Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp (6 page)

By the time we reached my house it was
nearly noon.

“You built a new house?” asked Sunny
as we pulled into the yard.

“It looks like it,” I agreed. “But I
only added an upstairs to that one section.”

“I wish we had that much space,” said
Star with a sigh. It was the first time I’d heard her say anything
that sounded a little envious of having a better life.

As we entered the house, Paddy lifted
his head, thumped his tail and opened his mouth in a huge yawn.
Both girls ran to his cage.

“You can let him out,” I said. “In
fact, you had better take him right outside. But come back in
quickly. We’ll eat lunch first, I think. Are you
hungry?”

“Yes,” the girls chorused loudly, and
raced for the door with Paddy loping behind them.

From the kitchen window I watched them
play with the pup. They had forgotten to put on their long pants,
but they seemed adept at keeping away from the dog’s toenails,
dancing around him and teasing him with a stick. Paddy got tired of
lunging for a stick he couldn’t get, and brought a yellow tennis
ball to Sunny. She tossed it to Star. Of course, Paddy raced toward
the older girl, who threw the ball to Sunny. The girls seemed
completely at ease with the dog. While they played keepaway, I tore
up lettuce and washed the other vegetables and fruits we’d
bought.

I opened the kitchen door to let in
some air, and soon the three playmates tumbled into the kitchen,
laughing and shoving each other.

“We can help,” Star said, suddenly
looking a little bit ashamed.

“OK,” I said. “Thanks for giving Paddy
some exercise. He needed that.” Star looked relieved. She was
clearly a little more wary of her relationship with me than Sunny.
“There are dishes in that cupboard, and you can pour some drinks. I
have lemonade, milk or water; I hope those are all right. I didn’t
think to get any soda pop. Sunny, the silverware is in that
drawer.” I pointed to the left of the sink.

“Lemonade is good. I’ll have milk
later with the cookies,” said Sunny, heading for the
silverware.

“Wash up first, please,” I
added.

Within a few minutes we sat down to a
lunch of salad, fruits, and some rolls I’d bought earlier in the
week. It seemed light, but I knew we’d be filling up with cookies
soon. Paddy lay under the table, his nose resting on Sunny’s
foot.

After eating, we stacked up the dishes
and got out the baking utensils. Star measured the shortening, and
Sunny scooped up the brown sugar.

“We used to bake with Grandma,” began
Star.

“We still bake things, but it’s not as
much fun as it used to be,” Sunny finished.

“It’s more like work, now that we’re
doing most of the cooking,” Star admitted.

“You have a nice big kitchen. It’s fun
to do it here,” Sunny said as she creamed the moist ingredients
together. The girls didn’t squabble over who got to do which part
of the task at all. Clearly, they had been working as a team for a
long time. I looked around at my bargain appliances and old
wallpaper. Although I’d bought a stove and refrigerator, I’d
postponed the kitchen remodeling in favor of the new upstairs. But
seeing it through the eyes of these girls who lived in a small
trailer, I realized how grand it really was.

Before long we had rows of warm
chocolate chip cookies cooling on a rack, and we’d each swiped more
than one finger-f of raw dough. There was lots of giggling
involved. I hadn’t raised any girls. My only child, Chad, had baked
with me when he was small, but cooking with two girls was
definitely different from that experience.

“Let’s take Paddy outside again before
we have cookies. May we do that, Miss Ana?” asked Sunny.

“Sure,” I said. “He’d like that.
There’s a path over that way, if you’d like to take him for a
walk.” I pointed in the direction of the trail into the
swamp.

“I’m going to change,” said Star. “The
bugs might be thicker in the woods.”

“You can use my bedroom,” I said,
pointing to the stairs. “There’s more room than in the
bathroom.”

