Chapter Eleven: Arrested by the Park Police

They began walking in my direction. I could hear the crunch of gravel beneath their feet. Then . . . voices.

Voice One: “Dadgum coons. Look at this mess!”

Voice Two: “They sure wreck a place.”

Voice One: “I’d love to catch ’em. Wait a minute. What’s that over there?” Silence. Footsteps. My heart was pounding. “It’s a dog, and he’s got his head stuck in a can!”

Voice Two: “Caught in the act.”

Voice One: “Yeah, and do you recognize him? That’s Loper’s dog. He lives on the next ranch to the east.”

Gulp. My fame, it seemed, had caught up with me. I had been caught, exposed, revealed, and identified. Now all that remained . . . oh brother! Maybe, if I was lucky, they would ship me off to . . . somewhere. Devil’s Food Island. Prison. The dog pound. I didn’t care, as long as they didn’t call the ranch and report me to my mister and mattress.

Master and mistress. Whatever. Anything but that. My reputation couldn’t stand another Garbage Felony.

Suddenly I heard them laughing. What could this mean? I strained my ear to listen through the can.

Voice One: “Loper and Slim are on the volunteer fire department crew. Every time we get together for a fire meeting, they pull some prank on me. One time they turned a turtle loose under the seat of my pickup. Last Fourth of July they wired up a smoke bomb to the fire truck. I thought I’d burned up the clutch.”

Voice Two: “Sounds pretty funny to me.”

Voice One: “Uh-huh, and I’m fixing to get paybacks. Can you guess who’s going to clean up this garbage mess?”

Voice Two: “Two names come to mind.”

Voice One: “I’ve got ’em this time, Floyd. Old Hank has done me a great service. Let’s go back to the office.”

I felt a pair of hands on my neck. A moment later the can slipped off my head and I found myself looking into the eyes of Larry Marooney, Park Ranger, and his friend, Floyd Somebody.

I tried to squeeze up a smile, and tapped the last two inches of my tail, as if to say, “I didn’t do it, honest. I was just . . . uh . . . walking around with a friend, see, and he . . . he was a coon, a raccoon, and . . . I’m not the kind of dog who tips over garbage barrels, no kidding.”

I had expected them to be angry, but they weren’t. They seemed very pleasant, to tell you the truth, and they chuckled all the way back to the office. There, Ranger Marooney pulled a cigar from a box on his desk, fired it up, and puffed on it several times. He was still grinning as he looked up Loper’s phone number and dialed it.

By the time someone answered, he was looking very serious.

“Hello? Sally May? Morning, ma’am, this is Ranger Marooney over at the park. Uh, we’ve got a problem over here. We’ve had a lot of trouble with garbage barrels being overturned. It’s been going on for two weeks. Uh-huh, yes ma’am. We thought it was coons, but we’ve caught the culprit. It’s Loper’s dog. Yes ma’am, Hank.”

Whatever she said was loud. Ranger Marooney held the phone away from his ear and grinned. He winked at Floyd and went on.

“Now, Sally May, this is pretty serious. We just can’t allow stray dogs on the park, and I’m authorized to write up a citation that carries a two-hundred-dollar fine.” He flinched and held the phone away from his ear. “Yes ma’am. Now, I’ll let y’all off with a warning this time, but I want Loper to come over here and claim his dog and clean up the mess.”

He gave Floyd another wink. Then his smile faded. “Oh? Gone to New Mexico? Well, send old Slim over. I guess he’s smart enough for this job. He’s gone, too? Took some cows to the Beaver City sale? Well, don’t you worry about it. Me and Floyd can . . . no, there’s no need for you to . . . Sally May, I really didn’t mean for you . . . Yes ma’am. We’ll be here at the office.”

He hung up the phone, stared up at the ceiling, and took three long puffs on the cigar. “Those jugheads. Wouldn’t you know they’d both be gone? Loper’s wife’ll be here in fifteen minutes, and she didn’t sound real happy about it.”

Floyd got a big laugh out of that. Ranger Marooney didn’t, and neither did I.

My heart sank. OH NO, NOT HER! Not Sally May! Anyone but Sally May! Couldn’t they just go ahead and shoot me? All at once the thought of being marched in front of a firing squad seemed pretty appealing.

Gulp. I began rehearsing my story.

“Sally May, I know this looks bad, and I understand that you had other things planned for your day . . . uh, besides picking up trash in the . . . uh . . . park. I know you’re upset. I know this is a humiliating experience. And I understand that our relationship has been a little . . . well, rocky, you might say . . . that is, we’ve had a few mis-understandings . . . several misunderstandings and missed opportunities. But I think I can explain everything.”

It would never sell. She would never believe that I had been lured into a life of crime by a cheating, scheming, crooked little sneak of a coon.

I was sunk.

The waiting began. What was taking her so long? Well, no doubt she had to round up Little Alfred, put some clothes on Baby Molly, and load them all in the car. That would take some time. But still . . . I hate waiting. It drives me nuts. When a guy is sitting around waiting, all he can do is think.

