Dedication
For
Pearl and Nico
and
all you animal lovers
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
1.What is it?
2.Something different approaching
3.Don’t let it hear you
4.Think positive!
5.Mack and the sisters
6.Donkey, donkey, it’s okay
7.Avoid the ball
8.Gus
9.What’s the point?
10.Freeze that scene
11.What’s a Winslow?
12.Here comes trouble
13.What’s the matter with him?
14.See that light?
15.Shots
16.Are all donkeys sad?
17.You don’t have to do that
18.Remember me
19.The girl with the yellow hat
20.Lovesick
21.A painting
22.Something the matter?
23.A letter from Gus
24.Don’t go
25.Winslow was curious
26.Winslow! Winslow!
27.The bear
28.Shh, he’s sleeping
29.Questions
30.Gus fan club
31.Hey, there!
32.I’m confused
33.We need to talk
34.I knew it!
35.Do you miss us?
36.He’s not a dog
37.Can he do that?
38.You have a donkey?
39.Follow me
40.Are they going to make it?
41.Easy, boy, easy
42.Sorry!
43.Something was wrong
44.Please, please
45.Boom-Boom
46.You’d be proud
47.The best donkey
48.Settling in
49.The light
About the Author
Books by Sharon Creech
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
What is it?
In the laundry basket on the kitchen floor was a lump.
“Another dead thing?” Louie asked.
“Not yet,” his father said.
It was the midst of winter, when night, like an unwelcome guest, came too early and stayed too long, and when each day seemed smaller than the one before.
Louie’s mother stared down at the basket that her husband had brought into the house. “Another one of Uncle Pete’s, I presume?”
Uncle Pete had a small farm on the outskirts of town. Anything to do with Uncle Pete usually involved Louie’s father wasting time or money, or doing something dangerous like chopping down trees or racing tractors through mud fields, or disposing of dead animals. Louie’s father had already brought home and buried two piglets that had not survived their birth.
Louie knelt beside the basket. A small gray head with black eyes and feathery eyelashes and sticking-up ears emerged. Attached to the head was a trembling thin body and four long spindly legs, all of it covered in splotchy gray fur scattered with brown freckles.
It was not a dog or a cat. It was a pitiful-looking thing and it was gazing at Louie. He felt a sudden rush, as if the roof had peeled off the house and the sun had dived into every corner of the kitchen.
“A goat?” he asked, kneeling beside the basket.
“No, a donkey,” his father said. “A mini donkey, born last night.”
“A mini donkey?” Louie’s hand cupped the donkey’s head, patting it gently. The donkey seemed too weak to move. “Something wrong with it?”
“The mother is sick, can’t take care of it.”
“Poor mama,” Louie said. “Poor baby. What will happen to it?”
“Probably go downhill fast. Might last a day or two.”
“No!”
“So,” his mother said, “why do you have the donkey? Why did you bring it home if it might just die in a day or two?”
“I don’t know,” his father said. “I felt sorry for it. I thought maybe we could at least watch it until it—you know—until it dies.” He whispered that last word.
The donkey made a small noise that sounded like please.
Louie lifted the donkey from the basket and held it close. It smelled of wet hay. It put its face against Louie’s neck and made that noise again. Please.
“Okay,” Louie said. “I accept the mission.”
“What mission?”
“To save this pitiful motherless donkey.”
2
Something different approaching
Louie’s house was old and cold and drafty and leaky, rising up out of its stone cellar with good intention but weakening as it reached the bowed roof topping the musty attic. The house was like many others on the narrow roads this side of town. Beyond the town stretched farmland and empty fields.
In summers past, the house had felt light and airy, with cooling breezes puffing the curtains in and out of the windows and always his older brother, Gus, there, so full of energy and purpose. “C’mon, Louie, let’s paint the porch,” and “C’mon, Louie, let’s clean out that vegetable patch,” and “C’mon, Louie, let’s go to the creek,” always with something new to do. But now Gus was in the army, gone already a year.
And now it was winter.
And each day short and dark and cold . . .
Until this snowy Saturday morning in January, with the wind plastering the windows with wet flakes, when Louie had awakened feeling floaty, suspended in the air, with something different approaching.
3
Don’t let it hear you
Louie had not had the best luck nurturing small creatures.
Those worms he brought into the house when he was three years old? Those cute wriggling things dried up and died two days later.
The lightning bugs so carefully caught and tipped into the glass jar with holes punched in the lid? Dead on the bottom of the jar three days later.
The lively goldfish won at the carnival? Belly-up at the end of the week.
Blue parakeet also won at the carnival? Care-fully fed and watered and talked to? Three months—then gasped its last breath at the bottom of its cage.
The kitten found at the side of the road? Ran away the second day.
The bird limping across the porch and gently brought indoors? Flew out an open window two days later.
