Whittington Read online

  “Suddenly she vanished.

  “‘So, my young master,’ said the king, nodding and screwing his mouth into a smile he didn’t feel and holding up his hands in pretend surrender. ‘What may I add to the cargo and the jewels?’

  “‘The Amapacherie,’ whispered Dick.

  “The king gasped. ‘How did you know …?’

  “At that moment, another rat screamed its last.

  “‘Yes,’ the king murmured, ‘for to have such a cat would be a boon to my people. They would be able to save their food, and their homes would be cleaner. She will bear generations of ratters.’

  “Dick exchanged the cat for the cargo, the jewels, and sacks of the herb and its seeds. He had the same lost feeling he’d had when he heard the harsh, dry bell of home. It felt wrong to let the cat go, even though she’d given him a signal. There was no parting. The cat had disappeared before the boy could change his mind.

  “‘All will be well,’ said the captain. ‘Back in London you’ll find another cat.’

  “If the boy cried, no one saw. He left with the captain for London. He knew there wasn’t going to be another cat.”

  NOBODY WAS HOME when Fran the postman came with the registered letter. It was addressed to Bernie and Marion, “Guardians of Benjamin—, a minor.” Someone had to sign for it. Fran left a slip.

  Since Ben and Abby’s father was alive and hadn’t given his consent, Bernie and Marion couldn’t adopt their grandchildren, they could only take care of them. Every few months, a Social Services caseworker came with a checklist and a large file for a home inspection. She had a remote, superior manner that kept Bernie and Marion on edge. Marion was afraid the letter had something to do with their fitness as foster parents.

  Marion was a pleasant-looking woman with smile lines. She was not smiling when she showed up at the post office to claim the letter. She was scared. She’d never gotten a registered letter before. From what she’d heard, good news didn’t come in registered letters.

  She went in, said hello to the clerk, and asked for her letter. Her hand was shaking when she signed for it.

  She went out to her car and cut open the envelope carefully, as if it were something important to save.

  The letter said that Ben wasn’t reading up to grade level and there were problems with his temper. Sometimes when asked to read, he’d throw the book down. He was classified as an “At Risk” student—at risk of failing because of his poor reading. He needed to be tested. Depending on what the test showed, he might need to go to a special class.

  That night after dinner Bernie called Ben down to the kitchen for a talk. The boy knew something was up; to be called down to the kitchen after dinner meant trouble.

  “The school people know about these things,” Marion said. “They figure it will be best for your future.”

  She knew she couldn’t do for Ben what she’d done for Abby. His problems were different.

  Abby came running when she heard her brother’s long wail. She told Bernie and Marion how the sentaways were teased. She described the reading sessions in the barn, the vocabulary lists, the verses and sayings he’d memorized, how hard Ben was working to catch up.

  Ben’s despair frightened his grandparents. It wasn’t a boy’s rage. It wasn’t anger. All feelings he’d built up about his mother’s death, his father’s being off somewhere and not caring, his inability to keep up with his classmates, gave way at once.

  Bernie and Marion were afraid that if they didn’t go along with the school’s recommendations, they would be reported to Social Services as unfit guardians. As frightened as they were by the violence of the boy’s reaction, they didn’t want to risk losing him and perhaps his sister too.

  Marion didn’t hear the boy crying. On instinct she went to him. He was sobbing into his pillow. She put her hands on his head and patted him.

  “It will be all right, honey. Things will work out.”

  He turned over and looked at her.

  She smoothed his face until he fell asleep.

  EVERY YEAR the school principal, Dr. Donald Parker, brought his car to the Texaco for its annual inspection because Bernie was fair about it. He didn’t look for things to run up a bill. Two days after the letter arrived, Dr. Parker showed up at the station. Bernie had always associated Don with his Ford, but that day when he arrived Bernie saw Don with new eyes: he took him out of his Ford and put him in the school.

  Don liked to watch while Bernie checked his car. He didn’t get to look at it much himself, so he’d stand under the lift and study what Bernie was tapping and adjusting and peer under the hood when it was up. It was an old car.

