Give me liberty or give me breath
- Feb 9
- 14 min read
“I want to enjoy my lunch and a nice cup of tea sitting in the air-conditioned van,” she said like a threat. “I’ll wait.”
The closer to the bottom we came, the more time we had to spend waiting by the side of the trail for more and more people to come out of who-knows-where to block our way. With each stop, the end pulled farther ahead. Mom tried to hold her face still to hide her scowl in case anyone noticed us getting out of the way for them, but they never did.
“Why on earth would you wear fake eyelashes and pancake makeup to go hiking?” Mom scolded.
“Mmmmm, pancakes,” I drooled.
They came up the trail in herds, wandering with the grim determination of exhausted tourists searching for the bus to Alcatraz. They wore fashion sneakers on their paws, plastic whiskers on their eyelids, and shirts with slogans over their bubble bellies. They wore cologne, lotion, and fur products that stunk up the mountain, even from a social distance. It might not have been so bad if there were room on the mountain for me to guide Mom safely past them, but the trail was so tight and rocky, and Mom so wobbly, that she was liable to punch a stranger with her flapping if they came too close.
And then there was the breathing problem. Mom held her neck sleeve in place so that someone would need to look deep into her eyes to see the smoldering as she plowed through them like a battering ram. Even with the muzzle in the way, Mom still closed the doors behind her nose and mouth every time a stranger was near so as not to contamomate them. The trouble was that the trains of strangers got so long that Mom could suffercate waiting for them all to pass. If Mom suffercated, who would bring me cheese?
The only way for Mom to safely take a breath was to stop and turn her back on the trail until the danger passed. Nothing makes Mom more dangerous than when she has to wait.
“Downhill traffic has the right of way,” she mouthed behind her muzzle so that only I could hear her as we tried to balance together on a trailside rock the size of a pencil tip.
“Step off the dammed trail to take your stupid picture,” she muffled as she stood facing a tree with her arms crossed and the eyes in the back of her head shooting fireballs at the photographer.
“What, is the whole class of 2022 out today? What happened to no large gatherings,” the smoke signals coming from her ears said as she stepped so deep into a bush that she had to swipe leaves out of her eyes.
I strained at my leash as Mom disappointed hundreds of Oscar fans clamoring for my attention. “I think those people wanted to pet me.”
“If we stopped to let everyone pet you, or let everyone pass, we would literally never get off this mountain,” Mom said as she dragged me past another four-legged hiker leaning in to sniff me hello. “At this rate I bet we’ll pass close to 2,000 people before we get back to the van.”
I tried to memorize that two thousand people was exactly how many fit on a five-and-a-half mile trail when you stacked them exactly six feet apart. The numbers burned holes in my brain and fell out before I could save them.
Perhaps Mom was right when she said that you couldn’t get deep enough into the wilder-ness to escape the boogeyvirus. By now, it had spread so far and wide that even the deepest forests and steepest mountains were teeming with its carriers. It’d crowded the joy out of more than just the wilder-ness. No matter which way we turned, the rules of uncivilization blocked the path back to the way things were before. The only way to get through it was to step aside, hold your breath, and wait for it to pass. But even after all these months, Mom still acted as if the boogeyvirus couldn’t catch her if she kept moving. She red-rovered recklessly through barriers and took frantic detours until the twists had tied her hopelessly in knots. The more she struggled to escape, the more tangled she became and the farther the car kennel seemed to get. If only she would sit and accept that this was our life now, the car kennel might come before she burned up inside, and we could live happily ever after in whatever safe, comfortable life the New Normal had in store.
As morning became lunchtime, the sun came closer and brought the heat with it. I was thirsty for all the lakes and puddles I’d ignored in the cool hours of morning. The bottle under Mom’s arm was empty and her sweatshirt was dark around the packpack straps, but to get at short sleeves and the full bottles in the packpack, we would have to stop. Every time we passed a stopping place with enough room for a bowl and all six of our paws, there were already people sitting on the rock meant for us. So I held my thirst as the sun heated my fur like an oven.
There was also a noise coming from higher up the mountain—a sort of manly whoop like the mating call of a hideous bird. The sound was the same every time, like when Mom has a scratch in her brain that makes the same line of a song play over and over in her thought bubble. Except that this sound was in my brain. Was I going crazy like Mom?
