A brush with the spiritual

Freshly made waffles topped with cherries, hot hashbrowns sizzling off the grill, salted and peppered, strong black coffee. All the ingredients of a perfect Saturday morning were in play, when one thing went very, dangerously, wrong.

Skye was missing. She wasn't at our feet looking for handouts, she wasn't playing with the cat, or on her porch, or anywhere in the field. She didn't respond to our whistles and claps, she didn't come bounding out of a neighbor's yard to our increasingly frantic calls.

On this sloping prairie of ours, five acres of garden and overgrown wheat field roll down the far-off bank into thickly wooded forest. In Spring and Fall the elk herd come through. We've seen moose trot past our flower garden and disappear into the brush three times. And twice, coyotes have grabbed our Shelties by their throats and hauled them into the field and tore out their guts there.

When Skye didn't come, we knew what had happened. April, not winter, is when coyotes are hungriest, because they have pups to feed. Mom recalled seeing a coyote far down in the field every morning for the past week.

Tearing off pajama pants and sweatshirts we silently and swiftly dressed for the rain and each of us wordlessly split off in three directions. No longer calling. Hoping to find what was left of her.
I walked first to the end of our road past the neighbor dogs she sometimes visits. No trace.

I came back through our field deeper into the tall grass, pushing against my thighs, the damp smell of decaying organic matter heavy in the air-- last year's leaves, veined on their white leperous bellies, sodden as newspaper.

I caught a glimpse of Mom standing at the edge of our steep bank that falls into forest, and fifty feet beyond her, with a pair of field glasses that saw everything and nothing, my Dad. We all stood in our separate worlds with our backs to the house, now football fields away, gazing into the quiet green canyon. Down there is where the elk, deer, and coyotes come from. Down there.

I followed a deer trail and went slipping down in my blue converse, soaked with the wet grass making the white toes bone-colored.

Past cobwebs over hollows in the mossy earth, sparkling with raindrops, rotting stumps broken apart and scattered red, fallen trees rubbed to a high polish from antlers, the odd hoofprint, masses of decomposing leaves, waxy yellow swampflowers, briars.

Picking trails through the underbrush, stopping every now and again to listen, my head on a swivel, looking for a sign--blood, hair, who knows? All silent. The plopping of water drops off of high branches, evergreens swaying, birdsong.

I don't like burials at sea. There's no evidence. What would we bury? How do we know she's not alive but injured somewhere? Other dogs in the neighborhood have eventually fought free and came limping and bloodied home. She's not a fighter though; I can see her, crouched back on her haunches, hackles raised, lips curled, ears flattened to her head in fear, tail curled up and trembling. A leap, fangs in the throat, and it's over.

There's a skeleton in the path in front of me. Not hers, something dead for weeks, an animal like a badger, or a mole, something with long claws for digging and flap of skin pulled over the skull, the hair gray and coarse, it's little spine picked clean and twisted in a curl.

When God told King Saul to kill the Amalekites, and let not his eye pity them, he didn't. He spared "the best," the fairest of the people, the best of the oxen, cattle, livestock. We may have seen mercy, but on the battlefield near Gilboa where Saul and his son were killed, it was at the hands of an Amalekite mercenary. The lesson being, Don't leave your enemies alive.

Have we allowed the coyotes to live? We sighted in the gun, we baited them, we called the experts, we thought we were doing a pretty good job; but we didn't do our all. We didn't don camoflauge and hunt them thirty days straight with a trained hunting dog, we didn't call the exterminators, when they killed our last two pets we didn't find their dens and ram dynamite down it. We failed.

Two hours later I'm soaked and heading back out of the forest. My socks are gummy with rain inside my shoes, like liquid slippers. My jeans making hollow sucking noises over the grass. Rain mixed with unseasonable April snow drives into my face, behind my glasses. I'm shivering uncontrollably.

In our backyard there are prints. Coyotes, ten feet or less from the dogdoor. Wide paws, long claws. And scat. Left in jeering derision on our porch. Mom sits in a lawnchair, sleet blowing by her sideways, tears quietly streaming down her face. Dad finds more tracks and narrates, sniffing away angry tears:

"Good God, here are the tracks....big ones....look at the size of those claws!...and the pads. Skye doesn't have feet like that. Here's her print: back towards the house and dug in. Here's theirs....hiding by the bank? Moving fast. And here.....God he's big! Heavy! Sunk in. Maybe because he's carrying something....."

I go inside, strip off each muddy, sopping article of clothing, return to my pajamas and lay down. I can't feel much. My feet are numb and I turn on my electric blanket. My hands are so cold I can't bear to touch them, and shove them under a pillow, wrap them in my comforter. I think about the night my Jonesy died and how I cried till I thought I would break for grief. I haven't cried yet over Skye.

Mom is downstairs on the couch and softly singing "When dark trials come and my heart is filled with the weight of doubt I will praise Him still..."

And we hear a bark.

She was locked in the guest room next to mine, and never made a sound. I let her out and she fled down the stairs to Mom and Dad, who fell to their knees in overwhelmed emotion, Mom sobbing uncontrollably as Skye licked her face. "I feel like I'm seeing Lazarus!" Mom cries.

Lazarus. I read that just this morning, before breakfast, before anything happened...had a cup of coffee and randomly opened my Bible to wherever it fell open, and it happened to fall on the story of Lazarus. Coincidence?

Here are the things that make this miraculous....

1. The guest room has been closed up for two weeks. There's no entrance to it from my room either, the doors are locked and we keep them closed unless we need them so the heat goes to the other rooms. How did she get in there?

2. In spite of our calling, whistling, loud and frantic insistent calling, clapping and all manner of cajoling, she never made a sound, not a whimper, not a scratch at the door, for hours.

3. We heard the bark as soon as Mom finished that song--the song that had been given to her when she asked "What are we supposed to learn from this? There must be some higher lesson, we're not just cursed...." Praise Him. And she did, through her tears.

4. Lazarus? I mean, come on! I'm not making this up!

Guard what you treasure. Leave nothing undone that could cause you future grief. Don't leave enemies alive. Have no reason to feel regret.