Hamster? Snake? Turtle? Lizard? Louie tried, but all of them, each and every one, either shriveled and died or escaped.
More recently, he had been longing for a dog.
His parents thought it would be a better idea if he borrowed a dog from time to time. One that didn’t live with them. One that didn’t need walking in the rain and snow, and one that didn’t pee on the carpet or chew on the furniture.
So Louie was more than a little surprised when his father came home that Saturday morning with the pitiful donkey wrapped in a blue blanket.
“I don’t want to watch it die,” his mother said.
“No!” Louie said. “No dying. I told you, I accept the mission.”
The pitiful creature tentatively touched its nose to Louie’s. “Awww.”
“Don’t get attached,” his mother warned. “You’re going to be heartbroken when it—”
“Shh,” Louie said. “Don’t let it hear you.” He asked his father if it was a boy or a girl.
“Boy,” he said. “Poor thing.”
His parents stepped out onto the front porch to “discuss the situation.” Louie could see his mother waving her arms here and there, and his father nodding helplessly, shrugging his shoulders, as if he realized he had not thought this through. And then Louie saw him waving his arms and smiling and making a cute
donkey face.
The pitiful donkey was trembling in Louie’s arms, his wee head nuzzling Louie’s neck, his long, spindly legs folded up awkwardly. By the time his parents came inside, Louie had a plan.
“He’ll stay in the cellar. I can sleep there with him on the cot. Maybe we could have the heater on at night. We need to go to the feedstore and get some hay for him to sleep on and a bottle and some milk formula.”
His mother’s mouth opened and shut. No sounds came out.
“Mom? Will you watch him while Dad and I get supplies?” Louie handed the donkey to her, pushing him gently into her reluctant arms.
Louie’s mother bent her head to the donkey, studying his sweet face. “Go on,” she said. “But I’m warning you both. He may not last the night. And if he does, he may not last another day or two. You’re going to be so, so sad.”
“No!” Louie said. “I will save Winslow.”
“‘Winslow’?” Mom said.
“That’s his name: Winslow. It just came to me, out of the air.”
4
Think positive!
Next door lived Louie’s friend Mack, whose father owned the feedstore. Louie had been in the feedstore many times, helping Mack stock shelves, so he was familiar with the layout. He could direct customers to the cow halters, the livestock feed bins, the portable cages and tick repellent and vitamin supplements for animals of all types, and to books on every farm animal, from pigs to donkeys.
Mack was there when Louie and his father arrived. They told him about the donkey and chose a suitable powdered milk formula.
“A small bag,” Louie’s father said, “because it probably won’t live very—”
“Yes, it will,” Louie said. “Don’t say that.”
Mack recommended a book, All About Donkeys, but Louie’s father said they should get it from the library, “because, you know, what will we need it for if the donkey—erm—if it—”
“Don’t say it! Think positive!”
That was pretty much how it was with the few items his father accepted: the smallest bottle, the smallest bag of formula, the tiniest vial of vitamins, the two-page free pamphlet titled The Newborn Donkey (instead of the two-hundred-page book, All About Donkeys), because he was convinced this would all be wasted on the pitiful donkey. His father did not want to buy a bale of hay for bedding, but Mack’s dad offered to throw in a partial bale for free because it had fallen off someone’s truck.
“We’re going to feel pretty stupid,” his father said, “if we get home and find a dead donkey.”
“Quit saying that!”
“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
5
Mack and the sisters
Mack was thirteen, three years older than Louie. People sometimes thought they were related because they were often together and both had dark, unruly hair and dark eyes and were tall and thin. Louie’s own brother, Gus, shared Louie’s dark features, but had their father’s strong, stocky build. He had played football in high school and had been eager to join the army.
Louie missed him.
He sometimes missed Mack, too, because lately Mack had been hanging out with his friends from school when he wasn’t helping at the feedstore. If Louie suggested sledding down the hill at the end of the road, Mack sometimes said, “Aw, I’m a teenager now, don’t feel like sledding.” But other times, if there was no one else around, he might join Louie and laugh his head off all the way down the hill.
It was while they were sledding that they had met the sisters, Claudine and Nora, who had recently moved to town and were the only other ones at the hill that day. It was late Sunday afternoon and the snow was packed and icy in spots. Later, Louie couldn’t remember how it was that he and Mack learned their names and where they lived and that Claudine was Mack’s age, and Nora was a year younger than Louie. It was all a blur, the way Mack and Claudine started talking and laughing while Nora and Louie kept on sledding down the hill, walking back up, and sledding down again.
On the way home, just the two of them—Louie and Mack—Mack put his hand over his heart and said, “I am in love!” He pretended to stagger and fall back in the snow.
6
Donkey, donkey, it’s okay
When Louie and his father returned from the feedstore, his mother was still cuddling the donkey, snuggling him in a blanket, stroking his head, and talking to him, “Donkey, donkey, it’s okay.”
