“Uh,” said Jimmy.
“Yes?” said Alice.
“Uh—”
Alice leaned in, concern on her face.
“Uh—”
If only Jimmy had spoken.
If only.
Smitty returned with the blanket, unfolded it, and wrapped it around Jimmy’s shoulders.
Jimmy nodded his thanks.
Smitty stood up. He took Alice’s hand in his own. His handsome face glowed with pleasure and pride. “Jimmy, old boy, I guess you’ll be the first to know the good news.” He inhaled and said, “Alice and I are getting married.”
Jimmy’s body went numb beneath the warmth of the blanket.
Alice blushed and ducked her head and could not have looked lovelier. “You’ll come to the wedding, won’t you?” said Alice.
Jimmy wanted to die. He wanted to die right then and there. He tried to shake his head but could not say no to Alice, so he nodded instead.
Smitty said, “I can’t wait to tell my folks. Can we borrow your cup and spoon to get back across? I came over on a graham cracker, but I’m sure it’s dissolved by now.”
Again, Jimmy nodded against his wishes.
“Thanks, Jimmy,” said Smitty, “you’re a real sport.” He jumped into the measuring cup and extended his paw to Alice. “Hop on in, my love!”
Alice smiled and smoothed her tail. She sashayed to the measuring cup and stepped in.
“Oh,” said Smitty, as the cup sank dangerously low.
“Oh,” said Alice, as the cup rocked back and forth. She hopped out.
“I think—maybe …,” said Smitty.
“Yes,” said Alice. “I think perhaps I should wait behind.”
“No matter,” said Smitty brightly. “I’ll be back in a jiff with a larger vessel.” He lifted the spoon. “Look after my bride-to-be for me, will you, Jimmy old boy?”
Jimmy’s heart stopped. He looked at Smitty. He looked at Alice. A thunderclap sounded in his chest.
He loved.
He hated.
He put his arm around Alice, and he said, “You betcha, Smitty, old boy. It’s a long trip back. Make sure to take a break on the bit of land over by the moonbeam.”
The sun has risen. The full moon has retreated. But death persists. Pollen, such a deadly weapon.
Tulip and Daisy were best friends. They had been friends ever since they were tiny green sprouts, reaching for the open sky on the edge of the wheat field.
Daisy was friendlier than Tulip, but Tulip was more intelligent. Because each flower had blossomed in her own special way, they did not feel the need to compete with each other. In fact, they agreed that they would rather die than allow anything to come between them.
In their straightness and strength, their richness of color, and their gift for brightening the faces of passersby, they were the epitome of floral beauty.
They grew along the east bank of Puddle One.
Puddle One was not large—it was about the size of a student’s desktop—but it served the flowers’ needs. They never went thirsty.
“Oh, Tulip,” said Daisy on a sunny autumn day, “how wonderful it is to be alive.”
“Isn’t it though?” said Tulip. Her bloodred petals glowed in the sunshine. Not for the first time, she wished someone would paint the pretty picture she made. She and Daisy.
“I just love life,” said Daisy, white petals bright in the sun.
“Life is good,” agreed Tulip.
“It’s not just good. It’s divine!” Close by, a songbird echoed Daisy’s joy with a trill.
“Divine, then,” laughed Tulip. She leaned toward her friend, and they touched petals.
At that moment, on the other side of the puddle, a crack began to form in the earth. The crack was tiny, not more than a pebble long. A green sprout peeked out.
“You are so beautiful,” Daisy was saying to Tulip.
“I was just going to say the same about you,” said Tulip.
“You are more beautiful,” said Daisy.
“If that is true, and it’s not, then you are the most lovable,” said Tulip.
“Oh, stop.”
“You stop.”
So devoted were Tulip and Daisy to admiring each other, they did not notice the earth crack again on the other side of the puddle.
Another sprout peered above the ground.
