Chapter 12

The next morning was the big day. It had been over eight weeks since I last saw Sphyncus standing there staring at me in the darkness as I practically ran away with tears in my eyes. Heartbroken, our souls intertwined forever. She didn’t even have a name then, and now she had two. I hoped she remembered me.

Walking into the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, it quickly became obvious that I didn’t know where I was going or what I was supposed to do. It was about 8:00 a.m., an hour before we were told to pick Sphyncus up. I thought that was plenty of time to just wander around and figure things out. I was wrong.

Looking at a map of the terminals, I couldn’t find anything telling me where to go for cargo pick up. Being a typical male, I didn’t want to ask for help. Randi was very much inclined to let me lead the way, this was my quest after all, and like all women, she always enjoys when I set my mind on something that clearly isn’t going to work out and have to eventually ask for help. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was making a mistake and wasting time. We walked all the way to the end of the main concourse to the Lufthansa gate but no one was there. My stomach was starting to get queasy.

“Damn it. Where are we supposed to go?”

“Boy, just ask somebody. We’re running out of time,” Randi said very matter of fact.

“All right, let’s go back to the entrance and get somebody there. How is there a Lufthansa gate but nobody around? I never saw a desk anywhere either.”

I stopped the first employee I saw, an older woman, and asked her what I needed to do and where I needed to go. Just when she was starting to answer me I got a call from an Atlanta number.

“Hello?”

“Is this Mr. Joshua Hines?” a rude female voice asked.

“Yeah.”

“Mr. Hines are you coming to get your dog? We have you scheduled at 9 a.m.”

“Yeah, I’m at the airport. I’ve been walking around a while now looking for Lufthansa cargo. Where are you?”

“The cargo pick-up is at a separate building. You have go there to get some paperwork then come to the Customs and Border Control office before we can turn the dog over.” The voice was sterner and more unwelcoming with every syllable.

“Ok. I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before. Nobody told me how this worked. Where is the cargo warehouse and border control?” I was a little embarrassed. But Border Control? What in the world? This didn’t sound right. Suddenly I was intimidated as hell.

I can only imagine the look of utter confusion I had on my face when I got off the phone. Randi turned to me. “What was that all about?”

“Apparently, we have to go to the warehouse where Sphyncus is to get some paperwork, take that to Customs and Border Control in a different location, and then go back to the same warehouse we just came from to finally pick Sphyncus up. Because that all makes sense. That woman was kind of a bitch. I’m really not looking forward to this.”

“How were we supposed to know that? Where is it?” she asked.

“She gave me the address, let’s just go. I’ll put it in your phone when we get to the car. She was giving me all this business like ‘Mr. Hines are you coming to get your dog’ and it’s like yeah, no shit why do you think I’m here. Ugh.”

It took us about ten minutes to get to the warehouse. The whole thing had a vibe like we were driving around some place we weren’t supposed to be. Roads with no other cars. Buildings with no signs and empty lots, almost like an abandoned movie set where hordes of zombies would come out of a hangar and run at the car at any moment.

When we arrived, there was a little office inside at the front where I checked in and received the papers to take to Border Control. The area I stood in was maybe ten feet by ten feet at most and surrounded by fencing. Sphyncus was in that warehouse somewhere, probably twenty feet away, but I had to keep fooling around with a bunch of papers before I could go in to get her. If I knew where to look I might have been able to see her in the crate. The suspense was killing me. Evidently, we hadn’t jumped through enough hoops yet.

Customs and Border Control wasn’t too far away, just a little backtracking down the slow roads of despair. Throughout this entire rescue operation everything seemed to quickly turn into some sort of mess and this particular episode was falling right in line. I had a feeling the worst was yet to come.

When we walked in, I was immediately uncomfortable. It looked and felt like a doctor’s office or somewhere you go to get drug tested. A very dull, sterile environment. Chairs to the left of the room, a help counter straight ahead and another to the right. Nothing else. I walked up to the counter that was across from the door. An older black woman greeted me.

