Little hound on the prairie

On the road, there was no knowing when the butt-shredding rocks would hit our tabottoms, so Mom could raise her arms in abandon as the world carried us from one surprise to the next. At home, we would only have the Witch’s lies to tell us what was happening in the world outside. “Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s break bad-lands before we go home.”

Read last week’s story

The Wagon rolled out of the black-white hills onto the prairie. I kept waiting for the land to do something interesting, but the only thing that happened was that the white dirt turned to grass. There were still cows, though. There are always cows. 

Without warning, the Wagon pulled over as quickly and messily as a whale-mobile. I peeked around the arm shelf to find out what was happening in the cockpit. Mom jumped out and ran into the prairie like something had bitten her backside.

I climbed into the driving chair for a better view. “Don’t worry, I’ll just sit here in case the Law comes along,” I said to no one in particular. 

While I waited for the Law to ask if I was okay and why the Wagon looked like that, Mom tip-toed through the grass as sneakily as the Hamburgler. 

“Holy dog doo, Mom. Look out!” I barked when I saw what else was out there. 

A pawful of the biggest, ugliest cows I’d ever seen stood in the grass staring at her. They looked like their father was a yak and their mother was a warthog. They looked like someone had taken a cow and squeezed all of its extra parts up around its shoulders. Their haircuts were just terrible, like Julia Child or Norm MacDonald, but worse. And they wore this frumpy cape—no, not a cape, a stole—around their shoulders. 

“WHAT THE SMELL IS THAT MONSTROSITY?” I barked at top volume. 

Almighty Dog put some beasts on this earth just for chasing. If a critter wouldn’t run right away, you had to bow-wow a war whoop and charge them like a cannonball. 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. She always tried not to make any sudden moves.

When a beast ran away in spite of her incompetence, she just looked disappointed and went back to what she was doing before. 

Even though I shouted at top volume through the window, Mom was deaf to my coaching. She just kept waving the Witch in front of her like garlic at a vampire and following the mutants in a slow-speed chase.

“They can smell you, you know!” I barked as loud as I could. “Lemme at ’em! I’ll bark at ’em, and I’ll chase ’em, and then I’ll bark at ’em while I chase ’em! Now! Run now! You’re letting them get away!”

Instead, Mom stood up out of her sneaking posture and put the Witch back in her pocket as the deformed cows lumbered into the background.

“GO BACK TO WHATEVER MOO-TANT RANCH YOU CAME FROM, YOU FREAKS!” I screamed. 

Mom came back to the Wagon looking as un-disappointed as if she’d actually caught one of the moo-tants. I started quizzing her as soon as she opened the door. “Do you know what the heck those things were?”

“They’re buffalo!” she bragged. “Or… bison? Is there a difference?” 

The freaks watched boredly from the top of the bluff where they’d stopped as soon as they saw that Mom was done chasing. “I thought bison were ex-stinked,” I said suspiciously, without taking my eyes off of them. 

“I didn’t pay attention in that part of history class. C’mon. Get down so you can pose for a picture.”

“No way, José. You’re gonna run away and leave that curly hunk of jerky to eat me first.” I aimed an earth-rumbling growl their way so they would know I wasn’t afraid. The king wartcow chewed his gum and looked unimpressed. “DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE!” I stepped aggressively back onto the copilot’s chair to show them that I wouldn’t hesitate to sick Mom on them if they tried anything. Mom stepped out of the doorway to give me room to jump out and charge, but I just took another bold step backward, deeper into the Wagon. Why put in all that work to train a human if you’re not going to use her for protection? 

“We should keep away so their ex-stink doesn’t get on us,” I coached.

“Fine.” Mom remounted the driving chair. “You’re such a party pooper.” 

The Wagon remounted the road, but not for long. Every time the road swayed around another bend, the Wagon pulled over again and Mom ejected herself to take more pictures. It turned out that the reason they were called bad lands is because they weren’t terribly good at being hills, canyons, or fields. I’m not sure you could even call them lands, since they were more hole than land. They had no sense of style, mixing back-and-forth stripes like lines in a book with up-and-down creases like tree bark. Maybe they would have been cooler up close, but Mom never let me go more than a few steps from the Wagon.

The umptieth time we dismounted, there was something different in the air. My eyes followed my nose and landed on a pack of sheep staring curiously back at me. 

“Mom! Mom! Let me chase ’em!” I barked with so much friendliness that it cracked my voice.

“Hell no! Anyway, you’re not allowed more than 25 feet from the parking lot.” 

“Why not?” I whined. “I was born for this!”

“This is a National Park. No dogs on the trails,” she reminded me. “I read something about fleas being a problem…”

“Stop believing the Witch’s nonsense! I’m poison to fleas.” I puffed out my pest-free chest. “I just had my pill yesterday, remember? And anyway, sheep can’t catch fleas because they have wool instead of fur. I’ll make them tell you themselves if you’ll just let go of the leash…”

“Some dogs carry fleas,” she corrected, “…and the fleas could infect the prairie dogs.” 

“There are dogs out here?” I squealed. I couldn’t wait to meet one and ask him to show me all the sheep hangouts. 

“That’s just a nickname. I think they’re actually more like ground squirrels.” 

