Oswald, the Almost Famous Opossum

by Sara Katherine Pascoe

  “Thank you, young man. I’m sure our animal behavior team will be very interested.”

  Darnell took the cage outside, and Joey and Mr. Edwards followed. Darnell loaded the cage onto the front passenger seat of his van. Joey knew Oswald loved the tree-green van with the black-and-red writing on the sides. To Oswald, it was practically a limo.

  Joey got an awful, hollow feeling in his stomach. Mr. Edwards stood next to him as they watched the van pull away.

  “Don’t worry. I bet he’s back in time for dinner,” Mr. Edwards said.

  7

  BARNARD HILL PARK

  Darnell drove east on Perry Street, then turned left. Glimpses of houses, trees, and sky flicked by through the cage screen and van window. Darnell made more turns as he sped down the road. Oswald slid back and forth in the cage and started to feel sick.

  “My goodness, Darnell. Is everything all right?”

  Darnell didn’t answer.

  “Why so many turns, my good man?”

  Darnell turned up the radio and revved up a hill.

  Oswald shouted. “Excuse me, Darnell. Might you inform me of our route? I’m having trouble keeping track.” Darnell still didn’t answer.

  The van slowed to a stop. Traffic swooshed by. In a few moments, they started off again down a longer road with a curve in it. Oswald could only see green and sky, then a few houses when Darnell stopped the van. He clicked open the cage top and light flooded in. Oswald stood on his hind paws and looked out the window.

  “Where are we?”

  Darnell reached behind his seat and retrieved a pink paper bag. “Lemon custard or Boston cream?”

  “How lovely! Lemon custard, please!” Oswald did his happy dance. “You’re going to love this, Darnell—poetry. This will most certainly get me into Animal Watch. I can hear my mother now—she always said I was destined for big things.” Oswald gestured at the papers with his snout while he gripped the donut like a steering wheel.

  Darnell glanced at the rumpled papers on the seat between them. “‘Big things, eh? You mean besides your stomach? Look, every mother thinks her kid’s a star. I know you lost her too young, but you’ve got to get a grip on something besides that donut.” He chuckled, but Oswald didn’t see what was so funny.

  Oswald huffed. “I understand not everyone is naturally ambitious—I’m glad you’re satisfied with your position, for example. But you have to admit, it’s obvious I have considerably more talent than the average animal who gets their piffling antics reported in the newspaper. You know, this could help your career too,” Oswald finished with a flourish.

  Darnell shook his head as he swallowed the last of his donut. “You really are a piece of work, you little prehistoric nuisance—thinking you’re so much better than everybody else.” He arched an eyebrow. “But what can I expect—you don’t even have a corpus callosum.”

  “That was uncalled for. You know I can’t help my . . . brain . . . anatomy . . . ” Oswald started acting woozy. “I . . . I don’t feel well . . . ” Oswald rolled his eyes back and slumped down in the cage.

  “Don’t go fainting on me.” Darnell stroked Oswald’s back. That felt nice. Oswald felt a little guilty faking a faint, but the problem was Darnell seemed to fall for it every time and was always nice about it. And it was much simpler than carrying on this discussion—after all, Oswald didn’t want to make Darnell feel any worse. He hadn’t meant to sound harsh, comparing their lives. Oswald promised himself to try to be kinder in the future.

  “It’s OK. You’ll be all right,” Darnell repeated over and over, giving him a perfect scratch behind the ears.

  Oswald was enjoying the attention and forgot everything else for a moment. When he finally looked out the window, everything seemed unfamiliar. “Where are we? You never said.”

  “Barnard Hill Park.”

  Oswald chuckled. “Oh dear friend, you are confused. You’ve crossed the city line into Washington, DC, out of your jurisdiction.”

  “Exactly. Look, you should mix with more animals. Give this whole fame thing a rest. What do you think getting into Animal Watch would get you anyway? A big Hollywood deal?” Darnell flicked donut crumbs from his shirt.

  Oswald’s ears started to ring. “What? No. What about my poetry? An opossum writing poetry is a terrific story. Your name will get into the newspaper, too—as the one who ‘found’ me. You will report this, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Darnell said while looking at his watch. He snapped the cage lid shut so fast, Oswald had to duck to avoid bumping his head. Darnell swung the cage out of the van.

