The Adventures of Zoe, the Wonder Dog
By Carrie Jacobson
The story so far: Zoe, a mostly blind lhasa apso, and Kaja, a big red chow mix, are traveling from the Pike County shelter to Middletown to find Zoe’s owner. They have just rescued Samantha Morrone from a near-tragic rafting accident on the Delaware, and have holed up for the night in an abandoned car. Samantha, her brother Ashton and their parents, Angie and Pete, are looking for the dogs, who have been joined by a cat named Loosey.
Chapter 18
In the morning, Angie keeps Samantha home from school. She’s OK, really, but Angie just can’t let her out of her sight. Yesterday, she came too close to losing her. And she didn’t even know! This makes Angie feel sick inside. It makes her feel like wrapping Sam in a blanket and tucking her into bed and keeping her there for the next 10 years, while she waits on her hand and foot. She’d do the same with Ashton, too, but Pete took him, first to search for the dogs, and then to go to school.
Pete and Ashton drive past Glen Spey first, looking for the dogs, searching and calling out the windows, but they see nothing, not a person, not a cat, not a dog, nothing but cars.
Pete turns around and doubles back. He leaves Ashton at the school, where he joins a group of his friends, all looking at something that one of the boys has. Pete taps the horn before he drives away, and Ash turns and smiles and waves, and Pete feels his heart lurch.
He looks for the dogs as he drives down 97 again, headed for his office. He doesn’t see them, though he passes within a couple hundred yards of where they’re sleeping, curled together in the abandoned car.
In time, they get up, stretch, and head back to the road. The cat trots along with them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes vanishing for long stretches.
At one point, she comes out of the woods carrying a dead chipmunk. In the next hour, she kills two others. Kaja and Zoe and Loosey the cat, bellies full, curl up together in a sunny spot near a house just off Barnes Road.
They’re sleeping there when someone rattles up the driveway to the house in a beat-up old truck, carrying a load of wood. The driver turns the truck around, backs it up to a spot behind the house, and gets out and pulls down the tailgate.
At first, Kaja thinks the driver is a man, but as she watches, she begins to see that it’s a woman. She’s built like a man, and her haircut is like a man’s, and she’s wearing a big flannel shirt over a T-shirt. But Kaja watches, and she can tell from the person’s movement, and from her scent, that she’s female. And strong.
The dogs watch as the woman tosses the wood from the truck. She works without stopping, without wiping her brow, without bothering to hitch up her jeans or pull down her shirt. When she’s done, though, she opens the door of the truck, pulls out a paper bag, and goes around to the back of the truck. There, she sits in the sun on the tailgate and eats a sandwich and an apple and drinks from a thermos.
She takes out a cigarette then, and smokes it, and tosses the crust of her sandwich toward the spot where the dogs are hiding.
“Come on out,” she says, and her voice is low and soft. “Come on out, dogs, I see you there.”
Zoe takes a step toward the woman. She can’t see her, but she can smell her, and she likes the smell. It makes her think of home. She takes another step, and now she can smell the sandwich.
She doesn’t like eating animals. She doesn’t like eating trash. She likes eating kibble that comes in a bag. She likes the crusts of sandwiches, and little tastes of meat and cheese, and fresh, cool water in a bowl, and suddenly, her old life comes back to her, and she misses it so much, she begins whining. She creeps toward the woman, and when she gets close enough, the woman offers her a cookie, and Zoe walks right up to her and takes it.
The woman lifts her up, and holds her on her lap and pets her. Kaja, watching, creeps closer, too, and the woman bends and pats her on the head, then rubs her ears, and Kaja lies down beneath the tailgate.
And as the woman continues to caress Zoe, she begins to laugh. Loosey the cat has come out of hiding, too.
“Well, aren’t you all something,” the woman says. “Your own little ‘Incredible Journey,’ eh? Except you’re supposed to be a Siamese,” she says, pointing to Loosey.
“Come on,” she says, “get on in.” She puts Zoe in the now-empty truck bed, and pats it. Kaja looks at her, and at little, blind Zoe, and then she jumps up. The truck smells like wood and dirt and warm sunshine on a cool October day. The woman pats Zoe and then looks at Loosey.
“If you’re with them, then, come along,” she says, and the cat leaps up, light as moonbeams. The woman starts the rattling truck, heads out to the road and turns toward Port.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
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