IMAGINE
Here Comes the Sun
I’m dancing in my driver’s seat, singing a golden oldie Beatles tune, my hula dog jiggling on the dashboard.
“Sun, sun, sun!” I shout. “Here —“
Beeeeep. The guy in the big-tire truck behind me lays on his horn. The light’s green, sure, but even as I go, Mad Max leans on his horn again — then shoots me a bird.
Yet I hold fast to my Sun. And as a further sign of my largess, I blow Mr. Max a kiss while sailing through the now-yellow light.
I’m still wailing away when I pull into the Tyler County Animal Shelter and park in the shade of the Queen, an old live oak we used to hang the collars of our departed residents on until the county made us stop. I’m barely a few steps from my Mini Cooper, however, when my nose protests. The outdoor kennels haven’t been cleaned. Two days. Maybe more.
A tendril of smoke escapes from Draco, my inner dragon.
Exhaling slowly, I chant: Today is a new day; today is a new day; today is a new day.
Across the parking lot, a barking orchestra awaits.
“Hello, sweeties!” I holler. “Did you miss me?”
Yips. Yowls. Wagging tails. I scurry toward them, rummaging through my pockets.
“Sit,” I say at each kennel, giving every dog kibble (with a little extra for each sitter). At the last one, home of Large Marge and Colonel Potter, I lace my fingers through the chain-link fence. “How’s my crew?”
The Colonel, a salty mix of Scottish terrier and bulldog, sits at rapt attention. Marge, a white shepherd with milky, blind eyes, licks my knuckles. Triple treats for them both.
Humming, I swipe my badge through the monitor and push through the steel door. Inside the break room, I spot Amina, my assistant, alone and scowling.
“Hey, Mina!” I smile with all my teeth. “Today’s a new day for both of us, remember?”
The furrow deepens between her brows. “So you haven’t talked to Nelson?”
I stop humming. “Amina. I just got here.”
Our office secretary — eyes averted, pencil sprouting from his man bun — scurries past.
Mina nibbles her thumb. “Well, his memo’s on your desk. Coffee?”
Today is a newday. Today is anewday. Todayisanewday.
A Day in the Life
I read Nelson’s memo, then read it twice more. As Draco erupts in smoke, Amina, mug in hand, appears in my doorway.
I wave the memo like a pennant. “What’s the H?”
“It was the new guy.” She plops into a chair. “Mr. Ex-military.”
I sit up straighter. “My replacement?”
“Yup.” She wide-eyes me. “Didn’t last a day. Something about,” she jingles the tags around her neck, “not being ‘cut out for it.'”
“Not cut out for it?” I echo.
She nods, clasping the ID tags that belonged to the first dogs she helped ET. She wears them daily, though she won’t say why and I don’t push. People got their ways. Like, why do we all call the euthanasia here “ET”? Nobody knows. Nobody remembers. We just do.
But that’s going to change. Because today is a new day — for me, Amina, everyone here. Today I start my new position as the shelter’s first ever (drum roll, please) Foster and Adoption Ambassador.
Ambassador. Isn’t that a good word? I insisted on that word. It reflects the changes I plan to make. I’m going to launch a community spay-and-neuter campaign. Transport our overload to foster groups across the South. Set up a foundation to pay for our most dire needs. Yes, ma’am: I’ve got big plans.
But this new guy quitting, that worries me. Nelson, my boss, is a real Norman Bates kind of guy. Sort of like a sampler box of candy, where one day you get the vanilla cream and the next, a jawbreaker.
There’s a rap on my door, and before I can answer, in strides the Devil himself, with Chickenwing jittering in behind him. Wings (a sweet tabby with a deformed leg) is always welcome and knows it. Nelson, not so much and ditto.
“Morning, Miss Lucy,” he says, and I nod to let him know I see him there, in his pinstripe shirt, chichi pants and tassel loafers, looking like a fancy banker instead of an animal-shelter director.
“Sorry to barge in,” he says, pulling up a chair, “but while you were on vacation, our new hire didn’t work out.”
I exhale slowly. “And that is my problem because …?”
