Huck Read online

  They made their way out to the road. They saw a man standing at the edge of a deep front lawn in front of a cedar-shake-shingled colonial house with a driveway that curved around the side of it.

  “Let’s go talk to him,” Rich said to Ray. “Maybe he’s seen Huck.”

  The man stopped and watched as they approached. “We’re looking for a lost dog,” Rich began.

  The tall, friendly-looking man, Dick Seelbach, and his wife, Jackie, owned two Scotties, one of whom occasionally ran away only to return. These people loved dogs. They had bred, raised, and successfully shown their Scotties for forty years. Dick was a delegate to the American Kennel Club.

  So a day earlier, on Friday afternoon, when Dick saw a small, red poodle first in the woods, and then sitting by his neighbor’s pool, he kept an eye on him, realizing the dog must be lost. He said he watched the dog for the better part of the afternoon. Eventually Dick tried to catch him.

  “But that little guy, he wouldn’t let me anywhere near him,” Dick told Rich and Ray. “He just took off.” It was another sighting, but another one that came too late.

  Rich recognized in Dick another new friend ready to support our search. He told Dick our story and explained how warm and welcoming everyone in town had been. He handed Dick a flyer, telling him how we, too, had seen Huck on Friday. “Your telling me that you saw Huck right here all afternoon tells me that we must have seen him right after you tried to catch him,” Rich said to Dick. “Geez, we were so close. Thank you for trying.”

  “There is always a chance he’ll come back this way,” Dick responded. Rich asked if it would be okay to leave a piece of bologna and a bit of cream cheese at the end of Dick’s driveway.

  “Sure,” Dick said. At which point Ray, who had been silent, wondered aloud if food left out like that would do much good and might only attract other animals like deer, given the proximity of the Seelbach house to the woods. But Rich was not deterred and left the food anyway.

  The men shook hands. “Thanks a lot for trying to catch our dog yesterday,” Rich said.

  “I really hope you find him,” Dick said. “I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

  As Rich and Ray continued up the street, past Dick’s house, Rich ruminated aloud, “I wonder who else around here saw Huck yesterday. For that matter, I wonder if Huck has been seen around here this morning. Maybe after Huck ran into the woods last night, he came back out into this neighborhood.”

  It was late in the morning, about 11:00. Rich’s eyes darted up and down the street, looking for anyone who might be lifting a grocery bag out of the trunk of a car or puttering around in a yard. He noticed an open garage and an open front door diagonally across the street from the Seelbach house. It was a gray-green colonial house with black shutters and white trim. There was a basketball hoop on the driveway and an SUV parked underneath it. “Let’s go talk to those people.”

  Rich and Ray walked up the driveway and up a step or two to the path that led to the front door. Rich rang the bell. A middle-aged man came to the door and stepped outside. “We’re looking for our dog,” Rich said as he pulled a flyer from his pocket. “Last night he ran into the woods at the end of your block after spending most of the afternoon in this neighborhood. I was wondering if by chance you had seen him.”

  “This now makes sense to me,” the man, who later introduced himself as Brian O’Callahan, responded. “Last night I thought I heard something outside. I told my wife I thought it was a wild animal. Then I heard what I thought was the sound of dog tags and I said to her, ‘No, it can’t be a wild animal, because I think I hear tags. We both thought it must be a dog.”

  “Do you remember what time that was?” Rich asked.

  “It must have been around ten o’clock,” Brian said. “I’d say in all likelihood it was your dog because dogs around here aren’t wandering around like that, off a leash, and out of a yard.”

  Rich began to give Brian some of the details of our story. He described the events of Friday, putting the pieces together as he did. “If Huck was in your yard late last night, it means he probably never went far into those woods after he ran from us in the evening, or, if he did, he found his way out again. We were afraid he might have gotten through the fence and onto the golf course, but based on what you’re telling me, Brian, I think the golf course scenario is unlikely.”

  Brian wanted to do something. “I will help you in any way I can,” Brian offered. “Can you give me something that smells of your son, like a glove? I’ll take my sons and our dog and we’ll look in the woods.”

  “That is incredibly generous of you,” Rich said, once again at the receiving end of a stranger’s kindness. “I hate for you to interrupt your Saturday.”

  “It is no problem at all,” Brian said in a way that made Rich know Brian was the kind of man used to helping others in the most unceremonious of ways. “You can’t be here all the time,” Brian continued. “But I am here, so I can be your eyes and ears. Think of me that way. I’ll give you all of my phone numbers, every way you can contact me, anytime you need anything at all.”

  Then he asked: “Who is your sister in-law? Maybe I know her.” As it turned out, one of Brian’s sons was Darian’s age. They were in school together. The O’Callahans did know the Clarks.

  Going back over Huck’s movements on Friday, Rich was frustrated and now regretted going home once Huck ran into the pitch-black woods that night. It was maddening to think of how close we were to Huck without being able to find him.

