The Painted Ponies of Partequineus and The Summer of the Kittens

by Peter H. Riddle

  “So everything in the Bible is true, right?”

  “That’s what we Christians believe.”

  I figured I had him there. “Then how did Noah get all the animals on the ark when it was only forty cubits long or something” - I didn’t know what a cubit was, and I didn’t care - “and how come he didn’t take the dinosaurs too? Did he let them all drown because they were too big to fit?”

  “That’s one of the mysteries we aren’t meant to know. God is all-powerful, and he can do anything, even make room for all the animals in the world in a single boat.”

  “What is he, magic?” I said.

  “In a way, yes.”

  “My Dad says there’s no such thing as magic, only tricks.” This time he tried to interrupt me, but I was on a roll. “And how about those dinosaurs, anyway? How come the Bible doesn’t even mention them?”

  “There were giants in the earth in those days,” Reverend Davis said, and it sounded like a quote, and this time Mom interrupted, which she always told me never to do.

  “Hanna, we have to go home now,” she said, but she didn’t sound as angry as when she was yelling at me in the car. “I want you to apologize again, and nicely this time.”

  I was so mad, and what I wanted to say was that everything he was talking about was a load of crap, only I wasn’t thinking “crap” exactly, but something worse. But I knew I wasn’t going to win this one, so I said in a really polite voice, “I’m sorry that I made a fuss in church,” and Reverend Davis said, “That’s all right, dear,” and I said, just as quick as I could, “And I’m sorry that you’re wrong about animals not going to Heaven.”

  Mom was really quiet all the way home, and even when we went inside the house. After lunch, while I was feeding Veronica, she sat down on my bed.

  “Hanna,” she said, “do you know why I was upset with you this morning?”

  “Because I believe that animals go to Heaven just like us?”

  “No, that’s not it,” she said. “In fact, I’m very proud of you, that you think for yourself and don’t just accept what other people say without asking questions. But you went about it in the wrong way.”

  “I couldn’t help it. He made me mad.”

  “I know. But people have the right to believe what they think is right, and when it comes to religion, nobody has all the answers.”

  “Reverend Davis thinks he does.”

  “But I don’t think he does, and you have the right to disagree too, except there’s a right way to go about it and a wrong way. You picked the wrong way.”

  Veronica stopped eating and was just playing with the nipple, so I put her down and picked Smudgie up instead and stuck a different bottle in her mouth.

  “What was the right way, then?” I asked, and Mom didn’t answer right away.

  “You have to remember that you’re still very young,” she said, “and that adults have a lot more experience than you do. They know a lot more.”

  “Are you saying that adults are always right?”

  “No. But children shouldn’t contradict them.”

  “Even when they’re wrong?”

  “Even when they’re wrong, unless they ask for your opinion.”

  “That’s pretty stupid. So just because somebody’s grown up, I’m supposed to believe everything they say?”

  “I didn’t say you have to believe them.”

  “That’s what it sounded like. And I’m never going back to church again if I can’t express an opinion when somebody tells lies like he did.”

  Mom looked tired. “You can find out many important things in church. You can learn a lot about the world from the Bible, and from Reverend Davis, too.”

  “Not if I can’t tell when what he says is right, or when it’s wrong,” I said. “I won’t go!”

  And that’s when Mom finally lost her temper. “You will if I say so!” she said, and her eyes were really mad, kind of squinty, and she clamped her mouth shut so tight that her lips practically disappeared. So I shut up, only I’m really not going to go, even if she tries to drag me there next week. If she thinks I made a fuss this time, just wait!

  I hate it when I’m mad like this.

  July 19th

  Dear Diary,

  Mr. Morris took Jimmy back to the hospital in Halifax again yesterday, only he didn’t have to stay there this time. When he got home I went over to see him, and he looked really tired, and today Mrs. Morris said it would be better if I didn’t come over.

