The Dog That Saved Stewart Coolidge (7 page)

She reached down, softly saying, “Hello, Hubert, so glad to meet you.”

Hubert snorked and sniffed and grinned and pushed his nose into the palm of her hand and then stood on his back legs so he could get a better view of Lisa's face. Lisa leaned in closer.

“You're a famous dog, Hubert. Or infamous, I guess. At least in Wellsboro, that is. I suppose fame is a relative thing.”

Hubert licked at her and caught the tip of her nose. She wrinkled her face and replied, “Yuck,” but in a genial, good-natured way.

“Sorry, Lisa. I can get him away from you.”

“Stewart, we had dogs when I grew up. My granny always had at least one. They sometimes lick people. It's okay. Really.”

“You sure? I never had a dog, so I don't know.”

She began to scratch behind Hubert's ears and he closed his eyes, obviously relishing the careful, delicate, feminine attention.

“Stewart, I'm sure. And now that I'm up here, and we both have been with Hubert, I bet we are both guilty of harboring a fugitive. Or aiding and abetting. Or being an accomplice. Something. I am sure that they can throw the book at us now. You ready to go to the hoosegow for this pooch?”

Stewart looked to Hubert, who opened his eyes wide, staring back at him.

“I guess.”

Lisa nodded.

“Good. That makes two of us, then. Or three, counting Hubert.”

“Do you think they allow dogs in prison?” Stewart asked, and his question sounded very serious. Lisa laughed in reply.

I really like it when she laughs. Like the sound of a waterfall in the spring.

Hubert leaned against Lisa's leg as she petted him. He also closed his eyes, obviously enjoying the attention.

“You are such a sweetie, Hubert. I could tell you were a sweetie from the picture Stewart took. Just an angel of a dog.”

Every word brought Hubert closer and snuggier to Lisa. It appeared that he considered climbing into her lap as well, but it was a much smaller lap than Stewart's, so he remained on the floor.

“Oh, yes, why I'm here,” Lisa said, her words bright and full of cheer. She brushed a strand of blonde hair from her face.

Stewart wondered if she had fixed it differently today, or styled it differently. He was not sure which word was more correct. It always looked pretty to him, her hair, but today it looked prettier—and a little different.

I don't think I'm supposed to ask a woman about her hair. Or is that her clothes? Or tell them that they look nice. Right? Isn't that harassment or something? But she does look nice today.

“I forgot to tell you when I first came in.”

Well, sure. She has not made a habit of dropping by. No one has, I guess.

“Anyhow, the editor at the
Gazette
is running my second story on Hubert. I interviewed Mr. Arden.”

“Was he nice? I don't think I've ever seen him outside the store.”

Lisa offered a small almost-smile in reply.

“He was nice enough. Very business-like. I went to his office.”

“When? I didn't see you come.”

“It was late in the afternoon on Friday. I knew you wouldn't be at work. And I didn't want to make a big deal about—I wasn't sure the
Gazette
was actually going to publish the next installment. So…you know…I didn't want to let everyone know, until I was sure.”

“Well, sure, that makes sense.”

Lisa wrinkled her nose.

“His office is tiny. I thought a store manager would have a better office. It's the size of a closet.”

“Yeah, it is pretty small.”

“And it smells…like lettuce. Does he keep lettuce up there?”

Stewart shrugged.

“I don't think so. But the whole store sometimes smells like a vegetable, if you ask me. Especially when some of the produce is getting close to being out of date.”

Lisa wrinkled her nose again.

She looks pretty when she does that.

“Hubert stole another bone this morning,” Stewart declared. Hubert sort of glared at him, with a dog's sort of glare, appearing a little offended, as if Stewart had just called him an importune name.

“Sorry, Hubert. I just wanted Lisa to know,” Stewart said, and Hubert's expression softened.

“I know,” Lisa replied. “It was all over the coffee shop in the afternoon. Seems like this dog crime wave has got the entire town talking.”

“I know. A lot of customers make a point of asking if the dog bandit came in yet.”

Lisa beamed.

“My story got a lot of attention.”

“It should. It was funny.”

“A lot of attention.”

Lisa looked as if she was ready to burst.

“You'll never guess who noticed it. Never in a million years.”

Stewart pursed his mouth, trying to appear deep in thought, even though he had no real idea who might be interested in the story and why Lisa was excited. It was a subject he had simply not considered.

“I don't know. I give. Tell me.”

Lisa sat up straight.

“KDKA.”

“Who?”

“KDKA. The big TV station in Pittsburgh! I think they have a radio station, too, but this TV producer called me. They say they want to come out and do a feature on the bandit dog. And they want to talk to me! Stewart! This is huge. KDKA. That's a real TV station. Not some cable show, I mean, like two guys in a van with an iPhone for a camera.”

Stewart hoped his smile appeared genuine and authentic.

But right after he heard the word “Pittsburgh,” he immediately developed a scenario in which Lisa was offered a job and she left Wellsboro forever, leaving him—and Hubert—forever, alone, bagging groceries at the Tops Market until he was in his forties and then almost dead, or something equally as bad.

