“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Mom said. The leash yanked my collar as she started running. Over the first few steps, she reeled in the leash even more. “Stay close!”
We ran until we were up and over the gibbet before Mom turned her attention back to me. She didn't even bother to unlock the mailman van before she descended on me with a hunerd pinching fingers. I didn’t complain. All attention is good attention.
“Cheese, Oscar. What did you do? Roll in a whole hive of ticks?” She finished with my butt and tail and started moving down my leg. “They’re everywhere! That’s one... two...” Each time she found one, she flicked it into the grass beside her. “... eight... nine... All on the same leg!”
She moved down my other leg. When she had pinched all the way down to the second ankle, she started feeling around my belly. Suddenly, the pinching stopped.
“What? Arg! I already checked that leg!” Mom set to work on my first leg again, making pirate noises every time she pinched me. “Argh! They’re coming up from the grass! C’mon. Into the street.”
“No! Mom! Everyone knows what happens when a dog is in the street!” I didn’t actually know, but maybe Mom was finally distracted enough to give away the secret.
“Where else can we get you out of the grass except in the road?” Mom grabbed my collar with a wild look in her eye and dragged me to the line in the middle of the street. “We’ll be able to see and hear if any cars are coming. Hold still.”
I watched for cars while Mom picked over all four of my legs, my back, my neck, and my ears. She threw each bug away with a hurried flick of the wrist so it wouldn’t slow her hunting. She lifted my tail to check its underside and pinched a spot uncomfortably close to my you-know-what hole.
“Okay. Roll over,” Mom ordered.
I was only halfway through my roll when Mom put her hand on my chest to stop me. She leaned in and set to work on my chest, tummy, and leg pits. Without warning, she grabbed my wrist like an old hag in a fairy tale grabs a naughty boy.
“Where did this sucker come from?” She pinched my elbow and held up the guilty sucker. His wiry little legs wriggled around her finger as she looked around the pavement for clues about how he could have tricked her. Her eyes landed on the pavement beside me and she screamed again.
Mom threw the forgotten tick aside so hard that he probably landed somewhere in Nicaragua and grabbed my collar. Before I knew what was happening, Mom was running down the line in the middle of the road, dragging me beside her.
“Whaaaat?” I asked when she finally stopped.
She crouched down and went back to crazed grooming. “The ticks were crawling right back onto you as soon as I pulled them off. They didn’t even wander around looking lost like ants do when you move their food. There were a dozen of them descending on you like that scene in the Charlton Heston movie where the crowd swarms the Soylent Green truck ... nine... ten!” She let go of my ankle and grabbed ahold of my collar before my paw even hit the ground. “C’mon! Go! Go! Go!”
She dragged me another few steps. When she stopped running, she picked up the same leg again. “One... two...” She paused for a long time as she pulled and prodded at my other leg. “... seven... eight...” Finally, she grabbed my other ankle. “... nine... ten... Okay! Go! Go! Go!”
We kept running down the line in the road a few steps at a time, stopping in between for Mom to pick ten more suckers out of my coat before we ran away again. We’d probably traveled a quarter mile by the time Mom had picked off enough of the buggers that she couldn’t meet her ten-sucker quota to move on.
She stood up. “Okay. I think I got most of them. I guess it’s time to get in the van and figure out how to give you a...” she looked at me.
“A what? A treat? A toy?”
“... figure out how to get you clean.”
“I think you did a great job. Good work, Mom. Shall we go get lunch?” I suggested.
Mom opened the door to the mailman van, but rather than telling me to up-up, she signaled for me to wait. She disappeared inside and came back a minute later with my rain slicker.
“It’s okay. I think the weather will hold,” I told her. “Animals know these things, you know.”
“This way they won’t get in the blanke— Oh my Dog! Oscar! You’re standing in the grass again!”
She grabbed my collar and dragged me back into the road. This time, we only ran about half as far in the other direction before Mom picked off enough of ticks to lose count.
When I was mostly-clean, Mom wrapped me in my slicker and carried me like a bride back to the mailman van. She plonked me unromantically into bed, pushed all the blankies into a corner, and slammed the door. She mounted the driving chair in a flying leap and the mailman van sped off as quickly as an ambulance.
