5  

A BACKWARD MARCH TOWARD FAME

Melvin, who had already settled in for a snooze, yawned, his teeth glinting in the moonlight.

“I don’t have a lot of time. Can you look up something for me on the Internet?”

Melvin stretched and leaped onto the desk in one graceful swoop. He turned on the computer. “What’s the plan, Sam?”

“It’s Oswald. Although some beings call me Oz, I do prefer Osw—”

“It’s a saying, man.” Melvin stared out the window for a moment. “What do you want me to look up?”

“I want to know if opossums are known for their poetry.”

“Poetry? You are a piece of work.” Melvin shook his head then tapped away on the keyboard.

“Fish carcass!” Melvin looked frustrated and typed some more. He must have been making mistakes. “Hairball!” Melvin said.

“No need to be coarse.”

Melvin took a deep breath. Then he turned back to the keyboard and typed with one claw extended from each paw. The computer screen lit Melvin’s large, handsome head. His whiskers glowed like fiber optics.

“You’re in luck. Opossums are not famous for their poetry.” Melvin gave an odd smile.

“Fabulous! I think Miss Ann likes poetry.” Oswald clapped his front paws. “Might you be so kind as to get a pen and paper for me? Please?”

“Sure, man.” Melvin pushed a few pieces of paper and a pen off the desk.

“Thank you, Melvin. You’re a good friend.”

Oswald started to write, but his pen kept poking holes through the paper into the carpet. After a few more tries, he dragged the paper onto the dining table in the next room. Melvin carried the pen to him in his mouth without being asked.

Writing on the table worked much better. There was a moment of relative quiet; the only sounds were the pen scratching on paper and the summer’s night orchestra of frogs and insects muffled through the windows. A train whistle sounded in the distance.

“Stop staring at me, I can’t concentrate,” Oswald told Melvin, who stood up, turned around twice, and re-curled himself in the opposite direction.

Oswald wrote some more.

“Please desist. You’re sending bad vibrations—interfering with my brain waves.”

Melvin sat up. “Not exactly a tsunami.”

“What are you talking about?” Oswald said.

“Nothing. But I think I see a solution.” Melvin trotted over to a blue plastic laundry basket on the floor.

“I bet the laundry basket would protect you from my stares and vibes.”

Oswald clapped his front paws in agreement.

“And I know just the solution to protect those brain waves of yours.”

The two worked together, tipping the basket and removing the few items, then hauling it from floor to chair, and chair to table. Then they flipped the basket over Oswald. This made a bright-blue plastic slatted hut over the struggling poet. Oswald started writing again, and Melvin jumped off the table and trotted off into the kitchen.

He returned with a fork in his mouth, jumped on the table and placed it on top of the upturned laundry basket.

Oswald stopped his writing, which was now going very well. “What on earth are you doing?”

Melvin explained that if there were metal objects on top of the upturned basket, they would absorb any “bio-electrical forces” that might be interfering with Oswald’s brain waves and his brilliance. This sounded technical and complicated to Oswald, which convinced him it must be true. So Oswald returned to his writing while Melvin opened kitchen drawers and cupboards, carrying silverware and any metal objects he could manage.

Soon, there was a large pile of knives, forks and spoons, small pot lids, old keys, a rusty hinge, a broken watch, an empty cat-food can, and other odds and ends on top of the upside-down basket. Confident his brain waves were properly protected, Oswald wrote speedily, going backward with the pen in his back paw, covering page after page with scratchy marks. Meanwhile, Melvin slept in the armchair in the study, wearing another one of those odd smiles.