The earth cracked again and again and again. Each time, a sprout peeked out to see if this was a good place to grow. And every sprout saw Tulip and Daisy, strong and beautiful, and Puddle One, presumably the reason why Tulip and Daisy had become so strong and so beautiful. This, thought the sprouts, is a very good place to grow.
So grow they did, stretching their fledgling roots toward the puddle’s other side.
And Tulip and Daisy did not notice.
They did not notice until the moment when Daisy could not draw enough water from the puddle to satisfy her thirst.
“Tulip!” said Daisy. “Puddle One is nearly dry!”
“Impossible,” said Tulip.
“Listen,” said Daisy, sucking and slurping, creating a hollow garbling sound.
Tulip’s roots made the same sound. She managed to draw up only a thin line of water. It was then she saw the row of healthy green sprouts on the other side of the puddle, chattering and gurgling.
“Why, those thieving infants,” Tulip said. “They’re sucking our puddle dry.”
“What!” cried Daisy. “Then what will we drink?”
For the briefest moment, Tulip didn’t know what to do.
Daisy looked at her expectantly. Tulip was, after all, the more intelligent flower.
“You must ask them to leave,” Tulip said.
“Me?” said Daisy.
“You are the friendlier flower,” Tulip said.
“Yes, but—” Daisy said. “Oh, very well.”
She formed a bullhorn of her petals and said loudly and clearly, “Excuse me—little friends? This puddle is ours. Please move on to a different puddle, or there will not be enough water for Tulip and me. We were here first, after all. Please understand, we mean no offense.” She paused, then added, “And we wish you the utmost joy in your new life somewhere else.”
One of the sprouts let out a low, gurgling burp, impossibly loud for so small a plant.
Shocked, Daisy pulled back.
“How rude,” said Tulip.
“They sound drunk. Drunk in the way Farmer Bald used to be.”
“Drunk on our puddle water,” Tulip said. “But will they move, is the question.”
The sprouts began burping again, as though they were having a contest. Was that giggling? At the burps or at Tulip and Daisy? It was clear, at least, that not a single sprout had pulled under to move elsewhere. The pests were rooted to their spot.
Daisy shook her head. “I don’t think they’re going anywhere. And without water, soon you and I will begin to wilt, and then our color will fade. And then the stink will come.” She startled herself with this last observation. “Tulip, we’re going to stink!”
The thought of her bloodred petals fading sickened Tulip. After a moment, the sick feeling turned to anger.
“Enough,” said Tulip. “I’ll handle it.” Her petals already bullhorn-shaped, she hollered, “Keep away from our water, you little squirts!”
“Tulip,” gasped Daisy. “Is that kind of language really necessary?”
A burp came from across the puddle.
“This is too much,” said Tulip. If she only had herself to worry about, that would be one thing, but she had taken Daisy into her care when Daisy’s family had all been picked by that big, mean pig. Now, she and Daisy were sisters, two flowers against the world. They needed only three things in life: sun, dirt, and water. But without even one of these things, well … Tulip formed a plan, to be acted upon straight away.
“Daisy,” she said. “We need to take action.”
“What do you mean, take action?”
“We’ve asked them
to leave. They’ve refused. Now, we’ve got to put them in our sights.”
Tulip tested her pollen-release capabilities. Foof. A small yellow puff whiffed overhead, then drifted lazily down. Not bad for a first try, tighter next time. “We’ll shoot them down with our pollen.”
Seeing her dear friend speak in such ugly terms, Daisy grew confused. “You mean …” She lowered her voice. “Shoot, as in, kill them?”
Tulip popped off another blub of pollen, and it dropped like a miniature bomb into the puddle mud. Next time, she’d aim out, not up.
What a bold new feeling this was! Why had she not thought of this before? She might have saved Daisy’s family from the pig. She might have protected their water supply. Nobody would mess with them again. Pretty, passive flowers? Not anymore.
“Tulip,” persisted Daisy, “are you suggesting we kill the sprouts?”
Tulip replied, “Please, Daisy, you’ve got a big heart. That’s what I love about you. But don’t go having a moral crisis about this, all right?”
