Pinky Pye (12 page)

"I told you it was a typhoon or something," interrupted Mama. "I told you so."

"Well, anyway," said Papa ("You can read the whole thing for yourselves in a minute," he said, for Uncle Bennie's and Rachel's and Jerry's heads kept getting in his way as they tried to see the story), "the wind yanked the owl out of her hands and it disappeared into space. The poor Bishes! They were crazy about that little fellow. Fiercest-looking little thing for anything that small!"

"Maybe he flew to land," suggested Rachel.

"Not likely," said Papa. "He couldn't fly in a wind like that! Even if he had been blown to land, he couldn't survive, for he has been a pet all his life and wouldn't know how to find food. All his meals have to be served to him."

"Well," said Uncle Bennie cheerfully. "What's gone is gone. My crickets is gone. And his owl is gone. That's fair."

Rachel cut the owl story out of the paper, and even if it did smell of mackerel, she pasted it on page two of her bird scrapbook. So far, both pages happened to be about a pygmy owl, the same owl.

"Poor little Owlie," she murmured, looking at the picture of him on page one, all fluffed up and healthy and ready for his travels. And now where was he? Lost at sea. "Poor little Owlie-wowlie."

The next morning, early, Rachel decided to climb up on the little roof where Gracie always sat and see if she could make some sort of bird discovery from up there. The Pyes had been here all this time and she hadn't made a bird discovery yet and, so far as she knew, neither had her eminent father. It was time someone discovered something. Up on the little roof she could watch and she could think.

So up she went. She braced herself against the corner of the cottage and then hoisted herself up and onto the little peaked roof. She straddled this and then she saw what a wonderful view there was from up here of the ocean, of the family's comings and goings, of everything!

No wonder Gracie liked it up here! Trying not to displease her, for after all this was Gracie's place first, and edging away from Gracie's spot, which was as near the dusty porthole window as possible, Rachel looked down at her father.

There he sat, under the green umbrella. His field glasses were beside him and so were his notes and papers, anchored by rounded rocks so they wouldn't blow away. Papa did not look like an injured bird man who has broken his ankle. He looked like a real right regular bird man watching and working in his khaki clothes on an expedition. Rachel's heart swelled up with love for her father.

Just look at him,
she thought.
Studies the birds though his foot is broken. It is like "the show must go on,
" she thought.
It is going on, Papa,
she said to herself.
Your little daughter, not so little anymore, soon to be ten, is up here now, on the rooftop and on the brink of a great discovery.

Rachel had no idea what this great discovery was going to be, but she had a feeling that she would make it and that it would be great. With her back to Gracie and the porthole window, she raised her binoculars and took a long look at the horizon. A big ship was sailing by.
It must have been just about there,
Rachel thought,
where that big boat is now, that the awful wind snatched poor little Owlie out of his mistress's hands and flung him into the sea, right into the mouth of a whale, probably, or some other big, widemouthed, hungry fish.

"Stop it," she said to Gracie, whose tail was as strong as a wired thong and hit Rachel in the back now and then as they were doing their watching, one facing inward, one facing outward.

I watch good,
thought Rachel proudly.
When there is something to watch, that is. But when there isn't something to watch, you watch and watch and soon there
is
something to watch.

Rachel had the idea that wherever her father went he attracted birds to him by the stillness of his watching. When he was away on a far trip, she visualized him as always being surrounded by beautiful and extraordinary birds. Now, seeing her father seize his binoculars and turn them toward the dune, she did likewise. A covey of terns flew upward in a lovely formation, and then, like the bursting of a beautiful night-firework, they dispersed, dipping over the dune and out of sight.

Papa and Rachel both watched for a further display of loveliness and, none coming, they turned their binoculars upon each other and waved. Then each went back to his own watching, Papa to his near watching and Rachel to her far and distant watching, for she had the idea that her great bird discovery was going to be discovered far away. That was why she was up here, to see farther.

"Stop it," she said to Gracie, whose tail thwacked her again.

She had never seen her father do great watching, for she had never been on an expedition with him, not before this. She imagined that he could watch as well as a certain man she had once seen at the zoo, who had looked not to left nor to right, but just straight ahead at what it was that was being watched, in that case—a monkey.

Yes. The best watching that Rachel had ever seen had been watched by this certain man at the zoo, a keeper in a khaki suit. She and Jerry had run ahead of the family to get to the monkey house first. When they got near it, they saw this man in the khaki suit, a keeper, sitting on the ground with his back against a tree and looking up into a large tree opposite him, not taking his eyes off it, hardly winking, not saying "Quiet" to them or "Sh-sh-sh," because he could not take his eyes off what he was looking at.

She and Jerry had stopped in their tracks and they looked up into the tree where the man was looking. They had that much sense—to do that and to not ask questions—and up in that tree they saw a bright-eyed little monkey who was looking down at the keeper eagerly and happily and scratching himself.

A few yards beyond their first looker they saw another looker, a keeper in a khaki suit, too. This one was standing so still he seemed like a tree, and he, too, was watching the monkey and hardly winking and not turning his eyes to the left or the right either.

Then, out of the side of his mouth, softly, and to give the impression that he had not spoken at all in order not to upset the looking beam that was going on between him and the monkey, the first man, the sitter, said, "Please go away."

The children knew he was talking to them, and without a word they backed off, not taking their eyes off the man because they had never seen anything like this watching in all their lives before, and it sent the chills up and down their spines, as though they were watching a policeman trying to catch an escaped robber. They stumbled over a gray boulder and almost fell into the arms of the real policeman of the zoo.

"Why are the men watching the monkey?" Jerry asked him. "Did he escape?"

"Yes," the policeman said, and would not explain how it had happened, so Rachel and Jerry had to figure it out for themselves.

