"That's not the point, Sonny," said Betty. "I'm still trying to train the dog." She pointed to Scott. "Him."

"Oh, just you watch," Scott said. "Two tiny wet spots that will be dried and disappear within a week."

Cormac finished his peanut b.u.t.ter and came to lie at my feet. Sostie jumped on the sofa between Betty and Scott. Scott asked about Cormac, said his face and demeanor reminded him of the Yellow Labrador who had stayed by his father's side for fifteen years. I told him about Zebbie, about Drew adopting him, and about our finding Cormac some seven months ago. "He'll be a year old March 21," I told Scott and Betty.

"He's going to be a big fellow," Scott said.

"I think so. Maybe seventy-five pounds when he's fully grown," I said.

Betty stayed quiet. "So, Betty, how's the new novel going?" I asked.

"Three weeks on the top ten best-seller list," she said, offhandedly, as though the information were not important. "Look, Sonny, what about you? On this tour, I've heard of three independent bookstores closing. I'm talking about shops that have name recognition. T-shirt worthy. I want to know what's going on with your store."

"Well, I think I'm going to have to close Over the Transom," I said, the words tumbling out. I couldn't believe I'd just spoken aloud the thing that I'd been thinking in a dusty, cobwebbed corner of my mind for some weeks now. Saying it was like making real what had been before only a possibility. I was disconcerted as though I just got the news myself.

"You have to fight for it," Scott said flatly. He got up and walked over to a bin of T-shirts. Sostie followed. So did Cormac. They sat and gazed up at Scott as he took a shirt and held it out in front of himself so he could read it aloud: There is nothing so important as the book can be. MAXWELL PERKINS [Because] All that man has done, gained, or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. THOMAS CARLYLE Scott checked the size, declared it a fit. "Do you mean what you've got written here?"

"You know I do," I said.

Scott draped the T-shirt over the crook of his arm while he pulled off his own white oxford and dropped it on the floor. Bare-chested, he pushed out his chest and curled his arms into a muscle-man pose, then pulled the T-shirt over his head.

Betty looked at me. "You want him back?" Scott and I had once been partners in a small publishing concern. Cormac, in the meantime, had grabbed the shirt on the floor and made off with it, dragging it to his spot behind the counter. Sostie trailed him, hopping along on her one front leg. Scott went after them, patting Betty's shoulder as he went past.

"Haven't you got something you could sell?" Betty asked.

"Everything I've got is mortgaged for more than it's worth." I told Betty and Scott that I thought I should schedule an appointment with a bankruptcy lawyer. "Just to discuss my options, you know."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Betty said. "You can't be serious."

"Completely, I'm afraid." I told them the money I had in my store checking account could cover overhead for two more months.

"Does Diana know this?"

I told Betty she knew about the store's cash flow drying up. "But we didn't talk about meeting with a lawyer."

"Good," Betty said. "We've got to talk some sense into you." She got up and paced back and forth. She stopped and faced me. "What about the novel you've been working on? Why don't you sell that?" Her question surprised me.

"I don't think anybody would buy that book," I said. "And I still lack a hundred pages or so to finish it.

"How do you know no one will buy it?" she replied. "I sold my last three books on proposal. If you've got a good start, and they like it, they'll offer you a contract to complete it."

"What have you got to lose?" Scott chimed in.

"I will use my considerable influence in New York to get the ma.n.u.script read," she offered, completely serious.

Cormac pranced and capered, following Scott back to the middle of the room. Sostie came along as well. Scott said, "Betty can get this done. Her agent will read it right away and tell us what she thinks."

Cormac stood, put his muzzle on my thigh, and rolled his eyes upward at me. He did this more and more these days, and each time he parked his face there the world seemed a little less with me. This must be the part of being near a dog that's been shown to lower old people's blood pressure in a.s.sisted living places and such. I reached out my hand and rubbed his head. He wagged his tail. "Cormac thinks it's a good idea," I said, smiling.

