Wade it out

Another challenge was waiting for us when we came around the bend. A pool of water the creamy grey of poop juice filled the canyon floor from one wall to the other. 

“Oh well,” I said, “I suppose we’ll have to— Hey! Where are you going?” 

Mom already had her pants rolled up and was wading away from me through knee-deep water. 

“If you don’t come back soon, you’re gonna be sorry!” I shouted. 

She kept wading. The puddle caught her pants and started climbing up her legs. With each step, the wet line on Mom’s jeans climbed a little closer to her butt pocket, where the Witch lived. Rather than dissolving in worry when the line got to the Witch’s doorstep, Mom just pulled her out of that pocket and held her high in the air for safety. 

“Come and get me, unless you’re too chicken,” she said without turning around.

You’re too chicken-chicken-chicken, taunted the canyon.

I waded in socks-deep just to prove it wasn’t funny anymore. “Don’t make me come over there and get you!” 

Mom sloshed onto the bank. “Fine. Stay there. See if I care.” 

I had to think quick or else she might wander away without me. I took another cautious step. When she didn’t turn around, I took another. On the next step, the bottom disappeared. I splashed in up to the collar and swam the rest of the way.

“Thank dogness that’s over!” I said, shaking the puddle out of my fur like a shampoo model. But when I looked around for adoring fans, Mom was already gone. 

I found her around the next bend studying a wall of boulders clogging the canyon as if she were contemplating a painting in a museum. The bottomest boulder was taller than Mom with a face as steep as the canyon walls it was wedged between. There wasn’t even enough room for an ant to walk around. Smaller boulders were piled on top of it nearly to the top of the canyon, which was deep enough to swallow a house by now. 

“Oh no,” I said, perfecting my most disappointed wag. “I guess we’ll have to go back now.” I turned and led by example.

“I’m just planning my route.” Mom was silent for another thoughtful moment. She patted a divot in the stone. “Up-up.”

I took a running start and followed her instructions. Once I’d caught my balance, I asked, “Now what?” but she was already tap-tapping another flatter spot higher on the rock. This time I was too high for Mom to reach the next step, so she told me to stay and climbed ahead to the top of the base, using all four of her paws like a lizard. From there, she reached down and tapped a spot that was too small to balance on, but would give me a jumping-off point to scramble up next to her.

Mom continued pat-patting the jumble of rocks where it was flat enough to fit at least three paws. I took flying leaps between them until we were nearly level with the top of the canyon and there was only one rock on the pile above us. 

I looked at the gap between my toes and the topmost boulder and thought for sure it was the end of our adventure. The rock I was standing on slipped steeply into a gaping hole as wide and black as a Tyranasaur’s gullet. The overbiting rock on the far jaw leaned highly and steeply over the hole like a roof. The rock under my paws was too steep for a jump not to become a fall, and the gap was too big to step across. I was sure Mom would notice the trap and turn back, but to my horror, she picked me up and carried me into the hole. 

“For the love of Dog, let me go!” I squirmed. 

“Hold still.” She squeezed me tighter. “I might drop you if I lose my balance.” 

There must have been a tongue in all that blackness, because Mom was standing on something. Her whole body was swallowed in darkness, but her head still stuck out of the hole. One bite, though, and she’d be a goner. I craned my neck to make sure my own head stayed out of the hole and flailed my paws toward the far rock, trying not to look down. Mom lifted me with a grunt until my front paws could reach the top of the overhanging rock. With my front paws in place, she grabbed my butt and pushed until all four paws were underneath me. 

I watched her climb out, not to help, but so I’d be ready to shout told you so! into the abyss if she slipped. Hanging from her front paws and using her back paws as wedges, she smeared and flapped, pushed and flopped onto the rock beside me.

We both looked down the far side of the barricade. The rock dropped cliff-like into a moat as wide and depthless as the last. Mom patted little ledges just wide enough to catch my paws on the way down until there was nothing left to do but dive into the puddle. I belly-flopped the last step and swam to solid sand.

Mom splashed out of the moat behind me and gave me more kisses and snuggles than she usually does when we’re in badass mode. “It’s a good thing that this is a loop,” she said, “because I don’t know how we’d get back over that in the other direction.” 

Before long, we arrived at the main feature: a place called Tunnel Slot, which turned out to be a butt-hole-shaped crack between cheeks of solid rock. A dingy puddle that started two Wagon-lengths in front of the entrance filled the tunnel clear through to the other side.

“Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks,” Mom said hopefully. 

“Not as bad is still bad,” I reminded her.

Mom waded in with her shoes on, still fearless after our death-defying escape. She lifted her arms for balance as the puddle sucked up her ankles and shins. She used her free leg like a blind person’s stick to see the puddle bottom as she tapped her way deeper. The next step would have wet the Witch’s pocket if it weren’t soaked already. Mom didn’t take the next step. She stood knee-deep in the puddle and squinted through the butthole to the tiny star of light on the other side. “We could maybe swim…” 

“No!” the Witch and I screamed together. 

“. . . but I don’t know how we’d get our stuff across,” Mom finished. Her body sagged. 

“No way, uh-uh. I’m not going in there!” I repeated, backing out of the shadows into sunny safety. 

Mom reached her neck toward the darkness to make the distance a little shorter. “It’s only the length of a swimming pool, I bet.” The Witch and I waited in suspense. 

Mom reached down toward her pants cuffs. Was she rolling them up higher to go deeper? Her hand kept going. She reached past her socks toward her shoelaces. Was she taking off her shoes, the better to swim with? She missed her shoes and grabbed the packpack strap instead. She swung it onto her back and turned away from the tunnel with a sigh. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s go.” 

