“Hazel, Hazel, wake up for a minute.”
Hazel raised her ever-alert, upright ears before opening her eyes. Tucker’s tone didn’t seem urgent, but had a touch of anxiousness to it. Radar (ears), indicated no impending doom or the sound of the biscuit jar opening. So eyes reluctantly opened.
Hazel rolled onto her back, slightly annoyed? “What is it, Tuck?”
“I’m really late with my column, Mom’s giving me The Look, and I can’t find Dad. You took a vacation from your column, so… I was wondering if you have an extra story I could use?”
“I got nothing Tuck, sorry.” Hazel rolled onto her side, her back toward Tuck because she didn’t want to see his disappointment.
She heard Tuck’s front paws prance in nervous energy and sighed in empathy with her pack brother. Tucker, as the other senior with Haze, is privately the closest to her. Just as the two juveniles, Pru and Kiera, they had their own private world between them.
“What do you mean you got nothing? Your column is due shortly, you had all that time off, and you don’t even have an idea to share?”
Tucker paced at the foot of the bed while Hazel, above him, regretted waking up. Now she was getting anxious about her column.
Tuck leapt up on the bed and laid down next to Hazel. “Maybe we could do that brain storm thing Dad talks about. You know, just throw out ideas and see what sounds good?”
Hazel shifted her position slightly, her back still to him. “I don’t like storms. I never liked that term. Lightning outside is bad enough, I don’t want it in my head.”
Tucker laid his head on Hazel’s side (a very rare move for a pack sheriff). “It’s just a turn of phrase. C’mon Haze, work with me here.”
Both pack seniors became silent as they tried to think of a solution to a shared problem. Outside the bedroom window, sunshine gave way to thick clouds that made the bedroom seem as if it had floated away to a more peaceful realm where the only proper response would be… to… sleep…perchance to dream. Breathing deepened, eyes closed, close body-warmth comforted anxious minds as fur bodies began to drift away with the Sandman’s song.
BOOOOF! BounceBounceBounce!!!
“Hey, what are the old folks up to? Dad taught me to bounce on the bed! We were listening to a song–something like, ‘I heard it through the grey mind’… (BounceBounce)… and Dad said–are you guys even listening–and Dad said the song had a perfect groove and showed me by bouncing on the edge of the bed and used the tennis ball to get me to bounce with him… and it was fun ‘til Mom asked if Dad was done dusting… and… What are you two seniors doing, anyway?”
What the two seniors were doing–since Pru’s carrier-deck landing in the center of the bed–was restraining themselves from running Pru off in a manner that would… well… cause a negative response from Dad or Mom.
Without raising his muzzle to look at Pru, Tuck took a serious and quiet tone. “Hazel and I are brain storming.”
Pru snorted.“More like brain snoring, I would say.” She bounced big for playful emphasis.
Hazel bristled. “We’re trying to come up with a story for my column.”
Tuck snorted and pushed his muzzle down on Hazel’s side.
“Oh,” said Hazel. “Tuck’s story is also due. So go play with Keira while we grownups work.”
“I can’t.” Pru plopped down next to Tuck since nobody would bounce with her. “Kiera’s in time-out with Mom because she chewed the corner off of a dish towel. She’s pouting in the office with Mom, and I got chased out for taking bits of paper out of the garbage can.”
Pru (for no particular reason other than boredom) started pushing her muzzle under Tucker’s. What Hazel had just said suddenly replayed in her head.
“Story!? Dad told me a story last night after you two went to bed early.”
Tucker raised his head to look at Pru. “You can stay only if you stop bouncing and tell us Dad’s story.”
Pru rolled onto her back and kicked her legs the way she would if she were upright and allowed to bounce. In rapid-fire fashion, she relayed:
“So we’re outside late, late, and y’all were asleep and Dad was looking up at the sky toward the cold-wind direction and he said, ‘Keep at him boys, He’s getting tired’….
“And so I’m looking around trying to see who we’re talking to, and Dad starts laughing at me and tells me he was talking at the Big Dipper, only he didn’t see it as the Big Dipper anymore because a Mohawk man told him that it was a giant bear being pursued by three young warriors who were Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois as most know them by…
“And so these three were brothers, and they were the fastest runners and best hunters in their area, so they were picked to hunt down a giant bear that had attacked villages just to the west. The bear would attack at night and tear up longhouses, eat all the food and hurt many people.
“The young men began tracking the bear westward, and in no time they found villages where he had just been. They continued tracking, crossing rivers, running through endless seas of prairie grass and climbing mountains. Their hunt began in early Summer, and by late Fall they began to gain distance on the bear. The tracks became fresher, and the men knew the bear would be looking to hibernate and hadn’t been eating enough while on the run. They’d catch up to him soon.
“One cold, bitter day the young men caught sight of the giant bear just east of the mountains in Flagstaff. At the moment they saw him, the bear caught their scent. Knowing he didn’t have the strength to outpace the relentless men much longer, the bear did the only thing he could think of. He ran full out to the mountains and grabbed the peak with his left paw and flung himself into the sky.
“The young men, determined to finished what they had started, leaped into the sky and have continued their hunt to this very day… And Dad said that in the Winter, the bear wants to come back to the earth to hibernate and he comes way down towards the horizon but the men are still hot on his trail.
“So that’s why Dad said what he said to the sky, and he told me that after hearing that story and sleeping under the stars in the desert, he had the sudden realization that a clock’s hands run the wrong way. So that’s what he told me, but I forgot to ask him what a clock is.”
Tucker laid his head back down on Hazel’s side,
“A clock is that disk thing on the wall that Dad looks at when we start alerting him to mealtime. He looks at it and it tells him what to say–like, you know, ‘It’s not time yet’ or ‘Not even close, guys’ or ‘Can’t you wait twenty minutes?”
Pru had stopped kicking her non-bouncing paws while contemplating clocks and if Mom had one that would tell her that Kiera could come and play now. With that thought, she bounded off to find out.
“So, Hazel, despite Pru’s blathering on, did you think of any story ideas?”
“Not single one. Sorry Tuck.”
~ Tucker Oso ~
