"I wonder if that's where he stabbed them." Mom pulled her eyes back onto the road, but not for very long. "Or there. That might be a good spot. If I needed to do a dastardly deed and make a quick getaway, that's where I'd do it. Or maybe over there..."
"What are we looking for again?" I asked. All those millions of miles of copiloting and I still didn't quite understand how driving worked. Good thing dogs don't drive so Mom wouldn't know that I was as lost as she was.
"We're looking for a trail, just like we always do." Mom gave me a funny look, like she couldn't tell if my question was a joke. "I thought for sure there would be a walking path along the shore or something."
"Oh. I thought maybe we were looking for something else," I said. "Who are we gonna stab?"
"No one. You don't want to be sent to the pound on the very first day of our trip, do you?" Mom had finally found a Forever Job, and we were celebrating by taking the mailman van on a three-week tour of the West. Now that we’d been on two overnight trips in the mailman van, I was sure we had it all figured out and the rest was going to be easy. Probably.
“We're looking for somewhere with shade and a lake or river so you can cool off and I don't have to carry as much water." Mom turned back to trail-searching. "Cheeses, I thought that a place as large and well-known as Lake Beryessa would have more... I don't know, landmarks, or signs or something.”
"What's it famous for?" I asked.
Mom lifted her eyes from the lakeshore to the hilltops as she thought. "Hm. Maybe it's not famous except that it’s where the Zodiac killer stabbed a couple of people. Or maybe the lake victims were shot? I forget. Anyway, he wore a bag over his head when he killed people and he wrote letters in code to taunt the police. Just like in a TV show.”
"And you're looking for him?" I gulped.
"No. I'm looking for a trail. I told you. It just makes me feel famous to visit places where things happened. Ooh! I have cell service again."
My cheek bonked against the side of the driving chair as the mailman van unexpectedly swooped into a murder scene. "No! Mom! He'll find us!"
"Chill, Spud. The Zodiac isn't coming for us."
"How do you know? His victims were good-looking, fun-loving, well-liked somebodies in the prime of their youth. I'm a handsome, fun-loving, popular dog in my prime. Just look at me! How could he resist?"
"Relax. That was like 50 years ago. If he's still alive—"
"What do you mean, if? When did they last check on his cage at the pound?"
"They never caught him." Mom was more concerned with the lies that the Witch that Lives in her Phone was telling her than our imminent doom. "But if he were still alive, he'd be at least 80. Way too old to sneak up on anyone, let alone outmaneuver them and speed away. Remember, old people drive slow.”
"You're not even paying attention to who might be sneaking up on you!” I checked out all the windows, then I checked them in a different order, just in case. We were on one of those extra loops of pavement that hangs off the main route, but doesn't have a plan of its own so it merges back onto the road right away.
The Zodi-sack wasn’t on the copilot’s side of the mailman van, unless he was hiding in the lake like a sea monster. But a sea monster’s flippers can’t hold a knife. And sea monsters don’t wear bags on their heads. But he could be in those bushy hills that surrounded the lake like a decorative bowl. Or speeding toward us on that long road that traced the shore at the midline between water and sky.
"Ooh! This one looks good," Mom said like she was talking to me, but she was looking at the Witch. "It's got some hills, but it's not too technical.” She swiped at the screen. “It's not on the lake, but there are nice views and plenty of shade in the pictures. How does that sound?" She didn't wait for me to answer before telling the mailman van to giddyup, but it was okay. I was glad we weren't sitting ducks anymore.
"You will arrive in thirteen minutes," the Witch praised her.
The mailman van stopped under a tree on an old country road. Outside my window, a fence held back a sea of wild grass. It wasn't the nice, soft grass of golf courses, graveyards, and front yards, but a towering wall of feral, unruly weeds that were okay for hiding in, but no use for rolling.
"This is it," Mom said. "The trail’s over there." She nodded at the grass behind the fence and the tree-like brush in the background. She opened the door. "Come on. Let's go."
I sniffed the base of the nearest fencepost while Mom packed the packpack. "How are we supposed to get in?" I asked. "Are you pawsitive there isn't a cereal killer hiding in there somewhere? Maybe the fence is holding back more than just grass.”
"The Zodiac Killer is not hiding in the grass, Oscar. Do you see an old man with a bag on his head lurking around?"