Overflowing with relief, I turned my tail toward the creepy hole and pranced manfully back up the canyon. Then I remembered. The moat. The boulder pile. The Jaws of Death! 

I ran ahead to get it over with. My coat couldn’t get any wetter than it already was, so I splashed into the moat and swam around looking for a place to up-up, but the big rock made a wall even taller than the other side. When I clawed at the rock trying to lizard-climb like Mom, I only sank deeper. 

I was still paddling around when Mom caught up. I swam back to shore and whimpered for her to fix it and the canyon mocked my cries. 

She held out her shovel-arms and squatted. “Don’t worry, Spud. I got you.” 

“That’s not what I had in—Let me go!” I struggled mightily, but the more I wriggled the tighter Mom held me. 

Puddle water squeezed from my fur into the few pieces of Mom’s clothes that were still dry as she staggered into the water. A roly-poly rock rolled under her foot and she lurched, dunking my nose before she caught her balance again. 

“You’re doing it wrong!” I whined, struggling even more mightily to free myself. Water squelched from my fur and dribbled down my belly into her hoodie as she hugged me tighter.

When we were below the lowest part of the wall, she hefted me up until my front paws landed where the wall wasn’t as steep. But it was still too steep to hold me.

“I can’t do a pull-up,” I wheezed assertively. “Try something else.” 

“I got you,” Mom grunted reassuringly as she shoved my butt like a bulldozer. 

I looked back to make sure she was serious. The quicksand under the puddle swallowed everything below her knee. The more she pushed, the more the quicksand squished, and I was no closer to the top. 

The pushing turned into pinning as Mom used one paw to keep me from falling while the rest of her took another baby step closer to the wall. When her nose was touching the rock, she started to climb. She smooshed her toes into knicks and used her free paw to hang on for balance, all the while balancing my butt on one shoulder like a waiter holds a tray. 

With every step, I rose a mini-meter higher. I scrambled and scratched, trying to stick long enough for Mom to climb another step and bring me closer to flat ground. Finally, one of my paws stuck to the rock. Then another. Mom spotted me until all four of my paws were underneath me, but it only lasted a moment. 

I felt one, then the other back leg slip out as I began to slide back toward the puddle.

For a moment, I thought all was lost. Time slowed down, and I had a chance to wonder if Mom would catch me or if I would knock her down so we both fell in together. 

I felt two paws on my butt, but not in the usual way. Instead of lifting me like an elevator, Mom crammed me hard into the rock. With Mom’s pushing, my paws stuck just enough to scramble like a lizard onto a precarious balancing spot, where I faced the Jaws of Death. Without even checking to make sure Mom was behind me, I took a leap of faith. 

I thought I had it for a second. One and then the other front paw landed on the steep slope, but my back leg landed in a wobbly place. The last one didn’t land at all, but hung over the void. The hole grabbed my loose leg and started sucking me in. My life passed before my nose as another leg lost contact and slipped down the monster’s gullet. 

Just when I thought that all was lost, firm claws clenched me under the legpits and pinned me back onto the rock. Mom must have jumped in to choke the hole and caught me just in the nick of time! Of course she did. Because true love means not letting your life partner fall into a bottomless pit. 

Mom boosted me out one scooch at a time until I could stand on my chest and use my front paws to pull my back legs under me. I needed all four of my legs to run up the steep slide before it sucked me back toward H-E-double-hockey-sticks. I aimed for the place where the rock met the wall, where there was a notch just wide enough for an Oscar. It was low enough to save me a step or two, which could make all the difference. 

I ran, but just as I reached the notch, I slipped again. I landed hard on my belly. I was beached, with back legs still hanging over the hole, front legs hanging on the other side of the notch, legpits wedged between rock and canyon wall, and my belly doing the standing. 

I hung there for a second, watching more water from my belly fur dribble down the rock as I tried to figure out what to do next. Mom grunted behind me. Before she could make the situation worse, I slithered my chest to freedom and let falling do the rest of the work of getting my legs back under me. 

“I aced it, didn’t I?” I wagged as Mom plopped down the last rock behind me. 

Once Mom had cleared up any confusion about who was a good boy, we climbed back out of the crack in the same place we’d come in. This good boy had had enough of Mom’s leadership. When we were safely back on clear ground, I kept running straight past the chickensaurus nest back the way we’d come. 

“Where are you going?” Mom called after me.

“Back to the Wagon,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ve had enough.” 

“You’re running the wrong way,” Mom corrected. “That way goes deeper into the canyon, remember? The van is this way.”

I stopped running. “How do you know?” When I looked back, her arm was pointing away from me toward more unknown rocks. 

“It’s simple. The trail is shaped like a Y.”

“What does a why look like?” 

“Like this,” She held her arms above her head like she’d just won. “The Zebra Slots were over here.” She waggled one of her paws above her head. “And the Tunnel Slots were over here.” She waggled her other paw above her head. “We walked this way to get here.” She took the Tunnel paw and moved it back and forth above her head from the Zebra paw back to where it belonged. “The van is over here.” She shook a soggy foot. “So if you run that way, you’ll be running into the desert until you fall into the Grand Canyon.” She pointed her chin toward the unknown rocks again. “That way is a shortcut.”

“I don’t like your shortcuts.” But there was no one else to jump into a monster’s mouth to save me, so I followed her anyway.

Mom took a bearing from the Witch and walked across the naked rock as if it were a trail. This time, when a cow fence blocked our way, there was no way around. We were probably the first not-cows to try to cross here since chickensauruses ruled the earth. 

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“This is nothing. We’ve solved problems way worse than this before,” Mom said, forgetting that way worse problems meant way worse solutions. 

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