Amina slides Wings onto my lap and as he purrs a symphony, Nelson launches into a Byzantine explanation of why everything’s about to fall on me. He’s exceptionally good at that. I should keep a list of all the things he’s explained away. Learn from the Master and all. But as he drones on today, I focus instead on Wings, the oldest member of my crew. Everybody here has a crew of two or three or 23. Your crew’s your family. Your crew keeps you sane. And in return, you keep them safe.
Finally I hear Nelson circling his beloved perennial: the “bottom line.”
“Bottom line,” he says, “it’s bad.” He looks at me like my brother when he’s about to confess something I’d rather not know. “While you were gone, Miss Lucy, we didn’t keep our inflow in balance with our outflow. Now we’re way out of whack.”
Wings kneads my thighs; doom thickens the air.
I rub behind Wings’ soft ears. “What do you want?” I say evenly.
“We don’t have enough kibble to last the month.” Nelson brushes cat hairs off his trousers. “You have to reopen the ET room.”
“WHAT?” I set Wings on the floor and like Maya Angelou, I rise — all 5-feet, no-inches of me — for when you go into battle, it should be on both feet.
“Nelson, staffing is your responsibility. It doesn’t fall on me to fix your … miscalculations.”
He glances at his Rolex —and Draco ignites.
“NO!” I pound my desk. “You promised. I’ve been waiting for this job a year!”
He clears his throat. “Come on, now, Lucy. You know you’ll get that job someday — someday soon. We’re both on the same side here, remember? Please be fair.”
His plea pierces my Achilles heel, which was surely his intention. Nelson knows I’m a staunch believer in Fairness, as it’s the first step to Justice. And in fairness, I know Nelson fights harder at our budget meetings than anyone. It’s not his fault our shelter has so little money: It’s the county commission’s. I sink back down.
Nelson leans in like he wants to share his password.
“You know this isn’t just me asking,” he says, launching into the same seductive mantra I’ve heard a hundred times. “What we do here, we do for our community: our neighbors, our friends, our families. We do this job so they don’t have to. And you, Miss Lucy, do it with unparalleled compassion. Just look at what you did to our ET room. You took that gray, sterile room and painted a blue sky on its ceiling and flowers and trees on its walls. Now thanks to you, the last place they see looks like a park . . . and the last face they see is a caring one. Because it’s your face, Lucy.”
A quiet cold falls over me then, like snow falling in deep woods. My plan for a new way — for me, my crew, for everyone at the shelter — yaws like the Titanic.
“I’m counting on you,” he continues. “We’re all counting on you. Only someone with your strong moral character should do this job.
“So today,” he raps on my desk, “we reduce our population by 10. More, if you’re up to it.”
His chair screeches back.
“I’ve selected them myself,” he confides, patting my shoulder, “so you don’t have to.”
The door clicks behind him.
I shake the globe on my desk, a present from my ex. Its flakes flurry over a girl, a guy and a dog. They were supposed to be us: me, my ex and Jack, the best dog ever. Our dog, once upon a time. When the flakes settle, I shake it again and again and again. Because I’d like to do that. Disappear in a swirl of snow.
A swirl of anything, really.
Hey Jude
I know Amina’s in the ET room when I hear the old rocker squeaking. It was a donation turned godsend once I realized that rocking is the best way to get a sick kitten or pup to relax enough to find a useable vein. Injecting into a tiny vein without causing pain, well, it’s an art.
As soon as I enter the room, Amina rises and silently departs, gone to retrieve the first on our list. After checking our adjacent walk-in freezer for space, I gather my tools: a clean syringe, a blue vial of Fatal Plus, a final treat.
The calm click of nails down the hall tells me our first will be good dogs. When I became the ET manager, I prayed for only good dogs. They still trust you. Despite everything, they even want to please you. Yet today, I’d almost rather a fighter.
As Amina waits for them to finish sniffing in the hallway, I spread a clean towel over the room’s dog bed.
Please, I pray (to whom, I am clueless) help me do my best.
Amina enters with her nobody’s-home look locked and loaded. Colonel Potter follows behind her, then Large Marge. The Colonel snuffles the air suspiciously.
“Sit,” Amina says and, being good dogs, they do.
