The day finally came for Marty and his sisters to relinquish their freedom and choreograph their daily schedules again. Julie would be driving her Volkswagen to high school at Drake, after dropping Marty and Susie off at Lagunitas School. Marge began shuttling Rabbit to her job as a seamstress in San Rafael, which was conveniently close to the pet store. Otter remained on the property as a caretaker to the animals they had left, but Marty suspected he’d be sleeping most of the time.
Five months in Lagunitas helped Marty feel more like he belonged, and less like the new kid in town. His hair was longer, and his clothes were second hand from the thrift store because he’d outgrown nearly everything he brought from his former life. In other words, he looked like most of the other boys at school. He was no longer the newest student in class, which also made a difference. Maxine was still there, but much to his relief, she was no longer obsessed with him. William and all the other guys were back, too. Marty was popular and getting good grades, and everything was going well, until William started bringing pencils to school.
These were not ordinary pencils, in case you, dear reader, have forgotten the code word for marijuana cigarettes. Those were very dangerous contraband in those days – similar in audacity to smuggling medicine into a concentration camp. Mrs. Sledge was aggressively strict, and didn’t miss anything. For several days, Marty and William felt like black marketers being hunted by the police. He obtained the rolled joints from his older brother, who didn’t want to keep them in his room anymore. (Remember, their father was a minister.) So he brought his pencils to school every day, which was probably even more risky. Marty suggested they hide them just off campus before he got to school, and they carefully wrapped them in plastic and hid them in an old paint can, out of sight, under the bridge that crossed a small creek. That hiding place became their secret cache of weapons in the revolution against the stupefying tyranny of public education.
The reason Mrs. Sledge was a problem was because she now taught the eighth graders English in the afternoons. Mr. Inuktut taught everything else, and he had a young assistant who was very tall and looked exactly like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, so that’s what everyone called him. Between classes, Marty and William plotted many seditious maneuvers that never came to fruition, because talking about them was more fun. They dared not smoke any pot until after school, because they were certain everybody would know they were high and they’d get sent to prison for the rest of their lives. The temptation to subvert the dominant paradigm was strong; however, and eventually they smoked a joint on the bridge at the edge of campus. Or near the bridge, anyway. Actually, it was in a small clearing about 50 yards upstream from the bridge, screened by the branches of a massive bay laurel that had fallen decades ago and grew into a wall of new trees.
The would-be revolutionaries sneaked around through the shrubbery, covert in their fantasies that they were eradicating the evils of society. Then William coughed, “Some heroes we are, hiding in the poison oak like this. Let’s go play some hoops.” He’d brought his basketball, and the two boys had a silly time playing the funniest one-on-one tournament since the Harlem Globetrotters.
“Hey guys, you want to take me on? Two against one?” A familiar voice disrupted their giggly game.
It was “Shaggy,” a.k.a. Mr. Laurel, the assistant teacher from Scooby-Doo. A wave of paranoia crashed on the beaches of their foolish brains, and they froze, holding the ball and staring, open-mouthed, going “Uh-h-h-h…”
“Are you guys stoned?” Shaggy asked, grinning ear to ear as if it was the funniest thing in the world. So much for their careers as secret agents! “Hey, don’t worry, man. It’s after school, I don’t care what you guys do, all right? Let’s play ball.” He grabbed the basketball out of William’s hands and loped towards the basket.
The Marty and William statues stared at each other for a few seconds with the same open-mouthed disbelief, then they shrugged and started to play basketball with Shaggy – or Mr. Laurel – while ripped out of their gourds. Marty already liked him best of all his teachers, but this made him realize that Shaggy, too, was a real person with personality and life after his job. He was about ten years older than them, tall and slender, with long, scraggly blonde hair.
“Shag – I mean, Mr. Laurel, that’s traveling!” William complained as the athletic man sprinted past him in three steps to lay it in easily.
