A Dog's Way Home (18 page)

F
or three days, a cold, steady drizzle washed the tops of Craggy Gardens. Banks of thick fog came and went between thin rain. The fog and the rain wove its way in and out of Tam's dreams. From time to time, thirst drove him from beneath his shelter of shrubs. He limped to the small pool of rainwater cupped in a depression of granite. He drank just enough to cool the fever in his body, then returned to his bed and dreamed.

On the fourth day, a sound woke the dog. Tam lifted his head and peered into the fog. The pain in his face made him whimper. Still, he stared. There was something—a familiar form—just on the edge of the fog. With great effort, Tam crawled from beneath the bushes
and searched for a scent. It was a scent he knew, a scent like a dog but not quite. A scent laced with companionship and safety. It was the scent of his friend, the little coyote.

Tam wagged his dirty, matted tail and whimpered a greeting. His heart filled with joy.

The coyote wagged her beautiful, full tail, her amber eyes shining. She drifted closer, beckoning Tam to follow, then melted into the mist.

Tam followed her across the craggy heath, the coyote always just in sight. When he faltered or stopped, she appeared out of the mist, silent and insubstantial. Tam would rise with a groan and follow. To be with her, and the safety and warmth of her body, would be enough.

In this way, she led him down the mountain. By nightfall, Tam reached the picnic area behind the Craggy Gardens Visitor Center, exhausted. He made a bed inside the protection of a tall tangle of rhododendron, the over-arching branches forming a perfect tunnel. The spirit of the little coyote slipped back into his dreams.

 

The man and his daughter took the Blue Ridge Parkway up to Craggy Gardens every spring as soon as the roads opened. Some years, the laurel and rhododendron blanketed the mountain with a candy-colored display of pink, white, and red. Other years, the man and his daughter
waded through snow. In late summer, he and his daughter and wife filled plastic milk jugs full of blueberries. This year, snow crusted the sides of the recently plowed road. Drifts of snow still pooled in the shaded parts of the forests.

“Don't know how good a hike it's going to be today, Emma,” her father said, straining to see through the fog from the car window.

“Doesn't look like spring made it yet,” the girl said.

They drove slowly up the Parkway in comfortable silence. At last, they pulled into the parking lot of the Craggy Gardens Visitor Center. “Let's go in and see if they have any of that free hot chocolate,” her father said.

“How long's the road been open?” Emma's father asked the ranger behind the counter.

“Not long,” she said. “It was a tough winter up here, and one of the worst Aprils I've ever seen. Didn't think the snow would ever stop. I heard up around Mount Mitchell they may not open the road for a couple more weeks.”

The ranger handed two Styrofoam cups of steaming hot chocolate across the counter.

The man blew across his cup to cool his first sip. “How far up can we drive?”

“It's plowed to Glassmine Falls Overlook, but I wouldn't advise going up there. Judging by what we've had the last three days down here, the road up is probably a sheet of ice.”

Emma's father rested his hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, bug. Guess this is going to be a shorter trip this year. But we can at least have a little picnic before we head back.”

Emma and her father ate their ham sandwiches at a picnic table in a small clearing behind the Visitor Center. A crow watched from a limb above their table. A rabbit huddled beneath a low bush, ears standing at attention, black nose twitching.

“Fog's thick as pea soup,” her father commented.

“Mama's navy bean soup,” Emma added.

The high, faraway voice of a girl awakened Tam. The voice floated through the fog accompanied by the low, deep voice of a man.

Tam lifted his head and listened. He could not see if the voice belonged to his girl. The thick fog kept the wind from carrying scent to him. But memories of gentle hands; high green grass; a special place by a creek; a warm, soft bed; and a bowl of food washed over him. Trembling with effort and hope, he pulled himself to his feet and followed the voices.

“Look, Dad,” Emma said, pointing to the tunnel of rhododendron on the far side of the meadow.

The man squinted through the mist where his daughter pointed. A small creature slipped in and out of the shadows, coming toward them.

“What is it, Dad?” Emma asked.

He leaned forward. As the animal stepped from the tunnel into the weak light of the clearing, he saw a red coat, white chest, and the flick of a white-tipped tail.

The man touched his daughter's arm. “Kind of looks like a fox, doesn't it?”

The girl leaned forward, squinting. “Kind of. But Daddy, it looks so scrawny.”

The animal staggered toward them.

Not taking his eyes off the animal, he said, “You're right. It looks like it's in bad shape.”

Emma broke off a piece of ham from her sandwich. “Maybe I should give it some of my sandwich.”

Tam whimpered and took another step forward.

The man frowned. “No, honey,” he said. “It looks sick. It might be dangerous. I think we better leave.”

