The race

She looked very sad all of a sudden. “There are other ways a person can be sick besides a virus.” 

Read last week’s story

Mom put on her running clothes, pulled a fresh pair of socks from the drawertop pile, closed the drawer another whisker, tied a bandana around my neck, and we turned to face the world she’d spent the night trying to block out. 

When she opened the door, the screen flew open faster than Mom could catch it. Everything outside was bent in the wind as if an invisible giant were sitting on it. The same air that had breathed fire not long ago was now blowing ice. I rushed to the car as frigid combs raked through my fur. I felt better the instant I jumped into the quiet air in the back seat. 

Mom looked back toward the Stuck House. “Hang on, I forgot something.” She slammed the door in my face and ran back inside.

She came back a century later wearing a long-sleeved shirt. Things don’t change much in My Hometown from one season to the next, so I tell the difference in the seasons by the differences between what Mom wears from night to day. It was the first time she’d run in sleeves since Utah. Without even noticing the time passing, we’d come back to the season when sleeves bookend the day.

The vast car kennel was as full as ever when we arrived at the Dog Beach. Sunlight sparkled in the sea of cars and flashed like sequins on the skirt of the dancing ocean beyond the cliffs. “The weather doesn’t seem so bad,” Mom said in the moment between silencing the car and opening the door. Sometimes life is like that. Something seems scary while we’re inside the Stuck House listening and worrying, but if we actually venture into it, the howling wind and driving rain aren’t nearly as bad as the Witch made Mom think. Mom might not even notice anything wrong if the Witch hadn’t gotten her all worked up about it.

Mom’s long sleeves stuck to her body like spandex in the wind as she held the door for me. “Remember how you said things aren’t as bad as you thought when you turn off the TV and check them out for yourself?” she asked as I dismounted.

“You heard that?” 

“You were right!” She struck a determined pose. For a moment, the wind made her look dauntless. Then, it blew her hat off and she just looked hatless. 

Mom’s head fur whipped like streamers as she chased her hat across the car kennel. By the time she caught up to it, she had the unruly hair and wild eyes of a mad scientist. She fit the hat back on her head to keep the madness inside and turned toward the ocean. 

I stayed behind Mom for shelter as we jogged across the car kennel to where the land dropped away. Beyond the cliff, the ocean looked ragged and frayed. The wind pulled Mom’s legs this way and that until they bumped together like the tinkle tubes on a windchime. A fierce gust held me midair in freeze frame, then dropped me closer to Mom’s heels than I expected. When her heel popped up for the next step, I took it on the chin.

“I thought everything was supposed to be better now,” my eyes said when Mom looked back to make sure she hadn’t kicked my teeth in. 

“They are, but it’s going to happen slowly,” she shouted over the wind right before we leapt off the cliff together. 

Falling down a cliff isn’t always as bad as it seems from the top. A set of sand stairs led from the car kennel to the Dog Beach, so we never fell more than one step at a time. The farther away from the car kennel we dropped, the more the wind relaxed. 

“See? All we needed was shelter,” Mom said. “We need a good wind to blow away all that smoke. This is just the beginning of a long process of clearing the air. If we can shelter ourselves from it, we might just ride this thing out after all.” 

“I don’t remember what it was like when there wasn’t danger in the air,” I said, blinking the grit out of my eyes. 

“Yeah, we’ve been running into headwinds for so long, I’m not sure I remember how to live without something to fight against. It’ll probably be a while before we remember what it’s like not to be constantly in crisis.”

I jumped off the last sand stair onto the beach, where it was a mostly-calm sunny day. Uncountable dogs dug in the sand, splashed in the waves, and chased each other in lopsided loops. Their people threw balls or crouched to introduce themselves to dogs they were meeting for the first time. There wasn’t a muzzle in sight, as if the Dog Beach were a place where more than just the dogs were free to be themselves.

I ran through the crowd, pushing other dogs out of the way and introducing myself to their people as Mom trudged around the outside of the group where she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. Here, where the sand was weak and messy, pushing off felt like digging in. A frisbee flew overhead and sand smeared under my paws as I tried to knock it out of the air before anyone else could catch it. 

Lower down, where the sand spent half its day as beach and the rest as sea floor, the waves made the sand strong. A dog could run easily on the sturdy ground, leaving a line of pawprints to mark his progress. Once he’d moved on, the tide would wash all traces of him into memory, leaving a fresh, blank world for the next dog. When Mom reached the sturdy sand, she turned her shoulder to the waves and started to run. She called for me to follow. 