“You can call me Shaggy, it’s after school,” he smiled, and thrust his face close to William’s, “And I’m not traveling, you’re standing still.” He showed them how two steps can be subtly extended to two and a half without getting caught, and how to move their feet imperceptibly to take a charge.
The next day at class, Shaggy – or Mr. Laurel, now – acted as if nothing happened. He was his usual friendly self, but there were no winks or hints that they all shared a secret. At recess, Marty and William speculated that perhaps he’d told on them, but they decided he was too nice a guy to do that, and they were right. Nobody else ever knew they got ripped to their gills in the bushes behind the soccer goal after school. There was still one more pencil in the paint can they called “the magazine,” but the time was not yet ripe for more adventure. William’s brother got busted with dope at his high school, and their dad was on a crusade against the evils of drugs, so they had to be cool for a while. William made a point of going straight home and doing his homework every day, to be the model son instead of collateral damage.
The days were shorter but still warm and dry, and Marty hastened to get home and enjoy the redwoods. Susie preferred to walk home with her friends, so he was free to ride his bike and get there much earlier. One day he arrived back at the Ranch to find Otter playing with a cute new dog that resembled a bear cub. It was still a pup, and from his experience at the pet store he guessed it was about six months old. “It’s a Norwegian Elkhound,” Otter stated proudly. She was very friendly, and jumped into Marty’s arms and licked his face as soon as she met him. Her fur was brown and spongy, it was so dense and fine, and its beautiful cappuccino color rippled as she moved, because the tips were dark brown, and underneath was lighter. She had a wrinkled face and soft ears like a teddy bear, and a tail that curled forward over her back, like a husky.
“Where did you get her?” Marty asked, laughing in adoration as the pup tugged on the cuff of his jeans. The little rascal was very alert, and in tune with her surroundings, but most of all the humans.
“She just showed up today and said, ‘here I am.’ She said she’s called Freyja,” the Inuit revealed with a straight face. Marty wasn’t about to argue with him. That wily Inuit was eerily familiar with things far beyond the awareness of most people. Otter continued, as if conversing with canines was a normal occurrence. “Animal spirits come and go in this world, like buddies on our journey.” Marty thought he was pulling his leg with another of his “old Indian tricks,” but he was serious. His black eyes challenged the boy to prove him wrong. Actually, Marty pondered, if he was telling the truth, that meant the dog just appeared out of thin air and spoke to him. He didn’t challenge the veracity of his indigenous myths because it was more fun to believe him. Anyway, it was simply delightful to have another dog in the family, and that was enough!
“Maybe she belongs to somebody around here,” Marty blurted with sudden awareness, “Did you ask the McAuliffes?”
“You think I got shit for brains, boy? She ain’t from around here,” Otter said levelly. “She’s Freyja, the Norse goddess of love.”
“Oh, okay.” Marty imagined that this was either a cultural legend of northern latitudes, or a few chapters of Otter’s tribal knowledge were malfunctioning. Either way, it was pointless to argue, so he deftly changed the subject. “Is she gonna sleep here at your teepee?”
“Yup,” Otter held the gently squirming pup close to his chest, and Marty could sense a bond between them that was deeper than he could fathom, and out of respect them both, he never again inquired of her provenance.
Freyja was in love with the whole world, and was the friendliest dog anyone had ever known. Naturally, everyone in the White family fell in love with her. She wanted to be around people all the time; to be part of what they were doing. Marty reflected that if he lived his life as joyously as he possibly could, and made the lives of everyone around him better, he might earn the right to come back as a dog like Freyja. The human world simply did not deserve her.
