Pinky Pye (15 page)

Jerry wondered if Uncle Bennie was asleep. He probably was because little fellows fall asleep anywhere, on trolley cars, even standing up, anywhere. Hard boards are not enough to keep these little fellows awake. When it is sleep time, they sleep. And then Jerry heard a soft and curious-sounding rustling noise somewhere in the cottage, and he wondered what that was.

Now of course this curious rustling sound that Jerry heard was the same sound that Mama (one), Papa (two), and Gracie (three) so far have heard. In fact, every member in the cottage heard it, but we can take them up only one at a time and we are now up to Jerry, who is the fourth. In the opinion of Mama and Papa, arrived at separately and silently as we know, the rustle was crickets, just plain crickets. In the opinion of number three, that is, Gracie, it was...? Jerry (number four) thought it was just the soughing of an old beach house. Ginger (number five) thought it was something, not dangerous exactly, but unusual; and he let out a small "oof!" Jerry throttled the oof before it became two oofs, so it sounded as though Ginger were having a nightmare, and with his feet he pushed Ginger back down into the bottom of the sleeping bag.

Now we are up to Uncle Bennie, who is number six of the nonsleepers, the listeners, and the hearers of the rustle. Uncle Bennie was not able to go to sleep. Contrary to what Jerry supposed, little fellows on the order of Uncle Bennie do not go to sleep just anywhere. They may on trolleys and trains, but sometimes they do not just fall right to sleep when they are in a sleeping bag. Uncle Bennie was the type of little fellow who stayed awake because sleeping in a sleeping bag is a rare and exciting thing to do and not to be compared with trolleys, on which he rode several times a week.

The funny thing was that he had been so sleepy before he got into the bag. But the minute he got into it, he was wide awake. He began to think about his thumb. He was proud of himself because he had not sucked his thumb once the whole day and not, so far, tonight. Who knows? The day the man came over on the boat and the night that he, Uncle Bennie, slept in a sleeping bag, might end once and for all his sucking of his thumb. And that wouldn't be so bad, would it, to give it up two weeks after his birthday instead of right smack on his birthday?
Better than nothing,
he thought, and put his thumb in his mouth for old time's sake. And then he forgot to take his thumb out because he heard an unusual noise, and it was not the noise of Ginger scratching his fleas either, it was a rustling sound and it was up in the eaves.

There goes my cricket!
said Uncle Bennie to himself. He was so excited, he wanted to yell to Rachel to wake up and hear the going-away of his cricket. There was his newest blue-threaded cricket getting away, making his clean getaway. The escapes of all the crickets and grasshoppers had been clean. They had left no mess after them; they had disappeared entirely and joined their brothers and sisters somewhere. There were always sharp little bites on the cricket boxes in the morning. But if a cricket can fight another cricket so hard that he can kill it, then a cricket can bite a cardboard cage and escape. Uncle Bennie was sure that his crickets escaped and that they had not been attacked by anything else alive up there. Rachel said she had examined the alcove thoroughly, and she could find no signs of squirrel, chipmunk, or mouse. She said Mrs. Pulie must have had a great fondness for seaweed, for there was an awful lot of that, all dried up and in corners. Maybe the crickets were living in that. But Uncle Bennie could not expect Rachel, who did not have his terrible fondness for crickets, to shake out the seaweed, examine it, and see if they were.

Uncle Bennie concluded that his crickets were amazingly clever to think up such good escapes, and this explains why he continued to put his crickets up in the alcove so trustingly. To those who asked, he said, "I keep putting my crickets up there because they have a secret place they get away to, and when I have caught a captain for them, they are going to have a simfiny awkstra." Uncle Bennie listened. The rustling gradually ceased. He was getting free, right then, that's what he was doing, thought Uncle Bennie. "Good-bye, cricket," he whispered, a little sadly.

