Kristy and the Snobs (9 page)

"Oh, boy," I said under my breath. Charlie, David Michael, Andrew, and I ran to the kitchen. The four of us skidded to a halt behind Karen. For a moment, no one spoke. We just stared at Louie. I couldn't believe what he was doing.

David Michael began to cry. I turned him away from Louie and hugged him to me.

Charlie drew in his breath and approached Louie, while I tried to turn Karen and Andrew around and hug my brother at the same time. Luckily, Mom and Watson both arrived home just then. I hoped one of them would know what to do.

Louie seemed to have lost complete control of his hind legs. He was pulling himself around the kitchen with his front legs, dragging the back ones as if they were paralyzed. And he was, as you might imagine, in a panic. He

crawled into a leg of the kitchen table, and then into the stove.

"Lou-ie!" David Michael howled.

"Charlie, take David Michael out of the kitchen," my mother ordered.

"Please take Karen and Andrew, too," added Watson.

Charlie did as he was told, but nobody had asked me to do anything, so I just stood by the doorway and watched.

Mom ran for the phone and dialed Dr. Smith while Watson tried to calm Louie down. He succeeded somewhat, and I relaxed a little and tried to figure out what the phone conversation was about, but all Mom would say was "Mm-hmm," and, "Yes, that's right," and, "I see," and finally, "Okay, thank you." When she got off the phone, she turned to me. "Kristy, tell the others we'll have a family meeting as soon as Sam comes home."

That family meeting is something I wish I could forget, but know I'll never be able to. The eight of us - Mom, Watson, Charlie, Sam, David Michael, Andrew, Karen, and I - gathered in the living room.

Mom said bluntly, "Kids, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Louie is very, very sick now. And he's not going to get better."

Charlie and Sam and I lowered our heads. But David Michael, Andrew, and Karen looked at Mom with wide, surprised eyes.

"What about the shots? And the pills?" asked my little brother.

"They're not working," Mom told him. "You can see that, can't you, honey?"

David Michael nodded, his eyes filling with tears.

"So what do we do now?" asked Sam.

Mom glanced at Watson and I could see that her eyes were teary, too. Watson took her hand reassuringly. "Dr. Smith suggested that we have Louie put down tomorrow," he said gently.

I expected my brothers to get angry, to yell that nobody would ever do that to Louie. But they all began to cry instead. David Michael cried noisily. Sam and Charlie tried to hide the fact that they were crying, but I know they were. Then a lump that had been filling up my throat all afternoon, dissolved, and I began to cry, too, which made Andrew and Karen burst into tears. It didn't matter. Even Watson was crying.

After a few moments, David Michael announced, "I'm going to sleep with Louie tonight." We knew he meant sleep in the family room with him, and I'm sure he thought someone

was going to try to stop him, but no one said a word.

So Louie and David Michael spent the night together. Just as Louie had often joined one of us in bed, to keep us company, David Michael kept Louie company during his last night with us.

Chapter 13.

Mom said it wasn't necessary for all of us to go to Dr. Smith's the next day, and I worried that we would argue about who stayed and who went. Sam and Charlie looked relieved, though, and said they wouldn't mind staying home. (I think they were afraid they'd cry at the vet's, and that people would see them.) Watson then asked if my brothers would watch Karen and Andrew. He'd decided they were too young to go. Sam and Charlie agreed right away. And that's how Mom and Watson, David Michael, and I became the four who accompanied Louie to the vet.

David Michael had spent an uncomfortable night with Louie. He'd insisted on sleeping next to him, on the floor. He wouldn't even consider the couch. Louie whined a lot that night, according to Mom, who (although David Michael didn't know it) spent most of the night reading in the kitchen, keeping her ears open

for problems in the family room. But toward dawn, both Louie and my brother fell asleep. They stayed asleep until nine o'clock when Mom reluctantly woke David Michael. She wanted to get the trip to Dr. Smith's over with as soon as possible.

At breakfast that morning nobody ate much. And we were silent. Nobody even asked for a reprieve for Louie. He was just in too much pain. We knew that giving Louie an extra day or two would be one of the crudest things we could do to him.

