Ivy Takes Care (6 page)

“That’s for me to know and you to find out!” said Ivy.

Tick, tick, tick,
went the watch. Billy Joe looked at it enviously. Ivy took the watch off and gave it back to Mr. Strunk. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Billy Joe said.

“Yeah, what’s that?” asked Ivy.

“I’ll buy you a soda if you cross your heart and hope to die never to go in my room and leave anything there or under my bed!”

“Looks like you’ve learned a thing or two about private property, Billy Joe,” said Ivy. “It’s a deal. Providing you call me by my right name,
Ivy,
and never call me Miss Snoot or Miss Climbing Vine from here on in.”

“Deal,” said Billy Joe. He slapped the soda counter with the palm of his hand. “Two chocolate malts, please, Mr. Strunk! One for me and one for Ivy here.”

“Make mine a double!” said Ivy.

O
pportunity always knocks
when you least expect it,” Ivy’s mother said, after Ivy complained that the telephone was not immediately ringing with new jobs. Ivy never would have guessed that her next assignment would come from one of the guests at the Red Star Ranch.

“Poor Mr. Burgess,” said Ivy’s father one July evening when the Red Star guests had been taken to the Christmas Tree Lodge for a fancy dinner. “I took him out on the Eagle River trail today. I showed him beautiful Washoe Lake, and all he did was cry. Comes from New Jersey. Terrible wife.”

It went without saying that all the guests at the Red Star Ranch had terrible wives or terrible husbands, because that was the side of the story you got when you ran a dude ranch in Nevada in 1949.

Ivy’s dad was a man who hated gossip. On the other hand, it was near impossible not to reveal details of the guests and their troubles, because it was all in a day’s work and there were always interesting guests at the Red Star Ranch.

Ivy didn’t usually listen in on conversations, but she drank in every word of what her dad told her happened along the trails. The guests usually spilled the beans about what was happening back home the second or third week they went out riding with him. That was how Ivy’d found out all about a certain Mr. Smith, who, by mistake, married a lady who liked to throw dishes at him and had run off with a traveling salesman.

Billy Joe Butterworth made it his business to know all about the guests. When he could, Billy Joe had been known to listen in on guests’ conversations over the telephone line. He had been especially interested in a Mrs. Jones, married by mistake to a bank robber who ate nothing but garlic.

Billy Joe could hardly contain himself when a really interesting guest came along. He said he kept a book of all their doings and undoings, but Ivy didn’t believe him because Billy Joe was too disorganized to write anything down, even in his school notebook.

Ivy waited for her dad to release a little more information about Mr. Burgess. Ivy’s dad went on. “That poor sap, Burgess. Still boo-hooing like the world has come to its end.”

“That big, handsome, barrel-chested man?” asked Ivy’s mother. “Why, he ate three plates of pancakes for breakfast! I didn’t have any more batter after him, not to mention all the bacon.”

“And he’s been here three weeks already,” Ivy’s dad added. “Most of ’em have calmed down some by this time.”

“What kind of wife would leave such a handsome, sweet man? I’d like to know!” Ivy’s mother said.

Ivy twirled a forkful of her spaghetti and wondered how much her daddy would tell about why such a man might have cried on the horse trails up in the mountains, where the desert flowers bloomed and Lake Tahoe shone like a diamond miles off on the California line.

“He misses his dogs is what,” said Ivy’s dad. “He don’t like horses so much. He likes dogs. Dog breeder. He’s got a whole kennel back home, and you’d think the dogs was his kids.”

Late that night, Ivy was awoken by a low moaning sound coming from one of the guest cottages. For a minute she thought it might be a coyote who’d lost her kits. But if it was a coyote, Hoover and Coover would be on it in a flash, and they were quiet. The moaning grew louder.

Ivy sat up and listened.
I bet that’s poor Mr. Burgess crying over his dogs. I bet I could cheer him up,
said Ivy to herself. She put on her jeans and T-shirt and slipped out the front door. On the way out she grabbed a handful of chocolate Hershey’s Kisses from the candy dish, meant only for ranch guests. She let herself out and crossed the grassy patch that separated the guest cottages from the Butterworth’s main house. Mr. Burgess occupied cottage number three. Ivy tapped politely on the door.

She had to tap louder before Mr. Burgess heard her. He opened the door, blowing his nose. “I’m so sorry if I disturbed you,” said Mr. Burgess. “I’ll be quiet.”

“I brought you some Hershey’s Kisses,” said Ivy. “Sometimes when I get upset, my mama gives me one and I unwrap the silver paper and eat it and it stops the crying,
bam!
” She kept her voice low. The guest cottages were close to the Butterworths’ house, and Billy Joe could hear a pin drop.

“Come in,” said Mr. Burgess. “Why on earth should a nice girl like you cry?”

“Because Mary Louise Merriweather at school makes my life miserable because she’s so perfect and snotty to everyone who isn’t her friend,” explained Ivy, “and my best friend hasn’t written to me all summer from camp.”

Ivy took a chocolate out of her pocket and offered it to Mr. Burgess. He peeled off the wrapper, popped it into his mouth, and sucked on it. He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his pajamas and sat on his bed.

“I’m a fool,” he said. “A fool for my dogs. I came out here to divorce my wife and had to leave my German shepherds in Teaneck, New Jersey, with my brother.”

