Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing by Sonny Brewer Read Free Book Online Page A

business day without a customer. I went to my stool behind the counter and woke up the Toshiba’s screen: one internet order for a $35 used book, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son by William Alexander Percy, a good 1941 hardcover 4th printing with a clean dustjacket. I looked at Cormac, asleep on a small rug. The hair on his shoulders was a little darker red than the rest and getting curly. He was a handsome, laid-back doggins.
    “You make it look so easy, Mick.”
    He didn’t even blink. “If I get a book published, pal,” I said, “I’ll sure thank you for your part.” I went to find the Percy book, wondering at the little hope stirring in my head, hope that I’d have to make good on my promise to Cormac.
    I walked, pacing slowly between rows of shelves sagging only just perceptibly with their quiet books. Cormac was at my heels, his pink tongue hanging from the side of his mouth, his eyes bright with expectation that we were going on some adventure, tail swishing.
    I walked back to the counter, then behind it. Cormac stopped on the customer side and stared at me. His tail stopped. He pulled his tongue into his mouth and cocked his head. His eyes signaled confusion, as if, “Okay, so what are we looking for?” He sat, continued to look at me. I looked at him.
    “I’m thinking about something.”
    For about the fifth time that day, as the day passed, I strolled the floor of my empty bookstore.
    “That’s it,” I said. “I’ve made up my mind.”
    I looked at the big grandfather clock in the corner near the front door. “It’s five o’clock and time to go home, boy.” I snapped the leash to Cormac’s collar before stepping onto the sidewalk. I still couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t dash in front of a car coming down the street. He was a good heeler ninety percent of the time; the other ten percent he’d sprint without warning and ignore all commands, even the call of his name. These times a dog or cat or a person had one hundred percent of his attention. Until we got that behavior modified, the leash was the only safe option for going from the bookstore to the Jeep. I let Cormac jump into the passenger’s seat, rolled down his window halfway, and closed his door. I went around and slid behind the wheel.
    “Well, today we walked several hundred miles in a bookstore,” I told Cormac. “But it paid off.” I looked over at him. He was on full alert, his ears perked up as he watched a cat ease out from between some bushes and onto the sidewalk. “I made up my mind to send out the manuscript myself,” I said. Cormac put his head out the window and barked. His tail swatted me on the face. I read somewhere that cats sleep about sixteen hours a day, two-thirds of their lives. This big red dog of mine, I believed, would spend about half his life wagging his tail. If Cormac wore T-shirts, I think his favorite would read: Wag more, bark less.
    “Maybe I should’ve brushed you, Cormac.” He sat beside me on the passenger seat, perked up, watching the world speed past the window. The clouds hung heavy and low and it looked like it might rain before lunch. “Sostie is coming to see us at the bookstore today.”
    Betty Fulton, a friend and author from Jackson, Mississippi, was to drop by for a visit this morning as she toured the South for her latest book, Love and Divorce on the Rocks. Her husband, my long-time friend, Scott Cannon, and their black and white Collie mix, Sostie, would be coming, too.
    Betty had popped in for a visit about three years earlier while in town to do a signing at Page and Palette, another bookstore just up the street. Scott, who loitered in Over the Transom spinning tales of the wealth and power available to us both if we could only get in on the ground floor of the disposable bikini market. When Betty, tall and glamorous, walked in, Scott instantly hit on her. I learned later from Scott, confirmed by Betty, that he asked her that day if she’d marry