Huck: The Remarkable True Story of How One Lost Puppy Taught a Family--and a Whole Town--about Hope and Happy Endings (14 page)

Harris was the kind of man who drew people in, rather than turning them away. So when he saw Rich walking toward him, he stretched out his hand before Rich uttered a word.

“Morning,” he said.

“Hi,” Rich responded. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure, sure,” Harris said. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I hope you can help me.” Rich pulled out one of the flyers and somehow sensing Harris’s capacity for appreciating life, gave him the long account of our saga, the one that included cancer.

As it turned out, Harris had had his own brush with children and pets and heartbreak. Some years earlier, his daughter Sara’s Russian Blue cat, Little Lely Bluesparkle Rakov, a completely domesticated feline with no claws, walked out of the house. Sara’s brother, Nicholas, then a newly minted driver, had backed his car into someone else’s, and in the ruckus the cat wandered away.

“It was terrible,” Harris explained. “Sara was away at college. We did just what you are doing, we tried everything. Barbara went to the Humane Society, we posted pictures, we left food out for the cat, and Barbara even created a mailing list for every house in the area.”

Rich asked the question he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. “Did you find the cat?”

“You won’t believe it. After about six or eight weeks, the cat came home. It was pretty amazing. I came driving down the driveway and there she was, eating the food we had been leaving out for her. I’ll bet Barbara would be happy to create a set of labels for you, and you could mail these flyers you have here to homeowners all over the area.”

Buoyed by the kindness of a complete stranger’s unusual offer of help, Rich thanked him profusely. The two men exchanged telephone numbers. Harris also gave Rich Barbara Rakov’s e-mail and work number, so he could be in touch about the mailing list. “I’ll tell my wife the story, and you call her a little later, once she’s had a chance to get to work and start her day.”

Harris and Rich shook hands. Harris turned and headed toward his front door.

As Rich started walking away, he turned back to look at Harris, hoping never to forget the face of this kind man. “Thanks again, thank you so much,” he shouted.

“I’ll bet you find your dog,” Harris shouted back, advising: “Give it some time.”

Back in the street and back in the car, Rich could not remember how to get out of the web of streets and back to Forest Avenue. He wondered if this wasn’t exactly what had happened to Huck—Huck started into the woods and, before he knew it, was so deep in he couldn’t find his way out.

The streets were more deserted now than they had been when Rich set out that morning. Talking with Harris had taken more time than he realized. It was now close to 8:30. For a while he saw no one. He wondered if everyone who was leaving for school or for work had already done so.

That is when he noticed an attractive, petite woman in a brown suede jacket walking a black-and-white Tibetan terrier. Rich pulled the car up alongside the woman, who introduced herself as Lorraine Sassano and her dog as Baxter. Rich asked Lorraine if she had seen a small, red poodle and then told her the story.

“Let me have some of those flyers,” she said. “You have to get the word out fast. I work in Allendale. I’ll put some up for you,” she volunteered. “I’ll also put some up in the office I work in. It’s a doctor’s office, so we get a lot of people in and out who live in the area.”

“That would be great. Thank you so much,” Rich said, and he handed her some flyers.

“Why don’t you try and go to the schools, get a posse of kids together,” Lorraine suggested. “Kids like a challenge. If the schools will put up some of the flyers, I’ll bet some of the kids will come out to help.”

With Kim in mind, Rich thought Lorraine was on to something. Schoolkids probably knew all of the area’s hiding places; they probably knew the woods better than most adults. After all, kids went a lot more places on foot and by bike than adults did.

“That’s a really good idea. I’ll try it,” Rich said.

“There is one other thing you should tell your son to do. Tell him to pray to St. Anthony,” she said. “He’s found a lot of things for me.”

“Thank you, I will,” Rich said.

Lorraine pointed the way back to Forest Avenue.

So many people had been so nice, Rich now felt emboldened, ready to take his campaign one step further. He had decided to start ringing doorbells at houses where it looked like people were home and awake.

Back on Forest Avenue, Rich spotted a few workmen milling around a colonial house with an American flag hanging off the porch. There was a truck in the driveway,
J.H. MYER GENERAL CONTRACTOR
, in neat letters across the side. He headed for the front door and rang the bell. John Myer opened the door and stepped outside, his dog, Lily, a brown-and-white King Charles spaniel, following behind him. “Wait, your dog just got out,” Rich said the minute he saw the dog come through the door untethered.

“She’s okay, she won’t go anywhere,” John said nonchalantly as Lily lay at his feet.

Rich was momentarily envious that John Myer’s dog just lay down on the lawn instead of running away or disappearing into the woods.
Why can’t Huck do that?
he thought to himself. He introduced himself to John and told our story while handing him a flyer, realizing as he did that he was running out of copies.

John was a confident man, not just confident that his dog would stay at his feet, but confident in his own skin, a man with an easy manner, a ready laugh, and a firm handshake. A carpenter by trade, the father of three girls, he invited Rich inside, offering to photocopy the flyer.

Rich followed John into the house, through the kitchen, where beautifully tooled cherrywood cabinets lined the walls and a cooking island stood in the center of the room. Off the kitchen was a den, where John’s handiwork was on display—thick crown moldings, a wooden mantle above the brick fireplace, a window seat. Off the opposite side of the kitchen was John’s home office. Without thinking, John made a fistful of color copies of the flyer and handed them to Rich.

