Catch me if you canine

When we dismounted, Mom hid behind the beak of her hat so that no one else in the car kennel could pick her out in a line-up.

The Witch wasn’t done ratting us out, either. She blared sirens all night, warning that we’d better skeddaddle. She wouldn’t even shut up when Mom hit the leave me alone button.

“LOVELAND MAYOR DECLARES SHELTER IN PLACE ORDER GOES INTO EFFECT AT 9AM!” she announced at midnight.

“COUNTY OFFICIALS DECLARE SHELTER IN PLACE BEGINS IN LARIMER COUNTY AT 10AM!” she threatened at a later midnight.

“GOVERNOR DECLARES SHELTER IN PLACE THROUGHOUT COLORADO AT NOON!” she blustered at a third midnight.

“IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP,” the Witch shouted while it was still midnight.

“What’s the point of staying in a fancy hotel if you’re not going to sleep in it?” I mumbled.

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Mom’s arm disappeared into the clothes bag and came back with long underwear in her paw. She held them up for inspection before shoving them back into the bag. “We’ve only got till 9am to get out of town.” This time her arm grew back with running tights in its paw. She set the tights aside and went back to fishing. “We’ve only got till 10am to get out of the county, and till noon to get out of the state, so we’ll have to run as fast as we can.” Her paw came back with socks, which she laid next to the tights.

“Or else what?” This sounded like the beginning of an excellent western.

“They could pull us over for our license plates. Who knows if they’ll throw us in jail just for being here. Or else why would we need papers just to be outside?”

I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. “What will you do if the Law comes after us?”

“No idea. I guess I could just explain the situation and ask for their suggestions. They can’t punish us if we ask for help, right?”

It was daybreak when the Wagon crept past the sign at the park entrance. Wooden posts the size of sawed-off phone poles lined the final road to the car kennel, a surrender flag made from printer paper flapping on the side of each one.

“What do they say?” I asked with my heart in my throat.

“I can’t read them from here. There was no gate to close off the park, so they’re probably telling us to get the hell out or something.” Mom checked the mirrors to make sure that no one saw her noticing. “If anyone asks, we can say we got here when it was too dark to see.”

Relief washed over me when I saw other cars in the kennel. “At least we won’t be the only outlaws hiding out in the park. I hope they don’t draw attention to us.”

The Wagon stopped with its nose just a breath from another flag-waving post. Mom leaned forward to read it. “It says NATURE IS OPEN!” she cheered. “That’s the first sane thing I’ve seen since Utah!”

“Take that, you lying hunk of junk,” I told the Witch. “Colorado isn’t so bad after all.”

Sometimes you just have to see for yourself to know if something is true. I was relieved, but disappointed, too. It was like when someone shouts “MAILMAN” in a crowded living room and you run screaming to the window only to find that it’s a false alarm. I was glad I wouldn’t have to fight, but a little let down that there would be no glory.

When we dismounted, Mom hid behind the beak of her hat so that no one else in the car kennel could pick her out in a line-up. When she accidentally looked up, a lady a few spots away expertly caught her eyes and smiled. Everyone had the look of someone getting away with something naughty, even the Rangers who came to unlock the potties and take out the trash.

“Go ahead,” the Ranger with the mop bucket told Mom as we got close to the potty.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” Mom warbled, her face turned at an odd angle. It was the tone I was starting to recognize as the sound of not-breathing. “I mean, I’m glad. Thank you. Glad and surprised. It’s just… with everything closing down…”

“Yeah, I was waiting for the call that I didn’t have to come in today, but it never came. So here I am.”

“I’m kinda glad,” the one emptying the trash said. “What am I going to do sitting at home all day? Going outside is just about the only thing you can do.”

“That’s just what Mom was—” the leash choked off my words as Mom dragged me into the potty.

“Well thank you so much for everything you do,” Mom said, closing the potty door.

“What was that about?” I thought at her. “We were about to make Friends.”

“Making Friends is dangerous.” I couldn’t tell if she was talking about the boogeyvirus or not.

“But they were saying all the same things you were saying yesterday about working and keeping the bathrooms open,” I said.

