Ginger Pye (8 page)

"I was just joking," said Rachel quickly.

Uncle Bennie said, "Call puppy 'Bumpy'?"

"Why 'Bumpy'?" they asked.

"Bumps into everything, he goes so fast," said Uncle Bennie.

This sounded like a very good name, but Jerry was not completely satisfied. It was the best so far, however. Then Mama said, "Well, he looks like ginger, and he acts like ginger. Why not call him 'Ginger'?"

"Ginger," they all repeated dubiously. None of them could think of anything better though and so they called this dog "Ginger," and it went well with Pye. Ginger Pye.

"People will think it is Gingerbread. And all the while it will be Ginger Pye," said Rachel who liked reasonableness.

Rachel's reasonableness was not always easy for Jerry to agree with. There was quite often likely to be a catch to it. For instance, there was the time of the poison tomatoes. That time he and Rachel had been sitting on the back fence, just talking and thinking. They looked down into the yard behind them which was overgrown with weeds, for the people were away for the summer. Yet amidst the rampant weeds a few sad-looking tomato plants were growing. And through the weeds and plants Rachel had spotted three beautiful ripe red tomatoes. It was a marvel they could have grown so perfect with all the weeds and burrs smothering them. But they had, and Jerry's mouth drooled hungrily, even now, recollecting them.

He had jumped over the fence and picked them and climbed back up, and he had been all set to put his teeth in his when Rachel had shouted at him, so loud he nearly fell off the fence. "Stop," she had yelled. "Don't eat them," she had said. "They're poison," she had explained.

"Poison!" he had said.

"Yes, poison," she had said. And she explained that though the people were away and the tomatoes would go to rot, still they could not eat them because in the first place that would be stealing. And in the second place they were poison anyway, and they would die if they did. The stealing reason Jerry had discarded because he knew the neighbors well and they would not have minded their tomatoes being eaten. In fact, they would have liked to think they
were not going to waste. The poison was another matter.

Where had Rachel got the theory the tomatoes were poison, he had asked her impatiently. She had got the theory, she said, from a story she had just a few minutes before finished reading. This story was in a little booklet the Corn Fluffies people had sent out. In the story some children, who were supposed not to eat some certain fruit because it was poisoned,
had
eaten the fruit and become quite sick. If they had stuck to Corn Fluffies they would not have become sick. Now these tomatoes, she said, were in the same category. They were poison. Why else would they be growing down there amidst the burrs? Anyway, she talked so persuasively she had Jerry convinced. And not only would she not let Jerry eat the tomatoes, she made him bury them deep in the earth of the lot across the street so the poison would not spread and spread all over the earth like the poison in the broken mirror in the story of
The Snow Queen.

"That is all book stuff," Jerry had reasoned ruefully after it was all over and Rachel had skipped off with Addie Egan. "And why do I ever, ever listen to her?" he had asked himself, half of a mind to go back and dig the tomatoes up again. But why take a chance with poison?

The poison tomatoes showed, though, exactly how unreasonable Rachel's reasonableness could be. When she did her most earnest talking was when you had to watch out. Was there a catch now to this Ginger Pye, Gingerbread business? Jerry couldn't see a catch to it. So he said happily, "Ginger is sort of a good name for him, isn't it? Sort of a just right name? We'll call the puppy Ginger. All right."

"Ginger Pye, not Gingerbread," murmured Rachel dreamily.

Ginger, who did not seem to care what he was named, or that he had been named, had fallen asleep under the kitchen table with one paw stretched in a proprietary fashion over his duster. He did not seem to mind the slashes of lightning or the rumbling thunder at all. Perhaps this was because he was used to the lowing and the mooing of the cows in Speedys' barn.

It was certainly good he was not like a big collie dog Jerry knew, named Lassie, who had to be locked in a closet during thunderstorms. Otherwise she would manage to get out of the house and run around like mad in the rain, not remembering where she lived or who she was or anything. Ginger, on the contrary, slept as peacefully through the storm as if it were a lullaby.

Since Ginger was now asleep, and since Mama would not let Uncle Bennie wake him up, saying, "Let the poor little thing rest awhile," and since dinner was still not ready, Jerry and Uncle Bennie went down cellar to hammer and pound. Mama was busy stirring the food in the pots and pans and the kitchen smelled as though they were going to have roast lamb. Rachel set the table, in the kitchen, because Papa was still away. Even though it was Sunday they always ate in the kitchen when Papa was away, saving a lot of time and steps. Then Rachel went into the living room to wait for dinner which smelled unbearably good.

It was a terrific thunderstorm, but once it got started it was over in ten minutes. The thunder had boomed, the lightning sizzled, the rain splashed down, horse chestnuts had fallen from the tree, and the birds were silent. When it was over Rachel felt as though the world had been born anew. She had spent these ten minutes of big storm in the big armchair doing nothing but appreciating the storm. When no more rain was falling, except big drops pelting slowly from the horse chestnut tree and the roof, she returned to the kitchen. Would dinner ever be ready? she wondered.

That was what Jerry and Uncle Bennie were
wondering, too. And they pushed open the cellar door looking grimy as stokers on a ship, and almost starved. Jerry listened. "The storm is now three miles away," he said, counting between the flashes of lightning and the lazy thunder.

