Penny (8 page)

And here at the farm summer had arrived. Lilacs were in full bloom, so fragrant we could smell them inside the house, apple blossoms were just past their prime and the petals had begun to fall on the grass like the snow we had had only two or three weeks earlier. The brooksides were purple with violets and the old meadow down the road where it hasn't been mowed for three years was covered with bluets.

That was Memorial Day weekend, and we spent two whole days at the lake, coming home to sleep only because the beds here are more comfortable than the built-in bunks at the boathouse. And both evenings when we came home at dusk Barbara stopped and looked at the front porch before she went up the walk.

The second evening I asked, “What's the matter? What are you looking for?”

“Nothing,” she said, and we came on into the house. But a few minutes later she said, “I have a feeling that she will be back.”

“Oh?”

“I didn't want to say anything, but—”

“Look, Cassandra, put away the crystal ball. Ask me. I have known since—oh, ever since the first day she came here—that she will be back. The Bad Penny. There's no escaping it.
But she ain't back yet!
… Forget it, kid, till she yips at the door.”

“I still have the feeling—” She sighed.

There was work to be done in the woods down at the lake, and George had promised to get at it as soon as he finished another job. George is a professional forester and one of the best men in the woods that I know. I phoned him, and he said, “I tried to reach you an hour ago.”

“When can you come?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Meet you there, pal. What time do you get going?”

“How about eight o'clock?”

“As you say. Eight
A.M.
tomorrow.”

The next morning I was at the top of the hill at the lake place thirty seconds ahead of George. He had his truck with chain saw, hand saw, axes, ropes, gear. His man would be along, he said. We drove down to the boathouse and George and I began ranging the property, George marking trees that needed to be taken out with a squirted X from a spray can of yellow paint.

“We'll burn the brush in the driveway,” George said.

His man arrived and set to work on the marked trees. George and I finished the lower hillside, and I said I'd like a couple of cords of firewood saved. Then I came home, knowing the job would be done right. George would save every good seedling and sapling possible, and he would cherish every clump of ground hemlock, as we call it. He would know the yellow lady's slipper plants and protect them. He would take as good care of that hillside as I would, maybe even better.

I came home, and I was barely in the door when Barbara said, “We've got a dog.”

“What? Again?”

“For good this time. Carol phoned about an hour ago, said they have to get rid of her and would we please take her. I said yes.”

“Of course.”

“I said you were down at the lake and we would be over and get her as soon as you got home.”

“All right, put on a jacket and come on.”

She hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“Aren't you?”

“I think so. I know we have to take her now. Something's happened. She's been snapping at the youngsters over there.”

“Ohhh. Teasing her, I'll bet.”

“That's all she said, that Penny-Pokey has turned vicious. She snapped at the kids and almost bit a little girl, their next-door neighbor.”

She had her jacket. I went to the garage for the car. Barbara got in, and I went back to the house, found the leash. Then we went to get our dog.

Seven

She was lying in the driveway, tethered by the long chain and as far from the house and garage as she could get. When we turned into the drive she looked up but didn't move. I stopped the car, got out, and she gave me a “What are you doing here?” look. It was almost an “I hate the world” look, too. Then I noticed that several children were standing across the yard, watching silently.

Barbara came around the car and said, “Penny!” and Penny looked at her, a kind of “So what?” look. Then she got to her feet and went back toward the garage, dragging the chain, which jingled softly on the concrete.

Tom came to the door, invited us in. Barbara said, “No thanks. We haven't much time.” Carol came and repeated the invitation, got the same answer. Tom went back into the house. Carol said the same things that had been said over the phone, about her turning snappish, almost biting one of the neighboring youngsters.

“I don't know what's got into her, I really don't. But Tom finally said we'd just have to get rid of her. So—”

Tom came back and handed me an envelope. “The papers. Everything is there, I think.” He shook his head, started to say something, then stopped. “At least, there aren't a lot of kids over at your place for her to snap at.” Then he added, “But she never snapped at us. Never.”

