Even Within A Mere Ninety-Six

At the end of a trying day, I was driving home through the late winter mist, watching the cars near me for the too-frequent signs of someone texting while driving, thinking of the long walk I would take Jinx on after I got home and fed him supper, determined to find a way to control some of his excess energy. My phone rang. My wife was calling.

“I have some sad news,” she said.

“Okay….”

“Helen [our nearest neighbor, from the next farm over] called me. A man came by, and he was looking for his dog. It was Jinx.”

I felt my throat close like a fist. “Oh –”

My wife spoke softly and quickly. “He asked Helen to thank us for taking care of his dog. I wanted to catch you before you got home, because I knew you’d be worried if he wasn’t there.”

And she was right. I would have been worried. I would have been thinking that Jinx had gotten lost, or gotten hit by a careening car on the road or the highway. I was glad to know that he was all right, and that he had been found by someone who knows him better than I, someone whom I hope loves him.

My wife went on to explain that, according to our neighbor, Jinx’s owner had knocked on her door today and described his missing dog. She pointed him to our farm and told him that we’d been taking care of the dog. He told her that Jinx had followed him last Thursday when he left for work, and that the dog must have gotten too far from home and gotten lost. The man lives in a little community several miles away on a gravel road like ours.

When he reclaimed his dog, the man told Helen to thank us for taking care of his pet.

So when I arrived home, I looked for him anyway; how quickly some habits can cut their grooves in a man. I retrieved his food and water dish, the old chew bone of Bonnie’s, and his bedding from the back deck. At one point, something hit the sliding glass door, and Dixee yipped. And just for a moment, I thought He’s come back, But it must have been a bird, because there was no Jinx, no spotted dog with a mischievous smile waiting in the damp grass.

How could I have come to depend on this little dog’s presence so quickly? Even within a mere 96 hours, I came to see him as a part of my daily and nightly routine, to expect his exuberant greetings, to enjoy watching him rove over the countryside in front of me as we walked, to say goodnight to him as he settled down on his bedding on the porch. How quickly it all happened — his arrival at our home, and his leaving it.

But I am grateful that he’s back with his family, and I hope they see in him the slumbering things I noted…the intelligence, the affection, the eagerness to please, the watchfulness, the stiff-legged nobility. I hope he doesn’t wander away from home again, because his absence certainly caused his owner to worry and fret.

Mrs. Orr and I made a promise when Jinx came to us for his short sojourn. We promised that for however long he was with us that we would love him and take care of him. We kept our promise.

So farewell, my squirming, grinning little friend. I never knew your real name, and I probably never will. I wonder what name you gave me in your canine brain…with what moniker did you come to identify me? But you will remain Jinx to me, and dear within my heart, and soft in my memories. God bless you, my little friend with the silly ears and the wrinkled brow and the spotted hind-end. May all your fields be green and full of chaseable birds.

You were and will remain my friend, Jinx.

~ S.K. Orr