It was Tuesday evening in the Cow County Sheriff’s Office, and the newest deputy had just arrived for his shift. It had been storming all afternoon, but the latest thunderstorm had just finished passing over and I hadn’t even got wet coming in. I put down my hat on the folding table that doubled as my desk (the sheriff promised to get me a real desk real soon), grabbed a jelly donut and a cup of java, and settled in with the local newspaper. The Cow County High School Bovines were having a banner baseball year – might even make it to district playoffs.
Just then the Sheriff burst into the room. I quickly pulled my feet off the table, wishing I’d heard him coming. For once, he didn’t seem to notice. “Mrs. Grayson says Rikki is missing,” he said. “You get out there and take care of it. Get one of the other deputies to ride along. It may get ugly.”
If the Sheriff thought anything having to do with Rikki Grayson was ugly, well, he must never have met her. Although I can’t say how he might’ve missed her in a town as small as Doggerel. I can’t say we were friends, exactly, but we had been in high school together back before I went off for my year of college in the city. Mason City Community College, certificate of proficiency in General Law Enforcement with a K-9 specialty endorsement.
“Wipe that moon pie look off your face and get moving!” he added. “And I was talking about the weather. Bad line of storms off to the north and west. Possibility of a tornado. Go!”
“Sorry, Sir,” I responded as I hopped up and spilled coffee all over my desk-table. The Sheriff watched impatiently as I mopped up part of the spill with my napkin. No time to waste, I thought. I tossed the dripping napkin into the trash can, told the deputy who thought he was going off duty that he couldn’t yet, and pulled him along as I dashed out.
I dashed back in, grabbed my hat, and left for the second time. The sheriff hadn’t moved. No time for conversation, though. In a matter minutes we were racing out to the Grayson farm, siren wailing. I love driving the squad car.
Old Mrs. Grayson stood on the porch, all lit up in the brilliant rays of the setting sun. The sky was orange in the southwest, but it was cloudy and dark from northwest around to northeast. Ominous sounds of thunder rolled in from over the northwestern horizon. Mrs. Grayson wrung her hands.
“Now, now, Mrs. Grayson. Take a deep breath. When did you last see Rikki?” I asked her.
“Well, the last time I saw her was about an hour and a half ago as she headed into my granddaughter’s bedroom to hide from the thunderstorm,” she replied.
“Isn’t Rikki your granddaughter?” I asked.
“Of course.” The hand wringing stopped and she looked at me strangely. Suddenly, despite my law enforcement certificate and the shiny silver deputy badge on my shirt, I felt as if I were not the one in charge. In fact, I felt almost like I was being reprimanded. It was a feeling I knew well. I’d had to repeat Mrs. Grayson’s Home Ec class at Cow County High twice. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried. On the other hand, I never did understand why I needed to know how to sew, anyway.
Returning to the moment, I continued the investigation. “Then what happened?” My interrogation techniques were simple but effective.
“Well, apparently she jumped through the open window and took off running across the pasture.” What odd behavior! This case was really beginning to intrigue me.
“Why did Rikki jump through the window instead of using the door?” I queried, slyly.
“She often does that,” Mrs. Grayson answered.
“Really?” I was testing the accuracy of her recollection.
“She doesn’t care about proprieties like doors and windows. Dogs just go wherever they want, however they can, don’t they?”
“Of course,” I muttered. Dog? It was beginning to dawn on me that I may have had the wrong idea about what was going on. “I have an endorsement in K-9 operations, you know.” She said nothing, but looked at me in exactly the same way the sheriff had when I’d spilled the coffee. It was eerie.
Over the next few minutes Mrs. Grayson explained to me that her little black and white dog had run away during the last thunderstorm. Rikki was a 10 year old mutt who was mostly retriever, collie, and Pekinese. Mrs. Grayson told me she had always been afraid of thunder and lightning. “Of course, my dog sensed that about me,” Mrs. Grayson said. “That may be why she was afraid, too.”
“Usually she just hid under the bed when the weather got bad,” she added. The hand wringing was back. “This time was different.”
About that time Mrs. Grayson’s granddaughter Rikki came out to join us. I stood up straight, sucked in my belly, put on my most professional expression and listened with extreme intensity to Mrs. Grayson’s description of the events leading up to the disappearance.