  As they stood together, Bernie told him about the letter.

  “Ben’s slow at reading but he’s trying to catch up.” Tap tap clunk. “Sister’s helping him.” Twist tap. “Reading aloud. Word lists. Poems and stuff.” Tap knock twist. “Says no to leaving his class. Upset about it. Says he’ll get teased. They already tease him about having grandparents for parents.”

  “Kids can be mean,” Don said. “They’re always comparing. If you’re different, you’re going to hear about it, maybe get a nickname. The class fatty, the stutterer, the one with a birthmark, the child who reverses, the one who lisps—they all get teased.”

  Just then he had to jump back because something Bernie was pulling at let go.

  “Ben’s had it rough,” Bernie said. “Don’t tease him.”

  “Some kids like the attention they get by being different,” Don said. “Some of them glory in it and fight back. The teasing makes them work on whatever it is that draws attention. But some are broken by it.”

  “Better don’t break him,” Bernie muttered.

  “The state says we have to send the letter if a student isn’t reading at his grade level. It doesn’t mean Ben has to go into Reading Recovery. If he can get his reading up on his own, okay.”

  Don followed Bernie around to the other side of the car.

  “Yeah?” said Bernie.

  “He won’t improve at all if he’s upset,” Don said. “But I think RR might help. Gets him out of the pressure of everybody around. Maybe his upset about his mom and dad is getting in his way. Some kids get so mad about stuff like that, they can’t see straight. The RR people know how to handle it.”

  They talked about what Marion had done with Abby. Don told Bernie what went on in Reading Recovery. He suggested Ben sit in on a session.

  “He doesn’t want to leave his class,” Bernie said.

  “You don’t give up your class if you go into Reading Recovery. It’s half an hour a day for twenty weeks. Then they see where you are. We’ve had pretty good luck with it.”

  “What about Marion, does she go too?”

  “No, this has to be all Ben’s.”

  “What about the test?”

  “Tell him I’ll make a trade. If he’ll observe a Reading Recovery lesson, we’ll postpone deciding on whether he has to take the test.”

  “What about Social Services?”

  Don promised to put something in the file with Social Services.

  The Ford needed a new brake line.

  AS THE PRINCIPAL drove off, Bernie walked out back on an errand that wasn’t an errand. He lit a cigar and wandered slowly among the broken-down cars. There was a clump of cottonwood trees at the edge of the lot. A flicker started a long, clattering call. It sounded like a machine in need of oil.

  He was out there for a while. Then he snuffed the cigar, put the stub in his pocket, and went in through the back to where Marion was sorting a stack of grease-marked work orders. He pulled the door. It didn’t really shut. The room hadn’t been painted in a while. On a high shelf there was a dusty row of model tank trucks and baseball caps marked TEXACO. He sat on the table beside the computer. Marion had the only chair. She’d seen Don come in. She figured they’d talked about the letter.

  “Don says he should try Reading Recovery. On his own. Make a trade. If Ben goes to a session, they’ll postpon
e the test.”

  Over dinner that night Bernie told the family about seeing the principal. Ben’s face worked. He didn’t say anything. He could hear what they’d whisper if he walked out to go to Reading Recovery. Marion slid her chair over and put her arm around him. Only the two of them knew how hard she squeezed. In important family meetings like this Bernie did the talking. Marion spoke in her own way.

  “Dr. Parker said to make sure you’ve got good light and you sleep enough,” Bernie continued. “‘Exercise, and no Cokes,’ he said.”

  Down in the barn Whittington was crouched, coughing and heaving. The cat convulsed from end to end for several minutes. The Lady thought he was dying. She went over and stood close to him. Suddenly what was down came up and Whittington shook himself.

  “Hairball,” he said.

