by Joan Carris
Of course, I was an orphan, too. He thought back to the day he had come to the Bed and Biscuit — tiny and cold and scared. His mother had died when he and his littermates were only a week old. He barely remembered her, only that she had fed him often and kept him toasty warm.
At the Bed and Biscuit, Grampa had also fed him often, wrapped him in blankets, and put him in a basket by the stove. Then one day I went exploring, Ernest recalled happily.
“Excuse me,” Grampa said, moving his leg. “I have to fix a mug of tea.”
Ernest hadn’t realized he’d been leaning against Grampa’s leg.
When Grampa had his tea, he sat down again. He patted his leg so that Ernest would sit beside him.
“Perhaps,” Grampa said thoughtfully, “we should call him Lucky.” He looked inside the snuggler and bent over so that Ernest could see.
The pup raised his head this time, but his eyes hadn’t opened yet. His nose was dull, not shiny and healthy.
Grampa gazed fondly at the puppy. “I wish you’d make some kind of sound, fella. Any kind at all. Or did all that smoke ruin your bark? Maybe you’re never going to bark for us, is that it?”
Ernest pressed against Grampa’s leg. That dog isn’t even TRYING to bark, Ernest thought. His eyes aren’t open, either. Ernest recalled that Grampa had said the pup was a “preemie,” born early.
All of a sudden Ernest thought, Poor little guy. Of course Grampa wants to save him and give him a home. It’s just the kind of thing he would do.
And poor Grampa, because I don’t think this orphan’s going to make it.
GABBY BARGED INTO THE KITCHEN late that evening. The minute she saw Ernest, she started in.
“I’m sick of this!” she exclaimed. “Grampa has no time for any of us anymore, and it’s all that stinky Scottie’s fault. Well, I’m here, too! And I’m a gorgeous, exotic bird from Vietnam. I can talk just like a human! That ratty little dog says nothing. Now just think about that!”
“I’m thinking,” Ernest said, backing away from her large, advancing beak.
“Loudmouth crows! I hate crows!” Gabby shrilled. She opened her beak wide and made a rude sound.
Ernest had a hunch that she would not move to the woods. After a bit he said, “I thought of something a while ago.”
“It had better be good!”
“Well . . . I was thinking back to when I came here. Grampa wrapped me in a blanket and put me in a basket by the stove. He held me and fed me every few hours. AnnaLee McBroom fed me, too.”
“Don’t lecture me!”
“I was just remembering what happens with babies,” he said mildly.
“I was a baby here, too! The only baby. Grampa was all mine for ten years! Then you came . . . and Milly . . . and now another one! Where will it end?” She gestured with one wing and nearly fell over.
Righting herself, Gabby said, “Where’s Milly?”
Ernest inclined his head toward the stove.
Gabby gazed into the dark stove corner. “You know this is silly,” she began.
Ernest interrupted quickly. “Milly is thinking, Gabby. We can count on her to use her head. Let’s go to sleep now. It’s late.”
“Bossiest, most know-it-all pig I ever met,” Gabby muttered. But she settled down on his blankets. In time, comforted by the place and by each other, they slept.
Two days crawled by. After supper on the eighth day after the fire, Grampa brought a tan willow basket down from the attic. He wrapped the puppy in a new red plaid blanket and tucked him into the basket near the stove.
“Keep an eye on him, Ernest,” said Grampa. “I need a night’s sleep with no interruptions. He should be fine there.”
Grampa went to the back corner of the stove. “Can’t see a blamed thing,” he grumped. “Milly, if you’re there, I still need you to be my kitty. I love you, you know.” He snuffled noisily.
“And I sure hope nobody comes in while I’m talking to my stove. Blast it anyway!” He petted Ernest and Gabby, and practically ran upstairs to bed.
The puppy did not move, and he made no sound. Ernest watched him and thought, You’re in my basket. Well . . . not really, he decided. It’s probably the new-baby basket for our whole family.
He tried to remember if he had suffered like this puppy when he was new to the Bed and Biscuit. Well, no. He had just been lonely and scared.