"What more validation do you want?" Betty asked.

"It's a long shot, you have to admit," I said, wanting to bring some reality to the fantastical notion that a publisher would buy my book.

"Sure it is," Betty said. "But you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take."

"It beats sitting for the life insurance underwriter's exam," Scott said. I agreed and said I'd think about it. They said they had to get rolling to Tallaha.s.see. As I walked them to the door, I wondered how Cormac would behave as Sostie left the building. Had she smitten this young dog with her beauty? It seemed no. Cormac only walked as far as the front door. At the threshold he turned and went back to his place behind the counter, curling down for a nap.

I stepped onto the sidewalk to watch my friends walk away and felt the first drops of rain. Several parking s.p.a.ces on the street were empty and I saw no pedestrians. This damp, gray day could be well-spent at home relaxed in my leather chair, my sock feet propped on the ha.s.sock. Since I was fantasizing, I took it further, imagined my laptop on my knees, coffee on a tray table beside me as I worked on the great American novel. It was not a picture I could bring into clear focus.

I went back inside. It was 10:30. An hour and a half into a business day without a customer. I went to my stool behind the counter and woke up the Toshiba's screen: one internet order for a $35 used book, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son by William Alexander Percy, a good 1941 hardcover 4th printing with a clean dustjacket. I looked at Cormac, asleep on a small rug. The hair on his shoulders was a little darker red than the rest and getting curly. He was a handsome, laid-back d.o.g.g.i.ns.

"You make it look so easy, Mick."

He didn't even blink. "If I get a book published, pal," I said, "I'll sure thank you for your part." I went to find the Percy book, wondering at the little hope stirring in my head, hope that I'd have to make good on my promise to Cormac.

I walked, pacing slowly between rows of shelves sagging only just perceptibly with their quiet books. Cormac was at my heels, his pink tongue hanging from the side of his mouth, his eyes bright with expectation that we were going on some adventure, tail swishing.

I walked back to the counter, then behind it. Cormac stopped on the customer side and stared at me. His tail stopped. He pulled his tongue into his mouth and c.o.c.ked his head. His eyes signaled confusion, as if, "Okay, so what are we looking for?" He sat, continued to look at me. I looked at him.

"I'm thinking about something."

For about the fifth time that day, as the day pa.s.sed, I strolled the floor of my empty bookstore.

"That's it," I said. "I've made up my mind."

I looked at the big grandfather clock in the corner near the front door. "It's five o'clock and time to go home, boy." I snapped the leash to Cormac's collar before stepping onto the sidewalk. I still couldn't trust that he wouldn't dash in front of a car coming down the street. He was a good heeler ninety percent of the time; the other ten percent he'd sprint without warning and ignore all commands, even the call of his name. These times a dog or cat or a person had one hundred percent of his attention. Until we got that behavior modified, the leash was the only safe option for going from the bookstore to the Jeep. I let Cormac jump into the pa.s.senger's seat, rolled down his window halfway, and closed his door. I went around and slid behind the wheel.

"Well, today we walked several hundred miles in a bookstore," I told Cormac. "But it paid off." I looked over at him. He was on full alert, his ears perked up as he watched a cat ease out from between some bushes and onto the sidewalk. "I made up my mind to send out the ma.n.u.script myself," I said. Cormac put his head out the window and barked. His tail swatted me on the face. I read somewhere that cats sleep about sixteen hours a day, two-thirds of their lives. This big red dog of mine, I believed, would spend about half his life wagging his tail. If Cormac wore T-shirts, I think his favorite would read: Wag more, bark less.

SEVEN.

"YOU KNOW HOW I feel about your writing," Diana said, rinsing her hands in the kitchen sink. "I've told you for a year that you should send out your novel. You know how to write," she told me, "and you're writing a good book." She asked me what had broken the inertia. I told her the plan was mostly Cormac's doing, and slipped a little grin.