  There’s some kind of flower growing on Maggie’s grave. It’s just a little one, and I think Mom must have transplanted it from her garden, only it looks different from all the rest. It’s a pretty blue colour with a little black dot in the middle.

  I wonder if she went to the nursery and bought it special.

  I’m glad it isn’t yellow, like the tigers.

  I went over to see Mr. Harding after lunch, but he wasn’t out on his porch and Mom says I shouldn’t knock on the door or anything when he isn’t out there in case he’s resting.

  Smudgie wouldn’t take her bottle this morning.

  I sat out on the stump of the elm tree for a long time this afternoon. You can’t see much of the world from a stump.

  July 20th

  Dear Diary,

  Smudgie is sick. I told Mr. Harding and he came over to look at her, only he couldn’t climb up the stairs, he even had trouble getting up on the front porch, so I had to bring her downstairs.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked after he looked her all over. He even took her temperature by sticking a thermometer in her bottom, which must have hurt at least a little, only she didn’t even cry. I haven’t heard her make any noise in a couple of days. Maybe longer than that.

  Mr. Harding looked really sad. “There isn’t anything wrong, as far as I can tell. We could do some tests for diseases, but if the other kittens are all fine, then it’s probably just fading kitten syndrome.”

  “Huh?” I didn’t understand what he said.

  “It’s just something that happens sometimes,” he said. “It happens to human babies, too, only then it’s called ‘failure to thrive.’ For some reason, they just don’t have the strength to keep on living. Maybe they just don’t want to.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, it’s not your fault. You must never think that. Even with the best possible care, kittens die sometimes.”

  “She never eats as much as the others, and she doesn’t play with them.”

  “That’s one of the symptoms.”

  He told me to make a different bed for her somewhere in my room, away from the other three, and to hold her a lot and to offer her the bottle more often, and that maybe she’d start to get better, but I could tell he didn’t think it would happen.

  July 21st

  Dear Diary,

  Smudgie died sometime last night. Dad made a really tiny box for her and Mom and I buried her right next to Maggie. When I went out later there was another flower on top of her. I don’t know where Mom got it from.

  It’s my fault. I guess I didn’t take as good care of her as I should.

  I’m sorry about your kitten, Maggie.

  Mom says I don’t have to go to church any more if I don’t want to.

  July 23rd

  Hey, Diary!

  The kittens are three weeks and five days old today. Two of them have teeth, Veronica and Thomas, and they’re sharp like little tiny needles. Mr. Harding says not to let them bite me, because they have to learn not to do that to people, even when they’re playing, or they’ll be “socially unacceptable” when they’re bigger, whatever that means.

  They can walk pretty well now and even run a little, and they play with each other a lot, especially Jesse and Veronica, only Thomas likes to sit in the corner and act bored, and then he attacks them. Mr. Harding says they’re only playing, but that it’s serious play because they’re learning how to be cats. They have to know how to act when they get bigger and may have
to defend themselves. That’s what was wrong with Peter in the book, because he didn’t know how to be a cat at first, and that’s why Dempsy could beat him up so easily.

  July 27th

  Dear Diary,

  I don’t know if today was a good day or a bad one.

  Jimmy called me up in the morning and told me his dad was going to take him out to a farm near Canning to try out his new seaplane, and that I could go if I wanted to, so after I fed the kittens I hurried over to his house, and Mr. Morris was just loading the plane in the back of their van. Jimmy looked really happy, except that he’s gotten awfully thin, and he gets tired pretty quickly now.

  “I can only go for a couple of hours, maybe three,” I told Jimmy.

  “Because you have to feed the kittens,” Jimmy said, “I know. I have to be back by lunch time too, so it’s okay.”

  “How come?” I asked, and Mr. Morris said, “Hop in, let’s get going,” so I never did find out what Jimmy meant, except I bet it had to do with taking some medicine or something like that.

