by Betsy Byars
In early afternoon things seemed to stop around here. I had once tried to write a poem about it.
Nap time at The Willows.
Heads upon our pillows.
The noon train has come and gone.
The whole world, with us, slumbers on.
I paused at the cemetery. Over the fence, I could see the stone lamb of Anita’s grave.
My grip on the Kodak tightened. I would take a picture of the lamb.
I opened the gate. As usual, it creaked on its hinges.
I moved toward the lamb. For a moment I just stood there. My thoughts were of Anita and how glad I was that there would not be another small grave beside this one.
Just then, a butterfly landed on the stone lamb. I held my breath. I looked through the viewfinder. There it was.
The butterfly flexed its wings, once, again. My fingers fumbled for the shutter. I inched toward the grave and sank to my knees.
I heard the gate open behind me. I thought it was probably Aunt Pauline. Ever since the photography had begun, she had been posing here and there—leaning against a porch column, smelling a flower in Frederick’s memorial garden, gazing off into the distance.
If I got this photograph, I decided, I would be generous and take one of Aunt Pauline.
There. One click and it was done. I turned to Aunt Pauline, smiling with satisfaction.
It was not Aunt Pauline, however, who smiled back at me. It was Mr. Tominski.
His gap-toothed grin froze me in place.
chapter eighteen
Run!
Run!
That was the only thought in my head.
Run!
But the gate was closed, and Mr. Tominski stood in front of it.
This was the first time I had seen him up close. He was a solid man. I noticed for the first time the size of his hands, his feet in their heavy black boots. They seemed to belong to a bigger man.
I was still on my knees in front of Anita’s grave. The sun was beating down on my head, and Mr. Tominski with his huge hands stood between me and safety.
I managed to get to my feet and brush off my skirt. Grandmama had found out from Papa that Mr. Tominski didn’t speak any English, only Polish, but he understood everything that was said.
“I b-better go,” I said.
He did not move.
“M-Mama’s expecting me.”
He did not move.
“I was just taking a photograph.”
He did not move.
“Grandmama gave me this camera.”
Now he did move. With one huge hand he pointed to himself.
I thought for a moment he was trying to show me his suspenders, for they were brightly colored and stood out against his gray shirt.
He pointed again, jabbing his chest with intensity.
At that moment, I had the most startling thought. Mr. Tominski wanted to pose for a photograph. Mr. Tominski! I tried to keep the shock out of my voice as I said, “Would you like me to take a picture of you, Mr. Tominski?”
He nodded.
“Maybe you could sit on the bench.”
I indicated the bench, and he took a seat. He ran one hand through his straggly hair, as if to smooth it, then rested his huge hands on his knees.
I approached the bench slowly. Of course he did not eat children, as the Bellas had said. He was, as Mama had said, harmless. Yet, my heart pounded in my throat.
I looked through the viewfinder. Mr. Tominski had a serious look on his face, as if this was a big moment in his life. He took a deep breath, as if to inflate himself with importance, and held it.
“One . . . two . . . three.”
I snapped the shutter. Mr. Tominski threw back his head and shouted with glee, “Hee! Hee! Hee!”
Then he grew quiet, but he continued to sit there, as if he were waiting.
My thoughts raced. Maybe, when Mr. Tominski was a boy back in the old country, he had seen important people having their pictures taken. Maybe he had promised himself that one day he would be important enough to have his picture made too.
And maybe, back then, if a person was very important, his picture would be taken twice, to make sure of a good one.
“Let me take one more,” I said.
I looked through the viewfinder and saw his face beaming with pride. “One . . . two . . . three.” I took the picture.
Even as I clicked the shutter, I knew that I would need no photograph to help me remember this face. There was a glow about it. A radiance. A lambency!
When I looked up, the cemetery gate was open and Mr. Tominski was gone.
Not until I was around the house, listening to Lamar still trying to extract a promise from Abigail for a photograph, did my breathing return to normal.
That night at the dinner table, Grandmama said, “Girls, I want to know the most interesting thing you photographed today. One by one, now.”
The Bellas had each photographed one of the spaniel puppies. Abigail admitted, blushing, that she had taken a picture of Lamar.
“A picture!” Augusta said.
“Augusta, what was your favorite photograph?” Grandmama interrupted quickly.
Augusta claimed that she could never take a picture of anything more wonderful than Adam.
“And you, Amie? You’ve been awfully quiet. What did you photograph today?”
“I photographed four things—Scout, Adam, a butterfly on the stone lamb of Anita’s grave, and”—I was pleased that my voice didn’t tremble when I said this—“I photographed Mr. Tominski.”
Then I smiled at Papa. “There was a sort of lambency about him.”
chapter nineteen
S-S-S-Something
“Scout! Where’s Scout?” one of the Bellas said. “Scout likes to play. Scout!”
“Scout! Scooout!”
Both the Bellas called, but Scout did not appear. This was unusual. Scout always came when he was called.
“We’ll have to play without him.”
The Bellas and I were in the front yard getting ready to play Ain’t No Bears Out Tonight.
