When I caught up to the stick, I lay down on the ground and got to work chewing it to splinters. Some dogs catch the stick and bring it back to their companion right away, without even pausing to rip it up. What a waste of a game! As if the stick would get away if they gave it a head start.
My technique is much more sensible. I run only as fast as I feel like and catch the stick when it's already on the ground, where it won’t put up a fight. Mom will still tug for it when she catches up, but I have time to chew it up nicely before she takes her turn.
Sometimes she taunts me with exciting things besides sticks, too. But if it’s not worth chewing, it’s not worth chasing. Mom can fetch those toys herself.
This time, Mom didn’t even try to take the stick away. “C’mon, Oscar,” she said as she power-walked past me without even slowing. In her thought bubble, where only I could hear, she added, “I don’t want to have to keep finding an excuse not to talk to that guy all day.”
“Say no more.” I left my frayed stick on the ground and ran back into the lead.
Now that I’d gotten to know the Turtle a little better, I was sure he wasn’t really dangerous, but Mom could become dangerous if she had to concentrate on being polite for too long. Too bad she’s such a slow walker with only those two stubby legs to toddle on. It took dangerous concentration for her to stay ahead of other hikers, too. Especially long, strong turtle-hikers, who are known for their speed.
We rushed toward the next bend in the trail as fast as Mom could without looking like she was running. If we could get out of the Turtle’s sight, he might be less motivated to chase.
When we made the turn, I expected Mom to relax and smile more. Instead of loosening up gracefully, she sort of flopped. Her shoulders sagged so much that her head rolled back and her arms flapped limply at her sides. A disgusted noise came from her throat. “So soon? Come on!”
I followed her eyes. A mound of white dirt sparkled in a patch of sun. “The rumors were true!” I squealed. “It’s here! It’s here!”
I forgot all about Mom and took a running leap into the glowing pile. I dug a hole, spraying a blizzard of twinkling grains into the air behind me. I rolled in it, grinding my ears into its cool surface and listening for the whoosh my tail made as it wagged a fan-shaped hole. When I was done waving my legs in the air, I rolled to the other side and spread them so I could kiss it tenderly while its cool flakes scratched my belly. By the time Mom caught up, I was on my back again, trying to reach my tongue around my nose to lick the white dirt next to my forehead.
“Oh cheese. We’ll never be able to outpace a tall person through this,” Mom whined. “It must be a foot deep already.” She stomped onto the mound like she was looking for a fight. Her shoes shooshed like the sound of a wet diaper as she tromped away.
We stomped through white dirt as tall as Mom’s knees. Every step was half-planned and half-reaction, since I never knew how deep my leg would sink into the white dirt. Sometimes my leg stayed put as if I were standing on normal ground, sometimes the white dirt pushed my legs out from under me or slurped up entire legs like spaghetti.
Behind me, Mom staggered through the white dirt much less gracefully and with more growling. She looked over her shoulder and the sloshing sound of her steps sped up.
Behind her, the Turtle was closing in. He was already so close that I could see his smile gleaming through his beard. Soon enough, he would be close enough to open it and start another conversation. I wondered if Mom would offer him more freeze-dried liver to leave us alone. And if he’d share it with me like the last time.
“I thought the snowpack wouldn’t be so bad this far down the mountain,” a deep voice boomed behind me. When I turned, the Turtle was nearly beside, Mom.
Mom sighed and slowed for a step to let him catch up. He slowed all his steps after that to let her keep up.
“Sorry,” Mom didn’t-really-apologize. “I have to use the restroom. I’ve been drinking coffee all morning and... you know... it’s not like I can just step into the trees.” She tilted her head toward the woods, where tree trunks were buried up to their bottom branches in even more white dirt than the road-trail was. “I was hoping there was a restroom at the trailhead. That’s why I’m in such a hurry.”
It was only a half-lie.
“Don’t worry. Even after the road ends, the trail is supposed to be pretty easy until you get to the switchbacks,” he said, as if Mom could be satisfied with turning back at the hardest part.
“Oh yeah, I read about those,” Mom said. “Some guy bragged for two paragraphs about how he had to carry his girlfriend piggyback. All that told me was...” she paused to pick her words.
“... that it’s really steep?” the Turtle asked.
“... that people are full of dog doo,” Mom finished.
The Turtle stuck to Mom like a dingleberry as we tromped uphill. I ran ahead as he jabbered about mapps just like Mom does, and Mom tried to say things to show that she was at least as smart as he was. When my companions fell behind, I rolled in the white dirt to make the Turtle jealous of how I could roll on my back without getting stuck that way.
