Ten Kids, No Pets

  “What’s all this?” asked Mr. Rosso, glancing at his wife.

  “We love Goliath,” said Dinnie.

  “And we don’t want him killed for Thanksgiving,” Faustine finished up.

  “But girls,” said Mrs. Rosso, “we can’t go back to Mr. Pritchard and tell him you fell in love with the turkey.”

  The twins shrugged.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Dinnie. Then she led the protest into the living room.

  Ira was the first one to crack. “I never thought about the killing part,” he confessed with a shudder.

  “It is kind of mean,” added Jan, looking up from a coloring book.

  That night Abbie knocked on the twins’ bedroom door. “I’ve been thinking …” she began.

  The following Monday afternoon three school buses each stopped a mile down the road from the Rossos’ farm. By the time the last one was disappearing in the distance, all ten Rosso kids were gathered around the Pritchards’ turkey pen, gazing at Goliath.

  “So we’ll just choose another turkey,” said Hardy practically. “Maybe Mr. Pritchard will let us trade. Look over there. That turkey in the corner is almost as fat as Goliath.”

  “But we’ll still have to kill it,” said Ira in a trembling voice.

  “We don’t have to, stupid,” said Woody. “Old Mr. Pritchard does that.”

  “I don’t want any of the turkeys to be killed,” Jan broke in. “It’s mean.”

  “We don’t want them to be killed either,” said Dinnie, speaking for Faustine as well.

  “Neither do I,” said Abbie and Candy at the same time.

  “I guess I don’t either,” said Bainbridge.

  “Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a turkey,” said Hardy slowly, “but why do we have to know the turkey we eat ahead of time?”

  “Right,” said Bainbridge. “I think that’s the problem.”

  The twins glanced at each other, satisfied.

  “I could eat a turkey from the freezer of Stop and Shop, I think,” said Dinnie. “I’d know it was a turkey and someone had to kill it, but we wouldn’t have known the bird ahead of time. Besides, turkeys in freezers don’t even look like turkeys. They look like frosted plastic bags.”

  “Is it agreed, then?” said Abbie. “We’ll tell Mr. Pritchard we’ve changed our minds and won’t be needing Goliath after all.”

  “Agreed!” said Dinnie joyously.

  The Rossos found Mr. Pritchard and one of his farmhands repairing the fencing around a pigsty.

  “Well, well,” said Mr. Pritchard, glancing up and seeing the ten kids coming toward him. He squinted fiercely into the sun. “Checking on that bird of yours again?”

  Abbie stepped forward. “Yes, sir,” she replied. “And we have to tell you something.”

  “What’s that?” Mr. Pritchard was still squatting on the ground. He slid his hat back, scratched his head, and stood up.

  “Well … sir … we, um, we won’t be needing him after all.”

  “You won’t, eh? Why is that?”

  “Well … our plans have changed. We hope you won’t mind too much.”

  Mr. Pritchard frowned and rubbed the white stubble on his chin. “I guess not,” he said. “I’m sure someone else will want the bird. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble selling him again.”

  Horror washed over Dinnie. They weren’t saving Goliath after all. She squeezed between Hannah and Faustine and pushed her way forward until she was next to Abbie. “Wait a sec,” she exclaimed. “We — we’ll take him after all. But we’ll take him alive.”

  * * *

  “It was the only thing I could think of,” Dinnie told her brothers and sisters desperately as they were walking home later. “I know we can’t save all the turkeys, but as least we can save Goliath.”

  “But, Dinnie, Mom is going to be doubly mad,” Abbie pointed out. “She’ll have to buy a store turkey, and she’ll be stuck with a live turkey when she’s told us hundreds of times ‘no pets.’”

  “We’ll just have to convince her to let us keep him,” Dinnie persisted. “We’ll wait until he arrives. She won’t be able to say no. It’ll almost be Thanksgiving then. She’ll have to show some holiday spirit.”

  * * *

  Somehow everybody “forgot” to tell Mr. and Mrs. Rosso that they would need to add a frozen turkey to their shopping list. Then, early in the morning on the day before Thanksgiving, the Pritchard Turkey Farm truck drove up the Rossos’ driveway, and one of the farmhands jumped out of the cab. He hurried around to the back of the truck, lifted a crate off, and deposited it by the Rossos’ stoop.