At least, that was what I intended to do. “Are you okay?” Rikki asked me. “You don’t look so good.”
“Of course,” I replied with a wave of the hand. I exhaled, sadly gave up on trying to impress Rikki, and asked Mrs. Grayson to go on.
It seems Rikki had accidentally left the window open in her bedroom. Hiding under the bed, Rikki noticed the open window. Before she could crawl out and close it, the little black and white dog had leapt out and was running across the pasture ahead of the cows.
“I’ve always been afraid of cows,” Rikki admitted. “I guess Rikki is, too.” I looked at Rikki with wonder and paused to ponder the remarkable way the universe can work sometimes.
“About that time,” Rikki continued, “Granny called out for Rikki. I told her she’s gone out the window.”
She told me that the earlier thunderstorm had been short but particularly severe. There had been gusting wind that had pulled a few shingle off the roof, and some hail. But it was the reports they’d been hearing about a tornado that got them so very concerned about the dog.
On the way over I had heard the radio report about thunderstorms spawning a tornado over in Potato County, a few miles west of the Grayson farm. The Potato Tornado, they called it. It had been moving fairly rapidly to the northeast.
Apparently when Rikki left she had been headed west for Potato County. But when the hail started she had turned the car around and come back. The dog, on the other hand, had run off to the north. Which at this point was even worse.
Granny Grayson was of the opinion that the twister was going to zero in on her little dog like it was a trailer park. Her fears were beginning to affect her granddaughter.
“I hope she don’t get twistered up,” Rikki Grayson worried. “If a twister was to pick her up, I don’t know how Rikki would do with that.”
“She’d bark like the devil ,” Granny Grayson added. They both laughed. Then they both wept.
“Oh, Rikki, what are we ever going to do with you if you don’t come back?” Rikki cried out to her missing little dog.
“Not likely to do anything with her if she ain’t back,” Granny Grayson observed. Then they wailed.
What was needed was less wailing and more action. With a comforting Pat for grandmother and granddaughter, I strode out to the squad car on my way to find the missing canine. My partner Pat stayed behind to comfort them. He’s better at that sort of thing than me.
I started the car and gently eased up on the clutch. The vehicle spurted forward, bounced over roots and ruts, and found the highway northbound. Flashing lights pierced the twilight and the sound of the siren clashed with distant thunder. I was on a mission to save Rikki and it was exciting.
Ten minutes later the siren was beginning to give me a headache. I popped an Advil, cut off the siren and flashing lights, and turned on the radio. My favorite station, KDOG out of Mankato, used to play a nice selection of swing and country on Tuesday evenings. It was worth a good listen even with all the static.
The orange glow had faded to a dim line along the horizon in the southwest. The rain and hail came and went. Ahead was only blackness.
Mile after mile raced by, with no sign of Rikki the dog. I was astonished at the amazing speed of that mutt! ‘I should have caught up to her by now!’ I thought.
The darkness became nearly absolute - only the headlights and the glow from the dashboard lights. Then, I seen it! Up there, up ahead, was a cloud of darkness darker than the dark dark night sky around it. It was a roiling mass of darkness reaching from sky down to earth, a sinister shadow slithering across the countryside.
I stopped the car and got out. Wiping driving rain from my eyes, I stared into the darkness and listened to the roar, like a freight train far off. It was the Potato Tornado, gone from over west in Potato County to up in the north of Cow County up toward the Minnesota border!
I got back in my car and began to sweat. Or maybe it was just the rain dripping in my eyes. But I began to get queasy. Hadn’t figured on this turn of events. But I started off up the highway, anyway. I had a duty to do. Rikki was depending on me. And to tell the truth, I had been thinking about asking her to the Founders Day dance next weekend. So I had to find her dog.
Five minutes later the roaring swirling mass of darkening darkness was directly in front of me, dancing weirdly, rising from the road ahead up into the sky, swaying slowly, erratically, hesitantly to and fro, sliding from left to right. The volume was deafening. I turned down the radio. The tornado was loud, too.
I heard one time about a tornado that picked up a cow and put it down in the top of a tree. Weird things, tornados. Who knows why they do what they do? I used to wonder how that cow got down outta that tree. But I reasoned – if a tornado could do that with a cow, why not with a dog? I spotted a large tree in the middle of an open field to my right, so I stopped the car. I jumped out, hopped over a ditch full of stormwater, stepped through some barbed wire, and started toward it.