“That's great, Lisa. Really great.”

But I don't mean it. Not at all. I don't like being left alone. And I don't want it to happen again.

B
ARGAIN
B
ILL
was in a great mood—the best mood he had been in for months and months, even better than when he sold ten cars in one day.

“Ten cars! All by myself. Can you believe it?”

His wife had smiled that day when he'd entered the house, then nodded and gone back to doing her word search puzzle. She was never far from a book of word search puzzles. Their house was home to perhaps twenty different word search puzzle books, each one with a pencil stuck between the pages of the last completed puzzle. In the garage, there were seven plastic bins, the large size, filled with completed word search puzzle books. She refused to let her husband discard any of them.

“They're not hurting you. Just let them be. It's my hobby, not yours.”

But none of that mattered just now.

His lost-dog ruse had worked. People were stopping in at the car lot, asking him about the dog—Rover, he now called it, “my sweet Rover”—and how he got the dog from that rescue shelter in Lewisburg, the one that just closed down, and how it ran off during a spring thunderstorm and how he was nearly heartbroken until he saw the posters in town and how he would do anything to get him back.

“The five-hundred-dollar discount is hardly enough—but it is all that I can do. I am just a struggling businessman who lost his most favorite companion.”

His wife simply nodded as he laid out his somewhat complicated scenario of the lost dog and the rescue shelter, and the trip to Lewisburg, and all the rest, but she had assured him, several times, that she would back up his story, no matter how outlandish she might have considered it to be.

“It's not a big enough lie for me to lose sleep over,” she told him. “It's not like you embezzled or held back taxes. It's a dog. A dog no one wants.”

This morning, the assistant pastor at the Good Hope Church stopped by to ask about the dog, but Bargain Bill came
this close
to getting him into a 2009 Mazda hatchback with low miles and new tires.

It's working. People are stopping in for no reason other than to ask about the mutt.

After the first blush of interest and calls and condolences, Bargain Bill had returned to the Insta-Print store and had Sam make a huge version of his original
WANTED
poster, and this time he had him print it on canvas, nearly six feet high and over four feet wide. He tied one end to the telephone pole outside his office and the other side he fastened to a faded red Ram pickup truck that had been on the lot for more than three months. The sign luffed in the breeze, flapping in and out, like it was alive and breathing.

That'll get people to slow down.

He stood back and waved at a car that honked as it went by.

And maybe it'll help get this truck sold.

Bargain Bill sauntered back to his office, full of high spirits and great expectations, knowing that this day would obviously be “a super-duper” day.

The good feeling almost made him wish that the dog really belonged to him.

Ralph Arden hiked up his work-grade khaki trousers with the built-in, absolutely permanent crease, and continued down Maple Street. The breeze was stout this morning, but warm. Strands of black hair were loosened from his carefully combed hair, hiding the bald spot that everyone could see, regardless of his mastery of comb and spray.

Regardless, Ralph felt almost pleasant this morning. Three cars slowed as they passed, the drivers shouting out to him questions about the dog and whether he had any leads and what the reward was up to today.

Well, there was that car filled with young hoodlum types who shouted out “Hey, Mr. Wiggins! Cujo goin' to get you, Mr. Wiggins!” as they passed, but they were, of course, hoodlums, or hooligans, who deserved to be ignored, which he did, with mature, adult condescension.

And who is Mr. Wiggins?

But even a packet of ruffians could not disrupt his mood this day.

Ralph Arden, of Meadville, originally, had been store manager of the Tops Market in Wellsboro for over six years now, and he'd never once felt as if he were considered a part of the proper Wellsboro society. He was not sure if there really was much to proper Wellsboro society—but whatever there was, he felt estranged from it.

They must have parties and dinners and go on picnics,but I'm never invited. It's like a tight clique that keeps out outsiders, like me. I know I'm just the manager of the second biggest grocery store in Tioga County, and I suppose that doesn't mean anything to the locals here—but it should. I'm all but invisible to the movers and shakers in town.

But now, and for the last few weeks, he felt visible—very and completely visible. People stopped by his table as he had dinner at the Wellsboro Diner, and that had never once happened before—never, ever in six years.

Like the people in the cars this morning, they asked about the dog and wouldn't it be prudent to station a guard by the dog food aisle (too expensive) or perhaps move the rawhide bones to a higher shelf (goes counter to corporate's approved shelf plan-o-gram).

And no one—not even that snobby Wilson Demerrit who was picked to manage the new store in Erie—could get away with making changes in the plan-o-gram without corporate approval, and no one gets corporate approval.

His new friends stopped and chatted and commiserated and smiled and shook his hand and introduced their wives and/or children to him. It was like—being accepted.

And Ralph really liked the feeling.

Part of him, the part he would never reveal to corporate, ever, that hidden part of him, sort of almost hoped that the dog would not get caught, but he could never, never, ever tell a soul. The longer the dog was on the loose, the longer Mr. Ralph Arden would be accepted.