Ginger remained awake. He knew that the cats were awake and he knew the whole family was awake, and when he heard that rustle in the eaves, he gave that little "oof" to let them know he was on the alert, even though he was in this uncommon spot down on the floor in a sleeping bag, and to let them know that it was not a very important noise but that he would study it and remain on guard.

He didn't have to oof,
thought Pinky in disgust.
We knew he was awake.
She and Gracie exchanged a glance that was full of disdain. "They oof and what is the sense of it?" they asked each other silently, for cats can talk to each other without saying a word. Sometimes a cat a block away knows what a cat in your house is thinking. And Gracie and Pinky went on with their silent contemplation of the closed swinging doors to the eaves. For a while, after the rustle, the tips of their tails thumped the covers hard—
bum, bum, bum.

Of course it wasn't Ginger's oof that had waked Rachel, for she, too, number seven of the nonsleepers, was awake already. The reason she couldn't go to sleep was because she wasn't in a sleeping bag. She felt excited. You would think it was the night before Christmas and Santa Claus in the chimney. She must be excited because with the man from the ferryboat in the house and with a sleeping bag here too, this night became a different sort of night, almost as exciting a night as that of the big blow. That night this man from the ferryboat had been on a big boat, little Owlie with him. This night he was here, alone, little Owlie gone!

Rachel had a habit of putting herself to sleep at night making speeches. But she couldn't lose herself in her thoughts tonight because of the excitement. Besides the excitement, her ankle itched. Probably now she had poison ivy. "Oh, to be in a sleeping bag!" she groaned. "A sleeping bag is probably like a sleeping pill. The minute you get in the bag, you probably fall asleep. Oh, let the man from the boat," she prayed, "spend tomorrow night here too, and then I will have a chance at it. Pinky would like to sleep in the sleeping bag too, wouldn't you, Pinky?" she addressed the kitten silently.

As if she knew that Rachel was thinking about her, Pinky kissed her with her cold little wet nose. She had a very endearing way of butting her cool little mouth against yours, as though bestowing a number of gentle kisses. Then Rachel, number seven of the listeners, and Pinky, number eight of them, heard this same rustling that all the other listeners had heard. Pinky's tail twitched back and forth mechanically, batting Rachel on the head. "Don't," whispered Rachel. "
Ts." That was probably Uncle Bennie's cricket going, going...
she thought.

Pinky, like Gracie, thought the rustling sound was...?

The sound of the peepers welled up and filled the whole world with their shrill and sad and mourning song.
Its those peepers that are keeping me awake
, thought Mr. H. Hiram Bish, number nine of the nonsleepers. Mr. Bish was used to mockingbirds in the night, not peepers. He turned over on his squeaky cot as softly as possible in order not to awaken any of the other people, the very nice and hospitable people of the Pye family. He fell to considering the strange sequence of events that had led him to Fire Island, which had not been on his program at all.

First, the boat trip from California with his wife and their little owl; then the ill-fated night of the great blow that had carried Owlie off the boat; then his fruitless visit to Cranbury to say "Hello" to his brother ornithologist, the noted Edgar Pye; and then, just this morning, he had been in Pennsylvania Station and about to take a train and rejoin his wife, who, instead of going to Cranbury with him, had gone on to Washington, and what had he done? Instead of boarding the train for Washington he had hopped on one for Fire Island!

Curiosity, I suppose,
he mused.
Its a curious name and I had never heard of it until that night on
the ship. So now, here I am, on it, on Fire Island with—of all people—the renowned Edgar Pye. Imagine my finding Pye here! Just by luck. For supposing one of the other wagon boys had got me instead of Jerry? Then I should never have known that Pye was here. But such strange whims of fate are the warp and the woof of our lives,
he thought.
To think that right off this island of Pye's, little Owlie was last seen, whirling mad-eyed and terrified into the roaring wind. Probably dashed into the ocean, poor little fellow,
thought Mr. Bish disconsolately. He had been very fond of the little owl.

