Louis, Molly & the Woodchuck

by Michael Arnold

  Chapter 14

  Ring, ring, ring was the sound of Edna’s phone as it went off in her bleached out jacket. Louis heard it but Edna didn’t, or maybe she did. But the idea of humiliating Louis to the best of her ability before taking the phone call was more important. She swung the pile of mud at Louis but, as she did, Louis used his strength and his knowledge of a fox terrier to outsmart and out-think Edna.

  Louis nipped at her face. She jerked back slightly, which caused her sore neck to turn and aggravate Edna’s already painful neck.

  “Oh my neck, my neck, you stupid dog, you hurt my neck again,” Edna yelled.

  “Good. I want to hurt it again. Come on, I’m not done with you,” Louis said.

  His words which were barks to Edna didn’t intimidate her, instead it made her angrier. “You, God Blame mutt, I have had it with you!” Her yells were booming, identical to the pounding in the middle of her chest. She ran towards Louis in an attempt to grab his chain. Louis pulled back. She reached and Louis pulled back again, then the ringing phone distracted her not once but twice, preventing her from concentrating.

  Now I got you. Take that, you mean old lady! Louis thought as he charged her as fast and hard as he could with great momentum and power. The old lady, Edna, fell back head first into the deep pile of mud.

  Louis was confused when he saw Edna’s eyes closed and her arms flat against her side. Louis pulled back and pulled on his chain. His neck hurt the more he pulled on the chain.

  I have to break it, if I am going to be free, he thought.

  He then heard Edna’s sporadic breathing. It was awkward but she was breathing and that’s all that mattered since Louis was not a killer.

  Molly could feel her back legs ache the more ground she covered but she didn’t show any sign of slowing down or stopping completely. She wanted to get back to the Valley of the Flowers and she believed the bird was her ticket back.

  The woodchuck rested for a time and when he woke up he was thirsty. He remembered that on their last and final raid, Louis had acquired small bottles of clear liquid, small to humans, but to the woodchuck the bottles were a couple of inches shorter than he was. With all the to-do and not-to-do with Louis, Hawk and Worm, the woodchuck didn’t remember where the small bottles of liquid were stored. Nevertheless, with extensive searching, the woodchuck was able to locate the bottles under a bag of grapes.

  “What does this say? Fruity Juicy!” The woodchuck read on the blue label across the front of the bottle. He looked down and saw that Louis hadn’t got one bottle of the Fruity Juicy but three of them. “Ah, I bet this will be good. It’s nice and cold,” the woodchuck said, turning the small silver cap on the bottle.

  I think this will hit the spot! He took a sip first. “Umm, they weren’t lying; this is really fruity. I even taste a sliver of grapes in it,” he said. He turned the Fruity Juicy up, then stopped to let the fruit flavor go down his throat slowly and make the taste of the fruit last longer since he almost had drank the whole bottle empty.

  When the woodchuck turned up the second bottle, he didn’t stop to take a breath. All that could be heard in his furry little ears was gulp, gulp, and gulp. After finishing it, he threw the empty bottle to the side and downed the second and the third bottle. He burped after those second and third bottles were empty. “I feel …soused but oh does it feel, oh so good!” the woodchuck said. “I think I cou-could u-use something to eat now, but I want something out on the town, I desire a night o-on the town!” His words came out in a stuttering sentence. He got as far as to the top of the exit hole of his burrow, and fell down backwards. “I see stars. Is it night already? They are so magnificently beau-beautiful,” he muttered. “I like that word. I…, I’m going to use that word. I have to save that one,” he said, turning over on his side to burp out a big bubble.

  In Molly’s perimeter vision, she saw a warehouse. “Where are we going, where are you taking me this time. If it is another trap, I suggest that we stop this instant,” Molly yelled and stopped where she stood. The bird stopped as if it was going to address Molly’s rhetoric verbally. It fluttered its brightly colored wings. Its green, radiant yellow narrow beak shone a ray of light on Molly’s back legs.