Running on the soggy sand next to Mom was a happy feeling that reminded me that there was enough room in the world for everyone. The ocean smashed itself against the land like a berserk beast trying to break out of its cage, but by the time it lapped over my paws, it was as gentle as a kiss. No matter how hard it tried or how loud it roared, it made progress in inches and gave up ground as soon as it was gained. 

Today, the ocean was especially cranky. Instead of settling the ground, it stirred up the sand within its reach, turning it into quicksand. I ran beyond the range of the unruly waves, letting the drying sand slow me down to Mom’s pace. Beside me, Mom struggled through the soggy muck that greedily sucked at her paws, leaving only faint ripples where her pawprints should be. A dogtective on our trail would think that Mom had left me to walk all alone.

“Ugh! Why?” Mom groaned. “Why is everything so much harder than it needs to be lately? It doesn’t matter how hard I push, the earth just sucks up my energy with every step. It’s like I only get weaker and stucker the harder I try.”

I was about to tell her why when two wrestling dogs distracted me. They were doing it all wrong!

“Stay close, Spud,” Mom said, forgetting about her problems only long enough to boss me around. 

Mom tells me to stay close around other dogs because she thinks that I’m an sasshole, which is her word for a referee that no one invited to the game. With the ocean crowding in on one side and the cliffs herding us close on the other, there was no room to stay out of the ring and pretend I didn’t notice all the rules they were breaking. Especially the rule about how they should be playing with me. With the Referee of the Universe by my side, it shouldn’t have been my responsibility to tell the wrestlers what’s what, but Mom was too wrapped up in her own misery to notice. Someone had to set them straight. So I joined in their game anyway. I barked thrumpteen fouls and screeched niney-twelve penalty shots. When they paid me no nevermind, I gave them each red cards. 

Being a referee is fun, but it’s stressful when other dogs and the universe don’t listen. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep control of the situation with no one paying attention to me, but Mom was taking forever to pass. I could hardly hear her gaspy shouts over my robust barks. Finally, she plopped far enough ahead that I could run after her without it seeming like I was running away. 

“And don’t let me catch you doing that again!” I shouted so I’d have the last word, and the first, and all the other words in between. 

When I caught up to Mom, her eyes were fixed on something that was both straight ahead and inside her head. It was the face she made when she was looking into the future. I followed her eyes to where the cliffs met the sea a short way ahead. 

Mom charged straight for the barrier without slowing down. She only stopped when the water was too deep to continue running. A wave bashed into the cliff, barely far enough away for the exploding spray to miss us. Mom gave the wave a hard look. It sucked in its foam and quietly slunk back into the depths. She looked at her wrist. “Dammit. We’ve gone 2.95 miles. If only we’d been here half an hour earlier, we could have gone an even 3,” she counted to show the size of her disappointment. “No matter where we go, it’s like the walls are closing in.”

“Oh no!” I took a step back onto dryer sand. “Pretty soon there’ll be nowhere safe to turn.”

“Not like that. It’s just bad timing.” Mom looked annoyed that I was making her play defense on the Worry Game. “At high tide, the water gets to the places where the sand is less settled and stirs everything up. The ground isn’t as stable and there’s less beach to walk on, so everyone’s forced into each other’s way.” She looked more tired than ever, even though her breathing was almost back to normal. 

“Why would our run be different if we came at a different time?” I asked. 

“Tides come in cycles, sort of like rivers. If we’d gotten here earlier, the way wouldn’t have been blocked.” Mom stretched her neck as long as it would go, trying to see what was beyond the rocky barricade. “If we wait long enough, the tide will go out and we’ll be able to get through.” 

“How long do we have to wait till everything isn’t harder than it needs to be?” I looked for a comfortable place to sit in the meantime. 

“Not long now, Spuddy. No matter what, the tide’s gonna turn once they call the election.” 

“And then everything will be better?” 

“Not right away.” She looked up from the ocean’s rage to the top of the cliffs, where the wind scoured the land of anything not stuck in place. “There’s a lot to heal from, but at least this agonizing uncertainty will be over.”

“Are we still talking about the tide?” Mom often confuses what’s going on inside her mind with what’s going on outside. It’s a condition called metaphor. 

“Maybe not.” She took one last look at the cliff blocking her way and came to join me on the dry sand. “The nice thing about an election is that it’s a decision we all make together. Nobody gets everything that they want, but at least you come out with a consensus on where we should go from here. A lot of crap is gonna wash up when the tide goes out on this disastrous year. There’s gonna be a lot of cleanup to do. At least we’ll all be cleaning it up together.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s make like the tide and turn around.” 