  “Darnell, my good friend, I’ve learned my lesson. I give you my solemn promise.”

  The sound of Darnell’s footfalls changed as he continued into the park. The smell of grass, earth, and trees wafted into the cage. Darnell put the cage down.

  “Well done, Darnell. You’ve made an excellent point. Now let’s go back to Mount Rainier.”

  Darnell opened the lid. Oswald looked up. His good human friend smiled. Oswald was about to tell him he missed some crumbs when he noticed the huge tree looming behind. Its thick branches reached up like strong, gnarled arms. The giant canopy of dark green leaves as big as a man’s hands blotted out the sky. There was a large hollow halfway up. Oswald shuddered to think who might live there.

  Darnell followed Oswald’s gaze. “Great minds think alike. Eh, buddy? That hollow looks like a good place to start. You’ll make a lot of friends here. The park’s loaded with animals.”

  Oswald felt tired. His muscles felt heavy. He knew this meant he was going to faint for real this time. How embarrassing. Everything was getting blurry and sounded far away, but he could still make out a few things.

  Darnell retrieved thin plastic gloves from his back pocket. He shook his head and lifted him out of the cage. “Pee-ew! Already? That fake death stink? Nice. At least you didn’t do it in the van.”

  Darnell arranged Oswald in a pile of leaves at the base of the tree.

  “You’ll be fine. No one will mess with a smelly ole rotten possum. You’ll come round soon enough. I will miss you, little buddy, but this is best for you.” Darnell walked toward the van.

  Oswald tried to say something, anything that would bring Darnell back, but by then he couldn’t speak, move a muscle, or even blink an eye.

  Oswald’s world went dark.

  8

  IS THERE AN APP FOR THAT?

  Oswald came to in the afternoon. With his eyes still closed, he lay on his back in the warm sunshine and drummed a little tune on his stomach. “Nothing beats the sun on the face and tum.” He quite liked his little rhyme. Maybe he was a poet after all. He yawned, stretched, and opened his eyes, thinking of Miss Ann’s lasagna. But his new reality doused him like a bucket of cold water. He was under that horrid tree in that awful park where Darnell left him. No, abandoned him. He thought nothing could be worse, until it was; something moved above him in the hole in the tree—something with eyes.

  Oswald clamped his own eyes shut. He heard chattering and paws with claws scrambling down the rough bark. He stuck his tongue out, remembering to point it down, not up, hoping to look dead and uninteresting.

  Multiple sets of paws padded toward him, most likely belonging to the tree dwellers. There were two, maybe three, voices. He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t scared enough to faint. Maybe it was because these critters were joking and laughing. He stayed still, not wanting to give himself away. Whoever they were, they were close now. He felt someone’s hot breath when they sniffed him.

  “Hey, Tiny. I didn’t know you ordered takeout,” one voice said. The two others snickered.

  Oswald felt a warm nose on his flank.

  “I don’t know, Chuck. Looks like we’ll have to cook him ourselves!” a second voice said, followed by laughter.

  “Oh, Mo, cook him? On what? The cell phone?” the third voice said. “Is there an app for that?” The three rolled around, crunching the rain-starved grass and laughing.

&nb
sp; Oswald couldn’t take it. He blinked his eyes open to see who these fools were. Raccoons. Three of them. Oswald had always found raccoons a bit raucous and goofy for his taste, and these three were proving no different. Was one of them holding a cell phone? He must have imagined it. In any case, he clamped his eyes shut, hoping they’d lose interest and go away.

  “Hey, he blinked. He’s alive,” Chuck said. Oswald felt noses and paws pushing and prodding him. He held tight, confident he could outwit these ridiculous creatures.

  The three raccoons gave Oswald a full physical examination: they combed through his fur, moved his limbs this way and that, drew back his lips, and counted his teeth. This took real restraint on Oswald’s part because they kept losing count, coming up with different numbers, and laughing. After a few tries, the three raccoons agreed he had fifty. One of them moved Oswald’s jaw like he was a puppet, making him say silly things. That was it. Oswald sat bolt upright.

