UNITED STATES—The Master was sleeping yet when Luna’s barking aroused him in the sepia hours of dawn. The Amazon delivery man cometh and goeth. Since our front gate meets the hinge of our neighbor’s front wooden gate, he’d placed our neighbors’ parcel (in an act of kindness) by opening our gate and depositing it.
Acts of kindness can boomerang, of course.
The Master awoke with a ghastly snap, at the sight of a gaping open gate and me, Luna, the pit-bull lab, trotting down the walkway toward the busy boulevard. I might be the death of the Master. There are moments, such as these, when we are dreaming and not dreaming. We can only hope to claw our way out, and of course we cannot.
My human steward, trapped in a leap of fright, ran outdoors, seized by a razor-edged terror, barefoot. Braving the thorny dry bougainvillea stems littering the ground and the threat of glass shards remaining from some previous cocktail misadventure could land him in an emergency room, heaven for forbid. His dearest hope was that unpredictable me, Luna, calm down en route to the city street.
When I sneak off like this, the Master over the deafening thump of his heart, by some miracle of experience seeks to remind himself to avoid the worst-case scenario.
“Luna… Luna!” he called.
He’d been prompted by a Jimmeny Cricket voice, namely that of his groggily awake daughter, who’d rose to the porch for this occasion. Call her name, she advised, she’ll come back.
The Master crouched and called out. I interrupted my bouncy trot and looked back with a gaze more characteristic of DeVille, the Chihuahua terrier, than of Leapin’ Loca Lupe. A beseeching gaze that betokened a thirst for leadership.
“Come here, Luna,” he gestured, albeit frantically.
I milked the moment for all it was worth. Finally, more than halfway down the garden bed, abuzz with bumblebees, Monarch and yellow butterflies, and honeybees, I shook my trail and in the last, quickly vanishing vestiges of night, presaging a real scorcher, lumbered back up the walkway, panting deeply.
I came back. And for this historic act of obedience, the Master awarded me with some peanuts. He sighed a deep sigh from the bowels of earth. I, Luna was back in my enclosure, the Luna hoop firmly in place to prevent the gate from swinging outward and releasing me to freedom.
When considering the alternatives, the Master could only be consoled and heartened. He knew full well the forces that conspired for my safe return home after a brief jailbreak.
The best the Master could do was to keep stoked the awareness how learn how lucky for all my escape had turned out. When love meets loss, one must crowd the moment of postponement with fervent thanks to our lucky stars.
To be continued…
