Ten Kids, No Pets

  Mr. Pritchard poked his head out from under the tractor. “Now I think that’s a great idea,” he said. “Doug spends too much time stuck on the farm during the summer. He never sees his friends. If football practice wouldn’t take up too much time, I’d be all for it.”

  “Really?” said Doug and Bainbridge at the same time.

  “Sure. But you have to get a sponsor if you want to be a real team. Did you know that? I mean, if you want uniforms and want to play the town league from time to time.”

  “A sponsor?” repeated Bainbridge. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, for instance, a business from town. How it works is, say, Zinder’s buys uniforms for your team and pays for expenses, and in return your team is free good publicity for them. Your team name would be the Zinder’s Bombers or something, and your uniforms would say ‘Zinder’s’ on them…. You’d need a coach, too,” added Doug’s father.

  “Gosh,” said Bainbridge, “I didn’t know it would be so complicated.”

  “Before you look for a sponsor, you better get a team together, though.”

  “That’s true. You want to come with me, Doug?”

  “I can’t,” Doug replied. “Not today. We have to finish with this tractor. And then I’ve got some work to do in the barn. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” agreed Bainbridge. “I’ll call you tonight and let you know how I’m doing.”

  Bainbridge’s next stop was Dana Benardi’s. He figured Dana would be an easy catch since the Benardis lived on a farm that, like the Rossos’, wasn’t a working farm. Dr. Benardi was the vet, and the Benardis simply liked country living. However, Bainbridge noted as he walked his bicycle up the gravel driveway, the Benardis did have some pets. He saw a horse, a German shepherd, and two kittens before he saw Dana himself.

  Dana was standing over a ten-speed bicycle that was balanced upside down by the driveway. A box of tools was open at his feet, and he was spinning tires and checking gears.

  “Problems?” Bainbridge called when he was several yards away. He didn’t know Dana well and was glad for the broken bicycle. It would give them something to talk about.

  “Hi, Bainbridge,” said Dana, looking surprised. “Yeah. Something’s wrong with the brakes. They keep slipping.”

  Bainbridge parked his own bike and stooped down to examine Dana’s. They worked on it together for several minutes. When they stood up, their hands were black with grease, but the bicycle was working.

  “What are you up to this summer?” asked Dana after he had thanked Bainbridge.

  “Not much,” replied Bainbridge. “What are you up to?”

  “Not much.” Dana grinned. “I help my dad sometimes, and I do a little work around the farm, but …” Dana shrugged as if to say, “You know how boring things can get.”

  Bainbridge nodded.

  “I wish I could get a job,” Dana went on, “but my mom won’t let me do that until I’m fifteen.”

  “Well, I know something you can do,” Bainbridge said. “That’s why I’m here.” He explained his idea about a “farm” football league. Then he told him what Doug Pritchard’s father had said. “You want to help me with the team?” he asked finally.

  “Sure!” said Dana. “That’s fantastic. I think we could really do it.”

  “I hope so,” replied Bainbridge. “It isn’t going to be easy.”

  Dana and Bainbridge worked hard that day. They rode to six other farms to talk to kids they knew. Everyone was interested but admitted that they didn’t have much time. By late in the afternoon Bainbridge had had enough for one day, and he and Dana agreed to meet again the next morning.

  Bainbridge rode home, zipping along the country roads, smelling leaves and dust and honeysuckle and watching the mottled sunlight on his arms as it filtered through the trees.

  At home Bainbridge found his mother feeling better. At least he assumed she was because she was on her feet in the kitchen making dinner. There were all sorts of smelly things around her — hot dogs and mayonnaise and lemons and horseradish — and she didn’t even look green.

  “Mom!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

  “I’m feeling much better, thanks,” she replied. “And in celebration, I’m making us a picnic supper. We’ll have hot dogs and hamburgers and potato salad, and we’ll eat outdoors at the wooden table.”

  “You’re going to eat?” asked Bainbridge, amazed.

  “I certainly am,” replied his mother. “Now, could you round up some of your brothers and sisters? I need a little help here.”

  * * *

  Later, after dinner was over, Bainbridge realized that the picnic was a meal he would never forget. Not that it had been spectacular, since hot dogs and hamburgers seem ordinary no matter what you do to them. It was what happened during the meal.

