“People like horses. Gets more likes and shares than anything else we post.”
“That’s not what we do.”
“Do you just want me posting boring pictures of the distillery all day long? I’m doing the best I can, and even then, I don’t think the two hundred people we have following us on Instagram will be rattled by the deviation from business as usual.”
He didn’t seem satisfied with that response. But I reminded myself his critique had less to do with my not-very-impressive skills as our part-time social media PR guru and more to do with our overall lackluster annual performance.
I sighed, Walker and I exchanging looks in that way where we didn’t need to do more to express our frustration with Big Daddy. Big Daddy continued our business meeting over dinner before I felt my phone vibrate.
I slipped my cell out of my pocket, surprised to see No Good Mitchell pop up on my screen. I couldn’t help but chuckle. Hadn’t expected him to be such a smartass, but I probably should’ve.
“Gotta take this real quick,” I said, hopping up from my seat.
“Take what?”
“Official social media affairs here, Big Daddy. Gotta call Instagram and get them to take down those offensive horse posts, ya know?”
“It wouldn’t kill you to learn to take some constructive critic—”
I was in the adjoining hall before he could finish his sentence, eagerly answering the call—
“You fucking smartass,” I said, unable to stifle a grin.
“You need to get over here right now.” It wasn’t Cohen’s voice. It was Isaac’s. “Holy shit, it’s coming this fucking—”
“What the hell is going on?”
I didn’t hear anything on the other end, so I checked my screen only to find we’d been disconnected.
Fuck.
“Everything cool?” Walker asked, stepping into the hall.
“We gotta go visit the enemy. Now.”
He didn’t ask questions. We excused ourselves, and Big Daddy assumed it was because I was annoyed about the Instagram stuff, so he didn’t ask questions either. Walker and I jumped in his truck and headed over to the Mitchell house.
“You sure we don’t need to call 911?” he asked, not for the first time.
I’d dismissed it when he’d first made the suggestion, but I decided he needed more to soothe his concern. “They’re city boys. If they needed emergency services, that’s the first place they would have called. Not looked up my number.”
“Fair point.”
Although, given Isaac’s tone, it didn’t keep me from being concerned about the guys. As soon as we pulled up the gravel drive to the house, I noticed just a few lights were on.
I pulled the truck to a halt, and we hopped out, headed up the front porch, and rang the bell.
We waited in silence.
I rang again…then again.
Still nothing.
“Strange,” I muttered.
“You think they’re over at the distillery?”
“Let’s run over there, I guess…” I began before a loud sound, like screaming, came from inside.
Walker and I shared another look, like the one at dinner earlier.
I checked the doorknob. Locked. Suddenly, 911 seemed like a more reasonable suggestion than I’d initially considered.
“Take it down,” I said, holding the screen door open. Walker backed up and launched himself at the door, full-force.
“Fucking hell,” he said, grabbing his shoulder.
“Okay, together.” I propped the screen door open with a planter, and we barreled into the door on a count of three, popping the wood on the doorframe as we forced our entry.
“We’re here! No one shoot!” I didn’t imagine either of them had guns, but being born and raised in Buckridge, I knew better than to break down a door without clearly alerting the homeowner of my presence.
The screaming sound came again.
“Upstairs,” I said, following the sound up the stairwell.
We entered the upstairs hall, and I noticed the ladder descending from the open attic door. I didn’t waste time, and when I reached the top, in the dim light of a lone bulb hanging from the middle of the space, I saw Isaac and Cohen, arms stretched to the sides as they stood totally still on adjacent walls.
I eyed them peculiarly before Isaac pointed toward the floor, where a cell-phone light danced around. In its shadow, it took me a moment for my eyes to adjust and see the little guy.
A raccoon.
Walker stepped up beside me as I approached it. “Oh, hey, fella…aren’t you a cutie?”
As soon as it spotted us, it dropped the phone and hissed.
“Don’t make it angry,” Cohen said. “I think he was looking for food or something when I found him.”
“Aw, he’s just scared,” Walker said, moving to the middle of the room. “They scare easily, so you have to get him in a corner, and then…” He had this cocky expression on his face as he rushed the coon…who charged him.
“Holy fucking shit!” he called, backing up to the wall beside Isaac. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I couldn’t blame him, since that thing looked like it was about to tear him the fuck apart.
I got a quick idea, so I pulled my keys out of my pocket. Removing my mini-flashlight, I turned it on and flashed it about, catching the critter’s attention. I headed to a nearby window and popped it open.
“Come on, cutie,” I said as it climbed a few boxes to get closer to my light.
I stepped back as it got close, then chucked the flashlight out the window. It hurried after it, giving me time to pull the window closed.
“Aw, our hero,” Isaac said.
I could tell by Walker’s tight jaw and squared shoulders that he was annoyed about me getting credited as hero of the night.
“All that fuss was over a raccoon?” I asked.
“No, not just a raccoon,” Cohen said, slightly defensive. “That thing… You should have seen the way it was howling at us. I didn’t realize raccoons even made sounds, let alone like fucking banshees.”
“It could have had rabies,” Isaac said. “I could have gotten rabies, and then I would have had to bite Cohen.”
“You think rabies turns you into a zombie?” I teased.
“That thing was crawling all over me, and I could have sworn it bit me.” Isaac kept checking for a spot.
“Where?” I challenged.
“I don’t have a bite mark, but it could have bitten me.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “So everyone’s fine?” As soon as I said that, I noticed red on Cohen’s arm.
He followed my look. “Oh, fuck. I think that must’ve been from when that thing jumped out of the box I was holding. There were some loose boards in there. Looks like one got me.”
“Come on. Let’s get you patched up.”
Walker helped Isaac clean up the mess from the coon scare while Cohen and I headed to the kitchen. I found an old first-aid kit under the sink and got to helping him bandage it up as he relayed the rest of his great raccoon tale to me.
“I was going through boxes to find…hell, I don’t know. Anything about my family. And that’s when it jumped out. Isaac had been getting me to take some new app pics for him earlier in the day, so he was loading them when that thing decided to hold us hostage. Once Isaac dropped his phone, it got distracted, and we scared it and it scared us, and it became this standoff.”