The Quest for Mal

Mal's favorite place in all the world was the tangled thicket behind Olbrich Park. Behind the old sugar beet factory ruin lay a combination of unofficial walking paths, official piles of Olbrich landscaping material, and overgrown streamside weeds. In the long grasses roosted ducks and a family of turkeys and above the trees hosted countless songbirds and squirrels. Along the banks of Starkweather Creek the able-nosed followed journeys of the local skunk from the night before, or the fox's jaunt from that morning.

Holl checked here first, turning her bike from the paved bike path onto the gravel drive leading back behind the building. On such a beautiful Saturday the dog walkers were out in force. Holl stopped one of them with three leashes clipped to his belt. Three bulldogs, each a different color, scowled up at her as their owner paused.

"Have you seen a dog running around," she asked holding up a picture. The picture, taken when they went camping up north earlier in the summer, showed a mud-brown dog with his mouth drawn up in a grin that displayed everything: teeth, gums, and lolling tongue. "He ran off this morning."

He leaned over the dogs who were taking the stop as opportunity to weave themselves into a leashy, furry knot. "As a matter of fact, I think I have! But it wasn't here." He pointed through the crumbling walls behind them. "I saw a dog like this running through the Atwood Prairie. Maybe...twenty minutes ago?"

Holl's heart fell. Mal had never run off that far before. They never even walked that far when they did go on officially leashed walks around the neighborhood. If that was even Mal... Still, it was a lead.

The Atwood Prairie was just a few minutes' ride from Olbrich and Holl rode slowly, scanning the sides of the path and peering down side streets for any dash of brown that might be Mal returning home. She rode up and down the path that bisected the prairie and community garden four times before a gardener called out to her.

"You lose something, honey?" Holl stopped her bike and turned to see a woman stand up from behind a row of tomato plants, a wide-brimmed hat masking her face.

"Yeah, my dog." Holl showed her the picture.

"Oh sure. Yeah, I saw that dog a little while ago. He ran off that way."

Holl gulped. The woman pointed at the busy Atwood Avenue just a block away. Holl followed the trail to Atwood, but it there the trail ran cold. Nobody had seen him around. She picked a side street and dove into the neighborhoods on her way to the lakeshore where maybe, just maybe, her dog had run off towards on his epic squirrel fest.

It was getting to be lunchtime and the smell of burning charcoal and meat twisted Holl's stomach into a growling beast. She'd stop at a bench by the bear effigy mound and eat the sandwich bouncing around in her front basket. She had just turned onto Lakeland when a a clump of rattling lilies in one of the side yards caught her eye.

Holl gasped as a brown doggish head popped up from the lilies like a surfacing dolphin. Mal was over the fence in Mrs. Weatherbatten's yard, a look of complete puppy idiocy on his face as he tramped through her prized garden.