Oswald, the Almost Famous Opossum

by Sara Katherine Pascoe

  “You gotta let me thank you. You saved my mom!”

  Oswald crawled out and blinked up at Joey. “I did? I mean I did. Actually we did. It was a true team effort. There was Tiny and of course Frank did some of the directing, and—”

  “Ah, my mom’s got to hear all this. She’s going to love it. She’s starting to speak Animal now, too.”

  Oswald blinked some more. “So you think she wouldn’t mind seeing me?”

  “Mind? Are you crazy? Come on!”

  As boy, possum, cat, and groundhog walked toward the front of the house, the raccoons—Tessa, Reggie, Hazel, Simone, and Frank—all came out of their various hiding places.

  Miss Ann was sitting in one of the chairs on the porch, talking to the TV interviewer. The cameraman filmed and the photographer clicked away. The reporter recorded the interview on her phone.

  The humans turned at the sound of paws, claws, and wings.

  Miss Ann grinned. “And here they are. Let them tell you—it’s their story.”

  She moved things to make more room. “Please, everyone come on up on the porch,” she said.

  The TV people told everyone where to sit. Joey’s dad got more chairs from the deck. Joey and even Ann helped with animal translations. The interview took quite a while. There was a lot to tell.

  By the time the media left, everyone was exhausted. Suzette came by with the kids and Joey’s stuff. They ordered pizza for everyone, all beings. Carlton and Suzette carried Mary and Noah, who had fallen asleep, into their car and said their good-byes.

  “You can stay home from school tomorrow if you want. Your dad told the school you might,” his mother said.

  And then the big news—the animals could stay.

  “Oh wow, I knew you’d come around, Mom!” Joey said.

  Pixie sat up, the lampshade jangling. “Ooh, I could dig a lovely burrow in the backyard. I could make it just like home, with a grass bed, and cubbyholes, and . . . ” She stopped talking for a moment—looked wistful. “Actually, I think I may move back home, if that’s all right—I do miss it.”

  “Of course,” Ann said, “But do come by and visit us.”

  Then the raccoons started reminiscing about their den in the tree and how it always smelled like leaves and how it was the best sleeping place.

  “I do miss our place, and our 120, or is it 122 relations?” Tessa said.

  And soon all of them realized they wanted to go home to Barnard Hill Park. All of them except Oswald, of course, who was home. After promises to stay in touch, to have picnics in the park, visits at the house, and for Ann to let Pixie “touch up those roots,” Joey, Ann, Oz, and Melvin waved as the animals walked down Perry Street, the rats on the raccoons’ backs, and Frank flying off ahead.

  “Please give our regards to Queenie the cat,” Oswald called out as they left.

  Oswald relaxed on the porch with Joey, Ann, and Melvin.

  The Edwardses’ screen door creaked open. Mrs. Edwards stepped out with Zola and another animal by her feet. She leaned against her porch railing. “Welcome home, Annie.” Oswald had never heard her call her that before. “I just wanted to show you something. I mean someone.” She pointed to the table where the second animal had jumped up—Esmeralda.

  “Hi, everyone,” was all she said, but she did seem to be smiling. Zola gave her a big lick down her back, nearly lifting her off the table.

  Ann leaned back in the chair with Melvin in her lap and her hand on Joey’s back. “That’s the second-best sight I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “Isn’t she, though?” Mrs. Edwards said. “She’ll be staying here until she’s fully recovered, with Zola’s help obviously. Then it will be up to her if she wants to stay or go back to the park.”

  “What about Mr. Edwards? I thought he was against feeding grown wild animals?” Joey said.

  “You’re as surprised as I am. But I guess it’s true, the only guarantee in this world is change.” Mrs. Edwards smiled.

  The Joneses’ house phone started ringing again. It had hardly stopped since Ann got home.

  “Hey, Oz—it’s Oprah. She wants you on her show. . . . Hey, Oz, it’s Ellen DeGeneres on the phone for you . . . ” Joey said.