No, he had to be a good employee of the Tops chain and make sure that shoplifting and thievery were punished to the full extent of the law.

As he walked this morning, tilting his face into the sun, he wondered what sort of ultimate punishment a dog might receive, a dog who had already stolen more than twenty-five dollars' worth of merchandise.

That might make it a felony, right? Maybe it has to be more than that, but still…criminal activity. And habitual. That makes it really serious.

Tucked away in a nondescript, steel-sided building edging toward the city limits, the offices of the
Wellsboro Gazette
were just a part of the publishing empire of Tioga Publishing—a rather small part of a small empire and that suited the current editor, David Grback, just fine.

“Yes, you spell it G-r-back, with no vowel in between the
G
and the
r
. Yes, I know it looks odd, but that‘s how they spelled it in the ‘old country.'”

He had been tempted a thousand times to change it, either legally or just by changing it in his professional life, but he had never gotten around to doing so.

“It does make me memorable,” he'd once explained to a former girlfriend, who had refused to leave New York City when David apparently lost his mind and resigned from the
New York Times
to take a job in a town that no one had ever heard of for a salary that the custodian of the Times Building would have dismissed as insulting.

After ten years of living in a fourth-floor New York City walk-up, with limited hot water and no views, with homeless people—aggressive, panhandling homeless people—living on each corner of his block, he had decided he'd had enough.

Wellsboro needed an editor and he needed out of New York.

And for the last seven years he had covered everything from city council meetings in which elected officials spent six hours deciding on paint colors for the new water hydrants in town, to high school sports, which he more or less liked, mostly because at that point the student-athletes were just that, both students and athletes and not jaded by culture or contracts or hordes of obsequious, sycophantic followers.

As an editor, David Grback had a pedantic obsession with his word-a-day calendar. He had three different copies in his office, each with a different level of difficulty.

As often as he could, he inserted one of the words into his weekly column—that is, unless the president of the company barked from his office that “no one outside of Daniel Webster would know that word. And maybe not even him.”

David considered it a game that they both enjoyed. He was wrong, of course, but the company president knew his highly trained editor was working for the proverbial peanuts, so he never announced his great annoyance at the word games, at least not in public.

But over the last three weeks, David's quest for a quiet life in the valleys of central Pennsylvania had been mazed (January 17 on the real smart calendar), or befuddled or flummoxed.

That was when the story of the “dog bandit” first ran. David considered it a semi-cute human-interest story that might generate a chuckle or two, but was amazed—and bemused—at the interest it generated. The reporter, or rather the not-paid-at-the-time and now underpaid freelance contributor of the piece, a Miss Lisa Goodly, a mere slip of a girl but very bright and very energetic, had sparked something in town—something approaching a community-wide dialogue.

“Is the dog a criminal?”

“Is the dog a runaway?'

“You can't hold the dog accountable—he's just hungry.”

“Can we blame the dog for the ills of society?”

Actually, the discourse never rose to that level, but people are talking about it. And I sense two camps: one that wouldn't mind catching the mutt for the rewards, and the other who would harbor the fugitive canine to keep it safe from the “man” and the evil authorities.

On his cluttered desk, he spread out an ad that Bargain Bill had dropped off the night before—a full half-page ad in the main section of the paper, and at full price. The ad featured a picture of the dog, taken from the
Gazette
files, with the same sort of wording as his poster but going into more detail about how heartbroken he and his wife were over the disappearance of their precious Rover.

The cynic in David, honed after nearly two decades of dealing with public officials who tended to treat the truth as if it were a dangerous narcotic and it would be prudent never to let the public have a taste, saw through Bargain Bill's subterfuge in a second.

It's not his dog. He just wants free publicity,
he thought.

But David could not prove his intuition, so Bargain Bill's story, pathetic as it was, became part of the bigger story.

And his new reporting star, Ms. Goodly, covered it all, with a keen eye and the wisdom, or cynicism, of a much more seasoned reporter.

She'll make a good reporter one day…unless she marries one of the hillbillies in town and has a passel of kids and spends the rest of her life in a trailer drinking diet Mountain Dew and eating store-brand Cheetos.

While David loved the low stress of being an editor on the
Gazette
, he had no love lost for some of the more countrified aspects of small-town, bucolic life.

And today, well, today was proving to be one of those perplexing days that could nonplus the most seasoned, jaded newspaperperson.

Only moments after he arrived at the office, his phone warbled and the phone number displayed was odd, with more digits than necessary. To his stupefaction, the voice on the other end, in a garbled, time-distorted manner, announced itself as an “editor of the
Daily Mail
in England, the country and not the New England in your eastern states.”

Already David did not like this person, but he heard him out.

The man wanted information and pictures of the bandit dog. Somehow he had picked up the story. David knew from the paper's Web site that such features were its stock-in-trade, but he himself never expected to be on their radar.

And even though he was pretty sure he did not like English people, especially English people in the press, he agreed to send copy and pictures that morning.