The Old Lab Who Came Back Home

Around the first of November a small padded envelope came from Phoenix, addressed to Moose Halvorsen, in care of the farm.

Inside was something wrapped in tissue paper and a note that just said, Not until Thanksgiving. Please, Mom.

I did not unwrap the tissue paper. I put it in the drawer by the stove where we keep the matches and the church directory, and every time I opened that drawer for the next three weeks I wanted to, and I didn’t.

Megan had booked a ticket home for Thanksgiving. Just her. Ryan’s company would not give him the days, and she said that was fine, that this was something she wanted to do by herself anyway. She was flying into Sioux Falls the Tuesday night before.

We drove down to get her together, Dale and Moose and me, in the pickup.

It was cold that night, the first real cold of the year, with little dry flakes of snow blowing sideways across the interstate in the headlights and the heater going full blast.

Moose rode on the seat between us. Dale had folded a quilt down for him.

He slept most of the way with his head on Dale’s knee, and Dale drove one-handed with his other hand on the dog’s neck.

The airport in Sioux Falls is small, and you can pull right up to the doors. Dale stopped at the curb with the flashers on.

The man directing traffic started over to wave us along, and then he saw the old Lab sitting up in the cab, and he looked at us, and he just nodded and walked back the other way.

I could not sit still, so I got out and stood by the truck in the cold with my hands in my vest pockets.

Dale let the window down a few inches so Moose could get his nose out. The automatic doors kept opening and closing for other people’s families.

Then they opened, and it was her. She had her carry-on and a puffy coat I did not recognize, a Phoenix coat, much too thin for South Dakota.

She was looking up and down the curb for our truck, and her face was tight, like she was bracing herself for something.

Moose saw her first. Before she saw us, before I could even lift my hand.

His nose came out through that gap in the window and stopped. His whole body went still as a post.

Then he made a sound I had never heard him make in twelve years. It was not a bark.

It was high and thin and it came from somewhere deep down in him, almost like a child crying, and it went on and on.

Megan’s head turned. She saw the truck. She saw his gray face at the window. She let go of her bag right there on the sidewalk and left it standing.

Dale had the door open before she got to us. He did not let Moose jump down.

He lifted him out of the cab himself, all eighty pounds, the way you would lift a calf out of a ditch, and set him on the curb as gently as he could.

Moose could not run anymore. But he went to her as fast as his hips would carry him, swinging his whole back end, crying that high sound, and she went down on her knees on that cold wet concrete in her thin Phoenix coat and he walked straight into her arms.