Pinky Pye (10 page)

"Just over," said Mama firmly. "And besides, have you counted the number of times we really have used everything we brought with us? And I can bring
War and Peace
to the beach now, too."

"What page are you up to?" asked Rachel. There were l,lll pages in this book.

"Thirty-nine," said Mama. "Last summer I was up to there, too, but this summer I'm going to finish it."

Today Uncle Bennie said he was not going to the ocean with the others, so there would be a little less to carry. He was tired of the old ocean. It was too big. He had said to the waves, "Waves, stop a minute!" But they hadn't. He was going to stay home and catch crickets to replace the ones that had got lost in last night's blow.

He scarcely said good-bye when the others left. He was on his stomach, wiggling toward a black cricket, who was surveying him with a surprised and puzzled look. She was still more surprised a few minutes later to find herself scooped up in Uncle Bennie's warm little fist. "Sing, cricket," begged Uncle Bennie. This cricket did not sing, and it never did sing. It was the first nonsinging cricket that Uncle Bennie had caught.

"If it does not sing, it is a lady cricket, for lady crickets do not sing," observed Papa from under his green umbrella.

"Oh, yes they do," said Uncle Bennie. "Some do. Mine do."

"Never heard of that kind of a lady cricket," said Papa, and he went on stroking Pinky under the chin.

Pinky was purring, absentmindedly, like an engine unwinding, going more and more slowly, then, putting on steam, going faster again. Her eyes were fastened on Gracie, who was sunning herself on the little roof over the front porch; and Gracie's eyes were glued to the little round porthole window over the porch. In fact, all day long, not even coming down for lunch, Gracie had been staring into the little window over the porch. You would think she'd turn around the other way and get a view of the world. But her world was straight ahead and through the window into the alcove under the eaves. Now and then the tip of her tail twitched.

No one except Pinky noticed these telling signs about Gracie. But Pinky noticed them and she was puzzled, and that was why she forgot, now and then, to purr. The tip end of her tail twitched in answer to Gracie's, for, without opening their mouths, cats talk to each other with the tip ends of their tails, which are very much like signal flags.

By the end of the day Uncle Bennie had managed to catch three new pets, two crickets and one grasshopper. This was quite a big haul for one day, and around the supper table everyone congratulated him. The peppermint-striped twins came by and looked at them stolidly. "Two are ladies," Uncle Bennie said to them. "For they do not sing."

"We know," they said. "You don't have to tell us," and off they marched to get cones.

Uncle Bennie had fixed up a new little apartment house for his crickets, a three-room house, and each captive was in its own room, broodingly poised on the grass Uncle Bennie had picked for its bed. After supper Rachel helped Uncle Bennie catch a ladybug for each and a lightning bug for each, so there was no favoritism despite the fact only one cricket could sing. It had a nice chirp, and it would have been easy to be fonder of that one than of the others that did not sing. Uncle Bennie tried tickling the backs of the nonsingers, with a piece of straw, which Papa said was the way the boys in China got their crickets to sing. But the nonsingers remained silent, so Papa must be right and these two were ladies and ladies do not sing.

Uncle Bennie and Rachel punched a few holes in each room of this apartment house so the crickets could breathe and a very small hole between each room so, if any one of them wanted company, he or she could get a peek at his or her neighbor and say "Hello"—a silent hello from the silent ones and a chirped hello from the singer. They put the chirping one between the two silent ones, out of fairness and for better balance. The holes between the rooms were not so big that the sight of their neighbors would make them mad and they would tear the house down and eat each other up.

It was a neat little house, and the next day Uncle Bennie planned to paint it red. He put water in three tiny tin plates with fluted edges that had come with candy in them from the penny store, and at bedtime Rachel climbed up on the table and then up on the chair that was on the table; she pushed open the little swinging doors and shoved the house full of crickets in. They were safe from cats and dog and, with the little window closed, no heavy blow could blow them away.

Everyone went to bed, and it was sweet in the eventime to hear the sound of the singing cricket; a sweet and lonely song he sang. It is true he stopped rather abruptly. But what singer on earth does not stop singing abruptly now and then? Perhaps this singing cricket caught sight of his neighbor eyeing him through her little peephole, and this made him uncomfortable instead of happy. Perhaps one of the ladies said, "Keep still, can't you?"

