Eggs marks the spot (free)
- Oscar the Pooch
- Apr 2
- 7 min read
The Wagon sat sparkling under the sun on the dusty road. Or, its top half did, anyway. With the skirt of mud and dust around its bottom half, it looked like a giant moose egg in its nest.
Mom opened all the doors and set up the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. I found the shadiest spot on the Wagon’s shadow-side and waited for the oven breath to leak out of the bedroom.
“I have a surprise for you,” Mom said. I lifted my head and cocked my ears, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the Witch. I put my head back in the dust. Let Mom make kissy faces at the Witch all afternoon, see if I cared.
Mom nested her steaming cup of tea in its seat beside the driving chair, closed up the stove, folded the counter, and slid the kitchen back into its slot in the butt of the Wagon. She slammed the kitchen door with a sound like an exclamation point. “Come on, Spud. Are you ready?”
I stretched. “For another Witch quest? What has she fooled you into this time? No, no, don’t tell me.” Instead of jumping, I climbed into the Wagon one leg at a time. “Sounds like a bad witch-uation.” I flopped onto the blankies. They were warm like they’d just come out of the dryer, but at least the oven smell was gone.
“Just one more stop before we go home.” Mom clicked the seat leash into its holster and woke the Wagon.
Half a nap later, the Wagon turned onto pavement and finally stopped rattling. “Do you recognize it yet?” Mom asked.
I sniffed the air chugging through the window as the Wagon sped up. Even without the dust cloud in my nose, all I could smell were pinecones. It smelled like a broom factory. “A coven-tion?” I yawned.
“We’ve stayed in that campground over there.” Mom pointed her chin at some trees. “One of the first nights of our first trip. Remember? That super rainy night? When I didn’t know that you couldn’t get maps without cell service and I had to get directions at that gas station?”
My ears perked up in spite of themselves. “That day we traveled back in time?” I asked. Something good had happened that day despite Mom’s foul mood, but I couldn’t remember what. Was that when Mom discovered Walmart? But Walmart was Mom’s happy place, not mine.
“How about now? Is this road ringing any bells?”
I only half-opened one eye. Mom really didn’t know how to take a hint.
“It’s part of the race course where you won second dog, remember? That’s the hill where you passed that weimaraner and lost interest in running.” She waved her hand at a cow-house flying by the windows. “There are no hotels around here. Part of the reason I rented that janky van was to see the trails around the race course. It was too rainy that day, but now we’ve finally done it.” She looked up at the sky behind the irresistible hills. “I wonder if we would have made it all the way to Utah if I hadn’t been running from that storm.”
I rolled over to rearrange the kaleidoscope of dreams in my head and went back to my nap.
“How about now?” Mom asked. “Have you guessed where we’re going yet?”
I looked out the windows, but it was just one of those short streets between little shops with wooden windows that you see in tiny towns all over the world. Now that I was a worldly dog, I knew that mini-Main Streets like this were nothing special. “I don’t know why you’re making such a brew-ha-ha,” I groaned and closed my eyes again. “It’s not exactly Hex and the City.”
“You have arrived!” the Witch said excitedly.
The Wagon stopped. Mom pulled the Witch from her leash and her wallet from the cubby under the front window. “Okay, I’ll be back. You be good.” She dismounted, barely even looking back to make sure the windows were closed enough to keep me from jumping out and following some stranger with a pocketful of bacon.
I can’t sleep when Mom isn’t around, so I climbed into the driving chair to wait. She was gone for a long time. I watched the door that she’d disappeared into, willing it to open and for Mom to come back out. I stared harder than I’d ever stared before. I stared so hard that my nose quivered and my ears trembled, but the door wouldn’t budge. I gathered all my strength and stared even harder.
The door opened a crack...
Instead of Mom, Santa Claus walked out. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but I recognized him right away by the beard hanging all the way to the bib of his overalls. The sun gleamed on his capless head as he turned to hold the door open for Mrs. Claus.
I tried to look into the dark doorway, but Mrs. Claus filled it with her plump physique. After she stepped out of the way, Santa let the door go. It swung through the Momless air and shut with tinkle of a jingle bell.
