Free A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel Page B

sat inside the kennels. The dogs were beautiful and stinky and hectic. From their pen, Kai and Tiger watched the proceedings without moving. Compared to these dogs, ours appeared medicated. I wasn’t sure Tiger was even of the same species.
    We finished with the watering, then stood back and watched the hounds try, without success, to settle down until they were called upon to perform the task for which they had been created. One blue tick who was exceptionally irritated chewed ceaselessly on the metal door of his cage; another couldn’t stop scratching his ear.
    “Daddy,” I said, reaching up to scratch my own ear, in sympathy. I would need a flea dip before the night was over. “Who were all those men?”
    “Aw, I don’t know, honey,” he said, flipping his cigarette into the gooseberry bush.
    “You mean they’re not your friends?”
    “Nope. I’d never seen them before. They’re good people, though.”
    “Well, how did we end up with their dogs?” I asked, completely mystified.
    “Word gets around when a man needs help,” he said. He took my hand and we headed toward the house. At the time I thought he meant that he was helping a group of men he didn’t know, but I quickly realized that the opposite was true.
     
    I GOT TO STAY UP late that night. I didn’t make a peep about it, but just kept sitting on the couch next to my mom like I was used to the nightlife. It got completely dark outside, and then darker than that, and then the moon rose up and silvered the yard, and just when I was about to fall asleep against Mom and my own better judgment, another truck pulled up in front of the house, and Dad stood up as if he’d been waiting.
    Mom didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything. I just climbed down off the couch and pulled my red galoshes on over my pajamas and followed my dad outside. He shook hands with the driver, who was tall, shy, and looked like he might have a tapeworm.
    “This ought to do it,” the man said, handing Dad a smaller crate. I couldn’t see what was inside it, but Dad held it away from his body.
    “Tell Ron I sent my thanks,” Dad said, walking toward the backyard.
    “Not a problem,” Lanky Man said, climbing in his truck like a marionette.
    I galoshed as fast as I could after Dad, and the dogs and I realized at the same moment that what Dad was holding was a raccoon. If I’d been any less a child I would have wet my pants from the sound the dogs made, collectively; one of them barked so hard and furiously that he tipped his kennel over, and he never stopped barking as he somersaulted inside it. Twice Dad lost control of the crate holding the raccoon and nearly dropped it, which would have resulted, of course, in the raccoon running right up my pajama leg to bite me in some tender place and make me rabid. I was so overcome by the commotion and the potential for disaster that I had to just sit right down on the sidewalk and put my head between my knees.
    I looked up and saw Dad gently setting the raccoon down in the middle of the yard, about twenty feet from the row of kennels. By this time the dogs were hysterical, throwing themselves against cage doors and leaping up and smacking their bony heads, repeatedly. When I was sure that none of them would actually escape, I walked out and joined my dad at the epicenter.
    “That raccoon is gonna have a heart attack,” I shouted. Lights were coming on all over Mooreland, everywhere except Reed and Mary’s house. “It must be scared out of its wits.”
    “That’s one way to look at it,” Dad said, glancing at the dogs and then at the raccoon, as if he were watching a tennis match.
    “What’s the other way?”
    “Well, this is the luckiest night of this particular raccoon’s life. There’s no chance it’ll ever come across thirty-six caged coon hounds again.”
    I nodded. After a few minutes Deputy Jim drove up next to our house slowly, with his lights off. He stepped out of his cruiser and stretched, then moved