“Can I help you?” she asked with a very serious look on her face. I immediately suspected this was who had called me.

I put the papers on the counter. “Yes, I’m here to pick up my dog. I just went by the warehouse, I guess it’s the one she’s in. They gave me these to bring to you before they’d release her to me.”

Silence. She picked up the pages and thumbed through them. “Okay, Mr. Hines. Have a seat for just a few minutes.”

We nervously sat down. I was becoming more and more intimidated by the second. Border Control was serious stuff. I thought maybe I was in over my head before, but now I knew that I was. Surely this sort of thing didn’t have to happen every time somebody flew a dog over. I’m not sure how long we sat there before the same dour looking woman returned.

“Mr. Hines?” I hated being called that. Mr. Hines is my dad or a college professor.

“Yes?” I got up and approached the counter again.

“I just need to ask you a few things before I can let you be on your way.”

“Sure thing.”

“What is your address in Atlanta?”

“We don’t live in Atlanta. We live in Kentucky. Bowling Green.”

Somehow her stone face got even harder as she tilted her head forward and looked over her glasses at me. “You don’t live in Atlanta?”

“No,” I answered. “We drove down about four and a half hours from Bowling Green. I was told they couldn’t send my dog to a closer airport so she had to come here.”

“So why does this list your address as being in Atlanta?”

“I have no idea. Can I see what it says?”

She held it up in front of me so I could see it but not hold it. I hadn’t looked at the paperwork on the way over. There wasn’t anything for me to fill out so I didn’t think it necessary, I figured it was just formality type stuff for records. As I looked it over I saw my first sign of trouble. The address made absolutely no sense.

Josh Hines

1960 Stonehenge Ave. Apt 1 Bowling

Atlanta, Georgia

USA

“What in the world?” I muttered to myself. It took me a second to put it together but it made sense to some degree. The final destination for the crate was in Atlanta, there was no reason for Kentucky to be listed. Since there was no physical address that Sphyncus would be going to in Atlanta, my apartment address in Kentucky was listed. It didn’t make any sense to look at, but I wasn’t really sure how it could’ve been done any differently either.

“I think I see what happened here” I told her. “See, that’s my address listed above Atlanta because that’s the address I gave them, where I live in Bowling Green. See how it says Bowling above Atlanta? That doesn’t make any sense. They probably just got confused. Does that make sense to you?”

She stared at me blankly, not at all happy with my explanation. Defying all fashion sense, I was still sporting the mohawk and beard look. Instantly I was full of regret about it. I could see this old woman applying every possible stereotype to me as I looked at her hoping she would just accept my logic regarding the address mix up and let me leave.

“Mr. Hines, can I see your driver’s license?” She was entering interrogation mode. Not good.

“Yeah, here you go,” I said as I pulled it out of my wallet and handed it over.

“What’s this address?”

“Oh, that’s my old address. I haven’t gotten a new license since I moved.” It was my parents’ old address that I had moved out of a couple of years earlier.

“Well, it looks like we have a problem here. Is that your wife there?”

“No, that’s my girlfriend. That’s her address on the papers there. I moved in with her a couple of years ago at that Stonehenge address.”

The woman motioned for Randi to get up and come over to the counter. “Ma’am, can I see your driver’s license? We’ve got a label for this crate that doesn’t match Mr. Hines’ driver’s license and I need to see some sort of proof of where this animal is going.”

Randi pulled her license out of her purse. She stared at it for a couple of seconds looking worried as she handed it over. I looked at her to ask what was wrong, but before I could say anything the security agent addressed us both.

“Miss Hunton, what is this address?” My heart sank. This was not what needed to happen.

Randi replied, “That’s my old address before I moved into our current apartment. I moved in the apartment in 2008 a few months before Josh moved in with me.”

“This address isn’t even the same city,” the woman responded. I could see her getting more and more irritated by the second and every answer we gave was somehow more damning than what came before it.

