Franny Parker Read Free Page B

to share the carrying as it was; four arms help to distribute the scratches. When we finally reached the porch stairs, we held out that tabby like we’d won the state lotto.
    Mama looked up first. “And how long does that tabby plan to visit?” I could tell she wasn’t pleased, but Mama never turns away a stray.
    As soon as Grandma Rae’s eyes lit on the cat, she leaped up and the beans went flying. “What in heaven’s name are you doing carting that filthy animal around town?” She spun around and faced Mama. “Honestly, Celia, you let those kids drag home all kinds of garbage.”
    Ben and I hung our heads, but we exchanged a sideways peek. We knew better than to leave when the good stuff was just getting started. Mama wouldn’t let us down.
    â€œNow, Rae, I don’t see the harm. The children will be responsible for the cat, and I can’t see what kind of lesson it would be to turn away
one in need
.” At that, Grandma Rae plunked herself back down, mouth in a twist. Accepting and assisting those
in need
was the theme of the preacher’s sermons that summer, and if Grandma Rae was going to command our attention to those weekly sermons, then Mama was going to put the preacher’s words to good use. To us, she said, “That cat can stay in the barn. You may get it some dinner, and then wash up for your own.” Yes sir, Mama was a lifelong animal lover, worse than all the rest of us. I pictured her as a wide-eyedlittle girl, a mouse in her dress pocket and a dog at her heel. I ached to be just like her.
    As we headed past the garden, Ben started in on cat names. “How about Jasper? Or Marmaduke? Oh no, what if it’s a girl? I know! Cynthia!” Even with my back turned, I could feel Grandma Rae’s disapproval burning a hole right there on the porch.
    â€œAnd so it continues,” she complained loudly.
    Grandma Rae was referring to what had started a few weeks earlier. It was turning out to be the summer of those in need. It seemed that once your eyes recognized one, the needy were all around, even in unexpected places. That spring had been the driest on record in over fifty years, and by the end of May, Blue Jay’s apple orchards had barely a blossom. By June it was worse. With no real rain all spring, the farmlands were crackled brown, and the wheat fields were in poor shape for harvest. The Wakeman family had such a bad crop that Faye Wakeman began working mornings at Harland’s Market to make ends meet. Then there was a brushfire that almost wiped out the garden club’s roses behind the church. These were terrible things, of course, but there wasn’t a whole lot I felt I could do about them. Until one late June afternoon, the last day of school, much to Ben’s horror, Daddy had found a painted turtle with a cracked shell on the side of the road. And so began our animal hospital.
    â€œWho could do this?” Ben shouted, hands clenched in angry little fists.
    â€œShe’s an old beauty,” Dad agreed, tracing her wide shell admiringly.
    We carried her to the barn, where we fixed her up good with yellow industrial tape. She looked just like a crooked highway lane, the lines running right down her bumpy shell.
    â€œWe’ll call her Speed Bump,” Ben decided.
    It was then I got my idea for the animal hospital. And since that June day I’d been working real hard helping the needy, just as Grandma said. It wasn’t exactly her way, but it was my own. And that was all that mattered.
    While Grandma Rae busied herself arranging help for the Wakemans and carrying her own well water to the town rose gardens, she offered only a stiff look of disapproval to the old turtle, who we set up in a quiet corner of our barn, our first official patient.
    Word spread quickly in town. By the middle of June, the mailman had brought us a box of baby birds, five barn swallows, who’d fallen out of a nest. The day after