You
know how sometimes you have a decision to make and you mull over the pros and
cons and then in a split second, you just go for it?
That’s
what I did. The Mystery of Houdini has been bugging me. A couple of days ago I
was filling up the neglected birdbath at my mom’s house. I figured by now the
birds were probably dehydrated and on bird IVs somewhere. Maybe Houdini would
hear the splash of water and come running around the corner of the house. I
looked over at his yard and noticed his food and water dishes were in the exact
same spot, so that gave me hope he was coming home. (Truthfully, he might be in
the backyard, but it hasn’t been mowed in I don’t know how long, and he’s not
that tall.)
Later
that afternoon, I happened to be outside as the kid next door was coming home
from school. (When did he get back from Arkansas? Did he even go to Arkansas? And where’s my dog?) So
I was debating whether to ask about Houdini. What if he said he left him in
Arkansas? What if he didn’t know where he was? What if he was hit by a car? Was
I going to like what I heard? How weird was this encounter going to be for both
me and the kid?
Talk to him.
Don’t talk to him. Talk to him. Don’t talk to him. Okay, now it’s getting
weird. He’s going in the house and you’ll lose your opportunity. Let it go; the
mystery of Houdini is in the not knowing.
And
so in a split second, I did it. “Hey, where’s your dog been? I haven’t seen him
around the yard.”
And
in a split second, it happened. “We lost him.”
Lost
him? How do you lose a dog that never leaves home? I had visions of him
wandering off at some roadside rest stop on the way to Arkansas. (Seriously, I
have got to let the Arkansas thing go.)
Deeper
in I waded. “Oh no! What happened to him?”
“I
don’t know. He just left and never came back.”
In
that moment, I had to be the grown-up and pull it together. I told the kid I
was sorry to hear that and that he was a good dog. He said “thanks” in a way
that was not sad enough to soothe me. But then again, he’s had a lot more time
to get over this loss. I wanted to scream, “Why didn’t you have a collar and
tags on him? Then he wouldn’t be lost!” But it’s not my dog or my kid or my
responsibility.
Growing
up, I had a cat named Lyndon. (Texas. In the ‘60s.) I think there may have been
other cats pre-Lyndon, but they all met the same fate. My dad would take them
“to the yard.” He took them to run around and catch mice at the construction
company where he worked. I like to think the cats lived a life of bliss,
catching mice and enjoying the love and belly rubs of burly men who operated
heavy machinery for a living. In our house, though (even now), “taking it to
the yard” is a euphemism for crossing into The Great Unknown.
I
have questions. Houdini wouldn’t run away. Hell, he never went farther than our
yard. He never chased cars. Occasionally, he’d trot behind the mailman, but
only for one house and then he came galloping back. The only time he crossed
the street was to follow me to the pool. Plus, the kid didn’t say he got hit by
a car. He didn’t say he ran off. “We lost him.” Houdini was the type of dog who
would probably jump into the first car that offered him a ride, but it’s not
like he was a champion show dog, so I can’t really imagine someone driving by
to dognap him. Had the kid’s mom taken Houdini to The Yard?
We
lost him.
Houdini
is lost.
When
I heard the news, I immediately ran into the house and fired up my computer to
the Facebook page for lost dogs in the area. He’s been missing for awhile now,
so I knew it was unlikely he’d be there, and if someone had found him, he’d be
at the pound by now. I quickly scrolled, stopping at every black dog I saw.
(BTW, a lot of pit bulls get loose in my mom’s neighborhood. This does not make
me want to do long training walks around here.) I stopped myself after a couple
of minutes because this isn’t my dog to find. And what if I did find him? Was I
going to run next door and say, “Hey, I ran inside to scour Facebook and I
found our dog!”?
So
I stopped. Because “we lost him.”
The
kid said a few weeks back that Houdini (well, I think he called him Spider at
the time) was such a homebody that if they left him in Arkansas, he’d just find
his way back here.
Is
that true?
When
a magician dies, there is something called a “broken-wand ceremony,” where the
magician’s wand is broken to signify the end of the magic.
I
suppose I could hold the Houdini equivalent of a broken-wand ceremony. I could
take down the barriers from my mom’s side of the fence. I could remove the
yellow Post-It from the back door (which looks all the more strange given that
there’s no dog there).
I
guess Houdini’s last, and perhaps most impressive trick, is that he turned me
into a dog person.
