"That was fun," I said as the mailman van pulled into the driveway. I made sure to leave a little sand in the bed before dismounting to remind us of the time I taught myself to surf. "Now that the mailman van is a car-house and we can do anything we set our minds to, where should we go first?"
"Most of California is too hot this time of year," Mom said. She's always finding what's wrong with a place before she'll look for what's right. "We'd have to go somewhere along the coast where it's cooler..." I stayed quiet and waited for her to come around. "I know!"
My tail twitched in anticipation. "Where?! Malibu? Oh! I know! Muscle Beach!"
"How about we go back to that trail from the last day of our trip. The one in Big Sur," Mom said. "It was right on the coast, only a few hours away."
There was no holding my tail in place anymore. It wagged so hard that my ears flapped. "The one with the quesadilla place on the way?"
"That's the one. We can be ready to roll as soon as I finish work on Friday." She tapped the Witch to start planning the route.
"You can't get there from here," the Witch party pooped.
"Oh weird. We drove straight up here on the coast to get home, didn't we?"
"Until we stopped at the quesadilla place," I reminded her. "Don't you remember? It was the best part of the trip."
"So why does it say we have to go inland? This has us going half way to LA and back. What about that gorgeous road down the mountain?"
"We could just do the quesadilla part," I suggested.
"Remember how the peak was set back a little from the coast?" Mom asked, missing the point. "I bet we could come at it from the inland side. Maybe it's shorter that way."
"You mean the hot side?"
She gave me the look that she gives someone when they've made an un-funny joke. "It's the same mountain that touches the ocean, Oscar. There'll be fog on at least half of it. How hot could it be?"
Questions like that are how Mom cheats at arguments. She knows that dogs can't tell the future like she can.
Dogs can't count days of the week, either, but we can smell a Friday when it comes. The afternoon had that Friday flavor when Mom burst through the door.
"Hi! You're home! I missed you so much!" I squealed. "Tell me all about your day. Who did what dumb thing today? Tell me all the reasons why you're smarter than them. Don't leave anything out!"
Mom didn't even bother to close the door behind her. She traded the car keys in her paw for the mailman van keys in the key-bowl and stepped back outside. "Hurry. Get in the van. C'mon." She swatted the air in a hurry motion from the doorstep. "They kept me later than expected at work. We've gotta get a move on if we want to get there before midnight."
"Ooh! Night hiking!" I wagged. "Exciting!"
"Not night hiking, but I'd like to actually get some sleep tonight. I'm wrecked." Mom gave me a look like her being bad at sleeping was my fault somehow.
Dogs can't count to midnight any easier than we can count to Friday, but when we stopped, the air leaking in through the mailman van's windows sure smelled like midnight. Now that the windows were quiet, I could hear the buzzing quietness of it. The blackness was unlike any midnight we have in My Hometown.
We dismounted to stretch our legs and have a potty break before bed time. I found a nice, thirsty patch of dried grass and Mom found herself a bush that was more her style. Afterward, Mom climbed into the back with me and we lay in bed listening to the sound of the night.
At the Stuck House, there are always people making noise. Of course, I need to bark at all of them, even if that means barking from bed. Mom hates to be left out, so she barks at me to be quiet. She's not very good at barking, though, especially right after waking up. Her "barks" are tiny croaks that wouldn't scare the bejesus out of Chicken Little, so I bark twice as loud so she feels like she helped.
Outside the mailman van, there were no neighbors coming home or strangers prowling around, only a night full of bugs. All I could hear out there were the creaking of crickets, the buzzing of flies, and the thwacking of moths against the windows.
With no one to bark at, I started to drift off. But it was hard with Mom thrashing around like that. Every time I started to doze, Mom would flop to the other side and wriggle around like a fish on the floor of a boat.
"Ow. I thought the carpet, a foam sleeping pad, a yoga mat, and the tatami mat wouldn't make it feel like I was sleeping on a corrugated floor," she said, flopping over yet again.
"Feels fine to me," I said. "You're just not used to sleeping on a dog bed."
"The princess and the pea got a bad wrap." She stretched her legs and wiggled her hips. "I think I'm gonna be bruised in the morning."
"Oh good. Wouldn't it be boring if you didn't have anything to complain about?"
"They say sleeping on the floor is good for your back. Good for you, my ass." She bunched up the pillow to make it pillowier and thumped her head into it like a judge's hammer. Now that she'd gotten the last word, she started to simmer down.
Mom had slept better on our trip in the car-house than she ever did in the Stuck House. Maybe there's something about sleeping on wheels that calms her down, sort of like those dogs who prefer to sleep in the coziness of their crates rather than spread out in a big, open bed. Once she finally drifted off, Mom slept harder than she had since we gave the car-house back.