"So, does Cormac also have a plan for submitting your unfinished novel to an editor?" she asked. "You don't know how to make a publishing deal." I told her I'd just take it one step at a time, maybe start with an editor I'd met the previous October at the Southern Book Festival in Nashville.

"She invited me at the time I met her to send my book," I said.

"Why don't you include a photo of Cormac, and a cover letter from him as your agent?"

Diana joined me at the kitchen table. Cormac, on hearing his name spoken, came over and put his chin on my knee. "Probably not a bad idea," I said, and rubbing his head. I told Diana I'd just read that a photo of a Golden Retriever was almost as effective at demanding attention in advertising as a scantily clad woman.

"Maybe so," she said, pointing out that the real estate sign on the house for sale just down the street bore a Golden Retriever's face. "Should I take the photo then?" Diana asked, teasing. "Or will you?"

The next morning I decided to walk to the bookstore. In the night the late September wind had shifted around to the north and the air was clean and crisp, and the sun had a cloudless blue sky all to itself. The incomplete ma.n.u.script of my novel was in a manila envelope under my arm. Cormac was smart, easy on the leash, only now and again muscling away from me and drawing his collar against his neck so that he coughed. I'd give the leash a little snap, then tell him sternly, heel, and he'd stop pulling.

He was putting on weight: sixty-three pounds last vet check and growing quickly. But he wasn't fat. With our daily walks, he would stay in good shape.

By the time we'd covered half the distance to the store, I had made up my mind to call an old friend in San Francisco. He had once told me that when I was ready to submit my novel, he knew an agent who'd help me put it into the right hands. When I had opened the store, I called him, told him the big day had arrived. He said he'd call the agent right away, and ask her to phone me herself.

She phoned within the half hour, introduced herself as Amy Rennert. She said, "So you've got a book I should look at?" Easy as that, this thing was rolling. She invited me to email the first thirty pages to her, and she'd get back to me. She phoned back the same day and offered to represent me. She said she believed we could sell my unfinished book.

Cormac looked at the package I'd tossed onto the floor. Who needed hard copy in a quick-transference world? He sat on his woven rug, mostly looking out the window, his nose to the daylight outside. But when he'd turn his head back inside the store, he'd look again down at the manila envelope on the floor.

"It's my book," I told him. "What do you think of the first two hundred pages of The Poet of Tolstoy Park?" His interest was elsewhere. He just looked at the envelope, then rolled his big eyes at me, without even sniffing in its direction. I moved from the counter and sat in my favorite overstuffed chair, a funky green wingback near the front window with plenty of light streaming in. I called Cormac over. Area rugs were scattered all around the store, and close by was a favorite oval number. He lay down immediately, as if he knew we were in for the long haul.

I really don't know why, but something about the big reddish brown dog stretched out on the braided rug in the middle of the bookstore made me think of a Kerouac poem. A couple of lines from The Scripture of the Golden Eternity: "Everything's alright, we're not here, there, or anywhere./ Everything's alright, cats sleep."

And in the midst of my little turmoil, my dog asleep. I studied him lying there. In this very present moment, and in every moment we shared, I could count on his empathy. His sweet brown eyes said he'd fix it all for me, always.

Within the week, Amy called to say a publisher was going to make an offer. Two days later, I talked to Drew, told him I thought we were close to making a deal on the book. I told him I'd not heard back from my agent, but I didn't want to jinx the deal by seeming impatient.

"Seeming impatient? Man, you are impatient," Drew said. "With good cause, son. Take a man pill and call your agent," I told him I would do that before going home from the store that day. I waited until I had locked the door of the bookstore to call Amy. I was behind the wheel of my Jeep, Cormac on the seat beside me. I was nervous and could hardly aim my fingers at the keys on the cell phone.

"I was just about to phone you," Amy said, and I swear I heard a note of defeat in her voice. But before I could further catastrophize the moment, Amy said, "Here's what I got you." She went down the list of deal points.