“What the smell is that woman saying?” Mom grumbled the umptieth time I heard it.
“Wait, you can hear it too?”
heeeeeeeeee-YUP!, the sound said.
“My middle school gym teacher, Ms. McGruff used to talk like that,” Mom said. “All the other teachers would avoid her in the halls.”
heeeeeeeeee-YUP!
“It sounds like a blister in my ears,” I whimpered.
By the gaJillianth verse, the Drill Sergeant had caught up enough to make out the words. “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaask-UP!” she bellowed.
Again.
And again.
And again.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mom hissed. “That’s the most obnoxious thing I’ve ever heard. Maybe she’d be less obsessed with airborne illnesses if she weren’t such a windbag.”
“She’s just reminding people because they can’t hang signs in the woods,” I said.
“Who does she think she is anyway?” Mom shifted her eyes over her shoulder in a suspicious way. “It’s not like everyone on this trail isn’t aware of the benefits of masks, and hasn’t already made their decision about wearing one. Just let the people breathe in peace.”
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaask-UP!” brayed the Drill Sergeant.
“Give it a rest,” Mom mumbled. “Having some rotten vigilante bellowing in your ear isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about anything.”
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaask-UP!”
“You should tell her when she gets here,” I said.
“She’d better hope she doesn’t catch up, or else I might push her off this damned mountain. And I agree with her. Sorta.”
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaask-UP!”
We inched our way through the crowds as the Drill Sergeant closed in behind us. She was practically shouting in our ears by the time we finally reached the crumbling old road where the Wagon was waiting. Mom’s shoulders had been creeping closer to her ears every time the Sergeant’s orders rumbled through the valley, and now they were almost high enough to be earmuffs. I was afraid she really was about to turn around and fight the old drillmaster to the death, but once we stepped back onto the bombed-out pavement, Mom forgot all about giving the Drill Sergeant something to holler about.
Now, instead of empty nature surrounding the road, cars crouched in every nook and cranny. It looked like a tornado had come through, dropping millions of cars higgledy-piggledy into the forest. Their windows burned the sun back into my eyeballs. More cars rushed to join the mayhem, blocking the exit for the few cars that thought to escape.
Zillions of confused people wandered through the car-nage, searching for the car that belonged to them, or a trail to escape the horror. It was so tight that Mom and I even had to yield the trail to cars forced off the road. The cars didn’t say thank you any more than the people did.
The tornado of frustration grew above Mom’s head, picking up speed every time she had to step aside. “I miss when the world was in crisis and everyone was afraid to leave their homes,” she grumbled.
“How can there be so many people and not a single one wants to pet me?” I moaned.
By the time we found the Wagon, there was nowhere for me to lie down in the shade where I wouldn’t be squashed by a car. Mom wasn’t in a picnicking mood anyway. The cyclone inside her head escaped her throat in scoffs and growls, launched the packpack across the Wagon like a cow in a tornado, and made cheese wrappers miss the trash sack three times in a row. It wound up her muscles like springs and made them snap in jerky motions so that doors slammed and keys jammed.
“Get in the van, Oscar,” she growled like I’d done something wrong.
“But I’m thirsty,” I said before I noticed the murder still lurking in her eyes. To avoid flying like a cow in a tornado, I held my tongue and obediently mounted the Wagon before asking, “… and what are you planning to do with that cheese?”
“You can eat it once we get going.” She hurled herself into the driving chair with such force that the door caught in her slipstream and slammed shut with a bang.
We were only a few miles from a normal road with places to pull over and enjoy a snack, but it took a lifetime to get there. Just like us, the Wagon had to climb into the trees every few steps to let dozens of ungrateful cars pass in the other direction. Mom drove with the fork in her teeth like a pirate carries a knife. My bologna container sat unopened in her lap as the Wagon elbowed its way back up the road.
Finally, the road spread wide enough to make room for all the cars that wanted to use it. The Wagon pulled into the trees one last time and Mom pulled the all done lever. She took the fork from her teeth.
