Things that fill me with regret:
- Nibbling on those peony bushes. I still feel sick whenever I think of them.
- Not getting even with Mr. Collins, the barn cat, and all of the idiot horses on the farm for being so mean to me.
- My habit of startling the deaf, elderly beagle living down the street on purpose each time we take a walk.
- Eating Miss Josie’s thong. What was I thinking?
- Holding my poo when we walk until I find a house with immaculate landscaping, and then letting it go.
- Pushing Miss Josie into a rose bush while she gardened.
- Kissing Miss Josie sometimes right after I lick my bottom. She has no idea.
- Eating an entire bag of chocolate at Beaver Tales.
Miss Josie spent a great deal of time preparing the picnic she planned to share with Doc McHottie at the evening storytelling event at the gazebo. She made spiced pumpkin soup and put it in a thermos. She also prepared panini sandwiches filled with roasted vegetables, cheese, and homemade pesto, and baked special brownies for dessert. The brownies were piled high with a decadent, fudgy frosting. Her apartment smelled delicious, making me drool like a fountain.
“Control yourself, Capone,” she said, wiping away the drool with a paper towel. “This food isn’t for you.”
Note to self: Miss Josie has a mean streak.
Making someone smell those delicious aromas all day long and refusing to share is not nice at all. It’s especially bad for someone with advanced olfactory abilities, but I was excited about the picnic, and seeing my friend, Wrigley, and hearing ghost stories in the park. I hopped around, smiling widely, as Miss Josie packed the food up. She secured a bait bag around her waist filled with treats for me as well—oh, happy day—and grabbed my leash. Her cell phone rang, and she put it on speaker so she could wrangle me into my Easy Leader collar as she spoke.
“Hello,” she said, sounding slightly out of breath.
“Josie?” asked Doc McHottie. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m getting Capone’s collar on. He’s not cooperating.”
The Easy Leader fit across my nose and was supposed to stop me from pulling Miss Josie while we walked. Instead it turned me into a nut case. It felt like a medieval torture device. I learned all about medieval torture devices on a PBS program once. Instead of being put on the rack, I had a tickle on my nose I could not scratch thanks to the Easy Leader. As soon as she put it on me, I fell to the ground and tried to get it off by rubbing my face against the floor.
“Capone. Stop it,” she said, her voice an angry hiss. She sweetened her tone for Doc McHottie. “I’m leaving. I’ll be there shortly.”
“I have some bad news. One of my patients, another lab, ate some broken glass. I have to operate immediately. I won’t be able to come tonight. I’m so sorry.”
Miss Josie’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. Okay. I understand.”
“Raincheck?”
“Definitely.”
Miss Josie hung up the phone and sighed. Between spending the night listening to ghost stories in the park, or spending the night alone with me, Miss Josie went with the first option.
“Let’s go, Capone. It’ll be fun.”
She was right. Once I got to the park and saw all the people, I sniffed around excitedly and almost forgot about the Easy Leader. Someone had decorated the gazebo with ghosts made from tissues and lollipops, and they’d hung swooping bats as well. The lighting provided an eerie purple glow, and nearly the entire town of Beaver had shown up for the event. Miss Josie spread a wool blanket on the grass, pulled out her picnic basket, and instructed me to sit and behave for the rest of the evening. As she poured a cup of soup from the thermos, someone spoke.
“Do you mind if we join you?”
Mr. Nate stood behind us with Jackson. Miss Josie cocked her head to one side. “Of course you can, Nate Murray, who does ‘this and that’ at First Impressions Café.” She shook her head in disbelief and patted the spot next to her on the blanket. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you owned the place. Why did you lie to me?”
He sat down, stretching out his long legs on the blanket. “I didn’t lie. Not exactly. You seemed so anti-coffee, and you were definitely anti-First Impressions. I already had two strikes against me. I thought if you knew who I was, it would be the third and final strike.”
She studied him. “I appreciate the baseball analogy, but it doesn’t apply. We’re friends now. Friends get more than three strikes before they’re out.”
“Good to know.” He wore jeans and a jacket with large pockets. The pockets smelled like treats. I pounced on him, trying to get to them. He laughed and gave me one.
Since we weren’t walking anymore, Miss Josie took the Easy Leader off my nose and attached the leash to my regular collar instead. Instant relief. Glory be.
Miss Josie wore leather boots and had a scarf wrapped around her shoulders to ward off the cold autumn air. “Would you like some soup?” she asked.
He nodded, glancing at the contents of her picnic basket. “Either you’re hungry, or this was a meal meant for two.”
She smiled and handed him a cup of the pumpkin soup. “My date couldn’t make it at the last minute. I’m glad you showed up. I’m not sure what I would have done with all this food if you hadn’t.”
I wanted to raise my paw and volunteer as tribute, but she wouldn’t have understood. Instead, I sat next to Jackson and watched the proceedings.
“Who was her date?” asked Jackson.
“The vet,” I said. “He’s a nice guy. I like him.”
Jackson snorted. “You’ll feel differently about Doc McHottie after he cuts off your cojones.”
“Cuts off my…what are you talking about, Jackson?”
He shook his head sadly. “You’ll find out soon enough, my friend.”
Mr. Nate took a sip of the soup and smiled. “Delicious. Did you make it?”
She nodded. “Vegetarian food isn’t quite as bad as you thought, right?”
“Well, it’s not steak…” He laughed at the outraged expression on her face. “I’m teasing. I’m not a caveman. I like vegetables. I consider myself an omnivore—like Capone.”
She snorted. “Is there a word meaning a dog who will eat anything, even non-food items?”
Mr. Nate considered it. “A Labradoravore?”
She giggled. “Nailed it.”
“I’m almost done with Pride and Prejudice, by the way.”
