Louis, Molly & the Woodchuck

by Michael Arnold

  Chapter 10

  What’s up there? What’s making the rocks fall down like that? Molly inquired. Her examination only brought her more speculation. I must get up this hill now, she thought. Although those words started and remained in her mind, they were louder than any words she had spoken since she had been separated from Fannie and Elvin. As if pondering her decision to go up the rocky hill, Molly turned toward the water. She kept her eyes focused on the lake for all of forty seconds before shaking herself out of her reveries.

  “I can’t go back in the water. I don’t know where it will take me. I feel better going up this hill. I will take my chances up the hill rather than in that cold water,” Molly said. She used her claws to begin climbing. The hill was steep and the rocks unsteady. Every step, every move and every grip was critical. She would have to take extra care. The pebbles and stones falling from the overhang didn’t matter as much as those beneath her paws. They seemed to break away with every step she took.

  Midway through her climb, Molly saw a shadow that stretched over the rocks which were close to the top of the hill. She wasn’t sure if it were trees or bigger rocks. She continued to climb but now she was distracted. Her speculation about the shadow took her mind away from the climb until one of the rocks under her grip came loose.

  “Awhhh!!” she yelled out. Her front paw hung for dear life as the rocks that were under her two hind legs tumbled down the hill and fell in the water. Such as a tree limb that was broken and close to falling off from the tree, so was Molly hanging on to the one rock. “No, no, no. I don’t want to fall. I will die because I will hit the rocks below me,” she whined.

  Just as she spoke, Molly forgot that the medicine was in her mouth. The bag of medicine hit the rocks then tumbled down into its final stopped then rolled in the water.

  Molly strained her body and her head to see how far her bag of pills went and if it was virtually possible for her to go down and retrieve it. But as she watched them drift away downstream, she was happy with her choice to hang on to the rocky hillside rather than let herself fall into that awful, cold water. She returned her attention to the climb and progressed to the top of the embankment with renewed vigor.

  When she got up to the top of the hill and pulled herself over the ledge, Molly would have collapsed right there where she was, but the valley stretching into the distance kept her on her feet and in awe.

  “Oh, wow! This looks amazing. Would you look at that?” Molly marveled at the landscape before her eyes. What Molly saw wasn’t a trick, or a figment of her imagination but a page taken out of the book of reality. Before her eyes were flowers, many flowers. Yellow, green, pink, orange, blue flowers. Flowers that bloomed from deep lilac grass, flowers sprouting from leafless stems, flowers exhibiting splendid beauty before a russet sun, flowers as far as the eye could see.

  This is beautiful. What kind of place is this? I have never seen anything like this in the entire world, ever! Molly reveled in her joyful mood while walking away from the rocky hill. As Molly walked toward the array of beautiful flowers, the inside of the flowers projected a rain like mist that came up and then came down over each and every one of the flowers there, turning them a different color.

  This place, wherever I am, makes me feel so happy, I want to be here for a while maybe, for a little while or maybe even forever. That would be a start to my life getting better. Several more steps brought Molly within inches from the flowers, when they separated to form a purple pathway from where Molly stood to a mount of yellow trees and dark green leaves. If Molly had been surprised before, she was stunned and soon mesmerized by those wondrous trees.

  “So, am I supposed to run or something, or walk through here? What do I do?” Molly asked herself. Then as if she heard an answer, she walked down the purple trail. The perfume emanating from either the mist or the flowers themselves drew Molly into the marvelous world of perfumed flowers and yellow trees. Walking was great and it felt good. For the first time since she had found herself alone out there in the middle of nowhere amongst the unknown, she forgot about her situation, her loneliness, her hurt, her pain. For the first time she forgot how she had been left in what she believed to be a prison for pets and now had found the freedom and the joy that enveloped her in this foreign place.