  Molly turned and looked at her left back leg. It was trembling. The pain that she began to feel was the pain that was eased by the medicine she had been taking. “My legs hurt. What are you doing to my legs? You are mean. Stop it now!” Molly yelled. When the bird’s mouth closed and the light didn’t show any more, Molly slowly began to weaken.

  For a moment Molly laid there aching from the cold, growing pain, while her mind was drifting and confused. “What, what am I supposed to do? You expect me to keep going to a place where you probably laid a trap for me?”

  The bird didn’t say anything. Its wings continued to flutter. It flew over Molly’s head and then flew forward, expecting Molly to move along in pace with it.

  “Why did you bring me to that house with that bad, bad man who has that bad, bad dog Daisy? I didn’t have to be there, you know. I could have stayed where all those beautiful flowers were. They wanted me. They all wanted me until that bad coyote came and wanted that red flower. You should have given him the red flower and everything would have been okay. I could have stayed and all my friends there would not have run away!” Molly said. “It’s no use; you’re not going to say anything, as Fannie use to say when talking to Elvin. Talking to you is like talking to a brick wall. Brick walls don’t talk and I guess you don’t talk either,” she added, regaining some strength in her legs as she stood up. She glared at the bird.

  The bird, of course, flapped its wing but it did something different this time. When it flapped its wings, a rainbow appeared from where Molly stood, stretching its way forward across the sky.

  Molly heard a sound in the distance, the sound of singing birds. The sound sang a specific song, a song that Molly didn’t know in its entirety, but a song of which Molly only knew the chorus. It was clear as the clouds in the sky, what those words were and what they meant to Molly.

  Louis heard mumbles coming out of Edna’s mouth. He even thought, at one point, when he reached up to try to disengage the chain from his collar, that he saw Edna put one of her hands on the side of her head. He wasn’t sure, so he didn’t dwell on the thought. Instead he tried strenuously to get the chain off his neck.

  “The chain seems pretty weak, but I’m still having a hard time getting it to pop,” Louis said softly, hoping not to wake the out-cold Edna. He worked the chain to the point where one of the links in it popped. The single link in the chain dropped to the ground.

  “Come on, chain. I had one link pop. I need another one to pop too.”

  Out of desperation Louis attempted to pull the collar off with his front paws, to no avail. It was on too tight and he couldn’t get through the lock in the collar. “I am fresh out of ideas. I don’t know what to do now,” Louis said, when pulling on the chain and trying to take the collar off didn’t work.

  The loud mumbles became words and those words became sentences and from those sentences came an angry woman’s voice. She sat up like the rise of a dead zombie in a horror film. “You mangy mutt, you stinky, dirty mangy mutt, I have had my share of you completely. I am done playing games with you!” Edna yelled from a sitting position in the mud.

  Louis wasn’t going to wait nor did he hesitate. He charged Edna before she could get up. But this time Edna wasn’t going to be out-done or out-gunned. She raised her heavy leg out of the thick mud where Louis’s face met her muddy boot.

  Louis felt the power, the abnormal power of a boot to the face. Edna then drew a light green pill from her coat pocket and threw it in her mouth.

  That ought to stop the pain while I finish what I started here, Edna thought, rising to her feet. “I hate you, dog. I hate cats, and I definitely hate rats. I’m going to dispose of all of you single handedly, but first I am going to start with you, mutt. Then I am going to dispose of every animal t
hat I can, until I get to that rat friend of yours. Then and only then, will I be happy!”

  Edna popped every knuckle in her hands when she stood up. Louis thought this to be strange. Not because she didn’t like animals but because of her actions, he thought she was strange altogether. Edna reached for his chain and yanked on it. Her strength was brutal. Louis’s massive size neck fit easily in Edna’s gripping palm of the one hand.

  “I don’t know if there is a God that looks after mutts, which I don’t believe there is, but if you think there is, dog, I suggest you figure out how to get in touch with him.”

  Louis felt the grip around his neck get tighter and tighter. Yet he, who was strong and a fighter, could only do so much with a woman who displayed the strength of a man, and with the electric power device she had in her pocket.

  He, too, had to surrender.

