I dashed back out. It wasn’t until I’d got most of the way home and saw the sun high in the sky that I realized we’d missed breakfast. Uh-oh, a punishable offense in our house.
6
Travis had both skunks in the cage by the time I got back to the barn. The larger one was nosing and cuddling the smaller one, which looked frighteningly weak. I explained Dr. Pritzker’s advice and then cast around for something I could use to warm the runt. I grabbed a brick from a stack and then ran with it to the back door of our house.
Our cook, Viola, sat at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee and taking a short break between cooking our family’s huge breakfast and cooking our family’s huge lunch. “You two done missed out. Your mama’s not happy about that. She wants to see you.”
Drat. Now I was in trouble, and I didn’t have time to be in trouble.
“What you doing with that brick?”
Viola doted on Idabelle, our one Inside Cat, whose job it was to keep the mice at bay, so I decided to stick with the kitten story. “I need it to warm one of the barn kittens that’s sick.” I opened the stove and pushed the brick in, nearly burning my fingers.
“Okay, but your mama wants to see you.”
I smoothed down my hair, straightened my pinafore, and marched into the parlor where Mother sat mending a big basket of my brothers’ shirts. (It turns out that a passel of brothers aren’t just hard on their sister; they’re hard on their shirts as well.)
“Ah,” said Mother, “the missing daughter has returned. Where were you at breakfast? And where is Travis?”
The sick kitten story seemed to be holding up well, so I went on with it and then explained about having to run to Dr. Pritzker’s for emergency advice. Mother didn’t much like me hanging around his office, saying it wasn’t a suitable place for a young lady, but she, like everyone else, felt sorry for the so-called sick kitten. She finally let me go with a word of warning not to miss any more meals, then said, “Send Travis to see me.”
“I think he’s still busy with our, uh, patient.”
“Well then, after that. You may go.”
I went back to the kitchen, took a dish towel from a drawer, and scooped out the brick and wrapped it up, again nearly burning myself. This skunk doctoring business was dangerous in ways I hadn’t expected.
I hurried out to the barn with my warm bundle.
Travis stood in the gloom next to the cage, looking anxious and biting his nails.
“Stop that,” I said. “Mother will get all over you about it, and you’re already in trouble for missing breakfast. Look here, I’ve got a way to warm the kit up.”
“You didn’t tell her we have skunks, did you?”
I marveled at the boy. Was he insane? “I told her we had a sick kitten. I told Viola that too. So that’s what we’ve got, right?”
“Right.”
We opened the cage and put the brick between the two. The bigger kit immediately nestled up beside it. The smaller one didn’t quite get it, so I picked it up and put it on top of the brick. It rooted around feebly, looking like it was trying to nurse in the fuzzy towel.
“All right,” I said. “Next, the warm milk. Go and find Flossie—we won’t need much.”
“She’s out in the pasture.”
“Doesn’t matter. We only need a couple of squirts. I’ve got to find a bottle that’s small enough. Or a sponge. Ugh, I guess I have to go back into the house again.”
Travis grabbed an empty jar and went out looking for our milk cow. I went back to the house, trying to think what I could use. We’d hand raised orphaned lambs and piglets with bottles in the past but they were far too big for the kit.
Viola was gone from the kitchen. I rustled around in the pantry but there was nothing we could use.
“Think, Calpurnia, think,” I muttered. Somewhere in my distant past, I’d seen a tiny little bottle in the house, but where? Then it came to me.
Mother was still sewing in the parlor, so I crept quietly up the stairs so as not to attract her attention. I went into the trunk room, stacked high with wicker traveling trunks, and then up the rickety stairs into the attic. The reek of mothballs grew stronger as I climbed higher. The hatchway into the attic creaked ominously as I pushed it open. Just like in a ghost story.
Oh stop, I told myself. You’re just being silly.
