Escape from Baxters' Barn

by Rebecca Bond

  Digging was much harder than Figgy had hoped. And exhausting. Last night, as midnight came and midnight went, she had raked at the dirt with her hooves and levered with her snout, but still she hadn’t broken through. She stepped back to survey her progress. This was a dumb idea, she thought to herself. You can’t just tunnel through a hundred-year-old floor! She hated that she had let everyone believe she could do this.

  All she wanted to do now was stop, push the hay into a big, soft mountain, and throw herself down on it. She took a step toward her bed, could feel its magnetic pull. How wonderful it would be to flop down, lay her head gratefully to the ground, rustle her body around until it felt just right . . . As she thought about it she let herself relax. She bent her knees, readying to give in. Sleep.

  But something, the tiniest spark of something, pulled her back, snapped her to attention. Maybe it was a small snore from Fluff, or maybe Tick mumbled in his sleep. “No, Figgy,” she said to herself, straightening. She furrowed her brow and scowled sternly into the dark. “To destroy our chance by just giving up would be despicable.” She had volunteered herself for this task and as nearly impossible as it now seemed, the others were depending on her.

  And so, through the long night, to the rhythm of the rain, from one a.m. to two, two to three, three to four and on to five, a weary but resolved pig dug and dug and dug and dug.

  By early morning, when the barn at last stopped shuddering, the torrent on the roof slowed to a trickle, and a ray of early dawn red brightened the east windows, an achy, dirty, and thoroughly worn-out Figgy finally fell gratefully asleep.

  The horrible creak of the doors announced Dewey’s arrival. Figgy jerked awake.

  “Oh no! The dirt!” she cried. There was a real pile of it now that hadn’t yet been dispersed.

  In a quick second, Figgy scrambled onto her hooves and attacked the mound, kicking frantically at the dirt, nosing it under the hay, pushing it toward the edges of her pen, and tromping madly to flatten it down.

  Immediately Nanny saw what was happening.

  “Burdock!” she hissed.

  The cat had just emerged from under the tool cabinet and was in the aisle, groggily stretching out his hind legs one after the other. He stepped now to the side to make room for Dewey when Nanny whispered, “Burdock! Stall him!”

  It took a moment for Burdock to catch on, but he did, just as Dewey was passing, almost to the pig’s pen.

  The cat sprang out in front of Dewey and clipped him at the ankles. Dewey stumbled, caught himself with a hand on Nanny’s pen, turned, and cursed.

  “Blast it, Burdock! What’s wrong with you?” Dewey gave the cat a rough shove with his boot, knocking Burdock into the pen wall.

  Figgy didn’t have a moment’s more time. The dirt was mostly gone but the hole! She dove against the wall, covering the small pit with her bulk, and squeezed shut her eyes. Look relaxed, Figgy commanded herself.

  “Well, don’t we look comfortable!” chided Dewey as he righted himself and clomped by.

  Figgy let out a lungful of air.

  “Are you all right, love?” whispered Nanny to Burdock. She looked through her pen’s slats at the cat.

  “I think so,” said Burdock, shaking his head slowly. “He’s never done that before.”

  “I know,” said Nanny. She paused. “I don’t know what would’ve happened if Dewey had seen the hole. Thank you for doing that, Burdock.”

  Burdock stood for a moment looking up at Nanny. Lately, she had been demanding things of him, but she was kind. Just the way she looked at him made him feel she cared about him.

  “Why don’t you come lie down in here for a while,” offered Nanny now. “Tick and I would be happy for your company.”

  Burdock hesitated, but when Tick stuck his nose out and beamed expectantly, Burdock agreed.

  Since it was still too wet to pasture the animals, Dewey threw a little hay over the pen walls, dropped a few scant buckets of water into the pens too, and milked Mrs. Brown. Then he closed her back in her stall and headed again toward the front of the barn.

  “Tug! Pull! Get ready!” he yelled over his shoulder and disappeared into the toolshed.

  What Dewey did next was this:

  He harnessed up the horses.

