Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing Read Online Free PDF

get.
    “You know how it goes when you wade through a litter of puppies?” Mr. Bennett asked. “How one little guy’s tail is wagging just for you? You step back. He follows. You take a side step, he follows.”
    “I could see that,” I said.
    “Don’t look now, but there’s a reddish-brown pup who’s been shadowing you since you stepped out of that vehicle of yours…” I was surprised when I looked at the ground near my feet and saw the puppy there.
    “Now, that’s what you call bonding, Mr. Brewer. I don’t often see it that pure and natural. No, sir, not many times.”
    The adoption seemed fated. I dropped down on my knees and patted my thighs. The puppy was a ball of fur the color of Ann-Margret’s hair in those movies where it was between red and auburn. He crawled immediately into my lap. Diana got the attention of our sons. She pointed to me snuggling with the nipping, wiggling pup. John Luke and Dylan glanced quickly at their playmates, and, realizing they had not singled out one puppy from the others, ran to join me.
    “Want me to get your checkbook, Sonny?” Diana leaned against the fender of the Jeep, her arms crossed, a smile for me.
    “Oh, I have to pay? I thought maybe—ah…”
    “That I’d buy lunch? Sure,” Diana said.
    “Better take what you can get there,” Mr. Bennett said, his eyes twinkling. “A dog’ll sometimes rob your bank, you know.”
    “Okay,” I said. “My checkbook’s in the glove compartment. I’ve got a pen.” I picked up the little dog. His mother came to investigate. She decided I made the grade, I guess, because she smiled up at me as I held her boy, then walked away to join her other children. The puppy had longish legs that dangled below my forearm. He turned his head and began chewing on my whiskers. His breath was hard, like a cigar smoker’s, but his honey-brown eyes fended off criticism. Maybe he was practicing his chewing technique for the furniture at our place, or, he could be hungry. I knew that I was ready for a nice lunch, and asked, “Do I get to pick where we eat?”
    “Anywhere at all,” Diana said.
    I put the pup down and wrote the check, while Mr. Bennett filled out the AKC forms for his registration. I had not even thought about the pedigree, said I didn’t think I’d file the papers, that it wasn’t important to me. Mr. Bennett suggested otherwise, made the point that it helped track the dog if another owner should acquire “this fellow.”
    “No, sir. Not a chance. No one else acquires this fellow but the welcoming ground at the end of his long life.”
    “It’s your choice, of course, to register him or not. And I do hope it works out that you two never part company,” Mr. Bennett said.
    “Look,” I said. “Can there be any doubt we are made for each other?” The little dog had sat when I put him down and hadn’t moved since. He just stared up at me with his pink tongue hanging out.
    On our ride home, Diana motioned with her head toward the backseat, where the boys and the puppy were all in a tangle with each other, laughing and squealing.
    “Yes,” I said, a few miles later, “this dog, excuse me—this fellow—is one of the family. He’s a keeper no matter what.” At a stop sign, before taking off again, I turned and looked at the puppy in the back seat. John Luke and Dylan were now sedate and looking out their side windows. The young Golden, maybe twenty pounds at three months, was stretched out between the two boys, completely still, with his muzzle down on the seat but his eyes wide open. He looked straight at me, and I was so captured in his gaze that I didn’t see the car pull up behind me at the stop sign. The driver in the car behind me blew his horn, and I got underway again.
    “You know,” I said, “we talked about naming him King. Be we can’t just settle for King. That could be any old king. But Cormac as in Cormac Mac Art, who ruled County Meath in the third century and was ‘wise, learned,