  Mrs. Rosso stuck her head out the door in surprise. “But that’s a live turkey!” she exclaimed.

  “The children said you’d changed your mind, ma’am,” replied the farmhand. He touched his hat, then climbed into the cab, backed the truck around noisily, and headed down the drive.

  Mrs. Rosso turned to find Dinnie and Faustine watching her sheepishly.

  “Do you know anything about this?” she asked, closing the door behind her with a blast of chilly air. She sounded more confused than angry.

  Dinnie grasped Faustine’s hand. “Borderish,” she muttered helplessly.

  “Don’t you think we should let that turkey out?” asked Faustine carefully, taking a step toward the door. “We can’t just —”

  “Not until I find out what that man meant when he said, ‘The children said you’d changed your mind,’” replied Mrs. Rosso. “Into the kitchen.”

  While Faustine helped her mother with the table-setting system, Dinnie slumped in a chair and told Mrs. Rosso the entire story of Goliath.

  Mr. Rosso came into the kitchen in time to hear the end of the story, threw on his hat, coat, scarf, and gloves, and flew out the door in search of a frozen turkey.

  Mrs. Rosso tried to remain calm and patient, but she was having difficulty. “I know how you feel about animals, Gardenia,” she said, “but you should have told me what was going on. You are not the only one eating Thanksgiving dinner. Getting a fresh turkey was my idea. I should have had some say in the matter.”

  Dinnie hung her head. “I know,” she replied.

  “It wasn’t just your fault, though,” Mrs. Rosso went on. “All of you kept quiet. Abbie and Bainbridge should have known better.”

  “We all wanted to tell you, Mom,” said Dinnie. “I guess we were just afraid for Goliath.”

  Mrs. Rosso patted Dinnie’s knee. “Well, your hearts were in the right place,” she said. “Now let’s just hope your father finds something big enough for the twelve of us.”

  While they waited for Mr. Rosso to return, Mrs. Rosso gathered all the children and told them exactly what she thought about what they had done. She gave Abbie and Bainbridge an extra talking-to because they were the oldest. It wasn’t really fair, but that’s what happened. The oldest were supposed to know better.

  Mr. Rosso came home empty-handed. “Sorry,” he told his family. “I drove to five supermarkets. There’s not a turkey to be had. Everyone’s already bought theirs.”

  “Not a single turkey?” repeated Woody pitifully.

  “Well, actually I did find one, but it was about the size of a baseball. While I was trying to decide whether there was any point in taking it, somebody else bought it.”

  “Then I guess we’ll have a vegetarian dinner this year.” Mrs. Rosso looked around the kitchen at the vegetables and cornbread and muffins and pies. “There’s certainly plenty to eat without Goliath.”

  “Goliath!” exclaimed Dinnie, remembering. “He’s still out there in that crate.”

  “Hey,” said Woody, “maybe Mr. Pritchard could come over and … you know. I bet there’s time.”

  “No.” Nine pairs of angry eyes bored into him.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” said Woody.

  “Bainbridge, why don’t you and Dinnie go outside and fix Goliath up somewhere,” suggested Mr. Rosso.

  “Does that mean we can keep
him?!” cried Dinnie.

  “Absolutely not,” replied her mother. “But there’s nothing we can do about him until after tomorrow, so we might as well make him comfortable somewhere. I suppose you know everything about keeping a turkey? What he eats, how much space he needs?”

  “Not exactly,” replied Dinnie.

  “Then call Mr. Pritchard and find out, honey. He’s your responsibility.”

  So once again the Rossos had a temporary pet. But first thing Friday morning Mrs. Rosso announced, “Time to find a proper home for Goliath. Since all you kids saved his neck, you may all participate in the search. But, Dinnie, I’m appointing you head of the Find a Home for Goliath Committee.”

  Most of the rest of Dinnie’s Thanksgiving vacation was spent poring through the ads in the local papers with her brothers and sisters and making phone calls. Every call led to a dead end, until Abbie, momentarily distracted by a page of department store ads, saw the announcement that read: “Hillsborough Mall — 100 Stores! Restaurants! Movies! Exhibits! And Now — Bring the Kids to Our New Petting Zoo!”