“But Daddy—”

“Let's
go
, Emma. We'll tell the ranger about it on the way out. She should know about it, just in case.”

Tam watched the girl leave. He whimpered and tried to follow. He had come so far to find her, and now she was leaving him. This was not at all how it should be. His faithful heart utterly broke.

“It's following us,” the man said. “There's got to be something wrong with it.” He grabbed his half-empty soda can and hurled it. “Get out of here!” he cried.

“Daddy, don't!”

The can glanced off the boulder with a sound like a gunshot. Tam froze. The man yelled again. Memories—of exploding glass, foul-smelling liquid, the roar of a rifle, the shouting man in the old woman's cabin—overwhelmed him. He whirled and ran back into the mist and shadows.

 

Ranger Lora Jean Graham looked up as the man pushed open the door of the visitors center. Jerking his thumb back over his shoulder, he said, “My daughter and I just saw a fox over by the picnic area.”

The ranger smiled. “We see them from time to time. They won't bother you.”

“This one seemed aggressive. And it looked sick. You better trap it or something. It's probably dangerous.”

Lora Jean frowned. In all the years she'd worked up here, she'd never heard of a fox being aggressive. “We've never had a problem with a fox before. You may be right about it being sick or hurt. I'll call Fish and Wildlife as soon as I get a minute.”

She watched out the front windows as the taillights of the man's car disappeared into the fog. She walked the short path behind the Visitor Center to the picnic area. The man and his daughter had left food on the table. She shook her head as she gathered up the garbage. No wonder a fox was coming around.

The sun broke through the mist. The gleam of the
soda can caught the crow's eye. He swooped down from the hemlock, pecked gleefully at the can.

“Geez, what's
that
doing over there?” Ranger Graham muttered.

As she bent to pick up the can, she saw small, canine prints in the wet earth. They looked fairly new. “Could be a fox,” she said to the crow. “About the right size.” Something wet and dark shown on the grass beside the prints. She touched her finger to the grass. Blood.

“W
hoa,” Harley said, letting out a whistle. “I've never seen anything like this.”

He and Cheyenne studied the Tam Map I'd made the night before. I'd gotten a long roll of butcher paper and mapped out the last six months, from the agility trial to now. I mapped out everything we'd done and seen and heard and felt. I mapped out all my fears and hopes—and even the dreams I'd had about Tam. All those things were tied up inside me like crisscrossing animal tracks in the snow. So I laid it all out on a map. It was the biggest map I'd ever drawn.

But I'd been practical too. I wrote in every date and exact place I knew of. I even put in what the weather had
been like, if I knew. It had been hard to be that practical, but I did it for Tam.

“I feel like a bird, way up in the sky, looking down on every little thing that's happening,” Cheyenne said.

Harley clapped his hands together. “Let's get to work,” he said.

He tapped the top corner of the map. “Looks like you lost him on October twenty-fourth.” He typed the date into his computer, then glanced at the date on a real fancy-looking watch. “And today is April thirtieth.” He typed that into the computer too.

Cheyenne and I peered over his shoulder as he typed all this information into his fancy map program. He muttered stuff to himself like, “Gotta overlay the GPS,” and “Calculate speed per elevation gain.”

Finally, he sat back and clicked Print. In seconds, his printer spit out a real live map. In color.

“Here you go,” he said, handing it to me.

I looked at it and shook my head. “What does it say?”

Harley sighed. He took the map back, smoothed it out on the desk. With a red pen, he circled an area at the end of the map. “There,” he said, jabbing at the red circle. “If all my calculations are right, that's where your dog is.”

 

“Craggy Gardens?” Daddy asked for the millionth time, rubbing the back of his neck.

I waved Harley's map in Mama and Daddy's faces again. “That's what Harley figured out, and he's a genius when it comes to maps. He's even going to be a professional mapmaker when he grows up.”

Mama and Daddy exchanged one of those looks.

“And we used a map I made too. It's the best one I've ever made, and y'all are always saying how my maps are practically perfect.”

“But Abby,” Mama said, “the maps are just based on speculation. I agree it does appear he's following the Blue Ridge Parkway, but we don't
know
.”

I wanted to scream, but instead I took a deep breath. “It's not just speculation, Mama. Harley had this fancy mapping program on his computer that probably cost a million dollars. Harley put in the exact coordinates of all the places we know Tam has been. It even calculated how fast Tam might be traveling. And it says Tam's at Craggy Gardens by now.”

Mama sighed.

I turned to Daddy for help. “Daddy, can't we go up there and look? The Craggy Gardens ranger station is the only one in the area. I just know we'll find him. We could leave tomorrow and—”

“That's a long ways up there, sugar, and we've all got a busy week.” He looked at Mama and smiled a goofy kind of smile. “Your mama and I have an important
appointment tomorrow. Maybe by the weekend we can head up there,” he said.

