A Frightful Discovery
So, I'm continuing my mingle with The Get Along Gang, just because I so love them from growing up. Where did these beautiful cartoons with reasonable morals go? I am not an insufferable conservative (did I say that right?), but I do think our society is missing a little sympathy. I miss those 'good old days'. . .and now I'm thirty-five, I can say that with a smile! Yes, yes, no yiff, I know, but don't worry, there is plenty of yiff in my back left jeans pocket, and I will share plenty. Have a splendid weekend, and thank you for reading.
Sharp rain and golden, clapping thunder and lightning shook Green Meadow as Montgomery "Good News" Moose, dripping and shaken (he just was damned plain scared of thunder and lightning), made a final turn around the hill and bounded up the steps, dashing into the caboose. His good friends, Dotty Dog, Zipper Cat, Woolma Lamb, Bingo "Bet-It-All" Beaver, Rocco Rabbit, Lolly Squirrel, and Flora "Forget-Me-Not" Fox were seated in comfortable lounge chairs, bean bags, a faux leather couch and the picnic table near the old seven-piece drum set that had been found nearby Mr. Hoofnagel's Ice Cream Emporium one very glorious summer day not so far back.
"Montgomery, you're one soaked moose!" laughed Bingo, as Montgomery shambled his way inside, closing the door behind.
"Yeah, well, fuck you, Beaver" responded Montgomery with just a small bit of sarcasm. "It's only raining about a fucking twelve inches an hour."
"Hey!" spoke both Dotty and Lolly at once. "Stop that swearing. We're ladies." "That's right," added Woolma Lamb.
Montgomery plopped down on an empty seat in the faux black leather couch, naked except for a half-dry white tee-shirt and brown khakis. His size ten feet were bare, and the short fur on top of them was now curled. He found the dial to the large AM/FM/cassette player located at the foot of the couch and turned it on 96.5, to hear "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds.
"Oh, I just love this song!" cried Rocco Rabbit, as he got up and started dancing in great time to the infectious beat. "Down, down, down, hey, hey, hey, HEY!" screamed the cute, bandage-eared rabbit, who was now very excited.
"Get down, boy!" said Bingo, whose large, flat tail began to make a hard beat against the caboose floor.
"This is a great cheerleading number!" Dotty Dog cried out, and began to move her sexy pom-poms in verticals and horizontals and continued by doing amazing back flips, just missing the top of the caboose.
Before anyone else knew it, the whole Get Along Gang was dancing. . .except for Montgomery "Good News" Moose. The hot fever inside the rocking little caboose could have been compared to a thick gossamer gray mist, where everything but the driving music and pulsing senses were ignored, even Montgomery.
Then the song ended, and everybody laughed, and giggled. . .except for Montgomery. Instead, the for-the-most-part happy moose had large drips of clear liquid falling from the corners of his almond-shaped brown eyes. . .and it was not the rain.
"Montgomery!" exclaimed Dotty Dog, Woolma Lamb, and Flora "Forget-Me-Not" Fox. The trio of ladies ran to their disturbed moose friend, shaking in some form of obvious grief, now half-lying on the faux leather couch. "Hey, man, what's goin' on?" asked Zipper Cat. Bingo "Bet-It-All" Beaver went to the bookshelf to get the box of tissues and Rocco had moved in quick to the vacant seat on the couch to spread a soft, white furred arm around his troubled friend.
"What is it, buddy?" Bingo handed Montgomery a tissue. Montgomery grasped the small cloth and blew into it, releasing a good puddle of greenish-yellow yuck.
For a few minutes, all Montgomery's friends could get out of him was more tears, and groans, and God knew what else. In an unconscious collective, rather Get-Along kind of way, everyone thought at once Must be something serious.
"Montgomery?" asked Dotty. "What is it?"
With a plaintive and shuddering sigh, Montgomery sat back and tried to breathe deep and relax. It didn't work, but he attempted to smile a little and compose himself.
"I just can't believe it. I ju. . .just can't BELIEVE IT!" roared little Montgomery, just about scaring everyone away, except for the fact they knew this wasn't their real friend on a day-to-day basis.
With a half-hearted shrug of his still wet paws and a scratch of his yellow antlers, Montgomery swallowed his tears, and his pride, and made way with what he really did need to tell his deepest and dearest friends.