  “Enough, gentlemen, enough! Show a New World marsupial a little respect.” Oswald smoothed the fur on his face and down his middle.

  The three raccoons jumped back. They all had the classic black mask markings on their faces, with tawny-brown coats and ringed tails of black and tan. One of them was quite massive, a good thirty-five pounds. The other two were a more ordinary size, and one of these had a chunk missing out of his ear.

  “We were only trying to help,” said Chuck, the one with the funny ear.

  “I’m perfectly fine, and certainly don’t need help from, well . . . your sort,” Oswald said.

  Chuck looked at Mo, who looked at Tiny, who shrugged his massive shoulders, his name being ironic.

  Chuck spoke. “We’ve never seen you before. Need any help? I know what it’s like to be stuck someplace new. Happened to me once, and if it hadn’t been for the kindness of a stranger—”

  “Oh, don’t start with all that again.” Mo shook his head at Chuck.

  “Come on, you two,” Tiny said. “I thought we were going to dinner, fried chicken—”

  Mo interrupted, “I thought we agreed on garbage buffet.”

  “I feel like Chinese, we never have Chinese,” Chuck whined.

  Oswald followed the conversation like a three-way tennis match.

  “Well, whatever we decide, you’re welcome to join us,” Tiny said over his friends’ heads.

  “No thank you, gentlemen. Let me introduce myself. I’m Oswald, the opossum of Perry Street. But most folks use the shorter term, ‘possum,’ although I find this a bit lackadaisical.” He paused to see if the raccoons understood this big word, but they seemed to. “Oh, yes, sorry. I digress.”

  “Do you mean digest?” Mo said and poked Chuck.

  “Digesting is much more fun than digressing,” Chuck said and started to giggle again.

  “Let the critter finish,” Tiny said.

  Oswald cleared his throat. “Yes, in any event, I have come here to, um, to contemplate the woodland. Yes, that’s why I’ve come—for inspiration. I’m a writer, you see. A poet, soon to be published.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Tiny said and gave his friends some sort of look.

  “Well, we’re not much on reading, have to admit,” Chuck said.

  Oswald brushed a twig from his shoulder. “Yes, I can see we travel in different circles.”

  “Come on, you guys,” Tiny said. “Let’s go get dinner, I’m hungry.”

  After Chuck and Mo stopped laughing, they ran to catch up with Tiny, who had lumbered across the grass toward the street. Tiny looked over his shoulder at Oswald one more time. “Should we bring you anything?”

  “That’s very kind, but I certainly won’t be here when you get back. I’m afraid my services are needed in Mount Rainer.” But the farther the raccoons ambled into the distance, the more Oswald felt lonely and even a little afraid. Without their boisterous company, he started to think about Joey. He wondered how he was, and what he might be doing. He wondered if Joey was watching a good movie without him. But he knew the boy wouldn’t be so thoughtless.

  Joey made as much noise as possible putting the dishes in the dishwasher.

  “Easy, Joey. You’ll break something,” Ann said as she tucked leftovers into the fridge.

  “Who cares?” Joey dropped a metal lid into the sink with a satisfying clatter. Ann whirled around and glared at him.

  “Just stop it, Joey! You need to get a grip. I’m not sorry I had that possum removed. You can’t have them crawling all over the house, honey. You know that.”

  Joey didn’t say anything, but put a pot in the sink gently.

  After a patch of quiet with Ann exhaling loudly, and Joey working hard to not say what he was thinking, Ann broke the silence. She leaned against the counter, holding a washed pot and a dish towel.

  “Well, I have to say, this is exactly why I never liked you having just one good friend. I’m sorry Bradyn moved away. I know this has been really hard on you. But things change in life, Joey. It’s something we all have to learn to deal with.” She tried to put her hand on his shoulder, but he dodged her touch. “Come on. When you’re older, you can go visit him in Chicago, I promise. But now you need to make more human—”

  “Mr. Edwards said Oswald would be back before dinner, and he’s not! Something must be wrong. Now you’ve really done it!”

  Ann started to say something, but Joey interrupted. He couldn’t hold back any longer. “You send everyone way. Don’t you? First Dad, and now Oswald!”