We turned back toward the part of the beach where all the people were—people who weren’t working so hard to escape. I ran ahead to check out anything nasty that might have washed onto the beach while my back was turned. With the way things were going, who knows what sea monsters might wash up. 

Sure enough, something was off about the distant group hiking through the waves up ahead. The dogs were unnaturally large and the human shapes, although still taller than the dogs, weren’t grouped right. And no one was running. Or swimming. Or fetching. I sniffed the breeze to find out more. 

“MOM! THEY’RE HORSES!” I barked with glee. “Or maybe mules. Do you think horses carry treats like mules?” 

“Oh lord,” Mom groaned, getting the tone all wrong for excitement. “This is just what we need. I didn’t bring a leash.” 

“Don’t worry. I’ll bring ’em to you without a leash,” I wagged. “You just wait right here and I’ll take care of the whole thing.”

“Don’t you dare!” Mom’s voice was sharp enough to cut off my dramatic chase. “Stay close.” 

“Oh goody! Horses! Horses! Horses!” I panted, stretching the imaginary leash as far as it would go without making Mom snap at me.

“No!” Mom commanded. And “Stay close!” And “Eeeeeeeeeeeeasy.” When we were so close that I could smell every hair on the horses’ rumps, she said, “Eh-eh-eh!” which is what she says when she can see my thought bubble and disagrees with what’s there.

The horse parade took up all the good wet sand, so Mom got on my wave-side and herded me onto the dry, shifty sand. I wanted to introduce myself to the horses, but suddenly Mom’s two legs ran faster than four. I ran even faster and she matched my pace, keeping her body in the way, no matter how fast I ran. Her face wore grim determination, like she alone was blocking the four horsemen at the End of the World from riding into the City. 

One horse was already gone behind me. To cut Mom off before the next one, I ran faster still. And still, Mom matched my speed.

As we pulled alongside the third horse, his jockey turned a friendly smile on Mom. I heard Mom think that she wanted to show the jockey the finger that doesn’t mean hello, but we were in a dead sprint and she didn’t have a finger to spare. 

Now we were in the home stretch, with only one horse left to chase. The lead horse stepped out of the waves and started squeezing toward the cliffs, cutting Mom off and forcing us deeper onto the bad sand. 

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Mom gasped like a final prayer. She looked at me and made the boop-boop-boop noise that means I should pay attention because things were about to get real.

This is it! I panted. The horse is playing right into my paws. Now Mom will have to yield, and I’ll be barking between those hooves in no time!

Then—I kid you not—Mom signaled for me to follow and ran between two horses. 

“Really? You really mean it!” I was too gobsmacked to be excited. 

“C’mere, Spud!” Mom said in a stronger voice than I thought was left in her. I followed, taking it all in as I merged through the parade of horses. 

When we reached open water on the other side, Mom and I sprinted through the ankle-deep waves past the lead horse’s nose and cut him off to reclaim the land. With the last horse behind us, we let the sand absorb our speed and eased into a victory lap. 

“Phew, that was close,” I panted. 

“I think I’m gonna puke,” Mom gasped. 

A tie goes to the first competitor to claim victory (everybody knows that), so before Mom could catch her breath I announced, “And I won! I was eleventy thousand, seventy hunerd and eighty noses ahead. Which is one more than I needed.”

I looked over my shoulder to savor the sight of Mom as a sore loser. She plodded on, rescuing each step from the quicksand an instant before the unsupportive world collapsed and the earth swallowed her like Saint Bernardino. Her body slumped and her breath came in ragged gasps. “Why is everything so much harder than it has to be?” she whined again. “It’s like every time you think you’re done, something happens that means you have to fight even harder than before.” 

“What are you running from?” I coached. “If you don’t like horse racing, just slow down and you’ll be surrounded by horses. You win either way.”

Mom looked over her shoulder and the jockey on the nearest horse smiled at her. Her mouth twitched into something between a polite smile and a snarl. She turned back toward the crowd of frolicking dogs and laughing people, and the fight left her stride. She let the sand suck up the rest of her momentum and hit the all done button on her wrist without waiting for her watch to beep the end of the last mile.

I smiled at everyone we passed on the walk back to the sand steps. Even with all the other good boys and girls around, each stranger had a smile and a compliment just for me. “See?” I told Mom. “You can run around playing referee and worrying about how no one plays by your rules, or you can just look for the people who play nice to begin with. It doesn’t matter how many enemies there are if you find people to love you just the way you are.” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mom said. “Right now all I care about is that there are more of our people than there are of them. And that our people voted. Let’s go home and see how the counting’s going.” 

Want to keep reading? Grab Oscar’s book, No Place Like Alone on Amazon.