  “You’re not so bad, now are you, dog? You see I have the power. I am the power and you are nothing but a pawn to me. All you dogs, cats, and of course rats, who I had no idea befriended dogs,” Edna yelled.

  As Louis was being lifted off the ground, he also felt his sight slowly becoming dim and his air harder to get.

  I wish I could have told the woodchuck that…, that I…, I loved him, Louis thought. Then, when he was seconds from closing his eyes for good, he plummeted to the ground, the mud splashing up onto Edna’s face. Louis gasped for air while trying to regain his senses.

  “Why, you. It’s you!”

  Edna turned and, to her surprise, she saw Molly. She held the back of her pants just like she held her neck when she pried out of the window when Louis and the woodchuck escaped that morning several days ago. Not giving Edna any chance to react to her tearing a part of her black spandex pants, Molly pounced on her chest and pasted mud on Edna’s face cream.

  “You, cat, I am going to ring your neck!” Edna flared.

  Molly was now mounted on her face. “I don’t know what I am doing, but I hope I am doing the right thing.”

  “You are, just hang on until I tell you to jump, okay?” Louis said. He had regained about eighty-five percent of his faculties by then.

  “Okay!” Molly yelled.

  Louis snarled, pin pointing the exact spot on which he was going to attack. I did it before and I will do it again, Edna. This time I am going to make sure you go down for good, Louis thought. Then, at the only speed he knew even in thick mud, he ran at Edna, aiming at her legs.

  “Now! Jump off now!” Louis yelled.

  Molly jumped off Edna and into the thick mud. Louis’s hard head rammed Edna’s knee caps. A popping sound erupted as she dropped down to her knees, holding her neck.

  What the heck, I might as well do it; Louis thought as he closed a paw and gave Edna a straight jab to her muddy face. She fell over.

  “I think, I think I see stars,” she yelled.

  Louis then turned to Molly who slung a paw full of mud at Louis.

  “Hey, what was that for?”

  “For being a dog and me being a cat! Since when has our kind become a likable pair?”

  “Okay?” Louis said in a question statement.

  Molly shook her head in a downward motion while Louis looked at her strangely. He was speechless for a moment.

  “Thanks for helping me out a few seconds ago,” Louis said.

  “Well, you’re welcome.”

  He peered down at Edna, expecting her to get up at any moment. “You better get going. She will be up soon. I am sure the punch I gave her isn’t going to keep her down. Besides this is my problem and I wouldn’t want you to have to deal with my problem.”

  “I have no place to go. I have no family. I thought I had a friend but as it turned out, I was chasing something that I don’t think ever was, and the owners I thought loved me.” She paused. Molly could feel the tears coming. As bad as she wanted to fight them, she wanted to be honest, so she allowed the tears to fall as they may.

  “My owners never loved me. They placed me in a cage and took me away to this place which hates animals. This place is very, very bad. They hurt and kill animals there. That’s where my owner took me,” Molly said.

  “I never been to that place, but I understand what it feels like not to be wanted and not having any friends. Well, I had one friend but… well, that is a long story and you have to go. And I…, I have to find a way to survive here,” Louis said, turning from Molly, when he heard the mud splash and his chain fall off.

  “Now, it will be easy to take the collar off your neck.”

  Louis turned to Molly. He was covered in mud again, and Molly was bathing in mud for the first time that she could remember.

  “Thank you!” Louis reached out his muddy paw. “I’m Louis. You may not be able to read the name tag. It’s kind of old and muddy.”

  Molly laughed.

  “I like that name. it’s kind of cool. Nice to meet you, Louis. I’m Molly!”

  “Nice to meet you too, Molly. Friends?”

  “Yes, friends,” Molly replied with a huge grin.

  “We have to get out of here. I will find us a place for the time being. I think she is planning something really bad for us pets. We have to go before she awakes,” Louis suggested.

  At first the coyote thought pursuing Molly, since he was stronger and faster than she was, would have been a positive thing to do. But examining the situation from a broader perspective and what was at stake, he felt it was a bad idea. Just like Molly, the coyote was weak, broken and wasn’t young enough to keep up with Molly, so he headed back to the Valley of the Flowers.

