Free Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing by Sonny Brewer Page B

leash.
    I glimpsed my image in the hall mirror. Odd, I thought, I don’t look like a man who is almost finished with a novel. I looked the same as I did yesterday. I had believed for decades that book writers breathe rarefied air so laced with the bearded sorcerer’s most powerful and sparkliest dust that they become transubstantiated into different beings. I really thought sometimes I had opened a bookstore for proximity to the magic. But the mirror revealed no change. At least I had not gone invisible there like a vampire. These last four months, I’d been so totally absorbed in writing the book that on some days I’d behaved like a creature in a scary movie.
    Like yesterday.
    Diana had walked into my study. I didn’t acknowledge she was there because I was struggling at that moment to fix a transition in the story. Every sentence I wrote was clunky and awkward. “Still working on the ending?” she asked. I looked at the clock on the wall opposite my desk.
    “Try an hour on the same paragraph,” I said, my eyes on the words on the screen. I kept my fingers on the keyboard, and didn’t look at Diana, hoping she’d cut short her visit.
    “Sometimes,” she said, “when you get stuck it’s best to walk away and come back with fresh eyes.” She had stepped over beside me, laying her hand on my shoulder. “Maybe you’d like to put down the writing for an evening of dinner and a movie with the boys and me.”
    I shrugged my shoulder as if to dislodge her hand.
    “You know,” Diana said, moving to the corner of my desk. I looked up at her. “We’ve given you about all the space you could ask for since before Thanksgiving. You’ve hardly joined us at all for anything away from the house. One night wouldn’t—”
    “I’ve got to get this problem worked out now,” I said. “If I take an interruption, I might lose the little bit of progress I’ve made.”
    “An interruption?” Diana asked, her voice tight. “You could call it a break. You could call it family time.” She left me alone in my study. By the time I’d stopped sulking and was ready to apologize, to ask what movies were playing, all the voices in the house had become silent behind the shutting of the front door. I sat for a moment longer, and then noticed Cormac was not in the room with me. I went out front and called him.
    It was dusk, and I waited for him to stroll into the faint light spreading onto the porch and into the yard. I didn’t see him, didn’t hear the jingle of tags on his collar. I called him again, louder. Still no Cormac. I felt a nudge of panic. Three days ago, I’d left him outside in the afternoon, and he’d run across the wire to go exploring. I was buried in the book, and hadn’t even thought of him until I got a call from a neighbor that Cormac was at their house. Now I’d let him run off again. I yelled his name and headed down the steps. He came running full tilt around the corner.
    “You scared me,” I said. His look said he had wondered when I’d miss him. Priorities was a word spoken in my head. Cormac sat, his tail still, and stared up at me. I made a mental note to call the people who sold me the underground fence again. I’d phoned once to complain Cormac was charging out of the yard.
    “There’s a better transmitter and receiver,” Ken had said. We agreed on another two hundred and fifty bucks for a system upgrade. “I guarantee no dog, and only a few elephants will cross this baby,” he had said, his attempt at comedy. But I had not yet heard back from Ken.
    Cormac and I were both oblivious just now to transmitters and receivers. We were headed for a walk. I had his leash in my hand and he was jumping like a mullet on a run. Every time I got his leash and for one reason or another delayed snapping it to his collar, he’d do a kind of bouncing levitation act. I swear I can’t see how he’s bending his legs and bunching his muscles when he does this. He gets happy for a walk and springs into