  He brought them outside and hitched them to the small wagon.

  He backed them slowly into the barn down the wide central aisle.

  He loaded up every last scrap of the garage equipment, even stripping off the shelving and the cabinets.

  He moved it all into the woodshed attached to the house.

  “Oh my stars,” said Nanny in a whisper, as she watched.

  “What?” asked Burdock, noticing the sudden unease in her voice.

  “Look,” said Nanny.

  It had not escaped the animals’ detection that Dewey cared more about his antique car than just about anything. Now it became clear that he was moving his precious garage equipment.

  Suddenly, any last doubts as to whether Dewey was serious about burning down the barn were gone.

  And Tug and Pull were being forced to help set their own demise in motion, while the other animals watched.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” cried Figgy, staring at Dewey’s nearly emptied-out room. All that remained was the car itself. Dewey would move that last.

  “How—how’s the hole coming?” asked Mrs. Brown. Her voice sounded shaky.

  “Not fast enough!” cried Figgy. “I can’t dig when Dewey’s around. So I have to dig at night. And the ground, I’m afraid, is hard. The top was soft, but underneath it’s much harder than I thought.”

  Burdock peered through the slats at the pig, whose hooves were cracked, snout chapped, and knees chafed.

  “But what if Dewey sets the barn on fire tonight?” asked Fluff. It was a valid question.

  “Huff!” puffed Figgy, heaving an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know! I’m doing the best I can!”

  “Of course you are, Figgy Piggy,” said Nanny. “We’ll sort it out.” Even petrified, she couldn’t help but be encouraging.

  “Oh, don’t be a ninny, Nanny! We could all be pot roast if I don’t dig faster!” Somehow Nanny’s kind words were making Figgy feel worse.

  The horribleness of the situation was becoming frighteningly real.

  They each tried not to think about it, to push the thoughts as far away as possible, but everyone’s imaginations betrayed them, conjuring up scenes too vivid to ignore.

  The fire would start at the outside and they would have to watch the first crackles, the first smoke, as it skulked up the walls, licking the wood tentatively. They would have to watch it intensify, gaining strength and confidence, watch it begin to gorge greedily, indiscriminately, on the old boards. They would have to watch it swell and grow. Watch now as it engulfed everything. Watch its roaring. Watch its speed. Watch it hurtling toward them with a force now so out of control, it could not have stopped itself for anything, not if it wanted to. Hold this back? Never. Escape this power? Impossible. Toward them would come at last the devouring heat and flames and destructive power of such massive proportions that it would simply grind down anything and everything in its path, and that would be the end, their end.

  That this was a real possibility was so completely palpable that it emptied out the chests of the animals, and all that remained was the low, persistent buzz of fear.

  Burdock really wasn’t accustomed to being overwhelmed by fear. You could say he hadn’t even felt lasting fear that night as a young cat when he lost his eye. It had happened so quickly he hadn’t had time to feel much of anything.

  And in the intervening year, he’d hardened up, grown accustomed to the world around him, and was now rarely surprised, let alone afraid.

  But like the other animals, fear seized Burdock now. It wrapped its cold arms around him and squeezed tight until all he could take were shallow breaths. Dewey was putting his plan into action. There was no question the barn would be coming down.


  The gray cat ran to the feed room and watched the last loaded-up wagon go down the aisle.

  Pull turned slightly and gave Burdock a knowing, doleful look. Burdock received Pull’s warm, brown gaze and held it with his one blue eye, but then, before the horse was past, he looked away.

  Leave, a voice whispered in the cat’s head. Save yourself, it said. Go! it commanded.

  11

  Digging

  With the storm over, the temperature began to drop fast. That afternoon, for the first time in a while, the sun was in the sky, but still the air was cold, almost crackly, and seemed to be headed toward freezing.

  Toward midday, the animals heard Dewey drive off in the car, and Figgy started digging again.

  She tried to concentrate on her work and not think about anything else. “Focus, Figgy,” she said quietly to herself. “It’s up to you. This is the only way we’re going to get out.”

