She waits, and then she says, “But you are being ruder if you don’t tell me your name.”
That enormous smile again, and there isn’t a bit of humor in what she has just said. “I think you know who I am,” he says. He waits for her to recognize him, but how can she? Then he says, “Why don’t you take off that there snake and run in and put on your pretty dress?” And when her mouth drops open in awe or whatever, he adds, “Because, come to think on it, I reckon I’d want ye more in that there dress than I’d want ye as you generally are, a-running around all over creation a-wearing nothing but a smile.” She cannot say a blessed thing. So he observes, “And you’re not even wearing a smile, now.”
Racking her brain, she comes up, at last, with a single word. “Adam?”
His smile is about to cleave his jaw. “Madewell,” he says.
“I cannot believe this,” she says. “I simply cannot even begin to believe this.”
“If you’re having trouble believing it,” he says, “just imagine how I started out the day without any inkling of what I’d find up here at the old home place, and as soon as I step over the line into my haunt, here it all is! And here am I! And here are you! Boy, I’m plumb jiggered and struck all of a heap!”
“But where is Adam?” she wants to know. “I mean, if you’re Adam, then where’s the boy who in-habits this place?”
He touches his heart.
She thinks about that, and the thought disturbs her. “Do you mean I’ll never see him again?”
“You never saw him to begin with.”
“But I can’t ever be with him again.”
“You’ll always be with him.”
In time, she believes him, and believes in him, and her only disappointment is that she cannot show him the place because she doesn’t need to. You’d expect, if a man came back to his boyhood home after thirty years, that he’d want to take a long, leisurely tour of the premises and see all the little changes, but Adam doesn’t need to do that, since he’s never left. She wants to show him the barrel she’s made, and he dutifully inspects it, and honestly tells her that it wouldn’t pass muster at Madewell Cooperage but it is certainly a remarkable piece of workmanship and he is proud of both of them, her and Adam, that is, himself, for having done it. She realizes that she doesn’t need to explain the presence of a skeleton in the outhouse to him, because he knows all about it. “How do you feel about indoor toilets?” he asks, and she, remembering Latha’s house, grants that they are a lot more convenient and comfortable than outhouses.
At least he can participate wholly in her birthday party, unlike the in-habit, who has never been able to sample the birthday cake except in make-believe. He can even light the candles for her, there in the midst of the whole menagerie, all her family and friends, and he can applaud, which the others cannot do, when she blows out all the candles. She will not tell him her wish, nor will she tell it to us, but only those of us with the most impoverished imaginations could fail to guess what it is. She wants to inform him that he is her birthday present, but she assumes he already knows that. He has retained, or has never quite lost, the in-habit’s ability to communicate with all the animals, and he tells her the fascinating story of how they had originally planned to acquire a man named George Dinsmore for her birthday, luring him with the bottles of Jack Daniels, but, owing to some of those quirks of fate which never cease to delight us, Adam himself came along and took George’s place. So, in a sense, the animals have not presented him to Robin for her birthday. He has presented himself.
Nevertheless, he is still her present, and of course she is free to do with him whatever she has hoped. The adult Adam is experienced, far beyond the boy’s wildest fancyings. As but one example, his adventures in France, where lovemaking is nearly as important as cooking, have left him with the ability to show her something called maraichinage, which is not just a kiss but an escapade, and the very first time she tries it with him she reaches so explosively that she can hardly stand it. Adam is so much better than Adam, and so much less inhibited or clumsy or inept or simply unknowledgeable.
They sleep late, and she is charmed that Adam can do something which Adam could never do—sleep. When he finally wakes, she shows him a present she has for him: hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. He tells her that he is very touched to be offered such a large sum of money, but, if truth be told, he doesn’t need it, and he would much prefer that she keep it and spend it on herself. “I’ll give you many a chance to spend it,” he promises. After breakfast she goes with him, holding hands, to the place where he has left his car, and she helps him in the slow, tedious carrying of all his worldly goods from the car to the house. For lunch he opens for her a bottle of what he says is the rarest, finest Cabernet Sauvignon of all time. She has never tasted wine before. She isn’t sure, at first, that she likes it, but he tells her she will, as she will acquire a taste for all manner of things she has never known. He tells her that he would like to convert part of the meadow into a vineyard, if it’s all right with her.