Louie set up a place for Winslow in the cellar, with hay for bedding and blankets for extra warmth. Winslow was bleating pitifully, those little pleas: plea-plea-please. Winslow did not know what to do with the bottle of milk. He repeatedly bumped his nose against the nipple, and when he got it in his mouth, he spit it out. When it finally stayed in his mouth, he didn’t know how to suck on it.
Louie stayed with Winslow, holding him, talking with him, petting him, coaxing him to drink. He dripped milk onto his finger and slipped his finger into Winslow’s mouth. Winslow sucked on it eagerly. Louie repeated that until Winslow accepted the bottle.
Success! But it had taken two hours to coax an ounce of milk into Winslow, and then Winslow fell asleep. Louie, too, fell asleep, holding the blanket-wrapped pitiful Winslow.
When Louie was born, he was two months early and weighed only three pounds. He didn’t like to see photos of himself from when he was such a scrawny birdlike thing, hooked up to tubes and housed in an incubator. He looked helpless.
Sometimes Louie thought that he could remember those early days. He knew that was unlikely, but often when he was falling asleep or waking up he felt as if he’d been gasping for breath and then suddenly his mouth opened wide and a rush of cool, clean air came in, and he expanded like a balloon, and he floated up and out of an incubator and into the world.
And such a world it was, full of blue sky and trees heavy with leaves every shade of green and birds swooping and diving and chirping and yellow tulips waving.
Louie was thinking about this when he fell asleep holding the pitiful donkey, and when he awoke a few hours later, he felt that rush of cool, clean air, but something was different; he did not feel floaty. There was the donkey, limp against his chest. Louie rubbed him with the blanket, begging Winslow to stay alive, please, please. Winslow’s legs twitched. His eyes opened briefly and then closed again.
Louie urged the donkey to take more milk. “Please, Winslow, please?”
And he wondered, had his parents begged him to stay alive? Did they hover over him like he was hovering over Winslow? Did they urge him to keep breathing? Did they pat him and talk to him? And did that help him?
In two weeks, winter break would be over and Louie would have to return to school. He hadn’t thought about what he would do with Winslow when that time came. How would he get frequent feedings?
His mother said, “Oh, don’t worry about that. We don’t even know if Winslow will be—”
“Don’t say it.”
7
Avoid the ball
Louie missed his brother, Gus, and wished he had not joined the army, even though it was what Gus had most wanted to do and everyone was so proud of him.
“You’ll be serving our country,” Louie’s father had said.
Louie hoped he could serve his country, too, and he sometimes imagined himself standing on a hilltop, guarding the territory. Sometimes his arms were spread wide as if to shield everyone behind him. Was that serving?
Gus’s favorite sports were basketball, baseball, soccer, and football, and although Gus had tried to interest Louie in these games, Louie gradually understood that he did not have Gus’s natural talent. He was particularly wary of sports that involved balls. When he tried to throw, kick, dribble, or bat them, they rarely went where he intended. When someone else threw, kicked, dribbled, or batted a ball, Louie was unable to anticipate where it was aimed.
After one especially frustrating soccer practice, Louie’s coach said, not unkindly, “Louie, you seemed to, um, avoid the ball.”
; “Right!” Louie said. “When it’s coming at me, I don’t know where to move. I can’t get out of the way.”
“You’re not supposed to get out of the way.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Hmm. Maybe sports are not your thing, Louie.”
Later that night, he asked Gus, “But what is my thing? If it’s not sports, then what?”
“Don’t worry, Louie, you have plenty of time to figure that out.”
But Louie did worry. He feared he would never find something he was good at or something he was as passionate about as Gus was about sports.
8
Gus
After his brother left for the army, Louie wondered how the absence of one person could take so much air out of the house. He kept bumping into empty pockets, spaces that Gus had previously inhabited: the couch with cushions squished; the kitchen counter always dotted with his sandwich makings—bread and mayonnaise and mustard and bologna and peanut butter; the bed across from his; the porch, cluttered with Gus’s smelly shoes and sweatshirts. All these places were now missing signs of Gus.
He and his parents hovered over each letter and postcard from Gus. They were hungry for his voice and his news, but he rarely phoned, didn’t write often, and his news was not elaborate. Life was “okay” or “not too bad.” Once he said it was “great!” but he did not explain why it was great. The food was “okay” or “not too bad,” though one time he and his buddies had pizza. It was “great!”
“Not the biggest vocabulary,” Louie’s father observed.
At first, Gus had signed his letters simply “Gus,” and then it was “Miss you, Gus,” but lately, each letter closed with the same three words:
Remember me,
Gus
Of course they would remember him, Louie always thought when he saw that signature. What a crazy thing to say!
But it made him worry about Gus, and now, when Louie was holding Winslow, coaxing him to drink, wishing him stronger, he hoped that if Gus were sick or injured someone would watch over him.