  I like the road out to Canning. It’s really pretty. First you go through Port Williams and down across Church Street, and then through a whole bunch of fields where there’s corn growing and other stuff, and we didn’t take the turn-off for the regular flying field ’cause the seaplane needs a big pond to take off from and land on.

  Mr. Morris found a dirt road that leads to a huge farm, and when we got there this nice man named Mr. teStroete came out of his barn. He’s Dutch, and he talks kind of funny, like his mouth is all full of spit, only he was nice to us and even invited Jimmy and me into the barn to see where he milks his cows. It took a while for Jimmy to get into his wheelchair, ’cause he doesn’t seem to be as strong as he used to be, but he wouldn’t let me or his dad help him. I knew he was impatient to fly his plane, but he was polite and said nice things about how clean the barn was and everything. I liked looking at the cows.

  When we went outside again, Mr. teStroete pointed to a one-lane road through a cornfield and told Mr. Morris that was the way to the pond, and Jimmy got back in the van and folded up his wheelchair as quick as he could, and I got in beside him and we went.

  The road was kind of rough, full of potholes where the rain had washed away the gravel, and all along the side were old weathered fence posts with cracks and knotholes that looked like faces watching us go by. Mr. Morris had to drive real slow so the seaplane wouldn’t bounce around too much in the back.

  Just after a sharp turn in the road a red-winged blackbird came flying in front of us and landed on top of one of the fence posts. I put the window down so I could get a better look, and it didn’t even fly away, like it wasn’t scared of us or anything. Its eyes looked huge to me, and bright like one of Jimmy’s marbles, and I felt like it could see right into my head and tell what I was thinking. It looked sad.

  When we reached the pond, Jimmy was pretty excited and almost dropped his wheelchair when he lifted it out. Mr. Morris lifted the plane out of the back, and I helped by carrying the radio and Jimmy’s field box - that’s the square thing with the handle that holds the airplane fuel and the battery to start the plane and stuff like that.

  The pond wasn’t as big as I was expecting. It was longer than it was wide, and Jimmy wheeled himself to the very end and Mr. Morris put the plane in the water and it floated just perfect! He started the engine. Jimmy spent some time taxiing back and forth to get used to how the plane behaved in the water. Then he brought the plane to shore again so Mr. Morris could put some more fuel in the tank. After that we were ready for the big test flight.

  It was really scary. Once the engine was running again, Mr. Morris held on to the tail of the plane while Jimmy made it run really fast, and Mr. Morris made some adjustments that made it go even faster and louder, and then Jimmy said he was ready. Mr. Morris let go of the tail and Jimmy pushed the joystick all the way forward and the plane started to move, only not as fast as the ones that take off from land. It got almost to the end of the pond, and I thought it was going to crash on the shore, only at the very last minute Jimmy pulled back on the stick and it broke free of the water and soared right up in the sky. It was great!

  The plane looked really pretty in the air with its great big wings - Jimmy says it needs them because of the extra weight of the floats - and there’s a Canadian flag on both sides of the tail fin. Jimmy flew back and forth over the pond half a dozen times, and then way out over the cornfield so that the plane looked really small. Another red-winged blackbird flew up out of the cornfield and up into the air until it was as high as the plane. It flew away over the pond and turned around at the far end, and Jimmy turned the plane to follow it, and they came back together, all in a line.

  Right about then I stopped watching the plane and looked at Jimmy instead, at his eyes especially. They looked bright somehow, just like that bird on the fencepost, and he was concentrating so fiercely on the sky that I could almost see him rise up into the air. Then suddenly he wasn’t even there, not in his wheelchair, I mean. I thought maybe he was in his plane instead, only he wasn’t. He was flying along beside the blackbird, all by himself.

  Remember I said I didn’t know if today was good or bad?