“It’s not my business to have an opinion on other people’s lives or the laws in a state where I’m not supposed to be.” Mom pumped a generous blob of hand sanitizer onto her paws and elbowed the door open.

The world may have been coming to an end, but the sun still rose as usual. It shone on me like a spotlight as we ran up a little hill toward a jagged wall of rocks that stuck out of the top of the hill like the crest on a stegosaurus’s back.

“It’s called the Devil’s Backbone,” Mom said. “Do you see it?”

“Where? Is he staying six feet away?”

“No, silly. The rocks.” She waved her arm toward the saw-shaped wall. “They’re supposed to look like a spine.”

I squinted at the rocks and tried to picture it. I guess if the devil were real skinny and spent too much time hunched over his laptop… “The Devil needs to do more lat pulldowns,” I coached.

As we ran along the backbone, my eyes ran ahead, past the end of the spine and over his butt cheeks, which were furry with fields and pimpled with tiny farm houses. Behind that, mountains crinkled the horizon. One, bigger than the others, glowed like a second sun rising in the west. It was the kind of scene where each thing looked best as a tiny detail in the bigger picture around it.

“I sure look handsome today, don’t I?” I struck a dashing pose while Mom aimed the Witch. “Colorado looks good on me.”

Mom’s face scrunched. “The backbone looks much smaller in the picture than it does in real life,” she said, like the Witch had messed up her order. “It kinda fades into the background.”

“Why don’t you tell the Witch to make it bigger then?” As far as I knew, the Witch could change anything to make the world look the way Mom wanted it to.

“It doesn’t work that way.” She scooted to one side and held the Witch up again. “Our minds pick what’s most important and make it seem bigger by sort of cropping everything else out. But the camera doesn’t know what I’m looking at, so it shows everything exactly as it is. It makes things that are far away look teeny tiny, and things that are too close to drown out what I want to see.”

I always knew the Witch couldn’t recognize greatness. “So if she doesn’t see anything as special, how do you get the love into my pictures? And also the scenery and stuff?”

“I have to put the story together myself. I position my subject—that’s you—in such a way that the picture looks the way I want it to.”

“So something scary like a big ol’ devil’s spine sticking out of the earth can grow into the most important thing in the world or shrink to a tiny detail depending on where you stand?” I adjusted my pose the way Mom wanted me to. “And all you have to do to make it less scary is stand somewhere else?”

“Exactly. And it’s up to me if I want to tell an exciting adventure story or a cozy feel-good story.”

“But what about when something looks scary from far away, but nice and friendly from up close?” I asked. “Like Colorado? Or people from the internet?”

“It’s a matter of perspective. People are afraid of the unfamiliar until they see it close up.” She looked toward the cozy farmhouses with their teeny tiny farmers trapped inside. “The internet lets you zoom in on anything, but I guess it’s always filtered through someone else’s perspective. Then again, it can bring connection, too.”

“Like Lily?” I asked.

“I suppose. When people see the world through your eyes, they can connect with your ideas. The connection may be virtual, but the feeling is real. Hence, the pictures. I kind of feel like somebody needs to be a witness while everyone else is at home.”

“Or a referee,” I said. “Where do we need to stand to make the boogeyvirus fade into the background?”

“We’d have to go all the way to the moon.” Mom sighed. “I think it’s gonna be a long time before we have enough distance to see this whole situation for what it really is.”

A visit to the moon sounded like fun, but the Witch would probably tell Mom we couldn’t drive there. And Mom would believe her. “It’s hopeless!” I huffed. “This isn’t America anymore.”

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Distance helps you see something for what it really is. Or, if you don’t want to see it, everything else in the frame can drown out the unpleasant parts. Look at that mountain over there.” Mom pointed her eyes at the molehill hulking like a rising moon on the horizon. “That mountain is probably big enough to bury everything from Loveland to Denver a mile deep. If we were standing on it, it wouldn’t matter where we looked because everything in the frame would be part of it. But if you sit right here, I could hide that whole mountain behind your back.”

“You should take a picture, then. So you’ll remember what it’s like to be a referee in Colorado, and how there’s a handsome dog at the center of it all.”