“I’ll keep some myself and put a few on the trees and telephone poles on the street. I’ll also post them in our trucks and ask my men to keep an eye out,” he said to Rich.

“This is really helpful,” Rich said. “I didn’t realize I was starting to run out.”

“Not a problem,” John said. “We’ll look around. Good luck.”

While Rich was out walking the streets, and while Michael slept, I took the local phone book from the desk in our hotel room, grabbed my reporter’s notebook from my bag, and went into the bathroom where I could turn on a light without waking Michael. Doing nothing was torture. I had to start working the phones.

I sat on the edge of the cold, white porcelain tub, balancing the phone book on my lap, and started looking for the names of local newspapers and animal shelters. I found at least three newspapers we could run ads in. I used my cell phone, which I had held on to since Rich had left, and started calling to find out how to go about placing the ad, and what it would cost. We had done such a good job on the flyer that it would be best if we could simply reproduce it in a quarter-page or half-page ad.

My first call was to the
Suburban News
, a small weekly paper covering the towns of Ramsey, Waldwick, and Mahwah I spoke to a woman named Pat who said it was too late; the paper was closing that morning. I pushed, trying to see if there was any give at all in her decision. I told her it was an ad offering a reward for information about a lost dog belonging to a twelve-year-old boy. I told her we were from New York and staying in a local hotel, combing the area in search of the dog. I was prepared to tell her the whole story, but I didn’t have to. She was persuaded and quickly relented. “If you can get a jpeg file to me in two hours, I’ll be able to get it in. But it has to be within two hours.”

“That’s terrific. Thank you so much. I’ll get it to you. Let me take down your e-mail address. And if you hold on, I’ll get my credit card and give you the number.”

I put the phone, my pad, and the phone book down on the floor. I opened the door of the bathroom to go get my credit card and was startled. There stood Michael, completely dressed, asking: “Mom, can we go? Why did you let me sleep so long? Let’s go look for Huck. Where’s Dad?”

“Let me just finish on the phone and I’ll fill you in on what’s going on.”

I gave Pat my credit card number and thanked her again. I had no idea what a jpeg file was, but assumed Rich would know and would also know how to send it to her. I walked out of the bathroom and sat on Michael’s bed. He sat down next to me and leaned his head on my shoulder.

“Dad left very early to try and talk to people on their way to work or to school. We wanted to let you sleep because you’re going to need a lot of energy today. I was waiting for you to wake up before calling Uncle Dave and asking him to come get us and take us to get more signs made. Then we’ll catch up with Dad. Now how about we order you some breakfast while we wait for Uncle Dave?”

Michael wanted to get going but agreed to have some breakfast while we waited for our ride. He seemed much better physically for having had a night’s sleep and was more himself, though his characteristic spark was missing. I called Dave and asked him to come and get us and then called room service and ordered Michael scrambled eggs, chocolate milk, and toast. After it was delivered, Michael sat on the edge of the easy chair, leaning over the breakfast tray on the ottoman in front of him. He didn’t turn on the television looking for
SportsCenter
and baseball news the way he ordinarily would have; he just sat there, forcing himself to eat a bit of breakfast.

While he did I sat at the desk and called the Bergen County Animal Shelter to find out what happened if someone turned in a lost dog. “If a town thinks there is a lost animal, they’ll call us for animal control,” the man who answered the phone said. “We’ll come and pick up the animal and bring the animal here. We hold them for seven days.”

Scared to ask, but going ahead anyway, I said: “And then what happens?”

“We put them up for adoption.”

Relieved, I told him our story and asked his advice. “You can come down and fill out a report and look over the dogs we have here,” he said. “But quite honestly, I don’t remember seeing a dog like that. Why don’t you keep looking and come down in a day or two.”

It seemed like a reasonable suggestion. The journalist in me had to ask the next question, but I was reluctant to do so because of Michael. He was sitting right there, finally rested and finally eating something. I didn’t want to start his day off the wrong way. I didn’t want to upset him, but I knew I had to ask “And what happens if a dog is killed by a car or a wild animal and someone finds the dog’s body?”

“Well, people will usually dispose of the body; you know, someone in the town will usually be called to dispose of it. We won’t hear about it,” he said.

I could not help myself. I wanted to be sure I grasped fully what he was saying. Huck was so much a part of who we now were as a family, his constant love such a source of comfort and joy, I found it impossible to believe that he could be killed and no one would tell us. So I asked again, making sure I was getting it right.

“You have been very helpful, sir,” I said. “Let me just make sure I have this right. Are you saying that if our dog or any pet for that matter were killed by a car or a wolf or a coyote, and someone just disposed of the body, we would have no way of knowing?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“But what if the animal had tags on his collar with identifying information?” I asked.

“Someone might call you or whomever. But that would just be out of the goodness of their heart. There is no routine in place.”

I thanked him and hung up the phone. Mercifully, overhearing the question about finding the dead body of a pet did not seem to upset Michael in the least, or if it did, he didn’t say.

I pulled the phone book onto my lap and started thumbing the pages for numbers of other animal organizations that might prove useful. It was hard to tell from the names whether or not they had anything at all to do with finding lost dogs. There was the Humane Society, the Ramapo Bergen Animal Refuge, Animal Control, the ASPCA. It would take a while to call them all. I jotted down the phone numbers, thinking I’d have a chance to call them one by one, as time permitted throughout the day.