Every Living Thing (4 page)

Jack leaned against the radiator, barely breathing. Then, while he and the squirrel looked each other over, two more black squirrels jumped from a nearby tree onto the sill. All three animals sat up on their haunches and looked at Jack through the window.

“Well,”
Jack whispered.
“Well.”

The staring among them went on for several minutes, until Jack's legs got tired and he went back to bed. He fell asleep and when he woke, the three squirrels were gone.

He felt better, though, and decided to stick it out in the hospital another day. So he talked to the doctors, cried some, ate terrible meatloaf for dinner and in the evening went to bed early, expecting to get up the next morning and just walk out of the place.

He woke up at dawn again. As soon as his eyes opened, he couldn't help looking over at the window before he pulled on his pants and packed his few things.

All three squirrels again sat on the sill. One had a nut and was gnawing at it furiously, while the other two sniffed around the windowpane.

Jack put on his glasses and tiptoed over.

“Well,” he said.

The squirrels raised up on their haunches when he stood at the window, intently watching him. At first Jack couldn't figure what to do. Then he decided to feed them.

He opened the drawer of his bedside table and pulled out a couple of packs of Saltines. When he slid open the window, the squirrels didn't run away, and when he held out the crackers, each squirrel grabbed one and sat back to enjoy a free breakfast.

Jack chuckled to himself.

That day, too, he changed his mind about leaving the hospital. He was a little friendlier to the doctors, and he played a game of cards with another man, a Korean War veteran (Jack's war was World War II). He also hid some corncobs from dinner inside his pillowcase.

Jack woke up the next morning and fed the squirrels. They hopped right up to him and reached for the cobs. Two of them ate the food, but the third jumped down into the yard and buried his.

You'll never find it
again,
Jack silently told the squirrel. Boy, are you going to
look foolish.
He grinned and went back to bed.

Day after day Jack fed those squirrels. One morning the smallest of the three had a bloody scrape on its back and Jack fed it an extra cracker, then worried about it all day.

Jack grew stronger with each new morning. After about two weeks, he gave up altogether his plans for escaping. He wanted to stay. His body didn't torture him for whiskey, he was growing to like the doctors, a few of the men had become important friends to him (he found he enjoyed talking with them far better than he had with his wife) and, most important, he had three squirrels to greet every morning.

By the fifth week, Jack had gained weight, made plans for a camping trip with another man and was finally not as afraid of his life as before. The doctors said he could leave.

Jack wanted to be home again, to move around in his own small kitchen and fix a few things in the garage. He wanted to leave. But he wondered about his squirrels.

He moved out of the hospital, back home, and for the next four days woke up at dawn and thought about the squirrels. Then on the fifth day, an idea struck him.

Jack was at the hospital the next morning, before sunrise. He walked through the grass around to the wing of the building where his ward had been. All the windows looked alike to him, especially in the half-light, but when he saw three black shapes moving around outside one of them, he knew he was in the right place.

“Hey!” Jack called softly, standing below the window. “Hey! I'm outside now!”

The squirrels stopped moving and sat, listening sharply. Then one of them jumped off the sill into a tree.

“Hey!” Jack called again. He opened the bag
he was carrying and pulled out a long rope of peanuts. He shook it at them.

“Look what's for breakfast,” he said.

The peanuts that Jack had strung together like popcorn clicked in the silent yard, and the squirrels came after them.

Jack draped the rope over a few tree branches and watched, grinning, as the squirrels picked off the nuts.

“Thanks,” he whispered. “Next week, sunflower seeds.”

In January, a puppy wandered onto the property of Mr. Amos Lacey and his wife, Mamie, and their daughter, Doris. Icicles hung three feet or more from the eaves of houses, snowdrifts swallowed up automobiles and the birds were so fluffed up they looked comic.

The puppy had been abandoned, and it made its way down the road toward the Laceys' small house, its ears tucked, its tail between its legs, shivering.

Doris, whose school had been called off because
of the snow, was out shoveling the cinderblock front steps when she spotted the pup on the road. She set down the shovel.

“Hey! Come on!” she called.

The puppy stopped in the road, wagging its tail timidly, trembling with shyness and cold.

Doris trudged through the yard, went up the shoveled drive and met the dog.

“Come on, Pooch.”

“Where did
that
come from?” Mrs. Lacey asked as soon as Doris put the dog down in the kitchen.

Mr. Lacey was at the table, cleaning his fingernails with his pocketknife. The snow was keeping him home from his job at the warehouse.

“I don't know where it came from,” he said mildly, “but I know for sure where it's going.”

Doris hugged the puppy hard against her. She said nothing.

Because the roads would be too bad for travel for many days, Mr. Lacey couldn't get out to take the puppy to the pound in the city right away. He agreed to let it sleep in the basement while Mrs. Lacey grudgingly let Doris feed it table scraps. The woman was sensitive about throwing out food.

By the looks of it, Doris figured the puppy was about six months old, and on its way to being a big dog. She thought it might have some shepherd in it.

Four days passed and the puppy did not complain. It never cried in the night or howled at the wind. It didn't tear up everything in the basement. It wouldn't even follow Doris up the basement steps unless it was invited.