  Michael and I were still in the car with Dave headed in the direction of Carriage Lane. We had stopped to pick up some coffee and muffins, which, along with a lot of Saturday shopping traffic, had slowed us down. I called Rich to find out exactly where he was. Michael and I were eager to join him and resume our search. Rich explained that he had met up with Ray and they were now at the foot of Pine Tree Road. “Meet us here.”

  Once there, I left Dave and Michael in Dave’s car and took a bag of muffins and a cup of coffee to where Rich and Ray were standing, next to our car, at the edge of the woods. Rich introduced me to Ray, who said he was going to take a few minutes to go back into the woods. I handed Rich the blueberry muffin and put the paper cup of coffee on top of the car.

  Rich had a smile on his face as he started to tell me about the latest kind stranger he had met. “You won’t believe this guy we just met, Brian O’Callahan. He lives right there,” Rich said, pointing to the house, as he broke off a piece of the muffin and ate it. “He said he heard an animal outside his house at about ten o’clock last night. First he thought it was a wild animal,” Rich continued, “but then he heard dog tags jangling and realized it had to have been a dog.”

  He took a sip of coffee. And then went on. “I think that had to have been Huck. Brian is an incredibly nice man. He said he’s going to take his kids into the woods to look some more.”

  As I stood there listening to Rich talk about Brian so enthusiastically, I thought about how easily and deeply moved Rich could be by people who are sincere, and how much he abhorred any kind of feigned sentiment and any kind of snobbery. The people he had been meeting, Brian being the latest, had touched him. I could see already that he had affection for them that I knew would be lasting.

  From where we were standing, we could see Michael and Dave in Dave’s car. We watched as Michael climbed from the backseat to the front. “Why don’t you come up front and have a muffin and some juice,” Dave had said to Michael. Michael slid into the seat next to Dave and took a muffin out of the white paper bag on the floor. There was a console between the two seats. Dave pulled something out of the console that Michael could not see.

  “I have been driving around with this since shortly after 9/11. A man I hardly knew gave it to me, and when he did, he said I might need it for hope,” Dave continued. “I want you to have it.”

  He extended his open hand to Michael. In it was a white baseball, with red stitching, a symbol of their shared passion. On the baseball
in red letters was 09-11-01. Do not lose heart. Corinthians 4:16–18.

  “Really? Are you sure you want to give this away?” Michael asked, touched by his uncle’s generous spirit.

  “I’m sure,” Dave said. “I think you need it for hope.”

  “Thank you so much, Uncle Dave.”

  Michael held the ball in his hand. There was something soothing about just holding it—the firm, familiar feel of a baseball, the way it fit in his hand, the way the stitching felt against his palm. It was the comfort of an old friend. He felt optimistic. He put the ball in the pocket of his winter jacket and zipped the pocket closed, opening it many times as the day wore on, taking out the ball, holding it, squeezing it, and then tucking it away again. It was a private moment between uncle and nephew. Neither Rich nor I saw the ball until late that night.

  Standing by the car, Rich and I reviewed our options. We were trying to decide between spending more time in the woods looking for Huck and putting up more signs in the hope of having more people keeping an eye out for him.

  After some discussion, we decided we had to put up more signs. As hard as it was to leave the spot where we had last laid eyes on Huck, we knew we still needed to reach more people in the community. The challenge we recognized yesterday, that the publicity was lagging behind the sightings, was still a problem.

  We walked over to Dave’s car to run the idea past him. He seemed to always have another map of the area. He did then, too, and got out of his car and spread it across the hood. “I don’t think Huck did go onto the golf course. I didn’t see any kind of an opening in that fence that he might have gotten through,” Dave said.

  “I think you’re right,” Rich said. “I just talked to a guy who knows Barbara, by the way, and he said he heard an animal in his yard last night at about ten o’clock. He heard dog tags. My guess is that it was Huck.”

  Dave went on. “I say we head more in the direction of Mahwah. We cross over West Crescent where that mailbox was, where that woman saw Huck on Thursday, and up toward Youngs and the surrounding streets.”

  Dave knew the area well. I was inclined to do whatever he thought was the right thing to do, but I was concerned that although we had put flyers in just about every retail establishment in Ramsey, we had not put them up on telephone poles or trees, in places people might notice from their cars. Maybe it was more important to do that than to head to Mahwah. But Rich thought Dave was right, that we needed to expand the radius. For now, he thought we ought to get some signs up in the area Dave was suggesting and then we could return to the neighborhoods closer to the center of Ramsey.

  We kept trying to make decisions based on facts and logic, and when that failed, on educated guesses. But the truth was, we were mostly flying blind; we had no idea what we were doing. Sure, there was some logic to running ads and putting up signs and alerting people to be on the lookout for a lost dog. But deciding which direction he might have run in?

  Rich, Michael, and Ray went in one car. Dave and I went in the other, stopping at the Clarks to pick up Darian and to get hammers and nails. When we pulled into the driveway, Barbara came running out. “Anything?” she asked.

  “Not much,” Dave said. “Rich talked to someone on Pine Tree Road who heard a dog in his yard at about ten o’clock. So if that was Huck, there’s a good chance he did not go onto the golf course, which I don’t think he did, anyway.”