September is growing a bit chilly, and he does something else that Adam couldn’t do: he chops up and splits a lot of wood for their stoves. She is so glad to be spared the chore; she can devote more time to preparing their meals. But there too he wants to use his hands and help her, and he knows things about cooking that the Cyclopædia couldn’t have dreamt.
No, she decides, she hasn’t lost her childhood playmate who became her phantom lover: he has just acquired all the talents and strength and wisdom of a man.
Chapter forty-eight
She does not like the present tense. So she bites it. She has tolerated it only for its ability to furnish a setting for the presenting of the birthday present: a man for Robin, but now that that present has been presented, the present tense is an annoyance and a hindrance, slowing everybody down, and she snaps “Hreapha!” at it and chomps her canines into its leg, and it will yelp and flee in panic, and in its running away it will be transformed into the future tense. Which will suit her just fine. Because the future tense will be everlasting, even eternal. She will realize that she is getting old and she will not be able to live forever (although she will have been happy to learn from Adam that Yowrfrowr will still have been going strong down in the valley), but as long as she will have this enduring future tense to live in, she will be able to hang around and watch all the wonderful things that will be happening.
Although the first time that she and some of the others will trot or creep or amble down the mountain to watch the strange men in their huge machines moving the earth and even building a bridge, one of the men will take his gun and fire at Robert. He will miss, but she will be indignant, even though she will continue to feel that her son-in-law is a rascal and a reprobate. She will run to Adam and will say to him, Master, those men are shooting at us.
Adam will go to the men, yell at them, talk to them, and he will collect all of their weapons, keeping them until such time as the men will have finished their job. He will pat her and say “Good dog,” reminding her of the first words he will ever have spoken to her. She will be able to remember so many things about him when he was still invisible and unsmellable: how he had helped her find the scissors and the turkey caller, how he had told her how to find her way to Stay More, how he had assisted at the births of her children. She will have always felt that she was his dog as much as she will have been Robin’s, and she will be especially thrilled that now she will have been able to actually feel his pats upon her head and his occasional hug. He will be purely and simply a nice man. A kind man. The nicest and kindest she will ever have known, so vastly different from her first master that it will be difficult to think of them as having belonged to the same species.
She will also appreciate the many ways that he will make Robin happy too. Not a day will go by that he will not tell Robin how beautiful she is, never in the same words twice, always with some convincing and well-spoken variation on the same essential theme: that she is, and always wil
l be, the most attractive and desirable female on earth. And whenever Robin will raise her voice in song, the opaque tones that will drift out across the meadow will seem to express her joyful thankfulness for not just his kind words but his ability never to use the same words twice.
Hreapha will be sorry that sometimes their words to each other will not be entirely pleasant, and Hreapha will attempt to lower her ears and cover them on those occasions when the Master and Mistress will be having an argument. She will be especially sad when they will have discussed the coming of the strange men with their huge machines, even before one of them will have taken a shot at Robert. The building of the road and the bridge will have been the Master’s idea; the Mistress will not have been certain that she wants it or appreciates it. When the men will have surrendered their weapons and gone on with their work, they will begin using what the Master will tell Hreapha is called “dynamite.” The Master (he will have asked Hreapha not to call him that, but she will think it is at least preferable to “in-habit,” which he will never be again) will organize on an October day what will be called a “picnic,” far off in a glade on the western side of the mountain, where all of them, even Sparkle, will go to escape the horrible sounds, which they will only be able to hear in the far distance, the frightening sounds, worse than thunder, of great explosives blasting away the bluff where the bridge will be. The picnic will be so much fun, despite the distant explosions, that they will decide to have a picnic each week, which they will do regularly as long as the future tense will survive and weather will permit.
