by Bobbie Pyron
He glanced back at the den. Rosebud snored on.
He looked up at the sun-washed sky. No crow, no owl.
Trouble shook the worry from his coat and, with a certain jaunty trot, headed down to the cove.
28
Finding Trouble
Amelia trotted as fast as she could across Central Park. “Of course a coyote would live in The Ramble,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s the wildest part of the park. What kind of Junior Explorer am I not to have figured that out?”
She skirted Cherry Hill. She heard music coming from Belvedere Castle. She dodged bicycles and runners and horse-drawn carriages as she crossed the street. What would a coyote possibly think of this?
Finally, she reached the deep green of The Ramble. Trees closed overhead. A winding path bordered by a wild tangle of ivy and thick stands of blackberry bushes beckoned. She hesitated. She had never ventured from the paved confines of the park. But this was where the wild in the city lived. How could she not go?
One step, then another into the heart of The Ramble. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. So, so quiet. She felt muscles she hadn’t realized were clenched relax.
Amelia wandered through bracken and scrambled over rock outcroppings, seeing the forest as the coyote must see it. She looked for signs that might point to where in this wilderness the coyote lived.
Something caught her eye. There, pressed into a wet place in the dirt and leaves, a doglike paw print. She took off her pack, reached in, and pulled out a copy of Animal Tracks and Signs. She opened to the page she had already marked. There it was, an eastern coyote print. A perfect match. A chill of excitement ran up her spine.
She followed Trouble’s tracks along a faint, winding trail. Through the tall birch trees, their bark paper-white, over ancient stones, and around fallen logs.
Amelia stopped to wipe the sweat from her brow. She slapped the mosquitoes on her arm and studied the collection of paw prints in the wet dirt.
She looked closer. The bramble formed a hedgerow, and there, just where she stood, barely discernable to the eye, was an opening.
Amelia dropped to her knees and looked in. She did not see the glowing yellow eyes of a coyote as she’d hoped. Instead, she saw an odd collection of bones, a squirrel’s tail, apple cores, a rubber boot, feathers, tennis balls, and a Frisbee. And, lying among the treasures, snoring ever so softly, a small opossum.
Amelia reached out to touch the opossum.
Rosebud’s sensitive whiskers felt the heat from the human’s hand. Her eyes flew open. In that split second she understood two things: a human’s hand was reaching for her, and Trouble was gone.
Rosebud squealed and hissed in alarm.
The hand jerked back. The human scrambled away.
The opossum scuttled to the opening of the den. Rosebud squinted against the sunlight. She watched with alarm as the small human followed Trouble’s well-worn trail down to the cove.
Against every one of her better instincts, Rosebud followed.
29
“The Death of You”
Trouble’s stomach rumbled. He’d found the duck nests empty. The heat had driven the squirrels to the cool canopy of the treetops.
He lowered his head and lapped at the water.
“Oh, there you are!”
Trouble raised his head. There, just ten tail-lengths away, stood the small human he had encountered before. How had he not heard or smelled her approach?
He crouched and looked for a way to escape. Behind him was the cove and the wide lake; in front of him, the human blocked his trail into the deep woods.
She took a step toward him. “It’s okay,” she said in a soft voice. “I won’t hurt you.”
The pup took two steps back.
Slowly, Amelia took the pack from her back and placed it on the ground. She opened the top. The delicious smell of roasted leg of lamb filled the air.
His mouth watered. He took one step, then two toward the smell.
Amelia took out the lamb leg and unwrapped it. As a Junior Explorer, she knew better than to get too close to wildlife, much less to feed it. But if she could just tame the coyote a little bit, if people could see he was not a threat, wouldn’t it be worth it?
Amelia held out the meat to the coyote. “This is for you,” she said. “I’m your friend, see?”
Trouble did indeed see the leg, glistening with fat.
Trouble lunged for the meat.
“Oh!” Amelia jumped back in surprise, landing on her bottom.
“Look! A coyote’s attacking that little girl!”