I stare at my assistant like she’s sprouted a second head. “What in the hell?”
“They’re on the list,” she says, her voice curling up like a pill bug. “I thought if we did them first, the rest would be easier.”
My eyes swing from her to the dogs as Draco kicks in. “What. In. The. H? They’re on my crew. You know that, Amina.” I thump my chest. “Everybody knows that! So what in the actual hell are they doing here?”
She nibbles her thumb. “They’re on the list?”
“They cannot be on the list.” I feel like I’m talking to a two-year-old. “They’re on my crew.”
She chomps her thumb so hard I want to smack it from her mouth. “But Nelson said the crews gotta stop.”
“WHAT? No way.”
She glances at the doorway, as if escape’s an option. “While you were on vacation? He called this meeting? He said the crews gotta go?” Everything’s a question now. “He said they’re all unadoptable?”
A strange sound — half growl, half dragon roar — erupts from me.
Amina’s next words gush out: “Nelson said he doesn’t want to do it, he has to do it, the shelter needs the space and the kibble and everything for the adoptables — which makes sense, I guess, but everybody’s really pissed and some people,” her voice drops, “are even on strike.”
The floor tilts as I back up and ease into the rocker. The flowers and trees I painted on the walls look suddenly garish. Cartoonish. Disney on drugs. I rock, trying to quell my own nerves, until Colonel Potter leaps into my lap.
Amina holds out the final treat. It’s Potts’ favorite: a peanut-butter biscuit.
“Do it now,” she whispers, “while he’s distracted.”
The room grows painfully bright, and the world around me shrinks until there is only me, my protege, and the Colonel. As I squint and consider the unthinkable, another version of me bleeds through. This version is dancing in her driver’s seat, wailing like Yoko, high on a new vision. Yet now, it’s Groundhog’s Day again? How unfair is that?
I lower the Colonel onto the floor.
“This ET Room is closed,” I announce.
“But Nelson —”
My hand shoots up like a railroad stop sign. “Forget Nelson.”
Amina leans in. “Are you okay? You’re not acting like yourself.”
“I’m fine,” I lie. I break the biscuit, give Potts the small piece and the rest to Marge.
“But you always say that doing your civic duty, serving your community, it’s important.” Wrinkles plow across Mina’s forehead. “You’ve said that, like, a million times. And here you are, not doing it.”
That was true enough. As I massage my temples, trying to parse the logic of my own mind, a favorite quote of my ex’s bubbles up: Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what’s right.
“Well, okay, but today,” I rub Marge’s soft ears, “today, I’m saying I’m not going to let my ethics stop me from doing the right thing.”
Mina squats beside the Colonel. “I’m not following, Lucy.”
“I’m just saying,” I tap my heart space, “sometimes you gotta do what’s in here.”
She nods. “I get that. But . . .” Her bottom lip juts out. “But what do I tell Nelson?”
“Tell him to talk to me.” I put my hands on my hips, feeling a surge of bravado. “Let me worry about him.”
She smiles with her whole face.
“Yes, ma’am,” she agrees and, as she leaves with Marge and Potts, adds, “I like this new you.”
I put up my tools, lock the Fatal Plus back in its cabinet, and wonder how Nelson will react. A part of me worries about that, ‘cause I do have bills to pay. Yet another part doesn’t seem to care.
And that other part? It’s growing.
With a Little Help from My Friends
I zoom off in my Mini Coop and soon find myself back where my day began: 70 miles from the Tyler animal shelter, on St. George Island, parked in my ex’s driveway. Yet as I climb out, I have no memory of my return drive.
The late afternoon light falls softly across Bryan’s old beach house. The fronds of the Sabal Palms rattle in the breeze. Though in need of repair (okay, lots of repair), Bry was smart to buy it. It was the perfect place for him to die, which is what he did here three months ago. Much to my astonishment, he willed it to me.
Inside, I’m greeted by Bryan’s quote wall, which dominates the entire living-room. My eyes linger on the one from Isaac Asimov, the same one I referenced earlier to Amina. Beside it, in a lovely rococo cursive, is another of his favorites: “So long, and thanks for all the fish.” Bryan loved Douglas Adams and dolphins, so it’s a twofer homage. The day before he died, Bry’s best friend wheeled him out to the beach, and he got stuck in the sand. But they also saw an entire pod of spinner dolphins. “That really lit him up inside,” his buddy said.
