Raffi accompanied me as far as the Delta agent would allow.
“Are you sure he’ll be safe in there?” Raffi asked pointing to a 4-by-5-foot pen.
The agent checked the photo I.D. that was hanging from a lanyard around my neck. “Perfectly safe,” she smiled. When I stepped into the pen, she padlocked the door. “Is that necessary,” Raffi frowned.
“It’s okay, Raffi,” I said. “No one wants a loose animal running around the cargo hold.”
Gently, the pen was lifted by a hydraulic device and set onto the loading ramp. I gripped my hoofs into the mat to steady myself and tried to look cheerful for Raffi. “You better board or you’ll miss the flight,” I told him.
Eventually, the plane taxied to the runway. I saw fog outside the window. Once we were in the air the fog grew heavier. The plane bounced in the turbulence. My stomach got so queasy that I stopped eating the delicious hay in the corner of the pen.
Half an hour later, the pilot made an announcement: Due to the adverse weather, we were being rerouted to Nashville!
Once we landed, Raffi tried unsuccessfully to book us on another flight to Montana.
“We’ll have to stay the night, Detective,” he said.
We booked a room in a motel right behind the Grand Ole Opry and rented a cube van. While Raffi drove around the city streets, I gaped at all the entertainment establishments. At a particularly long traffic light, I read a poster on a door that advertised, “Tonight only – The Bray City Rollers.”
“Stop!” I shouted. “That’s my brother Flynn’s band.”
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