Huck Page 13

  My first call was to the Suburban News, a small weekly paper covering the towns of Ramsey, Waldwick, and Mahwah I spoke to a woman named Pat who said it was too late; the paper was closing that morning. I pushed, trying to see if there was any give at all in her decision. I told her it was an ad offering a reward for information about a lost dog belonging to a twelve-year-old boy. I told her we were from New York and staying in a local hotel, combing the area in search of the dog. I was prepared to tell her the whole story, but I didn’t have to. She was persuaded and quickly relented. “If you can get a jpeg file to me in two hours, I’ll be able to get it in. But it has to be within two hours.”

  “That’s terrific. Thank you so much. I’ll get it to you. Let me take down your e-mail address. And if you hold on, I’ll get my credit card and give you the number.”

  I put the phone, my pad, and the phone book down on the floor. I opened the door of the bathroom to go get my credit card and was startled. There stood Michael, completely dressed, asking: “Mom, can we go? Why did you let me sleep so long? Let’s go look for Huck. Where’s Dad?”

  “Let me just finish on the phone and I’ll fill you in on what’s going on.”

  I gave Pat my credit card number and thanked her again. I had no idea what a jpeg file was, but assumed Rich would know and would also know how to send it to her. I walked out of the bathroom and sat on Michael’s bed. He sat down next to me and leaned his head on my shoulder.

  “Dad left very early to try and talk to people on their way to work or to school. We wanted to let you sleep because you’re going to need a lot of energy today. I was waiting for you to wake up before calling Uncle Dave and asking him to come get us and take us to get more signs made. Then we’ll catch up with Dad. Now how about we order you some breakfast while we wait for Uncle Dave?”

  Michael wanted to get going but agreed to have some breakfast while we waited for our ride. He seemed much better physically for having had a night’s sleep and was more himself, though his characteristic spark was missing. I called Dave and asked him to come and get us and then called room service and ordered Michael scrambled eggs, chocolate milk, and toast. After it was delivered, Michael sat on the edge of the easy chair, leaning over the breakfast tray on the ottoman in front of him. He didn’t turn on the television looking for SportsCenter and baseball news the way he ordinarily would have; he just sat there, forcing himself to eat a bit of breakfast.

  While he did I sat at the desk and called the Bergen County Animal Shelter to find out what happened if someone turned in a lost dog. “If a town thinks there is a lost animal, they’ll call us for animal control,” the man who answered the phone said. “We’ll come and pick up the animal and bring the animal here. We hold them for seven days.”

  Scared to ask, but going ahead anyway, I said: “And then what happens?”

  “We put them up for adoption.”

  Relieved, I told him our story and asked his advice. “You can come down and fill out a report and look over the dogs we have here,” he said. “But quite honestly, I don’t remember seeing a dog like that. Why don’t you keep looking and come down in a day or two.”

  It seemed like a reasonable suggestion. The journalist in me had to ask the next question, but I was reluctant to do so because of Michael. He was sitting right there, finally rested and finally eating something. I didn’t want to start his day off the wrong way. I didn’t want to upset him, but I knew I had to ask “And what happens if a dog is killed by a car or a wild animal and someone finds the dog’s body?”

  “Well, people will usually dispose of the body; you know, someone in the town will usually be called to dispose of it. We won’t hear about it,” he said.

  I could not help myself. I wanted to be sure I grasped fully what he was saying. Huck was so much a part of who we now were as a family, his constant love such a source of comfort and joy, I found it impossible to believe that he could be killed and no one would tell us. So I asked again, making sure I was getting it right.

  “You have been very helpful, sir,” I said. “Let me just make sure I have this right. Are you saying that if our dog or any pet for that matter were killed by a car or a wolf or a coyote, and someone just disposed of the body, we would have no way of knowing?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “But what if the animal had tags on his collar with identifying information?” I asked.

  “Someone might call you or whomever. But that would just be out of the goodness of their heart. There is no routine in place.”

  I thanked him and hung up the phone. Mercifully, overhearing the question about finding the dead body of a pet did not seem to upset Michael in the least, or if it did, he didn’t say.

  I pulled the phone book onto my lap and started thumbing the pages for numbers of other animal organizations that might prove useful. It was hard to tell from the names whether or not they had anything at all to do with finding lost dogs. There was the Humane Society, the Ramapo Bergen Animal Refuge, Animal Control, the ASPCA. It would take a while to call them all. I jotted down the phone numbers, thinking I’d have a chance to call them one by one, as time permitted throughout the day.

  While we waited for Dave to pick us up, Rich had headed for the high school, following up on Lorraine’s advice to enlist kids in our search. On the way, right after the curve in Wyckoff Avenue where the road work had been going on the day Huck ran away, on the side of the road ahead, underneath a blue spruce evergreen tree towering above a grouping of smaller pine trees, he saw a large sand-colored stone about the height of a five-year-old child. There was a silver apple on the sign and the words YOUNG WORLD DAY SCHOOL.