“What do you think?”
“I liked it, but parts were frustrating. There was one miscommunication after another, and no one could say what they felt.”
“So, you found it unrealistic?”
His dark eyes locked on hers. “Quite the opposite. I think it hit a little too close to home.”
Miss Josie’s mouth opened, her lips forming a round little “o,” and I thought she might speak, but then Miss Edith Strosnider, a retired schoolteacher, got up to introduce the first storyteller. She slipped a pair of glasses onto her nose and read from a pile of notecards she’d taken out of her coat pocket.
“Storytelling has long been a popular means of creative expression,” she said. “But this rich and valuable art form is dying out. The purpose of Beaver Tales is to share this wonderful form of oral history with our children and inspire generations to come. Without further ado, let me introduce the first of our storytellers.”
We listened to story after story, and each one was fascinating, but the last storyteller was my favorite. Tony Lavorgne, a tall man with a deep voice who worked for the busing authority, shared local ghost stories with us.
“If you’ve ever climbed Misty Mountain,” he said. “You know how it got its name. A mysterious mist swirls around it, often coming out of nowhere. And sometimes, if you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of a lost dog barking far off in the distance. But it isn’t a dog at all. It’s a demon beast hunting for its next victim.” He paused, staring out at the crowd. “The Hell Hound of Misty Mountain.”
I whimpered, and Jackson’s eyes bugged out even more than usual. “I think I wet myself,” he said quietly.
He wasn’t joking. He now stood in a small puddle of pee. Thank goodness we sat on the grass and not on Miss Josie’s blanket.
“I never want to go to Misty Mountain again,” I said.
“As long as you don’t go there at night, you’ll be fine,” said Jackson. “Now, be quiet. I want to hear Tony tell us the legend of Charlie No Face.”
Charlie No Face was a man who lived near Beaver. Disfigured during a freak electrical accident, his face and most of his features had melted away. People often saw him walking along country roads at night, and some said his skin had an eerie glow, making him seem not quite human. Rumor had it he could come and go at will, disappearing into the night, and reappearing right next to an innocent bystander. It gave me the willies.
Note to self: Never go outside again.
The story of Charlie No Face, although terrifying, didn’t scare me half as much as the Hell Hound of Misty Mountain. I moved closer to Jackson, pressing against him, but he gave me a dirty look.
“Dude. Scary story time is meant for snuggling with the ladies, not with another guy.”
“Oops, sorry.” I backed away.
“Look at my boy, Nate, and learn,” he said. He nodded toward Mr. Nate, who sat next to Miss Josie on the blanket. They’d finished their meal and now sipped wine. “That’s the kind of snuggling you want to do while listening to a scary story. Love is in the air, Capone. Take my word for it.”
I frowned. Miss Josie had packed a picnic for Doc McHottie, not Mr. Nate. Had she forgotten about Doc McHottie completely? If so, I had to remind her.
An idea came to me out of the blue. The family on the blanket next to ours had an entire bag of chocolate bars sitting unguarded next to their sleeping three-year-old. I knew I might be making a terrible error in judgment, but I had to do something to make Miss Josie remember Doc McHottie. An emergency visit to the vet would do it.
I lunged for the bag of chocolate, yanked my leash out of Miss Josie’s hands, and took off across the darkened park full of people packing up their belongings after Beaver Tales. Miss Josie screamed, and both she and Mr. Nate got up to chase me, but I kept running until I reached a quiet area under a tree, out of sight. I then proceeded to eat the entire bag of chocolate, paper wrappings, and all.
Jackson waddled up to me as I finished, a shocked and horrified expression on his face. “Capone. What are you doing? It’ll make you sick. You’ll have to go straight to the vet.”
I nodded, licking chocolate from around my mouth. For something so poisonous, it didn’t taste half bad. “That’s the goal. I want to go to the vet. Miss Josie packed her picnic for Doc McHottie, not for Mr. Nate.”
Jackson paused, a confused frown wrinkling his already wrinkly pug forehead. “You don’t like Nate?”
I burped. Maybe the chocolate wasn’t quite as tasty as I’d initially thought. I felt a little funny now. “I love Mr. Nate, but if they get involved, it will break Miss Josie’s heart when he leaves. I can’t let it happen.”
Jackson eyed me with newfound respect. “I don’t agree with your methods or your conclusions, but I admire your loyalty, pup. You’re brave. Stupid but brave.”
“Thanks, Jackson.”
Mr. Nate and Miss Josie came up to me, identically worried expressions on their faces. “Capone, what have you done?” asked Miss Josie.
My stomach made a noise loud enough everyone around me heard it. “Uh-oh,” said Mr. Nate, picking up the now empty bag of chocolate bars. “This is not good. We have to take him to the vet. Now.”
“Is he going to be okay?” asked Miss Josie, her face pale with worry. The rumble in my tummy increased before I made an agonized gagging noise and spewed vomit on Miss Josie’s pretty leather boots like a volcano. I didn’t erupt with lava, however. What came out of my mouth was a dark stream of chocolate, paper, and foil.
Curse my heroic nature.
To Miss Josie’s credit, she didn’t get mad. “Poor puppy. I need to get him to the vet. Can you clean up the picnic stuff for me?”
“Of course,” said Mr. Nate. “I’ll bring it to you later.”
“Thanks, Nate,” she said, looking at him misty eyed before rushing me toward Doc McHottie’s office. Fortunately, it was only a block away from the gazebo, so we didn’t have far to go.
I glanced over my shoulder at Mr. Nate. He waved goodbye, a worried frown on his face. Jackson looked worried, too. I wondered if I’d done the right thing, and I wasn’t so sure. For the first time in my life, I may have literally and figuratively bitten off more than I could chew.