"Ah-" I could not think of a thing to say. I could not think of a question to ask. "Ah, let me see." I smiled. "Okay. What does he look like? Is he dark red?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Is he about, say 75 pounds?"

"He's kind of skinny. I don't think so. But this fellow has been on quite an adventure, I'm told."

"Ah-let's see." I shook my head. "Oh I know, does he put one back leg underneath the other when he's lying on his side, so that his other leg is kind of c.o.c.ked up in the air?"

She laughed. "I haven't noticed that," she said. "Now, Mr. Brewer, I can send you some photos. My husband would have to take them when he gets home from the office."

"He loves to take things in his mouth and, well, make these noises as though he's trying to speak," I said. Pierre and Lou liked that one.

"That's a match!" Erma Blessing said. "This fellow will make his sounds around the tiniest thing he picks up. A plastic straw this morning he found on the ground outside was quite sufficient." I turned loose of the hope I'd held in check and let it spill the way I'd spilled raw anger earlier.

"That's it! I've got it," I said in a rush. "Can I talk to him?"

Erma Blessing laughed. "We do that, too," she said. "My husband and I talk to our dogs. It drives my son crazy, and he wants to hide if we do it in public. Yes, Mr. Brewer, here I'll hold the phone for him. He's here in the kitchen with me."

I called Cormac by name, going high and falsetto, down low, growly, calling him Mickins, Cormac, Mick. "Are you my d.o.g.g.i.ns?" Pierre and Lou looked away from me with their eyebrows c.o.c.ked high. They slipped a glance at each other and sn.i.g.g.e.red.

Erma Blessing, on the other hand, came back on the phone, sobbing. "Mr. Brewer, this is surely your dog. This must be Cormac! He is on the floor with eyes like the moon, his face between his paws. Forgive the allusion to advertising nostalgia, but I do believe he's heard his master's voice."

I leaped from my chair at the table, did a pirouette, yelling. Pierre and Lou did a high five and clapped me on the back. "I know what I told you, man," said Lou, "but I don't believe this. I cannot believe you found the mutt!"

I calmed myself, got back on the line with Erma Blessing. I walked down the sidewalk with my cell phone to my ear, listening as she told me how they'd spoiled this dog, how he had full sofa and bed privileges, how her thirteen-year-old son hardly even liked their own dogs, but had fallen in love with Cormac. I loved the way she called him by name with confidence. There was only a tiny corner of my mind where I would allow this dog in Connecticut to be other than my Cormac.

Then she told me why he was getting the royal treatment around her house. "My husband jogs every day along the river," Mrs. Blessing said, "and on the second day Cormac was with us, he went along on the run. Jim fell and broke his ankle. He couldn't get up. Our two Labs just kept right on going, playing, ignoring Jim on the ground. Cormac lay down beside Jim and would not move. Stayed right by his side until help came."

"Wow! I'm proud of him." Then, without missing a beat, I blurted out, "How do I get him home?"

"Now, that I do not know, Mr. Brewer. I expect Mr. Jones will have all that information for you," Erma Blessing offered. "I'm aware the agency uses a pet transport person, and I guess you'll have to pay something, but I don't really know how it works."

"Well, I can't thank you enough for making a home for Cormac," I said. "You folks are probably the first nice thing to happen to him in this strange story. Truly a blessing to me and my dog."

"Why, that's a pun, isn't it?" she asked.

I sighed, suddenly tired. "Yes," I said, "and truly not intended except in deepest grat.i.tude."

TWENTY-FOUR.

AFTER TELLING PIERRE and Lou the good news, I tried to phone Drew at his construction site. "Drew didn't answer his cell," I said to Pierre, stepping off the curb. "If he stops by the bookstore, tell him the good news, and to get in touch with me."

"And so you're sure this is Cormac?" asked Pierre. He and Lou followed me to the Jeep.

"I guess until I see him in person, I won't know for sure," I said. "But it all feels right."

"If only we had that collar," Lou said. "You'd know then."

"Well," I said, "I'll know soon enough. I'll phone the agency as soon as I get home, and get things arranged to bring him home." I told them I had to go back on the road Wednesday to finish up the stops on my book tour. "I'll be home Sunday night," I said. "Hopefully, I can arrange to get him down here on Monday or Tuesday."

"Three weeks missing, and you got a lot done in one day," Lou said. "You can rest up some tomorrow."

