Referees

“So what will we do if you get sick?” I asked. She tilted her head to rearrange the kaleidoscope of thoughts inside. “I suppose I would drive us home as fast as I can. We have enough supplies to avoid stores for a week, and I could use the dog bathroom so I wouldn’t spread germs in any public places. The only thing I really have to touch is gas pumps. I guess I could fill up with poop bags on my hands.” “And that stops the virus?” “It’d better! If poop bags let germs through, I’m never, ever picking up one of your turds again. I’m just worried about what happens if we get caught.”

“They would send us home, right?” 

“Home is 1,000 miles away. We’d still need to keep driving and visiting gas stations, so that doesn’t change anything.” 

“They could make us go to a hotel,” I sulked. I hate hotels with their uncomfy beds that don’t smell like Mom.

“Even if the hotels and campgrounds were open, the guests would be travelers. That’s not safer. Our safest option is probably to keep doing what we planned to do all along—wild camping and staying away from interstates and cities. I guess we’re refugees now.” 

“Referees?”

What game could Mom be refereeing? Tiddlywinks? Mom would never tidy up for fun. Duck duck goose? It would drive Mom crazy if the ducks and gooses weren’t in the proper order. Certainly not red light green light. Maybe she was playing hopscotch? Or musical chairs? Then it hit me: Simon says! Mom follows the rules very closely, but she doesn’t always walk on the right side of the line. 

According to Mom, you can tell a lot about what’s allowed by what’s not allowed and studying the space between the allowed and the not. She calls it law-gic. If Mom sees a no dogs allowed sign below a PARK HOURS 8 AM TO SUNSET sign, she reads DOGS ALLOWED SUNSET TO 8 AM. That’s law-gic.

With everyone trapped at home, the world would need a protector to travel around keeping an eye on things while they were away and to herd everyone back together when it was safe to come out again. That hero would need a sidekick, of course. A referee who knew how to twist silly rules until they made sense again and wield Murphy’s Law to make impossible things happen, like bringing rain to the desert. Yes, the fate of the world rested on its globe-trotting hero, Tintin Quarantino and his faithful referee-sidekick, the Weather Jinx.

“If we’re referees, does that mean we get to make the rules?” I asked.

“Not referees, refugees,” Mom said.

“Potato-beast, potahto-beast.”

“It means people who are forced to wander because they can’t go home.”

“If you’re the referee, does that mean you get a whistle?” 

“It was a metaphor,” she said, using the fancy word for a lie.

“Well someone’s got to blow the whistle on all this. You can’t let those rascals cheat at Simon says. The world needs a referee to talk us out of trouble just like you always talk us out of trouble whenever the Law comes offsides to hassle us.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Mom lied again. In fact, Mom had talked us out of trouble the first time we visited Sedona. 

During our last Christmas vacation, the Weather Jinx had brought a blizzard to town. Snow may be how clouds deliver white dirt, but the delivery isn’t as fun as it looks on TV. The clouds throw it carelessly out of the sky like a drive-by mailman, with no thought to what innocent dog might get creamed by a snowfloof meant for a tree. When snowfloofs land on the road, they make Mom crunch against the driving wheel and yell a lot. 

“Dog doo, I forgot about this road!” Mom growled. Her fist was locked tightly to the driving wheel, so when she shook it, her body shook instead, like she was trying to shake sense into the Wagon. 

Outside the front window, the road dropped off the side of the mountain and twisted frantically as it fell. Meanwhile, the raindrops recognized the Weather Jinx coming and transformed into snowfloofs the size of dust bunnies. It only snows twice a year in Sedona, and this winter I’d been there to see both.

Back in the Before, driving down a slippery mountain road in the dark had been just about the most dangerous thing in the whole world. The last time this road attacked, the Wagon had carved fresh tireprints into the white dirt while a growing train of blinking cars hitched themselves behind us. Every time the Wagon pulled over to let someone else take a pull, every car in the train pulled over behind us like a big game of follow the leader. The Wagon was so jittery by the time we reached Sedona that it cowered in the first open place it could find beside the road while Mom and I slept off the storm. 

