Here’s the set-up:
It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. It was. At least it was quite dark. My mother was visiting. She and James and I were sitting around the kitchen table. James and I had spent the day in Vancouver at his graduation from the CMA. After a long day listening to speeches by approximately 250 shiny, freshly-minted new accountants we were fatigued.
10:00 p.m.
Mom says goodnight. She heads off to the studio, which is where guest sleep at our house. It is also where Frank sleeps. It’s sort of like a very elaborate, two-story dog house/writing workshop.
10:02 p.m.
Mother comes rushing into the house.
“He’s gone!” she says.
“Who?” we ask.
“Frank!”
We immediately begin running around like under-medicated epileptics doing bad meth at a disco that is on fire. James runs to look on the deck. Mom looks under the couch. (In the house. Into which Frank is not allowed.) I run to the studio and rip back the curtain in the shower. Maybe he’s hiding in the bed! I tear up the sheets. I throw open the cupboard. Nothing.
Cries of “Frank!” “Scally!” sound from every direction.
Still nothing.
Frank is gone.
10:07 p.m.
Mother worriedly stands at the front door as James and I get on our shoes and begin to search the yard and neighborhood.
Where can he be? He’s never run away before. He’s one of those dogs who is never out of our sight. If he’s not in the studio, he’s on the deck. He wouldn’t have gone and left all his squeaky toys behind! It’s like the beginning of a Without a Trace episode. Somebody call Anthony LaPaglia and Poppy Montgomery!
10:15 p.m.
Frank is not in the yard. He is not crouching in the patch of St. John’s wort where he likes to “do his business”. James has a flashlight and is walking along the road, looking down the steep bank toward the lake. I am walking the other side of the road, wearing my headlamp.
“Frank!” “Frank!” we cry.
Mother is patrolling the deck.
“Frank!” “Frank!” she cries.
Nothing.
10:30 p.m.
James and I arrive back at the house. We have an argument.
“I told you not to let him out by himself.”
“But he’s always been okay before.”
“Yes, but there’s always the first time.”
“This is not the time for I told you so.”
“Yes, but I told you so.”
We are interrupted by mother.
“I’m so sorry I let him out,” she says.
“It wasn’t your fault. I told you it was okay.”
“I’m going to go drive around,” says James.
“I’m going to call all the local vets and the pound.”
12:30 a.m.
James has driven through every street in the North End. I have called every vet in Nanaimo. No one has received a white and brown dog.
Finally, I get through to the person in charge of the pound.
“What happens to dogs who get hit?” I ask, dreading the answer will be that they get stuffed into garbage bags and dumped in secret locations in New Jersey.
“People bring them to us,” says the kind-voiced man.
“But he doesn’t wander. Ever.”
“It’s getting close to Halloween. People are setting off firecrackers. Lots of dogs can’t handle that. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
2:00 a.m.
After another couple of fights (we are becoming like that couple in the Lovely Bones, only much, much more into blaming)we accept that we can’t do anything else. I design 30 missing dog posters to put up in the morning. Mom and I burst into tears every time we see Frank’s abandoned squeakies lying on the floor of the studio.
Mother goes for a sleepless night in the studio. I lay on the couch where I can see Frank’s mat on the deck outside. James goes for another drive around the neighborhood. I fall asleep, only to be woken by dreams of Frank lying broken in the ditch or being tortured by proto-serial killers with horrible pathologies.
5:45 a.m.
I get dressed. It’s still black as dead dogs in garbage bags outside, but I can’t stay still anymore.
5:50 a.m.
As I’m putting my coat on I am startled by a cry. It’s mom.
“He’s back!”
Doors fly open. James emerges from the bedroom, fully dressed. I fly out the door. Mom greets us on the deck between the studio and the house. At her side is a rather embarrassed-looking Frank.
He is not wet. Or dirty. And does not appear to have been experimented upon.
Mother is in tears. I am in tears. James wouldn’t like me to say he was in tears so I won’t.
We all scold Frank and give him many biscuits.
“Where have you been, you little turd?”
“Do you know what you put us through tonight?”
Gradually, we calm down and all go back to bed, leaving the posters of Scally on the table. Best we can tell, he heard a firecracker and hid so far under the deck that we couldn’t see him with the flashlight.
He has lost privileges, is grounded, no longer allowed on the deck without supervision and cannot go to the washroom without a pass. But he’s home. Thank god.