  The twelve Rossos had sat down to a later-than-usual dinner. They’d waited for Mr. Rosso to come home from New York, and then the barbecue had taken longer to start than anyone had expected. (It always took longer than expected, but nobody ever expected that.)

  By seven thirty, though, the picnic table had been set, and a plate of hot dogs and hamburgers sat at one end. Mrs. Rosso asked the kids to seat themselves in alphabetical order, so Abbie, Bainbridge, Candy, Woody, and Hardy sat opposite Faustine, Dinnie, Hannah, Ira, and Jan. Mr. and Mrs. Rosso each sat at an end.

  For the next few minutes food was passed back and forth, and nobody spoke except to say things like, “Jan, you’ve got ketchup on your elbow” or “Isn’t there any horseradish?” or “Hardy, you are such a pig!” (that was Woody). Then Hannah spilled her milk and, in trying to mop it up, spilled Mr. Rosso’s iced tea, too.

  At last everyone was served and ready to eat. Bainbridge was just thinking that his mother still looked awfully tired, when suddenly she stood up. “I have an announcement to make,” she said.

  She smiled the way you do when you feel like laughing and crying at the same time. Something emotional or very exciting must have happened, thought Bainbridge, and he grew nervous. He set his hamburger on his plate, put his hands in his lap, and waited. Up and down the benches on either side of the table nine other Rossos were waiting, too. Mr. Rosso was grinning.

  “As you know,” began Mrs. Rosso, “our family seems just right to me. I always wanted to have ten children, each a year apart, and that’s what your father and I did.”

  “Except for us,” chimed in Dinnie.

  “Except for you,” agreed Mrs. Rosso, “but I’d rather have twins than perfect stairsteps.”

  The twins looked at each other and smiled.

  “Well,” their mother went on, “although we hadn’t planned this, it seems that our family is going to increase by one member —”

  “A dog! A dog!” Jan shrieked. “We’re getting a dog after all! Oh, I knew we would!” She jumped up and ran to her mother.

  “I’m glad we saved the food dish and toys and stuff,” Hannah whispered, leaning across the table to Woody.

  “Jan, kids, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” said Mrs. Rosso, disentangling Jan from her legs and aiming her toward her place at the table. “We’re not getting a dog…. I’m pregnant. I’m going to have another baby.”

  Bainbridge and his brothers and sisters were slow to react.

  “Another baby?” Candy repeated.

  “Eleven kids,” Ira said under his breath.

  The twins stared at each other. “Inmooglay!” exclaimed Dinnie.

  Bainbridge’s mouth dropped down.

  Hardy’s fork clattered onto the table.

  “No dog?” Jan cried.

  Then Abbie jumped up, ran to the other end of the table, and hugged her mother. “Oh, Mom! That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed.

  Hardy retrieved his fork and kissed Mrs. Rosso.

  Suddenly all of the kids were exclaiming, “A baby! Oh, wow!” and “I can’t believe it!” and “I hope it’s another girl,” and “I hope it’s another boy.”

  Bainbridge h
ugged his father.

  Hannah leaned across Ira and said to Jan, “Hey, squirt, now you won’t be the baby of the family anymore.”

  Jan burst into tears.

  “Hannah, why did you have to say that?” asked Ira. “That was mean.” He put one arm protectively across Jan’s shoulders, and Jan stuck her tongue out at Hannah, who stuck her tongue out at both Jan and Ira.

  Suddenly Bainbridge thought of something. As the oldest boy in the family, he would ordinarily have kept quiet and discussed his idea with his parents in private. But in all the excitement he couldn’t help himself.

  “Hey, Mom, Dad,” said Bainbridge in a tone of voice that made everyone quiet down and look at him. “You’ve always said we can’t get a pet because ten kids is enough. But now you guys are having another kid, so I think we ought to be able to have a dog — or something.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Rosso looked at each other down the length of the picnic table. Mr. Rosso raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  But Mrs. Rosso’s only response was “Ten kids is enough.”

  “Not fair,” said Faustine flatly.

  “No way,” agreed Hardy.

  “A rule is a rule,” Mrs. Rosso persisted.

