I got a dollar that says you and Cormac won’t miss much with each other. However much time either of you has.”

“I might even stop yelling at Cormac,” I said, “when he shreds the boys’ socks. Or, look the other way when he digs a big hole in the yard.” I leaned back in my chair.

“I doubt that,” Drew said. “Zebbie started chasing my goats again, and he got a good cussing. But I swear he looks like he’s laughing when I get mad. And he’s got bigger smiles than I’ve got expletives.” Drew drained the rest of his glass of tea.

“You know,” I said, “when I was in San Francisco, and got the call from you that Cormac was missing, it occurred to me that while I sashayed around being the writer guy I always wanted to be, I was also busy losing something I love.” I told Drew I was one of the lucky ones, getting against big odds another shot to take better care of Cormac. I told Drew about my German Shepherd, Rex, and how he had become paralyzed with hip dysplasia coincidental to the weekend I was away from home. “My father had to put him down in the way country people put down dogs forty-five years ago. It took me a long time to get over being absent when my dog needed me most.”

“Well that’s bullpucky. Rex is one dog, Cormac is another,” Drew said. “You found Cormac because he’s important to you. And losing Rex that way does not mean you didn’t love the dog. If Zebbie ever flies the coop, I mean seriously gone like Cormac, I can’t swear on my mother’s head I’d hunt him down the way you did Cormac.” Drew added that, compared to what could have happened, this was sort of a fairy-tale ending.

“I was thinking of something a little different,” I said, after a moment.

“How so?” Drew asked.

“Do you remember the myth of Parcival and the search for the Holy Grail?” I asked Drew.

“No, but I bet you’re about to refresh my memory,” Drew said.

“Well,” I said, “at King Arthur’s Round Table, the Siege Perilous was a chair strictly reserved for only the noblest, most deserving knight. To sit there short of full qualifications meant instant death.” I took a sip of tea.

“I remember some of this,” Drew said.

“So Parcival sat there, and was obviously the Man for the Chair. He’d just found the Holy Grail. Then, into the hall comes an old hag on a donkey, interrupting the party. She told Parcival while he was out grandstanding his mother died. ‘And you didn’t even attend her funeral,’ she said.”

Drew said. “Now I bet you’re going to tell me the moral of the story.”

“Maybe I’m reaching here,” I said, “but all this with Cormac helps me know my life is not just this writing thing. Writing is certainly a privilege and a blessing, but that’s only part of it.”

Drew pushed his plate away. “No kidding,” he said. “Jumping ahead, if you’re going to relate the Parcival story to the Cormac story, well, even a carpenter can see the mother in the myth is a symbol for love. So, the knight gave up love for a good seat at the party.”

“Right,” I said. “And next to a mother’s love, I’d hold up a dog’s love. A dog left tied to a parking meter has nothing but smiles for the knuckle-dragging cretin who tied him up.”

“That’s the way of dogs,” Drew said. “It’s also the way of us men to slay the beasts.”

“Right,” I agreed. “And while we’re out there knifing down dragons, it’s a challenge to keep our list in its right order, keep the love stuff at the top.”

Drew nodded. “We’ve also got to milk every moment of all it’s got, like it’s the last one you’ll ever get,” he said. “Like this,” and for emphasis he tapped the table with his index finger, “this is truly the best day yet. How can it be anything else since it’s the only one you’ve got?”

“Maybe if we can keep all that in mind, we’ll still get good seats at the ball. And nobody, and nothing, will be missing.”

“Not a soul,” Drew said, and winked. “Not a doggone thing.”