  Rich parked the car in the school’s lot, took a lost dog flyer off the front seat, and went inside. He stood just inside the double glass doors for a minute, listening to the sweet sound of young children’s voices accompanied by a piano. “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” their voices growing louder and more jubilant when they got to the chorus “fi fie fiddly-i-o.”

  It was warm and bright and cheerful inside those doors. It was a refuge. There were bulletin boards on the pale yellow walls, each filled with a brigade of white snowmen fashioned from the children’s imaginations and put up against a blue background. Below the bulletin boards were rows of pegs, and hanging off each peg was a backpack. Above each classroom door was a welcome sign. Rich felt a bit like an intruder, and in an era when men are viewed with suspicion when they are around children other than their own, he wondered how he would be received. “Excuse me, I wonder if I could speak to the person in charge?” he asked the middle-aged woman behind the desk, who was cheerful and did not seem the least bit bothered by his request.

  “She’s tied up right now, but if you’d like to sit and wait, she should be free in about ten or fifteen minutes.”

  Rich was still thinking about the kindness of strangers, when the person in charge materialized, seemingly out of nowhere. Janet Jaarsma sat down next to Rich and listened intently while Rich once again related our saga to someone he had never set eyes on before.

  Janet had been at Young World, a school for children as young as two years old that goes through fifth grade, for decades, making real her vision of a school with an emphasis on the positive, on what children can do instead of what they cannot. The warm, calm feel of the school that Rich felt as soon as he stepped through the doors was her indelible stamp.

  Janet grew up in an era, she later described, as one in which “children were seen and not heard.” Her girlhood days were spent in the quiet community of Prospect Park, New Jersey, where she walked to school five days a week and to church on Sundays. As a teenager she volunteered some of her time at the local hospital, Paterson General.

  She was a petite woman with graying hair. She had been raised with the expectation that she would work hard, do well, and use her considerable talents to help others. She did. She completed both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree at a time when women were less likel
y to do so than they are now. Janet married a man named Richard with a passion for literature and who shared her can-do, independent approach to life. They raised two children.

  Janet had a soft touch and a reverence for good manners and beautiful flowers. Sitting on the small bench-like seat next to the one Rich sat on, she thought he seemed quite distraught and tried to calm him by drawing him into the compassionate ethos of the school.

  “I have always felt that if everyone bends their minds and hearts to a task, then good things will come,” she said to Rich as he sat there, stunned that this woman was so welcoming and so generously using her time and her energy to help him. “Let me take a look at the flyer.”

  She took one look at the picture of Huck and smiled. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll make a large copy of this flyer and put it in the windows out front. When people drive by or when they come here to pick up their children, they’ll see it,” she said. “If anyone connected with the school has seen your dog, I am sure they will help.”

  For Rich, it was the latest in a series of extraordinary acts of kindness by people who, without thinking twice, interrupted their day to give so freely of themselves. Everyone, even the people in a hurry, stopped and gave Rich their time, responding in whatever way they could to his plight. No one shut the door or turned him away. To a person, Ramsey was opening their hearts to Rich and by proxy to us.

  Back in the car, Rich thought he ought to get to the other schools as quickly as possible and pursue the idea of a posse of kids. It was Friday, so if he did not reach kids today, he would not have another opportunity until the weekend was over. Driving back down Wyckoff Avenue toward Main Street, Rich, one of the most die-hard New Yorkers imaginable, a born city boy, was beginning to appreciate life in a small town. He was taken by how willing people were to give him the great gift of time. Most of the people he had talked to that morning had not made him feel that he had to tell them our story in a hurry. Like Janet Jaarsma, people seemed so open to giving him whatever amount of their time it took for him to explain our situation. It was such a contrast to life in New York, where a moment too long spent deciding on a bagel topping while ordering it in a deli could get you pushed aside in favor of a more decisive customer.

  But Rich did not allow himself to bask too long in the warmth of all the compassion extended to him. The hours were passing and Huck had not been seen. Not one of the wonderful people who were sympathetic to our tale had seen Huck or knew of anyone who had seen Huck. There was no telling if he were even alive.

  Rich forged ahead, hoping that what he was doing was laying the foundation for our publicity drive, which would keep the eyes of an entire community looking in the woods for Huck. He drove past the sloping lawn of Ramsey High School, parked the car in the lot in the back, and found his way to the principal’s office.

  Mrs. Maxwell, a kind woman with a shy demeanor, said the principal was not in and suggested Rich discuss his desire to put signs in the school with someone over at the Board of Education. Those offices were housed in a stone building just behind the high school.

  Rich hurried over. Just inside the door sat the receptionist, Annette Augello, a diminutive woman with dark eyes who had been sitting there, surrounded by children’s artwork, greeting people, for fifteen years.

  “No, no one is in right now who could give you permission for that kind of thing,” she said.

  Frustrated, Rich feared a descent into bureaucracy. The distance between his charged manner and Annette’s placid one was increasing. Annette asked Rich if he’d like some water and led him into a nearby conference room. Pictures of the town’s schools hung on the paneled walls; there was an American flag in one corner and a television hanging from the ceiling in another. In the center of the room was an enormous oval table with upholstered chairs pushed underneath it, taking up most of the floor space in the room.