I got the leash from the car, unsnapped the chain from her collar, fastened the leash. She got to her feet, almost resignedly, and went to the car with me. I opened the door and she got in, settled herself on the back seat. Barbara said good-bye to Carol, I shook hands with Tom, and he said, “If you can't do anything with her—well, do whatever you think best. She's yours now.”

The neighbor youngsters were still watching, now wide-eyed and grinning, as we backed out of the driveway and started home. Penny sat up and stared out the window, but she didn't look back. She looked sad, almost surly, and she was very thin.

Barbara said, “Carol told me she hasn't been eating. Didn't want the dog food and wouldn't eat bread and milk any more.”

We got home, and the minute she got out of the car she headed for the front porch, dragging the leash. I put the car away. Barbara let her in and when I got to the house Penny was on the back porch eating kibbled dog food moistened with milk. Eating like a starved child. She cleaned up one dishful and we gave her another. She put that away and started on a third before she was satisfied. Then she went in and lay down in her favorite place, under the bench.

She slept for an hour, then went to the front door and wanted out. I let her out. She went down the walk and took off up the road. I thought she would soon be back, but half an hour passed and no Penny. We got out the car and drove a mile up the road, watching and listening. No sight or sound of her. We went down the road a mile and a half to the little bogland where we always hear the peepers first, and still no Penny. “Well,” I said, “that's that. Nice knowing her. I hope she enjoyed that meal.”

“I hope,” Barbara said, “that she has a great big tummy ache! She's an ungrateful little brat!”

“Tut! I'm the one who calls her names.” And we managed to laugh. “Maybe she just has to prove her independence,” I said. “She has been badgered and scolded, and she has been chained up. And probably teased by those neighborhood kids. She got snappish and stubborn as a mule. So now she has to run away from us, just to prove that she can do what she wants to.… How's that for animal psychology?”

“Oh, very good indeed. Where did you learn so much about canine reactions?”

“Studying my own, of course.”

Barbara laughed. “You can supply the obvious reply to
that!
”

We were almost back home. I thought I heard something, so I stopped the car and turned off the motor to listen. Sure enough, up on the hillside beyond the home pasture a dog was barking. Penny. Barking “treed,” which with Penny would mean she had something cornered on the ground. I hoped it wasn't a porcupine. Or a skunk.

I started the motor and drove on home, got the .22 rifle and struck out across the pasture and up the hillside. Sure enough, Penny had cornered a young woodchuck. Evidently she saw me coming and mustered the courage to close in just before I got there. She had made her final rush, with a flurry of yips and growls and squeals and a snapping of teeth, just as I rounded the last clump of bushes. There she was, shaking the dead woodchuck.

I praised her, thinking maybe we had another Pat—he was a famous woodchuck hunter. She wagged her tail at the praise but didn't trust me. She carried her kill down to the edge of the pasture, rolled on it, grabbed it and hauled it away when I tried to take it from her. But after two more rolls she let me put the leash on her and went home with me without any fuss, though she did want to go back to the dead 'chuck a couple of times. A huntress, that's what she was, by blood and inheritance. And she'd had no chance to get it out of her system.

She was in the house only half an hour when she wanted out again. We let her go, remembering that she had to assert her independence That time she went down on the riverbank and found a fine place to wade, a very special place. She came back ten minutes later smeared with sticky black river muck. So I got a pail of water and gave her a bath. She didn't appreciate the bath, wouldn't even let me dry her off with an old towel. She rolled in the grass and dried herself to her own satisfaction. Then she lay on the front steps for a time.