  THE FIRST SPRING RAINS washed out the farm road and made a bog of the paddock. The weather blustered. The selectmen posted a flood watch on the river. The pond rose so high it looked like it was going to swamp the road. In the barn the horses were standing in water. Bernie put down extra hay. Water squished up through it. The vet had warned him about hoofrot. He let the horses stand outside while he trucked in sawdust. It didn’t do any good; it worked like a sponge. He trucked in gravel. All one Sunday he and the kids wheel-barrowed gravel into the barn to give the horses dry footing. That afternoon they noticed that hair had fallen out in patches on Aramis’s back where the skin was pimpled and festering. Bernie called the vet. She said the horse had rain rot and recommended a salve at Agway an evil-smelling tar that smelled so bad the horse wouldn’t try to lick it off. Never mind hoofrot, she said; Aramis should stay tied inside until the rain stopped.

  The next morning a stray seagull settled his immaculate gray and white on the pond. Then the water began to retreat and there were tips of new green everywhere.

  Ben thought about Dick Whittington. He’d been stuck too. He’d been forced to take a big step because there was no staying where he was. Maybe it was the same for him.

  Abby kept the afternoon classes going in the barn. The boy fidgeted. He winced when his sister corrected him. She noticed, though, that every time Ben drew the letter or number he was looking at he read it right. It was as if before he could see it for sure, his hand had to shape it.

  The tricks Ben was learning in the barn helped, and the vocabulary. One afternoon Whittington sang a song his master had sung to him. Ben liked it; he thought he could learn it. Abby wrote out the words and taped it below “PSALM”:

  The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:

  The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.

  The moon on my left, the dawn on my right

  My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

  In two tries he had it. Ben learned the sixteen different words in that song that afternoon. Abby would point to a word with a stick and he’d read it. It didn’t matter in what order she pointed, he got them right every time; it just took him a while to do the sounding out. The Lady noticed the cat shiver. A big thing had happened, or a big thing that had been building was coming into view. Whatever reading was, the boy was doing it. The kids’ faces were bright. Abby’s eyes were gleaming.

  “Okay,” said the Lady, feeling surer about the boy than she had for months. “Continue your story, Whittington.”

  With less effort than it ever took before, the cat leapt back to his storytelling place on the stall rail.

  “Dick left his cat in the palace at Tripoli. For days he was too listless to take delight or terror in the fair blue days or the lightning storms with slashing rain. He lay in his bunk. The captain feared he was ill.

  “Then one night he was called up to deck to see the rolls of phosphorescence marking the ship’s wake. He began sleeping out again. A few nights later, a strange vapor settled around the vessel making her rigging glow with white fire—Saint Elmo’s fire it’s called. On afternoons when the sea was smooth and chores were done the sailors sang and danced on deck. When they waved for Dick to join in, he did.

  “When he got back to London, he was slow letting out his news, not because he was proud but because it pained him. First he showed Fitzwarren the stock he’d bought in Lisbon, then what he’d traded the cat for— bales of cotton, excellent silks, sugar (which was used as a medicine then), gums, drugs, spices. The merchant was pleased; it was all of better quality than any he’d seen before. It would sell at a premium.

  “Fitzwarren asked the captain for the waybills. He got the one from Lisbon. There was no bill for the goods from Tripoli. The captain explained that Dick had traded his cat for them.

  “‘He got that cargo for a cat?’

  “‘That’s not the half of it, but you’d best ask Mr. Whittington.’

  “Back home among friends Dick perked up. He sat long with Fitzwarren and the cook telling of his adventures in Barbary, the filthy throne room with the birds, the fortune his cat had won, the strange fire in the rigging. If he told them he missed his cat, they didn’t hear it, and if they had they would not have understood. They smiled and laughed. For the cook he had a jewel. He made the old merchant beam when he presented him with the canvas bag of dried Amapacherie and the sack of seeds.

  “Fitzwarren insisted on paying Dick for the cargo he’d got for his cat and for the dried herb. Only the seeds would he take as a gift.