“I really do have to go to the bathroom,” Mom finally admitted. She looked around the open mountainside, more to show how there was nowhere to hide than to search for a hiding place. She looked from the half-buried woods on one side to the empty air on the other, where there was no ground at all to squat on. She squinted at the white stripe ahead where a road might appear someday and turned to the Turtle with one of those looks that’s supposed to tell a story. “There really aren’t many places to duck into privacy, are there?”
“I read that there was a nice bathroom at the trailhead.” He looked at his witch, then back up the trail. “It’s not far. About a quarter mile.”
Mom sighed and started another story about another one of the Witch’s wicked tricks.
I pranced, the Turtle tromped, and Mom staggered through the white dirt until the next turn in the road. We came around the bend to a gap in the mountain.
The road nestled into a hollow between the hump of mountain we’d just climbed and the one we were about to climb. A view of the other side of the mountains opened before us. The path curled up against the open air and went to farther. Standing proudly in the center of the view like the statue in a city square stood the most majestic potty tardis I’d ever seen.
It wasn’t one of the Dr-Who-style tardises that you find at parks and beaches that smell like poo and blue. This tardis would have looked more at home in outer space or at the bottom of the sea than it did here on this mountainside. It was round, streamlined, and had a chimney sticking out the top like an antenna. It rose out of the white dirt like litter thrown from the window of an alien spaceship. The white dirt climbed almost up to the door handle like eager fans trying to get closer to greatness.
We all stopped to enjoy the view.
“I’d have to dig all afternoon to get that door open,” Mom sighed.
The Turtle looked from the half-buried potty around the clearing, and toward the hollow spot between the trees that led up the next section of mountain. His face did something like realization. “This seems like a good time for lunch,” he said, dropping his pack into the white dirt beside his feet.
“I’d join you,” Mom lied, “but someone stole my lunch. Long story. I think we’ll just keep hiking." Mom turned toward the hollow spot in the trees where the trail must be. “It was nice to meet you...”
I hung back, watching the Turtle take pictures of nothing. He aimed his witch at the empty air between the potty and the next mountain. When he looked at the screen to check his work, I asked, “Aren’t your pictures missing someone?”
Before he could answer, Mom called me to c’mere. I left him to his boring pictures and dove into the shady mystery of the trail. After a brief pause behind the first big tree Mom found, we hiked on.
Now that we were in the trees on the shady side of the mountain, there were no bare patches for Mom to avoid the white dirt. She staggered and slipped behind me as I ran out of gymnastics moves to show off.
“I’m worried about those switchbacks.” Mom’s foot smeared through the white dirt for a moment before stopping. “Snow can be deceptive. Sometimes it makes it hard to see where the trail really is.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. You don’t need to carry me piggyback. I won’t get lost.”
“I was more worried about falling. Snow is slippery. And it can make the edge seem like it’s farther away than it actually is.”
“I have excellent balance on account of walking on all four legs,” I said. “Maybe you should try it.”
The snow sloshed under her foot, Mom’s arms waived for balance, and her throat made a pirate noise. “If this is the easy part, I’m starting to think we’re not going to make it.”
We came into a clearing filled with the crick-crack of gossiping frogs. The sun broke through the trees, punching craters into the white dirt. I climbed into one of the craters to sniff around, and my paw sank into the soggy mud underneath. The frogsong stopped for a suspenseful moment, then started up even louder than before.
I looked back to see whether Mom was enjoying the frogsong, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was twisting slowly to and fro, looking intently at the Witch the whole time. “How did we lose the trail?” she asked the sky. “It says it’s supposed to be right over there, but that can’t be right.”
Mom waved her arm at a tree leaning hard into a steep slope. The ghosts of boulders made the white dirt around it too lumpy to walk on. Mean-looking twigs stuck out like thorns from the surface, giving away the trap underneath.
“For heaven’s sake,” Mom sighed. “Another dud. We should go back.”
“Okay!” I said, eager to see all that white dirt again.
I expected Mom to follow our pawprints back toward the majestic potty, but instead she sat down on the white dirt to listen to the frogs sing. I sat next to her and we watched the sun sparkle on the white dirt for a while. Every now and then, Mom giving me fistfuls of brunch.
It wasn’t like Mom to sit still for long. When sitting and munching got boring I asked, “I thought you said we were leaving.”
“We are,” she said without moving. “But I don’t want to have to tell that insufferable blowhard that we couldn’t make it.” She stuffed a big mouthful of brunch into my face so I wouldn’t make fun of her for giving up either. “If we’re already off the trail, we might as well give him more time to get away. It’s called being ‘resourceful.’”