The girls rushed to switch to jeans
and then hurried out the door with the dog. They ran down the path
into the swamp so quickly I forgot to tell them to take his leash.
I wasn’t very worried though. He always stayed near me on our walks
and that trail only led, eventually, to the seasonal road. There
certainly wasn’t any dangerous traffic.

As I watched them
disappear around the first bend, I contemplated how I might help
these girls. Should I ask them how they felt about their mother?
Neither of them had brought up the topic yet. Maybe talking about
their grandmother’s death was a better idea. It was more recent, as
was the loss of their dog. They clearly adored Paddy, and must
miss—
what was her name?
—Gracie, very much.

I began to wash up from lunch and
baking, and mulled over more possible ways Family Friends might be
able to help without seeming to be patronizing. Maybe the church
could make sure they had more chances to buy fresh foods. Maybe we
could get them a better refrigerator. I hadn’t yet been inside
their trailer, but it didn’t look as if anything was in very good
shape, judging from the outside. However, the family obviously had
a lot of pride and might not want to accept large gifts.

It was refreshing to see how happy and
self-contained Sunny and Star seemed to be, but I was also sure
they didn’t have many chances to spend time with other kids. I had
no idea what their finances were, and I wondered if the girls would
have any new clothes to start the next school year.

As I was putting away the dried
dishes, my eyes darted to the window when the sounds of yelling
drifted through the open door. The dog was running into the yard
with something long and white in his mouth. The ends were covered
in mud, and so was he. Both girls ran after him, screaming and
trying to catch him, but it was Paddy’s turn to play
keepaway.

“Give that to me,” demanded Star. I
moved to the door and opened the screen.

Sunny looked at me and yelled, “He’s
got a big bone!”

Chapter 10

Paddy trotted up to the stoop and
dropped the whitened object at my feet. Star caught up and grabbed
the dog’s collar.

“Get the hose and wash him down,” I
said, taking hold of Paddy myself. “Sunny, that old blanket is
still on the front porch.” I hadn’t washed it yet, but that
wouldn’t matter since it was about to get even dirtier.

Star unwound the hose from where it
hung by the kitchen door and began spraying the dog, and I was
getting pretty wet myself. Water dripped everywhere; Paddy shook
and made it worse, but then Sunny appeared and wrapped the dog in
the old blanket. Star began to laugh.

“Come look at your big scary bone,”
she said to Sunny, between chuckles.

We looked at the thing Paddy had
dropped, which had also been washed by all the water flying around.
It was, indeed, a long bone, but attached firmly to one end was a
deer hoof.

Sunny’s bottom lip stuck out and she
said with a flounce, “Well, I couldn’t tell it was just an old deer
leg. There might be dead bodies in that Dead Mule Swamp. Nobody
would ever find them. Nobody ever found the dead mule, did
they?”

Star put her finger over the open
nozzle of the hose to make a fine spray and aimed it at Sunny. The
younger girl sputtered and launched herself at Star, causing the
teen to sit down hard in what was now a very wet spot in the grass.
She dropped the hose, which began to hop around from the water
pressure and spray everything in sight. However, the day was hot
enough that no one seemed to mind getting wet, and before I
succeeded in catching the end of the hose we were all soaked and
giggling.

“OK,” I said. “We better get cleaned
up and eat some cookies. Clip Paddy on his new line over there so
he can dry off.”

We stripped our wet sneakers and
socks, left them outside, and then all went upstairs to change. I
loaned the girls some dry t-shirts and they put on their shorts
again. The shirts were too big on both of them, but they didn’t
seem to care. Sunny impulsively gave me a little hug after she
slipped into the Michigan Tech shirt I handed her. It hung below
her shorts like a dress.

The cookies and cold milk hit the spot
after our exercise, and we sat on the lower porch, which I had
started calling the terrace, eating them and licking chocolate off
our fingers.

“Would you like to go to Youth Group
tomorrow or maybe next week?” I asked. “If your grandfather says
it’s OK, I’ll be glad to pick you up and take you home.”