When the bridge will be finished, the road will be constructed onward to the dooryard, making it possible for Adam to park his vehicle at the house, and he will use his vehicle, for the first time after the road and the bridge are finished, to take Robin to Stay More, and Adam will explain to all the other animals that for this trip only Hreapha will be allowed to accompany them, because she is the first and oldest of all the menagerie, but that for future trips in this wonderful future tense he will give the others, even Sparkle, but not Bess or Dewey, a ride in his wonderful car. Hreapha will be thrilled, and although riding down the mountain sitting on the front seat with her head out the window will remind her of all the many long-ago times she will have ridden in the man’s pickup truck down that mountain, she will come to understand what thrills the future, and the future tense, will have for her, riding in cars, and, that very first trip, riding down to Stay More to visit with Yowrfrowr and her daughter and grandchildren, and, my goodness gracious sakes, one great-grandchild. Adam and Robin will spend hours visiting with the nice old lady who lives in the dogtrot, so Hreapha will have plenty of time to visit with dear Yowrfrowr and the multitude of their offspring. If there is a heaven, this will be it. But Yowrfrowr will not be in good shape. He will say to Hreapha, Dear Girl, I am afflicted not merely with rheumatism but an host of other sufferings, and I fear I am not long for this world.
Hreapha will chide him for speaking in the present tense and she will tell him how she has bitten the present tense and chased it away. Sweetheart, she will say to him, in the future tense I will never let you leave us.
And he will give her a grateful lick. She will ask him if he understands that this man, Adam, is indeed the in-habit, the same one whom Yowrfrowr met in the orchard of the Madewell place that time that Yowrfrowr had helped them hunt for Paddington.
Yowrfrowr will say, Don’t you recall, my dear, that it was I who taught you all about in-habits in the first place?
Adam will invite the nice old lady to ride with them back up to the Madewell place, and they will decide that they have room for Yowrfrowr too, although Adam will explain to all the others, to Hruschka and everyone and even the dozens of cats, that he’ll give them all a ride too eventually, but for this trip he will take only Yowrfrowr, because he is the first and the oldest. Hreapha will be delighted, although they will have to sit together in the back end and will not be able to stick their heads out the windows.
Crossing the new bridge, which will be just wide enough for one vehicle but will seem to be suspended hundreds of feet above the ground below, both Yowrfrowr and his mistress will be amazed. “It’s just a viaduct,” Adam will say, “but it sure is extending our haunt.”
Yes, their haunt will reach at least as far as Harrison, where Hreapha will ride with them one day to do some shopping at some of the same stores where the man had stocked up for his abduction of the little girl, and Robin will show Adam the house where the little girl lived, still there, almost unchanged, but inhabited by strangers. Adam will offer to knock and ask that Robin be allowed to visit the interior, but she will not want to. She will say to Adam, “I’m not ready. I don’t want anyone to know who I am. Not anyone who doesn’t already know.”
One problem of Hreapha’s new and greatly improved life will be the matter of returning after so many years to commercial dog food. She will have become so accustomed to a diet from the wild—of rabbits and squirrels and various birds—that she will not immediately relish the idea of Purina Dog Chow again. But Adam, with Robin’s help, will pick out a lot of canned dog food of the very best grade, as well as cat food, and Hreapha will eventually decide that she appreciates the comfort and convenience, if not the taste, of not having to chase down, capture, kill and chew up her supper. It will be a comfort in her old age.