“Were you sick like this dog when you came here?” he asked Gabby, who was on her curtain rod already, eyes closed.
“I have never been sick as a dog,” she replied without opening her eyes.
“You know what I mean!”
“Okay, okay! This is all very sad. I agree. Now go to sleep.”
Ernest nudged his blankets into nighttime position and gradually sank into a worried sleep.
The moon had risen high over the house when Ernest awoke with a snort. There, sitting right in front of him, licking her left paw, was Milly.
“Milly!” cried Ernest. He bounced up onto his haunches.
“About time!” Gabby flapped down from the curtain rod.
“Is that dog going to make it or not?” Milly asked.
Ernest hated hearing that question. “We hope so,” he said firmly. “Being in that basket is progress. That was my basket when I was new here.”
Milly slumped down on Ernest’s bed. After a bit she said, “I’m mad at him, but Grampa is a very good human.”
“Go to the head of the class!” snapped Gabby.
“No arguing,” Ernest pleaded. “Isn’t it nice that we’re all here together? Just like old times. It’s almost a party.”
“A party with food?” Milly asked. “I’m hungry.”
Ernest jumped to his hooves. With his snout he opened the refrigerator. “Just hop up there,” he told Milly. “See that nice roast chicken?”
Milly leaped upward and balanced delicately on the refrigerator shelf. She gripped the carcass with her teeth and jumped down to the floor. “Oof,” she said on landing. “This is a lot of chicken.”
“If it’s too much,” Ernest said, “I can help.”
“Get me a pear while you’re in there,” Gabby said.
Ernest snouted open the crisper and removed a pear for Gabby and one for himself. “Party time,” he said joyfully.
The chicken and pears were soon eaten. Ernest put his hoof on the lever that raised the lid of the garbage can, and Gabby dropped in the chicken bones. Milly licked the floor clean. Grampa was a stickler about tidying up after meals.
After washing her face and paws, Milly crept around the puppy’s basket. She moved in a crouch, ears flattened.
“Ssss,” Milly said. Then “Fffftt!” in case the Scottie hadn’t understood.
“Mill-eee!” Ernest warned.
Gabby tuned up. “You put your right wing IN. You put your right wing OUT. You put your right wing IN, and you shake it all about. You do —”
Milly glared at her. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Lightening things up. Ernest said we were having a party.”
Ernest went over to Milly, who was much too close to the basket in his opinion. “Come on, Milly. A dog can never take the place of a cat! Go snuggle up to Grampa. He misses you —”
“Just look at that nice basket,” Milly said. “And the special blanket. I didn’t get anything like that when I came!”
“You were in Grampa’s pocket!” Gabby said. “Next thing we knew, you were tearing all over the house. Giving us palpitations of the heart!”
True, Ernest thought, remembering. “Think about that!” he told Milly. “We didn’t ask Grampa for a cat. But you came, and now we cannot imagine life without you! See how it works?”
Gabby squawked. “I never asked for a pig, either! Ten years here and I never needed a pig for one second!” She cackled noisily. “At least he doesn’t snore very often.”
“Don’t break your beak complimenting me,” said Ernest.
Slowly, Milly nodded. “Thank you. I’ll th
ink about it.” And with that, she went back behind the stove.
“Oh, for corn’s sake!” cried Ernest.
Gabby hummed softly, “You put your right wing in. . . . ”
THE NEXT MORNING Grampa fixed everyone’s breakfast, then sat down to feed the puppy. He was humming as usual when suddenly he yelped.
“Ernest! Gabby! Come here and look!”
Ernest stared at the pup’s damp eye slits. I guess his eyes are open, Ernest thought, but he’s doing a lot of blinking. What a struggle he’s having.
From her perch on Ernest’s head, Gabby went, “Oh, dear, dear.”
“Okay,” Grampa said firmly, “we have to give you a name. How about Sir William the Hardy? He was a great big, tough old Scot.”
Ernest saw the puppy stop drinking. He gave Grampa a dark, silent look.
Grampa laughed out loud, something he hadn’t done since the fire. “Got me there, didn’t you? You little short Scottie, you!” Smiling broadly, he finished the feeding and wrapped the pup in his red plaid blanket.