“That's too long to wait!” I cried. “He's trying to get home!”

“Abby,” Mama said, “we can't just run off from school and our jobs on the slim chance a computer's right and Tam's up there.”

“Mama, please,” I begged.

She smoothed my hair back from my face. “I'll tell you what, let's look up the phone number of the Craggy Gardens ranger station on the internet and give them a call. We can let them know to look for him.” She peered into my eyes. “Okay?”

“We can even email them a picture of Tam,” Daddy said, like it was the best idea in the world.

But it wasn't. The only best idea in the world was for me to somehow get to Tam.

T
he next morning, Lora Jean Graham unlocked the Craggy Gardens Visitor Center just as the sun touched the tops of the far ridge. “Looks like it's going to be a nice day,” she said to the crow sitting in the dogwood tree.

Lora Jean filled large pots for coffee and heated water for hot chocolate. Then she called Fish and Wildlife. She doubted the fox the man claimed he saw was dangerous. But it might be sick or hurt, and she had a particular fondness for foxes. Best to trap it and help it.

Within an hour, Percy Woods stomped into the Visitor Center, rubbing his hands together. “Turned off cold again,” he grumbled. “This durned spring can't seem
to make up its mind whether it's coming or going.”

The ranger handed him a cup of steaming coffee.

“Thank you kindly, Lora Jean.”

The ranger smiled. “No problem, Percy. You bring me a trap?”

Percy nodded. “Yes, ma'am. Got the trap and bait out in the truck.”

Lora Jean pulled on her coat. “Finish up your coffee and let's get that trap situated.”

Just as they were about to head out the door, the phone rang. The ranger sighed. A phone call this early could mean only one thing: her supervisor's latest Big Idea.

“Sit tight, Percy. I'll just be a minute.”

But it was not her supervisor calling.

“No, ma'am,” Lora Jean said, frowning. “I sure haven't seen a dog. The weather's still pretty bad up here and, of course, we've only been open a few days.”

“A shelter up in Blowing Rock had him, you say?”

Lora Jean nodded her head as she listened. “With all due respect, ma'am, Blowing Rock is a long ways away and it's very rough terrain between there and here.”

She grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper. “Yes, Mrs. Whistler, I have something to write with.” The ranger scribbled a number down. “I'll watch out for him, ma'am,” she said. “But I really don't think—”

She rolled her eyes at Percy. “Yes, I will. And I'll watch
for the email. Good-bye.”

“Some folks in Nashville lost their dog back in the fall way up on the Virginia end of the Parkway. For some reason they think it may be in this area,” Lora Jean said, heading over to the door.

Percy shook his head. In his opinion, people put too much stock in the intelligence of domesticated dogs. “Nobody's pet dog would make it this far during the winter we've had.”

“That's what I tried to tell her,” Lora Jean said. “But you know how city people are.”

Lora Jean showed Percy where the man claimed to have seen the fox.

“You saw prints?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, pointing to the dirt. “They looked to be about the right size. I also saw some blood and some red hair caught on the bush here.”

Percy set and baited the trap.

He straightened up and eyed the crow sitting in the hemlock tree. “Well, you won't catch a healthy fox, but I reckon you'll catch something. I'll leave you extra bait.”

Percy climbed in his truck. Sleet pattered against the windshield. “You call me if you
do
get a fox. I'll come right over. If you catch one, it'll be sickly. I don't want you messing with it.”

Lora Jean Graham touched two fingers to her ranger's hat. “Yes,
sir
, Mr. Woods!”

 

Tam heard voices. He raised his head and listened, but the voices did not come closer. When they moved away, he laid his head across his paws and slept. The fever in his body wrapped him in such a deep sleep, he did not smell the fresh meat in the trap thirty feet away. He did not hear the angry cry of the raccoon when the door to the trap snapped shut.

 

The ranger wiped the last of the coffee drips off the counter and readied the Visitor Center for closing. She pulled on her coat and hat. “Guess I better check that trap,” she said.

The raccoon spat and hissed at Lora Jean. “Sorry, little guy,” she said. She pulled up on the piece of twine tied to the trap door. “Shoo! Go on home now,” she said. She rebaited and set the trap. The crow chortled from the tree above. “And with my luck, I'll catch a possum next,” the ranger said.

That night, the rhododendron tunnel came alive with the comings and goings of all manner of night creatures. Feet scurried and scuffled within inches of Tam's nose. He did not raise his head to snap at them. Fever and hopelessness dulled his rich brown eyes. Tam was beyond hunger. He was beyond thirst. He was beyond caring. His body and loyal heart that had carried him so far through so much were failing.