At ten-thirty, David Michael and I wrapped Louie in his blanket and Watson placed him on the backseat of our station wagon. Karen and Andrew looked on in awe.

"Do you want to say good-bye?" Watson asked them.

Karen stepped forward solemnly, ducked into the car, lifted Louie's ear, and whispered into it, "Good-bye, Louie." Then she fled to the house in tears.

But Andrew called gaily, " 'Bye, Louie!" and I realized that he was too little to understand what was happening. Or maybe he was able to see the good that we were doing Louie easier than the rest of us were.

Charlie and Sam asked to say good-bye in private. When they returned to the house to

watch Andrew and Karen, the rest of us reluctantly climbed into the car. I squinched up in the very back part of the station wagon so that David Michael could sit next to Louie.

Nobody spoke during the drive to the vet's, but David Michael held one of Louie's paws the whole way. And Louie, our noisy vet-hater, didn't so much as whimper, even though he must have known he was going to Dr. Smith's. After all, he'd been there ten times in the past five days.

When we reached the vet's, Watson parked the car. Then he lifted Louie out and handed him to Mom. Watson had decided to let us Thomases take Louie inside by ourselves. He hadn't known Louie the way we had.

We walked slowly to the door to the veterinary offices, and David Michael held it open for Mom, while I reached into my pocket, pulled out a pair of sunglasses, and put them on so nobody would see my red eyes.

Five other people were in the waiting room, but the receptionist called to us right away. "Dr. Smith is seeing a patient now," she said, "but as soon as she's done, you can go in."

My mother nodded. Then she turned to me. "Kristy, I want you and David Michael to say good-bye out here. I'm the only one who needs to go inside. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I whispered. I began stroking Louie's muzzle.

"How do they put him to sleep?" asked David Michael tearfully.

"They just give him a shot," replied my mother. "That's all. It'll make him go to sleep and he won't wake up."

Mom had sat down on a couch in the waiting room with Louie stretched across her lap. Several people looked at us sympathetically. One elderly woman began to sniffle and dab at her eyes with a tissue.

"Will you hold him while he gets the shot?" asked David Michael. "I want you to hold him."

"Yes, I promise," said Mom. "That's why I'm going in. To be with him."

I looked down at Louie's liquid brown eyes.

When he moved them, his "eyebrows" moved,

too. He was paying attention to everything in

the waiting room.

"Do you think he knows what's going to happen?" I asked softly.

"No," said Mom. "I'm sure he doesn't."

How can we do this to him? I asked myself. We are going to kill him. We were saying, "Okay, Louie, you must die now," and not giving him any choice about it. We were going to send him into a room and let someone give him a shot so that he would never wake up.

But then I remembered what he had looked like the night before, and how much he was hurting, and knew we were doing the right thing.

The receptionist called Mom's name then, and she stood up. David Michael and I gave Louie last pats and kisses, and then Mom disappeared down the little hallway. When she came back a few minutes later, her arms were empty.

Karen said the funeral was her idea, but I think it was Watson's. At any rate, later that day, right after lunch, Karen found David Michael and me sitting glumly in front of the TV set. We didn't even know what we were watching.

"I think we should have a funeral for Louie," Karen announced.

"A funeral?" I repeated.

"Yes. To remember him by."

I glanced at David Michael, who seemed to have perked up.

"We could make a gravestone," he said. "Even though we can't really bury him."

"And we can sing a song and say some nice things about him," added Karen. "We'll hold it at three o'clock. I'll go tell everyone."

Right away, we began making plans. All six

of us kids gathered on the back porch.

"What kind of marker should we make for his grave?" I asked. "I don't think we have any stone."

"A wooden cross," said Karen decisively. "There are some scraps of wood in the shed."

"We can take care of that," said Sam, speaking for himself and Charlie. I could tell they were just humoring us. They felt bad about Louie, but they felt too old to be planning pet funerals, and wanted to go off on their own.

"Put 'Louie Thomas, R.I.P.' on the cross," instructed Karen.

"What's 'R.I.P.'?" asked David Michael.

"It means 'rest in peace.' "

"Shouldn't we write that out?" I asked. "Initials are tacky. It's like writing 'Xmas' instead of 'Christmas.' "

"No!" cried Karen, who's been wanting to have her own way a lot lately. "Put 'R.I.P.' That's how it always is in books and on TV."