“Oscar, if I ever want to come to Tahoe on a long weekend in the summer again, please smack some sense into me.” I would have reminded her that paws don’t “smack,” but she was finally peeling the top off the bologna packet and I didn’t want to distract her. She separated sheets of meat from the stack with the butt of the fork and draped them into my mouth like a servant feeding grapes to an emperor. While I ate, she asked the Witch to find us somewhere a little less crowded to spend the night.
“I already told everyone about all the great trails up here,” the Witch said. “They’re on their way right now.”
“Isn’t there anywhere that isn’t mobbed?” Mom begged, prodding the Witch’s filters.
“You might as well just go home,” the Witch suggested helpfully.
Mom forgot the torture of the past a hunerd days of solitude in an instant. “Good idea. Someone oughta tell all these people that there’s a deadly virus on the loose and it’s dangerous to go outside.”
Mom began to relax as we rolled out of the mountains and cruised through the marshlands outside of Sacramento. We’d spent many miserable traffic jams in the Before Times sweltering in the sluggish traffic between Sacramento and the Stuck House. Back then, a hunerd miles of traffic used to try Mom’s patience more than a whole army of Drill Sergeants. In the peaceful mountains, the Witch used to swear we’d be home in time for laundry, but as we came closer to the City, the traffic would squeeze tighter and tighter, building up to the finale of gridlock on the Grey Bridge that all the other traffic jams could only dream of. As we got closer, the Witch would stretch out the drive, adding a minute here and twelve minutes there, until Mom and I were overflowing with pee and it seemed like the Stuck House was gone for good.
“Traffic is getting worse,” the Witch used to announce, as if we hadn’t noticed already. “You will now arrive too late to make dinner,” she would jeer, so cruelly that sometimes it made Mom bang on the driving wheel. To rub it in, the Witch would remind us that there was no escape. “You are still on the fastest route.”
But not today! The boogeyvirus made the impossible possible, breaking the Bridge curse and ending the Witch’s treachery once and for all. As the Wagon approached the City, Mom’s thought bubble filled with showers and comfy pajamas. I looked forward to finishing my nap in a bed that wasn’t humming and swaying. The Wagon careened through the final turn, and the row of seveny-eight trillion toll tardises spread like a finish line across the boundary between freeway and bridge.
The Wagon red-rovered through the tardis line, but instead of coasting over the Bridge for a victory lap, it slammed to a stop just in time to avoid crashing into the wall of cars on the far side. Were they so stuck in the past that they didn’t realize we didn’t have to live like this anymore?
Mom looked to the Witch for answers. “Don’t worry, Spud. It clears up after the meter lights.” I wondered who she was reassuring, since I hadn’t asked.
She consulted the Witch again when we passed under the flashing lights that used to train people to take turns, back when sharing was a thing you needed to know how to do. “At the tunnel. It’s clear after the tunnel,” Mom told whoever was listening.
But when we passed through the island holding up the midpoint of the bridge, we found another clog of cars keeping the City just out of reach on the far side. It was like uptillion grannies decided to go for a Sunday drive over the Bridge at exactly the same time.
When I peered through the other cars’ windows to give the evil eye to the bridge trolls causing this mess, I noticed something strange. Many of the windows were boarded up with signs or had words painted like nose smudges on the glass. People hung their heads out of open windows, leaning into the wind like dogs and making the wooooo sound that means look at me in all human languages. People even popped out of roof windows like popes. They waved flags, honked horns, and generally made a big hullabaloo.
“Is this a party?” I asked.
“It must be a protest. Just our luck to turn up right when it starts,” said the Traffic Jinx.
“But I’m thirsty and I have to pee! What did I ever do to them?”
“I’m thirsty, too,” Mom said to make the suffering more real by making it about her.
Knowing that Mom understood my pain only fed my anger. “Why, it’s terrorism to do something so cruel to an innocent dog!”
“It’s not terrorism,” she said, as if I were overreacting. “They just want to bring awareness to a problem.”
“Their problems are between me and the potty. That makes their problem my problem. And you know what? I think they’re doing it on purpose.”
“Yeah. They are,” Mom agreed, but in that tricky way that suggested that being right made me wrong.
“But… But… What kind of civilization lets people get away with being so inconsiderate?” I humphed. “This isn’t America anymore!”
