by Natale Ghent
“Indeed he is!” Millhouse agreed as the children and the Weekend Boy began hunting for the Pepper Brown. While the children searched, Milly shouted out advice from his cage. Those who are fluent in guinea pig would have heard Milly yelling something like this: “Look behind the boxes at the far end of the room! Try under the chameleons’ cage and behind the desk. Check the shoebox by the door and beneath the overalls in the back room! And don’t forget to look in the garbage!”
But the children, who had never made an effort to learn guinea, simply heard a loud series of frantic and indecipherable squeals and squeaks.
“You must find him!” Milly urged. “Keep looking!”
The children hunted feverishly through the shop. But a Pepper Brown ferret is a crafty thing. He’s made of darkness and cunning. He seems to explode in every direction like beads of mercury from a broken thermometer, then reappear again completely whole in another location entirely. He can squeeze into places even a mouse wouldn’t go. And just when it seemed that he wouldn’t be found—
“Here he is!” the Weekend Boy cried.
“Where?!” the children asked in unison.
“In here!” He pointed to the filing cabinet drawer.
Just then, the Pepper Brown leapt from the drawer and bounced off the Weekend Boy’s chest. The Weekend Boy tried to grab him, but the ferret slipped through his hands like a water balloon and sprang to the top of the pet food shelf.
“Not sold!” Abacus declared.
“Catch him!” Milly squealed.
The other animals flew into a frenzy, screeching encouragement to the Pepper Brown, who humped along the top of the shelf and tried to squeeze through a hole in the plaster wall. The Weekend Boy, who wasn’t the sharpest stick in the bundle, produced a broom from the back room and began stabbing recklessly at the ferret, who leapt skillfully from side to side. The animals cheered as the Weekend Boy stumbled over a box and crashed into the shelf, sending the ferret tumbling dangerously to the edge. Milly covered his eyes as the Pepper Brown dangled by one paw and then the other—his body twisting and swinging—until he fell!
He fell right on top of the horrified guinea pig’s cage.
“Sweet Shakespeare!” Milly yelped as he and the ferret and the cage landed on the floor with a loud crash!
The bottom of the cage popped off, and there was a terrible moment when pig and ferret were caught in a frightful tangle.
Overwhelmed by the proximity of the Pepper Brown, Milly went stiff and fainted.
“Baldy’s out cold!” the Abby shouted to the other guineas.
“I can’t see a thing!” the Peruvian squealed. “Where is he?”
“On the floor,” the Honey Cream howled with delight. “He looks posi-tive-ly ree-dic-u-lus!”
The other animals shrieked as the Weekend Boy grabbed the Pepper Brown by the scruff.
“Gotcha!” he said, giving the ferret a victorious shake.
“But what about that funny-looking thing?” the little girl asked, pointing at Milly’s paralyzed form. “I think the ferret killed it.”
Millhouse lay on the pet shop floor, his eyes squinched shut, his feet in the air, his lips twitching ever so slightly—all in all, a very embarrassing position for a guinea, especially a naked guinea like Millhouse.
“Oh, he’ll be all right,” the Weekend Boy said, not at all sympathetic to the shame of fainting in public.
“Guinea pigs pass out sometimes when they get scared.”
“Not this pig!” the Abby boasted.
“Me nei-ther,” the Honey Cream sniffed.
The Weekend Boy handed the ferret to the girl, then went about fitting the smashed cage back together and placing the unconscious pig inside. He straightened the water bottle, tidied the shavings and put the cage in the sunlight.
The warm light soon tickled Milly awake—just in time to see the boy and girl fawning over the dreadful Pepper Brown.
“The universe is against me!” Milly wailed as the children stroked and coddled the ferret. The pig clutched his head and groaned when the little girl asked about the price. “He’s as good as sold,” the guinea moaned. “And I was so close to being noticed.”