  “See? A petting zoo,” said Abbie after she’d read the ad to the others. “Maybe they’d like a nice tom turkey.”

  “A nice, polite tom turkey,” added Faustine.

  “Well, we’ll find out,” replied Dinnie.

  After several phone calls she reached the woman in charge of the petting zoo, who was delighted with the donation of Goliath and even sent someone out to the Rossos’ farm to pick him up.

  “Come visit him anytime you want,” called the man before he drove off.

  “We will!” Dinnie called back.

  And she did — many times. But a pet at the petting zoo was not at all the same as a pet of her own at home.

  “I love Christmas, I love snow.” Janthina Rosso hummed busily. She tried hard to remember the song Mr. Heppler, her first-grade teacher, had sung the other day.

  Jan was filling in a worksheet for school. It was all about Christmas, but that didn’t fool her. A worksheet was work whether it showed the alphabet or pictures of Santa Claus. And this worksheet was homework. No fair. Jan was sure Ira had never had homework when he was in first grade.

  Jan paused and sucked on the end of her green crayon. She hoped the crayon would make a spot on her front tooth. Then she could walk around smiling, and all day people would say, “Jan, you’ve got a piece of spinach on your tooth,” and Jan could laugh and show them it was just crayon.

  Jan looked at her worksheet again. She had finished two rows. The third row showed a picture of a bell with an X over it. Next to the bell were a candle, a wreath, and a bow. Jan knew she was supposed to make an X over the bow, since it was the other B word, and color in the candle and the wreath. She looked down the page. Four more rows. This worksheet would take forever! Maybe one of her brothers or sisters would finish it for her. They usually did anything she asked.

  Jan wandered into the kitchen, which was warm and smelled of gingerbread. Hannah was the only one there, busy doing her homework. You never knew what to expect when you asked Hannah a question, but Jan decided to try anyway. “Hannah, will you finish my worksheet for me?”

  “A-hem!”

  Jan spun around. Her mother was standing in the doorway. “Janthina, it is Friday afternoon, and you have plenty of time to do your homework. Besides, your homework is for you to do, not anyone else. Why don’t you finish it right now? We have lots of Christmas things to do this weekend.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes. We’re going to get our tree, remember?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  Christmas, Christmas, Christmas! It was Jan’s favorite time of the year. And here in the country, Christmas somehow seemed more special than in New York City. Jan had to admit that it wasn’t quite as exciting — no glittering store windows everywhere you turned, no Santa Clauses on every corner — but it was more fun.

  One day, shortly after the man from the petting zoo had come for Goliath, Mrs. Rosso had given a “country Christmas” speech that wasn’t too different from her “country Thanksgiving” speech, and Jan had paid close attention.

  “We are going to become do-it-yourselfers,” Mrs. Rosso had said. “We are going to make our own decorations and some of our own presents. We’re going to chop down our own Christmas tree, and make wreaths from holly and laurel and evergreens, and do our baking from scratch.”

  “Can we still use the electricity?” asked Woody.

  Mrs. Rosso laughed. “Of course we can. And we’ll put up the store-bought decorations we already have. And we’ll have to buy most of the materials and ingredients we need. I just want you kids to see that Christmas isn’t all department stores and electronic toys and things that come out of boxes and grocery bags.”

  “Anyone who wants to use my tools is welcome,” added Mr. Rosso. “I’ll be glad to give you a hand if you want to make gifts or decorations in the workshop. There’s just one thing. I’m going to be working on a secret project — let’s call it Project X — in the basement. I’ll keep it away from the workshop when I’m not busy with it. I’ll cover it with a sheet. And I expect you not to peek. Is that clear?”

  Mr. Rosso tried to sound stern, but Jan could see that his eyes were dancing and his mouth was twitching. “It’s clear,” said Jan, and everyone laughed, since Jan had such a terrible time keeping secrets, hers or anyone else’s. “Who’s Project X for?” she wanted to know.

  “My lips are sealed,” said Mr. Rosso. “So no peeking. And if you see a sign on the basement door that says Project X, don’t come downstairs. That means I’m working on it.”

