Ricky and Cha Cha (Part 2)
Four months later, a man and dog walked along the road not far from my domicile. The man walked with a pronounced limp. The dog bounded along without a hitch.
I was driving home after a day on a construction job and dead tired, but I'll always look at someone walking with a dog.
It was Ricky and Cha Cha! I stopped the car and powered down the window.
Ricky greeted me like an old friend. I asked about his missing bicycle. It was shot to hell, a busted chain on a custom bike, and he didn't have a line on another one. He'd suffered a recent hernia and it was all he could do to take Cha Cha out for a walk. He wanted to ride again, bad. He thought it would be easier than walking.
I told him I had a great bike that I hadn't ridden in seven months. It was all his, although the tires might be low, if not flat. Just follow me, I said, and you can have it.
Ricky and Cha Cha followed me home and I set him up with a sweet ride. The tires hadn't lost a pound of pressure and the rig pedaled like a dream. He commented on how nice the bike was, first class, top notch components. I offered to buy Cha Cha some canned food from the nearby convenience store but he told me he was feeding her cooked chicken and steak.
I offered to buy him dinner from the store.
“I could really use a beer,” he said, “a clamato kind.”
What's a clamato beer I asked?
He gave me the lowdown and a minute later he was the recipient of two 24-oz cans of some Budweiser picante-flavored clam/tomato concoction packaged in a special tote bag I rigged up for the bike.
Ricky thanked me. We shook hands. Cha Cha came over and shook my hand. Ricky rode away with Cha Cha flanking him to the right.
A couple months later I was walking down a road and saw Ricky limping toward me with Cha Cha at his side.
We met. I didn't ask why he wasn't riding the bicycle. He told me he and Cha Cha were now living in an old RV parked next to a house not far from where we stood. I knew the house well and had regularly taken note of the various youthful miscreants who drove various beat-up sedans in and out of there all the time. I mentioned this to Ricky and he shook his head. He said one of the young men was the son of the woman who rented the house. She was on disability and supporting him and his girlfriend. No one seemed to work. They just partied. He said he met the mother on one of his walks with Cha Cha, shared his story, and she offered him use of the RV.
I didn't ask what had happened to the care taking gig.
Then Ricky told me he was looking into a job opportunity, a truck driving school in Medford. He could make $70,000 a year and Cha Cha could ride shotgun. No more walking or bicycling. It was his dream job because he'd be alone with his dog and not around assholes.
I asked how he'd heard about the school. Ricky said someone at the library had mentioned it and helped him research it online. It was some kind of veteran's program and the student lived onsite in barracks for several weeks during the training. Upon graduation, a job was waiting, as was the open road.
The only hitch, Ricky told me, the program didn't allow dogs.
I immediately volunteered to take care of Cha Cha during the training.
He didn't hesitate. “No.”
There was no way he was leaving Cha Cha.
“I'll sneak him in there some way,” he said.
I laughed at that. I asked if he needed a ride to Medford. He said he already had it covered. Someone at the library had already offered to drive him.
A month or so later I was admiring the ospreys riding the thermals above the Rogue River at the South Jetty when I saw an old 80s Ford Pickup with a canopy parked at such an angle to watch the river meet the ocean. It's the spot of one of the great natural drive-in movie theaters in Oregon.
Sitting in the driver's seat was Ricky! Cha Cha was at his side, staring at the ocean. Who says dogs don't like an ocean view?
I walked over to the truck. Ricky saw me and rolled down the window (oh for the ability to still roll down a window in a vehicle!). Cha Cha bounded over and wanted to shake hands. I asked what happened to the trucking school. Ricky gave me the scoop.
The school didn't work out. He scraped up some money to buy an old truck that he could maintain himself. He'd rigged up the Ford's bed as a studio apartment (complete with sink and built-in propane camper stove that also serves as a heater. He wasn't going back to the RV and the miscreant neighbors. He was mobile again with the truck and Cha Cha loved it. What dog doesn't love riding around in a truck? Ricky said he camped along forest roads in the hills or the camouflaged turnouts along Highway 101. Always in view or within sound of the ocean.
I said it all sounded all great and I gave him enough cash to fill the gas tank. He thanked me and went back to the view.