three

Jay hit the ground pulling, making me feel a bit cartoonish as I scrambled both to keep up and slow him down a notch. He was definitely on a trail, and I hoped it was Gypsy’s. That’s the thing with tracking—with our poor deficient noses, we must trust that our dogs are on the scent trail we want them to be on. It’s a bit like asking someone to translate a page of writing in a script that we can’t read. Trust. We have to trust the other guy. Jay had never let me down.

We angled across Alberta’s leaf-strewn front lawn, the one next door, and the next. Jay’s shoulders were well into the harness and I had to force myself to hold him to a speed I could manage at a faster-than-normal walk. Running may seem more efficient, but—another hard lesson learned—the small margin of time gained is offset by the high risk to middle-aged joints, bones, and skin trying to keep up with an engaged dog over rough ground. Sixty seconds into the search and I was already warming up inside my sweatshirt, but I couldn’t stop to adjust my clothes. Alberta was still with us, but her breathing sounded a bit like my mother’s old fireplace bellows.

“Gypsy never goes out anymore! Someone must have come in and grabbed her.” I was surprised that Alberta could still talk between gasps. “They hate me, you know, because I feed the poor strays that live behind the club house.” Maybe she was oxygen deprived, I thought. She was starting to repeat herself.

Jay veered toward the street, so I shortened the line and stopped him at the curb. Alberta bumped into me and clutched my arm. Her cheeks were so pink they glowed.

“Who hates you?” I asked. Jay turned to look at me. He whined something that sounded a lot like “Come on!” and bounced his front end impatiently. “Hang on, Bubby. Car.” We could have crossed before the car reached us, but I thought Alberta could stand to catch her breath. Jay turned away from me, put his nose to the ground, pulled into the harness, and muttered again when I anchored him in place.

Alberta released my arm and put a hand to her chest. “But how can they hurt an animal? Especially one that’s no threat?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Golfers for one. They claim the cats leave dead things on the greens.” She snorted. “It’s their damn kids out there with BB guns do the killing, you know, birds and squirrels and things, and they know I know it, too.” She coughed and patted the notch of her collarbone. “They shoot the cats, too.”

That I knew to be true. The paper had run several articles about Halloween violence aimed at animals in the area, including two elderly pet cats from Alberta’s neighborhood that were shot with BBs at close range in their own backyard. One lost his eye. They still hadn’t caught the shooter.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said. “Gypsy may have just slipped out. You said you had a plumber here this afternoon, right?”

Alberta looked past me. The red in her face spread and deepened and an artery in her temple puffed up and pulsed. I turned my head toward the street. A big white SUV slowed as it rolled by, but the occupants were invisible behind tinted windows. Jay startled me with a series of short, deep-throated barks and I took a step back from the curb, pulling him with me. “Jay,” I said. He glanced at me, then back at the car. “Here,” I said, and heard a bright edge in my voice. In a flash Jay was at my side, leaning into my calf, still alerting on the car. I had learned to pay attention when my dog seemed to find something amiss. I knelt and sank my fingers into Jay’s dense fur and folded my fingers over the muscular curve of his shoulder.

“That’s them.” Alberta stepped into the street and screeched, “What have you done with my cat?” She swung the snap end of my leash at the car and missed. The driver’s-side window opened a couple of inches and a chorus of male voices erupted within. Most of what they yelled was unintelligible, but I made out “crazy” and “cat” and “tree hugger.” Then the window rolled up and the vehicle squealed away.

“Delinquent bastards,” yelled Alberta.

Jay barked a parting insult, then went back to sniffing and whining. I gathered and re-coiled the loose end of the long line and let Jay haul me across the street. His posture told me that he was partly tracking scent on the ground, but also reading something in the air. He pulled me up a driveway and across a backyard. The dormant grass felt crisp under my feet, the ground level and safe. Jay’s head came up and he leaped forward, shoulders strong against his harness. A small storage shed, salmon-pink with white gingerbread, huddled among bare-naked forsythias in the far back corner of the yard, and Jay raced toward it. He was no longer tracking. He seemed to know where he needed to be. Ankles be damned, I broke into a run and let him have his way.

“Go. Go.” Alberta wheezed encouragement. “I’ll catch up.”

Jay went into a sniffing, whining frenzy at the door to the shed and pushed against it. A violet rocking chair sat on the brick patio that ran the length of the little building, and lace curtains waved gently behind a window that stood open a few inches. Jay started to dig at the threshold and the door swung open.