“I met Foster here. I discovered this place on my way home from work one day and started stopping a couple of times a week just to watch the dogs. Helps me relax after especially busy days. I usually come after work on Tuesdays and have a burger with him. Sometimes on the weekends, too.” While Sebastian talked, his eyes continued to search the park. “Came today because I’ll be busy tomorrow night with the band.” He glanced at me. “How do you know him?”
“That’s Ani’s dog playing with Pete. Juno.” I pointed out the two dogs wandering among the other animals, side-by-side, noses to the ground. “We usually walk down here on Mondays, sometimes more, so Juno can visit her many friends. Pete is her token boyfriend. This is our tree,” I patted the trunk behind me before dipping my head to the oak a few yards away. “Foster usually hangs out over there.” Without thinking how silly it might sound, I added, “We feed them sometimes, too.”
Sebastian’s eyebrows rose. “Well, good for you,” he drawled. It didn’t feel like a compliment. Ani frowned at me. I could see she was having second thoughts about the guy. I didn’t like to admit it, but I was having a few push-me-pull-you thoughts, too. I couldn’t deny the draw I felt toward him, but I sensed there was something lying under the surface that might be bigger than I wanted to deal with.
“I wonder where Foster is,” Ani spoke into the awkward silence.
“Maybe we should look for him,” I suggested, not knowing what else to do. “Call Juno, Ani. Let’s see if Pete will come, too. Maybe he’ll take us to his daddy.”
Both dogs came charging up the slope toward us, and to my surprise, Pete ran directly at Sebastian first, who had crouched down to greet the happy animal.
“Do you have a dog?” I asked, surprised at how happy Pete was to see him.
“Nope. Wish I did, but I can’t have one where we live. That’s why I come here. Pete gives me my dog fix.” He pulled a couple of bone-shaped treats from his backpack and offered one to both the animals. “Let’s go find Foster, okay, Pete?” He ruffled the dog’s ears, then rose and headed off in the direction I’d seen Foster go on the rare occasions that he left the park before we did. Juno followed right on Pete’s tail, the two dogs obviously all in for whatever adventure they were going on.
Ani and I exchanged uncertain glances, following a few steps behind.
“Do you know where they stay at night?” I asked, wondering if maybe we should leave the task of finding Foster to Sebastian. Clearly, he was taking charge of the hunt, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted us along or not.
Sebastian slowed, and waited for us to come alongside him, the dogs taking it as their cue to charge ahead. “Do you?” he asked, turning the question back on us. I didn’t think he was challenging us, but more curious as to how much we knew about Foster.
“No,” I answered, trying not to feel guilty. I’d wondered many times before, but hadn’t felt comfortable asking. I always just hoped he had a place to go to at the end of the day, and every time we saw him at the park, I got a jolt of relief. Surely, his presence meant he had somewhere to sleep at night.
“He’s not very talkative,” Ani added. “And because he’s always been very respectful toward us, we’ve tried to give him some respect, too.” She sounded a little defensive, but Sebastian just nodded.
“I’m sure he’s grateful. Sometimes people can be too helpful,” he added, rather enigmatically.
“But you do know?” I pressed again. “You know where he goes? Is that where we’re going now?” We were nearing the back end of the park, a chain link fence marking the public area.
“See the drainage ditch on the other side of the fence?” Sebastian pointed to the concrete waterway that ran along the boundary line of the park. It disappeared into a huge concrete tunnel where the hillside rose above it. The tunnel was overgrown with weeds and saplings, but even from this side of the fence, I could tell it might make a good place to hunker down if there wasn’t any place to go home to. I brushed my fingers over Ani’s forearm when I noticed the sheen in her eyes. Ever since returning from Italy, she’d been so much more aware of the hurting people in the world we lived in.
We reached the fence, and after casting a furtive look around, Sebastian unlatched a section of it that, upon closer inspection, had been rigged to allow for easy access. He held the corner of the chain-link back and waited for us to slip through, then ducked under himself. We walked along the edge of the dry ditch for several yards, but as we approached the tunnel, Sebastian slowed and called out.
“Foster? You there, man?”
There was no answer, and Pete didn’t seem in any hurry to get to the tunnel. Even if Foster had been unable to answer, Pete surely would have scampered off to find his human. I could see by Sebastian’s scowl that he wasn’t feeling good about things. He called out several more times, but to no avail.
We approached slowly, the two dogs bouncing along as though nothing in the world was amiss, which somehow made me feel better. I was sure they’d alert us to danger if there was any. At the mouth of the tunnel, Sebastian swept back some of the vines and shrubs to peer inside. He had to bend down a little—it couldn’t have been taller than four feet at the highest part—and beyond him I could see what appeared to be a bundle of clothes or blankets, a couple of jugs of water, and an empty—and surprisingly clean—metal bowl that was presumably Pete’s dog food dish.
