Heaven's Coast - Mark Doty [87]
And then one morning early in January Wally’s walking Arden, on the way home from the lush wrack and tumble of the salt marsh. They’re crossing a lawn which is separated from the road by a tall hedge when Arden spies a rabbit, object of wonder and delight, and bolts unstoppably after it, right through the hedge and into the road. Wally, left on the other side, hears the sickening screech of brakes, and then, worse, the sound of a body being struck, and then a cry—pain, confusion, terror? He runs to the road. The car has stopped, but Arden isn’t there; Wally looks up to see him racing away down Commercial Street, toward town, and though Wally runs after him shouting Arden’s name till he thinks his heart will burst, the dog can’t hear him. There’s nothing for him but panic’s imperative, nothing but flight.
The driver of the car and his passenger, two kind and concerned men, drive Wally around the neighborhood, stopping to ask people if they’ve seen a dog. Someone says they thought they saw a black dog racing up Franklin Street—in the direction of the dunes and woods, a refuge, but only if Arden also crossed the town’s busiest streets.
No sign of him.
Soon Wally’s calling me at my office; only one other time, two years later, will a telephone call be so terrifying. There are great huge silences between words, when he cannot still his sobs enough to continue.
“Babe…” Long silence, the intake of Wally’s breath. I’m thinking, My God, what’s happened?
“Arden…got hit…by a…car.”
Slowly, my questions get the rest of the story out. I think it’s probably a good sign that Arden could run, and has; at least he was able to, though we’re both terrified that he’s injured internally, that he’s hiding somewhere, in pain, where we can’t get to him. And I’m frightened by this wild panic in Wally’s voice, which is somehow like nothing I’ve heard before, more desperate, more empty, as if the bottom has fallen out of the world.
It takes me six hours to get home. During this time, Wally’s combed the streets, calling till he’s hoarse. No luck. He’s also called his friend Bobby, who’s driven down from Boston; always wanting to please, to make himself indispensable, Bobby shows up all excited saying he’s found Arden, who’s waiting out in the car. Wally rushes out, but the dog in the front seat is someone else’s black pooch, who was perfectly happy to jump into Bobby’s station wagon. Later, Wally will tell me how his knees buckled when he saw that it wasn’t our dog. Bobby wasn’t a stranger to Arden; what was he thinking? Was he so desperate to help that he’d pick up any black dog? Certainly he could behave thoughtlessly, but I think now he must have picked up on that panic in Wally’s voice, that nearly unbearable note of pain. I would have done anything to salve that, too, but confronting the wrong dog only made Wally’s spirits sink more deeply. Bobby has to go home, just after I return, and I’m glad.
We comb the town again, hoping that a new voice might reach Arden; if he’s hiding, panicked or wounded, can I draw him out? We call the police and the radio station and make signs to post all over town: at the A&P, the post office, the café bulletin board. Arden’s not a dog who’s been out in the world on his own. With Wally or me since he was a puppy, carried home in our laps from the animal shelter, he’s bound to us by deep ties, and though he likes exploring, he’s never evidenced the