  “Very funny,” Oswald said. But their joking wasn’t too far off. Everyone was interested in the story: woman wrongly jailed; animals make a confession video that goes viral and saves the day. There were loads of angles and everyone wanted one.

  They put the phone on silent and let voice mail pick up.

  43

  A REAL CARD

  The moment they turned the ringer back on the next day, the calls started again.

  “I’ll go get him,” Joey said. He took the phone out back, down the steps, and stuck his head under the deck.

  “It’s for you, Oz.”

  Oswald poked his head out from his wooden-crate house. He blinked. “Joey, please. I do appreciate your sense of humor, but I am awfully tired,” Oswald said.

  Joey covered the mouthpiece. “No, for real. It’s for you.”

  “All right, then,” Oswald said and dragged himself out from under the deck.

  Joey left the handset with Oz and went back in the house. It was about midday. A steady stream of friends, relatives, and the press had been calling since seven. His mother came up with a response for anyone calling for an interview: they thanked them for their interest and told them Ann would get back to them within a week, as she needed time with her family. They thought this sounded better than ‘go away.’

  Oswald came into the house holding the receiver in his tail above his back.

  “Who was it?” Joey said.

  “It was Mo. He’s quite a card, with his phony ‘I’m a Hollywood movie producer, I’ll send my guy over’ voice. I invited the raccoons around later for a garbage buffet, hope that’s all right?”

  “Sure, but you can have dinner with us, you know,” Joey said.

  “I appreciate that, Joey. It’s just that I’ve come to enjoy being more of an animal. At least a bit.”

  It was midafternoon, and quite a crowd of Joey’s mom’s friends from work had come over. They were all joking and telling work stories.

  “Hey, baby. Come here. I want you to meet these good people,” his mother said from the living room. Joey laced his way through the grown-ups.

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Joey said, relieved at his momentary escape.

  A man in a suit holding a briefcase stood on the other side of the screen door. He looked too well dressed to be a cop, even a plainclothes one.

  Joey popped his head back in the living room. “Mom? I think you better get this.”

  “May I help you?” Ann said, Joey next to her.

  The man extended a business card. “Hi. I’m Victor Lapling. I represent Rick Darning. I believe you’re expecting me.”

  Ann looked at Joey, who shrugged. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what this is about.”

  “I’m here for a Mr. Oswald Opossum. Rick called him earlier about making a movie. We were told to come over. I’ve got the contract right here. We’d like to fly him out tonight, if possible. You know what Hollywood’s like. You got to get in there first with a good story like this,” Mr. Lapling said.

  Ann looked at Joey again.

  “Oswald got a call this morning. He thought it was one of the raccoons joking around,” Joey said.

  “Dang,” was all Ann said. She held the door open. “Please, Mr. Lapling, do come in. My son will get Oswald for you.”

  Joey returned with the possum scurrying at his feet, talking a mile a minute about Mr. Lapling being “for real” and how this could be Oswald’s “big break after all!”

  “I’m sorry, sir. The boy is a bit excitable,” Oswald said, extending a paw. “I understand you want to speak with me? Do you understand Animal?”

  Mr. Lapling gave Oz’s paw a quick shake. “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” He smiled, and held out a sheaf of papers to Oswald. “We’v
e got the contract right here for your consideration. We were hoping you could fly out tonight, to Hollywood, so we can start filming your biopic tomorrow.”

  “Fly out? To Hollywood?” Oswald asked. The man seemed to be talking, but Oswald didn’t hear what he was saying. Instead, everything that had happened in the last few weeks played out in his head: his attempts at getting in the newspaper, all that went wrong, the amazing beings he’d met and all the things they did together. He’d forgotten all about his prior aims at fame—hadn’t even wished for it anymore. Then his eyes were drawn to the pen being waved in front of him.

  “Mr. Oswald, do you want to sign? Are you all right?” Mr. Lapling said.

  Oswald smiled as he took the pen with his back foot. “So sorry for my lapse. Just a little stunned is all—I never expected this!”

  44

  SOMETHING COOL

  “Have fun. Don’t forget—dinner’s at five thirty,” Miss Ann said.