I sat there in broad daylight with tears in my eyes. I blinked and looked over at Cormac. He had curled down on the seat. His eyes were closed. Then my agent tested the strength of my man pill.

"That's the good news," Amy said.

Everyone knows the phrase that follows: And now for the bad news.

What in the sweet name of Jesus could that be? In the nanosecond pause, my mind scrolled through a half dozen devastating possibilities. "This is October," Amy said, "and they want the book by May 1. Can you write the rest of the book sustaining what you've got going in those first two hundred pages?" She reminded me that I had a wife and children and Thanksgiving and Christmas and et cetera to consider. "Not to mention a bookstore," she added. She told me we'd be signing a contract and that it would not be a good thing to miss my first deadline. I interrupted her. "Just tell me where to sign."

Yes, yes, yes.

I put my hand wide-fingered on the head of my Mickins. He opened his eyes and cut them over at me. He knew something was up. He got up on the seat and stared at me, his ears alert. He pushed his face near my own. He licked my cheek, pulled back to see if that helped. I grinned like Alice's cat and his tail thumped the door panel.

EIGHT.

IT WAS CLEAR that I'd have to stay home to write to meet the deadline for The Poet of Tolstoy Park. I had to figure out what to do about keeping the bookstore open for walk-ins.

Cormac and I went to Pierre's baseball card and vintage LP record store to ask for advice. I found him putting away a stack of alb.u.ms. "Check this out," he said. "The Beatles' White Alb.u.m on the Apple label, 1968. It's an original copy, with the poster and four photos. Picked it up at the thrift store for a quarter. I might get fifty bucks for it." I told him that was a good margin of return.

"So what's up?" Pierre asked. He patted Cormac on the head, who stayed at his knee only for a moment. He headed off to check out the rest of the record store. "What brings you to my little corner of world trade?"

I told him I had to figure out how to keep my store open while I knuckled down at home to finish the novel and a rewrite before May. "No problem," he said, still shuffling records, like this was the easiest thing in the world. "I'll move into your store and take care of everything." He told me he'd already been thinking about it. Word had quickly traveled around town about my book deal.

"What do you mean, you'll move in?" I asked.

"Just that," he said. "My lease expired here a month ago, and I'm on a month-to-month basis with my landlord. I've been looking for a different storefront." Pierre told me he'd move his inventory onto the premises at Over the Transom. "The floor s.p.a.ce is big enough, easily," Pierre said, adding he would sell my books for me in exchange for free rent and use of the phone and fax machine and computer. "I know your books as well as you."

I didn't hesitate. "When can you make the move?"

"This afternoon," he said, then added that he could get some high school students to help him start the move tomorrow, and get it done by the weekend. "I can be in business at your place next week."

"Pierre, this is great. It works for us both," I said.

"You just set your mind on finishing that book," he said. "This is your chance. Don't blow it."

"Oh, I believe I can do it," I said. "And, all the better with your help. I'm grateful, Pierre. I don't know what I would have done."

"G.o.d, stop fawning," Pierre said. "Just be sure I get a part in the movie. Will there be a mud wrestling scene?"

I told him that would be small payment, and I'd write the scene with him in mind. And with a handshake for good measure and to seal the deal, I called Cormac and we headed back to the bookstore. Cormac walked with his head high and his tail sweeping side to side. With a s.p.u.n.ky air to his carriage and a spring in my own step, I wasn't sure either of us could even finish out a week behind the counter.

Diana agreed this was a good plan. She and the boys and I celebrated that night with supper at Benny's Pizza Shop. It took some talking to get John Luke and Dylan to understand why with me at home each day they couldn't give up going to school. They became more agreeable when I promised to pick them up early on some days and join them at school for lunch now and again.

"You can go on my field trips," said John Luke.

"Will you bring the cookies to the birthday parties?" Dylan asked.

"Yep," I said to them both. I'll even try my hand at writing a novel, I thought.