“What are their names?” asked Ivy. She sat in the moonlight in the rocking chair opposite Mr. Burgess.

“Siegfried,” he answered, blowing his nose with a neatly folded handkerchief. With each dog’s name, his voice grew happier. “Birgit, Tristan, Elsa, and Parsifal. I trained them to be champions in the show and obedience ring. I have photos.”

He turned on the light next to his bed and from his wallet on the dresser removed five photographs of five German shepherds. They all looked exactly the same to Ivy.

“Beautiful!” she said. “Especially that one!”

“That’s Birgit,” said Mr. Burgess. He unfolded a newspaper clipping, also kept in his wallet. It showed him with a winning team of shepherds at the Madison Square Garden Westminster dog show.

“Wow!” said Ivy. “That’s the most famous dog show in the country!”

“I have only three weeks and three days before I see them again,” Mr. Burgess explained, as if in Nevada he were the prisoner of Zenda. “My wife, Elma, thinks dogs are dirty and dangerous. She left me and fell in love with a banker who hates dogs and lives in a big modern apartment building in New York City and drives a yellow racing car.”

“I’d be upset, too, Mr. Burgess,” said Ivy. “I don’t understand people who don’t love animals. I actually run my own business. It’s an animal take-care service. I do dogs, horses, turtles, birds — whatever people have.”

“I wish Elma had taken lessons from you, Ivy,” said Mr. Burgess. “Dogs are just creatures like us people, and I love ’em like my own kids. That is, if I had kids, which I don’t, ’cause Elma doesn’t like kids, either.”

Ivy nodded in sturdy agreement. “I’d rather have five German shepherds than any old New York City banker,” said Ivy.

“I would, too,” said Mr. Burgess, his voice squeaking a little.

“I’ll take the yellow racing car!” said a voice from the doorway. It was Billy Joe Butterworth, in his blue striped pajamas. He stood in the light of the porch lamp, batting at the moths that gathered there.

“Billy Joe, you get on out of here!” snapped Ivy. “This is a private conversation!” But it was too late. Billy Joe had already unlatched the cottage door and let himself into Mr. Burgess’s room, cool as a cucumber.

“I have an idea!” Billy Joe said. “It’s better than any old chocolate candy, too.”

Ivy had half a mind to clock him over the head then and there, but he signaled her and went on. “Five miles south of town, there’s a lady who’s got five of them shepherd pups. Saw them today, ’cause my dad dropped off some hay at the Perkins place. Cute as day, those pups. Born end of May, I reckon. She’s got a sign up now, advertising ’em. Maybe you’d like to see ’em just to cheer you up!”

Ivy knew what Billy Joe was up to. He was afraid Mr. Burgess might bolt right back to New Jersey to his dogs and not pay his bill if he was this homesick. Guests who didn’t pay were bad news for the Red Star Ranch. Sometimes guests just skedaddled. Some guests got telephone calls and all their marriage troubles were forgiven over the phone. The whole ranch suffered when the divorcers kissed, made up, and went home. It was important to keep the guests happy. Unpaid rentals meant mashed potato sandwiches instead of ham-and-cheese for both Ivy’s family and Billy Joe’s.

Mr. Burgess looked at Billy Joe as if he had seen the second coming of the Lord.

“I’d love to see those pups,” he said. “What time do you two finish day chores tomorrow?”

Ivy did not un-dignify the day by arguing with Billy Joe as to who would sit in the front seat of Mr. Burgess’s rented Cadillac. A fancy car meant more to Billy Joe than it did to her. Ivy had it in the back of her mind that, just maybe, one of the Perkinses’ pups might come home with Mr. Burgess and it might just as well ride in the backseat with her. Another dog wouldn’t matter much at the Red Star Ranch. Hoover and Coover were eleven-year-old sheepdog brothers and didn’t like to do much more than lie in the sun and chew the burrs off their feet. They didn’t even get up for jackrabbits anymore.

“Boy, it must be fun to drive this baby!” said Billy Joe as Mr. Burgess put the car in reverse. Ivy knew this was Billy Joe’s way of asking if Mr. Burgess would let him take the Caddy to the end of the driveway.

“It’s a rented car, Billy Joe,” said Ivy. “It’d cost a lot of money if something went wrong, like stripping the gears!”

Billy Joe turned around and gave Ivy a serious stink eye. He knew that she knew that he had stripped the gears on his dad’s pickup and was forbidden to even put a hand on the steering wheel.

At the Perkinses’ farm, Mr. Burgess vaulted into the middle of the puppy enclosure. Mrs. Perkins tossed an apron at him so his pants wouldn’t get messed up.

“Champion bloodlines, dam and sire,” she recited. “They got all their inoculations and are vet-certified in perfect health. Look at the bone on that one. Look at the bites. No overshots, no undershots, no fiddle fronts, no straight stifles, and no laggy, draggy hindquarters in this madhouse!”

Ivy knew the words
dam
and
sire
meant the mother and father, the same as for horses. But she wondered about
straight
stifles
and
fiddle fronts,
not to mention
laggy, draggy hindquarters.
Mrs. Perkins did not explain these things, but handed out sodas all around.

The price of the pups sounded like a small fortune to Ivy. Ivy guessed that Mr. Burgess, having rented a Cadillac when he might have rented a Chevy or a Ford, did not have too much trouble with money.