PeeWee and Plush (4 page)

Lexi and I looked at each other, puzzled. I'd heard music coming from the boom boxes that some of the people carried in the park, but I'd never heard it so loud and it never sounded like this. Personally, I prefer birdsong to human music.

“Mr. Josephi, who owned the pet shop where I used to live, always had the radio on,” Plush explained to us. “He especially loved to listen to opera. I've heard many of them in his store.”

“Would you like to
see
the opera?” I asked Plush.

“You mean we could actually do that?” she asked incredulously.

“It's just a short walk from here to the Great Lawn. That's where the performance must be.”

And so that's why we didn't go to Turtle Pond, and it's how I got to see my first opera. There were men and women wearing long outfits that looked incredibly uncomfortable to me, singing in voices that were unnaturally loud. Although I could hear them perfectly well, I couldn't make out a single word. Whenever the singing stopped, the hundreds of people sitting on blankets or folding chairs would break into loud applause. Plush tapped her paws together in delight too.

“Why can't I understand them?” I asked Plush.

“They're singing in Italian, silly,” she told me.

“Do you understand Italian?” I asked in amazement.

“No,” she admitted. “You don't have to understand all the words to enjoy an opera. You can feel the emotion in the music. Imagine! I'm hearing a live performance of
Tosca
here in the park,” Plush said happily. “Who could believe it? I only wish Mr.
Josephi were here too. He would be so delighted.”

“Maybe he is,” I wondered aloud. I'd never seen so many humans before in my life. There were hundreds of them.

“Oh, what a good thought,” said Plush, looking at me. “You're right. Perhaps Mr. Josephi is out there somewhere.”

As we sat under a shrub, I saw sheets of green paper with words printed on them on the ground around us. With everyone concentrating on the scene before them, I dared to venture out and grab one with my teeth. Then sitting back under the bush, I studied it. Plush was so involved with the opera performance that she didn't notice me poring over the green page. From it, I learned the names of all the singers and all of the
people who had sponsored this event.

Much later, when the opera was over and the audience had left, the sky was dark. Only a few park lights and the moon above cast any light on the Great Lawn.

“Now we can feast,” said Lexi. “The park personnel will be cleaning up early tomorrow morning, so this is our chance.”

Plush ate her first grape and a wheat cracker. I had a piece of peach and some salted peanuts. Lexi kept busy eating and hiding food in holes that he dug all around the field. Many of his relatives snatched up food that had been dropped by the humans too. Not far from us, I saw Lexi's fat old uncle Ninety-nine munching on a piece of cookie. I even noticed an old acquaintance, a raccoon named Sewer Drain, busy devouring
a sandwich which had been left behind. There was plenty for all of us.

“Why do you make holes and bury food?” Plush asked Lexi.

“I can't eat it all,” Lexi said, “and I hope by burying some of it that I'll be able to find it later in the year when winter comes and there are no nuts and seeds and leaves available.”

“What is winter?” Plush asked.

“It's many moons away from now. But when it comes, the days are short, the nights are long, the air is cold, the ground is hard, and life is harder.”

I shuddered at Lexi's words. But on such a warm, moonlit summer night, it was hard to imagine a time called winter. So I turned my attention back to the food in front of me.

When we had eaten as much as we could possibly manage, it was too late to begin the long trek back to our homes. “Let's spend the night right here,” suggested Lexi, and both Plush and I agreed.

Lexi climbed up the nearest tree. Plush crawled under a nearby bush. She was making a funny sound in her throat. It took me a moment to realize that she was trying to hum one of the melodies from the opera. I crawled in beside her.

“I have some good news for you,” I whispered in the darkness when she stopped humming.

“What is it?” she asked. Her voice no longer held the anger of the afternoon. Where had I read the words
music soothes the savage beast
? Guinea pigs aren't savage, but all
animals get angry sometimes. And the opera had worked its magic on Plush.

“I saw on the program that a different opera will be performed here later in the summer. It's called
La Traviata
. Have you ever heard of it?”