I didn't miss her until I heard her up on the mountainside again about five-thirty. This time it was her trail bark, not the “treed” or “cornered” bark. She barked from time to time for an hour or so, then was silent. I made no move to go and get her, decided that she would come back when she felt like it or not come back at all. Or maybe stay out all night and come home in time for breakfast. She was silent for a long half hour, then barked the trail bark again. Apparently she had put up another rabbit. Then silence once more. And finally, about a quarter to eight, she came back, tired and filthy again—evidently she had found and wallowed in every seep spring and mudhole on the whole mountainside. I wiped her off and brushed her a bit, and we let her in, fed her two more dishfuls of dog food. Then she lay down under her bench and slept the sleep of the utterly weary. About eight-thirty I took her out to Pat's old place, the little brooder house, and put her to bed on a fresh pallet of straw. It was obvious that she didn't appreciate it. I don't know what she wanted, maybe wall-to-wall shag rug, with a special pad for a mattress. Anyway, she let me know, even before I closed and latched the door, that she didn't think this was much of a place to quarter a dog of her standing. I didn't agree. I came back to the house. And I was barely inside when she began to bark, an impatient bark, then an imperious bark, then a defiant bark and finally a most piteous bark. Barbara looked at me, and I looked at her, and we both shook our heads. And about nine o'clock Penny settled down and shut up.

We were sleeping soundly when a car woke me up about half past twelve. Some idiot came up the road with his car radio on full blast. It was bad enough to wake people, but it was inexcusable to wake sleeping dogs. Penny came to with a roar of indignation and warning. It sounded as though she would tear down walls to get at this intruder. Not only tear down walls but stop the car and haul the driver out and dismember him, maybe disembowel him. I never heard a more peremptory challenge. It was a performance that would make lions quail.

But by then even the echo of the radio-loud car had died, and soon Penny's performance subsided to ordinary barking. That eased to spasmodic barking, the spasms just far enough apart that one could almost doze off between them. Almost, but not quite. This went on for twenty minutes, by the clock—it seemed two hours—and I was tempted several times to get up and go out and tell her to stop it before she got a case of hiccups or something. But each time, she shut up before I even got out of bed, and finally she stopped altogether. I lay awake another half hour, waiting for the next spasm, and finally drifted off to sleep. And we slept the rest of the night.

Apparently she got most of the “I won't” out of her that one day. She was her familiar friendly self when I went to let her out. She frolicked ahead of me to the house, ate a big bowl of breakfast, went outside for ten minutes and came back and asked to be let in. She was the perfect house dog. I had to go to the village in midmorning to do several errands, and Barbara said Penny wouldn't let her out of her sight while I was gone, as though Barbara was her special responsibility.

That afternoon she napped in the house for an hour, went for a long walk with us, then lay on the front steps till about five o'clock. Then she went out across the pasture and prowled the mountainside, barking trail from time to time, for almost an hour. When she came back she hadn't wallowed in one seep spring, hadn't been down in the river mud and wasn't in a nasty mood. She came back, asked to be let in, ate her evening meal, napped in the living room till nine o'clock. Then she went off to bed in the brooder house without a whimper. And she slept all night, apparently. At least she didn't rouse us with any tantrums.

The next morning Barbara said, “Penny seems to have got hold of herself. I think she's going to settle down all right.”

Two days later we took her down to the place at the lake.

It was a beautiful June day, sunny and warm and with just enough air in motion to be comfortable. The camp there is a cabin with a living room, a tiny kitchen and two small dressing rooms. It has a six-foot deck across the front facing the water. The lakeshore there is precipitous, with a drop of about twenty feet from the deck to the water's edge. A series of steps go down over the ledge to the dock. There is a ten-foot overhead glass door opening onto the deck, so one gets the feeling of being right outdoors and, on the deck, suspended in midair.

Penny left the farmhouse merely pleased at going for a ride. She loved to ride in the car. She slobbered on the window and slithered on the seat, smirked at the big black cat down the road and looked superciliously at the police dog just beyond. Then she lay down and dozed for ten minutes. She woke and sat up when we got to the top of the hill at the lake place. This was something new, a new woodland and, undoubtedly, brand new smells. She sniffed, at any rate, and watched with intense interest as I drove down the steep, winding road to the parking place just above our camp. When we got out she turned and looked at the lake, probably more water than she had ever seen. She stared at it, trembling. Then she went down the steps to the cabin with us, went in, looked around. At the two built-in bunks, at the chairs, at the two chaises. Then at us, with a “What's this all about?” look.