Playmates

by Francis W. Porretto

  “We’ll cope. Please, just do it.”

  Ten minutes later the veterinarian departed, check in hand, still muttering and shaking his head.

  Phyllis rose and embraced him. “You know we can’t keep her inside all the time.”

  “Of course we won’t. But she needs to know that this is her home, just as much as Bruno’s. Besides,” he said, “this will be better for her in the winter months than sleeping in the shed.”

  “I guess.” Phyllis glanced over her shoulder at the animal friends. Bruno was grooming the spot between Ursula’s shoulders where Grotius had inserted the RFID chip. The bear was stretched out full length, eyes closed and head propped upon her forepaws. “There were times last winter I thought Bruno was about to join her in the shed, to keep her company.”

  “No one likes to sleep alone.” Harold stroked his wife’s back. “Like I said, we’ll cope. Just be ready for a knock at the door. You know it’s coming.”

  She nodded. “And don’t you forget to clean out the shed, remove all traces of her, and put a few garden tools in there for show.”

  “Yeah.”

  #

  It was plain to Bruno that there had been a change in Ursula’s status. Before her, no animal but he had been admitted to the Corens’ home. He wasn’t unhappy about it, but he was aware that in bringing Ursula indoors, his master had acknowledged and adjusted to a change of some other kind. Probably not a good kind.

  He became keenly attentive to the transient noises of the neighborhood: the sounds of passing vehicles and other sorts of traffic on the street before his home. Anything that came near and lingered for more than a few seconds received his undivided attention until it moved on.

  Ursula had grown wary as well. She stayed even closer to Bruno than was her previous habit. Whenever he went indoors, she would do so as well. When they were outside, she would dash off into the forest at ever slighter disturbances of the peace, returning only when silence had returned and had persisted for a considerable interval. Bruno began to fear that should anyone but the Corens enter their yard, she would depart forever.

  He had no way to reassure her except with his presence, his affection, and a degree of vigilance over their surroundings she could not help but notice. For the present, those things were enough.

  #

  Hallowe’en in the Corens’ Oakleigh neighborhood was a more active and sociable date than any other on the calendar. Costumed trick-or-treaters, from the very young to the soon-to-be-drinking, swarmed over their street from just after lunch hour until well into the darkness. Harold was bemused, and Phyllis sternly disapproving, at the racy direction costuming had taken even among the prepubescent. Nevertheless, they were openhanded about gifts of candy and general good wishes to all.

  As they’d done on their previous Hallowe’ens in that home, they kept Bruno in the back yard throughout. He was too prone to “making friends” with everyone who might come to the door. Having Ursula beside him added an element of risk beyond what prudence would permit.

  It was a few minutes after ten, the last trick-or-treater had come and departed half an hour before, and Harold was about to close and lock the door for the night when the limousine pulled into their driveway. He frowned, pulled the door all the way open, and waited.

  The stretch Lincoln’s passenger side doors opened simultaneously. Two men emerged. One was fiftyish and silver-haired, about Harold’s height and build, dressed in an expensive-looking suit, and had a folio tucked under one arm. The other was short, stocky, and carried an unidentifiable weapon.

  The former headed up the walk to the door. The latter went around to the side of the house, plainly headed toward the back yard. Phyllis edged up behind her husband and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Phyl,” Harold said, “are Bruno and Ursula in or out?”

  “Out,” she whispered.

  “Stay here and keep that guy outside.”

  He snatched up his shotgun and sprinted to the back door. He stepped out of the house and onto the deck to confront a standoff he’d hoped never to see.

  Ursula was prone on the grass, paws over her head in unconcealed terror. Bruno was between the intruder and the bear, doing his best to keep her in his shadow, while snarling and growling menacingly. The intruder was edging to his left, trying for a shot at Ursula with what was plainly a launcher for anesthetic darts.

  Harold knew that if Bruno were to take a bite out of the intruder, he’d be destroyed by court order.

  He raised his shotgun and racked the pump.

  “Hold!”

  The intruder froze.

  “Take one more step,” Harold grated, “and I’ll fire. Drop your gun and face me.”

  The intruder complied. Bruno relaxed fractionally.

  “You’re trespassing and threatening my dog with a weapon of some kind,” Harold said. “My wife has already called the police. Clear out of here before they get here, and no more will come of this. Refuse, and you go to prison.”

  “Oh, I think not,” came a masculine voice from behind him.

  Naturally sharp reflexes and well-honed skills from Harold’s time in the 75th Ranger regiment surged forward. A roundhouse stroke with the shotgun’s stock and a deft sweep of his legs put the tall stranger Phyllis had been unable to exclude unconscious on the deck. Harold spun a second time to refocus on the first intruder.

  But too slowly.

  The anesthetic dart caught him in the upper thigh. It must have been loaded with the most powerful soporific known to Man, for a bare three seconds had elapsed before Harold slumped into unconsciousness himself.

  #

  Bruno sensed his opportunity and charged.

  He knocked the intruder onto his back and pummeled him with both forepaws. The intruder flailed his arms uselessly, confused by the assault. After a few seconds he groped for his gun, dropped just barely within his reach.

  Ursula darted forward, took the tranquilizer gun between her teeth, and bounded off into the forest.

  Relieved of that threat, Bruno slid forward and laid his broad chest over the man’s face. The flailing became wilder, then weaker as the Newf pressed down with his full strength and weight, cutting off his captive’s respiration. The struggles had grown feeble when he heard the mistress command him to sit up. He complied.

  The mistress was standing over them, pointing the master’s weapon at the intruder. They exchanged words in that shrill, anger filled tone Bruno knew from the Corens’ occasional fights over money.