He may have stopped for a drink, who knows?
thought Uncle Bennie, comfortably settling himself in his snug little bed and saying his prayers over again, not remembering whether he had said them yet or not. Was his thumb in his mouth? Yes. He had not quite finished giving it up. Rachel had encouraged him. She had said, "Uncle Bennie, if at first you don't exceed, try, try again. That is a famous saying that someone said once and now everybody says it." Ah, he loved Rachel.

"Good night, Rachel," he said.

"Ni-ite," she said.

The way she said it almost made Bennie cry. He did love her so. She loved him too and she loved his grasshoppers and his crickets. There was no one else in the family who helped him. When he needed a box, she got one for him. When he needed to put the crickets carefully, one in one room, the other in another, she helped him not to break their legs. And she did the big and important and hard thing of putting them into this high and safe place under the eaves, free from danger.

Free from danger?

Free from danger, indeed! "What happened to my three nice crickets?" wailed Uncle Bennie in the morning. When Rachel went up for the cricket cage, she found the lid of the apartment house off and the three crickets gone. Crickets do not have the strength to raise the lid of a shoe box and get out of their house. Uncle Bennie knew this. "Still," he said, "they might. They just might have said in cricket language, 'Yo heave ho,' and pushed. All together. And then they might have eaten each other up."

Rachel said this might be so, since they enjoyed eating each other up. But then where was the one, the last one, the fat one that had the two others inside of him? Or, her. Maybe the last one was a her and was silently sitting somewhere, full of other crickets; and though she had plenty to sing about, naturally she couldn't make a peep. Had to celebrate in silence.

This was a great puzzle, and after breakfast Rachel and Uncle Bennie sat down under the green umbrella to solve it. Pinky sat beside them and daintily sniffed the little apartment house, which needed many repairs. The floor was damp where drops of water had been spilled, and one might think this house had been in a miniature hurricane. There seemed to be more holes for breathing than Uncle Bennie had punched in it. But Uncle Bennie was not absolutely certain of this. After all, he was only just four and could not be expected to remember everything, not where he had punched every single hole.

"I have a good idea," said Rachel.

"What?" asked Bennie, who liked good ideas.

"Tonight, we'll put adhesive tape on the roof to keep it on. They'll never be able to get out then."

"All right," agreed Uncle Bennie. And then he said crossly to Pinky, "Will you please get out of my cricket house?" Pinky with her spindly, spiky legs was stepping daintily over the walls from room to room, smelling each little hole long and thoughtfully, crouching down in a sneaky way and peeking up at them. It is hard to think that the face of a kitten of that age could look wicked, but hers did. "Go away," said Uncle Bennie, giving her a little shove. She scratched herself and went away.

Uncle Bennie did not have very much luck that day catching crickets, but he did catch one handsome olive green grasshopper. Grasshoppers do sing, though not as charmingly as crickets. He put the grasshopper in his pet cage and this, all adhesive-taped down, Rachel put aloft.

In the morning—same story! No grasshopper!

"He's gone!" said Rachel. "Not a trace of him! And he certainly tore this house open to get out!"

"Is there an animal up there?" asked Bennie. "An animal that could eat them?"

"Oh goodness, no!" exclaimed Rachel, coming down quickly at such a horrid thought. "Just suitcases and big boxes are up there."

"Could Gracie get up there?"

"Oh, no. She just sits and sits on that little roof, and she can't get in because during the big blow Jerry closed the window. Besides, when the window was open, she never bothered your crickets. That bell around her neck keeps her from trying to bother anything."

"Maybe she gets up there in the middle of the night when she doesn't have her bell on," said Bennie.

"Oh, no," said Mama, who had overheard the conversation. "Gracie does not get into the eaves in the nighttime. Why, she sleeps on my feet, and I wake up if she even turns over."

