Ginger Pye (6 page)

Mrs. Speedy waved to the children and soon came over to them. "Well," she said. "I suppose you have come for your puppy?"

"Yes," said Jerry proudly.

"He's a fine dog, you bet," said Mrs. Speedy.

"Yes," said Jerry. "Here's the dollar," he said.

So Mrs. Speedy took the dollar and Jerry tenderly picked up his puppy, his own puppy, his little brown-and-white dog. The children were beside themselves with joy. Here they had this real live puppy, it was theirs, their very own real, honest-to-goodness dog, and nobody else's. Jerry let Rachel hold him sometimes because she had helped with the dusting, and also Uncle Bennie, showing him how to pat the puppy and not squeeze him. They just loved him, they did.

As they left Speedys' barn Jerry happened to glimpse someone racing across the fields behind the dairy, leaping over the old telephone poles lying there. Jerry didn't pay much attention to the person because he was so excited about having his own puppy in his arms at last. Anyway there were dark shadows in the fields now and the only thing about
the leaping person he got any impression of was his hat. It was a sort of yellow-mustard-colored hat.

Must be someone getting some milk,
he thought and soon forgot about the person. Jerry did not connect this person with that other person who had been trying to buy his dog. Naturally, he would expect a person who was planning to do something as important as buy a dog to approach the house from the front way, and not be coming leaping over telephone poles and brooks and skunk cabbages to get there.

"What kind of a dog is he?" asked Rachel, this being her turn to hold the puppy a minute. "Did you say he is a fox terrier?"

"Yes. He's purebred, part fox terrier and part collie. There may also be a little bull in him too," boasted Jerry.

They were so pleased with, and interested in, the puppy they dragged Uncle Bennie all the long way to his home without noticing the distance at all. Rachel and Jerry could hardly eat one bite of the supper Gramma had prepared for them and they had no idea what they were eating until they reached the dessert. Then they knew that what they were eating was some of Gramma's homemade peach ice cream because of hard pieces of frozen peach that hurt their teeth.

Usually Gramma urged them to eat more, more
of everything. "Eat more rolls," she'd say, when they had already eaten so many of her tiny delicious hot little rolls they didn't see how they could possibly swallow another one. Still they would always find space because Gramma would be hurt if they did not eat just one more and just one more. But tonight Gramma could see they were in a hurry to get home to show Mama their fine dog, so she only urged them once or twice, instead of her usual dozen times, to have more ice cream.

Gramma was very pleased that Uncle Bennie had spent the afternoon dusting the pews. "He may be a minister when he grows up," she said.

Uncle Bennie did not want them to leave with the puppy. But when Rachel and Jerry assured him he would see the puppy next Saturday, and every Saturday, he felt better. Anyway, he was awfully tired and sleepy and he sat down in the doorway, grabbing hold of his old bubbah, tickling his nose with it, sucking his thumb, and blinking his eyes drowsily.

Uncle Bennie called not only his old pink blanket "bubbah," he called the little bits of wool he plucked from it and with which he tickled his nose and chin and even his knees "bubbah," too. When he waked up in the morning the first thing he would say, ecstatically, was, "Ah-h. Bubbah!" Sometimes
he would crawl around on his hands and knees picking up old stray pieces of hubbah he had dropped. And, outdoors, he might find a little speck that Gramma had shaken from the rugs. "Ah-h, Bubbah!" he would exclaim and gather it fondly up.

There had been a time when he plucked the wool not only off his old pink blanket, his
real
bubbah, but off the camel's-hair rugs from the Orient also. Gramma finally had to store these rugs away before they should disappear in thin air. She bade Uncle Bennie to be economical, to save his bubbah, and use only the little bits he found here and there instead of always plucking new bits to tickle his nose. She said, "Bubbah will wear out and then you will not have Bubbah anymore."

But Uncle Bennie was spendthrift. He did not look to the future, and he still plucked at his bubbah and tickled his nose with it. But he had agreed to leave it home and not take it with him anymore, now he was a big boy of three.

So now Bubbah made up to Uncle Bennie for the departure of the puppy and Jerry and Rachel, and he solemnly, tickling his nose, watched them prepare to leave.

"We'll see you next week," Rachel called to him.

"Go church again?" asked Uncle Bennie.

"Maybe."

"See puppy again?"

"Sure. He's our puppy now."

"'Bye."

"'Bye."

By the time Rachel and Jerry started on the long way home, way over on the other side of town, it had grown dark. Whenever they came to a streetlamp they put the little dog down so he could stretch his legs, and they kept exclaiming over all the wonderful things about him—his ears, his eyes, his softness, his roundness, his whole self. The puppy did not seem to miss his life in the barn at all. He was happy to belong to Jerry and Rachel and he kept frisking about.

"He likes me," said Jerry happily.

"Oh-h. Isn't he cunning!" admired Rachel.

"And smart, too. He's going to do tricks. I'll teach him everything," said Jerry proudly.

"Gracie can open the front door," Rachel reminded Jerry. It was true. Gracie could leap in the air and turn the doorknob and, as she came down, let her weight fall against the door in such a way the door would fly open. It was a very smart thing to do, and far more pleasant to hear about than catching rats for Mama.

"Yes, Gracie's smart," agreed Jerry. "But this dog can go everywhere with me."

"Yes," said Rachel. And they walked along happily and silently.

Suddenly, Jerry realized that he heard footsteps behind him, that, furthermore, he had been hearing these footsteps for some time and thinking nothing of them. Only now did he realize that someone was following them.