I sniffed the breeze for the medicine-and-mothballs smell of old man. "I bet that's what his victims said. You should know better. You get scared any time it gets a little cloudy."
"That's called anxiety and we're supposed to take a few deep breaths and move on." She climbed up a little stairway to the top of the fence. It was only three steps up, a platform, and three steps down, but there was something too convenient about it. If I were a bag-head murderer, it was just the type of trap I’d set.
When she reached the top of the platform, Mom turned. “Are you coming?"
"Are you sure you're supposed to be doing that? The fence owner might be mad at you.” I whimpered bravely. "Doesn’t it sort of remind you of the platform under a gallows? Or a guillotine? Or a gibbet?”
"The fence isn't to keep us out, it's to keep the cows in. The stairs are like a secret passageway just for us. It's called a stile. Isn't it exotic?"
“There are cows here?" I practically pushed Mom out of the way as I raced over the gibbet to meet them.
When I landed on the far side, the world was full of nothing but grass. It rose taller than my head so that its blades were all I saw. It tickled my nose and reached into my ears to give me a wet willy. As I walked, it pet my belly and flanks in a slimy, pleading way, leaving slug trails of dew in my fur. In only a few steps, I was soaked.
"Gross," I shook myself from head to tail, but the grass spattered as much back onto me as I splashed onto it. "When you said near water, I didn't think you meant it like this. This isn't hiking. It's swimming."
"It's supposed to get warm today. It'll burn off soon. You'll wish you were covered in cool morning dew in a couple of hours when you're flopped legless in the shade, complaining that you're melting."
She was half right. I was definitely going to regret it later that morning, but not for the reason either of us thought.
I tucked in right on Mom's heels so she would block the worst of the spatter. "How do you even know where you're going?"
"I can sort of see a faint line in the grass," she said. "Sorta."
I stepped in a little closer to see around her legs. Maybe too close. The next time she took a step, Mom's heel came up and bopped me under the chin.
“Careful, Spud,” she said.
“I am being careful!” Clomp. “I’m keeping a close eye on you so you don’t let us get eaten by the Zodisack.”
I followed her through the grass, my chin making the clip-clopping sound of a dry coconut shell as Mom's heel caught my jaw every few steps. When she stopped without warning, my forehead bonked into her knees.
"What?" I looked up at her, but she was looking down intently at the Witch. "Are we lost? Already?"
"We're not lost. I know exactly where we are. I just need to figure out where we're supposed to go." She turned one way, checked the Witch's opinion, then turned the other way and checked again. Whatever the Witch told her the second time must have worked, because Mom looked up and said, "Ah! There it is!"
The branches of a bush parted as Mom walked confidently through a passageway that was invisible until she stepped inside. When I tried to follow, the branches let go of her shins and snapped back to thwack me in the face.
“Are you sure we’re not lost?" I asked the woody gauntlet ahead.
"Yeah. It's just a little overgrown.” Mom took another step and more branches came back to thwack me. "I'm sure we'll pop out of this overgrown patch any minute.”
“I don’t like it in here. Maybe I don’t want to pop out where it plans to dump me.”
“It gets better. I swear! I saw it.”
“Saw it where?”
“In pictures. There were open fields with panoramic views of the lake.”
“Forget the views, you told me there would be moos. Where are the cows?”
“Maybe it’s the wrong time of year. Don’t cows have seasons? Where were the cowboys taking them if they don’t migrate for the winter?”
POP!
The bushes ended. Just like Mom promised, we were on a sunny hillside covered with more tall grass. It was still too tall for me to see the lake, or if there were any cows.
“Whew!” Mom stood triumphantly with her hands on her hips. “I thought we really were lost there for a minute. But here we are, right where I thought we’d be.”
“You said you knew where we were this whole time. You’ve been holding out on me! How am I supposed to believe you that there are no cereal killers hiding out there if you don’t even know when we’re lost?”
“Relaaaax. I’ve been in control this whole time.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking. “You haven’t even checked for murderers yet.”
“I told you, he’s not out here. I promise.”
“Then why do I feel so jittery?” Ever since we’d stepped out of that bush, I’d had heebies crawling under my fur and jeebies running up my spine. There was something in the air that just didn’t smell right, but I couldn’t place it with the scent of all that grass in the way.
“Anxiety is just excitement where you don’t know what you’re excited about yet,” Mom said as she marched forth into the savanna.