  This foreign place was new to her and her to it. But no matter, it didn’t take her long to adjust and become comfortable. Molly took off in a sprint. “This is great. I love it, I really love it!” she yelled. Then she heard her words spoken back to her in a loud, high-pitched echo. It startled Molly at first, but when she saw another row of flowers clear out another pathway for her and the chant of a song in the background, she dashed upon the pathway.

  The purple pathway took her to a valley of more flowers where the song became more vivid. Pianos and violins, violins and trumpets, trumpets and the lyrics, the only lyrics Molly held to and remembered: “Joy! Joy, joy, joy! Joy! Joy, joy, joy!” Molly felt the cold purple grass under her feet. She ran as far as her legs could take her and that until she saw more flowers that stood off in the distance. She recognized these flowers. These were daffodils.

  “Those are absolutely beautiful too,” Molly said, running toward them. She expected the purple path to open up and allow her to reach the daffodils, but it didn’t. “Maybe I can just go through.” Molly was set to move through the colorful flowers, when they pushed her back.

  “What is going on? Why can’t I go through?” she yelled.

  Not only was Molly unable to move out of the colorful flowers and onto the path toward the daffodils, the song that sung joy, joy, joy had stopped. The thrill of this place suddenly turned, and Molly was overtaken with anxiety and fear again. “What’s going on?” Molly whispered. When she attempted to fray herself a passage through the purple flowers, they broke away from each other. The purple road appeared through the grass and led to an unknown dwelling. Molly didn’t know what it was, but what she did know was that she wanted to be where those daffodils were.

  “Thank you, thank you!” Molly said as if she was royalty that presented herself before great men and women.

  Then surprisingly she heard: “You are quite welcome.”

  Molly was surprise that the flowers spoke back to her, but this time she wasn’t afraid, she was happy. She continued to tip-toe her way toward the daffodils and onto the purple path.

  “I see them. They are so beautiful! Joy, joy, joy, joy!” Molly’s lips quoted the lyrics out of turn. It was embarrassing because she didn’t know all the lyrics to the songs but they rolled off her tongue as if she was waiting on the choir.

  I feel them. They, they feel wonderful. They love me. They want me here. They care for me. They want to walk with me, Molly thought while stopping in the middle of the purple road. The daffodils moved from side to side with a certain intelligent sway. This brought a smile to Molly’s little face.

  “Hi, I am Molly. I feel your energy. It is very strong here, stronger than where all of the wonderful flowers I have seen so far,” Molly said.

  “Yes, we are very strong. Our energy is, yes. Welcome to the Valley of the Flowers, Molly, where we, here, want to…” Then the words, that were so strong from perfectly beautiful daffodils, died down and within seconds the daffodils began to sink in the ground.

  “Hey? You are my friends. Come back. Please don’t leave. You are my friends,” Molly yelled. But not even a vibrant yell could keep Molly’s new friends above ground. They were gone. The flowers and the glimmering purple road were also gone.

  “No one likes me; I’m not even wanted by little innocent flowers!”

  Molly’s assumption brought her a puddle of tears on a black powdered ground. She had every reason to wallow in sadness; she had nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Nothing was going right for her, even when she was in the right place. She wanted to elaborate on how bad her troubles were by lying right there in that powdered ground, but she didn’t. And she wouldn’t. Coming across the empty field of
the Valley of the Flowers was a varicolored coyote with tousled and spiky hair that lay in the distance amongst what the ground had produced – black powder.

  In the direction to which she went, she heard the yellow-faced coyote yell at her, “Where are they? I was told of this place. I know you know them, because if you didn’t, you would not be here. Now answer me, cat, where are they?”

  Of course Molly was scared. She was almost scared of herself, but it wasn’t the voice of the coyote that scared her. His voice was just loud, not threatening. It was the coyotes’ bright colors, long, busy tail and furry tattered body that did. The coyote had just as much blue and yellow fur as she did.

  “Are you going to stand there, like dew on a daffodil, or are you going to tell me where the red flower is?”

  Red flower, what is that? Molly questioned. She wanted to answer, and probably would have, if she hadn’t been so distracted by the yelling coyote.

