The White Flash went on a run this afternoon at Sunset High School.  After he finished a dog came up to him and licked the sweat off his shins.  The owner was on the other side of the track,  walking alone and gazing up at the sky with a brown leather leash in her right hand gazing into the clouds as if she knew her dog was only a few feet away.  Her pooch was a beautiful Bailey’s-colored Labradoodle with a black nose and hair so curly you couldn’t run your fingers through it.  The canine and the White Flash locked eyes.  Neither one of them looked away until suddenly the dog spoke in perfect English, “Aren’t you the “White Flash?  I could smell you a mile away.  You had to stop running for me to get a good look at you.  The blur so bright when you were running you looked like a laser beam and your smell burned all the way up my snout and into my cranium.  I had to stop and flop on to the ground pretending I was rolling in cat poop.”  Then he whispered,  “They’re coming for your nuts.”

The dog’s owner yelled “come” and the dog ran off.  The White Flash looked back at the two of them, stretched out and walked back to his car.  Back at the White Flash’s home he took a shower and got dressed.  He thought, who would want my nuts?

He went downstairs and dry rubbed chicken with Uncle Tibbs spices and slathered the boneless, skinless thighs with sauce so spicy it made his eyes water.  The White Filled filled up his Weber with briquettes and set those cubes aflame.  He made myself a Jim Beam and water, with two fingers more bourbon than usual.

Two grey squirrels were chasing each other in his Japanese maple tree.  He sat down in a lawn chair and stared into his drink.  Before the White Flash could put the glass to his lips, the squirrels jumped on to the top of the wood fence and faced him.  They looked like identical twins on their hind legs, their whiskers twitched on their furry faces, and their bushy tails waved like a wind chime.  The boy squirrel spoke first in a surprisingly deep voice that reminded him of James Earl Jones, “White Flash, you are a legend amongst our people.”

The White Flash said, “What?”

Now it was the girl squirrel’s turn.  Her voice was high pitched and cute like Bernadette Peters.  “Our people are light, swift, and agile.  We leap from branch to branch and scurry up and down trees using our sharp claws to dig into the trunks; we always descend head first.  You can always see us.  You can never smell us.  We make no sounds when we move.”

The White Flash chugged his drink and went indoors.  He grabbed the Jim Beam bottle.  His mother in law was watching the San Francisco Giants vs. Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game on television.  She didn’t look up.  He refilled his glass, checked the charcoal, and sat back down.  The White Flash tried to look away but four tiny black eyes looked down on him like he was a priceless piece of art.

The girl squirrel continued.  “Maybe we don’t need to spend so much time on the ground, foraging.”

The White Flash asked, “Is there a point to all this?”

“We’re here for your nuts.”

To Be Continued…