Mr. B paid no attention to the bear.
“I could eat too,” the snake said, and Mr. B paid no attention to him, either. He was waiting for the bright pink pig to lead the way.
Finally, “Maybe Mr. B is too hungry to talk,” she said, and she started off.
They followed her along the dirt path that led away from the beach. Zia, shiny pink and licking steadily at her ice cream cone, was the first in line, and Mr. B was the second. He didn’t look behind him to see how the others arranged themselves.
They passed a small red house that stood with its door wide open. They went by an old beech tree with its limbs and leafy branches spread wide. After the beech tree, the path led to a pink house. Zia went right in, but Mr. B stopped in the pink doorway. He turned around to stare at everybody until, without a word being spoken, they all understood that they were to come no farther. Then Mr. B nodded at them and followed Zia inside.
It wasn’t long before Zia came out again, pulling the pink door closed behind her.
After that, it was a longish time, especially for Sid, who had thought he was going to eat right away. Eventually the door opened again and there stood Mr. B—a small, faded white bunny rabbit with long, floppy ears and a faded light blue ruffled corduroy collar tied around his neck.
“Don’t you look nice and clean,” said Umpah.
Mr. B said nothing.
Prinny came to stand in front of him. “Do you remember me?”
“You’re the one who woke me up.”
“I’m Prinny.”
“I’ll make us something to eat now,” said Zia.
At that, Mr. B turned around to go back inside again. He left the door open, so after a minute’s hesitation they followed and discovered that he had pulled Zia’s pink rocking chair up close to the window, where the sun shone in on him. They stood a little distance away, talking quietly, in case he wanted to nap.
They were talking about where he would sleep and live. Mr. B sat in warm sunlight and listened to this conversation.
“He can stay with me,” said Sid. “In my burrow. Bunnies like burrows. And besides, nobody lives with me. Prinny has Zia and Teddy has Umpah, but I don’t have anybody.”
“Nobody lives with me, either,” said Peng. “And that’s the way I like it.”
“But I found him first,” Prinny said.
“But I have all kinds of questions to ask him,” Teddy said. “There are things I need to know. We have plenty of room.”
Prinny said, “So do we,” and Sid said, “So do I, a lot of room.”
“Not me. I don’t,” said Peng.
“Mr. B will choose where he lives,” Umpah decided, and this was so fair that they all had to agree with him.
Except, “He can’t choose me,” Peng told them.
They turned to Mr. B where he sat rocking in Zia’s chair, staring at them. “You must be very tired,” said Umpah.
“I could sleep,” Mr. B agreed.
“Where do you want to sleep?” asked Teddy.
“And live,” added Sid.
Mr. B climbed down from the rocking chair and went over to stand beside Peng.
Peng looked away, looking over his shoulder as if Mr. B were an invisible ghost, or weren’t even there in the room at all. Mr. B waited right where he was, right at Peng’s side. Finally, “Not possible,” Peng said.
Mr. B waited some more.
“No,” said Peng, still without looking at him. “Absolutely not.”
“Or I could stay here,” Mr. B said. He returned to Zia’s rocking chair and closed his eyes.
Mr. B only lived in the pink house for three days. On the morning of the fourth day he went outside—as usual—and wandered away—as usual—but he didn’t come back in the afternoon for his usual nap in the sun in the rocking chair by the window.
“Oh dear, oh dearie me,” said Zia, who was watching out the window and worrying. “Do you think he’s lost? He was lost before we found him and he could be lost again.”
Prinny went to look for the bunny. First, she went up the hill to Peng’s cave. “He was here,” Peng reported from the entrance, where he stood so that nobody could go inside, or see inside. “I sent him away.”
“He never came here,” said Sid, who was curled around his favorite low branch, from which he could see almost everything that was going on. “Do you think he might?”
At last, Prinny found Mr. B in Teddy’s house, sitting on a green pillow beside Teddy’s wagon. Teddy was asking him questions. Sometimes Mr. B answered and sometimes he pretended not to hear.
“He’s going to stay with us,” Teddy told Prinny. “He likes Umpah’s muffins.”
