Epidog
- Jul 13
- 12 min read
Mom looked at her wrist. “Oh good! We can still be in Las Vegas by lunchtime.”
She made herself a fresh cup of poop juice and we took our positions inside the Wagon. Thank dogness we’d already solved all the dangers along the way and there would be no more surprises on the slippy sand, bumpy road, train tracks, and dotted pavement.
The Wagon backed into the middle of the car kennel and turned its nose toward civilization. It took a running start and launched into the sand. We had only been moving long enough for a deep sigh when the Wagon gave a satisfied little wiggle and settled in like it was naptime.
“You’ve got to keep moving,” I reminded Mom.
Rrrrrrrrrrr, purred the Wagon in a tone that sounded less like contentment and more like panic.
“Oh dog doo,” Mom said slowly, like speaking at a normal pace might cause something to go terribly wrong.
“Does this count as stopping?” I asked.
Mom dismounted without answering my question and disappeared below the windowsill. She was much dustier when she reappeared a very long time later.
“We’re stuck,” she announced as she climbed back into position behind the driving wheel. “We’re really in deep, but there’s hardpan about six inches down. I dug out the wheels and all the sand I could reach underneath to clear a sort of track to more solid ground.” She woke up the Wagon. “It’ll be okay, if only we can get moving again…”
“Ready, set, go!” I cheered.
“I am,” Mom said through her teeth.
“No you’re not. See? We haven’t moved.”
“Maybe we can reverse out of it?” She moved a lever but the Wagon paid her no mind and went on whine-purring.
Mom’s whole body made a fist and the Wagon’s whine got more shrill, but still we didn’t move.
Mom let go. With a sigh, she turned the key and the Wagon went silent. She spread wide the Wagon gates and let me back into the desert.
I inspected the Wagon while Mom discussed our options with the Witch. The first clue I found was that the Wagon’s belly was on the ground, which wasn’t how it usually sat.
“Up-up,” I commanded, but the Wagon didn’t move a muscle.
I didn’t know the sign language Mom used to communicate with the Wagon, so I sniffed around some more in search of another idea. “Eureka! I know what the problem is!” I declared. “The sand ate the bottom half of the wheels so they can only roll on one side!”
“Yes, I’m safe. But I’m in trouble,” Mom told the Witch.
“I think we have to lift it from the top and move it a few Wagon-lengths that way,” I suggested.
“It’s okay, I have food and water if I need to be out here for a few days, but I’m hoping you can send someone with a winch…”
“The Witch can’t help here,” I told her. “She has no arms to push with, nor feet to drive with. You need to try a new style of moving. The usual way isn’t gonna work.”
“Not a witch, a winch,” Mom said with her eyebrows crossed, which meant shut up, I’m on the phone.
“A wench? Will she be strong enough? I don’t see how a girl would be any better at—”
“A winch, a winch!” Mom repeated. “As in something to pull us like a fish on a hook. Yes.”
I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or the Witch. I decided she was talking to me. “Where are you gonna find one of those all the way out here?”
“Yes, I think a winch on a 4X4 truck should do it. Thank you. I’ll give him my GPS coordinates when he texts me his number.” Mom put the Witch in her pocket and stared blankly at the distant mountains.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. Mom always has a plan.
“Spud, I just did something I thought would kill me,” she said without taking her eyes off the mountains.
“Talk to the Witch? Yes, I heard you. Good girl.”
“No, I mean—”
“Oh! I know what’s been bugging me!” I interrupted before she gave away the answer. “You kept saying we wouldn’t get stuck, but we did. Then you said the only way out was to call for help. But you hate the phone, and you’d rather die than ask for help. Are we gonna die?”
“… I just asked for help!” she finished like she could hardly believe it herself.
“Oh no! You’ll have to let someone else do something that you’d rather do for yourself,” I empuffed. “You’re already having a bad day and now you’ll have to act like you’re okay when clearly you’re not.”
The toughness drained from Mom’s whole body at once. “Yeah, well, there’s no getting out of this one without help.”
I looked around and noticed that no help was on the way. “Now what?”
“We wait.” If there’s one thing that Mom hates as much as asking for help, it’s waiting. “What should we do on our adventure?” she asked to turn the wait into something less terrifying.
“Why don’t we go play in the dooms some more?”
“Nah. I’ve got sand in my shoes.” Mom kicked the ground to scoop a little sand onto her shoe for extra realness. “How about I drink my coffee and we write?”
“I guess,” I shrugged, lying in the shade of a bush.
Mom tore off the tag and opened the pop-out chair that had seemed like such an exciting idea when she bought it years before. The most inspiring part of the chair was the hole in the armrest meant to hold a drink. Mom imagined it would be very nice to sit in the wilder-ness drinking a drink and thinking a think, but it was only the idea of the chair that Mom loved. Outside Mom’s imagination, we never stopped moving long enough to sit in it. Instead, Mom drank her drinks from a dented cup and thought her thinks in the driving chair as the Wagon carries us to the next adventure. Each chip, stain, and dent in the cup and the Wagon were like a badge of faithful service, and neither one had failed her until now.
