Ginger Pye (2 page)

It was the most interesting way for a mother to meet a father of any that Rachel and Jerry had heard so far. Addie Egan's mother had met her father at the high school prom, for example. And Dick Badger's mother had met his father at a Sunday school picnic. And so it went. At any rate this was how it happened that Rachel and Jerry had the youngest mother in the town of Cranbury, and the youngest grandmother, and the youngest uncle, their Uncle Bennie, Mama's baby brother, who was now only three years old.

Papa and Mama came to Cranbury to live so that Papa could study the birds of the marshes and the woods and the fields, and because Cranbury was in the middle between New York and Boston. Perhaps they, too, could not make up their minds which was more important, New York or Boston, and had to settle halfway.

After a while Gramma and Grampa moved to Cranbury too, so that Uncle Bennie would grow up knowing his niece and nephew, Rachel and Jerry, and none of them be strangers to any of them. Grampa was a piano tuner and he said he'd just as lief tune pianos in Cranbury as where he was and moreover he could have a boat in Cranbury, which he couldn't in New York. Sometimes Rachel and Jerry asked Grampa which he thought was more important, New York or Boston, and between plinking the piano keys, he'd say, "New York." But then, naturally, being from there he could not be a traitor and say, "Boston."

After Rachel had been taken to visit both cities,
New York and Boston, finding them both wonderful, she didn't know what to say in the importance game. To keep it interesting, however, she continued to say, "Boston." What would be the sense of both her and Jerry saying, "New York"? There would not have been any game then. And, anyway, the name, "Boston," still
sounded
more important.

It was Papa who had taken Rachel on her first visit to Boston. And it was Mama who had taken her on her first visit to New York. The time she went to Boston with Papa happened to be over the Thanksgiving weekend, just a few years before this story begins. They were to spend the weekend with an old aunt of Papa's, Auntie Hoyt, who had been the first to steer Papa toward birds. She was a spinster aunt and she was very old and fragile and Papa was very fond of her.

That weekend was a cold, raw, and bleak one. Rachel slept on a small cot in the parlor and she could not get warm the whole night. She didn't have enough covers and her feet would not warm up. She stayed awake and stayed awake and though she scrunched herself up into a tight ball, she still stayed cold. Since Auntie Hoyt was poor, Rachel imagined she did not have any more covers in the cupboard and she felt she should not embarrass her by asking
for
more. Anyway she didn't want to be a nuisance and wake anybody up, so she shivered and shook. Also she didn't want Papa to think he had such a cold daughter he could not possibly take her on any more trips. Rachel longed to go on bird trips with Papa, to the coldest North and the hottest South and traipse through the swamps of Florida. She had to be stoic. It must have been about three in the morning before she ever fell asleep.

The next night as Rachel got ready for bed she viewed the cold couch of night with horror. She felt she could not stand the cold another minute. Papa was reading
The Auk,
and Auntie Hoyt a little book of
Forget-me-nots.
Whispering, so Auntie Hoyt would not hear her, and hoping the question would not fill Papa with such disgust he would never take her to Labrador, she asked Papa where they had hung her overcoat—she planned to sleep in it. Then he and Auntie Hoyt, who
had
heard, were sorry and piled a hundred coats on her couch. She was still cold, however, and could not get her feet warm the whole time she was there, in Boston.

In Boston, one day, she had an unusual experience. While Papa and Auntie Hoyt waited out of sight somewhere, she had to go by herself into a large room in a department store and listen to someone dressed up like Santa Claus read a Christmas story and '
Twos the night before Christmas.
This seemed odd to her for at Thanksgiving time, she was not ready for Santa Claus. In Cranbury they got through the turkeys and the pumpkins and the Pilgrims before they brought out the Santa Clauses.
She was quite relieved when the whole occasion was over and instead of being abandoned she found Papa and Auntie Hoyt waiting, beaming, at the door.

They went on an underground trolley car in Boston which went too fast around corners and it was a wonder it did not bump into the wall. For almost every meal Auntie Hoyt gave them baked beans out of a can and cold boiled ham both of which Rachel was very fond of but for which Auntie Hoyt apologized, saying hard times had hit her. In Boston, she also saw the Common, the old North church, the Bunker Hill monument, and where John Adams was buried. It was all like walking through the pages of the history book. Could New York come up to this?

The following year when Mama took her down to New York, she saw that it could, but in a different way. It is true she had a number of ideas about New York before she got there which came in for quite a reshuffling when she saw how things really were. For instance, she had expected the elevated railway to be a little train running on narrow tracks from pole to pole about a half a mile in the air, really elevated. A sky train, she had thought, reached perhaps by ladder, and she had anticipated riding on it with the greatest delight. On the contrary the elevated was so low down, the trolleys that ran over the viaduct from Cranbury to the city were almost as exciting.

The subway, too, was not as she had expected. She had thought a subway would be a shining thing way way down in the middle of the earth. But there, one had merely to go down a flight of stairs and one beheld the subway; and she did not see the escalator that Papa flew up.