It had grown very dark, especially under the great elm trees that arched Second Avenue, the street they were now on. Whenever Jerry turned around to see who, if anyone, was following them, he could see no one. The street was not a straight one. It curved and twisted, and he couldn't see far enough back to make out anything. When he and Rachel were walking, however, he was certain he could hear the footsteps behind them. When he and Rachel stopped, the footsteps stopped.

Shucks,
said Jerry to himself.
I'm as bad as Rachel, always thinking things.
But he no longer put the puppy down on the ground. "It's getting awfully late," he said to Rachel. "We better hurry home or Mama will be wondering where we are."

"M-m-m," said Rachel absentmindedly.

Now Rachel had been hearing the footsteps, too.

But she had said nothing because Jerry always thought she was imagining things. She didn't think she was imagining these footsteps though she certainly hoped she was. If there were real footsteps behind them, walking when they walked, stopping when they stopped, why she and Jerry didn't just sprint for home was more than she could tell. Jerry probably had not heard them, that was why. They probably weren't there.

Meanwhile Jerry was saying to himself, "I have to see who this is that's following us. I bet it's that stranger fellow, the one who wanted to buy my puppy. And I bet it was him racing across the telephone poles in back of Speedys' barn and not someone after milk. Maybe it was even him, and not the minister, Rachel saw in the doorway of the church when she was being a minister in the pulpit."

He decided that at the next street corner where there was a good bright light they would wait and let the coward get past them. He wanted to tell Rachel they were being followed, but she would probably get so scared she'd yell, and then he wouldn't ever see what the person looked like. Jerry didn't know why he was so certain that the person behind them was the same person that wanted his puppy, too. But he was. His heart pounded. The fellow
better not try and take this dog away from him that he had bought just a little while ago from Mrs. Speedy for one dollar, that he and Rachel and Uncle Bennie had earned dusting the pews for tall Sam Doody. He better not.

When they reached the brightly lighted corner of Spruce and Second Avenue, Jerry stopped suddenly, grabbing Rachel's arm to make her stop short in her tracks, too. As clear as thunder they heard the footsteps and then they heard them stop short, too.

Still Rachel said nothing. She was not going to be told she was hearing things. But Jerry said, "You hear that?"

"Yes," said Rachel.

"Somebody's been following us."

"Yes. All the way from Gramma's."

"Yes. And I think this person was at Speedys' barn when we were there and probably followed us to Gramma's. And hung around there until we left. He's after my dog, that's what."

"Hung around in the dark," said Rachel, her spine prickling a little, to tell the truth, though here they were in their own town of Cranbury where they knew every street and lane and practically all the people. Moreover, here they were now, under a huge
purple streetlight and outside the house of Judge Ball whose pew they had just dusted, though he didn't know it. And who could do them any harm or snatch their dog away? No one. Pooh!

"We'll just sit here on the curb under this bright light until whoever it is comes along. When he does come we can run up on Judge Ball's front porch. He wouldn't mind. And if he doesn't come, and is just waiting for us to get going again so he can follow us some more, we just won't move. We won't move until somebody else comes by that we can walk along with and be safe."

This was a very sensible plan and the two children sat down on the curb to wait. Jerry put his sleepy puppy inside his blouse because the evenings were getting cooler and he didn't want his puppy ever catching cold or anything. It felt wonderful having the warm little animal against his heart. He could even feel the puppy's fast little heartbeat against his.

Jiminy crickets,
he thought.
I got a real dog now.

While they were sitting still on the curb, they heard nothing—no footsteps, no stifled coughs or sneezes as in mystery stories, nothing. They wanted to get home. Maybe they had both been imagining things.

"Oh, come on," said Jerry impatiently. "Let's go."

They left the bright streetlight and they started down the dark tree-rustling street. No one was around for it was suppertime. They could smell different cooking smells as they passed each house. In one they were having pork chops, and in others they heard the clatter of dishes being washed in the kitchen.

"Do you hear them now, the footsteps?" whispered Rachel.

"Sh-sh-sh. No," said Jerry.

They began to run and they made so much noise clattering up the sidewalk they couldn't hear anything but themselves anymore. They ran for a whole block and now there were just two long blocks to their home on Beam's Place. They stopped to catch their breath. They listened, trying to hear footsteps
above their panting. They did hear them. It was spooky.

"Jiminy crickets," gulped Jerry.

Then they had another piece of luck. Sam Doody, with a big suit box in his hand, came striding up the street, on his way home from town. He had got off the new Second Avenue trolley car. This was the second time in one day that Sam Doody had saved them; first—the dollar for dusting the pews that enabled them to buy their puppy, and now—here he was, saving them from the unknown footstepper, as Rachel had nicknamed the person in her mind already. Sam Doody lived only a few doors from them and he didn't mind at all their tagging right along with him.

"Well," he said, grinning. "Dust the pews?"

"Yes," said Jerry. "We dusted them good. The pulpit too. Everything."

"Fine," said Sam Doody. "You saved my life."

"You saved ours," said Jerry.

"We got a dog," said Rachel.

Jerry opened up his blouse and let Sam Doody take a look and touch his puppy. While they were all standing outside of Sam Doody's house, with Sam Doody admiring the puppy properly, Jerry and Rachel thought they heard the footsteps again. But they didn't care because tall Sam Doody was there and he was the captain of the basketball team. Moreover they were only two doors from home.