Aiming out, not up, Tulip released a round of pollen pellets that riddled the opposite bank. “Did you see that?” she laughed.
Daisy judged the holes to be about four pebbles deep. The sprouts wouldn’t stand a chance. “Can’t we try talking to them again?”
“Come on,” Tulip said. “Try it. Just shoot.”
“I don’t know.”
The sprouts’ heads bopped about on the other side of the puddle. They were babbling happily, as babies do.
“They’re so little,” Daisy continued.
“Please. The issue is simple. There’s a limited supply of water. It’s us or them.”
But having already spoken up, Daisy found she could not back down. “But we’re flowers, not”—she searched for the word—“assassins.”
“It’s self-defense.”
“You aren’t hearing me,” Daisy said.
Tulip rolled her head. “Stop thinking so much! I’m the brains of this operation, remember? The beauty too, if you stop to think about it, because white isn’t even a color.” She looked across the breadth of Daisy’s head. “Red, on the other hand …” she preened, “Everybody loves red. It’s the color of the only thing that matters.” She bent to touch Daisy’s petals, but Daisy pulled away. “Blood. Spill it, or have it spilled.”
Daisy knew then that Tulip’s mind was made up.
The wheat surrounding them stirred, suggesting an oncoming storm, yet the sky remained cloudless and blue.
Daisy shivered, but even so, she spoke. “I’m not as smart as you, that’s true, but I do know the difference between right and wrong, and this is wrong.”
“Suit yourself,” said Tulip. She aimed and, in a rapid-fire burst, blew apart a tiny green sprout.
“Gotcha!” shrieked Tulip. Now this was flower power!
The other sprouts bopped crazily about, trying to pull under or run away, but none seemed to remember exactly how it was they had arrived there in the first place. They chattered loudly, like a cadre of angry squirrels.
Daisy couldn’t stand by and watch, she just couldn’t. Acting on instinct, she swung around and whacked Tulip with her head.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“I’m not going to let you kill those sprouts.” Daisy tucked her leaves in front of her. “So if you want to fight, fight me.”
Rubbing her bruised stem, Tulip said, “It’s hardly fair. I’m so much bigger than you.”
“Tell that to the sprouts.”
Tulip leaned back until her head touched the ground, then sprung forward and walloped Daisy with all her might.
It was like being pounded by a hammer. Daisy hit the dirt hard, her petals crushed and oozing fluid.
Tulip fared better, only two red petals suffered minor tears. “Now you’re bald,” she said. “How about that.”
She retrained her attention on the sprouts, who continued yammering away.
“Shut up!” she shouted. She fired the deadly pollen again and again, her long stem pulsing with every release. Blown to bits, the sprouts formed a bright green streak on the dark earth.
Tulip surveyed the scene. “Well,” she huffed, “That about does it. Simpler than I thought it’d be, really.”
Lying on the ground, Daisy whispered, “Oh, Tulip, what have you become?”
Daisy hurt all over. She felt naked and ashamed. How had it come to this?
The wheat around the puddle shook softly in the wind, strand after strand rustling, growing. Then the strands of wheat began to fall, stepped on, stomped on.
Close by, Daisy heard Tulip’s tired panting and the confused thoughts rolling around deep inside her.
Farther off, she heard the good-blood-love twang of the bond between mother and son,
the crying of a foot,
the munching of flesh,
clumsy, lonely footsteps,
the ebb and flow of mucous in a dog’s nose,
bones cracking, minds cracking,
the earth cracking—
but winding through it all, like a single golden thread,
a single-note life-song,
a songbird atop the fairy’s tree,
singing.
Then—
someone shouted, “Vermin!”
A smaller, shriller voice screamed, “Lummox!”
“Pip-squeak!”
“Meathead!”
A lumbering foot pressed sprout pulp deeper into the ground, and another foot descended upon Tulip’s head, her bold and beautiful head. Because Daisy had listened, Daisy ducked, to live to see a better day—
A better, more beautiful day.