“Oops, running late,” Grampa said after a glance at the clock. He left the kitchen and headed toward his office.
“Let’s go,” Gabby said. “I belong in the office, too.”
“Oh, please,” Ernest said testily. “But I guess we might as well go. I need to be working. It helps me to think. We need to get back to where we were. Peaceful. Everyone getting along.”
On their way out, Ernest stopped at the dog’s basket. “You just hang in there,” he said. “This is a good place.”
The pup’s tiny, squinched-up eyes stared vacantly ahead. Ernest wasn’t sure the dog could see or hear. He didn’t move and made no sound. He just lay there, wrapped in his Scotch plaid blanket.
Cleaning and feeding the dogs and cats filled much of the morning. Grampa had to shampoo the golden lab named Happy so he could go home. Happy jerked around and grumbled as the warm water soaked his thick, wavy fur.
Ernest stood by. “A bath is a beautiful thing,” he told Happy. “I shower many times a day in hot weather. We pigs don’t sweat, you know.”
“If I’m hot, I go to a shady place,” Happy said. “Baths are for humans.”
“And pigs,” Ernest insisted.
Soon Happy settled down, for which Grampa was thankful. He was sure Ernest had calmed the retriever. He knew that animals communicated in ways that only they understood.
Ernest watched Happy leave in his human’s car, then immediately trotted over to Sherlock’s outdoor run. “I can move Frou-Frou now — four stalls away,” he told the hound.
“Who asked you?” demanded Frou-Frou.
Ernest looked over at her, then back at Sherlock.
“Aw . . . you don’t have to go to all that trouble, Ernest,” drawled the hound. “She’d . . . uh . . . she’d be —”
“All alone over there!” said Frou-Frou. “We’ll call you if we need you. Goodbye, little pig.”
Ernest decided that he didn’t understand either Sherlock or Frou-Frou, and he didn’t want to. He left, irritated at being called “little pig.” Of course, he thought, if I weren’t a very small pig, I couldn’t live in Grampa’s house. There are worse things than being a little pig . . . such as being a dopey chicken.
At noon Grampa, Gabby, and Ernest went back to the house for lunch.
“I’ll bet our wee bairn is good and hungry by now,” Grampa said, nodding at the puppy’s basket. “Well, shoot! Where’s the blanket?”
Grampa bent down, unbuttoned his flannel shirt, and tucked the puppy in against his chest. “I guess it’s back to the snuggler for you.
“But where in heck is your blanket? It can’t walk, and nobody’s been here!” Grampa headed toward the stairs, in a hurry to get the snuggler.
“Bad kitty!” said Gabby. “Bad kitty!”
Ernest checked behind the stove. No Milly. Right away he inspected the kitchen. The family room. The small half-bath on the first floor. The dining room, seldom used since Gramma had died.
Ernest examined his blankets. Everything downstairs was as it should be except for the missing red blanket . . . and cat. Both gone at the same time.
Gabby fluttered down to sit in front of him. “Ernest, I have a million talents, but finding blankets is not one of them. It’s up to you. Except for Grampa, you’re the smartest one here.”
Ernest was amazed. Gabby rarely complimented anyone.
Together they watched Grampa come into the kitchen. He wore the puppy in the snuggler and began fixing lunches, as always. Gazing into the refrigerator, he said, “Where’s my chicken?”
“‘My chicken!’” Gabby echoed.
Grampa moved things around in the refrigerator for some time before he gave up and set a package of bologna on the counter.
“I sure don’t remember finishing that chicken.” While he made himself a sandwich, Grampa groused about losing his mind. When he checked behind the stove for Milly and didn’t see her, the look on his face darkened.
Slumped on his blankets, Ernest thought, Drat that cat! He hated to assume she had taken the blanket.
Still, he thought, she could have, after the rest of us left for the office this morning. Maybe she thought that without his blanket, the puppy would get chilled . . . and sick . . . and then . . . Ernest couldn’t force himself to even think it.
