Rage against the quarantine

But there was nothing on the other side of the window. Absolutely nothing. “We’re here!” I wagged. 

Read last week’s story here

The Wagon rolled off the freeway into what looked more like a research station on Antarctica or the moon than a rest area. Mom opened the door and I ran to where the black road ended and the white emptiness began. I sniffed the air, but there was no freezer-burn smell of white dirt nor prickly smell of desert on the wind. In every direction, there were killmometers and killmometers of nothingness between my eyes and the far-off mountains where the world reloaded. 

It felt like freedom to have all that space to fill however I wanted. My paws itched to leave their prints in every tile, but the Salt Flats were too big to properly explore without losing smell of Mom. She plodded behind me at an uncurious pace, capturing as much of the vastness as she could inside the Witch’s tiny screen. I rolled as far as I walked, grinding tiny grains of magnificence into my fur so I could take it home with me.

We drifted farther during my floor routine of tumbling, jumping, and abs than I realized. When we found the car kennel again, we were on the far end. Mom and I hiked through the sea of empty spaces. There was only one other car in the kennel, parked far from the potties where few other cars would stop. The lady inside was holding up an empty box of the kind that glass bottles ride in. She twisted it around in the sun as if admiring its beauty.

“I’m trying to see how many calories are in a bottle,” the lady told Mom through the open window with a friendly, lopsided smile.

“Is beer diet food?” I thought to Mom.

“I actually know the answer to that question,” Mom said out loud. “An IPA probably has about 200 calories per bottle.” Mom knows how to put numbers on all sorts of things.

“That’s not so bad.” The lady looked relieved. I was proud that Mom’s counting had helped soothe someone else’s stress for a change.

Mom kept the friendly smile on her face as she wished the woman a safe drive home. Behind the cheerful voice, her thoughts judged, “… not bad for 1, but ma’am, you seem to have drunk all 6. In your car. More than 100 miles from anywhere you could possibly live.” 

“Should I tell her?” I asked, excited to show off that I knew helpful things, too.

“Nah, leave her alone. People are under pressure. They need to get out of their houses to find relief from the constant anxiety somehow. Anyway, she made me happy.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’ve put away a 6-pack of good beer before 4pm on a Tuesday, you’ve probably got some serious problems,” Mom calculated, showing her work as she went. “But she’s still thinking about her figure.” 

“I don’t think her figure has been bikini-safe for a long time,” I coached. 

“Bikinis aren’t an essential life skill for women over 30,” Mom said like a warning. “Anyone who’s day-drinking alone has parts of their life that are out of control, but that lady isn’t ready to let herself go. The world’s coming down around her, and there may be some huge things that she can’t take on right now, but that doesn’t mean she has to give in. All is not lost as long as people are still thinking about the future and making plans to improve.”

Inspired by the Health Nut, Mom forgot to be in a hurry and took the time to make her own comfy drink when we got back to the Wagon. While she watched the pot for bubbles, a pickup truck so big that it filled the boundless emptiness pulled in next to us. It continued growling, even after the man inside dismounted. He looked like he had been strong and muscular once, but quit the football team two dog-lifetimes ago. Now, his shirt was inflated with more arrogance than muscle. 

He looked Mom up and down, and his eyes said that she was no cheerleader. “What? Are you having a cookout?” he asked with the sneer of a TV bully. 

“No, I’m just making a cup of tea,” Mom said in a snotty voice that said he couldn’t bully her if she bullied him back. 

“Psh… that’s random!” he scoffed, walking to the people potties in a way that might have felt jaunty from the inside but looked constipated from the outside. 

“Wow. Cool,” Mom said in a voice that meant he wasn’t cool at all. She shot a sharp look into his back to deflate his puffed-up attitude. 

“That wasn’t much of a burn,” I whispered when he closed the pooping-tardis door behind him. 

“I haven’t heard anyone use the word random as an insult since I was in like 9th grade,” Mom said to make her feelings hurt a little less. “With all the things to worry about right now, that guy’s criticizing me about making a cup of tea?”

Mom’s eyes dropped back to the pot, where there was still no steam. Despite her brave face, the moldy insult spoiled the love for mankind left over from the Health Nut. She dumped the water on the ground and packed up the kitchen quickly. She mounted the driving chair just in time. The Wagon stole out of its parking space just as the tardis door opened. By the time Biff got back to his truck, we were already long gone.