Karen and I had a big discussion about the matter. Sam finally came to the rescue by suggesting that he and Charlie write 'Rest In Peace' with huge initial letters so the R, the I, and the P would really show up. Then they left David Michael, Karen, Andrew, and me to plan the rest of the service.

"We should sing a hymn," said David Michael.

But none of us knew any hymns by heart, except for Christmas carols.

"How about singing a song about a dog?" I suggested.

"I know one," said Andrew, and he began to sing, "There was a farmer, had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o. B-I-N-G-O - "

"We can't sing that at a funeral!" David Michael exclaimed.

"Old MacDonald?" said Andrew. "On his farm he could have a dog."

"No."

"Let's just sing a sad song," said Karen.

"No, a happy one," I said. "Louie wouldn't want us all to be sad."

"But funerals are supposed to be sad," she insisted.

We talked and talked. Finally we reached a few decisions. Instead of singing a song, we voted to play "Brother Louie" on the tape deck. Then we decided that we would each say one nice thing about Louie, instead of having someone give a boring eulogy. Saying nice things was Andrew's idea. His nursery-school teacher had just read his class a book called The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, in which a family remembers their pet, Barney, after he

dies. (I thought it was very lucky that Andrew had heard that story just before Louie died.)

At ten minutes to three, us six Thomas/Brewer kids called Mom and Watson, and our family walked out to the backyard and stood by a forsythia bush Louie had liked to sleep near. Sam was holding the cross he and Charlie had made, Charlie was holding a shovel, and David Michael was holding Louie's leash and food dishes. We were going to bury them under the cross. That was, we'd decided, almost like burying Louie himself.

"Okay," I said. "Charlie, why don't you dig the grave? Then we can say the nice things about Louie."

"No!" cried Karen. "Not everyone's here."

"Yes, we are," I told her. "Eight people. We're all here."

Just then I heard someone say, "Are we late?"

I turned around. Filing into our yard were Shannon and Tiffany, Hannie and Linny, and Amanda and Max. They were followed by two of Shannon's snobby friends. They gathered behind our family.

I looked at Karen in horror.

"I invited them," she said simply.

I shook my head. I didn't want Shannon at Louie's funeral. She'd made fun of him. Besides,

what would she think about a dog funeral? But there was nothing to do except go ahead with it.

Charlie, red with embarrassment at the sight of our guests, finished digging the grave. David Michael stepped forward and placed the leash and the dishes in it. Then Sam covered them up and pushed the cross into the earth.

"Now," said David Michael, "we each say one nice thing. I'll go last."

Karen, of course, volunteered to go first, and said, "Louie had good manners."

"He slept on my feet to keep them warm," said Andrew.

I dared to turn around and peek at the rest of the audience. To my surprise, not a single person was laughing. And Shannon was wiping tears away.

"Louie was a good football player," said Charlie.

"He had a sense of humor," I said.

"He was good company," said Sam.

"He was an adorable puppy," said Mom.

"He was nice to Boo-Boo," said Watson.

David Michael let out a sigh. "He was my best friend," he said.

After a moment of silence, David Michael pushed a button on the tape deck, and "Brother Louie" came on. We all thought of our good

old collie while "Louie, Louie, Louie" was sung. When the song was over, I felt both happy and sad. A hand touched my arm. It was Shannon. "I'm really sorry about Louie," she said seriously. "If anything happened to Astrid, I don't know what I'd do." Then she turned away, and Louie's mourners began to leave.

Chapter 14.

It was on Monday, two days after Louie's funeral, that I sat for the Snobs again. I didn't really think the Delaneys were so bad anymore, but the name had stuck.

"Tell us again what happened to Louie," said Max.

He and Amanda and I were playing Snail in the driveway, but the Snobs kept stopping to ask questions about Louie. They weren't being rude; they were just curious. They'd probably never known anyone or anything that had died.

"Louie was sick," I said for the fourth or fifth time. "He was really old and he didn't feel well anymore. He hurt a lot. . . . Your turn, Amanda."

Amanda hopped to the center of the snail shell, expertly avoiding Max's and my squares. She selected a square for herself and drew an