How to Look for a Lost Dog (8 page)

I look at the power lines that still lie across Hud. I look in the direction of The Luck of the Irish and see the trees that have fallen across the road, blocking the way. I realize it will be a long time before Uncle Weldon can visit us.

Late in the afternoon, when my father is getting tired of buzzing through trees with his chainsaw, I see someone making his way along the road.

“John!” my father calls.

The man waves to him. Then he wades to the side of the road and stands near the spot where our bridge should be. “Guess you're stranded,” says John, who has a prime number name (47) and who may be someone my father knows from The Luck of the Irish.

My father puts one hand on his hip. He wipes his brow on his sleeve. “Yup. It'll be a while before this is fixed. Maybe I can build a temporary bridge over the stream. Hear any news?”

“The flooding around here is terrible,” says John 47. “Whole towns washed away. Not ours, but others. People's houses gone. Plenty of others will have to be condemned. Don't know where the owners will go.”

My father shakes his head. “What a mess.”

By the time my father and I go to bed I realize that Rain has been missing for 37 hours, another number that is prime but not good.

I lie in my bed wearing layers of clothes because the house is so cold. I listen to the rushing water outside. For the first time I think that maybe Rain has gotten so lost that she won't be able to find her way home after all.

I lie (lye) awake in (inn) my bed for (fore, four) a long time (thyme). I can't fall asleep. Even though my room is chilly I crack the window open. I listen to the rushing water. I imagine tiny trickles of water on hilltops, dripping down to join brooks and streams, gathering force and speed, and meeting (meting) with rivers. Then I imagine all those trickles and brooks and streams and rivers swollen with the 15 inches of rain that fell during Hurricane Susan. That's how much rain we got in 12 hours. 15 inches. More than a foot. My father heard it on the battery-operated radio.

I try to picture what our driveway looked like as the bridge suddenly loosened, how the boards must have cracked and shifted before starting to break away and float off down Hud. I remember what my father said about the force of moving water, and what John 47 said about houses washing away.

Finally I think I know what happened to Rain. This is my idea: After my father let Rain out in the storm she walked across our yard in the dim light. She's very smart and she has a very smart nose, but she didn't know enough to stay away from the water at the bottom of our yard. It was new to her. Rain is curious, and maybe she leaned over to see what her nose could tell her about the rushing water. Maybe she saw something floating in it and stepped closer for a better look. Or maybe she just wanted a drink.

Whatever happened, Rain got too close and the water swept her away. She's a good swimmer, but she might have been swept very far downstream before she managed to climb out. When she finally reached a place where she could get out of the water she sniffed and sniffed, but nothing smelled familiar to her. She couldn't find my trail because she was too far from me. There was wind, there was floodwater, and there were unfamiliar smells. Rain got confused. She got turned around. She didn't know which way to go, and she started walking in the wrong direction.

In conclusion, I think Rain was washed a very long distance from our house. And because of that it will take her a very long time to find her way back to me.

Where are you, Rain?

My heart starts to pound.

Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen.

The next day, which is Monday, is sunny with a blue sky, and at 8.00 a.m., the moderate prime number temperature of 59 degrees Fahrenheit. When I stand on our porch with my back to the yard, I would not think that there had been a superstorm just 60 hours before. But when I turn around I see the fallen trees and our soggy lawn and the stream that runs straight down Hud, with no bridge over it at the bottom of our drive. I remember that my father and I are still stranded.

Also, Rain is still missing.

Also, the power is still out and so is our phone. The refrigerator has warmed up, and last night my father threw out everything that was in it and everything that was in the freezer. We have no ice left and only a few more bucketfuls of water for flushing the toilet.

“What do we do when we can't flush the toilet any more?”

I ask.

My father is sitting at the kitchen table eating a breakfast of tuna, which he's scooping straight out of the can, an apple and a bottle of ginger ale. He doesn't mind warm soda. “We go in the woods,” he replies.

I study his face. I look for humour clues, such as a smile. I don't think he's being funny, so I say, “How do we go in the woods?”

“What kind of question is that? You just stand behind a tree and pee.”

“I don't want to pee in the woods.” It doesn't seem sanitary.

“Unh.”

“What are our other options?”

“What do you mean?”

“What else could we do besides pee behind a tree?”

“I don't know. Pee in a bucket.”

That sounds a little better. “Could I put the bucket in the bathroom?”

My father shrugs. “Knock yourself out.”

“What?”

Now my father sighs, which is probably an indication of annoyance. “It means do what ever you want, okay? If it makes you happy to pee in a bucket in the bathroom, then pee in a bucket in the bathroom. But you'll have to clean the bucket out. I'm not going to do it for you.”

I pour cereal into a bowl, sit down across from my father, and eat the cereal dry. “What are we going to do today?” I want to know.

“Keep sawing up the trees.”

“I wish we could visit Uncle Weldon.”

My father gestures out the window. “Has a bridge magically appeared at the bottom of the driveway?”

I turn and look. “No.”

“Then we can't visit Weldon. End of discussion.”

After breakfast my father refills the gas tank in the chainsaw. He gets back to work buzzing through the trunks of the fallen trees. I am not allowed within ten feet (feat) of the chainsaw, which is good because it makes a very loud noise. My job is to stack the smaller logs on the woodpile. When I can't stand the noise I take a break, put my hands over my ears, and wander around our yard. I stand by the road and look at the water, which isn't gushing so fast any more. I wonder how far Rain could have been carried by the water on Saturday. I wonder how far she might have walked in the wrong direction after she got out of the water.