  Joey and Ghalib pedaled hard, east on Perry Street. They turned up Thirty-Third, leaned into the turn onto Bunker Hill, and generally tore around, up, down, and across the streets of Mount Rainier. Joey grinned. Silent except for the whir-whoosh of tires grabbing road. They pedaled in unison, free and powerful. Joey felt like he could do this forever and go anywhere.

  Ghalib stopped at the corner ahead of Joey. “Want to see something cool?”

  Joey stopped hard, inches from his friend. “Sure.”

  “Follow me.”

  They zoomed east on Bunker Hill, stopped before crossing Thirty-Fourth, then went right on Thirty-Fifth. Ghalib slowed and turned right onto a drive between the last two houses. He walked his bike to a gate, looked around, opened it, and darted in. Joey followed. The fence had signs all over it: DO NOT ENTER, and DANGER—DEMOLITION SITE.

  This was cool.

  Ghalib ditched his bike in some overgrown bushes. Joey did the same.

  It was an old house, three stories tall. The first-floor windows were sealed up with sheets of metal. Ghalib walked up to a tree at the back of the house.

  “You climb up onto that small roof, and then into the window. It’s open.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah—I’ve done it loads of times.”

  Ghalib climbed up the tree as though it were a ladder. He stepped onto the small roof, crouched down, and extended his hand. “Come on.”

  Joey jumped and grabbed the first branch, thick and strong with smooth bark. He swung his legs over the branch and climbed up to the roof.

  Ghalib opened the window and slipped in. Joey’s feet landed with an echo on the wooden floor. The house smelled musty and dusty.

  The room they entered was empty except for a broken wooden chair and forgotten wire hangers in the closet. There wasn’t a door on the closet, or in any of the rooms. There was a boarded-up fireplace.

  “Come on. Let me show you something,” Ghalib said.

  They walked into a hallway and up the stairs to the third floor, the attic. Up there were old car tires, a garden hose, empty bottles and cans, a few hubcaps, and other stuff Joey couldn’t make out in the dim light.

  “Wow. Where did you get all this stuff?”

  “It was already in the house mostly. Some of it was downstairs.”

  “Oh,” was all Joey could think to say.

  “Watch this,” Ghalib said. He took one of the car tires and released it at the top of the stairs. The boys watched as it bounce-rolled down the stairs and down the hall.

  “If you do it just right, it’ll bounce off the wall, then go down the other stairs. You go down and watch.”

  Joey went down to the second floor and located the stairs to the first floor. Most of the steps were missing or rotted out.

  “But how do we get the tires back after they go all the way down?” Joey called up to his friend.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Ghalib called from the attic. As promised, a car tire bumped down from the attic, wobbled through the hall, and then dove down the skeletal steps to the ground floor. It smashed bits of the rotting wood on its way down. It was a satisfying sound.

  “Wow. That’s pretty cool,” Joey said.

  Another tire made the trip. Joey helped it along, giving it a push.

  Ghalib appeared next to him, looked down at the tires at the bottom and grinned.

  “Now for the fun part.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Ghalib balanced on the diagonal piece of wood stretching from the first to second floors—the one that used to hold the steps. That was pretty much all that was left of the stairs. He turned around.

  “There’s a chair down here. I’ll stand on that, you lie on your stomach, and I’ll pass the tires up to you—”

  But that was all he got to say. The wood collapsed under him. He slammed onto the floor beneath.

  “Ghalib! Are you all right?”

  He lay there, quiet. After a few seconds he got to his knees and gasped. “Wind knocked out of me—that’s all.”

  “Oh my god, we’ve got to get you out of there. You OK? Anything broken?” Joey said.

  “Nah, I’m OK. For real.”

  They both were quiet, staring at the last of the staircase lying on the floor.

  “Is there anything down there like a ladder?” Joey said.

  “I’ll look.”

  Ghalib disappeared into the darkened first floor. He returned with a chair and a broom. “This is it.”

  “OK, I’ll go outside and see if I can get one of those things off a window, get you out that way.”