Which is how she messed up our morning.
"Mom! Mom! Quick! Wake up," I nudged. "You slept through the whole morning and now it's hot outside."
"Chill, Spud. It's not even 7am yet."
"How do you know if you haven't even opened your eyes yet?" I looked out the window to show her what I meant. When I looked back to make sure she was looking, she had one eye cracked open. It looked like it hurt, but this was an emergency. "Sun! See? You said it's supposed to be foggy in the morning, but there's sun. It's already burned the fog away."
Mom sat up, scratching the haystack of fur on top of her head. Maybe it was just the smell of dry grass coming through the window that had me thinking of hay.
"Okay, okay. Just let me make some coffee and we'll get a move on before it's too hot to run. You needa go potty?"
When Mom had her running clothes on and a packpack full of water, we stepped out into the hot afternoon sun. I stopped to sniff a bush so Mom could get a head start. The bush smelled more like cactus than seaweed.
When I looked up from its pointy leaves, Mom was hobbling away crookedly, scratching at something under her shorts as she ran. Now that she pointed it out, everything around here scratchy in one way or another. Any plant that wasn't burned dry as a bum had spines or leaves as hard as shells.
"I think there's something wrong with me," Mom said when I caught up. "I must have a nutrient deficiency. Or maybe I'm aging at an accelerated rate. Every time I try to run, I feel weak."
"Ah. I think I know what what's wrong," I said.
"Are you oozing?" I diagnosed. "Is there wet stuff all over your body?"
Mom wiped her forehead and her paw came back dripping. "Yeah."
"And you're sort of weak in the knees?"
"How did you know?"
"It's just as I thought." I nodded expertly. "You're melting. Don't worry, it's not permanent. You'll be fine. Not today, but when it cools down."
She gave me a lopsided look out of the side of one melting eye and turned to the Witch for a second opinion. "I think it's a neurological disorder. I'm gonna check Web MD."
"Suit yourself." I went back to sniffing.
Even in the desert, there are flowers. I knocked bumblebees out of the way with my nose to sniff clusters of teency flowers that grew here and there in every color of the greyn-bow. Other flowers grew like camouflage on bushes to hide their true murderous nature. Some flowers had spines themselves and heads like little explosions.
There was other wildlife, too. I sniffed a cluster of rocks as a fat-furry spider skittered around between them like a rogue mailman stalking Fred Flint-gnome around the town of Bedrock. I saved the day by peeing on him.
As we got higher, the bushes beside the trail started to close in. Spiderwebs hung across the trail like booby traps — invisible, but impossible to ignore when they were in your ears and nose, or stuck to your tongue.
Now that we were a little higher, I could see farther. Just over the next set of hills, a grey clump of fog swallowed the world. It must have been cool in there, but it was impossibly far away, guarded by a whole mountain of dried foxtails.
"Look at this cool... cactus? flower? tree?" Mom waved a hand at a weed with the base of a sea urchin and the neck of an ostrich. A cloud of flies buzzed around it like fresh roadkill."Up-up. Let me get a picture."
I tried to do as she said, but I couldn't concentrate.
"Sit still, Oscar," Mom pleaded. "Just long enough for me to get one picture."
"But — CHOMP — there's a — CHOMP — fly! —CHOMP! Got him! Bugger! Another one! CHOMP!"
"Please?" Mom got down on her knees to beg... or to take the picture.
"Fine," I sat still except for the twitching lid where one fly was trying to crawl into my eyeball and the swatting ear where another tried to climb into my brain.
Mom aimed the Witch and...
"Grargh!" Her elbow flapped and she made a noise in the back of her throat. The Witch went flying into the dust. "Damned bugs."
We kept climbing and melting, swatting and chomping. Neither of us were moving very fast anymore. To keep the cobwebs out of her sweat and the flies out of her ears, Mom ran ahead, waving her arms in front of her like she was under attack by a swarm of invisible bats. I ran in spurts, leapdogging ahead to find shade while I waited for Mom to run by.
The bushes crowded rudely in as we went, tricking us about what was trail and what wasn't. Bushes are at least supposed to make shade, but these scratchy shrubs made less and less of it as we got closer to the sun. I had to push hard into their claws to get the tiniest sliver of relief. The bushes pushed me back into the sun like Mom pushing me out of the comfy spot in bed.
Every time Mom made it far enough ahead for me to quit my sliver of almost-shade, I'd catch up to find her hanging in another bush like a fly in a spider web.
"Gah! Ow! Cheeses," Mom sputtered as she fought the jungle.
I leaned back in my bush and watched the show.
Mom thrashed and swam to hold her place for a desperate moment. Finally, the bush got a good grip and heaved her back onto the maybe-trail.
