The Adventures of Zoe, the Wonder Dog
By Carrie Jacobson
The story so far:
Zoe and Kaja are traveling from the Pike County shelter to Middletown to find Zoe’s owner. They’re sleeping at the edge of the Delaware when the river rises and nearly sweeps them away. At the height of their trouble, they see Samantha Morrone, a young girl they’ve met on their travels. She’s adrift on a raft, being swept down the river. Kaja, the big red dog, rescues her, and then she helps get Zoe, a nearly blind lhasa apso, to safety. She also rescues Loosey, a cat who’s ended up in trouble on the river.
Kaja
Chapter 17
The sun is nearing the horizon as Samantha, Kaja, Zoe and Loosey climb the bank, toward the road. When they reach Route 97, Samantha sees they’re just about in Handsome Eddy, which she knows only because she thinks it’s such a funny name for a town. Well, it’s not really a town. Not much of a town. More like a wide place where rafters like to hang out.
Samantha is scared. She is cold and wet and her teeth are chattering, and she is scared. She knows she almost died out there on the river, and that’s scary enough. But when she thinks about what her parents are going to say, what they’re going to do, she’s even more scared.
Maybe she should just run away. Go with these dogs, wherever they are going. Never go home. She made it this far, she thinks. She can’t be in much worse trouble than she’s in now.
But she’s hungry, too, and so cold. The big red dog noses into a driveway. She looks at the house, and then looks at Samantha. The dog isn’t talking, not in words, but she might as well be. The dog is telling Samantha to go to the house. Call her parents. Face the facts.
She starts down the driveway, and then tells the dogs to sit. They do, and the cat sits, too, which makes Sam smile. She turns around once, and they’re still there. Then she rounds a curve in the drive, and nearly runs to the house.
She knocks on the door. Nothing happens. She looks for a bell, but doesn’t see one. She knocks again and waits. She begins to realize how cold and wet and scared she is. She’s trembling. Her hands are white, she sees, her fingernails blue. The day is cooling, and her wet clothes are starting to feel icy on her skin.
This time, she bangs on the door, hard, and when it opens, there’s a woman standing there, and Samantha has seen her before, and when the door opens, Sam smells dinner cooking, and out of the blue, just like that, she begins to sob. She flings herself into the woman’s arms, and nearly collapses.
“Oh, dear,” the woman says, “oh, dear! What has happened to you? Come in, come in, come in, now, and ssshhhh, stop your crying, dear, you’re safe now, safe and warm,” and, talking all the time, she nearly carries Samantha into the living room, puts her on a couch, wraps her in a blanket, and goes to make her a cup of tea. By the time she gets back to the living room, Samantha has fallen asleep.
Outside, in the driveway, Kaja and Zoe and the cat wait. They hear the door open. They hear voices. They hear the door shut. And then there’s nothing.
They wait. The sun falls. The breeze picks up. Kaja noses toward the road, and they set off. She looks back once. She can see that a light has come on in the house. She likes the girl. She could love the girl, she knows. But they have to go. They have to find Zoe’s man.
Mary Dubrovnik lets Samantha sleep for 10 minutes, then wakes her. The girl would sleep all night, Mary knows, but she has parents and family and they must be worried sick. The girl is familiar, she’s from somewhere nearby, but Mary can’t place her.
She wakes Samantha, and gets her phone number, and calls.
Angie answers. She’s breathless.
“Pete!” she shouts, when Mary gets the sentence out, “Pete! She’s safe. She’s, she’s – ” her words fall over themselves, and she begins to cry, and Pete takes the phone from her, finds Mary’s address and tells her he’ll be right there.
By the time he arrives, Samantha is warm, fed and nearly dry. By the time he arrives, Zoe and Kaja and Loosey have feasted on the remains of a roasted chicken from someone’s trash can. They’ve drunk water from a stream and they’ve found an abandoned car behind an abandoned shed, and curled up on the back seat, warm and safe and sheltered, and fallen fast asleep.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
Tags: carriejacobson