“Yes, I lived in Munfordville for a year before moving back to Bowling Green. It’s about 40 miles north. I was working in Elizabethtown for a year so I lived in Munfordville as a halfway point to make it easier on us.” Randi was significantly calmer than I was and much more formal in her answers. I could feel myself starting to get a little shaky and that was not going to help matters as it would make me look guilty of something.

“Do either of you have anything proving that you live at this address? Maybe some mail?” I took that question as a positive that she was acknowledging the flub of our Bowling Green address being listed above Atlanta as an actual real address.

Randi was quick to respond, “I think I have some mail in the car, let me go out and check.”

Her car was always a total mess of junk, mail, water bottles, clothes, anything that could just be tossed aside. It frustrated me to no end, but suddenly I was thankful for it because I knew she would have mail in there. I stood at the counter hoping the woman would say something to break the tension but she gave me nothing. Silence. She looked incredibly impatient. It was one of the most awkward times I can recall in my life. The epitome of seriousness on one side of the counter, an idiot with a curly mohawk and beard wearing cut off shorts on the other.

Randi came hurrying back in with a handful of mail, flipping through it as she opened the door and made her way to the counter. “Shit,” is all she said as she sat it down on the counter.

The woman started thumbing through it and let out an agitated sigh. “Now what is this address?” she asked. I didn’t think it possible for her to sound more annoyed, but there was clearly another level beyond what we had been witnessing up to this moment.

I grabbed a few pieces of mail to look over. I should have expected this, but with everything going on it hadn’t crossed my mind. We never got mail delivered to our apartment. It went to my P.O. Box. I had set up a post office box in 2004 to use as a permanent mailing address for the bands I was playing with and eventually I just used it as my primary mailing address. When Randi moved to the apartment, she asked to have her mail sent there so we could just keep everything together.

“That’s my P.O. Box” I said. “I’ve had my mail sent there for years so I would always have something permanent.”

“This won’t do” the woman told us. “We have a problem here. This is already mislabeled and now you can’t show me any proof you actually live at this address. You have shown me three additional addresses. I have four addresses here.” I could only imagine the horror that was written all over my face. What a colossal catastrophe we had created for ourselves simply by not keeping our driver’s licenses up to date.

Everything that everyone had worked so hard to do the last couple of months was crashing down before my eyes. I knew there was nothing I could say that wouldn’t be digging a deeper hole for myself, dragging Randi in with me. I was one hundred percent certain the security agent could smell the fear on me. She had clearly gone through the same training as the drug dogs Border Control used except she didn’t sniff out drugs, she sniffed out fear on punks like me. She was going to kick it up a notch and put the fear of God in me.

"Let’s start from the beginning,” the agent said. “Explain what’s going on with all of these addresses and why the shipping label says the dog is coming to Atlanta."

"Because the dog did come to Atlanta. She isn’t being shipped to Kentucky."

"Why does the label say Atlanta?"

"How would I know that? I didn’t go to Egypt and make the label myself.” I was trying not to be a smart ass, but it’s what I’ve always resorted to when trying to talk my way out of something. The best way to show somebody you’re right is to expose how stupid their points are. “The shelter made it and I’m sure there was some confusion with how our cities and states work."

"What are all of these addresses? Where do you actually live?"

"I live at 1960 Stonehenge Avenue, Apartment 1. Bowling Green, KY. The one that’s mostly written on the papers."

"So why does it say Atlanta?" she asked again. The classic tactic of trying to trip you up by repeating the same questions phrased slightly differently.

"You can see on the label it says 1960 Stonehenge Ave, Apt 1, Bowling above where it says Atlanta. You know that doesn’t make any sense because there isn’t a Bowling Atlanta. Look it up and see if that address exists. The Stonehenge address. I bet there’s not one here. I don’t know how the label ended up like that, but it’s obvious it was meant to say Bowling Green, Kentucky but the Green and Kentucky were left off. How else should it have been labeled? What could have been done differently?" I thought I could make a power play by asking her a question of my own, a question I actually did want an answer to. “How should it have been addressed?”

