“This sure is a lousy way to come up in the world,” Johnny moaned as he looked out from his rooftop prison.
The darkening forest loomed all around; wind rattled its branches. The trees looked like hungry beasts in the gloom waiting to devour great helpings of roasted badger.
The hard, bare earth surrounding the house was without trees, however. A single prickly bush was all that grew in the barren yard, as if the house had scared away all other greenery.
Thunder grumbled.
“Help! Can anybody hear me?” Johnny bleated.
Of course not. Nobody lived within shouting distance, and nobody would be out walking with a storm brewing up. The thunder spoke again, much closer now, and Johnny cowered against the chimney stones. There simply had to be some way to get off this roof!
He eyed the trellis nailed against the side of the house – how much better it looked when viewed from the sturdy stepladder!
“That doesn’t look strong enough to hold my weight,” Johnny said.
But then a tremendous thunder clap ripped the air, and lightning forked overhead. Suddenly, the trellis looked much more inviting. Johnny scuttled over and lowered himself onto the slats.
“Here goes!”
For a few seconds the trellis held, and wild hope blazed in Johnny’s heart. But then the whole thing pulled away from the wall. Nails screeched as they yanked free from the wooden siding.
“Ahhhhh!” Johnny screeched along with them.
The entire trellis swung away from the house. Johnny went with it, as if he were riding some ghastly pendulum.
“What else can go wrong?” he whined.
Then the storm hit.
A mighty gust of wind caught the trellis like a sail and hurled it back toward the house. Johnny slammed against the wall hard, but he was too frightened to notice the pain. He flung himself back onto the roof just as the trellis broke apart.
The grape vines whipped about like angry snakes. Then the wind tore them out by the roots and blew them off to who knows where.
“Oh, no,” Johnny wailed, “how can I make Punch Fabuloso now!”
He spread out in his cracked egg routine again, his claws dug into the shingles.
“I must find a better way to get up here,” he panted. “This is getting to be very tiresome.”
Driving rain pinned him down. An electrical charge built in the air, making his fur stand on end. Then:
BOOM!
Thunder almost shattered his eardrums. The entire house shook, and the sky lit up like the very sun.
The chimney offered the only possible shelter, so Johnny crawled toward it. Inch by painful inch, he clawed his way along the shingles – through the pounding rain, past the hole he’d come up to fix, over the roof peak. He was almost there!
BLAM!
A lightning bolt stabbed down from the sky and blasted the chimney. Pulverized rock exploded all around. A piece glanced off Johnny’s skull, almost knocking him senseless.
The storm whipped around him with increased fury, yanking his breath away like a giant vacuum cleaner. Still, he crept along. The chimney, even with its top half blown to smithereens, was the only available cover. Hopefully, lightning never struck the same place twice. Even if it did, what else could Johnny do?
Finally he made it.
He nestled his soaked and battered body into the angle between the chimney and the roof slant. Inside this tiny shelter the rain and wind pounded with slightly less fury. Johnny curled himself up.
“I wonder if I’ll ever see daylight again,” he moaned.
The storm raged and ranted. Lightning forked through the nightmare sky or rolled about the tree tops in fiery balls. Thunder boomed like an announcement for the end of the world.
14: Meanwhile ...
Mayor Raccoon shifted himself about on the dirt floor of the assembly hall.
This isn’t very comfortable accommodation, he thought ruefully, beats going outside, though.
Like many of the other mayors, he’d been forced to spend the night here because of the violent weather. Many of his fellow town leaders lay around him amid the shadows and the storm racket, thinking and plotting, as he was.
Every one of them was a political rival; every one yearned to be elected forest governor. Their meeting earlier today had bustled with deal making, back slapping, and whispered promises. Many favors had been called in and many new ones offered.
Lying in the darkness, alone amid so many others, Mayor Raccoon weighed his chances of getting elected. Forest Towne was one of the largest communities, he calculated, and if everybody there voted for him, he’d stand a good change of winning. He’d just have to skim off a modest number of votes from the other towns and get a few other mayors on his side.
This was a good plan. Until recently, Mayor Raccoon was confident it would work – but then Johnny Badger came along. All bets were off now; anything could happen now that he had a rival in his own back yard.
I wonder what happened at the party after I left? he pondered. Johnny was well on the way to making a fool of himself, but you never know ...