He Whistles for the Cricket

By Gwen Walker

Miriam has always wanted a dog. But times are hard, and her father's health problems mean that there's very little money left for luxuries after feeding the family and paying for medical bills. When her neighbor's dog has puppies, Miriam spends as much time as she can playing with them, and pretending they are hers. But when tragedy strikes, and only one tiny pup is left alive, it is up to Miriam to find someone to care for him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gwen Walker
• Release date: Jun 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311339225

Gwen Walker

Gwen Walker: beloved wife, mother of six, grandmother to 26 grandchildren, dog-lover, writer, friend, believer. She resides in Heaven with her Lord Jesus Christ, and is missed by all who loved her. She never got the chance to see her book published.

Book preview

He Whistles for the Cricket

Gwen Walker

Copyright © 2010 Gwen Walker

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1463768893

ISBN-13: 978-1463768898

DEDICATION

To my beloved family.

Forward

Babe came to our deck door in a waddling neighborliness. I opened the door and leaned down to pet her head and return her good morning.

Wait a minute, Babe, I urged her conversationally.

The birds’ chirps and clatter filled the background, activating the wispy greenery of the just visible day. I went to the kitchen for a bone I had frozen for Babe earlier in the week. I never knew, these days, just when she would stop over, so I couldn’t have chanced keeping it unfrozen. Before, Babe had come daily.

As I returned to the porch, I tore away the waxed paper, frozen to the bone, and offered Babe her treat. She had understood the request to wait, and now she wriggled her gratitude. Without ceremony, she left, holding her frozen treasure firmly in her greying jaws. She found a prominent spot on the back yard slope and settled down with her bone. The birds waited, perched in the nearby trees and under the low sprawling porch roof, until she had settled. Then they rose again to their morning chorus and perpetual motion, singing-seeding-tugging. I wondered if Babe missed Holly, as I did. This story is for Holly, and all those who know something of the kind of friendship a beloved pet can bestow.

Chapter 1

Midwife

Miriam didn’t know what to do. She held the nestling pup close to her in the back of the trailer. She was glad her brother Jeff had let her come along that morning. He had to return the trailer to the service station in town. They’d borrowed it to move a washing machine from the Johnson’s basement. The washing machine was free, and only needed minor repairs, but the trailer had to be returned by eight a.m.

Miriam was heart-heavy in spite of the early morning, late seasonal sun. It came up almost a caricature of itself in its screaming orange roundness. She was startled by it as much as Jeff had been startled by her wanting to get up so early to ride along with him. But she’d had to.

The pup wriggling so happily nosey inside her jacket, had been taken from the litter of pups next door. Poor little things. She’d been there just after they’d been born. She had walked along the edge of the creek one early autumn morning, watching the bugs dimple the shallow waters as it ran between the grass islands which looked as though they grew from the mud bottom of the creek. The houses were acres apart, and Miriam’s house was between a large open field on the west, and the Johnson’s farm was on the east. Farther west, past the open field through which a large drainage ditch ran to the creek, was the Zender’s farm. The Zender boys, Hank and Abe, would often be down at the creek later in the day, fishing or throwing stones in the waters. Miriam liked the early time, alone. The Zender’s part of the creek property wasn’t kept very tidy. There were old tires piled high on the other side of the creek, and occasionally an old dresser or refrigerator would be added to the pile. The Johnson’s property was much neater, Miriam thought, but not like the Chaney’s, who lived four miles closer to town. Miriam’s class had had a school picnic there one time, and she had spent the afternoon throwing sticks for their dog who took to her, it seemed, more than to the other children who soon lost interest. Dogs and Miriam had always gotten along, and this dog, who had only spent one afternoon picnic with her, let her visit her litter of pups. Miriam was even allowed to pick them up in affectionate inquiry.

Why, Mrs. Chaney had said, "Missy never let anyone do that before!"

Missy was feisty with strangers in general, and a real she-wolf when it came to her brood. Miriam, then, had Missy’s invisible passport. This made her feel very special, and she loved to hear Mrs. Chaney tell others about it. She would look away and pretend she wasn’t listening, or else she would stoop to pat Missy, but she would glow inside, and love Missy the more for having been the avenue of such acclaim.