“Actually, this is exactly what’s supposed to be so great about America.”
“Traffic? You can’t be serious.” Even Mom wasn’t dumb enough to believe that nonsense.
“I mean that you’re supposed to be allowed to be inconsiderate to make a point. As long as you follow certain rules and don’t hurt anyone while you’re doing it.”
“But they are hurting me,” I pointed out, sure Mom of all people would understand what can happen when you tell someone who had to go potty to be patient. “Can’t they have their peaceful demomstration on the internet where they won’t bother anyone?”
“They’re not doing it to you, Oscar. I have to pee too. And maybe that person in the next car is late to work.” Her eyes pointed at a car with two black flags waving like tails and a fist punching the air outside each window.
“They look angry too.”
“Maybe that person is hungry.” Mom looked at a car on the other side. It had cardboard signs in all of its windows except the one where a man hung out with his mouth open like a goldfish, arms punching the wind above his head. I couldn’t read the messages in the windows, but I knew that people in the City often held cardboard signs when they were hungry.
“… And who knows if that person has a condition that makes him incontinent. For all we know, he’s had an accident and can’t wait for this to be over so he can go home and change his pants.”
I peeped through the butt window of the car in front of us and sniffed the air vents for farts.
“Just because we’ve never had a problem ourselves, that doesn’t mean no one else is suffering from it,” Mom continued. “You’ve got to get people’s attention somehow. The internet can bring awareness to things, but it’s different when you see the faces of the people who are affected. It makes it more real, somehow.”
“That’s what I mean. Just because they don’t have to pee, doesn’t make it okay for them to go so slow that I wet the bed. What are they so mad about anyway?”
“Someone died,” Mom said, which were the magic words to win every argument. “He didn’t deserve it, but they killed him anyway. Now people are mad.”
“Aren’t his murderers going to jail like the Bad Oscar?”
“Maybe. That’s what these people hope will happen, anyway. But now do you see how their problems are bigger than how bad we have to pee?”
“Yes, I see that when some people are having a bad day they think it’s okay to make things worse for everyone.”
“More like, the more uncomfortable we are, the more power a temporary inconvenience has to make us stop and think.” I was starting to think that Mom had lost her mind.
We passed through the skyscraper gates of the City. A whale-mobile was parked in the middle of the freeway, flashing its lights and desperately trying to draw attention away from the rowdy terrorists. The Law stood beside the car waving arms like an air traffic controller to sort the rowdy cars from regular ones.
“Thank dogness you’re here!” I wagged. “There are some terrible drivers out today. Sick ’em!”
The Law swatted the rogue cars off the freeway. They obediently rolled onto the exit and drained into the City streets to be pumped back toward Oakland. When it was our turn, the Law paddled the Wagon to the other side and we whooshed onto the freedom of an empty freeway. It felt unstable to be moving again, like the moment when Mom lets go of the leash that’s been holding me back and I have to sprint out the wobbles just to keep from falling on my face.
“See?” Mom said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“If it wasn’t so bad, then why have you been making frustrated noises and banging on the driving wheel?”
“Staying woke is hard sometimes,” Mom shrugged.
Woke? So she was still upset about the Law that kicked us out of our sleeping spot last night? “You really need to let things go, Mom.”
“Just think of that lone cop standing in the middle of the freeway with nothing but a couple of flags to protect him, facing down hundreds of angry people who came out to protest him.”
“They could have eaten him alive!”
“You keep saying that this isn’t America anymore, but I can’t think of anything more American than bravely defending someone else’s right to disagree with you.” The Wagon stopped at the last abandoned intersection before the Stuck House and waited for the light to notice us. “And did you see how orderly everyone was in getting out of the way? Even though people are mad at the police in general, no one was holding it against that one cop. So yeah, it was annoying, but without the annoyance we never would have noticed that moment. And we learned something from it, didn’t we?”
“Sure did!” I fibbed. “You first, what did you learn?”
“That good leadership holds space for disagreement. And that there are worse injustices in the world than a traffic jam.”
“Oh. I was hoping you were going to let me stick my head out the window more often.”
Want to keep reading? Grab Oscar’s book, No Place Like Alone on Amazon.