You know what I was thinking about? My good friend Eddy the Rac. What a scrounge! What a louse! Just walked away and left his friend, his business partner to take the whole rap. Again.

A vehicle was approaching from the east. What? Was she here already? Good grief, what was the rush? I mean, what about rounding up the kids and cleaning their faces? Couldn’t we put this off another hour or two? I didn’t mind waiting. No kidding. I love to wait, especially when . . .

Gulp.

The door opened. There she was, with Little Alfred at her side and Molly forked on her hip. Her face was . . . uh . . . red, shall we say, dangerously red. Her gaze came straight to me and I wilted. My legs turned to Jell-O. My head sank to the ground. I drew my tail up between my legs and tried to crawl under a chair. That didn’t work.

There was only one bright spot in all this. Little Alfred was grinning. That provided some small relief. Alfred was still my pal. He knew I was innocent of all the terrible charges that had been brought against me. Surely Sally May wouldn’t strangle me in front of her son.

The Exchange of Prisoners was short and not-so-sweet. Sally May wore a frozen smile throughout the ceremony. She apologized for the actions of her “husband’s dog” and assured the park ranger that it wouldn’t happen again. Oh, and that her husband would hear all about it when he got home.

Ranger Marooney barked a little laugh at that, but it fell dead in the poisonous atmosphere of the room, I mean, like buckshot falling into a tin plate. He gave her directions to the . . . uh . . . overturned barrels, shall we say, and we left.

Ranger Marooney’s parting words were, “Have a good day.” He should have kept his mouth shut. That was the wrong thing to say, even I knew that.

We loaded everyone into the pickup. I was a little surprised that she had come in the pickup instead of her car. I knew she didn’t enjoy driving the ranch pickups because she hated shifting gears. So why had she . . . oh yes, Loper had driven the car to New Mexico.

When both doors were slammed shut, she shot a glare back toward the office. “I’m going to pick up garbage and he tells me to have a good day? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. If he doesn’t have anything intelligent to say, why doesn’t he just keep his mouth shut?”

She plunged her left foot down on the clutch pedal. I was down there on the floorboard, trying to hide and be inconspicuous and, you know, just minding my own business. But . . . OOF . . . somehow I managed to . . .

“Hank, will you move? I can’t drive this lumber truck with you in the way.” I struggled and managed to crawl several inches to the east. She tried again and . . . ARG . . . “Hank, MOVE! Get out from under my feet! Alfred, get this dog away from me so I can drive.”

Alfred called me over to his side of the pickup. I stared at him with puzzled eyes and whapped my tail. I tried to explain that, since Sally May was so mad at me, I felt some need to stay close to her and, you know, try to convince her that I really felt terrible about all this.

And I did, really bad, and lying at her feet seemed the right thing to do. But that was before she started kicking me, and at that point, I . . . uh . . . moved my business to the other side of the pickup. There I melted into the floormat and beamed Mournful Looks at her.

She stomped the clutch pedal, started the motor, threw the gearshift into first gear, and popped the clutch. Heads snapped back and we lurched away from the parking area. Dust drifted down from the ceiling and two miller moths flew out of the heater vents.

On our way to the, uh, scene of the accident, as you might say, Sally May gripped the wheel with both hands and muttered. It wasn’t clear if she was addressing herself or the kids or . . . well, me. It was all muttered in a low tone of voice, a kind of hiss. I didn’t catch all of it, but I heard enough.

“Tipping over garbage barrels. Eating garbage in the park. They probably think we don’t feed you. It’ll be all over the neighborhood now that we starve our dogs. You nincompoop, you moron! We spend thirty dollars a month on dog food and this is the thanks we get. You’re the . . . sometimes I think . . . oh-h-h!”

Boy, that hurt. But if it made her feel better to say all those things, that was okay. The problem was that it didn’t make her feel better. See, she still had to pick up the garbage. That was an experience to remember.

Molly and I stayed in the pickup whilst Sally May and Alfred chased papers. The wind had come up, see, a damp restless wind out of the southeast, and it sure did move those papers around. Alfred made a game of it and seemed to be enjoying himself. Sally May didn’t and wasn’t.

Boy, was she steamed. Chasing those papers around didn’t improve her attitude one bit. She talked to every one of them. I couldn’t hear what she said, but she wasn’t wishing them happy birthday. Oh, and she had quite a bit to say about the rotting watermelon rinds. They were swarming with flies, don’t you see, and Sally May wasn’t fond of flies.

Anyways, I felt terrible about it, her having to mingle with the flies and all, whilst I was sitting in the pickup and . . . well, watching. Actually, I was doing more than that. I was guarding Baby Molly.

All at once it occurred to me that if Sally May returned to the pickup and found me cleaning up her baby’s face, it might . . . well . . . soften her heart, so to speak. I needed to do something to redeem myself, and fast.

See, by then I had begun to worry that she might . . . well . . . send me away. That was my worst fear, and fellers, it turned out to be . . . you’ll see.