Bedford and apple pie (Unedited and unformatted excerpt from by upcoming book)
Halfway the afternoon Bedford started to get restless. I figured that he needed to go to the bathroom or at least get some exercise.
I stopped at a big park on the outskirts of town. It was quiet there, the only people I saw were a couple sitting on the grass with a checkered blanket between them.
I opened the passenger door to let Bedford out and he didn’t give me the opportunity to put his leash on.
Instead, he growled, his ears went straight back, and he took off into the park. Maybe he spotted a cat or a bunny. He ran right over the picnic blanket and straight across the lawn with phenomenal speed.
The women jumped up and screeched.
I stopped to make sure she was alright. She pointed a sharp finger at me and yelled:
“Look what your dog just did. Look at it.”
I didn’t see anything suspicious and let her now with a simple gesture of my hands. That apparently made her furious.
She pointed to the blanket and yelled again:
“Look, he ran straight through the apple pie.”
And sure enough, in what was left of a 12-inch diameter apply pie on an aluminum tray I could see a clear paw print.
“I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience people, please let me pay for the pie.”
Now the guy stood up, a man with an imposing stature. He must have weighed at least 300 pounds and stood about 6.6” tall.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.
Again, I offered to reimburse them for the pie, but he shook his head.
“No, no, not the pie, the dog. Aren’t you going after him?”
“Yes, I’ll see if I catch him. So, you are alright then?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. The pie was kind of dry anyway.”
That remark he was going to regret.
The lady planted her hands on her hips, leaned a little forward and screamed:
“What did you just say? The pie is dry, the pie is dry. Do you know how much time I spent preparing this picnic? And now you are telling me that the pie is dry?”
She tilted her head and her long hair fell to one side. In her eyes there was a fiery glow.
The big man looked very helpless. He tried to redeem himself but what he said next made his situation even worse:
“Well, it is a bit dry, but the pumpkin pie you made last week was very good.”
The woman stamped on the ground:
“That pie was from the store; from the store you hear. So now you are telling me that you like store bought pies better than mine.”
The man lifted up his arms, shook his head and looked at me like he expected me to help him.
“Sorry honey, I didn’t mean to upset you” he said as gently as possible.
But the woman was not calming down.
“Here, I’ll show you what you can do with it.”
She lifted her right leg so high that I was afraid she would tear her skinny pants and then with all the power in her she planted her leopard skin boot in the pie.
I’m sure if left a sizable dent in the aluminum tin as well. Then she turned around and walked away with big paces. The man kept quiet, probably the best thing he could do.
I apologized again for the commotion Bedford had created.
He just shrugged it off:
“It will be alright. She has a temper sometimes, but she always comes back and then she usually is as nice as pie.”
That last remark made us both chuckle a little bit.
I could not resist making a comment:
“Hopefully not as dry as this one.”
“You got it man” he said, and he started gathering his belongings. And then, with a big grin on his face he made another statement:
“And when she is back the sex is always great.”
No comment from me on that one.
Now it was back to the business of locating Bedford and that task was a lot easier than I had expected. After a few minutes of calling his name he suddenly appeared from the shrubbery.
“Whatever it is that made you do it, don’t do it again. You got us both in trouble.”
He just looked at me with an innocent expression.
When we got back to the car, I saw the big guy leaning against his truck. He was pinned in that position by the woman, about half his size. They were kissing heavily and apparently there were the kind of people who can forgive and forget quickly.