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Dampy would listen to these stories with a shiver of dread. Hooter, however, sometimes wondered if Mr. Fairfield was not exaggerating about the woods. Of course, the woods
were
out there. You could see them through the windows, and you could see the woodland creatures too, if you were patient—the deer and the two nice groundhogs and all the different kinds of birds, some of whom Mrs. Fairfield could identify, the crows and robins and chickadees, but most of the rest she had no name for. At sunset, in the summers, there were even bats, with their squeaky, unpleasant songs. But were all these woodland creatures as unfriendly and dangerous as Mr. Fairfield made them out to be? Hooter was not convinced.

And—another question entirely—was Dampy really a cat? Mrs. Fairfield had said once that he looked to her much more like a koala bear. She pointed out that he had ears like the koala bear in the advertisements for Qantas Airlines. Qantas was based in Australia, where most koala bears live. And Hooter thought she had a point. Even without a nose, Dampy looked more like a koala bear than a cat.

But Mr. Fairfield was adamant. Dampy was a cat. To prove it he sang a song. The song went like this:

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat
.

They took some honey and plenty of money
.

Wrapped up in a five pound note
.

The Owl looked up to the stars above
,

And sang to a small guitar
,

O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love
,

What a beautiful Pussy you are
,

    
You are
,

    
You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!

“Dampy is not a girl,” Hooter objected. It was the first time he’d ever contradicted anything Mr. Fairfield said, and Mr. Fairfield gave him a sour look and then a swat that knocked him halfway across the room.

“If I say he’s a girl, he’s a fucking girl. And if I say he’s a Pussy, he’s a Pussy. You
got
that?”

“Harry, please,” said Mrs. Fairfield.

“Harry, please,” Mr. Fairfield said in a whining tone meant to mock his wife, though in fact it didn’t sound at all like her.

“I guess cats are always females then,” said Mrs. Fairfield to Hooter. “Dogs are boys, and cats are girls.”

No one went to help Hooter until Mr. Fairfield had left the room, but Dampy exchanged a look of sympathy with him, as sad as could be.

Later, when they could talk without being overheard, Hooter protested (in a whisper, with the sheets over his head): “Is there nothing we can do then? Are we just trapped here, and have to suffer every kind of abuse?”

“He can be very mean,” Dampy agreed.

“And just as mean to
M
rs. Fairfield as he is to us.”

“Meaner, actually. Last year, about a week after New Year’s, he sent the
first
Mrs. Fairfield to the hospital emergency room and she had to get seven stitches in her head. You could see them when she took off the bandanna she had to wear.”

“Why would he do that?” Hooter asked, aghast. “And what did he do?”

“Well, they’d been singing this song that he likes. Over and over. And finally she said she was too tired to sing anymore, and he just sat there where you’re sitting now, staring at her, and then he got up and smashed his guitar right over her head. And do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think it was really the guitar he was angry with. ‘Cause he never played it very well. But no one ever complained, not with him. But it was a big relief for him not to have people hear how lousy he played his guitar. And he never got another one to replace the one he smashed.”

“He’s not a nice person,” said Hooter gravely.

“He’s not,” Dampy agreed. “But we should try and get some sleep. Tomorrow is another day.” He put his arms round Hooter, and they snuggled.

In such a small household, in a lonely part of the country with no neighbors close by, it was inevitable that Dampy and Hooter would spend much time together and become the closest friends. From Hooter, Dampy learned all about the Dutch Reformed Church and Reverend Drury and the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Of Hooter’s life before he became a church owl there was not much to be told. He’d been a prize at the ring toss game at the Grand Junction Centennial Street Fair, but the teenage girl who received Hooter from the winner of the ring toss donated him almost at once to the Dutch Reformed’s weekly garage sale. Hooter often felt, he confided to Dampy, like one of those Romanian children you hear about on “All Things Considered” (a program that Reverend Drury listened to every day) who have spent their whole childhood in an orphanage and later have trouble relating to their adoptive parents.

