Grey Squirrel
David Holub

I’d always hated my voice.

I’d heard it on video recordings and outgoing messages and felt nothing but embarrassment. I sound as if I struggled to control the pitch or tone or cadence of my delivery.

My voice was also a bit high for my liking. As a boy I hoped for a deep voice as an adult. When I turned 27 and still lacked the deep voice I was after, I began to take action. I once spoke with an English accent for seven months. I felt the British as a people sounded quite respectable if not downright elegant, even with high voices.

I listened to a voice tape, which promised to lower my voice two keys in three months by listening just 10 minutes a day. I hired a voice trainer but fired him in the second month after he showed up in a cowboy costume trying to hide a stutter.

With nowhere left to turn, I went as far as considering surgery to permanently alter my voice.

It was a TV news exposé that made me rethink. The show featured a doctor, who, after performing numerous voice alterations, was speaking out against ethics violations within the field.

However, due to controversy surrounding his appearance on the show, the doctor requested his voice be distorted to protect his identity. But already having had voice-altering surgery himself, to make his voice any lower would have made it inaudible, thus the show was forced to make his voice higher. When the alteration was done, the doctor sounded quite normal and was later blackballed for the appearance by colleagues who knew him before his voice alteration.

Visualizing similar dangers, I reconsidered, ultimately deciding to live with the voice I had. I said I was proud of it, but who was I fooling?

• •

The call came at 6:46.

It was a deep voice. It was an altered, identity-concealing voice, I was sure. I took a quick liking to the speaker — his voice’s slurred baritone qualities.

Hearing the fellow’s distorted voice on the phone put the idea of permanent surgery back into my head. But my attention quickly turned from fascination with his voice to fascination with his reason for calling.

Identifying himself as Grey Squirrel, he claimed that he was holding my concrete lawn donkey against its will at an undisclosed location. To get it back, I would have to meet a ransom of $55.

I was told to wait for another call for further instruction. And in the meantime, instructed the distorted voice, I was not to do anything irrational.

“Or what?” I asked, my pitch soaring too high on the word “what.”

“You don’t want to know,” he replied coldly.

Given Grey Squirrel’s vagueness, I was left to ponder how one would threaten and torture a cement lawn donkey.

I squirmed over the thought of masked men threatening it with hammers and chisels or intimidation using concrete figures shaped as coyotes or mountain lions, both natural predators of the donkey.

I sensed there was more to Grey Squirrel than a man who kidnaps concrete lawn figures for ransom. Yet, it was a clever scheme, I had to admit, just intriguing enough for me to go along.

• •

I could tell by his tone that Grey Squirrel wanted to move fast on the exchange and got a call the next day (although he called while I was out juggling in the front yard. I had a message waiting on my machine when I got back in the house).

Grey Squirrel’s instructions were to meet him on the swings at Chan Ho Park at 1 p.m. the following day. I was to identify myself with the password “Honky Tonk.” As far as the money, he wanted it in nickels and placed in a sealable freezer bag wrapped tightly in newspaper.

“And one more thing,” he said, his low voice dragging and slurring, “nothing funny. I’ll have my people scattered throughout the park incognito. Believe me, they’ve all been trained in ...”

The machine had cut him off, mid-threat.

“Trained in what?” I thought. “Management applications? CPR?” The possibilities were endless.

• •

Chan Ho Park was perched at the top of a mound encircled by a protective army of bushes and massive Styrofoam sculptures shaped to resemble members of the brass family. I walked between a euphonium juniper and a French horn cypress, which began my trek up the hill where more bushes and sculptures were interspersed.

Thinking back on it, I should have paid more attention to my surroundings. At the time I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I caught a man dressed in a rabbit suit peering from behind a cornet. I turned and looked at him and his head darted back behind the sculpture. The same scenario happened with a chipmunk behind a sousaphone bush and a marmot peeking from a row of trombones.

With the playground in site, I identified two figures sitting on the swings. One was dressed in a gray squirrel suit, the other, a nicely groomed man wearing tan office apparel, eating from a bag of mixed nuts. I assumed the man was taking an early lunch break. Walking past him, I approached the squirrel.

“You must be Grey Squirrel” I said.

“Wha-?” he replied.

“Honky tonk,” I countered.

With that, the squirrel darted up and sprinted off. Before I could shout and give chase, the man in the tan suit spoke up.

“I believe you’re looking for me.”

It was the voice, deeper than it had sounded on the phone.

“I believe you’re looking for me,” I monotoned. I then slapped the palm of my hand to my forehead as I had meant to say, “I believe you’re looking for me.”

Regardless, I didn’t think he noticed.

“Do you have the money?” he said.

I slightly lifted the paper bag I was carrying.

“Do you have my donkey?” I asked.

He lifted his newspaper off the ground, revealing the donkey.

Catching me off guard, he snatched the nickels from my hand. He stared blankly as he calculated the package’s weight in his head.

“Actually, there’s more,” he said. “It’s not your money I want, or your donkey. What I want is your voice.”

“My voice,” I responded, the inflection on “my” instead of the intended “voice.” “Who would want my voice?”

“Ah, your voice.” he said. “The cadence of your delivery is one-of-a-kind. Your inflections and nuances beam with perspective and insight. Your voice plays by its own rules, yes? It operates by its own set of ...”

Grey Squirrel cut himself off, distracted by the honk of a bullhorn and commotion behind me.

I swung around only to see a man in a hamster suit dive into the bell of a sousaphone water sculpture that was stationed in a wading pool.

When I turned back around, Grey Squirrel had bolted. Although admiring Grey Squirrel’s gracefulness — considering his suit, the bag of nickels in one hand and the concrete donkey under his opposite arm — I saw no other option but to pursue.

Despite his head start, his coat tails and impeccably shiny loafers slowed him down. Running alongside playground equipment, Grey Squirrel darted between a rainbow-shaped jungle gym and a teeter-totter. Identifying the moment as my best to catch him, I dove and swiped at his foot. The hit knocked his right foot behind his left which sent him tumbling to the ground. I heard a thud, catching a glimpse of his head smacking the base of the jungle gym.

Expecting blood, I jumped to my feet and saw something more intriguing. Lying three feet from Grey Squirrel’s body was Grey Squirrel’s head. With further inspection, I learned that the head was actually a mask and Grey Squirrel really was a gray squirrel — a giant of a rodent — wearing a human costume.

As the squirrel slipped in and out of consciousness he tried to formulate words.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he explained. He was prepared to make a generous offer for the rights to my voice. Something had gone wrong. He had received a signal from one of his men that told him to abort the meeting abruptly, forcing him to panic and run.

As a host of rodent suits came to the aid of Grey Squirrel, I grabbed the donkey, left the sack of nickels, and sprinted out of the park. I glanced over my shoulder every 12 paces for one of the minions but none had followed.

• •

Back at home I hadn’t displayed the lawn donkey for three hours before a neighbor claimed ownership and questioned where I had gotten it from. I knew she was mistaken but I casually offered her the donkey, finally speaking with confidence.

David Holub has been publishing absurd, humorous, surreal and off-the-center short stories since 2002 with work appearing in more than a dozen print and web publications. He is a newspaper designer at The Miami Herald and lives in Miami, Florida, with his wife and two pups.