Mom leaned tight over the driving wheel as if she were trying to beat the mailman van to wherever we were going by a nose. When the lake appeared in the front window again, she started looking for murder scenes with much more urgency than before.
The longer we drove, the more Mom squirmed. She shifted in her seat and whined like she had to pee. “C’mooooooon! How can none of them have a beach? Stupid drought!”
Finally, the mailman van swooped into a tiny car kennel with a narrow strip of sand almost covered by bog weeds and lapping waves.
“Out, out, out!” Mom ejected herself from the driving chair to show me what she meant. “C’mon. Bring every last one of those ticks with you.”
I did as I was told. Mom ripped off my slicker and shook it like a bull cape. I thought I saw a couple of specks go flying into the air. Mom gave the inside a quick look before scrunching up the jacket and searching the ground. She picked up a stick.
“Oscar!” She waggled the stick at me like a magic wand casting a playful spell. “Oscar, look what I got!”
“My stick!” I barked. “Where did you find it? Give it back!”
“Go get it!” Mom turned and made an exaggerated overhand throw.
The stick sailed through the air, tumbling end over end toward the lake. My heart sank as it splashed into the water.
“Wh— Why did you do that?” I asked. “Now neither of us can reach it.”
“Go get it!” Mom urged. She looked at the stick and bounced her eyebrows between surprised and excited to show me how badly she wanted to fight for it in a game of tug. If only some dum-dum hadn’t thrown it into the middle of the lake...
“But it’s in the water. Can’t you see?” I barked. “It’s way out there where it’s really deep. And wet. Very wet.”
“Go on, good boy,” Mom made the dancing eyebrows face again.
“But... no, don’t make the face again!” I couldn’t bear to break her heart like that. I turned back toward the stick. “Hey! Hey you! Come back!”
I waited for the stick to start paddling back to the beach, but instead it just bobbled there. What was it waiting for?
I took a step into the water. “You look at me when I’m barking at you! You hear me? Don’t make me come out there and get you!”
I kept barking and stepping until the water was tickling my tummy. I took another step. SPLASH! The floor slipped out from under me. I couldn’t show the stick weakness now. “Look what you made me do,” I snorted. “Now you’re really gonna be sorry!”
I paddled out into the deep water and chomped down hard on the stick. I had more planned for this hunk of soggy splinters when I got it back to shore.
It was hard to see Mom’s face around the stick and waves as I paddled back. I imagined how her eyebrows would fly up her forehead in delight when she saw it, then sink in determination to tug it from my jaws’ iron grip. I would resist just enough to make her think she’d put up a good fight, then I’d selflessly let go saying, “This one is just for you. I brought it for you because I want you to be happy.”
When I got my feet under me again, Mom was standing on the shore with another stick in her paw. If she had a replacement, why had she insisted on me getting all wet to fetch this one for her?
As soon as I stepped onto dry land, Mom threw her stick to the same spot I’d just swum back from. She didn’t even wait for me to drop the one I’d just brought back for her.
“Go on, Spud,” she said. And again with the face.
“But I just brought you the one you said you couldn’t live without. It’s right here.”
“Get back in the water,” she ordered. “I want those suckers to drown.”
I sighed, dropped the first stick, and turned back toward the lake. When I came back with the second, she didn’t even bother with the face because she was looking at the Witch.
“Plewey! Here’s your stick,” I said.
“Damn. It says here that ticks can survive for days underwater. Cheeses, these little monsters are indestructible!”
“Your stick?” I reminded her.
“No, don’t shake off,” she said. She opened the mailman van doors and spread a towel on the bed like a blanket. “Keep all that water in your coat. Maybe it’ll convince them to stay put.”
She climbed into the driving chair and held the Witch to her face like a walkie talkie. “Take me to the nearest veterinar...” Her eyes met mine in the mirror. She stopped talking about loud and let her thumbs finish the thought.
“Go to the road and turn left,” the Witch ordered.
“Yup. Just as soon as I...” Mom poked the Witch’s feeding straw a few times. She twisted something in the control panel and tried again. “Crap!” She jiggled the plug in the control panel. She wiggled the feeding straw in the plug. She wriggled where the feeding straw plugged into the Witch’s mouth. “Dog doo! Dog doo! Dog doo!”
“What?” I asked again.
To be continued...
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