Ginger Pye (13 page)

"Lie down, Ginger," said Jerry. "Dead dog," he begged.

Being awfully tired, Ginger was happy to lie down. He licked his nose with loud smacking noises and he washed his torn and bleeding ear, and he washed himself all over. He was right under Jerry's desk and every now and then Jerry gave him a nice pat with his foot.

There was complete silence now except for Ginger's loud paw licking and the occasional loud nose blowing of the tall one. In this quiet Ginger stopped licking himself. With a contented sigh he slipped into a thoughtful doze. He scarcely did more than twitch his ears when, from another room, he heard some more of the droning, as of bees, that he had heard outside. Now he could hear what the droning was saying, though.

R-A-T rat. C-A-T cat. Apparently the boys and girls were being instructed in the best way to manage these creatures. As for Ginger, he was too tired to listen and, besides, he knew the best way to handle them. As though one had to come to a place like this to learn such things.

There was one big boy, and his name was Wally Bullwinkle, and he did not take his eyes off Ginger Pye for one minute. He pretended to be lost in his big geography book, but he had a hand over his face and from between his fingers he was studying Ginger with a sly and furtive mien. Nobody—not Ginger, not Jerry—nobody noticed this.

Ginger was a quite famous dog now, in Cranbury, for his achievement on the school fire escape and for other happy ventures. Almost everyone knew him and liked him. He had a great many friends that he liked to call on. When visiting, he never cut across people's lawns, unless, of course, distracted by a cat. He always walked up the sidewalk or up the driveway, the polite way that people do. He had a comical sidewise gait and it was an amusing sight to see him purposefully walking up the street and turning into somebody's walk and trotting up on the porch and scratching at the door to be let in for a visit and a pat and perhaps a bone.

"Here comes Ginger Pye," people would say, delighted to be honored with a visit from such a famous dog.

It was impossible to think of Ginger having one single enemy in the wide world and the Pyes had
long ago tucked all thought of the unsavory character in the backs of their minds. For there had been no more suspicious happenings since the first few days of Ginger's coming into the family. The Pyes were all proud of their famous dog, though of course they did not boast of him.

Now Ginger was going to be even more famous than ever before though not, this time, in a happy way. For a dreadful thing happened.

Ginger disappeared!

The terrible discovery was made at four o'clock in the afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, right after the Pyes had finished dinner. Mr. Pye had returned the night before from another trip, this time to the Sea Islands, studying more birds. Gramma and Grampa and Uncle Bennie were also here and dinner had lasted a very long time. This was natural since it was Thanksgiving Day and there were three roast chickens and plenty of drumsticks.

Ginger had grown tired of all the talking and the eating and he had scratched at the front door to be let out. "Don't let the puppy out in front," said Mrs. Pye. "Mrs. Carruthers and Mrs. Gaines are sick and tired of all the barking at and chasing of their cats. Let us have some peace and quiet on Thanksgiving Day."

So Jerry let Ginger out the back door into their own enclosed backyard. They heard Ginger crying piteously for a time, because he had wanted to seek adventure on the street. Instead, there he was in the backyard with no possibility of getting out, at least so everyone thought.

The backyard had high board fences on three sides of it, and on the fourth side, the front side, wire fencing joined up with the board fences. Currant bushes grew along the wire fence and they were spiky and cold-looking in the November air. The wire fence and the board fences were all in good condition. There were no loose boards or holes, and Ginger could not get out. Yet Ginger had gotten out, and how? That was what everybody wanted to know.

Jerry was the one who made the discovery. When dinner at last was over, he had gone out to play with his lonesome dog. But there was no dog, lonesome or otherwise. He was gone. It would be impossible to explain why Jerry had such a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It seemed to him that the emptiness in the backyard was a long-time emptiness, that Ginger had been gone a long long while.

Someone must have let Ginger back into the house without my knowing it,
he thought.

But no one had. Still, perhaps he had got in somehow, on someone's heels without being noticed, perhaps when Mama went out for the celery. Once he was in, perhaps Gracie-the-cat had unlatched the front door for him in her unusual-for-a-cat manner. But Gracie-the-cat was innocently and lan
guorously sprawled on the mantel. The latch was tightly fastened on the front door. No one had let Ginger in or out of any door except Jerry when he let him out the back one into the backyard. And the backyard was where he still should be, safe and sound.

It was unbelievable that Ginger was not out there somewhere and Jerry went to the back door and whistled. Nothing but that empty silence answered. Jerry then toured the house, the bedrooms, the parlor, even Papa's study in the tower, but Ginger most certainly was not at home.

Rachel was helping Mama and Gramma with the dishes and there were mountains of these. It looked as though dishwashing would last a week. Uncle Bennie was curled up asleep on the couch in the living room, having had too much to eat. "Take a little nap. Take a little nap," Gramma had urged him. And this time Uncle Bennie had not refused. Grampa and Papa were in the little parlor sitting on the scratchy horsehair furniture, talking in low tones in order not to wake up Uncle Bennie. No one was as excited as Jerry about the disappearance of Ginger except Rachel.

"Oh, he probably got out of the yard somehow and is off chasing cats," Mama said reassuringly.