  “It’s probably another wall unit,” Jan heard Woody whisper to Hardy.

  From that day on there were mini-workshops throughout the farmhouse. The kitchen table was almost always covered with cookie decorations and cookie cutters and spices and flour. A table was set up in the den for card making. A table in the family room became the ornament-making center. And a table in the messy mudroom was where Mrs. Rosso worked on her evergreen wreaths.

  Jan sighed and sat down next to Hannah to finish her worksheet.

  * * *

  The next afternoon, after a lunch of hot soup, the twelve Rossos put on their outdoor clothes. “It’s only twenty-eight degrees today,” said Ira, glancing at the thermometer.

  “Hats for everyone, then,” Mrs. Rosso announced.

  When the kids were bundled up to her satisfaction, the Rossos set out across the farmyard. Mr. Rosso stopped in the shed for an ax, a saw, and Jan and Ira’s sled, and then they trudged through the woods.

  A dusting of snow, not even enough to cover the oak leaves on the ground, had fallen the night before. It didn’t crunch underfoot or smush into snowballs, but it was a nice snow, Jan thought. It made the woods look Christmasy.

  “‘Whose woods these are,’” said Candy, quoting a Robert Frost poem as they walked along, “‘I think I know. His house is in the village, though.’”

  “Let’s sing Christmas songs!” suggested Jan, watching her foggy breath puff away in front of her.

  “Great,” said Hannah. “Here’s a good one. ‘We three kings of Orient are, smoking on a rubber cigar. It was loaded and explo-oded —’”

  “Hannah,” said Mr. Rosso warningly, as Woody and Hardy dissolved into laughter.

  “Daddy, I don’t know that one,” Jan complained, and couldn’t understand why her sisters and brothers (except Ira) laughed at that, too.

  “Never mind, Jan,” Ira whispered.

  “Bainbridge, will you pull me on the sled?” Jan asked pitifully.

  “Sure,” he replied, helping her on.

  “You kids are supposed to be looking for a tree,” Mrs. Rosso reminded them.

  “Looking for a tree!” exclaimed Hannah. “We’re surrounded!”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “There are lots of fir trees farther ahead,” said Faustine. The twins had spent more time in the woods than anyone else had.

  Sure en
ough, the Rossos soon came to a small grove of evergreens.

  “Wow!” cried Abbie. “Look at this tree! It’s perfect.”

  “No, look at this one,” said Hardy.

  “Here’s a big one,” said Bainbridge.

  “Not too tall,” Mr. Rosso cautioned. “It has to fit in the living room.”

  It was Jan who finally found a tree that everyone agreed on. It was neither too tall nor too squat, too skinny nor too wide, and the needles were the perfect length for showing off ornaments.

  Bainbridge whacked at the trunk with an ax.

  “Oh! I hear it crying!” exclaimed Dinnie.

  “You do not,” said Jan, but she felt a little sorry for the tree, too. What could she do, though? You had to have a tree for Santa to leave presents under.

  When Bainbridge had made a notch in the tree, the others took turns sawing through the trunk. The tree began to wobble and lean and at last …

  “Timber!” cried Hannah, but her father caught the tree before it hit the ground.

  Mr. Rosso laid it on the sled. “Only the tree gets a ride back,” he told Jan. “You can walk alongside and hold it in place if you want.”

  “Since it’s my tree, I better.”

  “It is not your tree, you just —” Hannah began.

  But Mrs. Rosso put a stop to the argument. “We’ll make hot chocolate when we get home,” she announced.

  Everyone picked up the pace. When they reached the farmhouse, Mrs. Rosso and Jan, Ira, Hannah, and the twins started the hot chocolate while the other kids helped Mr. Rosso stand the tree in a bucket of water on the back stoop and spray its branches with Wilt-Pruf.

  “Why is my tree outside, Mommy?” asked Jan.

  “We have to leave it there until it’s a little closer to Christmas. If we bring it inside now, it’ll dry out, and its needles will fall off.”

  “Ew,” replied Jan. But she gazed proudly at her tree. And every morning and every night until the Rossos brought it inside, she stepped onto the stoop to see that it was all right.