"Tell me something," Wooley asked as he and Steve made their way through the drain pipes, "Why is it Billy gets to go up in the mountains with a couple of Blues players and Donny gets to hang out with a hot little 23 year old while you and I are crawling around these pipes freezing our asses off in the middle of the night?"
"I donno," Steve said," I guess 'cause Billy's the scribe."
"Well I wish he'd scribe me a new boot," Wooley complained, "my foot is wet and cold."
"You don't know that everything is going well for Billy either," Steve said.
"I bet he's got two warm feet," Wooley grumbled.
"This is strange," Steve said as they came to an intersection in the pipes.
"What is it?" Wooley asked.
"My compass is spinning 'round in circles," Steve answered.
"Oh man," Wooley said, "I knew we should have been leaving behind a trail of bread crumbs."
"As many times as we've crossed back and forth we'd have bread crumbs going in every direction," Steve said. "Then we'd really be lost."
"Yeah," Wooley said, "but at least we wouldn't be hungry too."
________
Abe and Matty made their way from tree to tree until finally they were on both sides of the bear. The the two of them started shouting at the top of their lungs and breaking small branches from the trees, throwing the branches at the bear. The bear was obviously confused but he still wasn't backing down. "It's not working," Matty shouted, "What do we do now?"
"How the hell should I know?" Abe shouted back, "I ain't never chased away a bear before!"
"Well so far Billy's still in one piece," Matty shouted.
"I guess we just keep shouting," Abe shouted.
The two of them shouted and shouted until their voices started going away. "I don't know how long I can keep this up," Matty shouted, "I've got a gig tomorrow night."
"Me too," Abe shouted.
It was then we heard yet another roar coming from behind me in the thick brush. Something was crashing through the brush and closing very quickly. Not another bear, I thought, not now. Suddenly, my old friend, the monster of a dog, came crashing out of the brush bearing his teeth with his fur standing tall! The bear took one look, turned and ran off through the woods with the dog close behind him. "What the hell was that?" Abe asked.
"That's my dog," I took a deep breath.
"Are you sure it's safe for us to come down out of the trees?" Matty asked.
"The bear is long gone," I answered.
"I'm not worried about the bear," Matty said. "Any dog that can scare away a bear is more dog than I can handle."
_________
Matty and I dropped off Abe and arrived home early the next morning. The dog quickly claimed Donny's chair next too the wood stove in the shop and refused to move when Donny demanded his chair back. After coming to the realization that he wasn't going to drag a dog that out weighed him by 100 pounds from a chair, Donny resorted to negotiations. Six sausage biscuits later the dog decided to return Donny's chair to him. I'm thinking the dog won that round of negotiations paws down.
Bobbie was very concerned that Wooley and Steve had not come home. So was Wooley's wife, so much so that she was going through the yellow pages calling the best divorce lawyers in Alamance and Guilford counties. Bobbie spent much of the morning calling friends to help form search parties and by mid morning had dozens of spelunkers under the streets of Downtown Greensboro .
Marikay called later to inform us that the 911 operators had recorded 19 separate calls from people who had been attacked by bread ties in the previous night, over 100 calls in the last month and yet none of this had ever been made available to the public. Not one radio station, television station, newspaper or alternative weekly had ever reported an attempted abduction by wire ties. And no one knew how many actual abductions there might have been,
Continue to Reservations.