I scrutinized the obscure setting, my mind slow to grasp that the ditch was quite likely Foster’s “summer home.” It probably stayed dry for most of the year, and being this close to the dog park was a plus for Pete, too. In the winter, I’d seen the man and his dog at one of the shelters in town, Joseph’s Warehouse, where our family served hot meals the first and third Wednesdays of the month. Between Thanksgiving and Easter, the facility opened their doors at night and offered people a warm, dry place to sleep. They even allowed dogs, as long as they were kenneled. Pete, along with his blanket, food, and water bowls, seemed fine with his kennel parked beside Foster’s cot. He probably appreciated the warmth as much as Foster during the cold nights, and he certainly enjoyed the attention he got from other guests, especially children.
Ani and I waited a few feet away. “I feel like a Peeping Tom,” I whispered to her. If this was where Foster and Pete slept each night, we were, in a sense, looking in his bedroom window. I let my gaze wander a little at the surroundings and wondered at the kind of circumstances that reduced a man to living like this. Had he made bad decisions in his life? Was he running from the law? From his past? His future? Maybe he was a veteran and suffered from some sort of PTSD that made normal societal expectations impossible for him to meet.
“I don’t know what to think,” Sebastian said as he turned back to face us. “It’s not like Foster to leave Pete alone. And the dog was inside the dog arena, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to look for the man out here.”
We all stood in silent concentration as we mulled over our options. Finally, Ani suggested we go back and wait a little longer. “Maybe Foster had to go somewhere and felt it was safer to leave Pete with the other dogs.” We all knew we were grasping at straws, but no one wanted to say out loud what we were really thinking.
Sebastian ducked back into the pipe, made sure the bundle of things was a little better hidden, and picked up the dog’s dish. “I think if he finds Pete’s dish gone, he’ll know to come looking.” The statement left a lot of loose ends, but Sebastian didn’t say anything else. He tucked the bowl inside his backpack and we headed back the way we came.
We scrambled through the fence and as we walked slowly, attentively, back toward our spot, Sebastian said, “You know, I can stay with Pete until Foster gets back. You two don’t have to wait.”
Ani and I both waved off his suggestion. “We’re not leaving until we know Foster is okay,” Ani declared.
“That’s right,” I concurred, feeling a strange sense of responsibility growing inside me. I didn’t feel right about leaving without answers. Besides, what if Foster didn’t come back? Sebastian had just said he couldn’t have a dog at his place. What would happen to Pete? “We’re not going anywhere. You’re stuck with our fine company until Foster shows.”
We sat on the hillside and the dogs played while people and their pets came and went. Conversation was stilted at first, competing with our concern for the missing man, but eventually, we fell into an easier rise and fall as we talked about everything from Ani and her unknown future with Paulo to the year I moved to the neighborhood with my loud, obnoxious family, and Ani’s life had never been the same.
“Not much has changed, has it?” I asked Sebastian, smiling as I thought about the breakfast he’d shared with only a portion of our troop. “The holidays are even wilder because when all four brothers get together, the testosterone is thick in the air.”
“Someone usually bleeds,” Ani quipped. “I just stand back and watch. From very, very far away.”
“They fight a lot?” Sebastian asked, his head cocked to one side. Although he had an easy smile on his face, I heard a hint of concern in his question. He must have been thinking about Jordan and my wrestling match.
“Not fighting. Competing. You know, poker, wrestling, one-on-one b-ball, and baseball games over there.” I pointed beyond the fenced-off dog section to the open field of the park. “Talk about brutal. My mom won’t let me pitch anymore because I kept getting taken out by line-drives and I couldn’t react quickly enough to catch the balls or hit the ground.”
“T-Bird and I hang out in the outfield and yell insults instead,” Ani contributed. “We’re pretty much the most talented hecklers in the world.”
Sebastian seemed to enjoy listening to us tell our silly stories. When Ani mentioned something about George Darling, Sebastian raised an eyebrow in question, so she explained the literary miracle of her circumstances.
“Yeah. She’s weird,” I teased. “But that’s how I knew we were sole-mates.” Ani and I high-fived with the soles of our shoes, making Sebastian roll his eyes at the terrible pun.
The shadows of the trees behind us stretched long across the grassy slope and we finally began voicing our concerns that Foster might not be coming back. “We have to get going, too,” Ani said quietly. “Mary Darling’s wondering where I am.” She held up her phone.
“Pete can’t stay here,” Sebastian began. “I’m pretty sure the cops do a sweep of this place after folks leave, just to make sure no one has abandoned any dogs. Foster tells me it happens often enough to make the sweep necessary.”
“That’s terrible,” Ani murmured, scratching the ruff of Juno, who lay sprawled beside her. Pete had pooped out, too, and was using Sebastian’s legs as a pillow. I got thumped by Pete’s tail every time he had a remotely happy dog thought.
“Yeah. People can be cruel.” Sebastian looked up and smiled grimly. I thought he might be talking about more than just those who abandoned their pets.
“So what should we do with Pete?” I asked, my mind buzzing over the possibilities. Pete really wasn’t the problem, though. Any one of us could take him home for a night or two. The real problem was how we were going to track down a homeless man in trouble. It seemed clear that something was wrong, that something bad had happened.