And now she doesn’t dare come back, he decided. She’ll hate herself for what she’s done. She’ll think she can never come home and be loved again. But that’s not how families work. We understand. We just want her back!
ERNEST BEGAN HUNTING for the blanket by taking a shower. A long shower always let him relax and think clearly. Finding the blanket will be easy, he concluded. It will smell just like the puppy — like a smoky barbecue grill.
Carefully he sniffed around the house’s foundation. Through the beds of dried-up day lilies. Down the walk edged with purple asters.
Romeo’s heehaw interrupted him. Ernest trotted over to the fence that separated the yard from the pasture. “Have you seen Milly?”
“I don’t think so. Why?” Romeo’s furry gray ears stood erect.
“She’s missing. Have you seen anything suspicious today?”
“What’s that mean?”
“A suspicious thing is odd in some way. For example, you might get a feeding when it isn’t time for one. Or there’s a dog on your doorstep when you expected a cat.”
“I don’t have a doorstep.”
“Okay, okay! What I mean is, has anything different happened this morning? What did you see exactly?”
“Well . . . I saw the cows . . . Grampa’s horse, Beauty . . . those noisy crows from the woods. Lots of mice. Will that do?”
Ernest gave up asking subtle questions and went straight to the point. “Romeo, did you see anything red? Did you see Milly dragging anything, maybe carrying something in her mouth?”
“You’d better tell me what the hay is going on!”
Ernest explained.
“Yup, a catastrophe. Get it? Catastrophe?” brayed Romeo. “You folks need a new cat. Just tell me what kind — tiger stripe, black coat, alley cat, fancy longhair. I got connections. I can get any kind you want.”
“Thank you, but Grampa wants his own cat back.”
“That’s a human for you!” Romeo heehawed.
“As humans go, Grampa is the pick of the litter!” Ernest turned and stomped off.
“Don’t go away mad. Just go away!” Romeo nearly fell over heehawing.
Smart-aleck donkey, Ernest thought. He gives me a pain in the brain.
Still angry, Ernest entered the barn. It had always been Milly’s favorite place, ever since Grampa had found her here. Also, she liked keeping the barn free of mice.
Ernest decided to ask the chickens first, though he had little hope of learning anything useful. “You folks seen anything odd today?” he began.
The chickens clucked among themselves. One scruffy white hen said, “What’ll you give us if we tell you?”<
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“What do you want?”
“What have you got?”
“Well, nothing, really. I just thought —”
“How about crushed corn?” the scruffy hen said, her head tilted. She aimed one bright, hard eye at Ernest.
“I guess I could get some. Then you’ll talk. Is it a deal?”
“Deal, pig. Get the corn.”
Ernest backed away. “Just watch where you’re pointing that beak,” he said. He marched in a most dignified way to the feed room. Using his snout, he scooped crushed corn into an old pie pan. I can’t believe I’m bribing a chicken, he thought gloomily. A chicken.
He set the corn in front of the chickens and said, “Okay, talk.”
The white hen said, “Well, this morning Lolita gave an extra quart. That is very odd.” She bent down to peck corn with the rest of the small flock.
“That’s it?” he squealed. “You think that’s special?”
“Can you give milk?” The hen had the sense to fly to the top board of a nearby stall. Safe there, she said, “Any other questions, small pig?”
Filled with fury, Ernest turned away. Chickens drove him crazy.
He moved on, inspecting each stall for traces of Milly. He smelled the tack room, the feed room, and the manure pile out back, even though it hurt his nose.
He went back inside the barn and crunched an apple to help himself feel better. I was counting on her being here, Ernest thought. He saw the ladder to the loft, but that was hopeless. No pig has ever gone up to a barn loft, he told himself, and I’m not going to be the first.
Carrying on with the search, Ernest poked his snout here and there for the entire length of the woodpile and the blooming thickets of purple hearts. Gramma’s overgrown flower beds made perfect hiding places.
He pushed aside some yellow chrysanthemums behind the tall stone grill. Yessir, he thought, this grill has the right smell.
He stopped short. His brain had finally given him an idea. How clever! he thought. How sneaky! I have to see what’s inside that grill.