  “Oh, Joey,” was all she said as Joey stormed out of the kitchen.

  9

  A CHANGE OF HEART

  Early the next morning, on Friday, Oswald sat under the tree, which no longer looked as scary. He watched Tiny, Mo, and Chuck saunter, waddle, and stroll across the grass in his direction. The morning dew was welcome in this unusually hot, dry spring.

  The three raccoons looked woozy, as though they might be drunk. But, as they got nearer it became clear their hangovers were from food, not drink. Their bellies looked like they might burst. Oswald overheard them talking about the night. They had eaten a number of times: the Shepherd Street garbage buffet—“all you can eat,” Chuck reminded them, the fried chicken place, and the Chinese takeout.

  “Oh yes, and don’t forget—Twenty-Second Street Pizza,” Tiny said and patted his belly like it was a friend. Chuck and Mo nodded their agreement.

  If their inane conversation wasn’t enough, their copious burps and farts irked Oswald to no end. Oswald hated to even think the word, but these fellows were . . . ordinary.

  Chuck, the one with the lopped-off ear, saw Oswald first. “Hi! So you’ve decided to stay. We were hoping you were, weren’t we?” He swiped his paw at his friends. Tiny looked neutral, and Mo looked annoyed.

  “Chuck, just because that dog helped you that one time when you were stuck in that fence doesn’t mean we have to help every idiot,” Mo said.

  “I beg your pardon!” Oswald said.

  “Come on, Mo. You know Animal Control dumped him here—it’s not his fault. And that dog probably did save Chuck’s furry butt. Taught us all a lesson about the kindness of strangers, eh?” Tiny said.

  Mo huffed, “Well, it’s fine if he stays. It’s a free country. But he can’t fit in our den.”

  Chuck looked at Oswald as though he was sorry he had to hear all that.

  “Now my good fellows, there is no need to worry. I’ve merely stayed to do a bit more research. I fully understand the issue of limited resources and will return to my own nest shortly. In fact, I have some important meetings this weekend with a Mr. Joseph—”

  Mo raised an eyebrow. “Lost, are we?”

  Oswald spluttered.

  Tiny put his paw around Oswald’s shoulder. Oswald tried not to show how uncomfortable this made him.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. You were pretty much kidnapped. We can help,” Tiny said.

  Oswald wriggled out from under Tiny’s limb. “So kind, but no need, I assure you. I am well versed with my local geog
raphy and”—Oswald tapped his head—“I have MPS, a marsupial positioning system.”

  Tiny shrugged his broad furry shoulders and yawned. “It’s your life.”

  “We can’t just leave him on his own,” Chuck said.

  “Why not?” Mo said and prodded Chuck toward the tree. The two started their ascent while arguing about whether or not they should help Oswald.

  “See you later, Oswald. You know where we are if you need anything,” Tiny said then lumbered up the tree behind his friends.

  Oswald was keen to get back to Joey’s house so they could work on his school project, “The Tale of Tails.” They were making a big poster with drawings and information about all sorts of tails and how they worked. Oswald would go to school that day with Joey and demonstrate his own prehensile tail. This would be sure to get Joey extra credit.

  For the rest of Friday, Oswald fought his natural desire to sleep during the day and walked in a straight line from the tree. He marked his path with small twigs he found along the way, even though he wouldn’t be coming back. Just good policy. Eventually, he found himself on a street lined with tidy brick houses. He wasn’t sure which way to go. Then he smelled some luscious garbage. Need to fuel the brain for optimal thinking. After enjoying some sandwich crusts and licking out a yogurt container, he realized it was getting dark and he was getting sleepy. Maybe Miss Ann is right—it might be good for Joey to be a bit more independent from me. I’ll go home tomorrow. Oswald waddled back to the tree, following the twigs that were mostly still there. That’s odd. They’re not in a straight line at all. He found a hollow under some nearby shrubs to sleep in.

  “I don’t see him.” Chuck’s disappointed voice woke Oswald early Saturday morning. Oswald peeked through the branches and saw the three raccoons walking toward their tree. After another night of gluttony, no doubt.

  Tiny clapped Chuck on the back. “Cheer up, buddy. That’s good news for Oswald.”