When it All Comes Crashing

Chapter 3

Over a week after leaving New Orleans via a meandering route along the coast, a strong circle to the north to avoid the Houston traffic, and several business stops along the way, we were camped someplace between Austin and San Antonio.

I got up and threw Steve's hoodie on over a pair of yoga pants, my laundry day attire. I gathered up my one armload of clothes, slipped a laundry pod, my toothbrush and keys in the hoodie pocket, pulled up the hood, and emerged from the van letting Lo out with me. "Watch out for coyotes!" I called after her as she disappeared into the scrub surrounding the campground.

I trekked up the path toward the clubhouse, finding the laundry facility, starting my one small load and ducking into the bathroom to brush my teeth etc, while it ran. Then, figuring I still had a bit of time, I ducked into the small shop adjacent to the clubhouse. Everything was obviously price gouged, but the convenience of not making another stop last night had outweighed the tourist trapping for me. I bought a few things and some ice for the cooler, then I moved the laundry to the dryer to finish while I took my purchases back to the van.

Lo was sitting beside the van looking extremely proud of herself. At her feet lay a possum, almost half as big as herself, field dressed in her usual style. She was also covered in burrs, little stickers with their velcro exteriors and thorny goatheads both, the seedheads caught in her long fur, head to tail.

I groaned in frustration. "Lo, what the actual fuck."

She blinked, looked down at her prize and back up at me.

"I said a month, Lokitty. Regardless of that, I'm not cooking some fucking trash-fed campground possum."

She yowled at me.

"I don't care that you didn't get to eat the rabbit. I cooked it, and that was the deal. Do better negotiating next time. If you wanna eat it, fine, but you can do it au natural like the cat you are. It's not touching my tools. And if you barf it up later it better not be in the van."

Her tail lashed back and forth and she huffed loudly.

"I'm not cooking that for you. I'd be mad as hell at you right now even if you didn't drag that back here. Look at you! It's gonna take me half the afternoon with a shedding comb to get all that mess out of you! I've half a mind to save time and just shave your ass again!"

She huffed at me again, grabbed her kill by the back leg and drug it back out into the scrub toward the nearby cottonwood-lined stream.

I shook my head after her and pulled my camp stove and the cooler out of the van, setting them on the table. "And watch out for fuckin' coyotes!" I yelled after her.

"That's a big cat." I heard in a low drawl.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's either part bobcat, or some kind of spirit creature." I looked up to see who had spoken. And up. And up.

He was huge. Not quite as big as Hulk, but for sure one of the bigger enhanced people I'd interacted with. Well over seven feet, by my guess, and nearly as broad. A warm orangey-brown color all over, his body was covered in heavy leathery plates. Finally my gaze found dark brown eyes in a heavy-featured face. His gaze quickly shifted back to the way the cat had gone. "You sure she's not a bruja?"

"Nope." I chuckled, "Wonder all the time." I opened the drain valve on the cooler to let the melted ice from yesterday out into a bucket below. "I may eventually find out whether Lo's a curandera of some kind." He blinked down at me for the flip of cultural reference and I smiled up at him. "But the world is full of interesting and surprising people these days, and she's been a good travel partner who's brought me some solid luck." I reloaded with the new ice I'd just bought, and pulled out a few things. "So, I try not to hold it against her when she does very 'cat' things. Like bringing me random headless animals from time to time."