Read Online Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing by Sonny Brewer - Free Book Online

going home from the store that day. I waited until I had locked the door of the bookstore to call Amy. I was behind the wheel of my Jeep, Cormac on the seat beside me. I was nervous and could hardly aim my fingers at the keys on the cell phone.
    “I was just about to phone you,” Amy said, and I swear I heard a note of defeat in her voice. But before I could further catastrophize the moment, Amy said, “Here’s what I got you.” She went down the list of deal points.
    I sat there in broad daylight with tears in my eyes. I blinked and looked over at Cormac. He had curled down on the seat. His eyes were closed. Then my agent tested the strength of my man pill.
    “That’s the good news,” Amy said.
    Everyone knows the phrase that follows: And now for the bad news.
    What in the sweet name of Jesus could that be? In the nanosecond pause, my mind scrolled through a half dozen devastating possibilities. “This is October,” Amy said, “and they want the book by May 1. Can you write the rest of the book sustaining what you’ve got going in those first two hundred pages?” She reminded me that I had a wife and children and Thanksgiving and Christmas and et cetera to consider. “Not to mention a bookstore,” she added. She told me we’d be signing a contract and that it would not be a good thing to miss my first deadline. I interrupted her. “Just tell me where to sign.”
    Yes, yes, yes.
    I put my hand wide-fingered on the head of my Mickins. He opened his eyes and cut them over at me. He knew something was up. He got up on the seat and stared at me, his ears alert. He pushed his face near my own. He licked my cheek, pulled back to see if that helped. I grinned like Alice’s cat and his tail thumped the door panel.

EIGHT
    IT WAS CLEAR that I’d have to stay home to write to meet the deadline for The Poet of Tolstoy Park. I had to figure out what to do about keeping the bookstore open for walk-ins.
    Cormac and I went to Pierre’s baseball card and vintage LP record store to ask for advice. I found him putting away a stack of albums. “Check this out,” he said. “The Beatles’ White Album on the Apple label, 1968. It’s an original copy, with the poster and four photos. Picked it up at the thrift store for a quarter. I might get fifty bucks for it.” I told him that was a good margin of return.
    “So what’s up?” Pierre asked. He patted Cormac on the head, who stayed at his knee only for a moment. He headed off to check out the rest of the record store. “What brings you to my little corner of world trade?”
    I told him I had to figure out how to keep my store open while I knuckled down at home to finish the novel and a rewrite before May. “No problem,” he said, still shuffling records, like this was the easiest thing in the world. “I’ll move into your store and take care of everything.” He told me he’d already been thinking about it. Word had quickly traveled around town about my book deal.
    “What do you mean, you’ll move in?” I asked.
    “Just that,” he said. “My lease expired here a month ago, and I’m on a month-to-month basis with my landlord. I’ve been looking for a different storefront.” Pierre told me he’d move his inventory onto the premises at Over the Transom. “The floor space is big enough, easily,” Pierre said, adding he would sell my books for me in exchange for free rent and use of the phone and fax machine and computer. “I know your books as well as you.”
    I didn’t hesitate. “When can you make the move?”
    “This afternoon,” he said, then added that he could get some high school students to help him start the move tomorrow, and get it done by the weekend. “I can be in business at your place next week.”
    “Pierre, this is great. It works for us both,” I said.
    “You just set your mind on finishing that book,” he said. “This is your chance. Don’t blow it.”
    “Oh, I believe I can do it,” I said. “And, all the better with your