You weren’t supposed to stay real quiet and creep around like you didn’t want to raise suspicion. Mom was clueless when it came to wildlife.

I waited, but there was no rumbling and no tumbling. I waited some more, but still no Mom fell out of the Mom-return slot. I would have to step onto her landing strip if I wanted to look for her. I was just about to take a cautious step onto the runway when I heard a whoosh.

“He was also a bit of a bully. He used to say, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’” “That sounds like excellent advice to me. Except how can you bark softly or any other way with a big stick in your mouth?”

Back when the world was free and Mom believed she could predict the future, she aimed the farthest point in our trip at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. More than anything else, she was visiting for the punchline.

When we dismounted, Mom hid behind the beak of her hat so that no one else in the car kennel could pick her out in a line-up.

“Keep the windows closed!” I panted as the glass-and-steel canyons sucked the Wagon through a forest of billboards. “I told you, it doesn’t work that way.” Mom turned down the blowers anyway.

“The trick to doing something hard for the first time is knowing that it’s gonna be uncomfortable, and doing it anyway.”

“Mom! Mom! There’s a hot dog shop in Albuquerque, remember?” The hot dog shop was where Jesse went to meet men with face tattoos and trade business secrets. “It has outdoor seating and everything! Can we go there for dinner?”

“Sit, Oscar!” Mom yelled, only she didn’t really say sit. “Run! Run! Run!” She didn’t need to tell me twice. I shot down the trail as fast as I could go without losing the ker-plopping of Mom’s steps behind me.

Mom snapped her fingers like a flamenco dancer to get my attention. “Oscar! Oscar! C’mere. Up-up!” she begged like a paparazza, waving her paw over the rock like it was even more amazing than she originally thought.

“Phooey!” I grumbled, knocking the bowl so the kibble spilled all over the bed. That felt pretty good, but one of Mom’s two-handed face rubs would have felt even better.

With everyone trapped at home, the world would need a protector to keep an eye on things to herd everyone back together when it was safe to come out again. That hero would need a sidekick. A referee who knew how to twist silly rules until they made sense again and wield Murphy’s Law to make impossible things happen, like bringing rain to the desert. The fate of the world rested on its globe-trotting hero, Tintin Quarantino and his faithful referee-sidekick, the Weather Jinx.

“They’re outlawing friendship?” I whimpered. I would never be able to hide my friendliness for long enough to stay out of trouble. “They can’t really send you to the pound for charisma, can they?”

“If you can pick your problems,” I coached, “maybe you shouldn’t see wet socks as a problem at all. You would have less to worry about if dry socks weren’t something that you expected from life.”

“For the love of Dog, let me go!” I squirmed. “Hold still.” She squeezed me tighter. “I might drop you if I lose my balance.” 

Dogs don’t take pictures, but Mom had tried to explain it before. “Doesn’t a photo capture exactly what the world looks like?” I asked, showing her my bored look in profile. “Instead of taking a hunerd pictures, you could just take one and look at it for longer.” 

“Do you know where canyons come from?” Mom asked, cheating as usual. Whenever she gets stuck, she uses science to invent some improbable story because she knows a dog can’t argue with science. This time, she didn’t even wait for me to guess. “Rivers dig canyons over millions of years.”

“Can’t the Witch call for help or something?” I asked. “You think there’s going to be cell service all the way out there?” Mom challenged. “We just left the only town big enough for a stop sign for 100 miles in any direction.” 

“No, Mom! This is awesome!” I corrected her. “It’s better than awesome. It’s… There’s no word for how awesome it is in your language.” So I barked the word in my language and did a cartwheel followed by a sprint to show her what it meant. 

As my ears roamed juice boxes, my eyes stayed stuck to the door where Mom had disappeared. Every time the door opened, instead of Mom, a bandit or a veterinarian came out carrying big bags of loot.