A small world

One afternoon while walking along the river I met a woman living at the end of a dusty road. I was searching for my missing dogs. Missing beagles, there I said it. Beagle is just another word for escape artist.

Six beagles had dug under a fence, run off and strayed north along the river. I could tell that much by following their four-toed foot prints. On a river bed the footprints looked like tiny human handprints... pointing me in the right direction.

The same footprints led me to the dusty road where the woman heard me calling her name. She waved me down and asked what had brought me to this deserted place next to the riverbank.

I could tell she was lonely and desperate to see a bird, a stray dog or a human crossing her path. I stopped and chatted with her. I showed her the footprints I was hunting like a hound.

She had no cat, no pets, no friends to visit in this deserted space, and I was not likely to cross her path again. But it was like I had become her link to the Earth. She herself had gone astray.

Six dogs, a handful of desert flowers, a walking stick, a large hat -- I was like a tricky character from an old novel. A novel she hadn't opened yet.

We chatted about beagles, and desert flowers, and walking sticks, and deserted roads, and eventually about her favorite books. And then my favorite author escaped my lips.

I had a paperback novel waiting for me at home... my favorite novel from my favorite author. I was anxious to return to my chair to read the first chapter, the one about Zina. But until I found my beagle named Zina I wouldn't be going home this early in my search.

What are the odds that this woman had heard me calling her name and rushed out the cabin door at the end of the dusty lane in the middle of nowhere? This woman named Zina.

What are the odds that this woman listened to me ramble on about the character named Zina in this paperback novel, without changing her expression until I explained it was the second novel in a series by my favorite author.

As soon as I mentioned the title to the first book in the series, she fully understood. My favorite author was barely famous for the movie that was made about my favorite character -- a police inspector in the cold, icy city of Moscow.

That movie -- about the police inspector -- was her favorite movie of all time. This pale woman named Zina knew nothing about the author, or the novel, or the series of novels, but loved the same things about his writing that I loved.

Out here in the middle of nowhere I had found Zina, as lost as a beagle following a trail; and even in her small isolated world Zina had found someone who understood her favorite thing.