  “I want the red flower. I know you know where it is. Now give it to me, you puny little cat!” The coyote stomped on his left foot. “I see you’re not going tell me where the red flower is. Maybe you will tell me once I get my massive paws around your catnip-eating neck, cat!”

  By this time Molly was already looking for a way to run.

  “I’m coming for you now, kitty-kitty.”

  At that command, Molly was in flight. Where the many colored daffodil lay isolated from all the other plants, Molly’s footprints now were a decorative stain on the ground. Molly didn’t know where she was running to. It didn’t matter. All she wanted to be was away from the coyote.

  “I haven’t lost a race yet and I always catch what I am after, cat. So, today will be like anyone of those days, I will not disappoint myself.”

  Molly turned her head slightly to one side. In her sights, very close to her, just inches away, was the gaudy coyote.

  There wasn’t a crease, seam, crack, or crevice through which Louis could wiggle his way out. He was caught and there was no possible way that he was getting out, unless for some odd reason Peter, a.k.a. Pete, would have a change of heart and open the cage door to let Louis out.

  “Look, Louis, you don’t have to look at me with those sad, puppy dog’s eyes of yours. It’s not that bad. Really, how bad can it be?”

  “If you only knew how bad it was for me,” Louis said, “I’m sure, if you are a dog lover, which most humans are, you would let me go really quickly and never allow another pet in her hands, ever in her life. That goes for my enemy the cat, too. As bad as I hate them, I wouldn’t give any of them over to her.”

  “Look on the bright side, Louis. You’re not out here wondering around in the cold looking for food, or get taken by animal control or worst of all, get hit by a car. It’s really bad out here and you need a loving owner who could give you the love you need. Awh, Louis, you are such a beautiful dog. Come here, little doggy,” Peter said.

  Placing his face in reach of the door, Louis barked loudly. Peter stuck his hand through the cracks in the bar and Louis swiped at Peter. He jumped back. “Oh my God, Jesus, you are a psycho dog! I don’t know if it will be safe around you. I feel for your owner, umm… Edna.”

  Louis snarled, shaking his head from side to side frantically, as if he was infected with rabies. Peter backed away at the same time as Edna pulled up in a rundown, paint peeling, balled-tires pickup truck.

  Out of the truck climbed Edna herself. “You have my dog, mister?” Edna yelled.

  “Why yes, are you the….”

  “I’m Edna James, the one and only. Back out of my way so I can get a better look at that mutt,” Edna said rudely.

  “Excuse you,” Peter said.

  Ignoring Peter, Edna walked right past him and to the white paneled truck that held Louis.

  “Would you look at that there? Louis the mutt, we meet again. Did you think you was going to actually get away without seeing your loving master in this life time? Never, ever!”

  The first thing that Louis found funnier than strange was Edna’s neck brace. Louis did all that he could to hold in his laughter, but not his comments. You look absolutely hilarious, Edna, Louis thought, coming as close to the bars as possible without actually touching them.

  “You looking at my neck brace I see, mutt. This is what you and that rat done to me, and if I could only get my hands on that rat, I would sprain his whole weasel body.”

  The things we would do to you, Edna, if he was here, but he is not. So I’m on my own and I deserve to be on my own. Louis rehashed those thoughts of him and the woodchuck together humiliating Edna. I done that, the woodchuck done that, so whatever you have plan for me, Edna, I’m okay with it. I got you once and if I have another chance, I will get you again.

  “Where is the key to this blasted door, Peter?”

  “Hold your horses. Before I open this door I believe there is something you owe me for finding that crazy and deranged dog of yours,” Peter said.

  “Yes, I believe there is something I need to give you. How rude of me, Peter,” Edna said. Then out of the pocket of her bronze-colored, silk pants came what looked to be a black ballpoint pen.

  “What is that?” Peter asked, taking a closer look.

  “It’s a writing pen. Doesn’t it look like a writing pen to you, numbskull?”