“
La Traviata
? That's another wonderful opera. It's by Giuseppe Verdi,” exclaimed Plush. “Oh, it would be amazing to have a second experience like tonight. Will you come with me?” she asked.

I wanted to jump for joy. I knew I was forgiven. Thank you, Giacomo Puccini, wherever you are!

That began a very happy time for me. Each day Plush and I grew to know each other better. I learned which seeds and leaves were her favorites and saved them for her. Plush was eager to learn more about park life and asked me a hundred questions a day. Best of all, we played together in the tall grasses that grew all around us.

It had always been impossible for me
to join in Lexi's games of tag, chase, and hide-and-seek that he played with all of his siblings and cousins. I couldn't keep up with squirrel speed and I couldn't climb trees or jump from limb to limb. But Plush and I were evenly matched for playing games. We hid in the grass or in small crevices in the earth or under rocks. We chased each other at our slower guinea pig pace and tickled each other with long flower stems and grasses. Each day brought new pleasures.

There were surprises too. It didn't rain until Plush had been living in the park for ten days.

“What is this leaking from the sky?” she asked in alarm when she stuck her head outside. She had never seen rain before.

“Rain? Is that another name for water?” she asked.

“It's water from above. It won't last long. Perhaps a few hours. Perhaps all day.”

Plush walked outside and took a morning drink from a nearby puddle. “I don't like it,” she informed me. “I like water to hold still so I can drink it. I don't want it falling on my head.”

“Then stay inside,” I told her.

“But what can we do? There's no room for any of our games in here.”

I knew how we could spend our time. Until now there hadn't been an opportunity to show off my reading. My mother had taught me from the paper scraps that lined our cage in the pet shop. And thanks to Lexi, I own a collection of small books that have
been left behind by people who visit the park. So Plush and I passed many pleasant hours in my hole as I read poems from one of my books.

“Read that again,” Plush asked after I finished one of them.

“
The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then,
Poor thing?
He'll sit in a barn,
To keep himself warm,
And hide his head under his wing,
Poor thing!
”

“That's a very sad poem,” said Plush. “And I don't understand all the words either.”

I didn't understand all of the rhyme myself. I knew about robins, but
barn
?
snow
? These were words I didn't know. But I had a feeling that it had something to do with what Lexi had told us about winter. Wasn't that a time of snow?

Later, while Plush was napping, I found another puzzling poem. I read it slowly. It was called “No” and the poet was Thomas Hood.

I shuddered at these words. It sounded like the end of time. I breathed deeply and tried to be brave as I went on. But the words seemed to bring more and more gloom. And finally the poem concluded:

Where had I heard that word before? November? I said it over and over to myself trying to remember and then suddenly I knew. Back when I was a young guinea pig and my mother was teaching me how to read, she had also taught me some of the rhymes and songs that she knew. One of them was about the months:
Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November
. . . . November occurred during one of the moons and from the words in Thomas Hood's poem, I could guess it was not his favorite time of the year. I guessed it would not be mine either.

Later that day the rain stopped and the
next day was another bright and sunny one. I forgot my fears once again. But it wasn't for long. A couple of days later, Lexi dragged a heavy magazine over to our hole.

“A woman left this,” he told me. “There're lots of black squiggles in here for you.”

Squiggles
are what Lexi calls words. I've tried teaching him how to read, but he is far too restless to sit still long enough to master even a single letter of the alphabet. Plush, on the other hand, who quickly learned all of the uppercase letters, was eager to learn more.

I went under a bush to study this new piece of literature. The information inside was not of much interest: mostly about cosmetics (that funny red coloring that human women put on their lips and
the black that surrounds their eyes), and how to lose weight (why would an animal want to do that?). There were lots of terrible pictures in the magazine too. I saw page after page of women wearing long coats or jackets made out of animal pelts. I shuddered at the thought, even though I knew guinea pigs are so small that no human would ever attempt to take our skins to make a piece of clothing.