  “The seeds grew, but it turned out that Amapacherie—taken as a tea, or eaten, or applied to the body dry or wet, hot or cold—had no effect upon the stone. It may be that in the king’s country they took it with something else to make it work. Nobody knew. It was a big disappointment to Fitzwarren because he suffered from kidney stones. He’d experimented on himself.

  “Someone told Fitzwarren that what was missing was the ritual that went with taking the medicine. It was a common thing with many of the country people in England then to use spells and incantations to make their medicines work. Other people, using the same herbs and compounds without the rituals, got little benefit or none at all. Fitzwarren’s friend thought perhaps it was the same with the Amapacherie.

  “Dick went to visit the old man who’d sold him the cat. He thought he owed him a share of the fortune. He’d learned that his name was Sir Louis Green.

  “There was no easing breeze that afternoon. He arrived at Sir Louis’s door red-faced and perspiry. The leather sack he carried was streaked with sweat.

  “The old man was again a long time answering. When he did appear, even though it was high summer he was still wearing the long green coat with the brown fur collar turned up. It struck Dick that the green of his coat was like the green stripe across the Unicorns sail.

  “He looked more ancient and wrinkled than before, his face smaller and more sunk down in the fur. His cheeks were pink, though, and he smiled a small, thin smile of pleasure.

  “‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he said.

  “He beckoned Dick inside. His home was dark and cool, the windows shuttered. The furnishings were of the century before and the century before that—dark, gleaming furniture, small objects of glass, rows of silver plate, tapestries hung on walls of carved rubbed oak that smelled of lavender oil.

  “Dick was thirsty. Sir Louis led him into a small room lined with manuscripts, maps, and rolled-up charts. On a low table there was a dish of pickled walnuts and two silver tumblers beside a sweating pitcher filled with a sweet, cool drink. A slim girl in black slipped out of the room as Dick came in. He caught his breath when he saw her. ‘My granddaughter,’ Sir Louis said. They were not introduced.

  “Dick told the old man what had happened. He described the fortune he’d gained by the cat and offered to share it. He mentioned that he intended another share for Will Price, the coachman who’d brought him down to London.

  “Sir Louis nodded. He seemed to know everything already.

  “He wouldn’t accept a share of what the cat had won.

  “‘That’s like you, lad,’ he said in his piping old man’s voice, whi
ch was strange since he had no way of knowing what Dick was like.

  “‘As for Mr. Price,’ he continued, ‘he is in my employ. I’ll give him what you wish.’

  “Dick’s mouth fell open at the news that the gentleman before him and Will were connected. But before he could say anything the old man made what was for him a long speech.

  “‘You’ll have time enough to give to them as needs. Give them books to learn from, comfort for the sick and old, and bring them water. Clean water, lad.’

  “He spoke in a way that did not invite questions or answers, so Dick just nodded.

  “Some instinct prompted Dick to trust him. He didn’t know what Sir Louis did, or what he had done, but he asked him to take his jewels and gold and invest his fortune.

  “The ancient nodded yes. Dick pushed the damp leather pouch across the table. Nothing was counted; there were no papers to sign. Dick gave him what he had, Sir Louis nodded again, that was that.”

  WHITTINGTON AND THE LADY looked up when they heard the ducks returning. A pair of mallards settled on the pond before all the ice was out. There were flurries of goldfinches and flurries of snow. The maple knobs turned rust red.

  Al, the man who helped Bernie at the Texaco, went to the livestock auction. He didn’t need any livestock, he didn’t even have a place, but he was curious about goats. When he was a boy, his aunt had kept a pair of white Nubians and a blue-flowered goat cart he got to drive sometimes if he’d drink a cup of goat milk warm from the teats. He’d gag it down and those goats would trot him all over. The more he laughed, the faster they went. The route was theirs. The reins didn’t mean anything.

  Al went to the library to find out what it would take to keep a goat. He learned they pretty much keep themselves. One book described the goat as a natural emblem of anarchy because it enables a man to live alone. Another said two milk goats can supply most of the food a human being needs, even in the desert.