"I'm going to tell you what's up, but please, let me finish before you ask any questions. I'm not even sure of what the answers to them could be. Yeah, why don't you all just sit around."
So, with Dotty at his left, Flora at his right, and Zipper, Rocco, Lolly, and Woolma sitting in a half-circle under the three of them on the couch, they began to listen with great intent to what Montgomery had to tell them.
"I just found out my mother is an alcoholic."
Needless to say, this was quite unexpected, and gasps and murmurs drifted from the six listeners.
"I came home, and Mom and Dad were in the middle of a huge fight. Dad was trying to pull Mom's large purse out of her paws, and Mom was calling Dad a 'bastard' and a 'fucking cheat'. Mom started throwing punches, and Dad couldn't hold back. She landed him a sharp one on his glasses. They didn't break, but they landed on the dining room table.
"It gets worse. Dad hit the tile floor, and busted his ankle, twisting it the wrong way when he fell. A lot of shouting happened afterwards, and then Mom just came out with this thin glass bottle from her purse and just sipped long from it. It was amazing that Dad nor I had ever seen it before. That or anything like it. We just didn't know. We had no. . .no idea," stammered Montgomery "Good News" Moose, and then he continued to sob again, this time on Dotty's cheerleading uniform, as she held him in her strong, soft, cream arms.
"Oh, Monty. . ." crooned Dotty, as Montgomery shook and shivered like a frail leaf caught in a massive hurricane in her embrace. "You're here now, with us."
"That's right, Montgomery. You're here, and safe."
Nobody moved or said anything for a while, while Montgomery allowed his sobs to flow free onto the warm, inviting cloth of Dotty's summery outfit. Thank God for my friends, thought he. _What would I do without them? _ The rain continued to fall, but the thunder had faded away and the lightning ceased to be. Instead, many birds began to sing and the sunlight started to peak through the soft pink curtains of the window above the couch, making Dotty and Montgomery look both like little angels in recovery.
Nobody really knew what to say to Montgomery's story. Then, Rocco Rabbit spoke up.
"My older brother, Randy, well, he's a drug addict."
This was news to the Get Along Gang, as well. All eyes directed towards the lop-eared, tough-looking rabbit to hear what he had to say.
"As soon as Randy left for college, he started smoking pot, like, all the time. He would send me letters once in a great while, letting me know what was up. He was real proud of his smoking big blunts, as his "brothas" supplied him, but he always said it was no big deal. Everybody does it, he said.
"Well, I once wrote him back, saying Mom doesn't do it, and I don't do it. How is that everybody? After that, he stopped writing. Then, he soon dropped out of college and, well, disappeared. What else did he do? I'm not sure, although I heard rumors of cocaine, heroin, acid. He's thirty now, and he lives at home. He works in Northfield doing retail and pays rent at home, but he has to attend these meetings. I don't know if he does or so, but he's stayed clean, as far as my Mom and I can tell."
Bingo spoke up and raised his voice. "And how is that supposed to help, Rocco?"
"Hey!" replied Montgomery with a bit of a sharp tongue. "As far as I know, alcohol sounds a lot for my mother like pot did to Rocco's brother. It's not good. Any words of good advice or comfort right now is good for me, I suppose."
"That's right, Bingo," chimed Flora. She stood up and held Montgomery's right paw, no longer shaking so hard but still not relaxed. "We're here for each other, through thick and thin, and if that means getting involved with the people in our friends' lives outside of this caboose, then ever more the so. "
Bingo blushed and stood up. "Oh, geez, I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry, Montgomery."
"Oh, shut up, and come over here, all of you." A happy and collective breath of relief swept through the thick foreign emotion of rare uncertainty among the Get Along Gang friends, and everybody, Montgomery "Good News" Moose, Dotty Dog, Zipper Cat, Woolma Lamb, Bingo "Bet-It-All" Beaver, Lolly Squirrel, and Flora "Forget-Me-Not" Fox, gathered around the now less-burdened moose and a group hug became manifest, warming the small caboose with great love and hope for a better tomorrow.
On the radio, drifting into the now sacred quiet, came "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail. Once again, the universal Zen made itself present as the ultimate healer of all wounds and tears in the ever-present suffering world.