Witchcraft
- Apr 13
- 7 min read
When we arrived back at the Wagon after meeting the horse named Mule, I collapsed in bed and would have been asleep right away if Mom would settle. Instead, she circled and dug through the blankets like she was the one preparing for a nap. I watched through one half-closed eye as she moved on from the blankets and peeled back the chewed-up corner of the mattress.
I gave up on my nap. “What are you looking for?”
“My laptop charger. It takes a long time to charge off of the van’s battery, so I want to plug it in before we hit the… Ah hah!” She held up the spaghetti-straw in triumph. She belly flopped onto the bed and reached into the cockpit to plug it into the spare slot under the Witch’s feeding straw. “I bet there’s enough time for it to be fully charged by the time we get to our next spot. I don’t know why I don’t do this more often.”
She was too proud of herself and I was too tired to remind her why. I rested my head back between my paws and let the Wagon rock me to sleep.
I woke up some time later to Mom hissing about trucks, or maybe it was ducks. When I opened my eyes, Mom was glaring at the Witch in her lap. Like a driver on TV who doesn’t have to watch the road, she checked the front window quickly for trucks or ducks and looked back down at her lap for even longer.
“Dog doo!” She pulled the plug in and out of the charging hole, and twisted it around.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Dog doo! Dog doo! Dog doo!” She leaned down so that only her eyeballs peeked over the front windowsill and rummaged in the cubby next to her feet. Her paw came back holding a different plug. She kept movie-driving with her eyes off the road and paws off the driving wheel while she stuck the Witch’s leash into the plug, and the plug into the charging hole. She checked the road quickly before looking down at the Witch again. “DOG DOO!”
“What?” I asked again.
“I blew the fuse again.”
“Aw, don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you’re handling whatever it is just fine.”
“No, I mean the van blew a fuse. Remember our very first adventure when I plugged too many things into the charger and we had to spend all day at that shady auto shop while a mechanic figured out what was wrong?”
“Was that the day with all the ticks?” I asked. “Because we didn’t stay in the Wagon that night, remember? You went into Walmart and bought every flavor of dog shampoo so we could break the world record for Worst Bath Ever.”
“Yeah, that time! It was $180 for the diagnostic and $2 for the stupid fuse,” she said, as if I wouldn’t believe her without a number to measure the problems by.
“And two hunerd for a lousy Motel 6 room!” I repeated to show that I remembered her grumbling. I didn’t know what that meant, but sometimes it’s more supportive to remember your partner’s problems than to understand them.
“Exactly! Well I did it again. I shouldn’t have tried to charge my phone and laptop at the same time. It blew the fuse and now I can’t charge anything. Even my phone.”
“Yaaay!” I cheered. “Ding dong, the Witch is dead!”
“You don’t get it. If I can’t charge my phone, that means no trail maps, no driving directions, no photos, no music, no audiobooks.”
“… The mean old Witch, the wicked Witch,” I kept singing. “Ding dong, the wicked Witch is dead!”
“… I don’t even know what day it is without my phone. If I don’t get this sorted out, it means a 14-hour drive back to San Francisco with nothing but my thoughts to listen to.” She shuddered.
“Don’t worry, I’ve seen this movie and there’s a shortcut,” I said. “You just click your heels together three times and—”
“We’re almost at the trailhead and I have enough backup battery for one charge,” Mom continued, ignoring my advice. “So I guess we’ll turn off the phone and do tomorrow’s hike the old-fashioned way. I’ll figure the rest out afterward.”
“Suit yourself,” I yawned. I laid my head back on the blankies and went back to my nap.
That night Mom stared deep into her soup, digging shapes with the spoon and swiping beans around the bowl like Candy Crush. No matter how hard she wished, though, her soup had no answers for what was happening in the world or what the trail ahead had in store. She swallowed her last spoonful of disappointment and we stared at each other until it was too dark to see by. Finally, Mom plugged the Witch into her emergency juice box and tucked her under the pillow. She plugged her swiping finger behind my ear where it scratched pleasantly as it swiped phantom candies until Mom fell asleep.