The viaduct and the new road will also make possible the crew of men who will come and dig big holes all along the mountain trail and plant in the holes tall poles, upon which will be strung wires. Just in time for their Christmas tree, a traditional red cedar, traditionally strung with Robin’s garlands of popcorn and many of the stars she had cut from toilet paper tubes and hand-colored so many years before and had used every Christmas since. But in addition to those, there will now be many new glass ornaments and garlands and tinsel and bows and boughs and sprays, and, most marvelous of all, myriad wired bulbs, large and small, which, when Robin flicks a switch on the wall, in a ceremony in the presence of all of them, will burst with light and will sparkle throughout the holiday season.
But several days before that ceremony, Hreapha, knowing that it will be Adam’s birthday, will say to him, Sir, as you know, I have always obtained, or directed the obtaining of, a pet for each of Robin’s birthdays, including, for the most recent one, yourself, Sir, if you don’t mind being called a pet, which you are, of course. Anyway, I should like to continue this tradition by getting you a pet for your birthday. You name it, I’ll get it.
Adam will laugh and laugh. His eyes will water. When he will finally get control of himself, he will say, “Dear Hreapha, you are not merely a good dog. You are the world’s best dog. But the ‘pet’ I reckon I’d like doesn’t grow in these woods or anywhere hereabouts. And it isn’t an elephant. It’s something I’ve wanted all my life, which Robin almost wanted for her eighteenth birthday instead of me, or before she thought of me. You wouldn’t have been able to get it for her either.”
A horse? Hreapha will ask. And when he will smile and nod, she will say, Well, don’t put it past me. I’ll find you a horse, by golly.
“I have a better idea,” he will say. And he will take her with him in his big car, just the two of them, and he will drive a long way, farther than Harrison, to a big farm surrounded by paddocks with many horses. He will hook to the rear of his big car another car, which he will say is called a horse trailer. “Now, pick one out for me,” he will tell her, a tall order, but she will carefully examine all of the horses, and will choose the one which she considers most noble, most stately, and most handsome. They will take him home. When Robin will screech and whimper, he will tell her that for a Christmas present he will take her back to the horse farm and let her pick one out for herself.
So, that day, after they will light the Christmas tree, Robin and Adam will ride out together across the meadow and all over the mountain on two horses who Robin will have been named Wish and Desire, objects of envy and admiration for all the other animals. Much to Hrolf�
��s dismay, neither Wish nor Desire will ever attempt to learn dogtalk, the official language of the menagerie. Rather, they will teach him a passable horsetalk, and he will spend the rest of his life, whenever he feels lordly, as he often will, speaking it.
Hrolf will remain always nominally in charge of the menagerie, even when, on those many occasions when Robin and Adam are gone away, sometimes for days on end, the care and keeping of the menagerie will be taken over by the very good man named George, the very same George who will have been intended as the original birthday present for Robin but through no fault of his own will have been relieved from that responsibility by the miraculous coming of Adam. Hreapha will like George very much and will often speculate about what life will have been like if he will not have been supplanted by Adam. George will not be nearly as handsome as Adam, nor as intelligent, and certainly not as wealthy, but he will have many admirable qualities which will always make Hreapha glad to see him, whenever he comes to feed them all during the occasional absences of Adam and Robin.
Adam will always tell Hreapha where they are going and how long they will be gone, and while Hreapha will wish she could go with them, she will know that she could not possibly ride in a vehicle which rises above the earth and flies over mountains and rivers and even oceans, which she will not even be able to imagine. She will be happy for them that they will be able to extend their haunt to the entire world, but she will miss them terribly while they will be gone.
While they will be gone, she will just take it easy and wait for them to come back. She will laze under her favorite tree, a white oak of course, and will watch the world either go by or fail to go by, as it will choose. Her favorite lounging hole, in the earthen floor of the cooper’s shed, will have been covered with hard cement in the renovation of the shed. She will not have minded. That is, minded in the sense of being offended or bothered. The better sense of minding, which Yowrfrowr will have explained to her so many years before, namely, the faculty of knowing what is in one’s master’s mind, is a talent that she will continue to employ whenever in the presence of Robin or Adam, and which she will regret being unable to employ while they will be gone.
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