  I heard the plane fly over our heads and Jimmy was back in his chair, only the light sort of disappeared from his eyes and I heard the plane’s engine stutter and cough. I looked up and saw its nose tilt up, kind of jerky like, not smooth like it was in the beginning. I looked back at Jimmy and he was sweating a little and concentrating really hard on the joysticks, not even looking up. I wondered what was wrong. Then the plane stopped jerking around and flew over our heads again really fast, so I thought everything was okay, only Jimmy still looked kind of funny to me, as if he was working too hard instead of having fun.

  Next I heard a sort of beeping sound from the radio that meant the plane was almost out of fuel, and Jimmy steered it around in a great big loop and came in low and slow to land in the water. Then something awful happened. His hand began to shake, and he couldn’t hang on to the joystick. The plane began to fall out of the sky, and Mr. Morris grabbed the radio as quick as he could but not quick enough, and the plane came down right at the edge of the pond really hard. The floats broke off and the plane skidded forward and turned end over end a couple of times. The propeller broke and the engine stopped, and part of the tail got all crumpled up.

  I looked at Jimmy. He was slumped against the side of his wheelchair with his mouth hanging open, like he was having trouble breathing. “Are you okay?” I said, only he didn’t answer or even look at me, and when I stood right in front of him his eyes were as dull as the dried sunflower seeds that Mom feeds the birds in our back yard.

  Mr. Morris scooped Jimmy out of the wheelchair and put him in the front seat of the van and strapped him in. I tried to help by folding up the wheelchair, but I wasn’t fast enough and Mr. Morris grabbed it away from me and threw it in the back of the van without folding it and told me to get in quick, and I did. He just left the plane and Jimmy’s radio and all the other stuff right there beside the pond, and started the engine and drove out really fast, so fast it scared me.

  All of the fence posts had faces that time, sad faces, and on every fence post there sat a red-winged blackbird, their eyes so big you could hardly see their heads, all turning to watch us go by, and behind them all the cornstalks in the field turned yellow, and grew eyes and stripes and big ferocious claws.

  As soon as we reached the main road Mr. Morris took out his cell phone and called somebody, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying from the back seat, and he was driving really fast so that we got to Kentville in a hurry and went right to the hospital. Some men in white coats were waiting for us at the emergency entrance, and Mr. Morris left the van right there by the curb, not in the parking lot, and he took Jimmy out of the front seat and the men put him on a wheeled stretcher and they all disappeared inside.

  I didn’t know what to do next. Mr. Morris forgot all about me,
I guess, only that was okay, ’cause he had to take care of Jimmy. So I just sat there, and after a little while Dad drove up and stopped our car behind the van. I guess Mr. Morris must have called him on his cell phone, so that means he didn’t forget about me after all. I opened the door and jumped out, and when Dad stood up beside the car, I grabbed him around the waist and buried my face in his shirt, which was kind of a funny thing for me to do, seeing as how I’d been staying away from him pretty much ever since he ran over Maggie.

  Dad put me in our car and went inside the hospital. After a few minutes he came out again with a set of keys in his hand, and he got into Mr. Morris’s van and drove it to the parking lot. Then he went back inside for a couple of minutes, and when he came out again he got in our car and started the engine.

  “How’s Jimmy?” I wanted to know.

  “He’s better now,” Dad said.

  “He was flying his plane, and all of a sudden it seemed like he forgot how. He crashed it.”

  “They put him to bed, but he’s sitting up and talking and says he feels fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was some kind of seizure, I think. Mr. Morris said the doctors aren’t exactly sure, and that they want to keep him in the hospital overnight.”

  Dad turned east out of the hospital grounds and stopped at the traffic light near the foot of Gallows Hill.

  “His plane is still out there,” I said.

  “What?” Dad said.

  “We drove away so fast that it just got left by the pond. Can we go get it?”

  The light changed and we started up Belcher Street. “Mr. Morris will go back for it,” Dad said.

  “What if he forgets? And what if it rains overnight and Jimmy’s radio gets all wet. That’ll ruin it, won’t it?”

  “I’m sure it will be okay,” Dad said. We stopped at the red light at the top of the connector road that goes to New Minas.