The morning of our first day into the new routine, Cormac waited for me at the door, ready to go to the bookstore. "Not today, Mickins," I said. I went back to the kitchen for another cup of coffee, instead of out the door to the Jeep and town. Cormac stood in the foyer tossing looks at me over his shoulder. He turned to stare at the door, his pose reminding me of the hunting dog he really was. He could have been waiting among the cattails on the sh.o.r.e of an icy lake, ready to jump in to retrieve some duck I'd just shot. But I'm not a shooter, and he's not a retriever of more than the occasional tennis ball or Frisbee.

He could, however, now be something of a farm dog, romping and playing all day instead of hanging out with me inside a bookstore. He could chase squirrels, bother the cat, and cut up with the next-door dog, Bailey, also a Golden Retriever but almost completely white. Our two-acre place was only six minutes out of town proper and still within the city limits, but with not many houses, almost no streetlights, it felt like another world. Cormac, like Hank the Cow Dog of the children's books, was placed in charge of "ranch" security.

In his new role, the tiny part of our backyard that had been enclosed by the fence seemed unfair limitation on such important responsibility. I'd take down the chain-link fence that Diana never liked anyway because it was "so ugly" and have an electronic fence installed. With me working at my desk in the study, the Mick could rule the world of squirrels and birds. And with the new fence buzzing away, I'd not worry that he'd wander off.

The man on the phone told me the "fence" would amount to a thin wire buried a few inches deep in the soil. The wire was not expensive, so I'd have the entire two acres circ.u.mscribed. With the two ends of the wire connected to a transmitter, and a collar that had a built-in receiver to pick up the wire's frequency pulse, Cormac would get a mild shock if he tried to cross where the wire was buried. But not before sounding a warning beep so that Cormac could engage his superior intelligence and stay away from the ouch place.

Until then, he was certain that he was supposed to be inside with me. And not only with me inside the house, but that he should take every step I took. Almost literally. If I got up from my desk to get another cup of coffee, he came along. If I walked to a window to enjoy the view of the big dogwood tree just down the hill, he'd have his own look-see.

Three years later, Cormac still does this, follows me all over the house, though I think his clinging to me nowadays is in large measure a consequence of his nightmarish adventure, like the way he sinks flat on the floor when I start packing for travel. Sometimes when I move from room to room, I speed up to get ahead of him and then duck behind a door to jump out as he pa.s.ses and scare him the way Dylan likes to do to me. Cormac has not yet once appeared even remotely startled by my antics. I'm pretty sure it's his nose that lets him see around corners. When I leap out with a big yaah! he only looks at me with his big brown eyes worried that I've lost it.

My new life as a novelist was like a monk's insight after a long trek toward some evasive truth. Those first weeks of long hours spent writing, there was a time or two when I wanted to pinch myself: Emmylou Harris singing from the stereo, sweat pants and bare feet all day, my protagonist's story unfolding for me like I had it all on tape, my dog on the floor while I pecked away at the computer keyboard. We had it easy. If I turned my head in his direction, he'd watch my eyes to see if I needed him to fetch something. But I did all the work and just let Cormac guard the muse so he wouldn't abandon us. Cormac did a good job.

In the s.p.a.ce of about a month my whole life had turned around, the cavalry had come riding over the hill, publishing contract in velvet-gloved hand. Sonny the novelist. I had the papers to prove it. Diana told me she'd known it all along, and had many times tried to tell me so. She reminded me more than once that Th.o.r.eau said our focus determines our reality. "Seems I remember," Diana said, "saying something like you should focus on your writing." She had told me precisely that.

And Cormac. Bless him. The doggie would not have to fret that any day might find me poking around in a bare cupboard, looking for a bone, and the poor dog would have none. No, sir. Cormac was ruler of his two acres. Until, that is, the king would one day feel abandoned upon his lands, and then a keen, deep fretting would extend the edges of his world into the outer dark.

NINE.