  “You broke the rule,” Abbie pointed out patiently. “You said ten kids is enough, and now you’re going to have eleven kids. If you get to have one more, why can’t we have a pet?”

  “Because —”

  “And don’t say, ‘Because I said so,’” said Woody.

  Bainbridge shot Woody a withering look. Now was not the time to be rude, no matter how unfair their mother was being.

  “Young man,” Mr. Rosso began warningly.

  “Sorry,” Woody apologized quickly.

  “How come, Mom?” Jan asked.

  “Because I know who would end up feeding the pet and cleaning up after it and training it and exercising it.”

  “We would,” said Candy quietly.

  “But if you didn’t, I’d have a new baby and a pet to care for,” Mrs. Rosso pointed out.

  “Mom?” spoke up Ira. “What if you made a rule about the pet?”

  Everyone looked at Ira questioningly.

  “What, honey?” said Mrs. Rosso.

  “You make lots of rules, and we follow them all, don’t we?”

  Bainbridge suddenly understood what his little brother was trying to say. “Yeah. We always put the folded clothes on the bottom of the piles, and we sit in the van in alphabetical order.”

  “So make up a rule about a pet,” Ira went on. “Like, on even-numbered days kids A through E take care of the pet. On odd-numbered days kids F through J take care of it.”

  “Hey! No way!” cried Hardy. “Ira, you little sneak. There are more odd-numbered days than even-numbered ones.”

  “See what I mean?” said Mrs. Rosso. “It’s already starting. “

  But Hardy didn’t hear her. “The F-through-J kids would get to take care of the pet more than the rest of us would,” he said crossly.

  There was a moment of silence. Then everyone began to laugh.

  “Mom?” Bainbridge asked again. “Our pet?”

  “I’ll think about it,” his mother replied, still smiling.

  “I’ll help her,” Mr. Rosso added.

  * * *

  Mrs. Rosso didn’t give the kids an answer until the next day.

  Her answer was yes.

  That night the ten Rosso kids held a meeting in the boys’ bedroom.

  “Any kind of pet we want!” Hardy was saying. “So of course we’ll get a dog.”

  “Of course,” agreed the others.

  “Where’s the best pet store?” Candy wondered.

  “Who cares?” said Woody. “Let’s decide what kind of dog to get. I want a Doberman pinscher.”

  “I want a cocker spaniel,” said Abbie.

  “I want a beagle,” said Ira. “Like Snoopy.”

  “I want a collie,” said Jan. “Like Lassie.”

  “I want a Welsh corgi,” said Candy.

  “I want a golden retriever,” said Hardy.

  “I want a poodle,” said Dinnie.

  “I want a toy poodle,” said Faustine.

  “I want a Saint Bernard,” said Hannah.

  “I want a Great Dane,” said Bainbridge.

  “Well, now what?” asked Woody.

  “Maybe,” said Dinnie, “instead of deciding what kind of dog to get, we should just go to the pound and see what they have.”

  “The pound!” exclaimed Woody.

  “Yes,” replied Dinnie. “Give a home to a dog without a home.”

  “Right,” agreed Faustine.

  “You know,” said Bainbridge, “I think that’s the only thing to do. Does everyone agree?”

  Everyone agreed, except for Woody, who had his heart set on a Doberman pinscher.

  “Woody,” said Bainbridge, “Mom and Dad said we could get a dog, not a monster. I don’t think they’d okay a Doberman pinscher anyway.”

  Woody nodded his head in resignation. He didn’t look happy.

  “Hey!” exclaimed Abbie. “Let’s get What Shall We Name the Baby? and figure out what the new baby will be named! Oh, I hope it’s not going to be something truly horrible, like Krenella.”

  Abbie found the book and brought it back to the boys’ room, where her brothers and sisters were waiting nervously. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s see. This baby’s name will begin with K. If it’s a boy he’ll be” — she counted down to the eleventh name on the boys’ K page —“Keegan.”

  “Not too bad,” Hardy said slowly.

  “And if it’s a girl, she’ll be … Kelly.”

  “Ooh, Kelly. That’s pretty,” said Candy.

  “And normal,” added Hannah.

  “I hope it’s a girl,” said Jan.

  “I hope it’s a boy,” said Woody.