“I’d rather come here again,” said
Sunny without any hesitation.

“Me too,” said Star. She sort of
ducked her head and then took a deep breath. “I saw you have a
sewing machine.”

“I do.” It was set up in my bedroom,
although I had plans to make a nice sewing area in my new
room.

“Grandma was teaching me to sew. We
had just started a skirt and vest that wasn’t too hard. But then
she died...”

“Would you like me to help you finish
it?” I asked, realizing that my opportunity to do something
meaningful had just been handed to me.

“I think it’s too small for me now.
But maybe I could get a new pattern and material. I have a little
money saved up from picking berries for the farm
market.”

“I like that material,” Sunny
asserted. “Do you think I could learn how too? Could I have the one
that’s too small for you?”

“We can do that. How about if we go to
the fabric store next Saturday?” I asked them.

Star agreed to let Sunny have her
previous fabric, and we made plans to shop the following weekend. I
didn’t press them about Youth Group.

It was after four o’clock when I
returned home from dropping them off at their trailer. I had
insisted they take most of the cookies with them, and some of the
salad too. It had been a wonderful day, and I was definitely
becoming fond of both girls. They were already more than just an
assignment to me, but I was exhausted.

The next day, Sunday, the predicted
rains came in great white sheets of water making it difficult to
see the trees beyond my yard. I skipped church. The old part of the
roof, over my bedroom, hadn’t been re-shingled yet, and I climbed
to the attic every few hours to empty the pan I kept placed under a
leak. Paddy and I huddled in the house. We worked on reinforcing
the “shake” command and began on “heel” and “stay.” In between
lessons I read the puppy training book and dozed. Paddy just
dozed.

Monday, Robert Gorlowski called to say
that he wouldn’t be working until things dried out a bit. I told
him the old leak was worse than ever, and he said they’d take on
that section of roof next, and start the siding on the new
upstairs. I wandered around my new room, making plans for a sewing
area and maybe a library corner. The area was one large room, and I
intended to keep it that way. I did the laundry, including the
muddy Sponge Bob blanket.

In the afternoon the sun came out, so
Paddy and I took a long walk down the extension of South River
Road, farther than I’d gone before.

When the road emerged from the trees
of the swamp and ran along the river I began to pay closer
attention. Pretty soon we reached what I now knew was the
confluence of the Thorpe and the Petite Sauble Rivers. The Thorpe
and the road curved around to the southwest, almost ninety degrees
different from the southeast direction the road had been going.
Just a little farther along, the dirt widened, and I could see
where the road used to branch and cross the Thorpe. I was now on
the west side of the guardrail I’d spotted from the other bank just
a few days previous. The defunct railroad bridge was about a
half-mile upstream to the south.

After a day inside, Paddy and I were
both ready for some exercise, and we continued down the narrow dirt
road toward the bridge. It appeared safe and solid with stout,
black and smelly wood timbers. The ties were placed close together,
so it wouldn’t even be too scary to walk across. I tugged on
Paddy’s leash and although he whined, he came along. My size sevens
easily bridged the gaps between the ties, but he placed his paws
carefully. Near midstream, just as he was getting confident, his
right front foot slipped through a gap, and Paddy stumbled, his
shoulder roughly bumping the edge of the tie. He woofed and
scrabbled at the splintery wood, pulling the dangling leg from the
space. He looked up at me with raised eyebrows, then down at the
swirling water a dozen feet below. Nevertheless, he continued
across the bridge without balking. Once we reached the far bank, I
could see the trail along the shore that must lead to this end of
the road.

“We’ve found an interesting route,” I
told Paddy. “But it would be a bit too long to walk to the
recreation area. We’d be too tired to recreate!”

Paddy wasn’t too eager to re-cross the
bridge, but we walked slowly, and he watched his footing. When we
returned home, I checked the map. According to the scale, we had
hiked about five miles, and that was plenty for both of
us.