  Presently the mistress allowed the intruder to rise. She nudged him toward the gate with the muzzle of the weapon, tracking him with it until he’d gotten into the big vehicle in the driveway. Moments later, the vehicle had departed.

  #

  Harold awoke to a remarkable sight.

  The man he’d knocked unconscious was awake and sitting in a lawn chair. The intruder’s gaze flicked to Harold as he sat up. Phyllis stood alongside him. She was wielding his shotgun like a pro, keeping the muzzle perfectly steady on the intruder’s chest.

  Bruno stood beside his mistress, teeth bared and eyes locked onto their uninvited guest.

  “Status?” Harold said.

  “Bruno knocked the other guy down and subdued him while I fetched your gun. I made him get into the limo and leave. Ursula snatched his tranq gun and ran into the brush with it.”

  “Her name,” the intruder said, “is Lulubelle.”

  Despite the pounding in his head, Harold laughed.

  “You named a bear that? Were you planning to enter her in a ballet company or something?”

  The intruder’s face twitched. He said nothing.

  Harold shook his head and immediately regretted it. “How long have I been out?”

  “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  That long? “You’ve been standing guard over this guy all that time?”

  “No big deal,” she said. “He was out about as long. I wanted your input about what we should do with him.” Her te
rseness did nothing to hide her anger. “Son of a bitch pushed past me into our house as if I were nothing.”

  “I doubt he’ll make that mistake a second time.”

  I wouldn’t have guessed I was still part of a Ranger quick-reaction squad.

  He clambered awkwardly to his feet and stood beside his wife. She made no move to surrender the shotgun.

  Smart girl.

  “Buddy,” he said, “I don’t know who you are or what you thought you were going to pull off, but I hope you can see that you blew it.” He stepped away from Phyllis. “Give me your driver’s license.”

  The intruder reached into his inside jacket pocket, brought forth a wallet, extracted a driver’s license, and handed it to Harold.

  It was a Massachusetts license in the name of Jesse Eisenbud. Harold recognized the name at once.

  “Eisenbud Digital Industries?”

  The man nodded.

  “What did you want with the bear?”

  Eisenbud shrugged and looked away.

  “Well?”

  “A pet for my wife. She wanted a bear.”

  “If memory serves,” Harold said, “Massachusetts has a law against owning bears.”

  “So? She’s twenty-four years old, a Miss Maine runner-up, has tits like cantaloupes, can suck a golf ball through forty feet of garden hose, and she wanted a bear.” Eisenbud smirked. “Besides, it’s against the law in New York too. Isn’t it?”

  Harold nodded. “Exactly, which is why we don’t own a bear.”

  The billionaire’s face clouded over. “But—”

  “If you leave peaceably and swear never to come back here, I won’t turn you over to the police. But trust me when I say this, Mr. Eisenbud.” Harold smiled his brightest, most vicious smile. “If you show your face around here ever again, shortly thereafter the Onteora cops will be notifying your wife of your untimely and very messy demise.”

  Bruno added a low growl.

  Harold held up the driver’s license. “I’ll hold onto this. Phyl, Bruno, keep him where he is.”

  The Newf barked once sharply.

  “Where are you going?” she said, still wire-taut.

  “To call him a cab.”

  #

  Ursula didn’t return that night, nor the next, nor the next. After five days had passed with no sign of the bear, Harold began to wonder if the commotion had frightened her away permanently, to become as wild de facto as de jure. After two weeks it seemed a certainty.

  It saddened him. All three of them had bonded with Ursula. Bruno had taken to standing watch at her habitual entry and exit point, as if to leave it unmonitored would risk having Ursula come back, survey the yard, decide she was no longer welcome, and depart never to return.

  Thanksgiving was two days away, and Harold was busily stacking the deck furniture for winter storage, when a rustling came from the northern edge of the yard. Bruno barked sharply and made a beeline for the sound.

  Presently Ursula emerged from the brush, a bit thinner for her time away but apparently otherwise no worse off. Her jaws were clenched on a long, silvery object. Bruno romped around her like a puppy, beside himself with joy. He escorted her to the deck and preceded her up the steps.

  She dropped the tranquilizer gun at Harold’s feet, sat on her haunches, and wagged her tongue.

  Harold dropped to his knees and wrapped the bear in a hug. Ursula returned it. Bruno pressed against the two of them with almost enough force to knock them over.

  A flurry of steps from behind them announced Phyllis’s arrival at the gathering.

  “She’s back,” she said wonderingly.

  He nodded. He kept his face against Ursula’s shoulder, lest his wife see his tears.

  Her hand descended on his shoulder. “Hal, it’s okay.”

  He looked up at that. Her face was as wet as his own.

  He released the bear and rose. A moment later the bear and the Newf and were once again careening joyously around the yard, companions love-bonded and inseparable.

  He pulled his wife snugly against his side.

  “I should have known she’d come back,” he said.

  “I never doubted it.”

  He looked at her. She grinned.

  “A woman knows these things. But Hal? She probably needs protein, and there’s no fish in the freezer.”

  “Right.” He fished for the car keys. “I’m on it.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “You sure?” He waved at the reunited pals, frolicking as if their energies were inexhaustible.

  She nodded. “They’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess they will.”

  ====

  About The Author

  Francis W. Porretto is an engineer, fictioneer, and commentator (and a Newfoundland owner and enthusiast). He is also the proprietor of the Liberty’s Torch Website (https://bastionofliberty.blogspot.com), a hotbed of pro-freedom, pro-American, pro-Christian sentiment, where he and his Esteemed Co-Conspirators hold forth on every topic under the Sun. You can email him at fran.porretto@yahoo.com. Thank you for taking an interest in his fiction.