I heard frantic voices, police sirens, and saw a good number of flashlight beams combing the area under the train. And then I heard even more frantic voices calling my name. I was the subject of an intense manhunt. I said nothing in reply and, instead, wrapped my body alongside that of the dog, holding him much the way I had held him months ago on the patch of oak leaves that had blown along the side of Pug and Vera’s bungalow.

The accident drew a banner headline in the Aurora Beacon-News. People who never heard of Jack Buffmeir attended his funeral. You would have thought Rudolph Valentino had died. To add to the pathos, the engineer insisted that he saw Oyster spending his last moment on earth trying to drag his master to safety and paying with his life.

A few days after the funeral I followed my grandmother out to Jack’s shack. She seldom left the store, and when she did, she had to walk with a cane. She removed a key from her apron pocket and opened the door. There wasn’t much inside. A bed and a dresser. A small kitchen table. There was a pantry filled with canned vegetables and fruit. Jack Buffmeir did not have a refrigerator, but an icebox. There was a bottle of sour buttermilk inside. As I sniffed it, I saw a cushion on the floor, and above it, on the wall, two paint-worn footprints. I had located the site where Jack did his hour-long daily headstands that were meant to defeat the pernicious effects of gravity on the human body.

There was a small closet filled with his dandy clothes, and, on the top, a box containing his birth certificate, a number of medical books, and an honorary discharge from the U.S. Army. In addition to this was a Purple Heart and Jack’s wallet, which contained four dollars. My grandmother handed me the box of papers, and after she locked the door, we walked back to the store together.

The next afternoon my grandmother mailed Jack’s four dollars to his osteopath. A few days later the doctor called her. I could see consternation on my grandmother’s face, and I was shocked at the length of time she spent on the phone—some four or five minutes. When she hung up, I asked her what was going on. She said that Jack Buffmeir didn’t have cancer after all. His liver was fine. The doctor in Chicago said the reason Jack turned yellow was from all the carrots he was eating. He was healthy as a horse.