With everything arranged perfectly for a relaxing day, Mom sat her big butt in the chair. The chair’s bones clenched under her weight, pulling on the armrest and dumping the cup of steaming poop juice into her lap. Her lap was also where her laptop was.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!” Mom screamed. She shot out of the chair, throwing the laptop into the sand. She screamed again and sat down to pick up the laptop from the muddy puddle before poop juice turned it into quicksand. When her butt touched the chair again, more poop juice poured into her lap and she made another noise that letters can’t spell.
Mom wasn’t much in the mood for writing after that, so she paced while I watched her closely from the shade of my bush. She stared toward the road. She looked down to ask the Witch a question. She shut the Witch up so the answer wouldn’t distract her from staring back at the road.
I dozed, Mom paced, and eventually we ate. Mom’s butt dried, and then it got wet again when she sat back in the chair. She paced until it was dry again, and then she made a fresh cup of tea to replace the poop juice that her pants had drunk. Finally, I heard a distant crunching and spotted a far-off sparkle.
The twinkle flashed as it climbed over the ditch. It passed the turn without slowing and disappeared into the desert like a shooting star.
I looked to Mom for an answer, but she was already lifting the Witch to her face. “Where’s he going?” I asked.
“Hi, I’m the idiot stuck in the middle of the desert. I think you just passed me,” she told the Witch without taking her eyes off the near-distance where the truck disappeared. “Yeah, Cadiz Dunes parking area. Okay. Katie’s Dunes, then. That’s right. Don’t worry, you’ll see me.”
I wanted to ask who Katie was and whether she was the wench we needed, but Mom was still staring at the spot where the star disappeared like she was trying to conjure a miracle. I’d heard of people making things happen just by wishing for them hard enough, but I wasn’t sure if those stories were make-believe. If anyone in the world was stubborn enough to will the impossible to happen, it was Mom.
Let there be light! Mom’s thoughts grunted as they strained against the spot. I sat quietly next to my bush and watched for signs of a dream coming true.
And lo, a flicker appeared in the spot where Mom’s eyes were pointing. The flicker grew to a glimmer, then a glitter, then a gleam. When it made the turn toward us, Mom’s teeth released their grip and her eyes fainted in their sockets. “Thank God,” she whispered to the sky.
“How did you do that?” I asked when the shock passed.
“I told him to turn around. Didn’t you hear me?”
“I heard you talking to… hang on a second!” It was so obvious, I couldn’t believe I’d never noticed it before. Only the Witch knew where we were going when we met Friends like Lily or Boss Charming in far-off lands. “You mean the Witch can summon Friends?”
“Of course. What do you think phones are for?” Mom gave me a look like it was the most obvious thing in the world. She turned her eyes back toward the miracle and waved her arms above her head like an air traffic controller.
I had so many questions, but a truck appeared behind the comet and Mom forgot all about me. As the truck came closer, she waved her arms more frantically until she looked more like a car wash windsock-puppet than an air traffic controller.
She kept flapping until the truck was close enough to see its captain’s bulky silhouette through the front window. Mom’s eyes dropped to the tattoo on the truck’s upper lip and her arms froze in midair like she was being held at gunpoint. The truck’s entire snout was covered with a painting of an eagle soaring out of a rippling flag. The eagle’s wings stretched from stars to stripes as its sharp scowl and pointy beak aimed threateningly at anything in the truck’s path.
“Look, Mom! It’s America, come back to save us!” I cheered. Unlike the men on the road to Yreka, I hoped that Mom was smart enough to know a Friend when she saw one, but I wasn’t sure. The suspicious glint in her eyes was the same one she’d used to size up the friendly Power Ranger on the day I met the horse named Mule. “Don’t forget,” I whispered, “you’ve got to act like whatever they’re doing is helpful, even if it isn’t. It’s the polite thing to do.”
“Oh cheese,” she muttered, dropping her arms but not taking her eyes off of the cocky eagle. “This should be interesting.”
The slamming door snapped Mom out of the eagle’s trance. Instead of a wench, a big man stood beside the truck.
I ran to greet him. “Hi, are you Katie? I’m Oscar. Thanks for coming.”
Behind me, Mom prepared to assert her dominance by showing she was in control of the situation. She huffed and puffed to inflate her big, bad business voice. “Hi, you must be Ruben,” she commanded, in case Katie thought he was somebody else. Before he had a chance to notice that the Wagon was sitting on the sand like a duck sits on a lake, Mom squared her shoulders and announced, “I really ducked up.”
Ruben stood with his big arms crossed over his chest and took in the scene. Mom waited for him to tell her that this desert was no place for a little lady in a soccer mom’s van.
“Do you think you can get us out?” Mom asked a little more timidly.
“Is that thing front wheel drive?” Ruben asked.