  “What’s the plan?” she asked in a surprisingly upbeat tone.

  “We’re going to put up some signs in the neighborhoods on the other side of West Crescent. If this theory that Rich has is right, Huck might cross back over that area where the woman saw him by the mailbox and he might head up toward Mahwah.”

  Barbara wanted to get in the car and go with us but held back so she could man the phones in case anyone called. “I’d better stay here,” she said. “You know today is a big shopping day; the stores will be crowded. More people will be in places looking at our flyer,” she theorized. “Hopefully, someone who sees one of our flyers will see Huck, too, and will call.”

  I started thinking about the kind of shopping most people do on a Saturday: grocery shopping. I realized I had never put a sign up in the supermarket in Ramsey, probably because it was not on Main Street.

  In a panic, I asked Barbara: “Where do most people shop for groceries around here?”

  “Probably Shop Rite,” she said. “Why?”

  “We have to put a sign up there,” I answered.

  “You mean you didn’t put a sign up in the supermarket?”

  Typically, she sprang into action. “Get in,” she ordered. “Honey, we’ll be back in a minute,” she called to Dave who was now in the garage searching for hammers and nails.

  In full sister mode, while driving to the supermarket, Barbara continued voicing disbelief that I had somehow missed putting a flyer there. “I just can’t believe you went to all those stores and didn’t go to the supermarket,” she said playfully. “What is the first stop every parent makes on Saturday morning after their kid is done playing sports?”

  “We live differently,” I said in a pathetic attempt to defend myself. “Grocery shopping is not an event. It is something that gets squeezed in after everything else,” I said. “On Saturdays, after our games, we go out to lunch, or we walk through Central Park.”

  “Yeah, I know, you’re so civilized and all we do is drive around and shop. I’ll wait here,” she said as she came to a stop in front of Shop Rite.

  I went into the store, noticing a large bulletin board just inside the doors. Shoppers could not miss it as they exited the store. It was around noon, and the store was packed. Supermarkets in the suburbs look a lot different from supermarkets in Manhattan. For one thing, there is much more space. The aisles are wide, the carts are bigger, the inventory is dizzying, and there are many, many checkout lines.

  I asked one of the women in a deep green shirt standing behind one of the cash registers where I could find the manager. She pointed to a man in his thirties who was standing politely, while a much older woman was yelling—and I do mean yelling—at him about whether or not the coupon she had presented for paper towels was still valid. She called him “stupid” and told him she was going to get him fired, that he was “not smart enough” to do his job. I thought I would do him a favor and interrupt.

  “Excuse me, sir, I am sorry to interrupt,” I began.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  With that, the yeller turned on her heels and walked away.

  “Would you mind if I put this flyer up on your bulletin board?” I asked the store manager as I handed him one of our flyers.

  He took a minute to read it over. “A thousand dollars—this must be one heck of a dog,” he said. “How old is the boy you say here is heartbroken?”

  “He’s twelve,” I responded.

  “So it’s not so much the dog as the kid,” he said.

  “It’s both,” I replied.

  “Tough age for this,” he said. “My sister’s boy is twelve. Why don’t you put one up in the front window as well. We’re not supposed to allow that, but why don’t you go ahead and do it. Today is a busy shopping day. A thousand dollars will catch a lot of eyes.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said. “I really appreciate your help.”

  I got back in the car and told Barbara how nice the store manager had been. “Of course,” she said. “I’ve been telling you for years, everyone here is nice.”

  Seizing my opportunity for some sibling one-upmanship, I said, “Well, not everyone. You should have heard this woman yelling at him about paper towels and coupons.”

  When we got back to the house, Dave was waiting outside. “We’d better go,” he said to me. “I told Rich, Michael, and Ray that we’d catch up to them.”

  “Where is Darian?” Barbara asked Dave.

  “She had basketball practice and I told her she should go to that and then she could come back and help us some more
,” he said. “I think it is important for her to go to practice.”

  “I agree with you. I’m glad you told her that,” Barbara said. “I’ll see you guys back here later. Let me know if anything happens.”

  “We will,” Dave replied. “And, honey, call us if you get any calls from anyone saying they’ve seen Huck since we saw him last night. Anything before that isn’t much help.”

  I was sorry Barbara was staying home. The brief ride to the supermarket together, with our sisterly banter, was a welcome respite from the weight of emotion that had hung over just about every moment of the last few days. I thought our plan to go to Mahwah would be another dead end. I didn’t want Barbara to leave, taking with her the chance for some momentary psychic relief. I didn’t want to face any more wrenching moments.

  CHAPTER 13

  DAVE AND I got into his car. He handed me two hammers and a box of small nails.

  “Once we get up in that area, I’ll stop and we can both get out and nail the flyers onto as many phone poles and trees as we can,” he said. “I still have a box of those plastic covers in the backseat, so why don’t you start fitting flyers into the covers while I drive.”

  I reached into the backseat for the flyers and the plastic sheaths and started putting one inside the other. The papers did not slide in easily; the paper stock was too cheap and the fit was tight, so each one took some effort, leaving me with fingers full of paper cuts.