“Okay. I feel excited because I think you’re leading me to a cereal killer.”
“Look!” Mom waved her arm over the top of the grass at the view I wasn’t tall enough to see. “Everything’s fine. No murderers.”
“Okay. If you say so.” I shook the heebies out of my coat, stiffened the jeebies out of my spine, and let my worries go.
Now that I was released from my doubts, I zoomed ahead like any dog who had been locked up all morning with his anxcitement would. I bounded through the grass like a rocking horse, pretty sure I was on the right path, but unafraid of blazing my own trail if I lost the one I was on.
A scream rang out behind me. It was a ragged, ugly scream, like the kind a victim makes in a murder show right before... you know.
I turned and stretched my neck to see over the grass. Mom was frozen few steps away, wide-eyed with her fingers curled next to her cheeks like claws and her teeth bared. Was she playing charades?
“Are you pretending to be a bear?” I guessed. “Is Yogi behind me? Smokey? Winnie the Pooh?”
I took a step toward her and she murder-screamed again. I ran the rest of the way to her side to see what she was carrying on about.
“OSCAR!” She crumbled down to my height and grabbed me in an aggressive bear hug. You just ran right over a rattlesnake. Twice!” She kissed the spot between my eyes about a million times. "What the hell were you doing? Didn’t you notice?”
“I thought I smelled something. But you told me not to worry, so I didn’t,” I wagged. “Anyway, I’m immune. Remember? That’s what the zapper was for the last time we saw spaghetti monsters.”
“You were supposed to learn to be scared of them.”
“There’s no need. It turns out that guy was just playing a dirty trick on us. It wasn’t the spaghetti monster that was zapping me at all. It was that ugly collar he made me wear. I can prove it: I just ran over that naughty noodle back there twice and nothing happened. He just lay there. He didn’t even sizzle.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Mom said, still too ‘excited’ to be mad. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Like you said, there aren’t any murderers hiding in the grass. And if there are, they’re too old to catch us. That old spaghetti monster is no match for the likes of us.”
The spaghetti monster glared at me hatefully. His eyebrows were stuck low over his beady eyes in a permanent scowl. He looked like someone who pulled ugly faces so often that his face stuck that way.
“Nope.” Mom turned around and hustled back toward the bushes. “Nope, nope, nope, nope.”
I trotted fearlessly after her. “Toodeloo, noodle stew,” I barked over my shoulder to the spaghetti monster before diving into the branches behind her.
When we popped back out on the other side, Mom clicked on the leash.
“That spiteful spaghetti was just one little squiggle in a whole field of grass, you know,” I told her. “You could’ve just walked around him.”
“He was sitting right in the middle of the trail,” Mom said.
“Trail schmail. There is no trail. You’re just making it up as you go along.”
“You think that was the only snake out here? Stay behind me. And stay close.”
“There’s nothing else in the gra—” I thought I heard a tiny voice and paused to listen. “There’s nothing else in the grass,” I finished. “That raging ramen is like the Zodisack: he’s in the past. You need to learn to let things—” Was someone saying ‘weeeeeeeeeee?’ “You’ve got to let things go.”
No, I was pretty sure I heard something. It sounded like an itty, bitty, teeny, tiny speck of a voice was saying, Hop on, boys! I looked around, but all I saw was tall grass and the back of Mom’s knees. I shook off the anxcitement and kept walking.
“I know.” Mom didn’t seem to notice the tiny voices at all. “...but you’ve always got to stay alert to your surroundings in a new environment. You never know when you’ll come across a snake or serial killer.”
She stopped on a clear spot of ground where a large, flat rock kept back the grass. She took the bowl from the packpack and squatted to fill it.
Mom scratched my butt as I drank. Suddenly, she pinched me.
“Ouch! Hey, what are you—”
“Hold still. There’s something crawling on you.”
Mom pulled what she was looking for from my fur. Why does it hurt more to pull one hair than to rip off my whole coat at once?
“Ow! What did I do?”
She held whatever-it-was close to her nose to inspect it. “Gross. A tick.” She crushed it between her fingers and flicked the tiny splatter back into the grass.
I finished my water. When Mom leaned over to pick up the bowl, she made a half-scream. “Oh my dog, Oscar! They’re crawling all over you!”
To be continued...