The woman wasn’t interested in humoring my attempt to turn it around on her. "So tell me how you came across this dog.”

"I was in Cairo. She was on the street in front of our hotel emaciated and being abused. I felt sorry for her so I fed her and got attached to her. I had to do something. It’s a long story but that’s basically it."

"And how long were you in Egypt?"

“Three days.”

I got hit with a look of genuine surprise that quickly transformed to outright suspicion.

"Three days?” she asked, pitching her voice higher.

“Yeah, just three days. It was part of a longer trip we took through Europe and Cairo is where it ended.”

“How many times did you see this dog?”

“I saw her the last two days I was there and I interacted with her twice. The first time I stopped some kids from chasing her and hitting her. She went under a car and I got her out but she was scared and ran off. The next day I fed her and gave her water. That’s when she warmed up to me and I was able to pet her. I was probably with her about an hour that time, I’m not really sure. You don’t know what it’s like over there." I shook my head and looked down as I said that last line. “It’s bad.”

"Why not just get a dog here?"

"I’ve been asked that a lot. My local Humane Society asked me that when I reached out to them for help. The Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, literally almost everyone has asked me that. You just had to be there. I guess I just connected with this dog and had to save her."

The woman blankly stared at me. No empathy at all. "What type of dog is this? Are you planning to breed this dog? Is she spayed?"

"She’s a baladi,” I said. The woman tilted her head slightly. I quickly clarified “a mutt. That’s what they call them over there.”

“Is the dog spayed, Mr. Hines?”

“No, she isn’t spayed. They told me she was too underweight. When they picked her up, they concentrated on getting her healthy and vaccinated but she never put on much weight so they didn’t feel comfortable spaying her. I have no plans to breed this dog or any dog at all ever. I’m going to have her spayed as soon as a vet here okays it." I felt good about that response.

The woman continued to stare at me blankly. "Not spayed," she repeated back to me.

I was starting to get really annoyed by that point. Like probably most people, when I feel like I’m being accused of something but I don’t even know what it is, my patience eventually wears out.

"So, you went to Egypt for three days, saw this dog, and wanted to bring her here. To the United States.” I wasn’t sure if it was a question or just recapping it back at me so I could hear how ridiculous it sounded from the other side.

"Yes,” I said back in my most no-nonsense voice yet. “It’s a different world over there. I’m a big animal person. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 20. There’s a long story to this whole thing. It’s taken almost two months to get her here from when I left."

The woman’s blank stare was unwavering. "So, you’re a big animal person but had to have this dog from another country shipped over here that you only saw a couple of times to a different state than you actually live in rather than just adopting a dog in Kentucky." It came across like she intended it to be her finishing move, to see if I would crack.

"Yes." That’s all I could think to say. A simple yes in agreement. She couldn’t catch me saying something dumb if I started giving one-word answers.

“Who sent the dog over to you?”

Shit. I couldn’t give a one-word answer here. That was a short-lived strategy. “They’re called ESMA. It’s an acronym for Egyptian Society for Mercy to Animals. As far as I know, they’re the only animal shelter in Cairo. The only one I could find.”

“So you what? Called them and they came to your hotel and got the dog?” Somehow even that question came out like an accusation.

“No, no. I didn’t talk to them until after I got home. The time when I was feeding her and able to pet her was right before I left. I didn’t have time to contact anyone because we had to catch our flight. I had to leave the dog there. It was awful. I didn’t know what to do. I made some calls to the Humane Society when I got home and my brother is actually the one that found the ESMA shelter online. There’s a long story to all of that, too.” The woman was not interested in my story. Not even in the slightest. She seemed more displeased with every answer I gave her.

“So you never even met these people that sent the dog over?” Her tone was akin to nails on a chalkboard.