Mr. B didn’t say anything. In fact, as soon as Prinny had arrived and distracted Teddy’s attention, Mr. B closed his eyes for a nap.
But after a few days, Mr. B didn’t return to the red house in the late afternoon. Teddy waited by his window, in case the bunny turned up, while Umpah went off to find him.
“He tried to come in here,” Peng reported. “He should know better by now.”
“We haven’t seen him,” said Zia. “Do you think he’s hurt?”
Sid came to the door of his burrow. “Quiet,” he whispered to Umpah. “Mr. B is here and he’s asleep. He’s going to stay with me. He’ll see you in the morning, maybe. Did you bring us any muffins? Could you bring some in the morning?”
But Mr. B didn’t stay long at Sid’s, either. After a couple of days, he went back up to Peng’s cave. Peng blocked the doorway and wouldn’t let him in.
“I could sleep here,” Mr. B suggested, the way he usually did, and he twisted and bent over, trying to look around the penguin, to see what was hidden there.
“No you couldn’t,” said Peng, as usual.
“But I want to,” said Mr. B.
“But I don’t want you to,” said Peng.
“But when you don’t want me to, then I want to even more,” argued Mr. B.
“No,” said Peng. “No and no and no.” He liked living alone, waking up when he felt like it, eating just what he liked, doing exactly what he wanted all the time.
So Mr. B returned to the pink house, where the two pigs welcomed him.
“Oh, Mr. B, I was so worried about you,” said Zia.
Mr. B didn’t mind being worried about.
“You really live with us now!” cried Prinny.
But it turned out that Mr. B wasn’t going to stay in any one house, or burrow, for very long. It turned out that he liked to stay a few days here and a few days there, although never in Peng’s cave, even if he always tried Peng first. And it turned out that they all got used to Mr. B moving out and moving back, staying with someone and then going off to stay with someone else. They got used to never being sure just where they might see him next, so they were always surprised, and a little alarmed, too, when Mr. B turned up on the doorstep. Which was exactly the way Mr. B liked it.
It was a rainy afternoon. It had been a rainy morning, too. Teddy’s wagon was next to the kitchen window and he was looking out at gray clouds, from which raindrops kept falling. He was busy with one of his favorite activities: thinking about things and wondering. Did the drops spill over from the edges of the clouds, he wondered, or did they ooze out through the bottom? Were they afraid to fall—into the water, onto the rocks, the grass, the leaves of the trees? Or were they trying to get away from the clouds that had been keeping them trapped inside, like he had been trapped inside, all day?
Teddy watched and wondered, and he also listened to Umpah, who put milk and eggs and butter and flour into a bowl and stirred them together. He was making muffins. The rain drummed softly outside and Umpah’s big mixing spoon whooshed softly inside.
When the raindrops fell onto the sand or the ground, they soaked in and made things wet and soft. But what happened when they fell into the water, which was already wet and soft?
Teddy wondered. He knew that in the spring, when the apple blossoms blew down onto the ground, they reste
d there on top of the grass, but was it the same when drops of rain water landed on top of the watery sea? He watched. When rain fell on the water, the drops disappeared. Wait, Teddy said to himself then, having an idea. The raindrops looked like they were disappearing, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe, if he had the right kind of eyes, he would see each raindrop, all of the drops that had fallen all day, all floating on the surface of the water, resting after their long fall the way apple blossoms rested on the grassy ground.
Teddy thought about resting-on, about how his house rested on the ground and his wagon rested on the floor of the house and his pillow rested on his wagon and he rested on his pillow and then he wondered—the idea blooming up in his mind all at once, the way ideas can suddenly appear, coming out of nowhere on a rainy afternoon: Why shouldn’t Prinny learn how to swim?
“Umpah?” Teddy said, turning to look at the elephant. “We live on an island, isn’t that right?”
“You know it is,” he answered.
“Umpah? If you live on an island, with water all around, and if you don’t know how to swim, something bad could happen, couldn’t it? Maybe?”
“Of course,” said Umpah. “Something bad can always happen. But I’m here to take care of you.”