Marty’s 14th birthday came with less fanfare than the dog, because his family was rarely all in the same place at the same time. Good Ol’ Dad never called, because he was probably afraid Marge would answer. He sent a card, but it was a few days late so he could mail it to his ex-wife in the same envelope with his monthly alimony check, and save a stamp. Marge was working later and later in the evenings, and Julie often stayed out with friends, sometimes sleeping at their homes because it was easier to study close to school (or so she said). It was just a couple of weeks till Halloween, and the forest was worn out and dusty from its summer splendor. Marty couldn’t wait to experience their first holiday season at the Rusty Bucket Ranch. He wondered what kids did for trick or treating out in the boonies – where the houses were few and far between – but he didn’t want to ask anyone for fear of being ridiculed. He decided to follow Susie’s lead. She and Tillie were going to the dance at the Community Club in Woodacre, where there were standard houses built reasonably close together, so it would be easier to get some free candy. If they went trick-or-treating out there in the woods, they’d probably get mugged by a raccoon.
Susie and Tillie dressed in pajamas like little girls, complete with teddy bears. “That’s a neat trick,” Marty deadpanned, “You dress as yourselves and people give you candy. Ow!”
He decided not to wear a costume, only an oversized Army jacket, but carried one of his mom’s frazzled old wigs in his pocket, just in case. The “dance” at the club was lame – just a few pre-teens listening to bubble gum records on the stereo – so he took the girls out to get some free candy. Unfortunately, the spirit of Halloween was lacking in that neighborhood. He could sense that was probably his last year trick-or-treating, as the adults were eyeing him suspiciously; judging him too old to qualify for a tiny box with four Milk Duds in it. When Marge picked them up and drove them back home, he got his first inkling that growing up was a very big responsibility, and things would soon get a lot harder. Marty realized he should enjoy the ride while he was still in the back seat, metaphorically speaking.
On the last day before the Thanksgiving holiday at school, Marty and William decided things had calmed down enough that they could sacrifice the last pencil in memory of the glorious revolution. Of course they checked ‘the magazine’ almost every day to make sure it was still there. There was only a half day of school before vacation, so they had lots of time to hang out before going home. The paint can was still under the bridge where they’d left it, but a couple of earwigs had taken up residence. They were rudely evicted to rescue the contraband. After a quick powwow they decided not to hide in the bushes, and lit up boldly on the bridge. They kept a nervous watch for anyone approaching, while smugly grinning through the smoke and congratulating each other on their audacity. After a few tokes there was a sudden, unmistakable sound of a bicycle tire grinding to a halt on the gravel path. The fearless guerillas nearly jumped out of their fatigues into the trees, and Marty envisioned a flash cartoon where their vacant clothes hung in the shapes of their bodies for two seconds, then crumpled to the ground. “Oh, it’s Shag – I mean, Mr. Laurel.” William sounded immensely relieved, as if he thought it might be his dad.
“It’s ‘Shaggy’ after school, remember?” The gangling assistant teacher got off his bike. “What are you guys doing, lighting up here? This is right next to school grounds.” The two boys stared blankly, trying to think of something to say that might obviate their predicament, and then inspiration struck.
“You want some?” Marty offered the joint to his teacher.
Shaggy laughed in utter disbelief, then cocked his head and peered at Marty, putting his hands on his hips. Then he glanced nervously all around and laughed some more, then put his hands down and confided, “Sure, all right man. Don’t mind if I do.” He took the joint and inhaled as if he’d done it many times before, raising his eyebrows appreciatively. Blowing a stream of smoke from his mouth, he put his hands in his pockets and exclaimed, “It’s pretty good shit, too!” They forgot their roles as young students and young teacher, and related like equal human beings, chatting about sports and sharing a momentary respite from having to pretend all the time. Marty developed a lasting impression that Shaggy was the coolest teacher on the planet… not just because he smoked a joint with them, but because he actually was the coolest teacher – a warm, genuinely caring soul who did everything in his power not to embarrass kids or make them feel inferior.
Pedaling madly all the way home with his wheels barely touching the ground, Marty repeated a dazed refrain to himself over and over, like the music from that scene in The Wizard of Oz where the witch is riding a bicycle in a tornado. “I just smoked a joint with my teacher! I just smoked a joint with my teacher!”