Also hanging on the quote wall is Jack’s tattered collar and ID tag, and seeing it darkens my mood. Jack, eaten up with cancer, died on Aug. 13, 2023, exactly a year before Bryan shed his own mortal coil. I put Jack down myself, right here in this living room. Bry bawled like a baby as I silently ran the IV, slide in the sedative acepromazine, and slowly administered Jack’s last shot. It was smooth and painless; I made sure of that. But all Bryan could see were my dry eyes, and afterwards, things were never the same. So in a way, Jack’s death was the end of us all.
To shake off the dark memories, I snag a bottle of Bry’s best Malbec and head for the beach. The sun oozes like a broken yolk into the Gulf. Seagulls crisscross above the sugar-white sand, screeching like zombies as they scour for nibbles. A blue heron wades into the shallows and dips her sword-like beak. Further out, an arrow of pelicans shoots by, barely a foot above the waves.
Off come my boots and socks, into the sand go my toes. The colors of the fading day smear across the sky like a child’s finger-painting. I plop down to admire the Van Gogh horizon and drink. I drink until Body proposes a swim.
No, Brain cuts in. Dusk is feeding time. Swimming is ill-advised.
Body does not care.
I zigzag down the beach. Off flies my shirt. My jeans disappear. Last to go is my buddy, the good Dr. Malbec.
The chilly water shocks my feet. Tiny fish, shiny as new dimes, shimmer and twine around my ankles. The surf’s foamy hands smack my pale thighs. I wade further out and dive into the deep.
I swim and swim and swim until Body warms. I’m a good swimmer, though I didn’t do much of it on my so-called vacation. Too obsessed with concocting lists of grant sources and schools, rescue groups and sanctuaries. No fool like an old fool — maybe I’ll put that on the quote wall.
Treading water, I spit out its salty taste and begin to sing-shout, “I may be a dreamer, but I really just don’t care!”
I screech defiantly, angrily, garbling the lyrics, until my voice weakens, which doesn’t take long. I’m thirsty. Tired. Gazing around, I also realize I’ve swum way too far out. Where’d the beach go? As the stars peek out, tears leak down my cheeks. How has my life gotten so off-track? I’m an animal lover who’s an ET manager! I pushed the love of my life away and let him die alone in our once-upon-a-time dream shack. And then today — oh yes, let’s not forget about today — I actually considered taking out my own crew. And when I didn’t, I left them. I left them in the hands of Norman Bates!
I’m poised to launch a full-blown pity party when, abruptly, I ken I’m not alone.
There in the gloam … a fin?
Swoosh. Something shoots by. Something BIG.
Fear explodes like an IED. The fin turns. Submerges. Air bubbles boil to the surface, making a trail that leads back to … me.
Body issues a full-scale alarm, and all soldiers comply. Bladder warms the water. Blood roars. Lungs gasp. Eyes rocket to the sky seeking … help? Absolution? My heart is a grenade, and the stars hold its pin.
Yet those heavenly orbs only glower at me, cold and brilliant as bad-juju blood diamonds. And that’s when I know. I know exactly where I am. I am in the universe’s ET room.
And the stars fall upon me, each the gaze of someone I’ve sent on.
More fins appear.
Something huge veers in, and I brace for it. The creature rubs against me, its skin tough yet spongy. It screeches, a sound like alien nails scraping a chalkboard.
Body freezes, but Brain proclaims: Not Jaws. Dolphin!
Swim, Brain demands, and for once, Body listens.
The pod follows. They encircle me. Shove me. They want to hurt us! Body cries, sending Brain into another spin. But then a white light arcs over the water — the St. George Lighthouse — and Brain realizes: Not hurt us, turn us.
have redirected us inland. The pod squeeches — shrill, cliff-dropping shrieks — and loosens its collective grip. They shoot ahead, leaving me to bumble in their froth like a swamped bee. My adrenaline spent, my arms and legs flail. I flounder. Fizzle. Sink.