The attic was dark and piled high with winter quilts. My grandfather’s war uniform hung from one of the rafters like a dead Confederate soldier, complete with sword. I shuddered and wished I’d brought a candle with me. In the corner stood our old rocking horse, paint chipped off, scraggly real horsehair mane and tail mostly missing from hard use by many children, including me. All seven of us had outgrown it, but for some reason Mother had not been able to pitch it out.
Over there were my old dolls sitting in a row, dolls I hadn’t played with in years. They grinned at me in the gloom and spoke in a whispery chorus: “Calleeeee. Where have you been, Calleeeee? We used to be your dearest friends, but now you have abandoned us in the dark. What do you have to say for yourself, Calleeeee?”
I cleared my throat. “Be quiet. You’re not really talking. It’s just my imagination. My overactive imagination.”
“Are you sure, Calleeeee?”
I told myself, Calpurnia, get a grip. I said to the dolls, “Oh, shut up.”
And they did.
I opened a tin box full of doll clothes. Buried at the bottom was a tiny glass bottle with a rubber tip. Ha! I congratulated myself on being a clever girl and skedaddled out of there before the dolls could accuse me again. I’d outgrown them and felt a bit sad about it, but not too sad because now I had other, better things in my life. Now I had my Scientific Notebook and Granddaddy to do experiments with; now I had Dr. Pritzker to teach me about animals. Now I had tadpoles that turned into frogs, caterpillars that grew into butterflies.
I crept back through the house and ran into Viola peeling spuds in the kitchen.
“What you got there?” she said, squinting at me.
“Nothing,” I said, and thrust the bottle into my pinafore pocket.
“Huh. Every time you got ‘nothing,’ it never turns out good.”
“Ha ha, very funny.” I kissed her cheek and ran out before she could swat me away.
Back at the barn I waited for Travis and worried about the runt, staring at it closely to make sure it was still breathing. It lay on the brick where I’d placed it, its rib cage barely moving in tiny shallow puffs.
Travis clattered in, carrying the jar with a couple of inches of milk. He looked like he’d been in a fistfight, with his hair standing on end and streaks of cow manure all over him.
I stared at him. “What happened to you?”
“It’s Flossie,” he panted. “She’s not used to being milked at this time of day. She didn’t like it one bit.” He wiped his brow. “And all this time I thought we were friends. Did you find a bottle?”
I showed him the doll bottle, and we both agreed it was perfect. It had to be—it’s all there was. I poured the warm milk into it while Travis took the runt and cuddled it in his arms.
“I think the brick is working,” he said. “He feels nice and toasty.”
I had my doubts. The poor thing looked pretty limp. I held the bottle to its mouth but it didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” said Travis. “Why won’t he drink?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it won’t drink cow’s milk. Maybe it will only drink skunk’s milk. Maybe we have to round up a skunk to milk.”
But Travis was in no mood for joking. “We can’t milk a skunk,” he cried, sounding dangerously close to tears.
“All right then, we’re going to have to force it.” I squeezed the rubber tip of the bottle, and a little milk oozed out. “Wake it up.”
“How?”
“Poke it, shake it, do something.”
He poked it gently but it didn’t move.
All right, Calpurnia, I told myself, drastic times
call for drastic measures. I pinched the kit by the scruff and pulled its head all the way back so that its tiny pink mouth gaped open. I pushed the bottle deep inside. The kit gagged, and milk dribbled down its chest.
“It won’t swallow,” Travis said miserably.
What more could we do? By now I figured it was a goner, and we were going to have to make yet another trip to the sad little cemetery out back where my brother’s failed pets were laid to rest. Travis was just going to have to get used to it. Besides, one baby skunk should be enough for any boy, right? (Although one certain boy would never see it that way.)
And then something wonderful happened: The runt twitched its tiny nose. Then it licked its chops. Then it feebly tried to lick its fur where the milk had splattered. Signs of life!
I gave it some more milk, and it managed to swallow a couple of drops. Just a couple. But it was a start. Travis lit up like the sun, making it all worthwhile.