  Annette and Rich each pulled out a chair and sat down. Rich took a sip of water from the plastic cup Annette had handed to him and then tried to explain to her how important it was that he be allowed to put up a few signs right away in the school. He handed a sign to Annette, hoping she would be moved. But she was unyielding. She said she simply did not have the authority to say yes or no.

  Trying to be helpful, she offered that there was a community service club in the high school that might be willing to help. It was now after 10:00. She suggested Rich call her later in the day and she would try by then to have an answer about the signs and the club.

  At the same time Rich sat in the offices of the Ramsey Board of Education, worrying that he had hit a dead end, I was at a Staples store near the hotel with Michael and Dave. We were waiting, while an older, heavyset woman wearing a red smock made us five hundred color copies of the flyer. We had found the tape and the plastic sleeves. When she finished, she handed the stack to Michael and told us to pay at the register. “Are you the heartbroken boy in this flyer?” she asked Michael. Before he had a chance to answer, she said: “I’ll give you one piece of advice: Pray to St. Anthony. If you do, you’ll find your dog.” Once again, a stranger had suggested praying to St. Anthony for heavenly help in finding our lost dog.

  Michael was nonplussed.

  “Thank you,” I said, answering for him. “We will.”

  We paid as quickly as possible and headed for the car. I called Rich and told him that we had to move quickly to get the ad in the local paper. We agreed to rendezvous back at the Clarks’ house, so Rich could use their computer to send the jpeg file. It would also give us a chance to figure out our next move. The charge in Rich’s cell phone was starting to run out and he was afraid to stay on the phone very long. Despite being frustrated at the Board of Ed, Rich was excited about the progress he had made in the hours since he had left our hotel room. “It has been a great morning,” he said. “I’ll fill you in when I see you.”

  “Did you meet anyone who has seen Huck?” I asked.

  “No, no, but I met a lot of good people who are going to help us.” I know it was terribly unfair, but I got off the phone wondering how Rich could possibly say it had been a good morning if he had not in fact met a single person who had seen Huck. It was a good thing Rich had been the one to go out in the morning and start meeting people. I was entirely too edgy and too sure that in the end I’d be the one to comb every corner of Ramsey looking for Huck. I suppose in that moment I had less faith than Rich did that people we didn’t even know would actually want to help.

  “Where are we headed?” Dave asked.

  “Back to your house.”

  “Did Rich have any luck this morning?” he wanted to know.

  “He says he had a great morning and met a lot of people who will help us,” I said. “But he also said he did not see Huck or meet anyone who had seen Huck, so I have no idea what to think.”

  “Mom, do you think I should pray to St. Anthony?” Michael asked.

  “It could only help,” I said.

  The truth was, I didn’t know what to say.

  CHAPTER 10

  BACK AT the Clarks, after the jpeg file was successfully sent to the Suburban News, Rich, Dave, Michael, and I stood in the kitchen, leaning our backs against the edge of the counters, catching each other up on the events of the morning and deciding how to divide the next set of tasks. No one was relaxed enough to sit, even for a few minutes. It was getting near eleven and the day was slipping away.

  After hearing about the idea of a posse of kids, Dave suggested we go to another area high school—Northern Highlands—in nearby Allendale. He walked over to the kitchen table where the map was and showed Rich how to get to the school.

  Dave had a couple of business appointments, so he was going to be unavailable for a few hours, which also meant we would be down to one car. I offered to walk up and down Main Street and ask the merchants to put the flyers in their shop windows. Rich said he and Michael would go to the Ramsey police station and then to Northern Highlands.

  Michael, the only person to have g
otten any sleep at all or to have had anything to eat, although he had not eaten much, was eager to get going. “What are we standing around for, let’s go,” he implored.

  We headed out to the car. I asked Rich to drop me at the top of Main Street. Once there, I set off with an arm full of posters and a bag full of tape. “Mom,” Michael called to me, “make sure they put the sign in a place where people will really see it.”

  “That’s good advice. I will,” I called back to him.

  “Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you, too.”

  My first stop was a deli and convenience store, creatively named The Store, advertised in a bright green-and-white sign above the double glass doors. It was a place where just about anything anyone might need was packed into seven short aisles. A cup of coffee or a freshly made sandwich could be had anytime day or night.

  A neatly dressed man named Unmesh had bought the store a half-dozen years earlier after coming to the United States from England to join his large extended family in New Jersey. Like so many of the people in Ramsey, Unmesh was civic-minded, allowing local charities to put their collection bins for used clothes in his parking lot. When I asked him if I could put one of our flyers in his window, he took the tape from me and put it up himself, separating it from the other homemade signs touting piano lessons, landscaping services, and babysitters.

  “We want to be sure people see this one,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure if Michael had phoned ahead or if St. Anthony was already intervening, but I was grateful Unmesh had thought to display the flyer so prominently, just as Michael had hoped.