Teddy wasn’t worried about being taken care of. He continued with his own idea. “You can swim,” he said. “Peng can swim.”
“Peng is a penguin and penguins swim,” Umpah explained. “Like fish swim, and crabs swim. It’s in their nature.”
“And Sid can swim and so can Mr. B, because how else could he have gotten out to our island?”
Mr. B had been having a nice nap beside Teddy’s wagon, but he woke up to speak on that subject. “Being wet is not at all pleasant.”
“But you can swim, can’t you?” asked Teddy.
“Of course. What do you think?”
“I think Prinny should learn how to swim,” Teddy answered.
“Zia won’t care for that idea,” said Umpah.
“It’s windy and cold and wet outside,” Mr. B objected. “Nobody wants to go swimming in this weather.”
“But Prinny should learn,” said Teddy. “And we should tell her that, right away.”
When they arrived at the pink house, they found Sid there too. He was having a bowl of ice cream and he agreed with Teddy. “I can swim,” he said. “It’s easy.”
“I could learn!” cried Prinny. “I want to! I want to learn how to swim!”
Zia worried. “It’s dangerous in the water.”
“Not if you know how to swim,” Umpah said.
“But until then,” Zia argued.
“When I learn it won’t be dangerous!” cried Prinny, growing more and more excited by the idea, the more she imagined it. “Can I learn now?”
“Not in the rain and cold,” Zia said.
“When?” asked Prinny.
“I can show you how to dive down,” Sid offered, “and swoop up close and surprise everybody, and scare them.”
“First, she has to float,” said Umpah.
Sid said, “Peng can help. Peng can swim even faster than me, and dive deeper and stay underwater longer.”
“Let’s go!” cried Prinny. “I want to be cold and wet.”
“Tomorrow,” Umpah decided. “If the weather is fine, we’ll go to the beach tomorrow and I’ll teach Prinny how to swim.”
Everybody—everybody except Zia, that is—was disappointed to have to wait for tomorrow, so Umpah invited them all back to the red house. “We’ll have strawberry muffins.”
“Good plan,” said Sid. “I especially like strawberry muffins.”
By the next morning, the clouds had left the sky, taking the rain with them. Prinny was so excited that she woke up much too early and had to wait for a very long time—or what felt to her like a very long time—for Zia to wake up too. As soon as Zia opened her eyes, Prinny asked, “Can we go now?”
But Zia said, “First, breakfast.”
As soon as she said that, there was Sid looking in the window. “Have you eaten?” he asked. “I’ve only had a couple of muffins.”
“I’m going to learn how to swim,” Prinny told Sid when she opened the door and let him in. “After breakfast.”
“It’s easy,” Sid said.
“I don’t believe that,” said Zia.
After breakfast, Prinny waited for what felt like another long time, until finally she said, “Can I go get Umpah now, Zia?”
Zia said, “We should wait to be sure it isn’t going to rain because it’s too cold to swim in the rain. We should wait to be sure there’s no wind coming, because wind can make the waves high and dangerous.” She was making excuses, of course.
But Prinny had waited as long as she could stand. She couldn’t wait one minute longer. “I’ll tell Umpah!” she cried, and trotted right on out of the pink house. “Teddy will want to watch,” she said.
When they were all gathered together on the sand, even Peng, they discovered that Mr. B was already there, settled comfortably into the yellow life ring, taking a little nap in the warm sun. Although he had no interest in swimming, or in anyone learning how to swim, he didn’t want to be left out when something was going on. “Do you want to sit here with me?” he asked Peng as the penguin waddled by.
“No,” said Peng. He went right into the water and swam out to where it was too deep for anybody else to go.
Mr. B closed his eyes again, as if he had never opened them.
Umpah pushed the red wagon up to the edge of the water and Teddy announced to them all, “The tide is going out.”
Prinny didn’t care about the tide. She raced up as close as she could get to the water without having it touch her four little feet. “Umpah? I’m ready!”
“First thing, you need to get used to being wet,” Umpah told Prinny. He led the little pig into the shallow water, just beyond where the waves washed up against the beach. “You splash me,” he said, “and I’ll shower you.”