"I will," I said, thinking I'd really only be able to close my eyes for a good night's sleep when I had him back. I got in the Jeep, rolled down my window and started the engine. "Thanks for hanging in there with me, guys."

"Yeah," said Pierre, "maybe I'll get a dog myself. What do they call them, man's biggest pain in the b.u.t.t?" Lou clamped his hand around Pierre's neck and slugged him on the arm.

"Go home," Lou said to me, "before you witness cruelty to this animal."

I smiled and waved and eased off, heading for Diana's office. She was on the phone when I got there. I took a seat and looked out the window at the pa.s.sing cars. I decided to try to keep the news for a minute. When she finished the call, she asked if I'd made any progress today on my rounds, or learned anything about Cormac. I held onto my poker face.

"I got a couple of leads, but they didn't go anywhere," I said. She told me not to get discouraged. We chatted about what I'd do tomorrow to continue the search for Cormac, about her work, about my last few tour stops later in the week. I told Diana I'd pick up the boys at school. I got up to go, stopped and leaned against the doorjamb and tempted her with an offer of pizza at Benny's when she was done.

"You found Cormac," she said, getting up and coming to stand in front of me. She crossed her arms. "Did you think you could fool me for long?" She smiled and shook her head. "John Luke and Dylan will be jumping when you tell them," she said. "I think pizza is the perfect complement to the news."

"Is that what gave it away?" I asked. "Since that's where we went to mark our decision to get a puppy?"

"No," she said. "We go for pizza like we go for a gla.s.s of milk in the morning. It was the goofy look on your face."

"What? I thought I was a man in an iron mask."

"Try silly putty," Diana said. "Don't you know by now that's what Cormac does to you?"

"I suppose so," I said, and I told Diana there was a slim chance the dog I found was not Cormac. "That's when we'll see what I'm made of. Either way, I think, the face is gonna go."

TWENTY-FIVE.

I WAS GOING TO see a woman about a dog. Her husband, a pet transporter with whom I had made all the arrangements so far, could not complete the delivery of the subject Golden Retriever.

Fenton Jones had recommended this driver, told me the man had made several other dog transports "down South." But the driver would be stopping in Birmingham on other business, so his wife would be making the drop-off, though she could not drive all the way to the coast. He gave me his wife's cell number, and we agreed to touch base as needed to coordinate the exchange in a Cracker Barrel restaurant parking lot at exit 231 on I-65, about thirty-five miles south of Birmingham. She would take only cash. Three hundred dollars.

It was Tuesday, April 5. Cormac had been gone twenty-five days.

Fenton Jones had said he would only release the Golden Retriever into the driver's custody if I would take the dog and agree to keep it, even if the dog was not Cormac. All the coordinating of schedules had taken about a week, and I'd gone back on the road to New Orleans the previous weekend to make a scheduled appearance at the Tennessee Williams Festival. I had used about half of my allotted time on my panel there telling the story of losing Cormac, and how I'd probably found him and would see him in a few days. People in the audience had been more interested in the dog tale than my novel, and someone suggested I post the rest of the story on my website. Now as the saga's arc would soon put me face-to-face with Cormac, the knot in my belly felt like the alligator sausage I had for breakfast two days ago was trying to bite me back.

It had been almost a month since I had seen Cormac. What kind of shape would he be in? I hoped for happy and hyper, not down and depressed, knowing he'd at least be somewhere off-center on the emotional scale. But, worst of all, what if Cormac were still missing? What if the dog in the van was a total stranger?

The only other time I remember feeling the way I felt as I drove north on I-65 toward Birmingham had been on a certain Friday afternoon some twenty-five years earlier. My stomach, then as now, was queasy, my breathing was in the top of my lungs, my heart was going fast, my tongue was kind of dry. The other time I headed for a rendezvous that had me going like this was when I was headed to see Emily when she was a little girl of two. Emily's mother and I had divorced and I had thought what I needed was to turn off my brain and bend my back in some good old-fashioned heavy labor. That would be the right way to fend off all that mopey stuff that finds its way into country song lyrics. So I called a friend who owned some tugboats and asked him if he'd let me crew. He asked me if I could pack a grip and be ready to ship out the following morning at five. I did, and physically separated myself from the land by working on the deck of a boat rolling on the river. The emotional distance was just the antidote I needed for a wrecked marriage.

Only thing, I stayed on the river too long.