Just recently, Missy had had another litter of pups. Mr. Green had been talking with Mr. Chaney in the hardware store, and Mr. Chaney had said, Be sure your little girl comes by. And so he had dropped by with her that very weekend. Mrs. Chaney sent Miriam down to the barn to see them without even going with her. When she came back by the house, Mr. Green and Mr. Chaney were talking, out in the driveway. Mrs. Chaney invited her in to see something special. There, in a basket by the kitchen window, she showed Miriam a little kitten. She was mostly white, but mottled with black feathers on her back legs and a black spot on her right ear, touching into her cheek. Miriam loved the little thing who looked like her face was dirty. Together, she and Mrs. Chaney enjoyed the round softness of the young animal, complacent in its expectancy that life would treat it well. This kitten, Mrs. Chaney told her, was brought home from college by her son. Someone had placed the litter of kittens in a closed cardboard box in the middle of the highway.

Wretch! she had said.

A couple of students, returning from a football game, had disbursed the orphans among themselves, and had eyedropper fed them in their various dorm rooms. The Chaney’s son had brought this foundling to his parents, and now it rested and accepted the affectionate hospitality of the Chaney home.

As she walked along the creek, Miriam had heard a mewing much like the sound of the Chaney’s kitten. She’d followed the piercing mews to the old slaughterhouse, rusting on the creek bank on the Johnson’s property. She’d been here before, now and then, and remembered that the door never had closed well. She’d pushed it inward, and saw, just barely, in its protected darkness, Greg Johnson’s dog: Queenie. This dog had often pushed her long nose into Miriam’s hand as she sat in the woods near the creek. Then she would leave to nuzzle tree trunks. Sometimes one of the trees would offer up a possum, or, less happily, ground bees. Miriam would watch Queenie back away, readying herself to attack, or to be quickly diverted to the next sound which seemed audible only to her attentive ears. Queenie would perk up her ears at the sound of Greg Johnson’s whistle, and run toward it when she was sure it was him. But she would always acknowledge Miriam with her quick attention and greeting. Now, in the darkened slaughterhouse, she thumped her tail heavily on the clay floor, as though she were occupied, but Miriam was yet welcome. Miriam went in, and as she reached to pet Queenie’s uplifted head, she saw the pups. Seven mewing sucklings, outstretched against their mother’s belly, oblivious to outside intrusion. Miriam took in her breath in a rush of wonder. She reached out her hand gingerly, and fingered the silken back of a little brown pup. She was cautious, looking to see Queenie’s reaction. Queenie shifted, and made effort to push her nose against Miriam’s hand. Miriam needed no further confirmation of their friendship, and the trust this mother dog had in her. She flattened herself against the floor, propped on one elbow, and gently stroked each pup, as she had the first. She laughed at their blind industriousness, with their tiny paws probing, pawing, hitching themselves up against the soft bodies of their brothers or sisters to secure a better vantage point. Their evident newborn feebleness was a funny contrast to their fierce determination and steadfastness of purpose. Suddenly Queenie shifted again and Miriam saw the motionless little black pup pushed under her right foreleg. She thought for a moment it was dead, and she swelled with a sudden revulsion and fear. Even so, she reached for the pup, and laid it in the palm of her hand. A flicker of motion, and Miriam’s hopes stirred. She brought the pup to its mother’s nose. Queenie immediately began her natal ministrations as though this were her first and only offspring. Miriam watched the pup’s tiny frame begin to visibly pulse with life, awaking to its own mewing power. With buoyant relief, Miriam placed the new life against the mother’s belly and watched, hesitantly hopeful that the pup would nurse.

The pup didn’t have to be coaxed or coached. Miriam sat up and laughed, and Queenie thumped her tail in gratitude. Their joint accomplishment, oblivious to mother or midwife, pushed and prodded and suckled as though it had been born into the world for this very purpose. It did not know the mystery and wonder its small existence had created in the soul of a young girl.

Miriam felt wonder, and also responsibility. Each day, usually early as it was on that morning of their birth, she visited the energetic brood. She saw Queenie shake herself loose with that universal exasperation of motherhood gendered by the clinging, demanding dependence of childhood. The pups’ squeaks had by now developed into sharp little barks with which they signaled their complaint. To no avail, however. Queenie pushed her way outside, and stood, relieved, beside her friend. She nosed her way into Miriam’s palm for a moment, and then ambled to the creek edge for a drink. Miriam sat in the doorway of the slaughterhouse, enjoying her family. She reached for the little black pup, so naturally her favorite. She hadn’t named him. He was not really hers to name. Even so, she rolled names around out loud. She wondered if her parents had known what they would name her, before she’d been born. She wondered if they had taken that time and thought. And then she wondered if they had had a name all picked out for her if she’d been a boy. She wondered, once, if Adam had come up with personal names for his animal friends in Eden. She thought of foolish names for the pup, like Squeak, but already the squeak was disappearing. In fact, the black pup was one of the less vocal pups in the litter. His little paws padded and pushed with the full vigor of his short days of life, but his small bark itself seemed lower, to Miriam’s ears, than that of the others. Sometimes she called him Silky, like his soft ears. Sometimes Candy.