  Peter’s face turned red and every attempt to smile it off didn’t work. He still held a dumb and ignorant glare that wouldn’t go away.

  “Is that what you’re going to write out my check with?” Peter asked.

  “Yes this is what I am going to write out your check with, Peter.”

  Edna removed the top from the pen then pressed the blue button on top of the pen. A combination of blue and black electric current made a whisking sound as they enter into Peter’s chest. “How do you like your check, Peter? It’s written in black and blue!”

  Louis backed away from the bars and as if he were outside in the wintry cold and the summertime’s heat when he used to hunker down and back away in the corner of his dog house, so did he in the corner of Peter’s truck. He heard everything from that corner and what he would be hearing once Edna had dealt with him.

  Edna let go of the button and yelled; “Now the keys, or else I will give you another dose of that, Peter!”

  He fumbled in his pocket before finally drawing a key ring out of it. Edna didn’t wait for him to sort through the key ring to find the right one, she snatched the entire key ring out of Peter’s hand, watched him dance wildly and awkwardly while the blue and black electric current passed through him.

  “Now, Louis, I want you to know I’ve missed you. Have you missed me?” Edna asked.

  “If you’re going to shoot me with that pen, I wish you go ahead and do it. I’m sure you don’t have all day to get me back in your hut,” Louis growled. He closed his eyes, watching Edna as she stuck the tip of the ball point pen inside the bars and pushed the button.

  Louis opened his eyes to a splash of cold water and heckles. When he woke suddenly, his body reacted in a jump and shivers. It took him only second to remember Edna striking him with her stun pen. He looked around.

  Just as I figured; a cage. At least I’m inside but cold.

  “Welcome to my world, Louis!” Standing before him, was of course Edna then there was Randall, his former owner.

  Who is he? He doesn’t look like Charles, not even in the slightest. Louis shook himself as much as he could of the cold water while not recognizing Randall.

  “Mighty cold isn’t it, Louis?”

  And you are one ugly-looking woman and I thought I was ugly too, Louis thought.

  “Well, well, well if it isn’t that dirty, stinky mutt, Louis. How do you do, Louis? We have plans for you, dog,” Randall said.

  Whatever plans you have for me, you better make sure it’s a good one, because if it’s not, I will make sure you will never find me again, Louis thought.

  “Welcome back, Louis! This is some home you’re thinking, right? Ed
na said. “It’s temporary until I figure out what exactly am I going to do with you.”

  “You know what you going to do to this…, this mutt! We are going to…”

  “Shut up, Randall. What we are going to do to this dog is none of his business. We have a plan and together we will have a say in this world of pets, cats and dogs to be specific. Now getting back to you, Louis, you are there and I am here and I thought to keep you safe, what better place than a kennel!”

  Yeah, whatever, Edna. It beats outside in that cold any day.

  “I always thought somewhere in that head of yours, you could become somewhat of a special dog, like one of those dogs that I often see on television, but na, you nothing but a mutt, a dog that is fit for the slums of not just of Edna’s backyard but anyone’s back yard,” Randall said.

  Edna gave Randall a sulky glare.

  “Well, I always wanted to say that. What’s wrong with that?”

  Edna ignored Randall’s silly rhetoric and focused back on Louis. “I haven’t forgotten what you done and before I ship you out of here, I will have my revenge on you, Louis,” Edna declared. “Come on, Randall, we have work to do!”

  Edna and Randall walked out. Louis couldn’t see where out was, he could only hear it. The white light bulb shone from the ceiling of a smelly warehouse where wet wood was stored. This was a similar odor Louis had smelled when he was chained up behind Edna’s house.

  “What’s going to happen to me? I don’t know if I should answer that truthfully, and not feel bad after I give myself an honest answer,” Louis said. “Honesty, ha-ha-ha-ha!” Louis laughed. “Honesty, I’m sure that Woodchuck would appreciate that coming from me, if he was here right now.”