The sliver of light wedged between the mountains overhead woke us on Mom’s first day as caveman. The air seemed softer somehow and the sun was burning slightly more greyly than normal. The smell of camping filled my nose and outside the windows, Oregon looked smudgy like an old VHS tape.
“Is The Covered Wagon a time machine?” I asked as Mom tied a fresh bandana around my neck. “It seems like we’re traveling into the past.”
“I wish!” Mom said as scenes from before the boogeyvirus played in her thought bubble.
“Is this what they mean by the mists of time?”
“This isn’t mist. Not in the desert of eastern Oregon.”
“Then why is the whole world fading away?” I asked.
“Remember that lightning storm the other night? Before we saw Lily?”
“Right. The one that sounded just like trash day.”
“Yeah, you were snoring through the whole thing.” Mom showed me the white part of her eyes, like sleeping was an unmanly thing to do. Mom never sleeps through anything worth worrying about.
“What’s your point?”
She looked annoyed that we weren’t going to talk more about how responsible she was for protecting the world all night with her worries. Eventually she went on, “It’s so dry around here this time of year that every one of those lightning bolts started a fire somewhere. It seems like all of Oregon and California are on fire.”
“Oh nooo!” I howled. “So it’s my fault that the world is going away? I knew it!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I could have scared off the lightning storm by barking at it. And you just let me sleep like a fool!”
Mom softened a little. “You can’t scare off lightning by barking at it.”
“That’s not true and you know it! It’s like Smokey Bear reminds me all the time, only I can prevent forest fires. I was just so tired from coaching you through all the other disasters. You should have woken me up!”
“It does seem incredible that so many awful things can happen at once.” Mom looked toward the scruffy orange sun and baggy dark clouds around it. “Almost like we brought it on ourselves.”
We set out to find the house-shaped sign that marked the boundary between car kennel and trail.
“Did you know that before Witches, the native Americans used to use these signposts to mark the way and leave messages to other travelers?” I guided. “Maybe it still works. Can you read the inscription?”
“It just explains how to poop in the woods,” Mom read.
“We’re already experts at that.”
“… and not to leave valuables in the car to avoid break-ins.”
“You’ve got all your valuables right here,” I wagged.
Mom clicked a button on the key and the Wagon chirped goodbye. She put the keys in her pocket and, as if by magic, her paw came back out holding the Witch. Even in death, the Witch still had Mom under her spell. She drew Mom’s eyeballs irresistibly to her glowing face.
“I thought she was dead,” I sputtered. “You promised that we were hiking without Witchcraft today.”
“I can hike without audiobooks, but not without maps or photos,” Mom said, like I’d caught her doing something nasty but she wasn’t sorry. “I’ll turn on the low battery setting and keep it on airplane mode so it lasts longer, and only turn on the screen when I absolutely have to. Promise!”
“Why do you need her right now, though? There’s only one trail.”
“But do we know if it’s the right trail?” As if that settled it, Mom turned her attention back to the Witch and told her to point the way.
“I have no stinkin’ idea where you are,” the Witch said, not even bothering to give us a blue dot anywhere among the grey boxes. “Why don’t you go outside and maybe I’ll tell you.”
“We are outside, you weasel,” I barked. “Stop messing around!”
“Are you underground or something?” the Witch asked in a bored voice. I could almost hear her filing her nails as she said it.
The Witch may have the personality of a cat, but you could usually count on her to be a know-it-all when Mom was vulnerable. “Why is she being such a booger-brain?” I asked.
“The mountains on either side of us must be so steep that it can’t get a clear signal.” Mom’s always making excuses for the Witch’s betrayals. “Either that or it has something to do with being powered down in airplane mode.”
“This must be what disappearing feels like.” I hoped that Mom still had enough wildness in her to find the right trail by instinct. The Wagon was counting on her, and we were all counting on the Wagon.
Want to keep reading? Grab Oscar’s book, No Place Like Alone on Amazon.