Santa and Mrs. Claus mounted their truck and coasted away at sleigh-speed. There were no other cars in the way, but in a small town like this, you’ve got to drive slow to make sure you don’t leave town by accident.
Every other car on the street was just as dirty as the Wagon, but the Wagon was the only one that wasn’t a truck. Now that I noticed, they were all parked on the same block, too. As if every truck in town had come to gawk at the exotic egg-shaped truck with the little wheels and belly so close to the ground. Hollywood-handsome celebrities like me don’t often come to small towns like this, so I was used to the stares.
The pickup in the front window looked even older than Mom. Its rust ruffles and the sharp creases in its flanks were the style that cars hadn’t worn since ancient times, when hair was bigger and trucks were smaller. What if its driver went in the same door as Mom and never came out? Had it been waiting there since Kurt Russell was a heartthrob?
Had the Witch tricked Mom into time traveling again? Without me?
The door burst open again, making me I jump. A lady carrying a purse stepped out and squinted into the sun. Mom doesn’t even know what a purse is, let alone how to carry one. The Purse-lady stepped to one side, letting the door slam back closed before I could see if there was anyMom behind her.
Instead of walking to one of the trucks, this lady pulled a little box from inside the purse and a little stick from inside the box. She put the stick in her mouth and covered it with her hands like a greedy squirrel eating a nut.
When her hands came down, the stick was still hanging from her lips without a single nibble missing, but there was a tail of smoke curling into the air. I’d only seen someone do that on TV shows from before Kurt Russell was handsome. The Witch must have lured Mom back in time even farther than I thought.
The lady stood blowing puffs of smoke into the air like a bored dragon. We both watched the puffs curl around themselves as they drifted into the sky. Suddenly, the lady took another step to the side.
The door opened again, scrambling the cloud of smoke above it.
It was Mom!
“Mom! Thank Dog you’re here!” I barked through the window in my best dalmation voice. “Hurry! That lady’s gonna set California on fire! Show her how you make fires go out on their own.”
Mom gave the lady a closed-mouth smile, but didn’t throw a bottle of water on her. The lady closed her mouth back and nodded.
When she saw me, Mom’s smile cracked wide open to show the teeth inside. “Guess what I got!” she said holding up a bag I hadn’t noticed until now.
“What?” I stuck my head through the window and sniffed. It smelled like smoke, chicken butts, pigs, and... was that...?
“Something even better than Denny’s. You’re gonna love it!”
She pushed me out of the doorway and climbed into the driving chair. The Wagon filled with the smell of frying and delicious barnyard animals. Mom pulled a carton out of the bag and opened it like a jewelry box on Valentines day. “It’s everything you’ve been asking for this whole trip.”
“Scrambled eggs!” I squealed, wolfing them down.
“With cheese,” Mom said proudly, guessing that I hadn’t had time to notice.
“And bacon!” I chomped. “And sausage!”
“I asked for one of each. Sheesh, Spud, don’t forget to chew!” When I tipped my head back to get the whole piece of bacon into my mouth at once, she was smiling as if she were the one with a whole plate of bacon. “And just wait till you see what’s buried underneath!”
I gnawed at the sausage, trying to catch the end of it before it scooted away to the far side of the box. I couldn’t wait to taste how the surprise would get even better.
When the bacon and sausage were gone, there was nothing but a heap of gold-grey flakes glistening on the bottom of the box like a shimmering haystack.
I licked the grease off the top. It tasted like sausage sweat and dirt. Not in a bad way, but not as good as bacon. “What is it?” I sniffed.
“They’re hash browns,” Mom said proudly. “Haven’t you been asking me to dig for potatoes for a week? Well... here you are. I asked her to make sure that the potatoes were on the bottom so you could dig for them.”
I sniffed the potato flakes again. Now that I’d licked off most of the grease, they just smelled like starchy dirt. “No thanks, I’m full.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sometimes it’s the search that’s the most fun,” I told her. “Finding the treasure is just the way you know that the story’s over.” I settled back into napping position, on my side to give the bacon in my belly room to stretch out. “Let’s go home.”