“There are squirrels out here?” I screeched. I’d had this place all wrong!

“No, shut up. This is important. Fleas may be annoying to you, but they carry diseases that can make prairie dogs get sick and die.”

“Like the boogeyvirus?” 

“Yeah. You could kill someone if you pass on your fleas.”

“But I don’t have fleas because I take my medicine. The squirrel-dogs can’t catch bugs I don’t have. Lemme at those sheep. I’ll scatter ’em like a bunch of wooly bowling pins!” 

Mom wrapped more of the leash around her hand to keep me closer. “That’s the thing, we don’t know for sure that you don’t have fleas. Even if you’re clean, we can’t prove it. So you can’t go.” 

“Innocent until proven guilty, Mom.” 

“Infected until proven innocent,” she countered. “Fleas don’t really follow the law, and neither do viruses.”

“No fair. If the squirrel-dogs are so delicate, they should stay in their own holes and not ruin the fun for everyone else.”

“To be fair, you’re the one coming from out of town to stick your big nose in their holes. They deserve to be safe from diseases carried by outsiders.”

“But you always say it’s good to make Friends from other places so we can learn about different ways of living.”

“We should respect when we’re not invited, and when it’s time to go back where we came from.” Mom turned so that only the arm holding the leash was left behind.

I turned back to the sheep to see if they’d extend an invitation. 

“I guess you’re not so interesting after all,” they baaaahed. They turned their wooly tails and leaped back toward the hole in the earth. 

I strained the limits of the leash to follow them. When I could go no farther, I leaned in to watch them drop over the edge of the car kennel and down the striped slope, no doubt on their way to tell their prairie-dog friends how rude Californians were.

Mom led me back to the Wagon and waved me inside. “Let me just make a cup of coffee for the road,” she said, slamming the door in my face yet again. 

While the water was cooking, Mom wandered around the car kennel, introducing herself to all the other cars. Instead of politely sniffing their butts, Mom pointed the Witch where her nose should go. 

“You’re supposed to do it with your snout!” I shouted through the window. 

She walked to the next car in line and did it again, holding the Witch close enough for a proper sniff. She checked the screen for the Witch’s opinion.

“Let me out and I’ll show you,” I called. “I’ll even be in the picture so it turns out better.”

Once she’d checked out the butt of every car in the kennel, she came back to review her work. “There are 10 cars in this lot,” she held up her hands in the all gone sign to show me how many ten was, “and only 2 of them are from South Dakota.”

“Is two most of ten?” I asked, trying to guess her point. 

“No. Most of these cars are from out-of-state.” 

“You said yourself that South Dogkotans are rare.” I was proud to have spotted signs of them in their natural habitat, even if we hadn’t found a wild one yet.

“No, I mean these people aren’t from nearby. They’re from Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, Illinois… all over the place. Looks like our secret hideout isn’t so secret anymore.” 

“I thought that everyone was grounded. Don’t they need to stay in place?”

“Maybe with schools and businesses closed, people are treating it like a vacation.” 

“I told you! All the referees are coming to South Dogkota and Wyoming, just like the spaceship movie predicted!”

“I don’t think it’s just South Dakota. Even flyover country is interesting when there’s nothing better to do. It was only a matter of time before people decided to escape the madness.”

“But they’ll kill us all!” I squeaked. “Good thing you took pictures as evidence. They won’t get away with this now that the Referee of the Universe is on the case.”

“The pictures were just to help me count.” She put the Witch in her pocket. “We’re hardly in a position to judge.”

“We should tell more people to travel, then,” I said. “To stop the madness.” 

“I thought we’d be safer on the road with everyone at home. But if other people start hiding out in the wilderness, maybe we won’t be as safe there as I thought.” 

When Mom argues against herself like this, it’s best to wait and see who’s winning before I pick sides, or else she’s liable to fight with me instead. So I waited. 

“And if the virus can get us all the way out here, maybe we shouldn’t be traveling after all. These people actually decided to leave home even though they knew it was against the rules and possibly dangerous.”

“We’ve known it was against the rules and possibly dangerous ever since Utah. What’s the difference?” I asked, excited to find out another reason why we were special. 

“Unlike them, we didn’t decide to be in this position,” Mom narrated. “Maybe we haven’t followed the rules exactly, but at least I’ve been trying to follow the spirit of the rules as best I can under the circumstances.” 

“I get it. Too many copycats.” 

Mom had always been a rebel, but how do you rebel when the boogeyvirus changes all the rules? When everyone wants to be part of the pack, you can stand out by being independent. But where’s the fun in being one-of-a-kind when everyone’s a lone wolf? 

“Thank dogness people are coming out again so you can be yourself,” I said. 

“Now that It’s starting to spread, I don’t know if it’s fair for city people to bring their germs to the country. But it doesn’t seem right to tell people they can’t come and go either.

Sometimes the only way to be beyond reproach is to stay out of the argument altogether.” 

“Stay out? What does that mean?” 

The fight drained out of her before my eyes. “I think it means that it’s time to go home,” she said with a floppy sigh.

With no more excuses pulling us east, Mom let the Wagon turn its wheels toward the sunset for the first time since our adventure began. From now on, every spin of the Wagon wheel would squeeze us back toward home like the last two drops of toothpaste in the tube. 

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