Of course Mr. Bish heard the rustle in the eaves, too. But he just didn't think anything about it one way or another. He was not as familiar with the cricket story as the others were, and he just thought,
New places, new sounds.

Again the sound of the peepers seemed to swell higher and higher through the night air. But the listeners in the night, one by one, at last became sleepers in the night. Ginger gave a sigh, smacked his lips, and went to sleep. The last to give in were the cats. Gradually their tails stopped twitching. Their little faces sank between their paws. The final thought of Pinky as she fell off to sleep was,
Why do dogs have to sigh? Why can't they be quiet about going to sleep? Like a cat. Not proclaim everything to the world, show every feeling.
Her tail gave the bed one last thud. She said to herself,
Remind me.
(She had fallen into many of Mr. Pye's ways of speech.)
Remind me, I must get up to the eaves tomorrow.
And so resolving, with no sighs, not one little "woe," she slipped off to sleep.

In the morning, after everyone had had their eggs the way they wanted them, and Mrs. Pye was right, that was in six different ways, each person marveled at how strange it was he didn't feel one bit tired after staying awake half the night. For in comparing notes at the breakfast table, each one confessed that he had not slept well. Rachel was astonished that the sleeping-bag boys had not slept. Perhaps they had not been in it right. Uncle Bennie claimed he had not slept at all. He had heard his crickets and his grasshoppers rustling about in their secret hiding place in the eaves. One cricket sang, he said. At least he thought he had heard one cricket sing.

This reminded him and Rachel of his blue-threaded pet, so Rachel went up to the eaves to get it and, of course, it was gone. All remembered then about the rustle, and all agreed they had heard the cricket escape except for Mr. Bish, who had not had crickets on his mind. The story of Uncle Bennie's crickets and grasshoppers had not come up yesterday or, if it had been touched upon, it had not been gone into very deeply. The Pyes went into it now, a little bit, and for a while Mr. Bish was very interested. Then his face grew pensive as he thought of the nice green grasshoppers he used to feed his dear Owlie in the old days before he had been lost at sea.

After breakfast Mr. Bish said he would like to explore this island. (To tell the truth, he secretly hoped against hope to find Owlie somehow, somewhere, even though common sense told him Owlie must be dead.) Papa said that down at Point o' Woods, a nearby little settlement, there was a sunken forest that was considered to be one of the most interesting sights hereabouts.

Mr. Bish said he would like to go there. This was too far for Papa to wheel himself in his wheelchair or to hobble to on his broken foot, so he would have to stay home. The rest could go though, he said. But when Mama saw how swollen one of Rachel's ankles was, she said that Rachel would have to stay home too and keep off it. To Mama, Rachel's ankle did not look as though it had poison ivy. "Probably sand-flea bites," she concluded.

"Ezzackly what is a sunking forest?" Uncle Bennie asked. "How do they know it's there if it's sunking?"

Rachel wanted to know, too. "I've heard of a lost river," she said. She visualized a river flowing along peacefully, winding in and out of a gentle countryside, and then going right down into the earth; or else a swift river racing madly down a mountainside and suddenly going underground, becoming "lost." That would be an unusual thing to see and so would a sunken forest.

But no one could tell her or Bennie what a sunken forest was because no one had seen it yet. Rachel was disappointed not to be going to see it. But Mama said all of them would go later in the summer when the people with the hurt feet got well.

"Well," said Rachel to her father. "We'll both stay home this time, you and me, and we might discover a bird discovery right at home."

"We might," said Papa, puffing pensively on his pipe.

Rachel thought,
He's dreaming about all the great birds he's missing and that Mr. H. Hiram Bish, the other bird man, will probably see today.

It took Mama quite a while to get everything in order for the expedition. "I can carry it all in my wagon," offered Jerry. "We'll go at low tide and it will be low again by the time we come back, so I can easily pull the wagon on the hard sand."