Milly hung his head and shuffled to the back of his cage. He didn’t want to see the sunshine. He didn’t want to hear the happy voices of the children. He wanted to hide. But before he could dig beneath his mound of cedar shavings, he was stopped by a terrifying shriek.
“You horrible animal!” the girl yelled.
Milly’s heart froze. “Could she possibly be talking to me?”
“You rotten little devil!” the girl scolded again.
The pig turned around slowly, a feeling of icy dread shuddering through his body. But the girl was not looking at him. The girl was looking at her thumb. It was bleeding! The Pepper Brown had bit her!
“You wretched beast!” Milly squealed. “Are you mad? Don’t you know they liked you—as impossible as that is to imagine! They would have bought you and taken you home!”
The ferret twisted in the little girl’s arms, attempting to break free.
“Oh no, you don’t,” the Weekend Boy said, grabbing the ferret by the scruff and tossing him into his cage. Pulling a roll of silver wire from the desk drawer, he fastened the cage door shut. “This time you’re not getting out.”
“Incredible,” Milly said, shaking his head. “I just can’t believe it. The senseless beast. Why would he bite a little girl? Why would he spoil his chance of finding a home?” He leapt to the front of his cage, pressing his face against the bars. “I can’t believe it!” he yelled at the Pepper Brown, who was already curled into an indifferent ball at the far end of his own cage.
Milly fell back on his soft pink haunches, still shaking and scratching his head in disbelief. The other animals soon lost interest and began scurrying and digging and swimming and blinking as usual. But Milly was absolutely dumbfounded by the ferret’s behavior and spent the rest of the day muttering about plagues and mutiny and raging seas.
3
A Strange Encounter
Stories of the pig’s humiliation with the ferret spread throughout the pet shop. The other guineas couldn’t stop gossiping about it, describing Millhouse’s predicament in gleeful detail to any animal who would listen. Even the chameleons, who normally kept to themselves, would roll their eyes and stiffen in mock swoon whenever the guinea looked in their direction.
Milly tried his best to ignore all the gossip and taunts, telling himself that any guinea would have fainted in similar circumstances. In fact, the only reason none of the other guineas had fainted before was because they were all a bunch of scaredy-cats, too afraid to leave their cages. He tried to console himself with these thoughts as he slumped on his stack of cedar shavings. If only he were back in the theater. He’d never once fainted there. He’d never had reason to. There were no ferrets at the theater. There were only wild mice, and sometimes a cat or two to scare the mice away. But they never bothered Milly. In fact, some of the cats were his friends.
Milly’s mind drifted to the stage. He saw himself standing beneath the warm glow of the lights—a most dramatic figure—the audience hushed and waiting for his speech to begin. He raised one paw slowly and was about to deliver his lines when the Peruvian guinea stumbled over her food dish and jolted him back to the pet shop with a loud clatter of metal.
The pig sighed as he watched the wild birds outside the window, whirling in chattering circles. It made him feel so lonely to see them flying in this way. They were preparing to go somewhere sunny and warm and far away for the winter. Summer is over, they were saying with every flap of their wings. And Milly was still here. He pushed his shavings into a neat, fluffy pile for the tenth time that morning. “Happiness seems to await every living thing,” he sniffed. “Every living thing except me.”
“It will happen,” a soft voice whistled.
“What did you say?” Milly asked, peering around his cage.
“It will happen,”
the soft voice whistled again.
“What will happen?” Milly demanded of the voice. “Who are you? I can’t see you!”
“Over here. Under the chameleons.”
The pig squinted across the room but saw nothing—nothing, that is, except Elliot, the asthmatic rat, buried in his mound of shredded morning newspaper. No one in the pet shop had ever addressed Milly directly before, at least not out of kindness. The other guineas had made sure of that.
“Are you talking to me?” Millhouse timidly asked. “I can barely see you behind all that paper.”
The rat popped up, blinking down the length of his nose at the pig. “Myopic,” he whistled.
“I beg your pardon?” Milly said.