The tornado was getting closer and louder with each passing second. I began to notice things flying past me in the air. They were birds, mostly. The wind was getting stronger, buffeting me, whipping wildlyin my ears and through my hair… That was when I realized my hat had taken flight, too. The sheriff was gonna be pissed.
As I got closer to the tree, a sense of dread began to rise up from the depths of my gut into my stomach and throat. I nearly had a panic attack, but I fought it down. All those years of counseling with the school psychologist and I still hadn’t overcome the old fears completely. But even in the face of imminent disaster I was still functioning, and that was pretty good. There had been a time when I would have been paralyzed by that old fear of falling cows. But I was no scared kid any more. I was a lawman with a duty to do. I clenched my teeth and strode purposefully on.
‘Besides,’ I kept telling myself, ‘it couldn’t happen twice.’ Could it?
I ran to the tree and jumped onto the lower branches of that big oak. Things began falling from the sky. More hail. And some of the upper branches. I think there was a squirrel in there, too, which kind of freaked me out until I remembered that squirrels are a lot smaller than cows.
I climbed through the onslaught. There was a terrible ripping sound… was the massive tornado literally ripping apart the sky? No, it was my pants. Those uniform pants were not designed for climbing trees, I can tell you.
But a split pair of trousers wasn’t important at that moment. The tornado was bearing down on us, that is, on me and… on me and… Was that a yelping sound I heard up above? Barking, maybe? Was Rikki waiting for me in the top of this tree just as I knew she would be?
Of course not. That would just be silly. The yelping and barking was coming from down below! There on the ground was Rikki the dog, front paws on the trunk, barking her head off as if to say, “What in the world are you doing up a tree in a tornado? Get yourself down here right now and let’s get out of here!” She had a point. I jumped from the tree and hit the ground running. Then I got up from the mud and started running again. Rikki and I raced for the car as the tornado exploded that big oak behind us. We went through the barbed wire (ouch!), leapt over the ditch together, and stopped.
The car, of course, was destroyed. A cow had fallen on it.
Mercifully, the cow was no longer with us.
The Potato Tornado was reeling off to the east. The hail stopped. A few stars were visible in the south. I pulled a Slim Jim from my pocket and decided the dog had earned her share. I broke it and gave half to Rikki. Then I realized I didn’t want any so I tossed my half into the ditch. I’d had a nice burger basket at the Doggerel Diner before coming on duty. We started the long long – did I say it was long? – walk home.
It was nearly dawn when we trudged up the road toward the Grayson farmhouse. I hollered out, and Granny came out onto the porch. She was overjoyed to see her little dog again. They hugged and yelped and danced around and licked each other with delight.
A minute later Rikki, wakened from her troubled slumber, stumbled out of the house, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and shrieked with happiness. Those two sure pitch a fit when they get worked up.
We went inside, and Granny made some coffee. She served it up with some jelly donuts and Slim Jims, which suited me fine. For the last several miles of the long journey home I had regretted tossing away that meat stick.
I told them the story of how I had tracked the tornado, rescued the little dog, and fended off the falling squirrels and cows. With tears of gratitude, Granny kissed my cheek. Her granddaughter looked at me in a different sort of way and kissed the other cheek. The dog licked Slim Jim grease and frosting off my face. I must say I enjoyed the attention.
After I ate the last jelly donut, we woke Pat and sent him on his way back to town. He whined a little bit about having to walk, but what could he say? I couldn’t help it if the car had been in the path of a falling Guernsey and he had to be at work in an hour.
“Let me mend those trousers for you,” Granny Grayson offered, kindly. She knew I never was any good at sewing.
I was exhausted, but the whole experience had invigorated me. Or maybe it was the sugar in the jelly donuts. Anyway, in a flash of inspiration I realized the moment had come. Then and there, I asked Rikki if I could take her to the Founders Day dance. She agreed, of course, with a wag of her tail. She had been fond of me ever since I gave her that half of a Slim Jim.
The best thing was, Rikki Grayson agreed to go with us, as a sort of chaperone. Not that we needed one, after all we’d been through together.
I certainly hope the weather is nice for the dance next weekend. And it also might be nice if there are no bovines in the vicinity.
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