  It wasn’t easy. She pawed and scraped and scooped, trying to find a rhythm. Fluff and Nanny and Tick stood waiting for the pig to push them dirt, and when Figgy did, nosing it through the cracks, they spread it around their pens to get rid of it. They were a good team, but the going was slow.

  While he teetered over what his own plan would be, Burdock had somewhat reluctantly agreed to Nanny’s suggestion; he would stand watch at the barn doors, and alert everyone the moment Dewey returned.

  Mrs. Brown felt helpless. She wanted to contribute somehow, but she was on the wrong side of the aisle to help Figgy. And even if she hadn’t been, she wasn’t especially limber, at least not enough to go about bending her nose to the ground and pawing at piles of dirt. She looked over at the horse brothers, who were now back in their stalls, their heads leaned together, clearly discussing something.

  Mrs. Brown let out a low “Hmmm.” It was a sigh, but there was a musical note to it and she liked the way it sounded and she did it again, “Hummm.” Her mother used to sing, back when Mrs. Brown was a calf at the McAllister farm a few towns away. Remembering how the singing always comforted and lulled her, she began to sing, very softly.

  “When the moon hits the sky

  like a big bale of rye, that’s amore.

  When the world seems to shine

  like the sweat of a swine, that’s amore.”

  Nanny leaned over the pen to listen. She was waiting for her next distribution of dirt from Figgy. “That’s nice, Mrs. Brown,” she said.

  “Cowbells ring ting-a-ling-a-ling,

  ting-a-ling-a-ling and you’ll sing, ‘Vita bella.’

  Lambs will play tippy-tippy-tay,

  tippy-tippy-tay, like a gay tarantella.”

  Fluff shuffled over and tried to sing along. What she lacked in musicality she made up for with enthusiasm.

  “When the creek makes you drool

  ’cause it’s sweet and it’s cool, that’s amore.

  When you hoof down the street

  with fresh grass at your feet, you’re in love.”

  The words of the song went softly around and around, and after Fluff joined in so did Nanny and Tick, singing as they worked. Even Tug and Pull’s full baritones came in once the brothers had stopped their talking, and Figgy dug, and dug, and dug to the regular rhythm. It helped her concentrate.

  It went on for what must have been a long time and their voices and steady movements seemed to warm up the barn, or at least made it feel less cold.

  Suddenly, with a squeal, Figgy exclaimed, “I see light! I’m through!” And there it was: a star of clear, bright afternoon beaming into the barn.

  And then Burdock gave the signal that Dewey was back.

  12

  Alone

  The others didn’t need him anymore right now. Burdock tiptoed away to the farthest corner of the tool room, where the horse tack was kept. One of the horse blankets had fallen from its hook and Burdock padded onto it, turned around, and lay down, his body a small, gray circle.

  It was strange. He hadn’t realized it until now, but he’d felt a little lonely while Figgy dug and the others helped and sang. He hadn’t sung. Stationed by the barn doors at the front and separated from the others by the feed and tool rooms, Burdock had felt outside of the group, removed from their unit.

  He stood up to shift position, nestling in closer to the wall. Now he was all but hidden by the blankets hanging above. He closed his eye and thought back to a time when he had rested in this same spot not so very long ago. Remembering how he’d felt then, he blew out a big sigh, ruffling the long fur on his paws.

  When Burdock first arrived on the farm, dumped at the Baxter farm driveway, he didn’t know where he was. He wandered for some time through the fields and around the pastures until he found the house. When a heavy door opened, Burdock tried to go in.

  “Whoa, where’d you come from?” said a voice and a boot pushed him back out. “No cats here.”

  But Burdock didn’t know where else to go, and having no other plan, he stuck around. He was young but bedraggled. As he’d roamed the spring fields, Burdock had quickly become covered in horrible sticky burdock burrs that latched on to his long fur. After a week, Grady took pity on him; the farmer collected the kitchen scissors and cut away the worst of the burrs, then brought the cat up to the barn.