  Joey climbed out the window and down the tree. The metal plates were screwed onto the house with those special screws you can’t undo. He tried telling Ghalib through the boarded-up windows but it was no use. He looked around the yard for anything that might help. He found an old clothesline and climbed back in.

  “It’s no use. You can’t get the screws out of the metal panels even with a screwdriver. Here.” Joey threw one end of the rope down. “I’ll tie it to something then you climb up.”

  “OK.”

  Joey tied his end of the rope to a radiator, tested the knots, and made a few extra. There was plenty of extra rope.

  “Ready.”

  Ghalib tried, but the plastic covered rope was too thin and slippery.

  “I’ll tie it around me, then you pull me up.” But with Ghalib a good twenty pounds heavier than Joey, there was no way.

  “What about that hose in the attic? Maybe I could climb up that?”

  Joey ran and got it, but it was rotten and crumbled when he lifted it.

  “We need a ladder. Maybe I should go back home get Mr. Edwards. He has one—lives next door,” Joey said.

  “Won’t he tell your mom?”

  “I guess. But it’s better than staying there forever.”

  They thought a minute.

  “Maybe I could make loops in the rope and use them to climb up, like a rope ladder,” Ghalib said.

  But the loops tightened around his feet, and he couldn’t get them back out.

  “What about tying pieces of the wood down there into the rope, and step on those?” Joey said.

  “Good idea.” Ghalib tried it but the wood was too rotten.

  “Wait there. I’ll go get some sticks,” Joey said.

  “Yeah, I’ll wait here.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Joey made another foray outside and returned with a bunch of sticks of different sizes.

  After considerable trial and error, they got enough sticks that were strong enough tied into the rope at decent intervals. Joey worked from the top down, and Ghalib from the bottom up.

  Joey tied the extra rope from the radiator to himself, braced his foot against the wall, and helped Ghalib up once he was close. They both lay panting.

  “What time is it?” Joey said.

  Ghalib checked his phone. “Almost six.”

  “Oh no. My mom’s going to kill me,” Joey said.

  45<
br />
  WE ARE FAMILY

  Joey sped home, skidding to a stop in front of his house. His mom was on the porch. She looked mad.

  “Sorry, Mom.” He wheeled his bike inside the gate and closed it gently.

  “‘Sorry Mom’? You’re forty-five minutes late, dinner’s ruined, and I was worried. All I get is a ‘sorry Mom’?” Her arms were crossed, and she tapped her foot. She looked taller than usual.

  Joey hung his head. He didn’t know what to say. He looked around, anywhere but her angry eyes. The water in Naja’s pool rippled in the breeze. He hated that—it always made him think, for a second, she was there.

  “When are we going to take that pool down?” he said.

  His mother threw her arms in the air, shook her head, and walked back into the house. She was saying something, but Joey figured it was just as well he couldn’t hear it. He wheeled his bike across the yard to the garage.

  He dragged his feet back to the house, thinking about what to tell his mother about why he was late.

  “Hi, Joey!” Naja said.

  There she was, on the grass, preening her feathers still wet from a paddle in the pool.

  Joey ran to her. “Naja! You’re back!” He hugged the goose, and she laid her neck across his shoulder and honked.

  “What in the world?” Ann came out on the deck and leaned on the railing.

  “It’s Naja—she’s back!” Joey yelled.

  Miss Ann didn’t forget she was mad at Joey. Twenty-four hours without the Internet was his punishment. But it was hard for her to stay mad once she set eyes on Naja. They had a family dinner on the deck, Ann, Joey, Melvin, and Naja.

  “So where did you go? Why did you fly off like that?” Joey asked. He still felt hurt over it.

  “I went to find a flock, but then I realized I already had one,” Naja said.

  After dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards and Zola joined them. Mrs. Edwards had made another cake, chocolate with buttercream icing this time.

  “Cats don’t like sweet things, but I’d love some of that buttercream icing, if that’s OK,” Melvin said.

  “Of course it is,” Ann said. She scraped a big spoonful off the cake and into his dish. Ann understood most of what Melvin said now.