19

Chapter 19

3:03 p.m.

"Come out with your hands up...and leash that mutt of yours before doing so."
"Damn, boys. We're in a tight spot."
"Son, shut your trap."
Everyone in our up-to-now-loosely-considered-a rescue party froze. It was like we were hard drives and had been put on 'standby' mode. (It's weird how, these days, people are creating computer-based metaphors to explain real life situations where, just a few short years ago, it was the other way around. But that's not something we can discuss now. There is serious and immediate business at foot with which we must deal).
"You want us, pigs, then you're going to have to come in and get us! We're staying. Enjoying our coffee!" the Colonel screamed, with a well-placed quotation from The Big Lebowski. Style points. He then faced the door and negotiated some strange early 1900s boxer pose, a position in which he remained for a
really long time, until Bufford broke the silence.
"Listen-this is all my fault. I'm just going to go out there, take my lumps, and that'll be it," he whispered to me.
"No way, man!" I said. "They're gonna throw the book at you, Bufford! There's a right thing to do here, but that's definitely not it. I mean, you were wronged! I can see why you would've popped a gasket when you saw that crazy woman. I would've, too!"
At this point, the aforementioned 'crazy woman', who had been processing her ongoing hostage experience in an agreeable traumatized silence,

spoke up again.
"Oh yeah, you rent-control sewer rats?! Well, it goes both ways, you know? I can't imagine ever..!"
"Hold it! What did you just say?" I grabbed her by the shoulders with both hands before I knew Iíd even opened my mouth. Brilliant!
"Are you interrupting me?!"
"Lady, shut the...Yeah, I'm interrupting you! The one useful thing you've possibly ever said in your life just may save my buddy's skin here. Now that you've said that, shut up! We can take it from here." At which point, I pulled off my right shoe, rolled my tube sock off my foot, and tied it smartly in a gag-type fashion around her mouth, and smiled. Why hadn't I thought of that before? Then I turned to the rest of the group, about to issue a dictum of such significance and weight that it would solve ninety percent of our problem. Before I could speak, however, the shed door was nearly ripped off its hinges, intruding nearly on top of us! The tax payers of our fair city had recently purchased for our fair police department a multi-person battering ram for purposes of breaking into suspicious homes and warehouses and, as it turned out, garage sheds of Vietnam vets. I'm not sure it was warranted in this specific case, but it was definitely dramatic and I'm sure it made the various members of the media who had gathered outside by now wet their pants in photographic glee.
All this police action commotion caused quite a stir in the dirt. Immediately, dust again was equal parts with oxygen, and the visibility was just what we needed it to be in order to affect our getaway. If you've heard it said that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, then you've probably also heard that refuted, complete with cited examples and mathematical calculations. Well, here's one more to add to your list. The battering ram was my cue to grab our collective menagerie and shove them back into the tunnel. 'It goes both ways,' she had said. And it truly does. We were simply going back in time, so to speak. We would escape by high-tailing it again to the scene of the crime. Everyone filed in efficiently and quickly. Everyone, that is, except Tikki. She, instead, felt it was time for her specific brand of sacrifice, her final act of devotion. The heroic animal turned to face the onrushing SWAT team, raised her hackles, planted her feet firmly in attack position, and growled a growl that would make the manliest of men freeze dead in their tracks. As we rushed away down the tunnel, we all heard the sad proceedings. There was no negotiating the end of the matter. Tikki got in a few good bites but, in the end, no animal, even those empowered by the fury of primal protection can get the better of a California police force pistol and the well-aimed bullet of social order. There was a crack. The Colonel paused but for an instant, then continued with the group, wordless. There would be time to mourn later. Now was a time for action.