That night, the Law had woken me up, and I woke Mom up to scare it away. Mom got out to talk to the lady-Law. She pointed at the snow in the sky and the white dirt on the road. Using law-gic and good grammar, Mom explained that it was all just a big misunderstanding. She promised to leave in the morning if the Law would be so kind as to please let us go back to bed. 

The lady-Law looked Mom’s chihuahua-sized frame up and down before inspecting the contents of her wallet, probably to make sure that Mom wasn’t a poor person. The lady-Law asked her shirt for its opinion. After a long discussion, the Law decided that the Sedonuts were safe with us sleeping among them and invited us to be their guests, just as long as Mom kept her promise and was gone in the morning.

Now that there was snow and a boogeyvirus in the air, it was probably best not to catch the Law’s attention. The Witch was telling scary stories about how people might need special papers to even leave their houses, and we didn’t have magic papers or a stuck house handy. It would be hard to convince the Law that we were staying home while the Wagon was wearing its name tags that said, Hi! I’m from California! 

Once again, Mom hugged the driving wheel so tight that her panting fogged up the front window. The Wagon put-putted at hiking speed down the curly mountain road and a tail of blinking cars lined up to ride in our wagon tracks. As the mountain released its grip on the road, Mom’s chest gradually became unstuck from the driving wheel. Her shoulders faded from her ears as the forest gave way to houses and buildings. As street lights appeared, she made circles with her bottom teeth to unlock her jaw muscles.

“It was worth it for fresh, hot vegetables,” Mom drooled. “I hope they have brussel sprouts. And green beans! I’d die for some green beans.” 

“Will they have roast turkey?” I wagged. “Or maybe pork chops? Do you think they’ll have pork chops?” 

“Tofu! Or any protein drowning in sauce, just as long as it’s not beans,” Mom gushed. “If they have mashed potatoes, I’m gonna fill a whole container.” 

My last dribble of drool dropped onto the blanket as a mouth-drying thought occurred to me. It was easy to find town things before the world ended, but now you were supposed to stay outside when you wanted to be inside, inside when you wanted to go outside, and not even the Witch knew if someplace would be open before we got there. Could you have a store if no one was allowed to shop or work there? 

“Will Ho Foods be open?” I asked.

“It’s a supermarket,” Mom said like a threat. “They’re calling supermarkets essential businesses now, so they have to stay open.” 

“Wait, I thought you said that working is forbidden. Who will cook the pork chops?”

“I guess work is forbidden for some people, but they’re forcing other people to risk their lives to work. Crazy times.” She shrugged, as if living in a world that still had tofu with lots of sauce meant she could cope with anything. 

Luckily, there were cars in the car kennel and lights behind the Ho Foods door. “I’ll be right back,” Mom promised with a kiss. 

“This is a special occasion,” I coached. “Hunt and gather as much as you can drag back to the Wagon.” 

I climbed into the driving chair and stuck my eyeballs to the door so I wouldn’t miss Mom when she reappeared with our feast. While my eyeballs were busy, my ears roamed the car kennel. A woman was filling the car next to me with sacks of treats while her man’s waving arms tried to pull my eyes from the door.

“They won’t even let you sit inside the McDonald’s. They make you take your burger out to the car to eat it,” he grumped. “This isn’t America anymore!” 

I’d always eaten my McRotguts in the Wagon, so I didn’t even know there was another, more American way to do it. It was a shame that Mom had left the window closed and I couldn’t tell him about the secret window in the back where they’d serve him his dinner without even making him dismount. 

Mom’s face wasn’t hidden behind a stack of treats when she reappeared, so I could see the creeped-out look it wore. Mom always looked creeped out when she came out of stores lately and it was starting to tick me off. I was supposed to be the one to have a panic attack every time she left the Wagon. And where were all the bags of takeout? She was only carrying one bag, and I didn’t smell a hint of pork chops or anything hot and yummy when she opened the door. Not even tofu.

“Sorry, Spud. No pork chops,” she said, offering me a cheese stick that she could have found at any old gas station. “The hot bar was closed, and they were completely out of canned food.” 

“But… but… You promised!” After Oregon, I thought Mom would be more responsible with promises. “Where did all the cans go? Do you expect me to eat kibble for every meal?” 

