Coyote

Chapter 16: The Hard Work

After a brief trip to Queens for a lovely meal at a Greek restaurant (can you imagine being given food and not having to hunt for it?), our human driver took us to a small village along the coast. I sensed the end of our mission drawing close, like a vole that had gotten a little too brave for its good, venturing out of its hole and straight into my waiting and eager paws. Soon, very soon, we would have our vole...I mean revenge. But before revenge, there was something that we had to do.

"Drop and give me twenty!" yelled Kai, pointing to the ground. The human had taken us to their home. After a nice nap, Kai had insisted on taking me, Eli, Asher, and Mr. Rodgers outside. She immediately began yelling at us.

"Twenty what?" Eli asked.

This seemed to stump Kai, who began looking around. There wasn't anything in the yard that came in a set of twenty. "I don't really know. It's a human expression."

"That explains why it doesn't make sense," I said. As usual, I was right. Even grumpy old Mr. Rodgers agreed with me.

Kai stopped berating us and tried a different tactic. "We were lucky to escape our encounters with Lulu. If not for Hunter, River, and Ollie defending us on the boat, we would have been sleeping with the fishes. We almost killed ourselves by sinking the boat and starting the electrical fire, although that was more one person's fault than all of ours, wasn't it Mr. Rodgers?"

"I did what I had to do, and I would gladly do it again."

"And the time before that," said Kai, rolling her eyes at Mr. Rodgers, "we got super lucky that she didn't notice the train cars had separated. She was too busy trying to take control of that guy who was working on the train to notice William pull the lever. We as a group aren't some sort of elite force. We're just people of the forest and it shows. We need to be better than this and take some time to train, get to know the lay of the land, and then approach our target with precision and skill. We are so out of our element here. We need to be able to rely on ourselves, not dumb luck, a human, or the incompetence of certain train workers. And we especially can't continue to rely on those three puppies."

Hunter and River were running around the lawn trying to jump on one another while Ollie watched on and occasionally tried to participate. Ollie was a little too slow to catch up to either of his siblings. Honestly, I'm not sure if I could catch up to them either. Even watching them run around in circles like crazed rockets of fur was making me dizzy. How they managed to keep this level of energy up after hours of playing was beyond my comprehension. It seemed like Hunter was about to catch River, but he tripped, rolling over several times, and then somehow managed to get back to his feet mid-roll and resume the chase. It was adorable really.

"How should we be training?" I asked. The glint in Kai's eyes made me immediately regret asking. I could see pain in our immediate future.

Our training was just as grueling and backbreaking as I imagined it would be. Kai took us to a local playground. We swung our way across the monkey bars, scrambled up slides while dodging speeding projectiles in the form of small children, used the swings to fling ourselves into the air and pounce on our targets, and balance on the balance beams. Kai was a relentless coach, yelling at us to keep our knees hi, and making fun of us whenever a child slammed into us on the slides. In addition to being exhausting, it was humiliating work. This is why I normally dive into my own endeavors without preparing for it beforehand. As my neighbor's best friend's uncle's cousin's tailor's son used to say, "previous prior planning prevents perfect performance."

And yet, it didn't end there. After the parents at the playground complained to a nearby officer, we practiced running away from a car with annoying red and blue flashing lights and blaring sirens, and then practiced heisting said car. The officer wasn't too happy when we tied him up and lay him on the side of the road, but he was also unconscious, so he couldn't have been too upset either. We ditched the car and recommenced our training nearby the harbor. We hiked while carrying rocks on our backs, swam across the harbor more times than my tired brain could count, performed an amphibious assault on a sailboat and learned how to operate it, and learned all about the different types of edible marine snacks.

After three hours, we were ready.

We performed a quick graduation ceremony in the yard, presided over by Hunter, River, and Ollie. Kai had refused to join us, claiming emphatically that three hours wasn't enough time to properly prepare us for the task at hand, and that if we wanted to be successful, we had a lot more work to do. She looked on from the window of the house as the puppies adorned us with our graduation medals.

"I'm so glad that's over," I told Eli afterwards once we were out of earshot of the others. The puppies had gone back to chasing each other in the yard.

Eli grimaced. "Who knew physical exertion could be so exerting? I miss reading and napping back home. Those activities were far less painful. My legs still hurt from when we had to drag Mr. Rodgers out of the water."

"Oh, don't remind me."

Painful though our training was, at least were ready to face our task head-on. Lulu and her Trench Coats couldn't possibly stand up to us now. If they couldn't defeat us before, they certainly wouldn't have a chance after our three hours of training. We could take whatever they decided to throw our way, especially if those projectiles were little children. After today, we had a lot of experience dodging children. If there was any doubt in my mind before, there was none now. I knew that we could succeed, that we would succeed. There was no stopping us now.

"Aiyeee!"

It was Asher. Eli and I turned back and saw them howling at the sky in distress. Hunter, River, and Ollie were running around them in circles, barking wildly. We ran over to them.

"What happened?" Eli asked, doing his best to avoid being runover by the puppies.

"They took Mr. Rodgers!" Asher said.

"Who took him, Asher?" asked Eli, doing his best to remain calm.

I stared at them blankly, not yet realizing what that meant. Then, I saw the tracks in the dirt around us. There appeared to have been a scuffle. Patches of the lawn were torn up. All the tracks led to a portion of the wire fence that had been cut away. It was just big enough for someone like Lulu to crawl through and nab one of us true and noble wolves.

Asher confirmed my suspicions. "It was Lulu. That guy in the chartreuse trench-coat, Claude, cut through the fence and grabbed Mr. Rodgers! I saw it all with mine very own eyes..."

Part of me was relieved that it was Mr. Rodgers who was taken rather than anyone else, but the other part of me knew that despite his grouchiness, we would have to find him and get him back. Afterall, he is part of our community, for better or worse.

Ever the symbol of comfort and resolve that I am, I told the others, "Don't worry. We'll get him back. Summon the hounds!"

Hunter, River, and Ollie sniffed at the crime scene. Once they identified Mr. Rodger's scent, they sprinted out through the fence like the crazed little furballs they were. Asher, Eli, and I followed behind, calling for them to slow down.