Trouble turned toward the noise, the leg of lamb clutched in his jaws.
A group of humans walking up from the lake trail stood wide-eyed in disbelief. They pointed the small square things they always carried with them at the pup and the girl. Click!
A large human reached down and grabbed a rock. He hurled it at the coyote, striking him in the side.
Trouble yelped and dropped the meat.
In a panic, he ran one way and then the other.
“Get it!”
“Kill it!”
“Call the police!”
“No!” Amelia cried, scrambling to her feet. Her heart pounded in her chest. “He’s friendly!”
“Trouble!” Rosebud hissed from the forest above.
The coyote darted past the girl and raced up the hill to his friend.
The last Amelia saw of Trouble was his bushy tail disappearing into the bracken, followed by the hairless tail of an opossum.
“What. Were. You. Thinking?” Rosebud punctuated each word with a poke of her pointy nose into Trouble’s side. “You weren’t supposed to go anywhere!”
“I was hungry,” Trouble whined. “And bored. I didn’t think—”
“That’s right, you didn’t,” the opossum snapped. “Now all kinds of humans have seen you.”
“Maybe they’ll forget they saw me,” Trouble offered. He curled up in the corner of their den and gnawed on a squirrel’s tail.
Rosebud’s nostrils flared with irritation. “I doubt that. They were very upset. And I can tell you from experience, Trouble, there’s nothing more dangerous than angry humans!”
Just then, Trouble and Rosebud heard a flutter and a swoop. Mischief strutted into the den.
“Did you find the Professor?” Rosebud asked.
Mischief puffed up his chest feathers. “Of course I did. If there’s a job to be done, just leave it to a crow.”
“Oh stop.” The Professor stooped, then shuffled into the den. “I can barely endure your self-aggrandizing at night. During the day, it’s intolerable.”
“Please,” Rosebud said, worrying her tail, “you two must work together. Things have gone from bad to worse!”
Trouble noted that the nocturnal owl looked much less grand, much less intelligent really, in the daylight. His golden eyes were dim, the tufts above his ears sagged.
As if reading the coyote’s mind, the owl fixed Trouble with a withering glare. “What is it now?”
Trouble looked away. “I was hungry and bored,” he said by way of explanation.
Mischief groaned. “Please tell me you didn’t leave the den.”
“I thought you were keeping an eye on him,” Mischief said to Rosebud.
“I did,” she said, “until I fell asleep.” She looked to the owl for sympathy. “I just couldn’t stay awake.”
The owl slowly closed his eyes, muttered something none of them could understand, then said, “What happened?”
After Rosebud finished her tale of Trouble’s disastrous encounter with the small human and the screaming, yelling large humans, the owl opened his eyes. He stared down at the coyote for a long moment, then said, “Your curiosity will be the death of you if we don’t get you out of the city as soon as possible. Posthaste. Pronto.”
Trouble knew in his heart it was true.
Rosebud trembled. “I can show you where that train station is,” she said. “I remem
ber it well.” Among their many virtues, opossums have excellent memories.
The Professor regarded the sensitive, none-too-brave marsupial. “Are you sure you want to be involved in this escapade? It could prove dangerous.”
Rosebud swallowed, then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “If it will save Trouble, then yes.”
Trouble nuzzled his friend.
“The truck will be back the day after tomorrow, so we must leave tomorrow night,” Mischief said. “Until then,” he said, glaring at the pup, “I’m not letting you step one paw out of this den.”
30
Wanted!
“Mon Dieu!” Madame exclaimed. She held the next morning’s paper out for Minette to see. A photograph of Trouble leaped across the page. Although the photograph was grainy, there was no mistaking who that was looking back at her with wild eyes and a leg of lamb clutched in his mouth.
“It says your wild friend attacked a child,” Madame said. “How could that be?”