7
If Travis was an idiot to adopt two skunks, I, being one year older and so much wiser, was an even bigger idiot for going along with him, right? In my defense I have to say that I warned him and warned him, but of course he grew more and more attached to them.
So now we were stuck with (1) Stinky the Skunk, and (2) Winky the Runt. I thanked my lucky stars there weren’t a dozen kits hidden in that tree.
Dr. Pritzker came over a few days later to look at one of our pigs with an eye infection, and I hung around to watch.
“Hello, Calpurnia, how is your kitten coming along?”
“My what?”
“The kitten you told me about, the poorly one.”
“Oh … yes, of course … the kitten. It’s doing very well, thank you. I think your advice made all the difference.”
“Would you like me to examine it after I’m done here?”
“Uh, well, perhaps some other time. I’m pretty sure it’s sleeping right now, and I hate to wake it up.”
Dr. Pritzker gave me a funny look but that didn’t bother me. I was used to it. Lots of people gave me funny looks.
By now Stinky was eating all sorts of fruits and vegetables and bugs, along with tidbits left over from our family meals. In fact, he’d eat anything we put in front of him. Granddaddy, the source of all knowledge, explained that skunks are “omnivores,” which is a fancy way of saying they’ll eat anything from popcorn to crickets to fried chicken. One day Travis presented Stinky with a whole pecan, which frustrated the kit to no end, as he was unable to crack the thick shell with his tiny teeth. Finally Travis cracked the nut open for him, and Stinky greedily inhaled the contents.
Winky was still using the bottle but slowly improving. The hardest thing was keeping his brick warm. We were constantly running in and out of the kitchen while trying not to draw too much attention to ourselves.
One day Travis and I walked into the barn and heard a terrible racket. We ran to the back, where Ajax, Father’s prize bird dog, was barking and pawing at the skunk cage. Stinky and Winky growled back at him from the far corner, doing their best to look large and fierce.
“No, Ajax!” we screamed, but he was too excited by the presence of not just one captive varmint but two of them. He must have figured this was his lucky day.
I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him away, but he fought me like a wild thing and jerked loose.
Stinky stamped his feet.
“Nooo!” I cried.
Stinky turned his back.
“Nooooo!” I cried.
Stinky let fly.
Ajax took a direct hit in the face. He howled and pitched over backward, pawing at his muzzle and uttering horrible screeches. The poor dog screamed and thrashed as if he were being tortured (which, if you think about it, he was).
Travis and I could only stand there with our mouths open, staring at this terrible and ridiculous scene.
When Father got home from work, Ajax was lying in his favorite place on the front porch. Reeking. You could smell him from miles away.
Father glared at the dog. “You, sir! Get off the porch! You’re banished for a week. Don’t come back until you’ve improved.”
Ajax flattened himself and slunk away, looking very embarrassed. Unfortunately he went to his second-favorite place, which was under the porch, and although we could no longer see him, it turned out to be not a whole lot better, nose-wise.
Father turned on us. “You two. Do you know anything about this?”
Travis said, “Well, we—”
I elbowed him. “No, sir,” I said.
“No, sir,” Travis echoed. Father scowled at us. We stared at our boots.
“Pfaw!” he said, and strode into the house.
“What do we do now?” said Travis.
“I guess we better wash Ajax,” I said glumly.
“Ugh.”
“Exactly.”
I knew that plain old water would not fix the stench.
“Stay here,” I said. “I’m going to talk to Granddaddy.” I went inside and knocked on the door of the library, where he spent much of his time.
He called out, “Enter if you must.” He said that because he preferred to be left alone. He preferred to live what he called A Life of the Mind. This meant that he liked to sit quietly, and read lots of books, and think about things. So what kinds of things did he think about? Everything, as far as I could tell: birds, dinosaurs, fossils, volcanoes, tornadoes, the weather, the planets, the stars. I hadn’t yet come across anything he hadn’t thought about. I hoped he’d given some thought to skunks and dogs.