Mom looked at the Wagon. “Um, I forget,” she said so she wouldn’t have to admit that she never knew in the first place. “I think so.”
Ruben looked the Wagon up and down, and I thought I saw admiration in his face. “How did you get all the way out here in that thing? My truck has all-wheel drive and even I was a little worried that I’d get stuck. Are you out here all alone?”
“The dog is with me.” Mom looked at me. “But he can’t help me push.”
I smiled at him and wagged a little harder. “I’m The Dog, but you can call me Oscar.”
“Dogs are the best hiking buddies.” Ruben played my ribcage like a set of bongos. “My boy Bruno used to do everything with me, but I had to say goodbye to him a few months ago.”
“Did he go away to college?” I asked.
Mom’s eyes softened as they watched Ruben remember Bruno. “Stop! You’re gonna make me cry, too!” she said, and the puddles in her eyes showed that she meant it.
Ruben got back into his truck and carefully turned the eagle’s rude stare away from us. He returned draped in chains with the biggest fish hook I’d ever seen.
I offered to help Ruben dig under the Wagon, but Mom grabbed my collar and told me to watch from the driving chair instead. So I leaned out the window to watch him crawl around in the dust, barking encouragement every time he knocked on the Wagon from below.
Mom stayed outside, trying to figure out the most helpful place to put her paws. Her back paws kicked the sand as her front paws moved from hips to cheeks, then tested whether it was better to clasp them in front or behind. She crumpled like a chair every time Ruben grunted with effort, as if folding up would hide her from the shame of not doing it herself.
Finally, Ruben asked Mom to up-up into the driving chair and returned to his truck.
Mom woke the Wagon and stuck a hitchhiking thumb out the window. From the window of the truck, Ruben hitchhiked in return.
The truck started rolling and a moment later, the Wagon lurched like a crash landing in reverse. We began to roll.
Ruben’s truck used the chain as a leash to pull the Wagon through the sand, yanking on it every so often like Mom does when I’m distracted by a pee spot. Each time it did, the Wagon dutifully followed, until the sandy road became rocky under its paws.
Once we were back on solid ground, the truck stopped and the Wagon sat obediently behind. When Ruben dismounted to unleash the Wagon, Mom and I got out to say goodbye.
“I can’t thank you enough for coming all the way out here on Thanksgiving Day to save my ass.” Mom handed Ruben a card from her wallet. “And especially for not making me feel stupid about the whole thing.”
“I’m impressed that you got this far in that thing,” Ruben said, looking up from his clipboard. The Wagon proudly shined the sun back into his eyes. “Most people wouldn’t even try with a minivan.”
“But we never would have made it out again without your help.” Mom accepted the clipboard that Ruben was offering and scribbled on it before handing it back.
“I’ll stay with you until the highway.” Ruben ripped a paper off of the clipboard and handed it to Mom. “I don’t want you to get stuck again and have to pay another thousand dollars.”
“Thank you again,” Mom said in a voice that showed how small a thousand could be. She checked the paper to make sure it had Ruben’s address before putting it in her pocket so she could send a reward closer to the size of her gratitude. “And happy Thanksgiving.”
“Happy Thanksgiving to you too, buddy.” Ruben ruffled my ears and patted in the goodbye.
Everyone remounted, and Ruben’s eagle led the way back down the bumpy road. Every time the Wagon had to slow down to pick its way over the tricky terrain, Ruben’s surefooted truck slowed to let us catch up, just like Mom and I do for each other on the trail.
When we crossed the train tracks back onto a real road, Ruben’s truck started shrinking in the front window. When we reached the first Road Closed fence, Ruben’s paw poked out of the window and waved a final goodbye before disappearing into the desert.
When we reached the freeway, the Wagon stopped for Mom to read the signs. One way led back to California and our Stuck House at the End of the World. The other led to Las Vegas and the desert where this story began, once upon a time.
“Do you know when we were here last?” Mom asked thoughtfully as the Wagon turned away from the sinking sun.
“Yesterday?” I guessed.
“No, I mean before that. This is the same route we took into Vegas right before everything shut down. Remember that day with the nosy cops that wouldn’t leave us alone? Now that I think about it, that morning was the last time anything felt normal.”
“Oh,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
The Wagon chased its shadow toward happily ever after as the sun watched us through the back window.
“I can’t help but think that there’s a lesson we’re supposed to learn here,” I said. “What does it mean when you think you can do everything yourself?
“…and you run all over the West looking for a place where no one can disturb you?
“…until you get so stuck that you need someone to leave their Thanksgiving dinner behind to pull you out?
“…and then they don’t even make you feel dumb about it.
“What’s the word for that again?”
Mom needed to think about it, so I gave her a hint. “Is it something about not doing everything yourself? Or maybe it’s something about Friends? Do you think it’s about Friends?”
“The things you come up with, Oscar!” Mom said, like I was suggesting something silly. “Obviously, the lesson is that we need a truck.”
Want to read it all again? Grab Oscar’s book, No Place Like Alone on Amazon.