"Probably," said Jerry as they walked along, "the first man opened the door of the monkeys' cage to feed them and this one monkey scooted out between his legs. You know, made a dash for freedom."

"Yes," said Rachel. "And probably now he's wondering what his next move should be."

While Rachel and Jerry were doing this interesting speculating, still another keeper came along with a tray full of delicious foods such as a peeled banana, a mango, some peanuts, a juicy slice of watermelon, a chicken sandwich on white bread—a lovely lunch, which he put outside the door of the monkey cage. He hoped to bait the monkey back to his cage with this tempting array. But the plan had not worked up till the time the Pyes had to go home. The lunch was just making all the other monkeys drool intolerably.

Probably never did get him back,
thought Rachel now.
Goodness,
she said to herself.
I almost forgot what I was doing. Watching. If only I had something to watch! I bet I could watch as well as that monkey-watcher.

Gracie's tail gave her another big thump. "Now, Gracie," said Rachel, turning around and shaking her finger at the big old cat, "you must be careful and not knock me off the roof. One lame ornithologist around here is enough."

Gracie gave no answer. Her watching was concentrated as usual on the little window, sooty and cobwebby. "What are you so interested in?" asked Rachel. "Uncle Bennie's grasshoppers? There aren't any up there in the daytime. You know they only sleep up there. In the daytime we take them down, that is, if any of them are left alive. You should know that."

Rachel edged nearer the window and took a look in herself. She saw nothing. "You are dreaming of your great rat-catching past, aren't you?" Rachel whispered to Gracie, who did not answer but shifted her position a trifle and gave Rachel a look that plainly meant, "Get away from here." Rachel then resumed her right position, patiently picked up her binoculars, scanned the dunes, and prayed for some odd bird. Imagine an ibis!

The watching of Rachel and Gracie was not the only watching going on at this moment. Uncle Bennie, of course, was watching grasshoppers and crickets and their life in the sparse grass that was their forest. He was not interested in the watching of anybody else.

For a time Jerry watched only Ginger, and Ginger watched only Jerry and the peanut that he was holding above Ginger's head. Jerry was teaching Ginger how to count. "Bark once for one, twice for two," urged Jerry. He held up the peanut, Ginger's reward when he got his lesson right. Eyeing the peanut, Ginger gave five excited barks for number one, and he haggardly pleaded for the suspended peanut. "No, no!" explained Jerry patiently. "Just one bark for one, two for two. You know now, don't you?"

Uncle Bennie, crawling by on his stomach, paused to say, "My bears can count. 'Ooze, dooze,' they say. That's one, two." And he wormed away on his stomach, for that is the best way to catch crickets.

Exhausted from their lessons, Jerry and Ginger sat back. Jerry gave Ginger the peanut anyway, for trying, and then he began to watch Uncle Bennie do his clever stalking. Ginger gave a profound sigh and lay down, his head between his paws. But he didn't close his eyes and he didn't take them off Jerry because he wanted to be ready for whatever came next, another peanut, a word of love—"Good dog!"—a trip to the boat, a "finding things" jaunt, anything.

Mama called Pinky, whose attention was hard to catch she was so busy watching the watchers on the rooftop. Finally she heard and loped to the back stoop, where Mama fed her some of the best food in the house. She spoke endearing words to her and put the saucer down where the delightful aromas were wafted to Ginger's sensitive smelling apparatus. What succulent smacking noises Pinky made! Ginger gave one disgusted look, hitched his shoulders uncomfortably, and resumed his watching of Jerry. Now and then, however, without moving his head, he rolled his eyes in Pinky's direction and then surrendered his thoughts to a petulant analysis of Pinky and all cats.

"Oof!" he said loudly to register contempt.

"Now, Ginger," said Mama. "You leave kitty alone. You'll have yours later."

Pinky looked up and said, "Woe?" in her most bewitching style.

"Ah-h-h," said Mama lovingly, and went back in the cottage to watch her pot in hopes it would boil.

Not looking at Pinky, but thinking glumly about her, Ginger gave another contemptuous "Oof!" He wondered gloomily why cats can't be like dogs.

When Pinky had finished, she sat and gave herself a thorough bath. Then she sauntered over to Ginger and rubbed up against his head. "Gr-r-r-r," Ginger said. Pinky put her ear close to Ginger's head and listened to his rumbling as one puts one's ear against a telephone pole to hear the humming. "Gr-r-r-r," said Ginger again, more loudly and like the rumbling of thunder. Pinky nodded her head as though to say, "It is what I expected," and she scampered off.

Settling down on Papa's lap again, Pinky scrutinized the main watchers of the family, Gracie and Rachel, who were as busy watching as ever. The tip of Gracie's tail was twitching back and forth as if it were mechanical, and Pinky cogitated about Gracie.

At this moment the first toot of the eleven o'clock boat sounded, and all watching, except for that of Gracie, whose head nodded sleepily but who kept her vigil anyway, and of Pinky, who continued to puzzle about the old cat Gracie and her watching, ceased.

Jerry called Uncle Bennie and Rachel to hurry up if they wanted to meet the boat with him. He wanted to be the first wagon boy there and earn ten cents. He plumped Uncle Bennie into the wagon and they all raced for the ferry.

"Too-oot!" sounded the bustling little boat as it edged into the slip.

Meeting the boat was a favorite pastime, wagon business or not, and seeing who came over on it was a real pleasure, even though the Pyes never knew any of the people. Someday they might know someone.

This time there weren't many people on the boat, in fact there was just one man.
I hope I get him,
thought Jerry; and he lined up his beautiful taxi with the others.

Funny-looking luggage he has,
thought Jerry as the newcomer hove it onto the dock. He had one battered valise and a huge gray thing that looked like an old quilt.