The Rockies shrank in the back window, while outside the front window, the land relaxed into the smoother blankness of Nevada. We continued our sprint westward through Nevada’s furrowed brow, where the land rolls up and down through unremarkable hill and forgotten valley after another. The hunerds of miles of slow-rolling earth lulled me into a trance of deep thoughts. It wouldn’t be long now before we were back in My Hometown at the End of the World. 

I didn’t want our adventure to end, not just because I didn’t want a new routine to stick us in our Stuck House. In the time we’d been away, the human race had gone from a cuddlicious bouquet of human-mutts to a cesspuddle of plague and suspicion. It wasn’t just me, it was like the boogeyvirus had cast a spell that turned the whole world into crotchety cats.

Even the Witch, who enjoyed nothing more than sewing conflict, warned that suspicion was spreading throughout the land, breaking people apart like the two sides of the Grand Canyon. The Witch reported daily accusations from Friends who thought that leaving a stuck house was murder, and other Friends who shouted that everyone who didn’t mind their own beeswax deserved what they got. Mom was afraid to talk to anyone but me, lest they find out where we were and say those nasty things to her. 

But we couldn’t hide in the desert forever. We needed to come home to report to my new business posting in a few days. There was nowhere else to turn except toward home.

There should have been endless things for a dog and his Mom to do in all that empty Nevada wilder-ness, but without anything special to aim at, it was hard to know where to start an adventure. If there were trails out there, Mom couldn’t find them on her own, and all the Witch could find was a shrug.

The Wagon’s almost there click woke me from my daydreaming. I climbed into the copilot’s seat to see if we were arriving at a camping spot or just a gas station. It was a gas station — one of the ones that's too small to sell hot dogs but possibly big enough to have cheese.

Across the street was one of those big, balloon-shaped towers like a mapp uses to mark somewhere special. I couldn't see much worth stopping for in the dried grass and empty dust lots that made up the little town. The tower wore a name tag like the towers that mark country towns usually do. A mural of happy people frolicking in rolling hills filled the space behind the letters. While Mom was inside, I studied the bikers and hikers for hints about what message the words might hold.

“Read it to me,” I commanded when Mom came back with my cheese stick.

“It says Welcome to the Outback of Nevada,” she read. 

“Oh goody! Steak!”

“Not the restaurant, dummy. People call empty areas of land the outback. Or, that’s what they call it in Australia anyway.” She mounted the driving chair and plugged the Witch back into her charging straw. “It’s solid branding. With a name like that, I bet we’ll find tons of resources on the internet. Maybe we’ll even find an excuse to stay for a few extra days.”

“Do outbacks have trails?” 

“Let’s find out.” To the Witch she said, “Show me trails in the Outback of Nevada.” 

“Did you mean Outback Steakhouse in Nevada?” The Witch asked, judgily.

“Yes!” I said.

“No!” Mom tried again. “Trail maps: Outback of Nevada.” 

“Here are some articles about Australia,” the Witch offered, like she thought Mom might be so lost that she’d driven to Australia without noticing. Even the Witch knew this wasn’t America anymore.

“Show me images of the Outback of Nevada,” Mom tried. Some of our best adventures started with Mom seeing a pretty picture, followed by a quest to find where it was taken.

“This is what Australia looks like, you dope. Do you see any koala bears outside? Is everything on fire? No, because you’re in Nevada.”

“Sheesh. What’s the use of having such a great name if you’re not going to optimize the hell out of it for search engines?” Mom said in her business voice.

“Maybe we should drive to Australia next.” I didn’t know how long it took to drive to Australia, but it couldn’t be too far. The pictures on the Witch’s screen didn’t look all that different from the pictures in the Wagon’s windows. “It looks nice there. Do you think that koalas like to play tag?”

“You can’t get there from here,” Mom said, giving up before she even tried.

The Wagon remounted the freeway and we continued toward the sinking sun. Besides it being the straightest route back to California, there was a second, more important reason why Mom had chosen this route home from Wyoming all those days ago. The real reason we were in the Outback of Nevada was because we both wanted a reason to say Winnemucca.

Try it: Winnemucca, Winnemucca, Winnemucca!

See? It sounds like laughing at a Fozzy Bear joke!

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