  Louis always felt upbeat and optimistic, no matter what the circumstances were, but this time, in that cage, he didn’t feel any optimism. “I know she is going to do something to me. I can feel it. And Randall, the man I lived with since the time I was a pup, until he gave me to that Hell-on-Wheels woman, Edna. My life was perfectly fine until Randall had to go and get evicted from his apartment and couldn’t take me with him. Now the two of them have something up their sleeves for me.”

  Louis spoke as if he was speaking to someone else until it turned into a question and answer session with himself. When he realized what he was doing, he stopped.

  When Louis pushed the front of his kennel, it didn’t budge, not even the cage itself moved.

  Of course it’s not going to move, it has a deadbolt lock on it, Louis thought. “These bars are solid steel. I’m not sure if the Woodchuck’s teeth could bite through this. I’m doomed.” Louis had absolutely no inspiration and no hope. He backed up into the back of the cage and lay down, peering out of the cage’s bars and into the white light.

  Like the various beats that make up the sound of a marching band, so were the sounds that were made when the groundhog tumbled twenty feet out of the tree into a pile of trash in a bin next to the shopping stores.

  “Crap, crap, crap! Trash. There’s nothing like the smell of trash, especially when it’s all on you!” The woodchuck spoke from the top of the pile in the bin. When he heard a customer approach, he buried himself under the tissue paper with the fresh snot on it, part of a double burger, cream soda, dirty napkins and other similar, disgusting things. Once he saw that the coast was clear, he climbed out of the trash bin and hurried behind it where he shook the food and other trash off his body and scarf. He knew the odds of him being discovered were practically a hundred to one against him. Not sure that behind the trash bin was going to give him enough privacy, the woodchuck thought of something different - a better idea.

  “I got it! Under the trash bin is better. That way they will never know that I’m here. I couldn’t think of a better idea!” And so that’s what the woodchuck did. He was very nervous under the bin. He was hearing the footsteps of humans, their interaction, loud talking, and one person in particular who had a dog who barked at the trash bin incessantly.

  “Come on, Sparky, that is nothing but a trash bin. You don’t eat trash, now come on!”

  Yeah, Sparky, beat it, the woodchuck thought as he made contact with the dog and its leash being pulled away from the trash bin. In no time, the woodchuck got used to the human coming by and throwing trash in the already full bin, and soon was able to focus on what was going on in the middle of the shopping center parking facility.

  “All I want is a little bit of your time today. Please, lady. Please, sir!” someone yelled. The groundhog couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a man with the costumes these three wore. “We have a problem in our shopping community. It’s with man’s best friend and man’s most hated house invader!”

  “A dog and a rat,” someone yelled out from the crowd that had gathered around the three people who were dressed up like Louis and the Woodchuck. “That’s right, a dog and a rat. She is absolutely right!”

  The woodchuck strained his eyes and then saw what was stamped on each of the three’s chest.

  Is that an X, the woodchuck wondered.

  “We have allowed dogs the privilege to come into our homes, our neighbors, and our place of work. We treat them as if they were humans. We feed them and we treat them as if they are part of the human race, but the moment we started to trust this dog, man’s best friend, he turned out to be man’s worst enemy! The people of this shopping center and two in particular were terrorized by this dog I described today, along with his cohort, a rat, and I brought one of the men with me today. The other one chose not to come. He is in his house hiding from the dog and the rat.”

  Yeah, sure, if he is hiding from us my name is Mr. Lilly-blue!

  One of the three people, who pulled off the rat mask, was Worker B.

  You should have given us what we wanted and things would have been a lot different. You had five boxes of grapes and I couldn’t have a couple of bags, the woodchuck thought.

  “I tell you; I never been so scared in my life,” Worker B said. “It was so horrible; that rat had some type of scarf on, he looked like it may have been someone’s lost rat or something. I don’t know. I tried to show him out of the trailer of my truck but he just stared. Oh, he stared at me with those horrible blue eyes. I never saw a rat with ugly blue eyes like what I saw that morning,” Worker B continued recounting the encounter he had with the woodchuck and Louis.

