July
1994
Ginger
By Antonia Gorman
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I should have known better than to go out in such weather. That winter
had been the worst I’d encountered in my sixteen years driving,
and the unplowed streets were treacherous beyond navigation. If the
snow, which was then falling, was not enough to dissuade me from my
planned trip, then my inability to come to a complete stop at the first
intersection should have sent me around the block and back to my front
door. But I consider myself born into a benevolent universe, protected
from evil by a loving Mother Fate, and so I not only thought nothing
of beginning a three hour trip during a snow storm, but blithely chose
a route over a narrow and winding mountain road.
On the way to the car, Ginger pulled so hard against her leash that
I lost my balance and nearly fell face-first onto the sidewalk I don’t
want to imply she was somehow precognizant of the events that were about
to take place, but that Ginger has always been afraid of cars and only
agrees to enter them after first assuring herself that she has no other
choice. Once forced into an auto, she circles restlessly until finally
settling on the rear, secured in place by the front and back seat. I’m
certain it was this positioning that kept her uninjured; allowing her
to complete the arduous journey awaiting her.
The first hour and a half of the trip was uneventful. While it is true
the car had several small skids and near misses, despite its slow speed,
Mother Fate kept Ginger and me clear of any collisons. So when we crested
the top of High Point, a state park claiming the highest elevation
in
New Jersey, and were thrown by a patch of ice into the lane of an oncoming
truck, I calmly assumed She would see to it that the other driver claimed
for himself the control we lacked and maneuver himself out of our way.
That was the last thought I had until the pain of being extricated
from
the car by emergency workers roused me to consciousness half an hour.
It wasn’t until I was inside the ambulance and on my way to the
hospital that I regained enough presence of mind to ask after Ginger
and to beg somebody to return to the car to see if she was trapped
in
the back seat.
What happened to Ginger at the time of the accident and over the forty-four
hours that passed before my husband was able to reunite with her has
been told to me by my husband, by the driver of the truck that collided
with us, by the nurses at the hospital where I was rushed, and by the
generous people of the town of Port Jervis where Ginger ended her journey.
This is that story.
The impact of the collision shattered the front driver’s side
window of my little Honda Civic, leaving a clear escape route for Ginger,
which she took the moment the vehicle came to a complete stop. Out
of
the window she leapt and ran into the surrounding woods, disappearing
behind a ridge of rocks at the top of an embankment. The driver of
the
truck was more concerned with my seemingly lifeless body than with
a perfectly healthy, though clearly frightened, dog. He made no effort
to chase after Ginger - assuming, no doubt, that she would keep running
and be impossible to catch. Ginger, however, apparently stopped just
beyond the ridge, where she was safe from the activity down below but
where she could still keep an eye on me; for the moment the ambulance
pulled away with me inside, she darted down the hill and began to chase
after it.
The ambulance driver, oblivious to Ginger’s pursuit, increased
his speed until he had disappeared completely from her sight. Ginger
was now alone in an unfamiliar wilderness during a storm more severe
than her coat - thin from a life spent indoors - could easily handle.
Rather than lose courage, Ginger took action and began to sniff along
the road until she picked up the scent of the ambulance.
At first the trail was easy to follow; few cars were foolish enough
to be on the mountain in that weather and the road itself was temporarily
unintersected by side streets. After three or four miles, however,
the
road reached the edge of the town of Port Jervis where the flatter
terrain and the increased population meant that more cars were out.
This made
Ginger’s tracking more difficult. Soon the route was intersected
by a feed from a major highway and here Ginger temporarily lost her
way. Unable to pick up the scent of ambulance tires beneath the more
recent smell of heavy traffic, and forced off her road by the increasingly
frequent use of cars, Ginger decided to turn right and follow the feed
toward the highway. For a quarter mile Ginger searched in vain for some
clue that she was headed in the right direction, then, suspecting she
had made an error in judgement, she turned around and returned to the
intersection where she’d gone wrong. Knowing that behind her lay
a road where she’d no success, and to her left lay the path back
to the mountain, Ginger turned right and began again to search for the
ambulance. Her persistance was rewarded when, several yards away, she
once more picked up the illusive scent. Encouraged by her success and
again facing an uninterrupted stretch of road, Ginger broke into a run,
hoping that her ordeal was near its end. As the hours passed, however,
and as the light began to fail, so did Ginger’s energy.
