The Case of the Missing Bark

The night the bark was missing, Rachel had a hard time going to sleep. There was nothing new about that. It happened all the time. Her dad said it was because her brain was too full. All the things she had done at school and all the adventures she had made up walking home were still jumbled together inside her head when she got into bed each night.

She had discovered the barks in the first place because her dad said that counting sheep helped some people go to sleep. But when Rachel tried that, her math homework or the seashells from her science project kept blotting out the sheep. So instead, she started counting the dogs she heard calling to each other across the night. There were always the same five dogs, and they always barked in the same order, as if they had made a deal with one another.

Rachel knew one of the dogs—Bonzo, the black cocker spaniel that lived across the street. His muffled bark came first, followed by the louder bark of a dog to the south, and then several small yaps to the west. Next was the deep woof of a dog she was willing to bet was a Saint Bernard, and last of all—so faint that she had to strain her ears to hear it—came the deep baying of a hound that must have lived at least a mile to the east. Then they started all over again.

Counting the dogs worked so well that she was often asleep before she got to twenty. Her father had even made her a tape recording of the barks to take with her on overnights. Its yips and yaps and bays put her right to sleep, even when she was in a bed that wasn’t her own.

On the night the bark was missing, Rachel thought maybe she hadn’t been paying attention. But when the barks came a second time, the last one wasn’t there. The hound was missing. When she told her dad the next morning, he said, “That hound’s just out wandering. He’ll be back in place tonight.”

Dad was right. That night the hound was back in place, but he was in the wrong place. Now his bark was coming from the west, out near the onion fields on the edge of town. Her dad said, “Don’t lose sleep over it.” But she did, that night and the next one, too.

“Maybe he’s moved,” her father said the third morning.

“But he sounds sad to me,” Rachel replied. If he’s moved, he’s not happy about it.

The next day when Rachel stopped at the library, she spotted a sign on the bulletin board. “MISSING DOG!” was written at the top. In the middle was a photograph of a black hound dog, grinning at the camera. Below the picture was a phone number and a message: “Chester has been missing for three days. His home misses him! If you’ve seen Chester, please call. REWARD!”

Rachel copied down the phone number and hurried home. “It’s about your dog,” Rachel said when she phoned.

“Chester!” said a woman’s voice. “Tell me you’ve seen Chester!”

“Well, I haven’t exactly seen him,” Rachel said. “But I think I’ve heard him.”

She explained why she thought that the missing bark might be Chester’s. “You say the bark was from the west last night?” the woman said. “May I come and listen with you tonight?”

That night Rachel, Rachel’s dad, and Mavis, a tall woman wearing a baseball cap, sat on Rachel’s porch listening for the barks. When they heard the hound who might be Chester, they got into Mavis’s car and drove slowly toward the sound. But when the bark grew fainter and then stopped, they lost the trail.

The next night Mavis was back, and Rachel had a plan. The three of them waited in the car until the barks started. Then they headed west again. But this time when Chester stopped, Rachel turned on her recording and held the tape machine out of the car window. As they drove, she let the first four barks play at full volume. Then she stopped the tape to see if Chester would take his turn. He did, and this time his baying was much closer to them.

They drove slowly in the direction of Chester’s howling. The whole night smelled of onions.

The only other sound was the swish of sprinklers in some of the fields. When they heard Chester bark again, they quickly stopped the car and set off on foot between the muddy rows of onions, following the sound.

At the far edge of the field they found a ramshackle old shed. When Mavis called Chester’s name, they could hear him inside the shed, whining and scratching at the wooden boards.

Rachel’s dad searched with the flashlight until he found Chester’s wet black nose pushing under a loose board. “Here’s where he got in,” he said. “But then the board wouldn’t swing the opposite way from inside, and he couldn’t get out.” Rachel’s father pushed in the board, and Chester wriggled out into Mavis’s arms, his tongue and tail greeting her wildly.

That night Rachel had trouble going to sleep because her brain was full of Chester and Mavis and the smell of onions. It was also full of the reward money Mavis had given to her, along with a picture of the grinning Chester.

Rachel listened as the five dogs began to greet one another again. First came Bonzo, then the dog from the south, then the yaps to the west, and next the woof of the Saint Bernard. Last of all she heard Chester, back in the right place, baying into the night in an especially happy voice. Rachel thought he sounded as if he were having trouble going to sleep, too.