Prinny splashed as hard as she could. “I’m swimming!” she cried. “Am I swimming?”
“Not quite yet,” said Umpah, and showered more water over Prinny from his long trunk.
Sid had slipped into the water. He swam in circles around Prinny and Umpah, sometimes flicking water at both of them with the end of his long tail. Mr. B stayed in the life ring and Zia stood beside him, worrying and licking at her ice cream cone. But Teddy had his wagon right up by the water’s edge so he wouldn’t miss anything. Every now and then, splashes of water bounced up into his face, and he laughed at the cool, salty surprise of it.
When Prinny was dripping wet, Umpah said, “Now. Now I’ll stretch out my trunk and you lie down on it, on your stomach. We’ll go out into deeper water and my trunk will hold you up.”
“Is that a good idea?” called Zia.
“Yes!” cried Prinny, who lay down as she had been told, with Umpah’s trunk under her belly to hold her up while they moved out to deeper water. “I’m swimming! Am I swimming?”
“Not quite yet,” said Umpah. “Before you can swim, you have to float—just like you are now, but without my trunk holding you up.”
“Don’t go too far,” Zia called.
“Let me go,” Prinny said to Umpah, “so I can really swim.”
She felt Umpah’s trunk begin to slip away, and all of a sudden she felt sinky. “No! Don’t let go!” But the trunk didn’t come back. Prinny tried hard. She tried as hard as she could to stay on top of the water, but she kept on sinking. “Help!” she cried.
The trunk came back to hold her up.
Out of the water right beside her came a narrow snake face, smiling.
“Didn’t I say it was easy?” asked Sid. “Isn’t this fun?” He dove back underwater before she could answer. Swimming wasn’t feeling at all easy to Prinny just then, and maybe even not much fun, but it was cool, and wet, and new, and exciting—as long as the trunk was there.
For a long time, Umpah walked back and forth, holding Prinny out in
front of him. Prinny called back to Zia, “Look! Watch me!”
Zia watched and worried. She was so worried that she came down right to the edge of the water and didn’t even notice when her fuchsia feet got wet.
“Why don’t you come back in now, Prinny?” Zia called. “Isn’t that enough for today?” She was so worried that she put her ice cream cone down in Teddy’s wagon and forgot all about it. She was so worried that she walked so far out that her feet were completely underwater.
Teddy wasn’t worrying. “What fun it must be to swim!” he cried, seeing Peng’s dark head bobbling in the water and admiring Sid’s bright stripes flashing along just under the surface.
Umpah held Prinny safe on his trunk and told her what to do next. “Paddle with your legs. Move them as if you were running,” he explained. “When you’re swimming, paddling pushes you forward.”
Prinny paddled. “Like this? Zia, look! Look at me!”
“Can you paddle faster?” Umpah asked.
Prinny tried as hard as she could, concentrating on the job. Reach ahead and paddle back. Reach. Paddle. Run. Run. She tried and tried.
While Prinny paddled, Umpah carried her back and forth through the water. “Look, Zia! I’m swimming!” cried Prinny. “Am I swimming?” she asked. She thought she might be. She wanted to be.
“Not quite yet,” Umpah said patiently. “Would you like me to let go of you again?”
“I don’t think so,” said Prinny. “Please, don’t?”
Sid had grown bored with swooping around Umpah’s legs and tickling at his stomach and with swimming through his legs to grab at his trunk and pull down. Umpah was so busy teaching Prinny to swim that he wasn’t any fun to tease. So Sid swam away, down to the end of the beach. There, he slipped out of the water and in among the dense marsh grasses. Silent and sneaky, he slid through the grass until he was just behind the yellow life ring. Then—without any warning, because it ruins the game to give warning—he rose up and hissed, right into Mr. B’s sleeping face, “Ssss-boooo!” and Mr. B jumped. He jumped awake and he jumped up into the air and then he was gone, faster than anything, before Sid could even get one laugh out. So Sid went to sit beside Teddy.
Teddy & Co. Page 4