She’d asked if she could have a pup, just in general, and the answer had been no. She’d thought it would be. Once, four years ago, when she was six, she had asked. She’d known her father could be sharp, but she had rarely ever had it directed toward herself. He was a gentle man. But that time he’d been sharp with her in his refusal. Her mom had sympathized silently, and it was the same this time. She didn’t even appeal to her mother by a glance.

Mr. Green had always worked long hours to provide for the four of them, but there was no provision for luxuries. A pup was a luxury. When Miriam had been six, and had asked so eagerly, her dad had seemed angry. She remembered the words, and the shock she’d felt at the anger in her father’s words. Now, at ten, she’d not have asked at all, if it had not been for the little black pup multiplying its sleek little form day by day in the Johnson’s slaughterhouse, and on the creek bank just outside. The hungering for this pup gave her hesitant boldness even though she didn’t expect a yes. She had come to realize that her father’s anger at that request four years in the past had been the anger of frustration and weariness and poor health...and, perhaps, the regret at having to deny his daughter her request.

She’d seen her father down in the basement at his tool bench where he spent so much time repairing broken appliances, or fixing torn screens. He would bend forward suddenly and clutch at his abdomen and stay that way for a few minutes. She learned from hearing her mother and father talk that it was a hernia which caused her father so much pain. There was no time or money for surgery, and he could live with it if he had to. Even so, Miriam knew he felt sorry for his sharpness with her. When her mother called her in from the front yard for bedtime that night, she’d heard her father say, Oh, give her a while longer, Jane. She’d been channelling the late June fireflies into a green mason jar, and the call to come in was never welcomed. She looked to her mother on the porch, it had been agreed that she could be out longer, and the busy activity of collecting had helped cover her disappointment. Before she came in, she set the jar on the porch swing and lifted the lid off. Fireflies shouldn’t be owned.

All that had been a long time ago. As she rode in the back of the trailer Jeff was returning, she remembered these things in snatches of feeling without a chronological network. Some feelings she could mull over - even brood over - but she seldom did for long if it left her heavy-spirited. She had learned in the long summer days and dreams to divert the thoughts which brought her distress. But that bruise of disappointment had not altogether healed, and so she had asked once again, four years later, could she have a pup? In the growing self-consciousness of youth, she was on the defensive, even as she asked. She was prepared for a refusal. The question, however, was buffeted by a glimmer of hope. Things were some better, financially. Her father was less distinguished by that gaunt withdrawal of pain and responsibility. Her mother had found part-time work in the Chicago mail-order house, and there was more to eat now.

Her mother had tried to help her understand. Once, she told Miriam, she had had a cat all her own. Buffy. He was angora, and colored like his name. He sat inside the curve of her wooden rocker and slept with her at night. Mrs. Green had loved Buffy. He was independent and affectionate, setting the terms of endearment. But he had been shot by a neighbor boy’s pellet gun, and abscesses had festered in his hip and his nose. The vicious pellets had been carefully removed with tweezers, and the wounds had been washed with a solution of boric acid crystals and warm water around the clock the first night, and for days afterward. Even so, the wounds had not healed, and there was no money to pay for a veterinarian’s care. Buffy had died, matted and suffering and beloved, in the awful odor of infection. It wasn’t right, Mrs. Green concluded, to keep a pet you couldn’t care for properly. Pets could eat on leftovers, but they needed shots and tags and medical care too.

Miriam understood. At least she understood the seriousness of her mother’s concern. Sickness and injury were things that might not happen. In her six-year old supplication, she couldn’t have understood those fears for things in a remote, possible future. She had had no history to give it practical meaning. But now, at ten, she had seen things which enlarged her understanding. She had seen a trapped and frantic raccoon, squealing in pain. She had the daily observances of small roadway corpses and breakfasting crows who withdrew from feeding only long enough to let the cars and trucks pass by. This always brought momentary sadness, and she usually averted her eyes. She knew that life had been snuffed out, and the revulsion was better dealt with if not entertained. She’d been in the car on a foggy morning when a deer sped in front of them. It was an almost magical leap. The deer seemed to have grown out of the fog bank on the right side of the road. It appeared for one startling moment in the yellowness of the headlights, and disappeared into the twin fog bank on the left. It happened so fast that Miriam and Mr. Green could only draw in their breath. There was no time for braking or conversation. Almost