“No, they’ve had her for almost two months. I’ve been in constant contact with them the entire time. I sent them money and everything, they’re trustworthy.”

“They’re trustworthy but you never met them? You don’t actually know them.” Again, I didn’t know if this was a question or a statement meant to make me see the absurdity of my story.

"Not personally, no. Only online. I’ve been talking with them for the last two months."

At that, the woman shifted her weight in a yet another display of annoyance and disbelief that she clearly wanted me to pick up on. "So you don’t know the people that shipped this dog over?"

"No." I had to restrain myself from saying more because it would have been something smart ass and that would have been a mistake. I was back to trying one-word answers.

“And are you sure that this is the same dog?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you know that?”

“You know, at first I was actually skeptical of that myself but they sent me a lot pictures. It’s the same dog. She has some injuries that they described that perfectly matched what I saw. I have no doubt it’s the same dog, as crazy as everything must sound.”

“Have the injuries been taken care of? What types of injuries are we talking about?”

“She has a fracture in her front leg that healed on it’s own. She had a limp when I saw her. They think something might be wrong neurologically, like she’s off balance sometimes. Their vet said he thinks it most likely came from being hit by a car. She has some hair spots missing on her legs. Almost like cigarette burns or something.” I was thinking surely that would soften this woman up some. Who wouldn’t have sympathy for a dog hit by a car with possible cigarette burns on her? A Border Control officer apparently wouldn’t.

“So we have an injured dog that hasn’t been spayed being shipped over by people you’ve never met from another country.”

“Yep.”

The woman almost grunted at my one-word answer. Like she was hoping for more so she could watch me fumble over myself again but was left disappointed. I quickly saw an opportunity to say something unprompted again. “You have all of her paperwork there. You can see she doesn’t have any health concerns or she would have never been allowed on a plane over here in the first place. She’s fully vaccinated and everything.”

Much like the first time I tried to get a leg up on her, the woman again shut me down immediately by not acknowledging what I had said and drastically changing the subject.

"You do realize that if they smuggled something in this dog that it will fall on you?"

“What?” I was honestly shocked by the question.

“If they smuggled something in this dog, whether you know about it or not, that will come down on you.” It came across like she was tired of beating around the bush and finally said what she had been wanting to say the entire time.

"Well, I don’t know of anything being smuggled so it wouldn’t make any sense to do that. They’re an animal shelter. I don’t know of any reason why that would happen."

“Mr. Hines, I don’t care if you know about it or not. People that you have never personally met sent over a live animal from Egypt to the United States. To a state you don’t even live in with an address on the label that you can’t prove you live at. This dog is your responsibility now and if something has been smuggled in it that falls on you.” I swear I almost caught a whiff of brimstone on her breath. She went for broke with a fully developed narrative and threw it right at me.

Now it was my turn to stare back blankly. My mouth was slightly open and I could feel my eyes starting to water. I had no idea what to say. Technically everything she said was true but none of the insinuations had any merit. She was just straight up raking me over the coals and I had nothing left to respond with.

"Mr. Hines, please have a seat. I’m going make some calls." The woman pointed toward the chairs where Randi was sitting and walked away from the counter.

I felt like everything was in slow motion. Randi saw the dismay all over my face. “What happened?” She asked. “I couldn’t hear everything from over here.”

My voice trembled and everything came out in a soft, slow crawl. “I don’t think they’re gonna give her to me.”

“What?!” Randi almost shouted it.

“She asked me all kinds of everything, just grilling me. I told her everything and she didn’t seem satisfied with any of it. Made me feel like a complete fucking idiot. The address thing really fucked this up from the start.” I hung my head down then placed my hands over my temples and rubbed the sides of my head. “I don’t know what to do. If they don’t let us have her I don’t know what they’ll do with her. I don’t think they’d send her back since it cost so much to fly her over here. I don’t know if they’d send her to a shelter here or just put her down or what.”