It might be true, Jerry thought. Nobody in Cranbury had such a smart puppy as he had—a puppy that could trail a boy through the streets and climb up the fire escape at school and find Jerry in his own room, Room Nine, at school, and bring his pencil to him that he had lost somewhere along the way. It would not be too surprising for a dog such as that to find a way to get out of the backyard. Perhaps he had dug a hole under the fence and perhaps he was somewhere in the neighborhood. Later Jerry would examine all the fences and stop up whatever hole he might have dug.

So Jerry went out the front door and down the street a ways and he whistled for Ginger, seven short whistles with an uptilt on the last whistle, the way he always did, and then he listened. No little brown-and-white dog came tearing like dynamite. Nowhere in the neighborhood was there the sound of Ginger's special cat and chicken barking. The silence of Thanksgiving Day, with everyone sitting around with stomachs full and eyes heavy, was all the answer there was to Jerry's whistling.

Except for that time when Ginger had trailed Jerry to school, so far as anyone knew, Ginger had never left their block before. His going away like this was puzzling and it was frightening. Jerry ran
next door to ask Dick Badger if he had seen his dog, but no one answered the bell and then he remembered that Dick's family was spending the day with the Badger clan in Cheshire. Disconsolately Jerry returned home where everyone was still doing the same things.

Rachel looked at Jerry and she was as anxious and panic-stricken as he was. After all, it had been he and she together who had heard the mysterious footsteps that first night long ago, had seen the yellow hat of the unsavory character in the lamplight and up at the reservoir; and she loved Ginger as much as Jerry did; and Ginger was as much her dog as he was Jerry's with the exception that he had been Jerry's idea in the first place, not hers.

She dropped her dishcloth and looked pleadingly at her mother. Her mother nodded her head. "Call in Mr. Pye," she said, referring to the way the men in Washington always spoke. "Call in Mr. Pye," they'd say whenever they got in a bird jam. This was not a bird jam. It was a dog jam and a dishwashing jam. But in this family it did not matter what sort of a jam it was. "Call in Mr. Pye" suited every occasion.

Papa and Grampa obligingly came in from the parlor, rolled up their shirt-sleeves and fell to on
the dishes, meanwhile reminiscing about KP duty in the army. Rachel and Jerry grabbed their coats and hats from the rack by the door and hurried out of the house.

Mama followed them to the door. "I'm sure he is not far away," she told them, giving them both a good-luck hug and kiss. "Now. Hurry back before it gets too dark."

Somehow this made Rachel and Jerry want to cry.
Shucks,
thought Jerry.
He must be right around here somewhere.

Still, neither one of the children said anything that might reassure the other. To both of them the possibility was too real that they might not find Ginger, that Ginger might be gone completely and forever. They both had an awful feeling that this might be so.

First they went to every yard in their block, and all around the square of the block. They whistled for him and they called, "Ginger, Ginger! Here pup, here pup!" But Ginger was not anywhere right around home, that was certain.

They buttoned their coats tighter and they went farther and farther, up one street and down another, whistling and calling all the time. It was a cold day, and a very fine snow—the first of winter—began to fall. After a while a thin gossamer layer glistened everywhere, and it was cold and damp underfoot.

"He'll be cold," said Jerry. "Out all this time."

"Oh, Ginger," gasped Rachel, hardly able to bear it that they did not at least know where he was. She knew not to cry, though, because she was nine years old and children that age did not cry in Cranbury. She usually managed not to cry anymore when she felt like crying. Until now, when they couldn't find Ginger, the main times when she found it almost impossible not to cry were the times in school when an awfully sad story was being read out loud.

Evangeline
was one of these awfully sad stories and sometimes Rachel had to press her fingers in her ears, trying not to hear. But she heard anyway and she would have to keep swallowing hard to keep from crying out loud and disgracing herself and all girls of nine in general. She would dry her tears on her petticoat under her desk, hoping it was supposed she had a cold.

Stories of old men also made her cry. There was the old man in
Hans Brinker.
And there was one dreadful story about an old man which the teacher in Room Four had read the class. The old man in this story was so feeble he spilled all his food on himself with his shaking hands. He made such a mess his family made him eat on a bench behind the kitchen stove while they ate somewhere else away from him. Rachel could hardly bear to think of that sad story ever. When Grampa got that old, she would make him eat right at the table with them all and slobber as much as he wanted. It was awful to be put on a bench behind the kitchen stove.

Dog stories, especially if there were cruelty involved, made her cry too. Consider the
Dog of Flanders!
Now, not to cry over not finding Ginger was
even harder than not crying over the sad stories. And how could they ever go home without him?

"Ginger! Ginger pup!"

They went way over to parts of the town where they hardly ever went. It was growing dark because there was not daylight saving time anymore. The lonely lights in the houses, looking sad and shrunken in the deepening dusk, were coming on. And still the children plodded on, up one street and around a corner and down another street, and calling all the time, or whistling.

They had finally woven their way over to the part of town where Gramma lived. They were on Second Avenue, the street where, that first day when they had bought Ginger for one dollar, they had heard the mysterious footsteps. Maybe here they would find him. They called, "Ginger! Ginger!" and they whistled the seven short whistles with the uptilt on the last note, and they walked slowly, listening hard between calls and whistles. But they heard nothing, no little yelp or whine saying where their puppy was.