For the first time, the Bellas were allowing me to be the bear. I was planning to hide in the shrubbery beneath the window to Papa’s den. The Bellas hid their eyes and I rushed around the house and into the shrubbery.
I waited, heart pounding, not making a sound. I heard a noise behind me—faint and yet there was something urgent about it. I pulled aside the branches and looked down.
Scout lay on the ground. There was a broad black mark on his side that looked like blood. The faint sound, I saw now, came from his lungs attempting to get air.
His eyes rolled toward me and his tail gave one pitiful thump, as if apologizing for letting me see him like this.
I pushed through the bushes, ran past the Bellas and up the steps to the porch where Grandmama sat fanning herself in one of the chairs.
“S-S-S-S—”
I could not speak the word. I buried my face in Grandmama’s skirt.
“S-S-S—”
“What is it?” Grandmama put one hand on my shoulder. “What’s happened?”
When I still could not speak, she said, “Is it something the Bellas did? Where are the Bellas?
“Bellas! Bellas!” Instantly she was at the porch rail calling. “Girls!”
Augusta and Abigail came out of the house. “What’s wrong?” Augusta asked
One of the Bellas said defensively, “Don’t look at us. We didn’t do anything. We were just playing a game.”
“What game?”
“Ain’t No Bears Out Tonight.”
“Is that what scared you, Amie, the bear?”
“Grandmama, she was the bear. She begged to be the bear. We said she wouldn’t be any good, but she—”
“Is that what scared you, Amie, being the bear?”
I shook my head and got out one word.
“S-S-Scout.”
“The dog? Why, Scout’s nothing to be afraid of. You love Scout.”
&
nbsp; “S-S-Scout’s hurt. He can hardly breathe.”
“Where?”
I pointed the way. Grandmama moved quickly, and we followed. She drew the branches aside and we peered around her.
Scout had not moved, except that his eyes no longer shifted to us, and his tail seemed to have lost its wag.
“Go in the house, girls.”
“But, Grandmama—”
“Now.”
As Abigail, Augusta, and I started for the house, Grandmama rapped on Papa’s window. “Albert, I need you out here,” she called. The tone of her voice made Papa move quickly. We passed him on the porch, and then went and sat on the stairs, shoulders touching for company.
“You get in the house too,” Papa said, and the Bellas joined us.
“Scout’s going to die,” one of the Bellas said.
“If he does die, whoever did it will be sorry,” said the other.
“Hush up!” Augusta said.
Papa came in. “Scout’s going to die, isn’t he?” a Bella asked.
“Go upstairs, girls.”
We went upstairs and sat in the playroom. Nobody—not even the Bellas—felt like playing.
A short time later we heard a shot, and, as if that were the signal, we all burst into tears. Finally, Grandmama came up and told us Mama wanted to see us.
The last time I had been in Mama’s room was when Adam was born. We now trailed in, a miserable group. Mama held out her hands. Abigail and Augusta managed to get there first, so the Bellas and I just stood by the bed.
Unbidden I thought of a poem.
With five children to reach
Have a hand for each.
I knew I would never write it down because it might make Mama unhappy not to have had enough hands to go around.
Our faces, reflected in the mirror over Mama’s dressing table, were wet with tears. Mama began dusting them away with a small handkerchief.
“Scout wouldn’t want you to be unhappy. Scout wouldn’t want you to cry.”
“What happened to him?” one of the Bellas asked.
“Yes,” the other said. “We want to know what happened.”
“Papa said maybe he got kicked by one of the horses,” Mama explained.
“It couldn’t have been a horse. Scout never bothered the horses,” a Bella said. “He used to go for rides with us and he never once got near the horses.”
“The horses liked him, Mama,” added the other Bella.
“Sit down, girls.” She patted the bed. We had never been allowed to sit on Mama’s bed before, so it didn’t really feel comfortable.
She began to tell us stories about Scout, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the way Scout had looked when I found him in the shrubbery.
“Now,” Mama said, “have one little peep at your brother and then go downstairs. Cook has lemonade and cookies for you.”
The Bellas and I left the room. Abigail and Augusta stayed behind for a longer look at Adam.
I expected the Bellas to rush down the stairs to the kitchen for the treat, but when we got out in the hall, the Bellas surprised me with one of their statements in unison.
“We know what happened.”
“To Scout?”
“Yes, we know what happened.”
“What?”
“He was killed!”
“No.”
“Yes, somebody killed him—” and then they finished in unison “—and we know who!”
chapter twenty
Tominski!
“Tominski!” they cried together.
“Mr. Tominski?” I asked. “No. He wouldn’t kill anybody. I think he’s like Mama said—harmless.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call that harmless—killing our dog.”
“Murdering our dog,” the other Bella added.
Their tears were gone and their eyes had gotten little and mean.
“I really don’t think he would have done such a terrible thing,” I said.
I recalled the man with his doves, the gentle man who had inflated himself for a photograph and grinned with pleasure.
“What do you know?” a Bella sneered. “Go write a po-em.”
“Yes, go write a po-em.”