  “Burdock. Not easy to get rid of. That’s your name now.” Grady grunted. It was hard to tell, but there might have been a hint of a smile in his voice. “Now make yourself useful. We’ve got mice.”

  Of course Burdock soon met the others in the barn. This was before Tick’s arrival, but Nanny was as motherly as ever and did her best to welcome him. The others too, though a little skeptical about this cat with great patches of fur missing, were nonetheless curious about the new arrival and made an effort to be friendly.

  Still, Burdock had never had much opportunity to make friends and he continued to feel like an interloper, so he mostly kept to himself. He settled into the feed room and slept a lot. The others figured Burdock liked it that way and, unless he came to them, they usually left him alone.

  Which worked out well until the day Burdock was injured.

  It was an early evening and the sky was already lowering October’s night curtain. Burdock was up in the orchard above the barn watching for the mice that came to feast on the sweet fallen apples.

  Burdock was so absorbed with quietly stalking the mice that he failed to notice the nearly silent steps of a coyote stalking him.

  Burdock only saw the fast-moving blur when it lunged. Immediately, he jerked to the side and though the coyote’s jaws clasped down on the side of his face, it was not a firm hold. Adrenaline took over. Burdock pulled back, twisted painfully away, and deftly leapt onto a nearby apple tree trunk. He fiercely scrabbled up out of reach.

  Burdock stayed the night in the branches of that tree. His eye swelled shut. The fur on his cheek matted with blood.

  Only when daylight finally came did he creep back to the barn, curl beneath the cabinet in the tool room, and sleep.

  Two days went by and none of the barn animals thought much of him. After all, Burdock regularly disappeared. They didn’t know about Burdock’s injury or that his wound had become infected. They didn’t see that he was feverish, sicker than he’d ever been.

  Of course the farmers didn’t think to look for the cat.

  As Burdock lay there too sick to eat, listening to the animals talking and laughing, he felt, not for the first time, companionless. But this time it was different; a heavy loneliness settled in him like nothing he’d ever felt, pushing down on him like a hard stone. Though voices drifted over to him, they were not meant for him. It was the lowest he’d ever felt.

  He never wanted to feel that way again.

  13

  Gasoline

  What was supposed to be the peak weekend festival for leaf peepers had become an event of much smaller scale. All this rain, and then the storm had torn nearly all the colored leaves off the branches prematurely. Yes, there was an ocean of leaves blanketing the sidewal
ks and amassed in wet mounds, but that was not quite what people came from far and wide to see. The tourists made pilgrimages here to see the leaves on the trees, their beautiful colored cloaks bandied about by gentle breezes.

  But one family didn’t care. The Bell family was new to the area and thought it was wonderful, all of it—the leaves on the ground, how the bare trees against the sky looked lacy at their tops, the local crafts, and the urns of hot chocolate, coffee, and fresh cider. And the doughnuts! Don’t forget Dolly Maccabee’s doughnuts! These confections were famous around here and the Bells had just discovered why: each doughnut was just slightly crispy on the outside, and cakey and lightly spiced on the inside. Was that a hint of cardamom? It was hard to tell. After the first discreet bite, the whole doughnut simply vanished into your mouth.

  “Oh, mmmm!” murmured Dr. Bell, closing his eyes right there at the doughnut stand. (And yes, he was a doctor and he knew doughnuts were bad for him, but every now and again, well, there was no real harm, was there?)

  “Mmmmm,” echoed his wife and three children, their hands and mouths full of cider, hot chocolate, and doughnuts.

  While the Bell family certainly couldn’t make up for all the missing tourists, their genuine appreciation for everything gave the people bundled in warm clothes—the people who were selling their wares or giving town tours—a much-needed boost of goodwill.

  It didn’t hurt either that the Bells liked spending money.

  “What does Dewey want with gasoline?” asked Fluff.

  That evening, Burdock had seen four five-gallon jugs of gasoline sitting in the tool room on a shelf. It was hard to miss them. The rusty red containers were lined up like beacons of doom under the hanging light bulb. Everyone was in a state of panic. Fluff looked confused.