TITLE: Climb, Pursued by Wolf
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
ARCHIVE: Ask, please.
RATING: PG
POSTED: Nov. 3, 2006
SUMMARY: Of vacation, pretzels, and hungry fuzzy animals.
AUTHOR NOTES: For Jenlev, who requested "earl and randy hitchhike a ride to chicago for a vacation." All of which, really, is my fault. ::facepalm::
DISCLAIMER: Read
If Earl had his way, he'd be doing his list in a logical manner.
Okay, a mostly logical manner.
Logical in a way that put him in, say, Florida for No. 328 'round about Spring Break Time, when the sun was hot, and the water was cool, and the girls were wearing those tight and white shirts that Joy wore all the time, and that still really never got old, especially when wet.
But noooooo. He was doing his list Fate's way. And Fate? Sometimes, Earl thought Fate really, really hated him. Like, in a wanted-him-dead-of-freezing-or-bleeding kind of way.
"I dunno, Earl. Maybe we were meant to be in Chicago. I think Fate wanted us to go ice skating."
"Ice skating?"
"Yeah," Randy said. "Like Disney. Except we don't have any pretty, pretty princesses. And I've never had a mouse big enough for ice skates."
Sitting in a tree looking out at what was apparently a lake, even though it was big enough that Earl wasn't entirely positive it wasn't the ocean separating the U.S. of A. from Canada ("Are all countries separated by oceans?" "Not always oceans, I don't think, but water's usually involved somehow." "So maybe it's a super-sized river?"), Earl and Randy eyed the big white dog down below that was eying what was left of Randy's pretzel, and Earl decided to stop talking about ice and skating, and asked, "What did I do? I don't remember doing anything this time, and I didn't ever do anything to any dogs. I like dogs!"
The dog growled, a rumble not unlike what came out of the back of the Crab Shack on Tuesdays, and then went right up on his hind legs so the front ones reached about halfway up to their suddenly very low branch. Earl tried to make his legs shorter, or at least not so dangly, and the dog barked twice. Really loud.
Randy stuffed the last of the pretzel in his mouth. "Mrimph!" he said, glaring at the dog.
"Oh, great." That last line of defense now gone, Earl gripped the branch digging into his butt. He couldn't fly when he was a kid, not even with the big sheet off his parents bed, but his arms were a lot longer now...
"Sirs?"
A tall guy in red was running their direction.
"This your dog?" Earl shouted.
Big Red cocked his head, looking way more amused than Earl felt was called for in the situation. Another guy -- huffing and puffing a whole bunch of steps behind him -- stumbled to a stop, bent almost in half, and turned away and put both hands on his head like he just couldn't look again. Earl wondered if that would really help.
He tried closing his eyes, but just heard: "Diefenbaker is not a dog, I think you'll find."
"Finding that would require getting closer!" Earl called back. "I'm good!"
"What is he?" Randy yelled.
"Ten bucks on 'hungry,'" Earl muttered. He peered down, saw teeth, and went back to counting branches. Branches were good. If he snapped off and threw that one there, there was probably a chance that the dog would go fetch right into the lake.
"I don't have ten bucks." Randy sighed. "The pretzel man took my last three."
"Okay, fine, a quarter."
"...how about a dime? I've got two of those."
"Sir?"
"WHAT?"
"He's part wolf, actually."
There was another loud bark, but that time the guy sounded like he was right beneath them, next to the dog/wolf/big-animal-with-more-teeth-than-anyone-needed. So Earl looked down again, and tried to focus on the teeny irritated frown that was now on the guy's face and that bore an incredibly close resemblance to the one Earl's dad tended to get when his mom went on a vacuuming spree on a Sunday afternoon.
"And while I haven't been able to reason with him on his need to have that acknowledged," the guy said, "I suspect that if you said--"
The wolf cut him off with a yip, dropped down on all fours, and was off down the path in a streak that barely paused when it knocked over the other guy.
"Goddammit, furball!"
"Whoa," Randy breathed. "White lightning."
"Dief! Stay! Diefenbaker!"
The other guy planted his hands on the ground behind him and shook his head hard enough to rattle something. "Seriously, Fraser, you been lacing his kibble with speed or something?"
"Ray, you know he doesn't like--"
The Ray guy made a noise kind of like the growl from the dog. Wolf.
Big Re-- Fraser cleared his throat and asked, "Another squirrel?"
The bright grin and big nod he got was about as real as the one Catalina gave her boss when he told her there was puke in the parking lot and it needed spraying down again. After a moment, Fraser heaved a sigh and put out a hand, hauling up Ray, who muttered something as he looked up at Earl and Randy on their creaking branch. Then he rolled his eyes and shook his head again, and pulled Fraser with him down the path, completely ignoring Fraser protesting, "Ray, we need to--"
As they headed off without offering any help at all, Randy made a worried noise.
"What's wrong?" Earl asked. "Besides how I have no idea how to get out a tree without breaking something important or tearing something embarrassing."
"Wolves need food, too."
"Yeah. That was kind of the problem."
"Well, I do think the problem was that he was hungry. But I feel bad that I hope he doesn't catch the squirrel," Randy said, frowning out at the lake. "I like squirrels. If you give them cheesy crackers, they'll let you stroke their fuzzy tails."
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