Minette’s stomach knotted in fear. She knew Trouble would never attack a human, but she did know he was far too curious for his own good. And she also knew that humans were fiercely, irrationally protective of children. Why, if a dog so much as looked sideways at a child, that dog’s person would get an endless lecture about safety, leash laws, and the like.
Minette grabbed her leash off the hook by the door, brought it to the poet, and barked. This was bad. Very, very bad. She had to help Trouble. But how?
The headline screamed: COYOTE ATTACKS CHILD IN CENTRAL PARK!
“It’s all my fault,” Amelia groaned. “What was I thinking, trying to feed him?” Although she could hardly bear to do it, she read the article again.
As reported in this paper two days ago, a wild coyote has been sighted in Central Park. Now it appears the same coyote attacked a child in the area known as The Ramble yesterday.
“I’m not a child,” Amelia muttered.
Dave Allison, visiting from Texas, saw the coyote jump on the child, knocking her to the ground. “We got lots of coyotes where I come from. You can’t trust them for nothing.” Allison managed to chase the coyote away from the girl before it could hurt her.
Starting this afternoon, Central Park will be busy celebrating the Full Moon Festival. Police caution park visitors and festivalgoers to be on the lookout for the coyote and to keep their children close. Officer Ambrose Vetch of New York City Animal Control and Welfare said, “This coyote has crossed a dangerous line. I will be scouring the park today, and I won’t stop until I find him.” When asked if the coyote, when captured, will still be taken to the Central Park Zoo, Officer Vetch said, “No, it’s attacked a child. We’ll have to put it down.”
A tear slid down Amelia’s cheek and plopped onto Trouble’s face. It was all her fault. Somehow, somehow, she had to put things to rights. She had to get the coyote away from the city, but how? How did one smuggle a wild coyote out of Manhattan?
She felt a hand on the top of her head. “What’s wrong, darling?”
Amelia’s mother’s beautiful face hovered above her.
How could she possibly explain? “Nothing, Mom,” she mumbled.
Her mother smoothed the hair away from her daughter’s face. “Well, I have no classes to teach today, so you and I are going to the Full Moon Festival in the park. Won’t that be fun?”
The festival. Central Park would be crawling with people. How would she ever find the coyote? She’d have to wait.
“I don’t really want to go, Mom,” Amelia said. What she wanted was to be by herself so she could come up with a plan.
“I promised Madame Reveuse we would all go together, honey.”
“Madame Reveuse?”
“Remember, darling, the old French woman two floors up? The one with the poodle?” Amelia’s mother poured a cup of tea. “She used to babysit you sometimes when you were very small.”
Amelia remembered. The smell of lilac. The taste of lemon biscuits.
Her mother dropped a quick kiss on the top of her daughter’s head. “We’ll leave at eleven o’clock, so don’t wander off.”
Officer Ambrose Vetch studied a detailed map of Central Park spread across his desk. He peered at the area on the map labeled The Ramble, so closely the tip of his nose all but touched the paper. As if he could see where Trouble was.
True to his word, Mischief would not let Trouble wander from the den. When the coyote complained of hunger, the fox brought him a fat rat. When he complained of thirst, Rosebud dragged the Frisbee to a leaking sprinkler head, filled it, and dragged it back to the den. When Trouble complained of boredom, the owl thumped him across the nose with his wing and called him a nincompoop.
Rosebud stroked the coyote’s throbbing snout with her tiny paws. “Trouble, get some rest. Tonight, we’ll be crossing the city with Mischief and the Professor.”
The fox lay down next to him. “You’ll need all your wits about you, dear.”
Trouble sighed. He would miss the small, quiet wisdom of Rosebud, and the tender heart and cinnamon smell of the fox. How could he leave them? And what about Minette? Mischief wouldn’t even let him leave the den this morning to find her and say good-bye.
As if he could.
Trouble curled up in misery with his strip of deer hide and fell into a fitful sleep.
His paws and legs twitched as he dreamed of playing a game of keep-away in the meadow with Twist. No matter how fast he ran, the older coyote was always just out of reach.
