I had a bumpy start on this bulletin board, and it took me a month or more to acquire my sea legs. Then I developed a story arc, completed in August, which I had intended to close shortly after Thanksgiving, November 2014. Then I lost NewScaratings privileges. So, two or more years after the fact, and while dropping two stories regarding Tommy, the smart-ass 4th grader, this shall be Mouse Hollow's final entry. Kind of a pity that Tommy, Spotes and Lewser never go trick or treating on these pages. There are, as Bertie Wooster so often complained, wheels within wheels.
I've noted, with considerable surprise, that this thread has taken over a thousand views. Let me conjecture that 2-3 of you actually enjoy this stuff. I've got about 30 of these stories lying around. If I get to 80, and my neighbors down here resolve their romantic issues, I'll probably seek publication. But to business:
Back in November of 2014, there was an Alberta Clipper moving in. The National Weather Service, in conjunction with local agencies, delivered the cold facts at 0300 hours, November 26. Of course everyone had been worn out by Brainbuster, Showdown, and Glory Daze. The only individual in Mouse Hollow who was still awake was the police dispatcher, and she was grateful that the alert didn't require that she drag anyone out of bed.
"Saturday, expect clear skies with a trace of cloud cover. Ceiling, 2 miles. Temperature at dawn: 23 F. Temperature at sunset: 14 F. Saturday, the White Bear Migration Path is on Red Alert."
"That'll bring 'em out on Black Friday," the Dispatcher speculated.
"The Skating Migration is anticipated to begin at 12:30 PM CST, ending at 2 PM CST, Saturday November 29. MNDOT to assist in municipal enforcement on demonstrable need. Take all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of the public."
So, two days after Thanksgiving:
While Ruth and Trish bonded over their recipes for holiday cookies, and various neighbors knocked at Ruth's back door, shyly offering their own kitchen treats, Jacob finished his third mug of coffee. His father, brilliant in his own way, sat in the shade of the family room, punching buttons on a TV remote. Jacob excused himself and stepped outside to settle his nerves. Four blocks from Main Street there wasn't a parking space to be had.
Apart from, or perhaps because of the many cars, the silence was eerie. And then it came into perspective: the police barricades on Main Street, the sandbags piled at the intersection. Jacob was about to witness the skating migration of the White Bears.
According to local legend, it had been happening for a half century or more, on the first afternoon in late autumn when the temperature in sunlight failed 20 F. Jacob checked his phone: 12:26 PM, temp 19 F. He tightened the scarf around his neck and hastened his pace, arriving at the intersection of Elm Street and Main only a minute or two later. Main Street, apart from the ice with which it had been flooded, was deserted. He was a half block from Big Itchy's. Or he could negotiate the slippery street and cross over to Mouse Hollow Books.
The decision was made for him. From around the bend on Main, where the business district trickled out, a lithe figure leaning into the curve suddenly accelerated, and in fewer seconds than Jacob could count, the first of the White Bears had skated past him.
Whoosh! Far taller than Jacob, she was moving at a speed which the bystander may accurately have pegged at 30 mph. (The speed limit through town was 25.) Then: whoosh! whoosh! Two more, and these weren't any slower. Jacob scurried up the sidewalk and ducked into Big Itchy's just as a peleton of a dozen bears skated past.
Big Itchy's was packed, but especially crowded at the front, the patrons' noses pressed against the plate glass windows facing the street. Halfway down the rail, Jacob located Doc Wakley playing Lunchtime Trivia, where Sgt Beaufort 'Beefy' Breault leaned into him, regaling Doc with all the stuff that's actually too trivial to be trivia. Doc's universal curiosity made him a magnet for this kind of harassment.
"Doc! Beefy!" The proffering of a hearty handshake.
"Jake! Good to see ya!" Jacob and Beefy remembered each other from high school, ran across each other every few years, and couldn't remember why or even whether they remembered each other fondly.
"How come you're not out there patrolling the street?" Jacob asked.
"I'm in here, protecting the patrons," Officer Beefy replied, with a dignity appropriate to his professional khaki. "The bears are on their way to the airport, catching flights to Arizona or Florida. It's all instinctual. They can't be stopped, and to attempt as much would be to disrupt the processes of nature."
Just then, the entire crowd at the windows suddenly retreated. A feminine voice screamed, "He's coming in!" A wave of Big Itchy's patrons, five deep, rolled away, and was suddenly cowering among the pool tables in the back of the room, seriously inconveniencing the two skinny guys playing 9-ball, with a lot of money on the table.
"Aren't you going to stop him?" Jacob asked.
"No, I'll let Soxpet handle this," Beefy whispered. You could have heard a pin drop.
"The White Bear, still in skates, waddled up to the bar and said, "I'm thirsty," his voice like a round of artillery fired from a deep canyon.
Soxpet, as blond as the bear, gazed up at him with her big blues and chirped, with practiced effrontery, "I'm sorry, Honey, but this is a Pepsi bar. We don't serve Coke products."
Glumly, the bear turned around and waddled back outside.
Once the bear was at safe remove, the patrons began chanting the bartender's name: "Soxpet! Soxpet! Soxpet!" She beamed, and there's no question but what she blushes beautifully.
"Jake!" Doc Wakley exclaimed. "With what term is Soviet literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky most associated?"
"Try #4: Defamiliarization."
"Thanks, buddy."
"Man, once I'd won my brass in Minneapolis," Beefy complained, now concentrating his powers on Jacob, "I couldn't wait to transfer home. And now that I'm back here, the problems are like one of Doc's drop-down boxes. If you're lucky, 20% is real."
"Yeah," Jacob sympathized. "I heard something about a fox hunt. What was that all about?"
"The fox hunt was real. Well, not exactly, but a public endangerment. A bunch of the loonies, equipped with mountain bikes and shotguns, got out of the mansion and were chasing Bashful, the lonesome coyote, through Old Church Nature Preserve at dawn. They were making one helluva racket. I got called in, had to confiscate the guns and chase them all back uphill."
"You've got to be putting me on," Jacob replied, failing to negotiate his disbelief against Beefy's professional integrity. "Mental patients with shotguns?"
"Keep in mind, Jake, this is Mouse Hollow," Doc admonished. "Here the inmates really do run the asylum."
Outside, the Skating Migration had ended. Caterpillars were chewing up the ice.
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