From below, a sleek body, far longer and wider than mine, catches me and thrusts me to the surface. I cling to her fin, gagging, trying to breathe without drowning. Barely have I adapted to her undulating rhythm, when my savior rolls me under and skyrockets off.
Sputtering, I bobble to the surface. The beach is less than 50 yards away. A few strokes and my tippy toes should scratch the sandy bottom. My savior reappears, cutting through the water like a knife and jetting upright beside me. A third of her powerful body rises out of the sea. She is magnificent. Majestic. Terrifying as any god.
Her dark eyes study me: her puny, salvaged bee.
“You saved me,” I burble, pogoing up and down.
She whistles and clicks, high-pitched yet pleasant now, then rolls back into the ocean. A series of childlike squeals erupt as she shoots high above the water and spins, a bedazzling display of joy, playfulness — and perhaps the elation of a job well-done?
Several in her pod copy her, and their splash-downs displace so much water that my feet find solid purchase. I slosh to shore, feeling clad in a 100-pound wet suit.
As I collapse on the beach, I wonder why.
Why did she do it?
Let It Be
The odor of fish crawls up my nose. Sand and salt coat my tongue. Snorting, spitting, I maneuver upright. The sun’s bleary fingers creep up the horizon. Dawn rouses.
Every part of me aches. Every part of me has only one desire: home.
I wobble down the beach, my wet underwear clinging, and pray the handful of people up and about don’t look too closely. At the DL (a 9-mile stretch of pavement that divides the barrier island’s beach from its bay) I take a breather, then dodder across.
The lighthouse and the bike trail orient me. After an eternity, I spy the familiar dirt road that leads to Bry’s house. My house. I drag myself up the stairs, lurch through the screen-door, and crumple onto the couch. I blindly tug an old cotton throw over me and curl into its lingering smells of coconut lotion and Bryan.
I am in Heaven.
*
When I wake, the day is in full force. It’s sun-soaked and overly warm for November, even given North Florida’s raging climate change. One glance at the sofa tells me I’ve brought home half the beach in my underwear. I guzzle a gallon of cold water, relish a hot shower, and emerge to make enough avocado-tomato-cheez sandwiches to feed a small army. After inhaling two, I feel sufficiently normal to brew a pot of coffee.
Back on the lanai, I sit on the wooden swing and page through my boozy brain. Foremost: Did this dolphin thing actually happen? Or did I read about it in The National Enquirer at the grocery? Was it all just … magical thinking?
Magical drinking and thinking?
I sip my coffee. Nah. I’m too practical for magical thinking — even when drinking.
“Mr. Adams,” I say aloud, glancing toward the living room, “your thoughts?” After a moment, I add, “Brilliant. Now I’m talking to dead people.”
A car rumbles down my drive, an old gas guzzler from the smell, and I spy Amina’s bashed-in Subaru shudder to a stop.
“How’d you know?” I holler as she clomps up the stairs.
“Well, duh.” The screen door bangs behind her. “You weren’t at your condo.”
Of course. The ant farm I formerly called home.
“Is …” I sit up straighter. “Is my crew — are they …?”
“Yes,” she says and squeezes my hand. “They’re okay. For now.”
Thank the gods. Feeling like a lottery winner, I serve her sweet tea and sandwiches. While she eats, I spill about everything: drinking too much, swimming out too far, being rescued by dolphins. Mina looks at me, wide-eyed but cautious.
“Am I crazy?” I ask finally.
She blots her mouth with a napkin. “Maybe. But if these dolphins didn’t save you, who or what did?”
“I don’t know.” I rub my eyes. “But why would dolphins, or whatever, save me?”
She licks her lips. “Good sammie,” she allows.
I hand her another.
She takes a big bite, chews slowly as she considers my query. “Well,” she says at last, “maybe your dolphins were paying it forward. Maybe a human did them a good, you know? And they were just returning the favor.”
The swing squeaks as I ponder this. “But I thought all that stuff was just urban myth.”
. “Maybe. Or maybe Bryan sent them.”
I groan.