Puddle One was hers alone now, to share—if she wished.
Just before Fat and Bones met in the field, face-to-face for the first time, a tired, old hound dog returned to the farm. He was harmless, except for his cold. I’ve heard it said that a butterfly can flap its fragile wings and cause a tsunami thousands of miles away. Might a dog’s innocent sneeze have a similar impact? A dog’s sneeze might, say, blow across a field of wheat and send an aging fairy hurtling into the face of a dead farmer’s son just when the two are getting to know each other better.
Dog Alfred sniffed.
Darn this cold, he thought.
He sneezed.
He had been sniffing and sneezing for days now, which was the reason his visit to his mom had ended early.
“Get home,” she had told him. “And get well.”
“Ma,” he said, “I came all this way. I can’t go home now.”
“You live next door,” she said.
Dog Alfred blew his nose, expertly aiming the thread of snot into a stack of hay in the corner of the barn.
His mom gave him a disapproving look.
“Days are growing shorter, nights are growing colder. You’d best get well before winter sets in.”
The thought of lying in front of a fire was too tempting to ignore. Dog Alfred nuzzled his mom and left.
And came home not to a warm hearth but to a cold grave.
He sniffed the earth and the body it held. He could still identify the man’s tangy odor.
Bald had not been a good man, nor had he been a bad man. He had just been a man. All dogs with discerning sniffers know that good men smell musky when they die, bad men smell rotten, and just so-so men smell tangy. Tangy like a lemon that’s been chewed on and sucked on and batted around in the dirt for a while.
Dog Alfred hung his head. He didn’t feel sad. He felt lost. Bald had not given Dog Alfred love, but he had given the dog direction.
“Follow me, boy,” he’d say when they went hunting. Dog Alfred would dutifully follow.
“Fetch.”
Dog Alfred would fetch.
“Sit.”
Dog Alfred would sit.
“Stay.”
Dog Alfred would not move, save for raising his heavy eyelids to see Bald better against the glare of the sun.
Dog Alfred liked being told what to do. It saved
him the trouble of deciding what to do on his own. He wasn’t like the cat, who never seemed idle. Even while sleeping, the cat appeared to be thinking something or waiting for someone or plotting something against someone.
Where was that cat, anyway? The cat usually trailed Mrs. Bald around as if she were made of sardines.
Where was Mrs. Bald?
And where was that no-good Bones?
When Bones dies, thought Dog Alfred, he’ll smell like rotten eggs stirred in spoilt milk with a dash of pee. Really yellow pee. Eggs and milk and really yellow pee, that’s what he’ll smell like.
Dog Alfred yawned, his eyelids twitching up and down. He wandered around the farm.
“What’s going on?” he said to a big, black pig.
“Not much,” said the pig, lying on her side on the ground.
Dog Alfred wished to appear purposeful in front of the pig, this big pig whose eyes shone as if she held a secret. “Nice day for a walk,” he said.
“I wouldn’t know,” said the pig.
Dog Alfred observed that the pig did not have any feet. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.
The pig smiled. “Don’t be,” she said.
It must be the worst tragedy in the world to lose one’s feet, Dog Alfred thought. “Don’t you miss them?” he said, pointing at her stumps with his nose.
“It was worth it,” she said.
“Oh,” said Dog Alfred. He didn’t understand. And his discomfort increased the longer he stared at her stumps. “Well, I’d best get going.”
“Enjoy your walk.” The pig wiggled her ears.
“Thanks. You enjoy, uh, sitting there.”
“Will do.”
Dog Alfred shuffled along. He sniffed the earth. He sniffed the air. He sniffed everything he passed. When he had sniffed himself tired, he wandered to the side of the house.
He found Mrs. Bald hanging from the clothesline. He wondered why she was not inside cooking. She was always cooking. Maybe she’d decided to try something new because Bald was underground and everything felt topsy-turvy for her. Dog Alfred knew that if his mother died, he’d probably want to hang from a clothesline too.
Fat & Bones Page 4
