Chapter Two – Popcorn Catch

The following afternoon, Rowdy plays a game of popcorn catch out on the backyard patio. He tosses a piece of popcorn as high as he can and tries to catch it in his mouth, but it bounces off his nose onto the ground. The blue patio tiles around him are covered in popcorn like white sprinkles on a blue frosted cake.

His mom comes out, leans a broom and dustpan against a nearby lounger for him to use to clean up later, and grabs a handful of popcorn for herself from the bag. “Your aim is improving.”

The boy looks at all the popcorn around him on the patio. “It sure smells good when it hits my nose.”

“Well, you keep at it, Rowdy.” She wipes some butter off his cheek. “You mastered tic-tac-toe, you can master this.” She winks at him and returns inside the house.

Rowdy tosses another piece of popcorn into the air. When he goes to catch it, someone behind him says, “Straighten your neck, then leap at it and snatch it out of the sky.” This was followed by the sound of snapping teeth.

Rowdy does as suggested and catches his first piece in a long time that isn’t by chance. It’s super buttery and taste better than ever, especially since he caught it. When he turns to see who gave him the good advice, there sits the big brown dog from yesterday with Rowdy’s lucky stick in his mouth.

Rowdy grins from ear to ear. “Hi, dog! You’re back! And you’ve got my stick.”

The dog shakes his head and his ears flop about, sounding like clapping hands but with floppy dog ears. The dog makes a strange groaning growl sound that goes up and down like a person talking. Rowdy closes his eyes and listens really hard, and the next thing he knows, he’s hearing, “Nope, it’s my stick,” the dog says, slobbering around the stick as he speaks.

Rowdy’s mouth drops open. The bag of popcorn slips from his hands and lands with a soft thud. “I can’t believe that worked. This is so awesome. But it’s still my stick.”

The dog shakes his head again. “I won the game. It’s my prize for winning. I almost lost it yesterday chasing that nut collector squirrel. My enthusiasm got the better of me and I misplaced it along the chase. I hunted all over those woods, but I didn’t give up because I knew I’d find it eventually. I knew because there is nothing in the woods that smells like that stick. Why is that, you wonder. It’s because that stick smells like buttery popcorn.”

He eyes the ground around him, popcorn niblets everywhere slathered in freshly melted butter. It’s enough to put his drool glands in overdrive and make him light-headed. “Looks like I arrived just in time.”

Rowdy stares at the dog. “Dog, how is it you’re talking to me?”

He tilts his head to the side, thinking. “Would you rather I ignore you? I see people do that a lot but it seems rude to me.”

Rowdy reaches out and touches the dog, making sure he is real. “I can understand you.”

The dog’s tail wags happily in the air. “I know. Isn’t it cool?” His tail-wagging pauses. “You know, no one has ever listened to me.”

Rowdy stares back at the dog. “But why do I understand you?”

The dog’s tail starts up its wagging motor again, like a big wind propeller flopping about behind him. “I dunno, maybe because you listened just right and heard me?”

A little dazed, Rowdy moves toward the broom and dustpan his mom brought out earlier to sweep up the popcorn. “With four older sisters it would be hard not to be a good listener.”

The dog eyes the ugly faded blue broom. He doesn’t mind a little dirt on his food, that’s to be expected when you eat off of the ground, but to purposefully spoil that fresh melted butter with grit from the crumbling patio grout is just plain wrong. Brooms, the tool of the amateur.

When the boy picks up the broom, the dog steps forward. “Hold on there, kid. Let me help you with that.” He grabs the broom handle in his jaws, leaving marks in the blue paint, and tosses it aside like a dangerous snake.

He looks back at the boy. “It’s a good thing I showed up when I did because I’m a cleanup specialist, and it just so happens that popcorn is one of my favorites to clean up.”

Rowdy shrugs his shoulders. “Have at it. I was going to give it to the squirrels.”

The dog’s eyebrows go up. “So that’s why that squirrel was mad at me yesterday,” he says and lowers his nose to the nearest piece. As he inhales the scent of the popcorn, he’s transported to a land of buttery goodness where it is so buttery problems don’t exist because nothing can stick to anything. All worries just slide off your buttery mind, leaving slug trails made of butter.

He finishes sniffing the piece, then gently nibbles it off the ground with his lips, and says, “Yum.”

He eats the next one. “Yum.”

He eats his way around the patio, one piece of popcorn at a time, softly saying, “Yum,” after each one, like a tiny prayer. “Yum, yum, yum,” he goes.

He’s had a lot of movie theater popcorn out behind those big mall theaters but never popcorn as buttery and salty as this. When the dog finishes his cleanup, he sits and looks at the boy. “You make some mean popcorn, kid.”

Rowdy grins. “I know, good, yeah? My mom lets me make it myself. She tells me not to put too much butter on it but who is to say how much is too much?” Rowdy thinks it’s strange that he’s talking to a dog, but he’s always talked to dogs, it’s just that this dog is actually understanding him. So he decides to just be himself and do what he’s always done, which is to talk to dogs. “Too much butter to my sisters is for them just to see the cube. I once chased them out of the kitchen with only half a tablespoon of butter.”

The dog listens raptly. He’s never heard anyone talk so freely about food before, like it just came out of cabinets, willy-nilly.

The kid puts his hands on his hips, warming to his subject. “I know, you’re wondering just how much butter do I use? Well, I’ll tell you. I melted the whole dang cube. I don’t mess about when it comes to popcorn. Would you if given the chance to make your own? No, you wouldn’t. Even my sisters, when they think the others aren’t looking, will sneak a handful. That’s why I always make a lot.”

The dog thinks of the messiest food the boy could possibly make where he’ll need a cleanup specialist. “Have you ever made cookies before? I love cookies.”

He licks back the drool, already tasting the mixing bowls he’d lick clean.

Rowdy picks up the broom and dustpan and his lucky stick to take inside. “So what do I call you? You can call me Rowdy, everyone does. And it’s not because I’m loud, it’s because everyone else is so quiet.”

The dog chuckles at the thought of quiet. With big sensitive ears like his, there is no such thing as quiet. “Okay, Rowdy,” the dog says and raises his paw to shake. “I’ve never had a name before so maybe you can help me out with that.”

Rowdy grabs the mutt’s paw in his hand and shakes. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Mutt.”

“Mr. Mutt?”

Rowdy nods. “Yes, I like the sound of that.” He wipes the butter off his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t know about you, but that popcorn made me thirsty.”

Mr. Mutt glances across the patio. “I’m eyeing that puddle over there to quench that.”

“Let’s get something to drink inside. Follow me,” the boy says and heads across the patio to the house.

Mr. Mutt raises his eyebrows as he ambles behind. “I’ve never been inside a house before. I mean, I’ve sniffed around an open garage or two but never gone inside.”