Towards, Then Past, Then Wondering

I was lost in thought as I drove home this evening, my mind splintered by the day’s frustrations and the mountains before me, bearded as they were with February mist, my almost-formed thoughts bunching up and then firing off in some of the directions to which they’re prone, then looping back and catching hold of the lullaby voice of Father Chad Ripperger, whose podcast was playing while the tires spun the rain back behind me and the wipers kept a cadence like 45 pairs of boot heels digging into the surface of the grinder beneath that unrainy sky so many years ago.

The road sweeps down through a mountain gap towards a state highway, and that’s when I saw him, his coat in contrast to the battleship gray of the road and the air and the rain. He was yellow and white, maybe forty pounds, and mostly lab, and did he have some boxer in him…or some hound? A red collar ringed his neck. The two most important things I noticed were the fact that he was running straight towards me, and the fact that he was running straight towards me in the center of the highway, in my lane, and he was not slowing down.

His tongue was out and his ears were up and he was switching that tail from side to side, hard enough that if he’d been standing still, his rump would have been right at home on the sawdust dance floor of a cantina in Juarez on a Friday night. As soon as I saw him and clocked his trajectory, I slowed way down. He moved just a bit towards the center line, towards my passenger side. That’s when I noticed the fellow in the car in the lane next to me and just a bit behind. He was on his phone and he was not slowing down.

I flashed back to several years ago when I braked to allow a happy Golden Retriever trot across the road in front of me. The woman behind me in her minivan was impatient, honked her horn, cussed me, and zoomed around on my right. She hit the Retriever square on. I saw her throw her hands to her face in horror as she stomped her brake pedal. Then I saw her drive away and leave the broken dog writhing and dying in the road. There was nothing I could do.

So when I saw that the guy next to me had not seen the dog arrowing right at us from 12 o’clock, I laid on the horn in a series of staccato blasts and jerked my wheel just a bit towards him, veering and yawing enough to catch his eye. It worked. I pointed up ahead, and the man saw the dog and slowed down.

I was going maybe 5 mph when the dog reached me. He had an open, friendly face, and he stepped aside just enough to let me past him, and then he stood expectantly, as if waiting for me to stop and open the door for him.

And right there, in a wedge of time that took less than a sneeze or a sob or a school bell, it all went through my mind: should I pick him up? He’s wearing a collar — where’s his home? If I take him, how will I find his owner if he doesn’t have a tag? He’s going to ruin my back seat, wet as he is. Look how pitiful he looks…I can’t leave him here on this road…he’ll die for sure. What if I get him home and he freaks out or runs away? What if I drive away and look in my rear-view and see someone run over him? Why does a truck have to be barreling down on me from the rear just at this moment?

So I came to a full stop and hit the emergency flashers, hoping the truck approaching from behind saw me. He did; I saw him change lanes just as I opened the door. But either my door or something else scared the dog, and he ran across the other lane of traffic, directly at an SUV speeding in the opposite direction. I held my breath and watched as the dog made it to the opposite shoulder and ran into the weedy embankment there. I shut my door and eased forward, still watching. The yellow and white dog was gone from my sight.

And now I sit, full of supper and comforted by my wife’s presence and the drumming of rain on the metal roof, but I am thinking of the dog, wondering if he made it home, wondering if someone even now is missing him, looking for him, choked with grief by his absence?

Back around it comes, that tormenting question about prayer and how it works. And here I go again, praying in a way that I do not understand, for a little warm being I do not know, hoping for answers I will not see, and trying to hold it all together on a night when my thoughts are still just as scattered as they were when the pretty little dog came racing towards me on a wet road.

Be safe and warm and dry and peaceful and well, little friend. May God and His angels make it so for you tonight.

~ S.K. Orr