  “You know what?” said Bainbridge. “I just realized something. I don’t have to start a football team for farm kids. No matter what the baby is, in a few years, when Kelly or Keegan is walking, we’ll have eleven kids. That’s enough for our own football team.”

  “Right,” agreed Abbie with a happy sigh. “I’m glad we’ll be an eleven-kid family.”

  “Even if it ruins Mom’s stairsteps,” added Ira.

  “Wait,” said Bainbridge. “Correction. Not an eleven-kid family.”

  “What then?” asked Woody. “You don’t mean … more twins?”

  “Nope,” replied Bainbridge. “I mean an eleven-kid, one-pet family.”

  Abbie thought it was fitting that the twins were the ones who found the Rossos’ pet. They were the biggest animal lovers of all, and they were also the ones who were most concerned about homeless animals. It happened two days after Mrs. Rosso had announced her surprising news and not long before she was to drive Abbie and her brothers and sisters to the pound.

  “Faustine! Gardenia!” called Mrs. Rosso. “Would one of you run to the end of the driveway and get the mail, please?”

  The twins went together, of course, talking excitedly about what kind of dog they might find at the pound.

  “Shh!” Dinnie said as they neared the mailbox.

  Faustine stopped talking. She thought she heard a tiny squeak. Then the noise came again, more loudly. “Mew.”

  The twins looked at each other. They ran to the ditch along the side of the road. “Kitty!” they called. “Here, kitty!”

  “Mew. Mew!”

  It didn’t take long for the twins to find a tiny gray-and-white kitten huddled into a little ball near a puddle in the ditch. The kitten was wet and dirty and trembling.

  “I’ll get it!” cried Dinnie, sliding into the ditch.

  “Be careful,” said Faustine. “Don’t let it bite you.”

  Dinnie approached the kitten slowly, talking to it in whispers. “You poor thing,” she kept saying. “It’s okay.”

  The kitten was too miserable to try to run away from Dinnie. It allowed itself to be picked up and then to be handed
to Faustine before Dinnie scrambled out of the ditch. The twins took turns carrying it back to the farmhouse.

  “Oh, good. You’re back,” said Mrs. Rosso, as they opened the screen door and came into the kitchen. “Let me just look at the mail, and then we’ll leave for the pound.”

  “Oops,” said Dinnie, as she realized they’d forgotten the mail.

  “Oops,” said Faustine.

  And at that moment Mrs. Rosso saw the kitten. She gasped.

  “We found it in the ditch,” said Faustine.

  “Someone must have abandoned it,” Dinnie added.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake. Let’s get it cleaned up.” Mrs. Rosso set up an assembly line to wash, dry, feed, and cuddle the kitten.

  By the time the kitten’s fur· was clean and its tummy was full, it was purring contentedly in Abbie’s lap, eyes half-closed. The other kids had gathered.

  “I guess we’re going to keep it, aren’t we?” said Abbie, glad that, for once, there was no question about whether they were allowed to.

  “You want the kitten for your pet?” Mrs. Rosso asked. “This is it, you know. One baby, one pet. We aren’t going to get a dog in addition to the kitten.”

  The Rosso kids held a silent meeting with their eyes. The kitten wasn’t the same as a beagle or a poodle, and certainly not the same as a Doberman pinscher, but they wanted to keep it. After all, it was homeless, too. What did it matter whether they gave a home to a dog from the pound or a kitten from the ditch? Besides, who could turn away the rumbly ball of fur that was dozing in Abbie’s lap?

  “We want the kitten,” Abbie said, speaking for her brothers and sisters as well as herself.

  Mrs. Rosso nodded. “It’s settled, then. Who wants to drive into town to buy a litter box and some food?”

  Everyone did, but in the end Hannah, Hardy, Bainbridge, Jan, and Ira went, while Abbie, Candy, Woody, and the twins stayed with the kitten. They cuddled it and talked to it until it was exhausted and fell sound asleep, its front paws hanging over one side of Abbie’s lap and its tail hanging over the other.

  The kitten was wide awake by the time the others returned with two bags of cat supplies. As Abbie watched it frisk daringly around the kitchen, she thought, You’d never know that just a few hours ago this kitty was lost in a muddy ditch. Now it looks as if it owns our kitchen.