“My-op-ic,” the rat repeated. He pointed to his eyes. “Can’t see a darn thing with these beads, ’less it’s right at the end of my sniffer.” He snapped his fingers and winked at the guinea.
Milly nodded, even though he didn’t know a thing about the rat’s vision. His own eyesight was a healthy 20/20, a fact he was about to impart when Elliot suddenly tore a small picture of an ice cream cone from the paper, licked it and pressed it against the back wall of his cage next to several strands of colored string. He fidgeted and fussed with the picture until it was hanging straight.
“How do you read them?” he suddenly asked, jerking his head toward Milly’s cage.
“Read what?” Milly replied.
“Exactly!” Elliot chuckled and continued to peruse his paper.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the pig said.
The rat squinted at him. “Them shavers,” he whistled. “The way you stack ’em up. How do you read them?”
“Oh!” Milly finally understood. “The cedar shavings! I don’t read them.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Elliot clucked. “It’s a pity. I love to read.” He tore a photo of a Belgian chocolate bar from the paper and smacked his lips. “Imported,” he said, pointing to the picture.
“Sweet Bard!” Milly said. “No one enjoys reading as much as I do. Why, I own great volumes of important literature—”
The rat began coughing and sputtering. His whole body shook and his eyes watered.
“Oh dear!” Milly said. “Are you all right?”
Elliot continued to cough, pointing one finger in the air as though holding a thought. He reached beneath his mound of paper, produced a shiny silver thimble of water and threw it back in one quick shot like strong whiskey. Then he whipped a small piece of white cloth from behind one ear and began dabbing at his teary eyes.
Milly waited patiently for the rat to compose himself, expecting some half-finished thought to eventually emerge. But he simply wiped his eyes, tucked the cloth back behind his ear and continued to read as before.
“I say,” Milly ventured after a moment of silence. “What did you mean when you said, ‘It will happen’?”
“He meant you’ll be my lunch,” the ferret growled, chewing the silver wire that secured his cage door.
“Merciful heavens!” the pig cried. “Will this torment never cease?”
“Don’t mind him,” Elliot said, jerking his thumb at the ferret. “His thinker’s flubberbusted.” He placed the photo of the Belgian chocolate over his dish of pellets. “Helps stimulate the appetite,” he explained, patting his belly.
“Excuse my persistence,” Milly said. “But could you please tell me what you meant?”
“That’s right.” Elliot nodded, scouring his paper.
“But … what will happen?”
“What you want,” the rat said without looking up, and snapped his fingers again.
“How absolutely cryptic.” Milly rubbed his whiskers. He had no idea what Elliot was talking about.
“Say!” the rat exclaimed, suddenly invigorated. “Remember that thing-a-ma-bub the other night?” He blinked innocently along the length of his nose at Milly.
The guinea stared back in uncomfortable silence. Could he possibly mean the kerfuffle with the Pepper Brown? “I can explain that …”
“Explain it?” Elliot whistled excitedly. “Could you get it for me?”
“Pardon me?”
“You know! Smack! Right between the beads!” He snapped his fingers and winked. “That exploding thing. Gave his thinker a shake!” He pointed toward the Pepper Brown and shook his head.
“Oh, the marble!” Milly understood at last. “It’s a prop. I used it to perform Hamlet, a fabulous play by William Shakesp—”
“That’s it!” the rat interrupted. “That prop-a-ma-bub. Can you get it for me?”
“But I haven’t got it anymore. It shattered—”
“That’s what I mean!”
“Well, good heavens,” Milly said with frustration. “I haven’t got it, but if I find another, it’s yours. I promise.”
With that, Elliot disappeared beneath his morning paper, and Millhouse was once again left to his own devices, which means he was alone without anyone of interest to talk to. But his conversation with the rat had him wondering. Would Elliot’s prediction come true? Would happiness find the guinea again someday? Could a lonely skinny pig trapped in a dusty old pet shop dare to dream of a home and someone to love? Could he dare to dream of himself back in the theater, bathed in the warm glow of the limelight, a celebrated actor in his own right, loved and admired by all? The thought made the pig’s knees weak with joy. And so he dared.