To which Dampy had replied, “I’m not so sure that that would be altogether a bad thing. Some parents you might not want to relate to any more than absolutely necessary.”

“You mean … Mr. Fairfield?”

Dampy nodded. “And not just him.
She
was just as bad, the
first
Mrs. Fairfield. Our life here is actually an improvement over what it used to be, with her.”

“You’ve never said that much about her before. Was it she who …” Hooter touched the stub of his wing to the end of his beak to indicate the same area on Dampy’s face.

“Who pulled off my nose? No,
that
happened at the Day Care. There was a boy there, Ray McNulty, who kept pulling at my nose, and pulling and pulling. Miss Washington told him not to, but he wouldn’t listen. Then one day when everyone was supposed to be napping he just ripped it right off. But that wasn’t enough for Ray McNulty! Then he took a pair of scissors and opened the seam at my neck.”

“And no one’s ever tried to sew it up again?”

Dampy went up to the mirror mounted beside the front door and looked at himself morosely. His neck was slit open from the front to just under his left ear, which gave a sad, sideways tilt to his head and meant that you had to listen very intently when he spoke. “Once, yes. Once, Mrs. Fairfield tried to mend my neck—the new Mrs. Fairfield. She means well, but she’s hopeless with a needle and thread. I’m used to it now. I don’t mind how it looks.”

Hooter went up to him and tried to push the stuffing back inside the wound in his neck. “It’s such a shame. You’d look so handsome with just a bit of needlework.”

Dampy turned away from the mirror. “That’s nice of you to say. Anyhow, I was telling you about the first Mrs. Fairfield.”

“Was she like him?” Hooter asked. “I mean, did she drink?”

“Yes, and when she drank, she became violent. They quarreled all the time, and she liked to break things. She broke dishes. She threw an electric skillet through the kitchen window. She poured a whole bottle of red wine over him when he was lying drunk on the rug, and when the
ants
got to that, oh boy! And then, if he reacted, she called the police. She had him sent to jail twice.”

“So what finally happened? Did they get a divorce?”

Dampy’s reply was almost inaudible. Hooter had to ask him to repeat what he said. “She died,” he said in a hoarse whisper. This time he added, “And it was no accident either.”

He was reluctant to supply any further details, and Hooter knew better than to pester him with lots of questions. In any case, there was a more important question pending:

Dampy had asked Hooter if he would marry him!

Hooter had objected that they were the same sex, but Dampy pointed out that same-sex marriages were discussed all the time on the news, and while they weren’t allowed among Southern Baptists and Catholics and Orthodox Jews, the two of them were Dutch Reformed if they were anything. Besides which, according to Mr. Fairfield, Dampy was a girl, not a boy, so it wouldn’t be same-sex. The important thing was did they love each other and would they go on loving each other to the end of time or death did them part. At last, Hooter had answered, in the words of the song, “O let us be married! too long we have tarried: but what shall we do for a ring?”

In the poem the owl and the pussycat sail off to a wooded island where a pig sells them, for a shilling, the ring that’s in his nose, but in real life finding a ring was a lot easier, for Mrs. Fairfield had a jewel case containing as great a variety of rings as you might find in a jewelry store. There were rings with rubies and emeralds and two with amethysts (the new Mrs. Fairfield was an Aquarius, and the amethyst is the birthstone for February), but the ring they finally selected was a four-carat facsimile zirconium diamond mounted in 14-karat gold from the Home Shoppers’ Club.

They were married in the woods in back of the house on a cloudy June afternoon, while Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield were away to talk to their lawyer in Grand Junction. Dampy wore a red-and-white checkered kitchen towel that Hooter said made him look like a Palestinian terrorist. Hooter himself was all in black. It was the first time they’d been in the woods together so far from the house that you couldn’t even see the roof. For all
they
knew they were lost!

Dampy took the stub of Hooter’s wing in his paw and said, “I thee wed!”

To which the owl replied, “For better or for worse.”

“In sickness and in health.”