Every day aboard that tugboat got harder and harder, missing Emily. I've still got a photo of me in the tug's galley holding a chocolate layer cake I'd baked on her second birthday. I wrote her name and age on the cake with Cheerios. Missing her birthday did it. I quit working as a deckhand soon as the vessel was docked in the port of Mobile. Hollow echoes of that angst reached me as I drove toward Birmingham.

I rolled past the off-ramps on the interstate, counting upward to my exit. I worried more and more whether it was Cormac I was going to meet. When I would put that fret aside, I'd drag up another one, troubling over what Cormac would do when he saw me. I began to think I should have brought Pierre and Lou with me for some manly emotional support: neither would brook much hand-wringing.

Diana had offered to come. She'd even suggested keeping the boys out of school and bringing them, too. I told her if I knew for a fact it was our Cormac, we'd definitely make this a roadside family homecoming. But since there was at least some chance Cormac was still missing, I didn't think John Luke and Dylan could handle the disappointment if a dog other than our Cormac was on his way from Connecticut. Diana knew that was bull, reminding me we'd told the boys over pizza there was a chance we'd be getting a new dog out of this. She said it was me who'd be a spectacle not fit for family viewing if the dog that hopped out of that van was not Cormac.

Exit 231, one mile the sign said. My heart rate started speeding up. The thumping became so p.r.o.nounced that I wondered about the physiology of the autonomic response. I considered the advice to take a deep breath. I did. It didn't work, didn't slow down the beating of my heart.

I took the exit, turned right on the service road, and left into the Cracker Barrel parking lot. I stopped the Jeep in the farthest corner, near the gra.s.sy median. There was only one way I could do this. I'd have to go inside the restaurant and look out the window. If it was not Cormac in the van, I would need the time, if only a minute, to adjust my att.i.tude toward my new Golden Retriever.

I marched quickly toward the restaurant, refusing to look around, or over my shoulder to see if an unmarked van had arrived bringing my "package." I walked through the store part of the Cracker Barrel to a window at the end of the register counter. I lingered by the T-shirt display, standing there like I belonged with the store fixtures, like a cigar store Indian. Wooden. I think I stopped breathing.

Then I saw the delivery van, a white Chevy. Ironically, it took the parking spot beside my Jeep. The driver stepped out, a woman in jeans and a blue flannel shirt. She rounded the rear of the van and went to the pa.s.senger side, where she slid back the door. A dog bounded out. The woman snagged his leash. He had to pee and went straight to the gra.s.sy median in front of the van, so that I wasn't able to get a good look at him. I put my hands on top of my head and waited for the dog to walk out so I could have a clear view of him. The woman stood in plain sight, holding a red web leash, the dog at its end still in front of the Chevy. Then she stepped back a couple of paces and she and the dog moved away from the van.

It was Cormac. Woo hoo!

And I ran from the restaurant like it was on fire. I didn't look back to see if I'd caused a panic. I just kept running. I yelled Cormac! At the top of my lungs I yelled his name again. He spun around on the leash and when he got me in focus, he bolted, s.n.a.t.c.hing the leash from the woman's hand. She took off after him, afraid for his safety in the parking lot, I'm sure. But he got to me and I got to him before she had a chance to intervene. If our lope toward each other could be shown in slo-mo, it would be more beautiful than the way the model ran and tossed her blond hair in that long-ago Breck shampoo commercial: Cormac's red hair flying, my arms outstretched.

Without even the aid of a leaf, or pair of socks, he found his voice. He whimpered and moaned and twisted his body and flung himself around so that he knocked me down in the parking lot, then jumped onto my chest with me laughing like a fool.

"Cormac, you silly d.o.g.g.i.ns! Don't you ever go away again." He yipped and wiggled and barked and hopped up and down. The woman only stood there watching us as though we were a tree full of hoot owls. I got to a sitting position, and Cormac tried to crawl into my lap like he was an eight-week-old puppy. I remembered the driver.

"I suppose you'd like your money now," I said to the woman.

"My husband's waiting back in Birmingham," she said. "I do need to get going." I stood up and took three new hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and handed them to her. She put the money in her shirt pocket, and extended her hand for me to shake. "He's a mighty fine dog, sir. And mighty glad to see you." She turned, got into her van, and drove out of the parking lot while Cormac and I moved our reunion to the gra.s.s median. We rolled and hugged a while longer before heading for home.

