Victor

When the rain let up and the clouds began to part, Mr. Herbert Trumbull opened the door of his small house at 439 Maple Street, made his way down the steps to the puddled walkway, and promptly disappeared with a rather impressive SPLOOSH. Glimmering ripples fled to the edges of what had appeared to be an ordinary rain puddle, and the water’s surface soon settled into glasslike calm. There was no splashing, no gasping. There were no cries for help. Mr. Trumbull was, quite simply, gone.

The only change to the scene, and indeed the only evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened, was the presence of Mr. Trumbull’s black felt bowler hat floating serenely in the middle of the puddle. No one was present to call for help; no one was watching. And, perhaps most sadly of all, no one would wonder where he was, for Mr. Trumbull had lived alone in his little house at 439 Maple Street as long as anyone could remember. He rarely, if ever, was seen entering or leaving, and his neighbors, if asked (which they never were) would have been hard-pressed to even describe him. They would most likely have said (though they never did) that he was “a roundish, nondescript, middle-aged man in a navy blue suit and a black bowler hat.” But in truth, not one of his neighbors thought about him much at all. The fact that he had chosen this day to leave his house in broad daylight might have been thought of as remarkable, had anyone in the vicinity been paying attention. Which they, unsurprisingly, were not.

The only witness to this mild calamity was a small, scruffy dog named Victor who happened to be nosing around in the wet dirt among the rhododendrons at the time of Mr. Trumbull’s unexpected emergence – and even more unexpected submergence. Victor, a terrier mix and an avid explorer of the neighborhood, often spent his days nose to the ground, zig-zagging through the bushes of the homes along Maple Street. He was a well-mannered dog, not wild or feral, and although he tended to avoid adults, he was very friendly and gentle with the neighborhood children.

Still, Victor was one of those dogs who seemed to belong to no one. The Leavitts of 448 Maple had always assumed that he belonged to the Derkins of 452. The Derkins, in turn, had thought Victor was owned by the Huggetts of Spruce Street – for after all, from the right angle, he did bear more than a passing resemblance to the white-mustachioed Mr. Huggett.

Victor, like Mr. Trumbull, had been a fixture on Maple Street for as long as anyone could recall. He sported a collar of brown leather, but he wore no evidence of ownership or address; just a simple metal tag in the shape of a bone that read: “VICTOR,” etched into the silvery metal in all capital letters. And although he appeared to be homeless, to all appearances he was well fed and looked after.

If Victor had been asked (which he never was), he might have expressed his own surprise at having seen Mr. Trumbull that morning, as he could not recall ever having seen him at that time of day. For Mr. Trumbull, like so many businessmen of his type, was an absolute creature of habit: every weekday morning he would wake before dawn, perform his morning ablutions, don his usual navy blue suit with a starched white shirt and conservative tie, and just before leaving, he would pop on his black felt bowler hat. Then he would walk briskly to the subway train that would take him – and so many other businessmen, identically dressed –directly downtown, arriving at his office at precisely 7:15 AM. But today’s appearance, as Victor noted, was at almost mid-morning, and the dog – himself a true creature of habit – found this change of schedule so alarming that it almost overshadowed the man’s subsequent watery demise.

Nonetheless, at the sight of the man going under, Victor had given a brief startled yip, and as the ripples subsided, he ambled cautiously to the edge of the puddle and sniffed. He eyed the black bowler hat bobbing gently on the surface with a mix of curiosity and mistrust. Cocking his head to one side, he barked once more – whether this was directed at the hat or the now-submerged Mr. Trumbull was unclear – but in a few moments he trotted back to the rhododendrons, the morning’s strange events apparently forgotten in the important business of sniffing about.

Victor’s wanderings that morning took him nearly the entire length of Maple Street and back, and by mid-afternoon, with the full sun overhead and the ground drying up and the puddles almost completely gone, he found himself once again among the neatly trimmed rhododendrons outside of 439 Maple Street. He might have trotted right past, had it not been for the incongruous sight of a black felt bowler hat resting on the walkway at the foot of the front steps. Victor stared at the hat, and then gave a single, excited bark. Just at that moment, his ears perked up at a distant high-pitched whistle. With one more glance at the bowler, he scampered off in the direction of the sound.

“Come on boy,” the old woman sang out. Who’s my good boy?”

Victor trotted over and sat at the woman's side as she stroked his head. She had a fresh bowl of water waiting for him, and he drank thirstily. After a few moments of rest at the old woman’s side, he stood and stretched, then ambled over to the wooden doghouse that he called home. It had been a long day, and he was tired, so he stepped into the darkness of the doghouse, turned three times (as was his habit), and with a sigh he plopped down on his favorite chewed-up blanket, surrounded by his few possessions: some dog toys, several well-used old beef bones, and a rather impressive collection of black felt bowler hats.