That was as much of the ceremony as they could remember, except for the kissing. Then there was the problem of what to
do
with the ring now that it was theirs. Dampy wanted to return it to Mrs. Fairfield’s jewel case, but Hooter got such a hurt look that Dampy at once came up with an alternate plan. They buried it under a stone out in the woods, marking the very spot where they’d been wed.

When they got back to the house, Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield’s lawyer, Mr. Habib, was there with them, as well as two policemen and a lady, Mrs. Yardley, with yellow hair like a movie star’s who wanted to talk to them. At first Mr. Habib said she was being ridiculous, the boy was autistic and delusional. Nothing could be gained by speaking with him, and in any case that would be a hopeless task. The boy could not be made to answer questions. Mr. Habib had tried, and so had the police.

“But I understand, from remarks that Mr. Fairfield has made in his deposition, that he
does
speak to, or through, his teddy bears. And I see he has them with him now. I’d like to speak to the teddy bears. Privately.”

“You want to speak to a pair of rucking teddy bears!” jeered Mr. Fairfield. “Maybe give ‘em the third degree?”

“For the record,” said Mrs. Yardley, “we have reason to believe that the child’s welfare may be in danger. There has been a history of abuse.”

“All those charges had to do with the deceased,” Mr. Habib pointed out. “And this boy is surely not fit for a formal interrogation.”

Mrs. Yardley smiled a sweet smile and scrunched down beside Hooter. “But I don’t want to talk with the boy. It’s
this
little fellow I’d like to meet. And his friend.” She gave Hooter’s beak a gentle tweak and patted Dampy on the head. “If
someone
would introduce me.

Dampy turned his face away, but Hooter was not quite so shy. “I’m Hooter,” he confided in a whisper. “And this is Dampy.”

Mr. Habib protested vigorously as to the irregularity of Mrs. Yardley’s questioning, but she just ignored him and went on talking with Dampy and Hooter, telling them about other teddy bears she knew and respected, an Evangeline, who lived in Twin Forks and was as well-dressed as any fashion model; Dreyfus, who always wore a little bow tie and was knowledgeable about mutual funds; and Jean-Paul-Luc, who spoke French, which made it difficult for Mrs. Yardley to get to know him very well, since she’d only had one year of French in high school, long ago.

She was a really nice lady, but the nicer she was the ruder Mr. Fairfield became, until finally she had to ask the two policemen to escort Mr. Fairfield out to their car. Mr. Habib accompanied Mr. Fairfield to the police car, and Mrs. Fairfield went upstairs.

When they were alone with Mrs. Yardley, she shifted their conversation away from the other teddy bears she knew and wanted to know all sort of things about the Fairfields. Hooter tried to be cooperative, but there wasn’t much he could tell her about the first Mrs. Fairfield. Dampy was not as trustful at first, and there were lots of things that he claimed he couldn’t remember, especially about the night the first Mrs. Fairfield had died.

Gradually, Hooter realized that Mrs. Yardley thought that Mr. Fairfield had murdered his first wife and was looking for some way to prove it. When she was done asking Dampy questions, Mrs. Yardley asked Hooter the same questions, even after he’d explained to her that he’d been living at the Dutch Reformed Church when Mrs. Fairfield was killed.

“Ah-ha!” said Mrs. Yardley. “Why do you say ‘killed’? Is it because you don’t believe it was an accident?”

“I don’t
know”
Hooter protested, close to tears.

“I guess she must have killed herself,” Dampy said unprompted. “That’s what Mr. Fairfield says.”

“Oh, really? Who did he say that to? To you?”

“No, to me he always says it was an accident and not to think about it. But I heard him say to the
new
Mrs. Fairfield—”

“To Pamela Harper, that is? The lady who just went upstairs?”

“Mm-hm. He told her that no one can take so many sleeping pills by accident. He said he thinks she must of mashed them up in her Rocky Road ice cream. Sometimes she would eat a whole pint of Rocky Road all by herself. Especially if they had got in a fight. He’d apologize by bringing home the ice cream. No one else ever got a bite.”