Kevin spent several minutes convincing himself that he had truly witnessed his older brother changing into a donkey. Little fazed him, but the amazing transformation had floored the fifth-grade student.
Old man Shunkel stared at him strangely as he talked to himself, a habit Kevin had picked up with two self-absorbed parents and an older brother who, naturally, didn't want to associated with a kid when he had his own friends.
"Where did they take him?"
Shunkel shrugged his big round shoulders beneath the tight fabric of a sleeveless white T-shirt.
"I guess to a farm or something where it belongs!" Shunkel exclaimed. Still shaking his head at the weird Webster kid, he walked back toward his house.
Kevin figured the older man was correct, but that didn't really help.
Meanwhile at a gas station, the men in the truck and the men in the hauler stopped to discuss the donkey's destination. The smell of petrol fumes irritated Jared's nostrils. He flared the nostrils and threw back his head and opened his large mouth to produce another unhelpful bray.
"Why have we stopped?" Jared wondered.
A call finally came with a destination. "Sounds good. It's not that far. We'll haul it out there and drop it off."
Human faces turned and looked in the direction of the trailer. Jared brayed, glad to have their undivided attention.
"Help!" Jared brayed, frustrated that all his words got turned into the awful sound. "I'm not a real donkey!"
The two men in charge of the trailer got back into the cab of the truck. The other truck drove away from the station.
"Where are they going?" Jared wondered before, more pertinently, he wondered where he was going. He swayed on his four hoof-tipped legs as the truck and trailer pulled back onto the road.
A twenty-minute drive later, the hauler pulled next to a large red and black barn. A man in denim overalls and wearing a straw hat welcomed them.
"That the donkey?" He looked through the bars of the trailer.
"Yea," one of the men laughed as he unhitched the trailer's gate. "Turned up in a back yard in a subdivision."
"Well, that's strange," the farmer said. "But no matter. I'll be glad to take him off your hands until you locate its owner. There's always plenty of work needs doing here."
"Work!?" Jared heard, concerned. He brayed, trying again to get them to understand this was a huge misunderstanding.
As soon as the donkey disembarked, the farmer attached a hackamore, working the bridle around Jared's snout and head.
"What the hell?" Jared brayed, upset at the treatment.
The man simply manipulated the hackamore chains and had the donkey following him toward the barn in no time. Jared felt compelled to follow and watched with scant interest as the men with the truck and trailer that had brought him to the farm departed.
"I won't mind if it takes a while to find your owners," the farmer said. "I've got a lot of use for a big, strong jack like you."