Pepper

Pepper was—sorry, is—our beloved pointer who magically and supersonically slipped her lead a few days ago on a walk down Lakeshire to tear ass after a rogue squirrel and we haven’t seen her since, despite the LOST signs we made on the Mac, with the pictures of her in her brown herringbone Original Dog’s Nest®, and with the iconic paw prints and the broken hearts and the falling tears, and despite the good intentions of all our neighbors. At least twice a day now we get a call from someone claiming to have seen Pepper or to know her whereabouts, only to ask up front about the reward and then leave a phony number. Pepper’s disappearance comes a as a double blow for us after losing this past February our twenty-year old tabby to tainted designer cat food manufactured in China with lethal doses of arsenic and melamine.

Beyond the parking lot of the tennis club are a series of creeks and a wide scalloped ravine covered with dogwoods and loblollies and paved with a carpet of wild grasses, ivy, and Virginia Creeper. The space is earmarked as public land and is used as a major thoroughfare by ruminating, migrating deer and fugitive foxes. This area is also classified as a 100 year flood plain and after a heavy rain the ravine carries the excess water down and away from the club’s clay courts and the Olympic pool and out to the river basin to meet its final destiny.

Anne fumbles with her glasses and stares down into the ravine. Applause shoots up from the tennis courts. Someone has either just aced a serve or returned an unreachable shot, far down the line.

“Honey,” Anne says. “I don’t think that was her.”

We all four stare into the ravine together.

“It was probably just a fox,” I say.

“No,” Kate says. “It was Pepper.”

“That was no Pepper,” Thomas says. He burps a loud, resplendent burp that echoes off the other side of the ravine and the rows of trees there. He stretches again, holding both his arms high above his head. “That was no fox either.”

“What do you know?” Kate says, almost yelling. “You didn’t see anything; you had your nose in that stupid book.”

I put on my hat with the ear flaps and the neck tails.

“There are no gray foxes in this area,” says Thomas. “Never have been; never will be.”

Thomas’s naturalism, however inaccurate, is a holdover from his tenure in Troop 853.

“Do you have any more flyers?” I ask.

“No,” Kate says. “I used them all up at the farmer’s market.”

“We’ll make some more,” Anne says. “When we get home, we will. I bought more ink and paper at Staples.”

We stand there at the edge of the ravine and call Pepper’s name into the woods until we are almost hoarse. Shortly, there is the crashing sound of an animal tearing through the dogwoods down the far side of the ravine, most likely a spooked doe.

“You know what they say,” Thomas says. “If you love something, let it go. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down and kill it.”

Thomas has always been a bright, optimistic child, but lately (almost certainly coincidental to the inception of “Spyware”) it has been necessary to have discussions with him about his (hopefully) feigned cynicism and his unwieldy attempts at cruel wit. We are a peaceful people, us Marcussons, at least this northern Virginia branch, in general moderate to sometimes quite left-leaning, with a aversion for conflict armed or otherwise, a sincere distrust of big business, and a very real aversion to corporate agriculture. We eat red-meat in moderation, shy away from farm-raised fish, and opt for free range and antibiotic-free poultry. It is true, however, that our well-paying jobs, spending habits, and hobbies find us firmly in one particular demographic, when often we wish desperately to be in another. Indeed, on paper at least we sound like and could very well be distasteful people, when in fact we are quite the opposite (at least I like to think so).

Do I believe our choices make us better people? No, our choices only allow us the ability to align ourselves with what we think could be right in the best of all possible worlds and perhaps allow us a good night’s sleep in the process. Regardless, because of the aforementioned traits at times we find ourselves swimming upstream at both St. Aidan’s and at the Quaker school where we enrolled Tom and Kate several years ago. We kill for sustenance (though sometimes with Reynolds for sport also but never for trophies) and our overall position on conflict is clear. Though I have played contact sports, I have never been in a fist fight (though I’ve come close and can still think of a few people I would like to bop on the nose). In our family we do not have arguments we have conferences.

Still we have our moments.

“You suck,” Kate says.

“You won’t be saying that, Blondie, when I’m playing Wembley Stadium.”

We are apparently a hopeful, optimistic people as well.