  “I really could have had her, I needed the rest. But I could have had her. If I would have knocked down those trees and ran after her, I would have had her, no question, because I am a coyote.”

  “I am strong, fast, and alert. I would have caught her and she would have given me the red flower. She would have given me what I needed to overcome what has been done to me. She could have saved me and freed me from the curse of the water,” the coyote said. He ran as fast and as far as he could go before giving up. He lay in the woods before getting to the Valley of the Flowers.

  “I’m not going to make it. I’m so weak, I will pass away very soon and if I do, it will because I deserve it. I was told that the rabbits were not for food and those that I found….” The coyote’s voice weakened into the depth of sleep or perhaps his last breath was coming, but confession was on his tongue and honesty was in his heart. “After all, there may be no red flower here, for me that is. I don’t deserve one after thinking about it long and hard,” the coyote continued while his coat of fur fell off in spots, burning the area in which he laid, then dissolving into the ground amid all the dead leaves, branches and grass. Apparently the coyote was used to this. It happened to him several times before and he didn’t think anything of it.

  He found strength to move though, yet every step and every move became harder and harder. I should have done the right thing and maybe things would have been different. No banishment, no curse, none of the pain I feel. He wanted to stop again, but when he thought about how much of a task it was to stop and go, he pressed his way through. He could see the Valley of the Flower some ways ahead. If I have to get past these trees then I am not going to make it. I will never get through to the Valley of the Flowers.” As the coyote made a move to step over the wild weed and through the trees toward the Valley of the Flowers, he felt a wrapping then, a tugging on his legs.

  “What, what is this?” the coyote said, his strength being pulled away from him just as the dark brown weeds wrapped around his legs and vowed to drag him away from the Valley of the Flowers.

  “No, no, you can’t have me. I won’t let you take me!” the coyote yelled, trying his hardest to pull away from the dark-brown vines. “Help, help me!” he shouted. His screams of desperation carried but soon broke off into gasps of strained words.

  The nightfall was being ushered in by cold rain. The woodchuck had yet to close the holes in his
entrance and exit part of his underground dwelling since he had been lying flat on his back from the Fruity Juicy. The rain drops came down on him, which was good, because without the rain, he may have slept even longer than he did.

  He woke up, an eye opening suddenly. “Oh, no, I can’t get away from the aliens. Help! Someone, help me!” he yelled, eventually sitting up and remembering what had happened to him. That was really some good stuff. Whatever they put in that bottle, it has some kind of a kick, he thought, then lazily got up on his hind legs.

  He read the label on the bottle, not to be sure what it was, but where it came from. The label didn’t have the information he was seeking, but it did have a barcode. Somehow he was able to interpret the information from the bar code on the bottle. Archer and Rash bottling company is what it read. “Archer and Rash bottling company,” the woodchuck said out loud.

  Where is that located, he wondered. He didn’t know where to start to find out the location of this bottling company. “I have to get more bottles of the Fruity Juicy, but would I actually have to go to the bottling company or could I just go where they carry it?” he asked himself.

  He smiled, his two white front teeth glimmering and his tongue still savoring the taste of Fruity Juicy. “I wish there was another way, but there is no other way. I have to be valiant in my search for Fruity Juicy,” he yelled. “Valliant, hum…, I like that word. I’m going to have to use it more often,” he said. “But, for now sleep is upon me, so I must lie down because in the morning I have to hunt for some more Fruity Juicy out of that truck when it comes in tomorrow. I want to be right there when it rolls in.”

  If mad could be defined in one word, that one word would be Edna. When Onree and Randall got to the warehouse Edna was nowhere to be found. She had not returned Onree’s phone call.

  “I don’t know where she is. She said that she was coming...”

  “I don’t care what she said, she knows about my secret operation and what I plan to do with these animals. Then again she may not, but I want to make sure she is loyal to this operation. If she isn’t, I want you to find a way to get her completely out of this operation. Is that clear, Randall?” Onree asked.

  “Yes, that is clear!”