She had traveled nine and a half miles, managing along the way to avoid
dangerous vehicles and additional wrong turns, and was worn out by the
physical and emotional stress. She had no way of knowing that she was
a mere half mile from her goal, she only knew she was exhausted and
in need of a place where she could sleep: safe from cars, malevolent
strangers, and the cold night air. When she passed a wooded cemetery,
she knew she had found such a place.
In the cemetery were several unpruned evergreen trees. Ginger found
one whose branches hung below the snow, then she tunneled beneath the
branches and in toward the tree’s center. When she came up on
the other side, she found herself inside a cozy den, with a warm pine
needle floor and a thick wall of snow-covered branches keeping the
wind
and the cold at bay. Here she slept comfortably until early the next
morning.
Ginger woke up hungry. It had been thirty-six hours since her last meal
and she decided to look for breakfast before continuing on her journey.
Remembering the smell of food from her travels the day before, Ginger
retraced her steps to a small diner where she sat patiently until the
owners arrived at 5:30 to open shop. Hungry as she was, however, she
was unwilling to be detained, so when the owners of the diner tried
to coax her inside, she bared her teeth and ran back toward the cemetery.
There she was spotted by Jill, whose house overlooked the cemetery.
She promptly called the Port Jervis dog catcher.
I don’t know if Ginger managed to find any food that day, nor
do I know how she managedto avoid the dog catcher; nor, twenty hours
after the accident, how she ferreted out the ambulance scent. But I
do know that somewhere around 11:30 that morning a nurse entered my
room asking, "What type of dog did you say you lost?"
"A golden retriever," I responded.
"Well," she said. "There’s a golden retriever been
sitting outside the emergency room door for the last hour, but it runs
away every time someone comes near it."
Ginger sat outside the emergency room door the rest of that day, growling
and running away every time someone tried to catch her. I wanted the
nurses to take me down to her, but I was in an unstable condition and
they refused to move me. I kept hoping my husband, Patrick, would call
so I could tell him to come to the hospital to get her, but he and
two
of his friends were out trying to follow her trail, never thinking
that she had found me before they had managed to find her. Patrick
did, however,
call the local dog catcher, who told him of Jill’s phone call
earlier that morning. When Patrick drove over to the cemetery, he quickly
spotted Ginger’s tracks in the snow. As he followed her tracks,
whistling and calling her name, Jill overheard him and came over to
see if she could help. It was Jill who suggested that Patrick leave
his scarf tied to the cemetery fence so that Ginger, if she returned
to her den that night, would know he was nearby. This proved a stroke
of genius, and the next morning when Jill looked out her bedroom window
she saw Ginger sitting next to the scarf, patiently awaiting the return
of Patrick.
Jill quickly called first Patrick and then the dog catcher, then she
set off across the street with a bag of dog food under her arm. Ginger
eyed her suspiciously, baring her teeth and growling menacingly when
Jill came too close, but refusing to budge from her spot near Patrick’s
scarf. Jill put a layer of food on top of the snow, and then backed
away. Ginger inched toward the food cautiously, eating it ravenously,
but abandoning it the moment Jill tried to approach her. As she lay
down more food, the dog catcher arrived and the two tried to capture
Ginger by backing her up against the cemetery fence. Ginger was too
fast for them, however, and they soon decided to give up their chase
and await Patrick’s arrival.
Ginger didn’t notice Patrick at first, standing upwind of him
and being completely focussed on the guarding of herself and his scarf
against the encroachments of the two humans. When he called her name,
though, a change went instantly and visibly through her. Every muscle
in her body, taut from hunger, cold, and nerves, suddenly relaxed and
then rebounded in a frenzy of joy and relief. She rushed, jumped, and
licked all exposed parts of Patrick, desperate for physically contact
with a familiar member of her pack. Once she had completely smothered
him in affection, she turned to Jill and the dog catcher allowing them
to pet her, eager to share her happiness with all around her.
Patrick told me that, despite Ginger’s return to her own home,
her anxiety remained high. She refused, he said, to sleep in her customary
spot in the bedroom, choosing instead to stay next to the front door
and asking, during the day, to be allowed to sit in the yard and watch
the cars. She was, he felt, looking for me. It took two weeks for me
to gain discharge from the hospital, but Ginger was waiting for me
when
I pulled into the driveway.
Antonia Gorman is recently completed a Masters
Degree in Religious Studies at New York University. Ginger is enjoying
her usual, restful summer in Pennsylvania.
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