👠 Cindersmella pt. 2
- Oscar the Pooch
- Mar 13
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 17
“I think all these people are coming to see...” Mom took a breath to gather the strength not to smack a guy's butt when he leaned over to tie his shoe in the middle of the trail. “There’s supposed to be a waterfall up ahead.”
“Uh oh! Where?” Suddenly, I felt as skittish as Mom. It was hard enough to keep Mom from landing on me without having to look out for a bath falling from the sky, too.
I looked behind me—no baths that I could see. To one side, there were nothing but trees and tourists. To the other, a little bit of sky peeked through more trees. It wasn’t till I checked the trail ahead that I saw it was about it end. I’d been so busy trying to dodge Mom’s sneaker attacks that I hadn’t even noticed the cliff and the metal railing in front of it.
“All the way out there.” Mom nodded into the distance, where a teency-weency waterfall dumped into a teeny-tiny forest. “Sheesh. it must be a quarter mile away.” She looked up and down the fence for a way around it, but there was nothing but cliff on the other side. The metal bars curled around a circle of dirt patted down by a zillion people-paws and disappeared into solid rock on the far side.
“I guess I should introduce myself to all these disappointed people so they don’t feel like they drove so far from the Starbucks for nothing,” I said, leaning into the leash to get closer to a lady making flirty eyes back at me.
“Let’s at least try to get a picture.” Mom found the only gap in the legs around the fence and made me sit in it. She got down on one knee like she was going to ask me to marry her and held out the Witch. Her face scrunched. “It’s like I’m taking a picture of you inside a cage. You can hardly see the waterfall.”
“It’s okay. Everyone just wants to see my handsomeness anyway,” I said and showed her what I meant.
“This is lame.” Mom stood back up to her regular height. Let’s get out of here.”
By the time we got back to the Wagon, the three stepsisters were gone and there were more cars with different bike racks in in their place.
“I can’t wait to get back to California,” Mom said, sliding the door open for me.
“You’re not gonna leave your missing shoe behind in Oregon, are you?” I asked. “It’ll be so lonely! And wet!”
“This tank of gas might get us back to California if we don’t go back to town. Otherwise, we might have to fill up in Oregon again.” She waited for the dun-dun-duhhhhhn, but it didn’t come.
“But where will you ever find shoes to fit your magnificently tiny paws again?” I asked.
“Maybe that REI is on the way out of town...” she holstered the seat leash and sat with her hands on the driving wheel, staring out the front window. “But I do hate to pay full price.” She didn’t move. “And waiting for someone to check the back for my size is worse than waiting for someone to pump your gas.” She woke up the Wagon. “Fine. Back to the campground it is.”
Under the wide light of the sun, the campground didn’t look as much like a prison yard as it had in the harsh glow of the street lamp. I might not have recognized it without the Wendy’s sign and the smell of Baconator sandwiches in the air. Maybe it was because the place was less cramped without the castle-bus crowding everything else out.
We left the Wagon in one of the not-camping places next to the stuck-building and walked back to our old home. I sniffed for signs of Mom’s shoe, but the only smell of stinky feet in the neighborhood was coming from the bottoms of Mom’s legs.
Mom sagged and turned back toward the Wagon. “Maybe they have a lost and found.”
She kept her eyes on the ground as we walked back to the building, more out of sadness than searching. She pulled the door open and stepped across my path, using her clonky shoe to keep the door from closing and blocking me from going inside.
“Do you have a lost and found?” she shouted into the dimness.
“Huh?” a muffled voice called back.
She took a step inside with the leg that wasn’t a doorstop. “A lost and found...”
I poked my head around her knee to see if I could help.
“No dogs in the building!” Prince Charming’s voice snapped.
Mom took another step, just enough to give the door room to slam in my face. But the leash kept it just open enough for me to hear her say, “I just want to know if anyone found a shoe.”
“No lost and found. No shoes. We throw away all abandoned property,” the voice said in the unprincely tone of a junkyard dog.
“Okay,” Mom said, turning and reaching for the door. She pulled it open just in time for me to see her face brighten.
“I missed you too!” I wagged, before I realized she wasn’t looking at me.
She dove toward the ground just inside the door. “My shoe!” she squealed.
She stepped back outside held it up as if she expected a sunbeam to break through the clouds and for angels to sing. It was covered in the dust and dried mud of almost every state I’d ever been to. Its skin was cracked from flexing with so many of Mom’s steps and had a frayed hole in the top where her big toe had dug itself a skylight. I guess that made it unlike any other shoe in the world.
As we walked back to the Wagon, Mom kept gazing lovingly at her treasure, admiring it from all sides. “They probably don’t even carry this brand at REI, you know.” She gently pulled on the laces and tenderly lifted the tongue to see inside. She stopped short. “What’s this?” She pulled a piece of paper out from deep inside the shoe’s throat.
“Is it a treasure map?” I wagged. “Or a top-secret message?”
“It’s a note from the couple in the motorhome nextdoor. They had to leave before the office opened, but they left this description of us in case we came back,” she read. “’Woman in a white van with a dog.”
“Awww, they described you perfectly,” I said. “They should’ve said how handsome I am if they wanted someone to recognize us, though.” People don’t even notice Mom when I’m around.
“There’s a note at the bottom that says they hope we have a good trip. That’s sweet.” Mom lovingly crumpled up the top secret message and hid it in the trash can. “The guy at the desk must not have even seen it or else he would’ve thrown it out.”
“It has been a good trip, hasn’t it?” I asked.
“It has,” Mom agreed. She opened the Wagon door and threw the shoe into a jumble of stuff in the bedroom. “But I’m ready to go back home. We’ll be back in California by sundown. And we can be sleeping in our own bed by tomorrow night.”
“But we have our own bed right here,” I said, kicking the shoe out of the way and settling in for a nap.