“Or maybe,” her dark eyes sparkle, “maybe those dolphins did it because saving is cool. It feels good. I like doing it whenever I can.”
While she gobbles down the rest of her sandwich, I let the Wisdom of Amina sink in. And as it does, I light up like Draco in church, swaying to a good gospel choir.
“Mina, girl, you’re a genius.”
She smiles like a sly Cheshire cat.
“I live to serve,” she purrs.
“Okay, then.” I jump up. “Let’s go!”
“What? I just got here.”
I feel happier than I have in a long time. “C’mon. This is important.”
Imagine
As I pull into the shelter’s parking lot, patches of blue break through the gray sky. Prognosis: Hope with a chance of rain.
The outdoor kennels erupt in glee as we toss treats like it’s Mardi Gras. Their joy uplifts me, and I’m grateful — for inside, I suspect a different greeting awaits.
And indeed, there stands Nelson, scowling at me like I just ate his mother.
“If you ever,” he bursts, “take off like a crazy gypsy again, it will not end well.”
“My, my,” I admonish, swishing past. “Such a harsh greeting, even for you.” He grabs my arm — a first for him — and pulls me back. I yank free and march off, heart like a drum.
He stomps after me. “I mean it, Lucy,” he barks at my backside. “I will not tolerate any more insubordination from you.”
I ease into my office chair, glad to hide the wobble in my legs. “In-sub-or-din-nation,” I echo, giving each syllable its due. “Such a big word, Nelson.”
His leans over my desk, his face knotted, a twitchy silverback wannabe. “You mock me?”
(Inside, Draco smolders. You rang? she hisses.
I got this, I tell her.)
“Mock you, Nelson?” I whip a blank sheet of paper from my drawer. “Heavens, no. You amaze me.”
“Well,” his face softens, “that’s more like it.”
Talk about not reading a room. “No, Nelson, you misconstrue.” I take a deep breath. “That’s what’s amazing. How consistently you misconstrue.” Skimming what I’ve written, I sign with a flourish and hand it to him.
“What’s this?”
Hopeless, he is. “Just read it,” I say.
His eyes roll from one word to another, bowling balls colliding into pins. “No, no, no. Not acceptable.”
“Perhaps.” I stand up. “But it’s true.”
“You can’t leave.” He stomps his size 16 loafer.
Yet I am. Be gentle, I tell myself, recalling my own anger issues. “I’m outta here, Nelson, and so is my crew.”
Mina pipes up from the doorway. “Pirate and Tipsy, too?”
Pirate and Tipsy are her crew, not mine. What she proposes means me going from my current family of no dogs and no cats to a family of three dogs and two cats.
Doable?
Hmmm. While Large Marge is a giant, she’s also the gentlest whale in the sea. And though Potts, her personal seeing-eye dog, acts like he’s all bite, I know (as does as any true MASH aficionado) that Colonel Potter is 99 percent bark.
And Pirate, Amina’s one-eyed spaniel, well, he’s 23 pounds of trouble — but mostly the kind that steals your food and makes you laugh. Then there’s Tipsy, the neurologically scrambled tabby who needs little more than a sunny nook, a kind word and regular (if expensive) meds. As for Wings, well, Wings is special. Just ask him.
What seals the deal, though, is knowing I’m no longer confined to my ant-farm condo. I have a beach house now. (Okay, a beach shack. Whatever. Thank you, Bryan.)
I nod. “Pirate and Tipsy too.”
A roar like the MGM lion erupts from Nelson, whose face has turned an alarming shade of drop-dead red. “Nobody,” he thunders, “leaves here without my say-so!”
My office falls pin-drop quiet — and then the circle of rebellion widens. From the doorway, Mina mouths break-room and disappears. Rusty, our man-bun secretary, materializes in her stead, mouthing, I’ll get Potts and Marge.
Draco and I rise and march toward the door — until Nelson leaps up to block our way.
“Move,” I demand, and when he doesn’t, I duck-and-run around him — for though my legs are short, they’re fast.
Cursing under his breath, he scrambles after me.
I dart down the hall and into the break-room, where staff members, curious about the ruckus, are already gathering. Amina, Rusty and my crew wait near the exit.