  More of the shopping center’s patrons gathered around Worker B and the other two costumed people.

  After Worker B concluded his tirade, the person who hid under the Louis costume resumed his speech.

  “Thank you, Mr. Watson. I really appreciate you telling us how bad rats can really be.

  “Now the few people who have taken time out of their busy schedule to gather out here to listen to what we are all about today, first I want to say thank you and second we have an animal problem here. It’s sad that this shopping community had to find out the hard way that animals are not humans and they should not be treated as such,” the masculine voice under the costume went on. “I have two daughters and we go shopping regularly. I would hate to take them both out and, out of the blue, a dog, a rat or possibly even a cat jumps out and attacks them. I’m not worried about me. I spent time in the hole in the military. I know how to survive. It’s just my daughters I’m worried about.

  “If you are anything like me, you want your loved ones to feel protected.” Then the man held his head down. Mumbling cries could be heard through the costumes. One of the other people beside him patted his back, soothing his sorrows.

  “I’m so, so sorry. I just get a little shook up thinking about the two of them and that sneaky dog and that dirty, nasty rat. I hate them. I hate them both to the bottom of my heart,” the man said.

  I am tired of listening to this. We aren’t bad. We were just hungry. All we wanted was food, the woodchuck thought as he prepared to get out from under the trash bin. Then the costume man said something that not only stopped the woodchuck in his tracks but scared hi
m.

  “I have been fortunate to use all of my inheritance that my mother left for…. Oh God, my mother. Bless her heart. I miss her so badly.” You could hear the crying in the man’s voice again. “I’m sorry. My mother always has a place in my heart. Anyway, I have come up with something that will protect us all from these bad, bad animals. I call it the Stun Duh pen. What this does…, and I am going to show you an example.”

  He called the rat costumed lady by name to be his example.

  “Martha works closely with me and so she doesn’t mind helping me here.” She took off her mask and did as she was told. She ran at the costumed man. He pushed the button on the pen device, and blue and black stream of current went into her body. Mr. Watson caught her as she dropped to the ground.

  “You see how her mouth went Duh, Duh, Duh when the current hit her? You can do the same as I did if you feel threatened by any animal that may try to harm you or your loved ones.”

  The woodchuck was in utter shock. He thought about his friend, his best friend, Louis the Fox Terrier, how he could be alone and there was some human waiting to strike him with the blue and black streaks of electricity.

  That is mean. These are the terrible things that you humans want to do to animals. How can they be so cruel to us? All we wanted is food. All we asked for was food, nothing else. And although Louis and I didn’t go about it the right way, I’m sure we would have never gotten the food, if we hadn’t shown a little bit of force.

  “What I have for you today may not last long and what I have for you is this same Stun Duh pen. Did you all see how my associate’s mouth went Duh, Duh, Duh?”

  “Yes, it was so funny,” a young child said among the crowd.

  “It may have been funny, but it’s also very effective against those animals that want to try and hurt you, young man. Now, for a very special low price of ten dollars, you can have this same Stun Duh pen. It shoots up to twenty five feet away. With this incredible piece of equipment, you will be able to defeat any animal that comes your way. And oh yeah, ladies we have them in pink. Once they get a load of this, it will stop them in their tracks.”

  The woodchuck thought that it was hard enough keeping an eye on the predators who want to eat him, but now he would have to keep an eye on everyone who had a Stun Duh pen.

  The crowd rushed the costumed man who ran to the back of his truck.

  Louis has to know about this. I need to find him and tell him. I know what he said, but if he doesn’t know about this, he could be in real danger. I think that and that alone, is why I have to find him.

  The groundhog got to the back of one of the department stores, and upon standing on his hind legs he beheld the street across from him. Heavy traffic was raiding his brain. “I have to be stupid. I am an endangered species. I can’t go after Louis!” As the groindhog turned to leap on the tree and go home, he saw something come after him. He knew exactly who they were. He turned to run, yelling, “Help me!”