I wait until I hear the chainsaw stop for a moment and then I call to my father, “Why didn't you wake me up when you let Rain outside during the storm?”

“For Pete's sake, Rose, haven't we been over that already?”

“But why didn't you?”

“I will answer that question one more time and then I don't want to hear about it again. I didn't wake you up because Rain has been outside plenty of times by herself and she always comes back. I didn't think it was necessary. Besides, the storm was almost over.”

“Why didn't you put her collar on before she went out?”

“Rose! Enough!”

“But this is a new question. This is the first time I've asked you about her collar.”

My father pulls the cord on the chainsaw. Nothing happens.

“She isn't wearing her collar so she doesn't have any identification,” I tell him.

“I understand that.”

“So why did you leave her collar on the door?”

My father turns away from me, shaking his head. He stomps his foot on the ground, and then he pulls the cord violently. The chainsaw lets out a roar that might be as loud as a jet plane, and I cover my ears. With my hands still over my ears I walk in a circle around my father, keeping ten feet between us, until I'm facing him. “Why didn't you put her collar on?” I yell.

My father's face is hard. He turns off the chainsaw and drops it on the ground. He walks towards me very slowly and something inside me says to run. So I do. I run into the house and slam the door behind me. When I look out the window my father is walking back to the chainsaw. I wait until I hear its roar and then go to my room and lie on my bed.

Sometimes when I'm upset Rain finds me and lies down beside me. She rests her head on my shoulder and looks into my eyes, and I can feel her breath on my cheek.

But Rain is not here now because my father didn't put her collar on when he let her outside during a superstorm.

Something good happens the next day. I walk into our kitchen early in the morning and the first thing I notice is that the refrigerator is humming. The second thing I notice is that the kitchen feels warmer. The third thing I notice is that the little table lamp in the living room that my father sometimes leaves on overnight is shining.

The power is back on. It didn't take weeks after all.

I pick up the telephone and hear a dialling tone.

The phone is back on too.

I almost knock on my father's door to tell him the news, but then I look at the Atlantic City clock and see that it's only 6.20, too early to wake him.

It isn't too early to call my uncle, though.

When he answers he sounds sleepy, but not mad.

“Uncle Weldon!” I shout. “It's me, Rose! Everything is working again.”

“Rose!” Uncle Weldon sounds as excited as I am.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I say, since I am not injured.

“I kept trying to drive to your house but too many trees are down. I couldn't get through town. Even last night.”

“Our bridge washed out,” I say, “so we can't leave our yard. Uncle Weldon?”

“Yes?”

“Rain is gone.”

“What?”

“Rain is gone.” I tell him how my father let my dog out on Saturday morning during a superstorm without her collar.

“Oh, Rose,” says my uncle. “That's awful.”

“I don't know what to do. We can't look for her because we're stuck here. And I couldn't call the police because our phone didn't work.”

“The police?”

“So they could search for her,” I say.

There is a short silence at my uncle's end of the phone, and then he says, “The police have a lot to do right now anyway. The roads have to be cleared, and some people are still stranded in their houses, surrounded by water. We'll have to look for Rain by ourselves.” He pauses. “Are you sure you're all right?”

“We're a little tired of peanut butter and tuna fish,” I say. “And I had to pee in a bucket because we ran out of water. And also some trees fell down but none of them landed on the house.”

“How are you doing without Rain?”

I'm not sure how to answer that.

“Rose?”

“Well, without Rain I don't have to feed her, and I don't have to walk her.”

“But how do you feel?”

“I feel that I would like to find her.”

“It sounds like you're a little lonely,” says my uncle.

Now I understand. “Yes, and worried. And sad. Uncle Weldon, how do you look for a lost dog?”

“I guess we'll start by putting an ad in the paper. We can put up Lost Dog posters too. But those things may have to wait a few days, although it's a good sign that the power's on.”

Since the power was back, my father and I watched television that morning. We tuned into the news. We found out that most of the roads in Hatford were expected to be cleared by the end of the day. We found out that school might open next Monday.

“Now that Weldon can drive through town,” my father said, “maybe he can buy some supplies and we can start building a temporary bridge over the stream.”

“Maybe he can go to the grocery store,” I added.

“Maybe. Our grocery store is under six feet of mud. So's the hardware store. He'll have to drive all the way to Newmark to go shopping.”

That night we eat supper in front of the television. I hear a newscaster who's giving a crime report say, “A complicated crime began simply, under the guise of friendship.”

I turn to my father. “Guise?” I say. This is exciting. “Guise? How do you spell ‘guise'?”

“How should I know?”

I look it up in our old dictionary. It takes a while to find it. Then I run to my room and turn to the
G
section of my homonyms list. I add: guise/guys.

Suddenly I feel more hopeful about Rain. I open my school notebook and at the top of a blank page I write: “How to Look for a Lost Dog”.

Knock, knock, knock.

The next morning I'm awakened by the sound of knocking on our front door. Now that the power is on, I don't have to go into the kitchen and look at the Atlantic City clock to see what time it is. I can sit up in bed and look at my clock radio. 7.41. Who is knocking on our door at this early non-prime-number time?