Mama was a very light sleeper. Everything, just everything, waked her up. She said there were little rustlings up in the eaves, and these often waked her up. Papa said there were lots of cracks and crannies in little beach cottages such as this, and what Mama heard was wind rustling through these and they could be anywhere in the cottage and not just up in the eaves.

Then Papa did a hard thing, considering his lame foot. To satisfy everybody, he climbed on a stepladder and, pushing the door to the little alcove open, took a good long look inside. "Not a sign of anything in there," he said, and came back down, all hands of all the family lifted to help him so he would not break the other foot.

"Do you think Pinky (Pinky, hearing her name, alerted herself by opening her eyes and bending one ear) gets up there and eats my crickets?" asked Bennie.

And then he answered himself. "No. She doesn't. Because she is too little. They just get away, they do. They go to grasshopper land. When we are all asleep, they go. I saw a beetle go through a crack as narrow as nothing once. Probably crickets can, too. Through the cracks and crannies they must go."

Of course Uncle Bennie could not catch a cricket or a grasshopper every single day. But he did catch one almost every day, and every evening he had Rachel tuck its little house up under the eaves. Sometimes the cricket sang up there while the family was having supper, and they all said, "There's Uncle Bennie's cricket singing." This made Uncle Bennie happy and proud and brought tears to his eyes. It was a very pleasant thing to have cricket-singing in the eaves, whether there was a soloist or a chorus.

But in the morning the little cricket would be gone. Three apartment houses had already been ruined.

Uncle Bennie and Rachel were sad. Two other members of the family, though they were not grieved, were interested in the disappearance of the crickets. One of these was Gracie. Partially hidden by the pale pink rambler roses she spent practically all her time on the little roof over the porch, intently watching the dusty window of the alcove. She moved forward as far as possible on the roof so her nose was plastered against this window, and occasionally she dozed in this odd position.

The other interested member of the family was, of course, Pinky, who studied Gracie with utmost earnestness. Though saying nothing, they communicated with each other frequently. The tips of their tails gave sudden twitches, and on occasion Gracie made a crunching sound with her mouth. Pinky, uncertain as to the exact meaning of the crunch, merely let her mouth hang open, showing its pretty pink lining.

"I know what it is," said Rachel. "The cats are thinking about the crickets and the grasshoppers we put up there, and they imagine they are eating them."

"Yeh. Drooling," said Uncle Bennie, and he went looking for crickets. He told himself the whole story of the disappearing crickets. He thought they just must have escaped through one of the wind crannies and gone back to their own country. Perhaps he was catching the same cricket every day. That was one reason he called them all Sam, not to confuse a cricket with a new name in case it was one of the escaped ones. He wished he could put a date on their stomachs the way one does on turtles. Then he would know for certain whether today's cricket was yesterday's or some other day's escaped cricket.

"I know," said Rachel, who was really allowing interest in crickets to be on a par with interest in birds right now. "We can tie a little colored thread around the cricket, and if it should get away tonight, we can recognize it by the color of its thread. If, tomorrow, we catch a cricket with a piece of red silk thread dangling to it, we'll know that it's today's, Friday's cricket." Furthermore, this would be final proof that Uncle Bennie's crickets did escape and were not the victims of some voracious animal, or of each other. Maybe the cricket would walk or hop on its little red silken leash, be a real little pet on a leash for Uncle Bennie.

When Uncle Bennie, after careful stalking, did catch a cricket, he held it carefully and delicately, not to hurt its wings or legs, while Rachel tied the red string around it. The cricket did not mind, and it did hop along for one or two hops; but it seemed confused, so Bennie put it safely in its little house.

In the morning the thread was there but not the cricket!

"He wriggled out! He wriggled out! Ginger does that too, wriggles out of his collar. What smart crickets I catch!" said Uncle Bennie in admiration.

On the morning of the escape of the cricket of the red silk string Uncle Bennie decided to consult Papa. "Papa," he said. (Of course Papa was not Bennie's real papa, he was his big brother-in-law. But Bennie had the habit of calling him "Papa" since he called his own Cranbury father, who was far away across the sound, "Father.") "Papa," he said, "what do you think happens to my crickets and grasshoppers at night? I'm not innerrupping. I'm just asking you what you think."