“Listen,” I said, “I went back there one time, back behind the chapel with Grandmama and Abigail. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you’d make me take you—”
“Take us!” a Bella exclaimed. “Why would we want you to take us? We’ve been there hundreds of times.”
“Thousands,” the other Bella said, correcting her twin for the first time in their lives.
“And one time—this is how we know he killed Scout—and one time Scout followed us, and when Mr. Tominski got his doves flying around his head, Scout came running into the clearing and Mr. Tominski kicked him. He missed the first time, but he was getting ready to kick him again—”
The second Bella picked up the tale—“when we rushed out and kicked him, and he ran into the woods and took his doves with him.”
I knew the Bellas well, and I could tell when they made things up. This had the ring of truth.
“But, but just because he tried to kick him once, doesn’t mean he killed him. Mama said she thought it was a horse.”
“Didn’t you see the black mark on Scout’s side?”
“Yes, it was blood.”
“Not just blood. There was a black streak.”
“And black streaks like that don’t come from a horse.”
“They come from a boot.”
As they said this, I was back in the cemetery, taking a photograph of Mr. Tominski. I recalled his big feet, his black boots.
“Tominski’s boots.”
“Remember when you and Abigail and Augusta went around the house with Grandmama?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we didn’t. We went in the bushes and looked at Scout, and his ribs had been kicked in.”
“Here’s what happened. Scout went back to look at the doves and old man Tominski saw him and kicked him.”
“Yes, he kicked him so hard that Scout fell over.”
They were taking turns, sharing the miserable story, and I turned from one twin to the other, listening.
“He might even have kicked him twice. We couldn’t turn Scout over to look at the other side.”
“And then Scout crawled to the house. He crawled to Papa, but the closest he could get was the window to Papa’s study.”
“Yes, then he lay down.”
It all sounded as if it might have happened that way.
“But you can’t be sure,” I said. For some reason I didn’t want it to be Mr. Tominski’s fault.
“We are sure. And old man Tominski is going to pay for killing our dog.”
“Girls,” Mama called from her room, “what’s the trouble?”
“Nothing, Mama,” the Bellas lied together.
“Then go downstairs and have your lemonade.”
“Yes, Mama.”
As we went downstairs, I glanced at the Bellas, and I could tell from the looks on their faces that they meant what they said.
Grandmama joined us in the kitchen, something she had never done before, and I thought Mama must have sent her.
She took in our solemn faces, our uneaten cookies, our untasted lemonade. She said, “It’s perfectly all right to grieve for a pet. When I was a girl, I myself cried when my pony Bonny Bill died.”
“What did he die of ?” a Bella asked.
“He ate some poison berries.”
“Did someone give them to him?”
“He found them quite on his own.”
“He could have been poisoned.”
“He could have been murdered like Scout.”
Grandmama ignored the twins’ last remarks. “As I said, it’s perfectly all right to grieve for a pet, but you can’t go back. You need to dry your tears and turn your faces to the future.”
chapter twenty-one
Uncle William and the Dog Star
&nbs
p; “Uncle William! It’s Uncle William!”
The five of us ran down the steps to greet our favorite uncle. Actually he was our only uncle, but if we had had a dozen, he would have been our favorite.
It had been only one month since we had run down these same steps to greet Grandmama. One month and so much had happened. Not only had I gotten a new brother, but I had also learned the depth of my feeling for him. Not only had I lost a beloved dog, but I had also been there for the last sad wag of his tail.
Only one month ago, Mama had called us her white butterflies, and although I flitted across the lawn in the same white pinafore with my sisters, the description no longer seemed to fit me.
“My favorite nieces,” Uncle William cried. The Bellas got there first, and he swung them into the air. “Mia bella Bellas,” he said, pretending to be Italian. Then, “Abigail, the fair! Augusta, the dear! And Amen, the answer to an uncle’s prayer!” My embrace was the last.
He greeted each of us in a special way, and although Abigail and Augusta were too old to be twirled in the air, I was glad I was not.
Grandmama stood on the porch, smiling. “My favorite son,” she said and kissed him.
The reason for Uncle William’s visit was to see his new nephew, but I was especially glad to see him because perhaps he was the one person who could soften the loss of our dog, and make the Bellas forget their sworn revenge.
Uncle William went upstairs first to visit Mama, and after he had admired Adam and we had eaten supper, he did what he was famous for—told us stories.
My uncle was a wonderful storyteller. His stories were of the heavens. He loved the stars, the moon, the planets. He yearned to solve their mysteries.
As we sat at his feet that night, he told of going to the Yerkes Observatory. “Girls, there is a moving floor. It rises.” As he told of the rising floor, he rose from his chair, looking around in amazement, as if our library floor were doing the same thing. “It lifted me to the eyepiece, where I saw miracles—the craters of the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, the spectacular rings of Saturn.”
He told of a man named Tesla. “Remember, Mother, he was the man I saw at the world’s fair holding lights—electric lights, girls, wireless electric lights, one in each hand.” He was such an actor that as he stood with his hands outstretched, they seemed to glow.