“YOU!” Nelson barks, pointing at the beefy brothers doing their community-service at the shelter. “Block that door!”
Confused, the teens do as they’re told. (A solid indicator, FYI, that they are learning new behaviors here).
“And you,” Nelson points his finger at me, “you are not taking those animals anywhere. They are the property of this shelter.”
Draco spits holy fire.
“Never,” I bellow, “refer to my family as property.”
Nelson looms over me, teeth bared, right eye twitching. “But they are property,” he hisses. “They’re my property. As the shelter’s director, I —”
“Do you hear yourself?” I cut in. “I’m giving my crew and Amina’s a home.” I turn to the gathering staff. “I’d do that for every animal here if I could. People, that’s what we’re about.
“Mina,” I bark, “go.”
“I forbid it!” Nelson booms. “Anyone helping her is fired!”
Draco spews like Vesuvius, sending my hand up to smack his face. But I stop myself and clasp Nelson’s cheeks instead.
“Listen to me. You’re in daze, a catch-22 daze. Snap out of it!”
He grabs my wrists. “I’m in a daze? You’re the one not acting like yourself.”
I try to wrench free and fail. “If by that you mean I’m not acting like the woman who’s been running our ET room for the last year, good. Excellent. ’Cause I’m not.”
Nelson snorts and releases my wrists. “Then who are you?”
“I haven’t,” I stand a little straighter, “imagined it out that far.”
“Imagined it out?” His eyes roll. “That’s crazy talk.”
“Crazy good,” I shoot back, rubbing my throbbing wrists. I turn to the boys blocking the exit. “Gentlemen, step aside.”
“You stay put!” Nelson commands.
“No,” I counter calmly. “Do the right thing: Move.” They want to, I can tell, but they’re worried about their community-service hours.
“Move!” a clerk shouts, hands on her hips.
“Yeah, move!” cries another.
The room fills with the chant: “Move, move, move!”
Confused, yet wanting to please their peers, the brothers step aside — and the staff cheers.
“Thank you,” I say, waving Amina through the door.
“Traitors,” growls Nelson. “And you,” he glares at me, “never would I have imagined that you, Miss Lucy, would do such a thing.”
“Maybe that’s your problem.” I motion Rusty to get the last of my crew out. “You need to imagine more.”
Well,” he snorts, “I guarantee you that this little mutiny of yours isn’t going to change anything.”
“Except,” I fire back, “to save the lives of five incredible creatures.”
The tic in his right eye travels to his shoulder and, to be fair, he looks on the edge of a nervous collapse. But I remain stalwart.
“Five,” I stress, counting it out on my fingers. “And maybe if you let it, this so-called mutiny could push the whole broken system here forward a step.”
Nelson smirks. “Imagine that.”
“If only,” I say matter-of-factly, “you could.”
Across the parking lot, under the moss-laced limbs of the Queen, my crew awaits. I click my car fob, and Amina and Rusty quickly load them in: Large Marge and Pirate in the back, with Potts squooshed in between; Wings’ crate in the passenger seat and Tipsy’s on the floor.
They whine and mewl, frightened but excited. “We’re going home,” I tell them, knowing they don’t understand. How could they? I dole out treats for the road, though only Pirate eats his (then steals Potts’ and Margie’s, too).
The staff spills into the parking lot, waving and calling goodbye. Pirate and Marge pop their heads out the back windows and bark like mad-dog Englishmen.
Woo-hoo! What a day — and yet the best still lies ahead. My family will soon experience their new home. Their own yard. The beach. The ocean. The waves, the fiddler crabs, the dolphins.
OMG! Can you imagine?
Kathleen Laufenberg says, “ ‘Imagine’ ” grew out of my reporting on animal shelters in North Florida, for which I won the First Place Explanatory Journalism award from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors and the Genesis Award for Best Newspaper Coverage from the Humane Society of the U. S. (both in 2002). While much of my writing has been in nonfiction, I have published several short stories in literary journals, including the Palo Alto Review, espresso ink, and, most recently, the Whitefish Review, where my story, “Happy Thanksgiving,” won the 2023 Montana Humor Award in Fiction judged by Garrison Keillor.