Then the dream shifted, as dreams do, to Trouble being chased by something unknown and terrible. He heard the voice of the wolf: “There are some things worse than death.” He heard the voice of his mother: “Nothing good comes from Makers.” He felt the eyes of Officer Vetch searching for him. He heard the scream of an eagle above, death talons reaching for him.
Trouble jerked awake. He sat up, panting with fear.
“You had quite a dream, poppet,” the fox whispered.
Trouble’s heart thundered in his chest. “Something very bad is going to happen,” he said.
The fox nuzzled his face. “Not if we can help it.”
“Where’s Mischief and the Professor?”
“Mischief left to check on some last-minute details,” the fox said, “and the Professor is keeping watch right outside.”
She nodded at the black boot. “Rosebud is resting.”
“Soon you’ll begin your journey home, my dear,” the fox said. “I’m going to just pop out and find you something to eat. You’ll need your strength.”
Trouble watched the white-tipped tail disappear through the opening. He didn’t think he could eat, no matter how delicious a thing she brought back. He could not shake the dream. A sick feeling of dread moved through his body like a dark poison.
31
Convergence
Mischief winged slowly westward across Central Park scouting the best route to take late that night into the city. They would have only a small window of time in which they might travel unseen.
Once a plan had formulated in his quicksilver mind, the crow flew north. He’d just make a quick stop at the Dumpster behind his favorite Chinese restaurant for a bite to eat.
Just as Mischief began his descent, he saw something that almost made him drop from the sky: there below him, lumbering slowly south through traffic, was the fresh-produce truck. THE fresh-produce truck.
“What?” Mischief squawked. “What in the name of all that’s feathered and fine is Trouble’s truck doing here? Now? Today?”
“No, no, no,” he moaned. “The plan is ruined.”
With a squawk, he lifted into the sky. If the truck headed back to the country, they were sunk.
But much to Mischief’s surprise, the truck turned left, then right. Mischief watched with growing puzzlement as the truck drove south and east, directly toward Central Park.
As Amelia had expected, people filled Central Park. White tents ringed the south end of the Great Lawn. A jazz band played on the steps of Be
lvedere Castle. A wide circle of people of all types—teenagers, soccer moms, artists, old hippies, not-so-old hippies, business people in button-downs—drummed on their drums. Kites and balloons floated on the summer breeze.
Amelia’s mother talked with Madame Reveuse in French as they strolled along the tree-lined boulevard. The poodle seemed more nervous than usual. She nudged Amelia’s hand with her wet nose and whined. The girl frowned at the dog’s diamond-sparkle pink collar and ridiculous haircut. She moved her hand away. She had a coyote to save.
Officer Vetch drove slowly along Central Park West, cursing New York City traffic under his breath. He desperately needed to park as close to The Ramble as possible. The pressure was on Vetch from city officials to catch the dangerous beast. Having a child-attacking coyote in Central Park was bad for business. And with so many people in the park, who knew what a wild coyote might do?
A spot opened up. Vetch whipped his New York City Animal Control and Welfare truck into the empty space, cutting off another car. The car honked. The driver yelled out his open window.
Vetch hopped out of his truck, put on his New York City Animal Control and Welfare hat, held up his hand, and said, “Official business! Dangerous animal on the loose!” He grabbed his catch pole from the back, pulled his hat down firmly on his head, and trotted off to The Ramble.
Once away from the crowds, Vetch studied the ground. He would have made any Junior Explorer proud with his tracking abilities. It wasn’t long before he found Trouble’s tracks and barely discernable trail through the forest. Over fallen logs. Through thickets of ivy, around a bench, and finally to the top of a rise. He stopped to catch his breath and admired the view of the wide lake and the city beyond.
A movement caught his eye. There, snagged on a bramble, a tuft of tawny fur waved like a flag in the breeze.
Officer Vetch plucked the fur from the thorns and rubbed it between his fingers. He held it to his nose and sniffed. Coyote. He knew it in his bones.