After twenty-five miles on I-65, I swung off the highway to grab a sub sandwich at a drive-through. It smelled good and tasted better. When I'd take a bite, I'd give Cormac the next bite. I knew better than to serve the d.o.g.g.i.ns green peppers and lettuce and onions and turkey and cheese on wheat, but we sat there beside each other in the Jeep's two front seats like a pair of college chums headed for spring break, just easing on down South where we belonged, snacking on a sandwich. Until Cormac got sick and threw up.

I stopped at the next exit, pulled into a gas station and cleaned up the mess. As I did so, a man getting into a Buick sedan parked beside my Jeep determined the business I was about. He said I ought to think about riding my pet in a travel kennel, not on the car seat. I told him he should think about riding in a kennel himself. He huffed and slammed his car door and drove away.

Loaded up and driving south on the interstate again, I rubbed Cormac's head and thought again about when I had been so lost in a fog of uncertainty the time I'd spent those six months without seeing my daughter. When I had worked it all out to get Emily for the weekend, you'd have thought I was being granted an audience with the Pope. I went to get a haircut. I bought a new shirt and ironed my jeans. I wondered if a little girl could hold a picture of her daddy in her head for six months.

I was so nervous, my knock on the door that day at Emily's house must have been more like a quiet tap, tap, tap. But I can tell you I might have knocked like the landlord, for it went much the way it had just now in the Cracker Barrel parking lot between Cormac and me. Emily had run full tilt across her mother's floor, getting to me as the door still swung on its hinges. She leaped into my arms. She had nestled there and pushed my face away and looked at me and pulled on my ears and patted my cheeks and smiled while I struggled to keep the tears out of my eyes. A weeping prodigal dad would have confused her. I vowed silently to save her from confusion whenever I could.

I looked over at the d.o.g.g.i.ns, Sir Cormac the Mickins, and said, "And to you, best dog in the world, I promise to never lose you again."

I wondered how Cormac felt to be together with me again. Maybe like this: I sit on my tail, but it wants to move and I stand as we go and my eyes see the one who has come for me and I lick his hand and it goes onto my head and if he wanted a ball I would get it for him. I will walk close to him. I will lie down to sleep at his feet. We will be together.

TWENTY-SIX.

I LIED ABOUT NOT ever losing Cormac again. Two years later I'd take him for a walk in the woods back of my house, just this once without a leash, get distracted studying a twisted root, and look up thirty seconds later to find him nowhere in sight. And spend one miserable Sat.u.r.day afternoon, evening, and night, calling and driving and walking, my ship being driven farther and farther onto the rocks with each pa.s.sing hour.

Driving around town, I saw Pierre. "Dogs'll wander, you know," he said. Pierre's nonchalance bothered me.

"And some folks will go looking for them," I said quickly.

I kept checking the front and back doors until one in the morning. I went to bed, but didn't sleep until just before daylight. I was still in bed next morning when John Luke came to find me. He tapped me on the cheek to awaken me. "You were snoring, Dad," he said. "It was loud."

"I'm sorry," I said. "What time is it?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Where's Mommy?" I asked.

"Making pancakes," he said. "Plus, Cormac's outside."

"What?"

I jumped out of bed and ran to the front door in my underwear. I swung open the front door. On the street out front, wet and muddy, grinning, but not about to cross that strange boundary where he would get zapped, was the d.o.g.g.i.ns.

I almost ran out, thought of my pants, dashed back to the bedroom to put them on and ran to the middle of the street. I stood with him, cussing him only a little. I told John Luke and Dylan to get their wagon, and I invited Cormac to jump in and we made it safely to the porch for a good toweling.

"Cormac, I thought we had a deal," I said. I made a plea for him to cease the wandering, once and for all. He grinned. I shook my head. Your dog thing, Pierre had said. My dog thing, indeed.

TWENTY-SEVEN.

WHEN THE CELL PHONE rang inside my jeans pocket, Cormac c.o.c.ked his head toward the ringtone as nearly like a bell as I could find from among the device's myriad choices. The interstate was unusually clear and I'd let my speed move past seventy-five, and it was noisy in the Jeep. I slowed to better hear the phone. I guessed it was Diana calling me back. I'd left a message that I had Cormac and we were coming home.

"h.e.l.lo," I said in singsong.

"Mr. Brewer, this is Tiffany Hale."

"Oh, h.e.l.lo," I said, thinking now what?

"Will you be at the bookstore in the morning?" she asked.

"Sure, ah, I can be there," I said.

"I've got the day off and I need to talk to you," she said.

"What time?"

"Ten o'clock?"