Run!

Luna Vista had recently been having a bit of a problem with bears. It seems a few bears from the neighboring hills had gotten a little hungry during the recent drought and come down to town to find some grub.

“I saw one ole' bear get into a dumpster and come out with his own sack lunch.” Rodney told everyone at The Store. It had gotten so bad, there were rumors that the city was going to put locks on the dumpster lids.

Ben and Barbara had been a fixture in town for many years. The elderly couple were always seen together, and once seen, were not easily forgotten - Barbara being blind and Ben not being able to see. Actually, Ben could see, but only about two inches from his face. They did get around despite their joint lack-of-sight, though. Both were active in the local church. Barbara played the organ at church and Ben had been a deacon since… well, since anyone could remember.

RoeMayo was home late one Wednesday night, sitting on the back porch of his little house behind The Store. It had been a long day and he was just enjoying the cool of the night with some refreshment. Now, most people that knew RoeMayo would have guessed that he was a cold beer-kinda guy. Some might have even thought him a bourbon man, maybe even a closet single-malt connoisseur. No, RoeMayo’s nighttime aperitif of choice was a Sprite…neat. He noticed Rodney and Imogene’s Great Dane trot over to the back of The Store and jump into the open dumpster. ‘Whatever’, he thought and drifted back to the deep musings induced by a beautiful night’s sky.

Ben and Barbara were the last to leave church that night and Ben, being a deacon, locked up. They only lived a few blocks away and since neither could drive, they walked. Ben, arm in arm with Barbara, who tapped rhythmically with her walking stick. Tap, tap, tap, a slow steady metronome in the night. Instead of walking along the highway, they cut back half a block and walked along the alley. In another part of the country, this would be unheard of, but this was Luna Vista. Crime was almost non-existent. Or as Imogene once told a tourist who had gushed, “This town is so quaint, I bet there is no crime at all.”

“Yeah, it’s kinda hard to rob the poor or rape the willing.”

RoeMayo’s profound reflections were broken by the tapping of Barbara’s stick. He saw Ben and Barbara walking along the alley and realized they would be walking directly past the dumpster containing Imogene’s Great Dane. He started to call out a warning about the dog in the dumpster, but for some reason remained silent-- or as a poet would say, morbidly mute.

Sure enough, just as Ben and Barbara got to the dumpster, the dog lifted his large head out of the open lid, eye-level with Ben.

“RUN BARB! IT’S A BEAR!”, and with that Ben took off running as fast as he could down the alley, leaving Barbara to fend for herself.

RoeMayo fell off his chair laughing as the staccato decrescendo of “TAPTAPTAPTAPTAP” echoed in the night.