It was a good dog.

Several times Doris had opened the door in the kitchen that led to the basement and the puppy had been there, all stretched out, on the top step. Doris knew it had wanted some company and that it had lain against the door, listening to the talk in the kitchen, smelling the food, being a part of things. It always wagged its tail, eyes all sleepy, when she found it there.

Even after a week had gone by, Doris didn't name the dog. She knew her parents wouldn't let her keep it, that her father made so little money any pets were out of the question, and that the pup would definitely go to the pound when the weather cleared.

Still, she tried talking to them about the dog at dinner one night.

“She's a good dog, isn't she?” Doris said, hoping one of them would agree with her.

Her parents glanced at each other and went on eating.

“She's not much trouble,” Doris added. “I like her.” She smiled at them, but they continued to ignore her.

“I figure she's real smart,” Doris said to her mother. “I could teach her things.”

Mrs. Lacey just shook her head and stuffed a forkful of sweet potato in her mouth. Doris fell silent, praying the weather would never clear.

But on Saturday, nine days after the dog had arrived, the sun was shining and the roads were plowed. Mr. Lacey opened up the trunk of his car and came into the house.

Doris was sitting alone in the living room, hugging a pillow and rocking back and forth on the edge of a chair. She was trying not to cry but she was not strong enough. Her face was wet and red, her eyes full of distress.

Mrs. Lacey looked into the room from the doorway.

“Mama,” Doris said in a small voice. “Please.” Mrs. Lacey shook her head.

“You know we can't afford a dog, Doris. You try to act more grown-up about this.”

Doris pressed her face into the pillow.

Outside, she heard the trunk of the car slam shut, one of the doors open and close, the old engine cough and choke and finally start up.

“Daddy,” she. whispered. “Please.”

She heard the car travel down the road, and, though it was early afternoon, she could do nothing but go to her bed. She cried herself to sleep, and her dreams were full of searching and searching for things lost.

It was nearly night when she finally woke up. Lying there, like stone, still exhausted, she wondered if she would ever in her life have anything. She stared at the wall for a while.

But she started feeling hungry, and she knew she'd have to make herself get out of bed and eat some dinner. She wanted not to go into the kitchen, past the basement door. She wanted not to face her parents.

But she rose up heavily.

Her parents were sitting at the table, dinner over, drinking coffee. They looked at her when she came in, but she kept her head down. No one spoke.

Doris made herself a glass of powdered milk
and drank it all down. Then she picked up a cold biscuit and started out of the room.

“You'd better feed that mutt before it dies of starvation,” Mr. Lacey said.

Doris turned around.

“What?”

“I said, you'd better feed your dog. I figure it's looking for you.”

Doris put her hand to her mouth.

“You didn't take her?” she asked.

“Oh, I took her all right,” her father answered. “Worst looking place I've ever seen. Ten dogs to a cage. Smell was enough to knock you down. And they give an animal six days to live. Then they kill it with some kind of a shot.”

Doris stared at her father.

“I wouldn't leave an ant in that place,” he said. “So I brought the dog back.”

Mrs. Lacey was smiling at him and shaking her head as if she would never, ever, understand him.

Mr. Lacey sipped his coffee.

“Well,” he said, “are you going to feed it or not?”

Mr. Willis was a man who enjoyed planting things. He had several beds of zinnias, a large circle of green onions, a couple of barrels of eggplants, a row of spinach and some Swedish ivy on his front porch. Mr. Willis was not a practical gardener, so it did not matter to him whether or not he could eat what he grew, or even if what he planted grew badly or not at all. Mr. Willis just enjoyed planting things.

Mr. Willis's wife lived with him and she was not well. She was old (as was he, but it didn't
seem to bother him so much), and she lay in bed most of every day. Mr. Willis loved her—he had loved her for fifty-six years—and he tended to her needs. Her favorite food was a chocolate milkshake mixed up with an egg and some powdered malt. He fixed one for her twice a day—and more, if she asked.

Mr. Willis missed his wife as he puttered about his yard, planting his favorite things. Sometimes she would pull herself up from her bed and stand at the window, watching him work among his onions or zinnias. But not often. She did not seem to enjoy life any longer since she had become old, as if she had decided there was no more for her to do. And Mr. Willis, as hard as he might try, could not change this.

On summer evenings, if the mosquitoes weren't too bad, Mr. Willis sat on his front porch and listened to the sound of children playing at the house just down the road. Traffic was light, and he could hear the crickets and the katydids in his apple trees. Sometimes he almost forgot, sitting there, that Mrs. Willis was in the house.

On his porch, Mr. Willis's Swedish ivy, growing down from a pot attached to the ceiling,
was so healthy that Mr. Willis did not tend to it as he did his other growing things. Plucking off a brown leaf or two, that was all the plant required, and Mr. Willis could ignore it for days.

But on one summer evening, when there was still light enough outside to show up a brown leaf for plucking, Mr. Willis's Swedish ivy gave him the surprise of his life. He was glad he was on good terms with God, in case it should be a sign to him!