“I did the best I could.” She really did look sorry. “Half the shelves were completely empty, especially in the aisles with the crackers and raisins that everyone usually skips. There was a couple with an entire cart full of crates of sparkling water, like that was going to save them from the apocalypse,” said my life partner, who buys fuzzy water at every gas station. “I wonder what’ll happen if they try to make espresso with it.” 

“This isn’t America anymore!” I said, trying out my new catchphrase for when you don’t get something you want. 

“I’ll make it up to you, Spud. I promise. Wasn’t there supposed to be a McDonald’s around here somewhere? I think they have outlets and wifi.”

“McDonald’s is telling everyone to keep out, too. I heard a man talking about it while you were inside. That’s why this isn’t America anymore.”

“Damn. I need to charge my laptop,” Mom said like she was finally starting to understand how bad things really were. “It’ll die soon if I don’t find an outlet.”

“Didn’t you do that while you were inside not-buying my pork chops? You were gone forever!”

“I tried, but all the chairs were upside-down on tables.”

“The whole world’s upside-down,” I agreed.

“Since nobody was in the dining area, I didn’t think it would be a problem if I stood quietly in the corner to let it charge, but the lady in the express checkout lane acted like she was going to have me arrested just for standing there.”

“How dare she!” I gasped. “Why didn’t you buy something first to show that you’re not an escaped poor person? Just to set people at ease.” 

“I had my $200 bag of groceries with me and everything. It didn’t matter. I guess we’ll have to find another place to sit and use public wifi now that sitting in public is illegal.”

“What about my McRotguts? You said you’d make it up to me.” 

“If we can’t find a McDonald’s, I’ll buy you the first hot dog I see. Promise,” Mom said, like someone who hadn’t just broken two promises in a row. “Anyone who shops at Whole Foods is used to getting exactly what they want, so they panic at the idea of making do. But we’re resourceful. No pork chops? We’ll hunt for McNuggets instead. No McNuggets? No problem. We know where to find hot dogs. Shortages are just another puzzle to solve. Bring it on! Scarcity doesn’t scare me.” 

“I thought the plan was to stay away from scare-cities,” I said. As much as I wanted to go hot dog hunting, this strange new world gave me the willies. No one in the soggy car kennel looked friendly. Instead of invisibility cloaks, they all walked around as if surrounded by force fields of fear and scorn. “I liked it better when we’re social distancing.”

“I know. I just need to find somewhere to charge up and then we’ll get out of town.” Mom called on the Witch for help. Her face crinkled and twitched in the screen’s glow until suddenly her eyebrows unpinched for the first time since she came out of Ho Foods empty-pawed. “I know where to find wifi and benches, where nobody will tell me to move along!” 

“It’s hopeless, Mom. If they wouldn’t let that big, angry man inside…”

“Not McDonald’s, the laundromat!” Mom announced triumphantly. “Some of them even have tables with outlets nearby! Indoors! Can you imagine such luxury?”

“We’re saved!” I wagged.

The Witch directed us to a different car kennel with only one bright window surrounded by many dark ones. Mom gathered her stinky clothes and the blankets. 

“Back it up or else I’ll close the door on your snout,” she warned, blocking the doorway with her body and sticking out a hip each time I tried to nose around her. 

“But I want to come with you!” 

“It says NO DOGS ALLOWED. Here, I’ll leave you with dinner.” She poured some kibble into a bowl. I leaned in to sniff it. As soon as my nose pulled out of the doorway, I heard a slam. 

I was in no mood to protect the Wagon. “Dog food!” I scoffed. “I was told there would be pork chops.” 

When Mom came back a few minutes later, I was ready to give her a piece of my mind. “Don’t tell me,” I said as soon as the door opened, “you saw a SERVICE DOGS ONLY sign and now you need somedog to escort you or they won’t let you inside.” 

“I forgot my laptop,” Mom chirped, reaching around me for the bag. She slammed the door in my face again. 

I sat alone and porkchopless on the bare sleeping mat, watching Mom through the laundrymat window as she tended to everyone’s needs but mine. My excitement curdled to anxiety, then to angst, and finally to anger as she scratched the laptop’s belly. Why should I have to quar-unseen in the Wagon when she was the one who was too dirty to be around anyone else? Mom should know better! The reason we go everywhere together is because the world is a scary place without a sidekick. She was probably in there tinkering with our plans right now, trying to plot away the white dirt before I left my mark on it. 

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