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As best as Wink and Jasper could
tell, this was a brand new game, and more fun than any toy they
could remember. Here they
were in the lap of luxury: air conditioning blasting away, a
bowl of clean water on the floorboards and dog treats scattered
around the cab. And there was their master, Izzie, trotting
alongside the lurching pickup, rapping on the window, making the
funniest faces and shouting with increasing urgency.
That was on the inside.
Outside in the hot wind Izzie was
trying to figure out how to get his one-ton stopped before it
reached the steep drop-off in one of his pastures, which was
dead ahead and growing all too close. How could he extricate his
beloved pups from sure disaster? How was he going to explain the
fact that his own dogs had locked him out of his own pickup,
which he’d shifted into grandma gear to idle along while he
tossed hay off the back to some newly arrived calves, just like
every other day.
As Izzie jogged along, yelling
through the glass that everything was alright, he was
frantically searching the ground, his pockets and the flat bed
for anything stout enough to break out a window. He still hadn’t
given up on his dogs helping, though.
“See that button there, just jump
on that button right there,” shouted Izzie, pointing in the
general direction of the automatic lock switch. “Just like you
did a while ago,” encouraged Izzie.
Tongues hanging out in
excitement, Wink looked at Jasper and then Izzie. Jasper looked
at Izzie and then Wink. Simultaneously, both dogs made a circuit
of the bench seat, jumped to the floor for a round, then vaulted
back onto the seat, perching on the armrest to peer out the
window across the cab from Izzie.
Izzie was rapping on the window
with more urgency.
“Wink, come on and hit the button
for daddy. I know you can do it.” Wink was the elder and usually
more dependable. Wink was a Cardigan Corgi. Jasper was a Jack
Russell Terrier.
They represented the only
purebred stock Izzie had ever owned, though Hooter kept telling
him that, technically speaking, the Jack Russell was a
composite.
“Right over here, buddy, jump on
the button.”
In one of those uncanny
extra-sensory moments between man and beast, Wink turned to look
at Izzie, cocked his head, padded purposefully across the seat,
lifted up is paw and…click, there it was.
“Yes!” shouted Izzie to heavens
as he heard the sound of liberation and reached for the door
latch.
Click!
“No!” cried Izzie, yanking
frantically on the latch.
What fun, thought Wink.
Izzie jammed his nose against the
glass and pleaded, “Just one more time, little buddy. Just one
more time for daddy.”
Click. “Yes!”
Click “No!”
Jasper tackled Wink. They rolled
off the seat, down to the floorboard and across the accelerator,
propelling Izzie’s truck past him. “Nooooo!”
As Izzie caught back up with his
ride he could see that the drop-off was only about 200 feet
ahead. He upended the nut bucket, spied a hoof pick, which he
grabbed and slammed against the window. Not even a crack.
“Wing glass,” thought Izzie. “No
wing glass. I told them that was a problem when I bought it…Come
one, you worthless flea bags, open up!”
Pant. Slurp. Bark.
“Plug wires,” thought Izzie in
triumph. “All I have to do is jerk the wires.”
He struggled to the front of the
pickup, climbed to a precarious perch on the brush guard and
searched for the latch.
“New game!” barked Wink and
Jasper as they tried to climb onto the dashboard, licking the
windshield and clawing at the ever-present mess of papers, new
and used vaccine bottles and chew cans.
“Where is it, where is it?”
wondered Izzie, fingers sliding back and forth between the hood
and grill. Success.
Izzie scanned the murkiness for
plug wires as it occurred to him, “What if I break a wire? How
do I get back? It’s 30 miles to anywhere and no cell coverage.”
A sizable rock in front of the
left tire did the deciding for him. Izzie was thrown to the
side. Rolling over on all fours, Izzie looked helplessly at his
dogs who were looking out the back window at him, tongues
hanging out in glee.
“Wink. Jasper. My truck,” croaked
Izzie. “I can’t look.”
After what seemed liker an
eternity, staring at the ground in despair, it occurred to Izzie
that he hadn’t heard a crash. There should have been a crash by
now. Could it be? But how?
Izzie looked up and started to run. At the very precipice the
truck had simply stopped. For the first time in his life Izzie
would have a reasonable reply to his buddies who always
criticized him for ignoring the gas gauge and running on empty.
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