I felt sick. Trying to retrace everything and figure out how this all went so badly, I kept seeing Sphyncus’ eyes in the darkness staring at me as I turned away from her, reliving that scene over and over again. Everything I had done, everything ESMA and Mona had done, it was all unraveling. A domino effect all starting with a post office box from six years earlier and us being lazy about changing our driver’s licenses. I was shaking in my chair. It was all my fault.

Randi was trying to calm me down, but my mind was flooded with all the possibilities of what might happen next. I had read stories online about things going wrong with animal adoptions. When it was some sort of extreme scenario like this where the dog or cat had nowhere to go and it would take money or effort to place them somewhere. The word “destroyed” was often used when telling what became of the animal. Destroyed. Like an old building being torn down or a car being junked. Destroyed. A harsh word to use when referring to a living creature, but I became fixated on it. I could not let that happen. As powerless as I felt, there was no way Sphyncus was getting shipped off to a high kill shelter in Atlanta to be destroyed. I couldn’t even imagine some other asshole adopting her. She was my dog, goddamn it. We were bonded. This was meant to be. Too much had happened to set this up. Too many obstacles overcome. Too many coincidences to ignore. Too much hope and hard work. How could I go home without my dog? What would I tell Mona? How could I live with myself?

It felt like we sat in those chairs for an eternity. The entire two months leading up to this Border Control nightmare seemed to play out in real time in my head all over again while we were sitting there. I was the most bush-league animal rescuer of all time. I tried to save a dog from the streets only to have it destroyed at an animal shelter because I didn’t update my driver’s license. That would be my big story, the legacy of Sphyncus.

As I sat there with my head in my hands staring at the floor, I heard a voice calling to me. A completely new voice. “Mr. Hines?”

I looked up and turned my head toward the counter of despondency. It wasn’t somebody new, it was the same grumpy old woman gearing up to deliver more bad news. My legs turned to jelly, just like when I had to get up from petting Sphyncus in Cairo. I didn’t want to stand up and face what was coming.

“Mr. Hines?” the woman repeated.

“Yeah?” I stood up and walked over. Something was different about her. She had sort of a chipper demeanor.

“Mr. Hines, you can go pick up your dog now.” Her eyes almost lit up behind her glasses and she smiled at me. “Take this and go back to the warehouse you went to before coming here. They’ll have you sign a release form then escort you to your dog. You’re free to go. Enjoy your new dog.” The woman smiled again, a real honest to goodness smile. Leaving the papers on the counter she turned to walk away.

I stood there for a second watching her walk away, not knowing what to make of everything. I fully expected her to turn around and rush back at me with more interrogation techniques but no, it was over. There was no explanation, just the conclusion of the solo performance of good-cop-bad-cop. Just moments before I had made up my mind that this woman would be my sworn enemy until the end of my days, but now I wanted to jump over the counter and hug her.

Snatching up the papers from the counter as if there was a time limit to do so, I turned to Randi and simply said, “let’s go” while heading straight for the door. Out in the hot Atlanta summer air, I tried to piece together what could have led to our fortune reversing course so drastically.

“What happened?” Randi asked me.

“I don’t know. She just said take these back to that warehouse and they’ll give us Sphyncus. She looked happy about it. Like she was just fucking with me that whole time. I mean, I know it’s her job but that was intense. I was scared to death.”

“Do you think maybe they sent somebody over to look at her after all of the questioning?” Randi asked me. “Like, inspect her to make sure everything was okay since she didn’t like your answers?”

It made sense. It made a lot of sense, actually. I couldn’t have passed a lie detector test with completely honest answers back in that office. It would make sense if they sent somebody over to look at the dog they had so many questions about.

“Yeah, that sounds about right. I guess when they saw how scrawny and pitiful she is there’s no way she could be used for smuggling something or breeding. Shit, she couldn’t even be viewed as some sort of wild fighting dog.” I paused for a second. “I’m just glad that’s over. I never want to do anything like that ever again.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 14