"Okay, I give up." Mom scratched at her butt to soothe her sore feelings. "This sucks. Let's go back."
"It's too late to go back now," I said. "My legs have melted off. This bush is my Stuck House now."
"There was that brook on the way back. How about we stop there for a little while so you can cool off?"
"I can't go on. Save yourself. I'll just stay here until wintertime."
"I can't believe how hot it is with the fog right there." She twisted a little for a better scratching angle. "It can't be more than a mile or two away."
"You have the worst sense of direction. Only you could aim for the fog and land in the sun."
We oozed down the hill, not even trying to run anymore, but just kind of hurrying. By the time we got to the dusty scratch where there was water earlier that morning, it was dry as a bum. The sun was so hot that it had dried up a whole river in just the time it took us to run a few miles. Or maybe we were lost again. With Mom, you never can tell. I lay down in the hot dust to wait for winter.
"Come on, Spud. Just one more mile and we'll be out of here." Mom took off the packpack and emptied a bottle into my bowl. "Here. Have the rest of the water."
I enjoyed the cool splash on my face as I drank the whole bowl down. When I looked up to ask for more, Mom had her claws so deep in the fleshy fold between her butt and leg that she looked like she might turn inside out.
"That's not how butt-scratching works," I told her. "You're supposed to find someone else to do it."
She looked at the claws on her scratching hand as if it were the first time she'd noticed them. "Hunh. Now that you mention it, my butt has been really itchy all morning. I'm sure it'll be better after a shower. Come on, let's go."
The windows washed the heat from the inside of the mailman van as we started moving. By the time we reached the freeway, it was almost cool again. Mom squirmed in the driving chair, shifting her hips like a sideways boot-scoot.
"That's it. I can't take it anymore," she said when we'd reached nowhere in particular. The mailman van started to click and drift toward the exit.
We rolled off the freeway and the air inside the mailman van filled with the smell of frying. It would have made my tummy grumble if I weren't frying myself.
The mailman van stopped at the back of a line of cars. Each time a car reached the front, it's captain leaned out the window for a moment like they were testing what it was like to drive like a dog. When it didn't work to cool them off, the car rolled away and it was a new car's turn to try.
"Don't bother, Mom," I said when we were next in line. "The car has to be moving for it to cool you off. We're better off on the freeway headed home." The car in front of us rolled away and the mailman van stepped up.
"""" " """" """?" The wall next to us let out a crackling bleat.
I jumped, knocking over the bowl of water Mom had poured for me while we were waiting. "Jeepers! What was that?"
Mom leaned out the window. "Can I have an Oreo McFlurry, a four-piece McNugget, and a plastic fork?"
"""""""" """"""""" """"" """"""""" """""""""" "" """," crackled the wall.
I stood up to give my tail more room to wag. "McRotguts! You really mean it?"
"If you can't sell four of them without the Happy Meal box, just give it to me in a box and hold the fries. Did you hear the part about the fork?"
"And don't forget the prize!" I said, hoping it was an extra McRotgut.
"""""'"" "" $""."". """""" """" "" "" """ """"""," the wall commanded.
The mailman van rolled up to a window and a lady handed Mom a bag and a cup. In return, Mom handed the lady something from her wallet. The perfume of rotgut drifted from the bag as Mom dug through it.
"The fork?" she begged. "No, a spoon is no good. Do you have knives then? Okay, fine! A spork."
When the lady gave Mom her card, she also handed over something else wrapped in plastic. Mom ripped the packet open with the same mailman-like savagery as the last plastic wrapper she met and tore a spoon tipped with tiny claws from inside. She held it between her teeth like a stick before driving away.
"What's in the bag?" I sniffed as the mailman van crawled to the shady side of the building.
"Hang on." Mom peeled one side of her butt from the driving chair and reached the spork up the leg of her shorts. She poked her butt cheek a few times like she was testing a roast to see if it was done and let out a sigh so deep that her eyelid flapped a little.
"What are you waiting for?" I shrieked. "Show me what's in the bag!"
"Remember when I went to the bathroom in those bushes last night?" She flipped the spork around and scraped the blunt end against her skin. "I don't know what poison oak looks like, do you?"
"Who cares?" I nudged the bag with my nose to remind her.
Mom put down the spork only long enough to crack open the box of McRotguts and rip each one in half. "What does poison oak look like?" she asked the Witch while I chewed.
"Haven't you seen this plant before?" the Witch asked. "It's everywhere! Do I need to tell you everything?"
"Ohhhhhhhhh, noooooo!" Mom scratched at the Witch's screen with one hand as she fed me McRotguts with the other. I no longer cared what the Witch had to say about bushes or tushes. There was nothing she could do to ruin this happy meal.