  “Good, very good. First thing in the morning, I need a load of animals to this warehouse with or without Edna. I’m going to need at least three hundred animals before I can ship them off. If Edna is not available in the morning then you will have to find a way to do the bulk of the work and get those animals out of that Animal Center and into this warehouse by yourself,” Onree said.

  When the night arrived and the cold was at its worst, Louis and Molly found a resting place inside a huge tree that had an opening inside of it.

  Louis made sure there wasn’t anything inside the tree that could hurt Molly. Once he found nothing that could hurt either of them, Louis cleaned out the opening and the entire matt of soft pine needles, making sure it was presentable for Molly.

  When she entered it, she said, “This is really warm. I like it, Louis!”

  “I think it would be a good place for us until we find out where we will go from here.”

  “I know that lady, Louis, I mean I’ve seen her before.”

  “You mean Edna, the lady that had me chained up back there?”

  “Yeah, the one that I jumped on,” Molly replied.

  “How do you know her?”

  “She came to the animal shelter and tried to adopt me, but I ran away before she could get me in the cage. There was something about her that was very, very strange. I felt it in my body, so that’s why I am out here. I’ve been out here since I ran away from her. How do you know her, Louis?” Molly asked.

  The thought of what Louis had been through with Edna was sickening. Every time he thought about her, was time spent in sadness and depression.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, Louis, I understand. Some things are best left unsaid, especially if it is something bad or something or someone that caused hurt, just like my owners caused me.”

  “It’s no problem at all, Molly. I am not bound by the bad she’s done to me so much that I can’t talk about it. I can tell you!”

  It was late. 9:30 when Edna called Onree back. He wasn’t happy and neither was she.

  “I thought you forgot about me and what your part will be in what we have to do in the morning, Edna!” Onree said.

  “I am not only qualified in common sense, Onree, but I am also smart enough to comprehend a duty without someone reminding me of my responsibility,” Edna said, adjusting her neck brace in the bathroom mirror.

  “Is that so, Edna?”

  “Yes, that is so, Onree!”

  “Looks like to me that you entered my warehouse without proper authority. You took something that didn’t belong to you and you done something that wasn’t part of your job description. And that, Edna, is evidence to me that you do need a reminder of what you are supposed to be doing for me. But since you did call me back, it is evidence that you want to do the job that I require you to do!”

  From the silence on the line, Onree believed that he had gotten through to her. But if she had gotten off track, she would be back on track very quickly. “So I am going to ask you as honestly as I know how; do you want to do this job or not?”

  “Yes, of course I want to do the job or else I wouldn’t have called you back,” Edna said with a scowl.

  “Good, that’s sounds very good. I need to meet you and Randall first thing tomorrow at the warehouse at five minutes after seven,” Onree said. “I need you there on time. We have much needed work to be accomplished and being late won’t and never accomplish anything, Edna. Have a good night and see you in the morning, on time!”

  Onree hung up before Edna was able to respond with a good night of her own, not that she wanted to wish Onree a good night, but she wanted some respect and she wasn’t getting any, not from her business partner, Onree, Randall, and of course, not from Louis.

  She snarled like a rabid dog and rammed her head several times against the hard edge of the mirror. “Who does he think he is? I deserve more than a hang-up. I deserve a good bye, Edna, I hope you have a good night sleep, and I hope to see you in the morning,” Edna complained before she rammed her head into her bathroom wall, this time making a small dent in it. A red mark appeared at the very top of her forehead.

  Then as if there was something to laugh about, Edna began to laugh. The laughter grew proportionally to the amount of pain she suffered during the bout that she endured with Louis. But that was the least of her worries. She was taking pain killers that masked the pain while she handled her immoral business.

  “I may not get you today or tomorrow or the next day, Louis, but I am going to get you one day. You will show up again. This is your destiny. And when I find you for the third time, I will make sure you will never eat a beer batter bone again. I will find you and that rat, but for now, I have business to take care of,” Edna said.

  She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of ice-tea that she pulled from the back of the refrigerator; in her hand was the Stun Duh pen. “Everyone is laughing, but soon there will be only one laugh, there will only be one standing, there will only be one standing, when I am done with everyone!”