"Three miles," echoed Uncle Bennie, admiring Jerry's knowledge.

They all sat down to dinner which, at last, was ready. Ginger waked up and came and ate his dinner under a little settee beneath the kitchen window.

"Ah, Ginger. Ginger Pye," said Rachel affectionately, making a loving face at him as one does to babies.

Ginger. Ginger Pye,
thought Jerry. The name did sound good, the way Rachel said it.

During this whole day so far there had been no sign of the mysterious footstepper, the man with the muddy mustard hat. Dinner was still going on. They were up to the dessert—Jell-O and sliced bananas with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. Uncle Bennie was sitting in Rachel's old high chair and, from it, he could see out of the little window over the sink better than the others could. All of a sudden he said, "I see hot! I see hot!"

"Hot" was the way Uncle Bennie always pronounced "hat." Forgetting this and thinking he was
just remarking on the food, at first no one paid any attention to him. But since he continued to point out the little window over the sink and exclaim, "Hot! Hot!" it suddenly dawned on Jerry that maybe it was
the
hat, the odd yellow hat, that Uncle Bennie was talking about.

Jerry ran to the window. It was! There was a queer yellow sort of a hat just like the one he had seen on the person racing across the fields at Mrs. Speedy's, and it looked as though it was glued to the side fence. The person must be looking through a knothole. If Jerry got out there fast enough he would see who this was, anyway. He tore out of the house, followed by Rachel and Mama, who grabbed Uncle Bennie out of his high chair. But by the time Jerry got to the fence and climbed up it, the snooper had disappeared. Jerry jumped down and raced to the corner but then he didn't know which way to turn. There was no trace of anyone, anywhere. If Jerry hadn't seen the hat, too, he would have thought Uncle Bennie had made it up.

Reluctantly he returned home and he looked through the knothole the man with the hat had been looking through. He would nail it up.

"Did you see anything of the man but his hat?" Jerry asked Uncle Bennie. It really would not have

made any difference if Uncle Bennie had seen the entire person for all men grown-ups looked alike to him, and all lady grown-ups looked alike. Only children looked different from one another to him.

"Just saw hot," said Uncle Bennie.

So they still knew nothing more about the unsavory character than they had before, except that he had become a very real person whom the Pyes had to watch out for.

Unsavory character. It sounded like a name. "Unsavory could be his first name. And Character his last," suggested Rachel. "Like in colonial times. It sounds like those names."

"M-m-m," said Jerry.

Why did that person persist in thinking he could get hold of their puppy? Ginger belonged to the Pyes. He already had a name, Ginger Pye, and he already had a little leather collar around his neck made out of one of Rachel's old skate straps. Anyone could see he really belonged. As soon as he was old enough they would get a license for him. And to keep him safe and sound, they wouldn't let him out of the backyard by himself until he was old enough to bark like the dickens, and even bite, if anybody tried to make off with him.

Moreover, if Unsavory continued to snoop around
they could tell the policeman. They could describe his hat and the policeman would catch him. Let the man watch out, or he would land in jail, the Cranbury jail, where no one had landed in ten years.

That was the way the Pyes were talking as they went into the house and made sure the doors were latched. Who latched doors in Cranbury in the daytime, if they were at home? Maybe Judge Ball. Hardly anyone else, though. But the Pyes latched theirs today all right, in case Unsavory should come back. However, they didn't see any more of him or his hat that day.

The next day was Labor Day. When that was over, school would begin. "Hey," said Jerry Pye to his friend, Dick Badger. "Let's go up to the reservoy for one more last good swim."

It was a fine warm day and Dick said, "Sure."

Dick Badger was the boy next door who owned the big black-and-gray hound that scratched his stomach when you scratched his back. Dick Badger knew more ways of earning a nickel than anyone Jerry had ever heard of. He charged a nickel if a boy or a girl wanted to hold his kite or to scratch Duke's back. Of course he didn't charge his best friend, Jerry Pye, anything, or even Rachel or Uncle Bennie. But he charged everybody else and he always had peanuts or gumdrops in his pocket.

Dick Badger was known as the "perpendicular swimmer." That was his nickname and the way he
came to be known as the perpendicular swimmer was because he almost always swam down and up, and almost never along the surface of the water the way the other fellows did.

He had learned to swim underwater before he had learned top-of-the-water swimming. He began in fairly shallow water, walking along the bottom of the sea on his hands. Before he knew it, he would be in deep water and swimming down there. Then he would have to shoot upwards for air. The reason for this underwater swimming was that he liked to feel land under his hands, even though it was wet land and at the bottom of the sea, because he felt safer. In this way he had developed his fondness for perpendicular swimming.

Of course, now he was an excellent swimmer on top of the water as well as underneath, but one rarely saw him on top except every half minute or so when he stuck his wet red nose up for air. He liked to throw shells or pebbles into the water and then swim straight down after them. He said he aimed to swim straight down to the bottom of the reservoir because he wanted to see what was down there. He had heard there was a dead cow and he wanted to see. In the ocean, likewise, he swam under the water instead of along the top. He liked it down there with the