“Granddaddy, what’s the best way to get the smell of skunk off a dog?”
“Ah, I take it one of the dogs has had a mishap with the family Mephitidae?”
“Yep, a mishap right in the face. He’s pretty miserable. And to make it worse, Father has banished him, which makes him really miserable.”
“Then I suggest you mix up five parts hydrogen peroxide, five parts baking soda, and one part liquid soap. Leave it on the beast for several minutes before washing it off. Repeat this process several times. You will find what you need in the laboratory.”
“Thank you.” I turned to go.
“Be careful not to spill the hydrogen peroxide on your clothes.”
“Why?”
“It will bleach them. And avoid storing the mixture in a closed bottle.”
“Why?”
“It is likely to explode.”
“Explode? Really? Perhaps you could, uh, come and help me.”
“Calpurnia, did I not teach you your proper weights and measures?”
“Yessir, you did.”
“Well, then.” He went back to his reading.
I went to the laboratory out back, which was really just an old shed where Granddaddy did his experiments. Sometimes I’d sit with him and take notes.
There were many bottles of chemicals on the shelves, the more dangerous ones marked with a skull and crossbones. I finally found what I needed and measured out the three ingredients, careful to keep the mixture off my dress. I poured it all into a big jar and left the cap off. An explosion was the very last thing I needed (although it might be quite interesting). Then I stopped off in the house and swiped a bar of Mother’s fancy rose-scented soap that she kept for special occasions. I figured this occasion was special enough.
I met up with Travis, and we took Ajax to the river on a leash, me carrying the open jar and taking care not to spill it. Progress was slow.
Travis asked, “Why didn’t you put a lid on it?”
“You don’t want to know.”
At the river we took off our boots and led Ajax into the water. We covered him with our recipe and made him stand there for several minutes. Then we splashed him with water and rinsed him off. Then we did it again. And again. He kept trying to climb up the bank, and we kept scolding him and pushing him back into the water. Nobody, neither child nor dog, enjoyed themselves.
Then we did a final scrub with Mother’s fancy soap. Ajax still smelled like a
skunk but not as much. And now he at least smelled like a skunk that had been rolling in rose petals.
“What do we do with Stinky and Winky?” Travis said.
“We’ll let them go where you found them. They’ll be happier in the wild, you know.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Come on, Travis.…”
“No, Callie, not yet. Maybe when they’re bigger and can look after themselves. What about Ajax? I’m afraid he’ll attack them again.”
“After that? No dog could possibly be that dumb.”
We looked over at Ajax, who had chosen that exact second to scratch himself with such a silly expression that we both had a moment of doubt. He squinted and grinned, his upper lip caught on an eyetooth. I’d be willing to bet that no dog in the history of the world had ever looked dumber.
“Hmm,” I said, “I guess we should put the kits in the loft for now. They’ll be safe there.”
We took Ajax home and pushed him under the porch, giving him strict instructions to “Stay!” Then we went to the loft, which was sunny and warm and dry. It smelled of sweet hay, and when the sun shone in at just the right angle, you could see a million golden flecks of dust dancing in the air. It felt like a magical place. Up there you could see all the way to the cotton gin downtown and miles of cotton fields in the other direction. It was also a good place to do gymnastics in that you could do rolls and flips and cartwheels in the loose hay without hurting yourself too badly.
It was no easy task hauling the cage up the ladder but we finally managed. Travis took the kits up in his overalls. We let them snuffle and nose around for a while and then tucked them back in their cage. We dumped a bit of loose hay over the cage to disguise it, just in case any of the other brothers came by.
* * *
The kits seemed happy in the loft. Travis brushed their fur and gave them baths and brought them little toys that they tossed about just like regular kittens. He sneaked them out for walks in the woods at dawn and at dusk, and he carried them around in the bottom of his satchel where they curled up happily enough in two black-and-white balls.
Skunked! Page 2