“Some things are so big that you can’t tell the story with just one picture. It’ll take billions of stories from billions of perspectives—both up close and far away—before we really understand what we’re looking at. It’s gonna be a very long walk, and we’re just starting out.”

As we made our final approach to the car kennel, a Coloradog bounded toward me dragging a lady behind him. He wagged his butt to signal to his lady that I was cool, and I wagged my butt at Mom to let her know that he was cool. Usually, that’s the signal for Mom to compliment the lady on her taste in dogs while I introduce myself. This time, Mom pulled me off the trail and made me up-up on a rock to let them pass.

I didn’t want to fight in front of strangers, so I up-upped like I was told, but my eyes stayed with my Future Friends. “I’ll be right with you,” I told the dog.

Mom stepped between us and hid him behind her back. I stretched my neck the other way until Mom sidestepped to block my view again. It was almost like she was doing it on purpose.

“Don’t be rude,” I whimpered.

“No more talking to strangers unless you’re off leash, Spud,” Mom thought at me. “Otherwise the humans would have to get too close.”

Even when my tail wound down and the springs in my legs had shifted to park, Mom kept her back to the trail so that her contamomated breath couldn’t hurt anyone.

“Good morning,” she shouted into the wilder-ness, turning her chin a tick to show the lady that she was talking to her with really bad aim.

“That poop bag back there is mine,” the lady told the empty air on the other side of the trail.

“See, Mom? Humans use bags too when they can’t get off the trail in time.”

“She’s talking about the dog, you numskull,” Mom thought back.

“She takes credit for everything I do,” the dog whispered as he leaned into his leash to catch my scent from a social distance.

“I’m going to pick it up on the way back,” the lady explained. “I just don’t want to carry it for four miles.”

“No judgment here,” Mom told the sky.

“Okay, bye then,” I called after the would-be Friends. I tried not to let it hurt my feelings that the lady hadn’t insisted on just one pat.

We spotted the poop bag a minute later. It looked as out of place next to the trail as Mom in a makeup store.

“I’ll just pick it up for her, since we’re almost to the parking lot anyway…” Mom reached out and her paw froze. The world stood still while the wheels behind Mom’s eyes spun. She stood back up, leaving the poop bag on the ground where it didn’t belong.

“Come on, Mom! Do a good deed,” I encouraged.

“Ugh! I really want to, but there could be germs on the bag.”

“That’s what the bag is for. To keep germs in.” Silly Mom. She knew that poop bags were made of an impenetrable plastic that wouldn’t let germs leak onto her face-touching paw.

“I’m not thinking about what’s in it, I’m worried about what’s on it. They don’t know how long the virus can live on surfaces. What if I catch It from the bag and spread It to wherever we go next?” Her face hardened with decision. In a brave voice she announced, “The more responsible thing to do is to leave the poo.”

“You’ve never picked up other people’s poop bags before.”

“Fair enough. But this time I want to pick it up.” She gave the poop bag a longing look. “Everyone’s so mistrustful right now. It would make me feel better to do something nice. But doing a good deed could be a bad deed if I get infected, pass the virus to someone, and they die.” Her eyes dropped from the poop bag to her toes. “I hate what this is doing to us. It’s not just making us suspicious of each other, it’s making it harder to be nice.”

We fled the poop bag with its load of germs and guilt, and kept running all the way to the car kennel. Mom ran until she could reach the door handle, where she paused only long enough to let me jump in ahead of her. All in one motion, she mounted the driving chair, slammed the door with one paw, and twisted the key with the other to spur the Wagon awake.

“GET THE HELL OUT! LOVELAND IS CLOSING NOW! GO! GO! GO!” the Witch blared as the clock struck nine. Once she’d screamed herself out, she added in her normal voice, “Take the ramp for Route 25 North toward Fort Collins.”

“HOLY CRAP, GET YOUR BUTTS OUT OF HERE BEFORE THE COUNTY CLOSES!” the Witch continued as the Wagon reached freeway speed.

“AND DON’T YOU DARE COME BACK TO COLORADO!” she shouted before changing the subject. “Welcome to Wyoming!”

“The Witch tattled on us? What a rat!”

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