4
The Pig Performs
Milly spent the day dreaming of happier things. But by the time the shop closed there was little to report, other than the mole’s tally of sales. Using his pellets, Abacus calculated six goldfish, a chameleon and two white mice sold. Not that anyone would notice them gone, Milly thought. The mice were born and bought so quickly that he could never remember their names—if they even had names at all. And the chameleons had even less to say than the goldfish, who couldn’t tell the difference between other fish and their own reflections, and so spent all their time talking to the aquarium glass.
There was a tense moment when it seemed that the Abyssinian might be purchased. But the Abby made such a ruckus of squealing when the girl went to hold him that she chose two white mice instead. Milly, as usual, was sadly overlooked.
“Ah well,” he sighed, feeling slightly more hopeful than he had in a while. “Tomorrow is another day.”
Millhouse waited until the moon’s surprised face was high in the pet shop window and all the other animals had bedded down for the night before he crept from his cage. Standing on the table, his pink toes peeking over the edge, he wondered if he should announce his performance, then decided against it. No one ever came to watch except for the insult-hurling Pepper Brown. “Best to keep it to myself,” the pig said as he climbed down the pet food boxes to the floor.
Milly strolled over to a brightly colored shoebox beside some empty cages. He opened a small door in the box and slipped inside.
The shoebox was filled with all sorts of fabulous theatrical treasures. These were the pig’s “props,” collected from careless customers over the months. Milly took stock: one silver paper clip, a five-cent stamp with the profile of Queen Elizabeth, several bits of string, a pink plastic Barbie shoe, a generous length of chamois cloth, a small red sock (discarded by an angry child several weeks ago), an empty matchbox, two broken crayons (one green, one blue), a dice, three pennies, a small gold key (purpose unknown), a length of wire, a thin twig and a firefly.
“A firefly!” Milly exclaimed.
The firefly flashed its phosphorescent light, then dimmed. Milly clapped his hands with delight.
“I wonder …” he mused. “I wonder if you would be so kind as to assist me?” he asked the fly.
Moments later, Millhouse stepped out from the shoebox, draped majestically in the chamois cloth, the dice in his left hand, the twig in his right. At the top of the twig was a small loop of wire in which the firefly glowed like a lantern. In the silence of the pet shop, by the light of the firefly lantern, Milly delivered
a moving speech on dreams and magic and woodland fairies. As he was winding up his performance, dice outstretched, lantern glowing, he heard a giggle.
“What’s this?” Milly whispered, peering across the darkened room.
The giggle sounded again.
Milly held the lantern out in front of him. The soft glow of the firefly illuminated dozens of little eyes flashing in the dark.
“Who’s there?” the pig asked, his jaw quivering.
More giggles.
“Show yourselves at once!” the guinea demanded, holding out the lantern as far as his arm would allow.
Dozens of wild baby mice rushed from the darkness. Milly cried out in alarm, letting the dice and the lantern crash to the floor. The firefly flew from the twig, taking the light with it. The dice bounced and skipped across the room as the baby mice swarmed around the surprised guinea.
“For the love of Shakespeare!” Milly cussed. “There goes another prop!”
The baby mice stared at Millhouse. Millhouse stared at the baby mice. The babies giggled, their tiny eyes shining.
“We watch you,” they said. “We like you.”
“I say!” Milly remarked, regaining his composure. “Where did you all come from?”
“The walls,” the babies said in unison. “We live there when it’s cold.”
“I see,” Milly said. “And where do you live when it’s warm?”
“The diamond,” the babies cooed.
“The diamond?” Milly repeated, scratching his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
The babies fell into a diamond formation, then pretended to throw balls and swing bats.
“Of course!” Milly said. “The baseball diamond! You must love spending the summer there, with all the yummy things to eat.”
The babies found this hysterical and began laughing and pointing and rolling on the floor.