But in New York Rachel tasted the best meal she ever had in her whole life. She and Mama had walked for miles and miles and hours and hours. They had had nothing to eat because on the train Rachel had eaten up the hard-boiled egg sandwiches that were supposed to be eaten in some quiet park with the squirrels and pigeons. Her footsteps lagged; she was hot, hungry, and tired. Finally her mother caught on and took her into a long, narrow store—she said afterwards it was the five-and-ten-cent store—and there Rachel was served this delicious dinner of pot roast and mashed potatoes and gravy and peas, and not too much, just enough, on a thick little hard white plate. Her dinner cost ten cents, Mama said, and it impressed Rachel that for either five or ten cents, one could buy almost anything in New York.

Even dresses. For after this wonderful little dinner they went into an enormous place and there, for ten cents apiece, Mama bought Rachel two dresses, a blue one and a brown one, and these were the first bought dresses Rachel had ever had. Mama made all her clothes. Rachel loved the bought dresses. But when they were washed they shrank up to nothing and she had to give them to Thelma Ruby, her old doll.

These were the only times so far that Rachel had been to either New York or Boston and when they played the game as to which was more important she still said, "Boston," so there'd be a game.

"Which is more important?" asked Jerry again for it seemed that Rachel had not heard the first time. "A cat or a dog?"

"Both," said Rachel, for this was like asking which was more important, a girl or a boy, and could not be answered.

"M-m-m," said Jerry.

September breezes stirred the branches of the huge horse chestnut tree that hung over the house; the stars were coming out; and the two children sat in silence. Then, stepping carefully over Gracie, not to make her move, Rachel reached for a horse chestnut that was glistening in the lamplight and, polishing it on her skirt, she sat down again on the bench beside Jerry. In the distance shouts of children playing hide-and-seek could be heard. Then, because it looked as though Rachel might possibly have it in mind to get up and run around the corner and get in the hide-and-seek game, to keep her here, Jerry said, "Hey."

"M-m-m?" said Rachel, sitting down again.

"I been thinking."

"M-m-m," said Rachel. And she waited. Thinking was more in Jerry's line than talking, but finally he blurted out:

"Would Gracie be jealous if we had another pet, a dog?"

"A dog!" exclaimed Rachel in surprise.

"Yes, a dog. There's a puppy over at Speedys' barn and they said I could have him for one dollar."

"One dollar!" said Rachel. "Where'd you get the dollar?"

"First," said Jerry. "Would Gracie be jealous, that's what I'm asking you. Not, where'd I get the dollar."

Well. There was silence for a few minutes while Rachel took this in. Then she said incredulously, "Is Gracie a pet?"

Neither Rachel nor Jerry ever petted Gracie because Gracie had no use for children, imagining they were just out to pull her tail. It is hard to know how she got this wrong idea, but she did have it, and the only person she had any use for was Mama. When she caught a rat out in the barn, as she did once in a while, she brought it to Mama, laying it proudly at Mama's feet. If Mama did not act as pleased as Gracie expected, she would neatly rip the rat's stomach open with her claws so Mama would find it more tempting. This performance, however unpleasant, was remarkable, and Mrs. Pye boasted of it to all other cat owners who were not too squeamish to hear the tale.

Naturally, the feelings of such an important cat and her position in the household had to be carefully
considered before taking such a step as Jerry had suggested.

"Is Gracie a pet?" Rachel repeated.

"Of course she's a pet. If she's a cat, she's a pet.

"Oh. I thought she was a member of the family."

"She is. But she's still a pet."

So now they were back at the beginning. Would Gracie, being a pet of the Pyes, be jealous if Jerry brought this puppy of the Speedys into the house?

"Well," said Rachel, counting on her fingers to make her answer more important. "There are four of us and none of us is jealous because there is more than one of us."

"But we're people. I'm not talking about getting another people. I'm talking about a dog."

"I don't think Gracie would be jealous of a dog," reasoned Rachel carefully. "Because we're not jealous of Gracie. And we're people and she's a cat. And she'll think about the dog the way we think about her. She might be jealous if we got another cat, like we might be jealous if we got another people. But she won't be jealous if we get a dog, any more than we would be."

This sounded rather sensible to Jerry and he looked at his sister gratefully.

"Did you ask Mama?" asked Rachel.

"No," said Jerry. "First I had to find out if Gracie would be jealous."

Presently Mama came out for a breath or two of air. She sat down in the little old red wooden rocker and fanned herself with a folded newspaper. Then Jerry told her he had a plan to buy this certain puppy of the Speedys for one dollar since Gracie, as Rachel said, being a member of the family and a cat, would not be jealous of their having a new pet—a dog.

"A dog!" said Mama, and Rachel and Jerry saw with satisfaction that she showed the proper surprise. "Well," she said. There had never been a dog in the Pye family before, only Mama and Papa and Jerry and Rachel and Gracie. Naturally it came as a jolt to try to imagine life with a dog when life had been going along so long without one.

But Mama did not hesitate long. She said that it would be very nice to have a dog and, since Mama was Mama, she did not ask Jerry where he was going to get the dollar. Rachel did though. She asked again where Jerry was going to get the dollar. Jerry muttered he wasn't sure just yet so Rachel knew it was going to be a hard thing to do.

It seemed to Rachel that by the time Jerry could get a whole dollar saved up the puppy would be a
grown-up dog. If he had only told them sooner they could have begun to save long ago. They could have made mite boxes such as those given out in Sunday school during Lent, and she and Jerry could have put their pennies in them. Soon there might have been enough to buy the dog. This way though, since he had not told them until now, and since they did not want this puppy to be a grown-up dog before they got him, they would have to think of some quicker plan.