The Orphan and the Mouse (12 page)

“It was a dark and cold winter morning when at last I made my move. I did not say good-bye. Carrying nothing, I squeezed through the foyer portal, then scurried beneath the front gate. Waiting at the curb, shivering and alone, I soon heard the deep rumble of truck tires on the macadam and saw headlights in the gloom. The brakes squealed. The truck stopped. The driver rolled down his window and tossed a newspaper over the fence.

“I had only a few seconds, and I made the most of them. I leaped to the running board and dug my claws into the rubber.”

Mary's heart pounded in sympathy.

“I felt exultant! I thought I was safe,” said Andrew.

“And weren't you?” Mary asked.

Andrew shook his head. “I hadn't counted on one thing—the rush of freezing wind that followed the truck's
acceleration. It dislodged my claws and pushed me backward toward the precipice. At any second, I expected to be dashed to my death!”

Mary shuddered. This was a good story. Lots of suspense.

“Then, at the last possible moment, the truck braked, and I somersaulted forward. I was dizzy and off-balance, but when the driver's door opened, I managed to stumble sideways into the truck's cab. A few minutes later, the truck stopped to drop off a bundle of newspapers at the Market Street Newsstand, and the driver alighted to visit with the owner, Mr. Valenti. That was when I took the opportunity to disembark.”

“Why there?” Mary asked.

Andrew's beady eyes turned dreamy. “It was the smell of people and comestibles,” he said. “I was ravenous, and the newsstand smells were delicious. I thought I could do worse than to make it the first stop on my quest.”

“But it wasn't the first stop,” said Mary. “You stayed there.”

Andrew nodded. “I did.”

Mary felt a little harrumph of satisfaction. So the big-time, boy-wonder mouse hadn't gone on such a magnificent odyssey at all. He had gone to the Market Street Newsstand . . . and
finis
. She thought of a question.

“Uh, just what exactly is a newsstand?”

“A wonderful place,” Andrew said, “a small wooden shelter that's busy all day with humans learning the news of the world from colorful and interesting magazines and newspapers, some of them with photographs.”

“Are there photographs of mice?” Mary asked.

“There is an occasional photograph of”—Andrew lowered his voice to a whisper—“
rats
. And they are always shown in an unfavorable light.”

“Naturally,” said Mary.

“Besides that, there are photographs of predators and, even more often, of canines. But the vast majority of the photographs show humans.”

“Such a self-centered species,” said Mary.

“The newsstand was a good home,” Andrew said, “but it did have its perils. Mr. Valenti was larger even than the usual full-grown male, and he often wore heavy boots. While usually it was easy to hear him coming, I still worried about being squashed. Also, the newsstand was only open from five-thirty a.m. till eight p.m., which meant there was no heat overnight.”

“And you mentioned the comestibles?” Mary prompted.

Andrew offered a detailed and rhapsodic account of the candies, gums, nuts, crackers, and packaged cookies on offer at the Market Street Newsstand, besides well-considered opinions on the merits of Wrigley's spearmint versus Juicy Fruit gum and Milky Way versus Hershey chocolate bars.

“Was it the quality of the comestibles that kept you from leaving the newsstand and completing your quest?”

Andrew's whiskers bristled. “Who says I did not complete my quest? At the Market Street Newsstand, I realized that the true nature of my quest was not spatial but mental.”

Mary covered her mouth with her paw to keep from
laughing. Did he not know how pompous he sounded? But when his whiskers drooped again, she felt a pang of remorse. “Please continue,” she said.

Andrew wiped his paw across his face. “At the Market Street Newsstand . . .” he began, then stopped and cocked his head. “Where was I?”

Mary came to a realization. “Andrew Mouse,” she said, “have you memorized your story word for word?”

The auditors had memorized the story of Stuart Little word for word, and most mice knew a few passages by heart. But it would be strange for a mouse to memorize a personal story so exactly. The implication was that the story must be very, very important.

Andrew looked sheepish. “Yeah. I practiced a lot.”

Mary could just see it. All alone on cold winter nights in the newsstand, Andrew pacing back and forth to keep warm while declaiming the story of his life. Probably he had envisioned his triumphant return to the colony, the crowds of cheering auditors, the tale retold over Cherry Street generations. Instead, the populace had gone away, and his only auditor, Mary Mouse, had not cheered even once.

Andrew's likely disappointment awakened her sympathy. “A mental journey,” she prompted.

“Right,” he said. “In short, the way that I attained wisdom and fulfillment and completed my quest was this: I learned to read.”

Mary was flabbergasted.

For generations, the auditors of the Cherry Street colony had observed that when Miss Ragone told a story, she looked at the book she held and at regular intervals turned its pages. From this observation, they concluded that the markings on the book's pages contained the story, which Miss Ragone deciphered through the process the humans called reading.

Mice had to memorize every story they told. How convenient for human beings that they did not!

The auditors—whose job was to listen to stories, then retell them—were especially eager to learn this useful human trick. From their observations of the classrooms on the second floor, they deduced that Miss Ragone taught the human pups to read, and the auditors duly attended her lessons. In addition, thieves were assigned to steal pages for the auditors to study. But try as they might, the mice could never make sense of the marks on the pages. They did not resemble words, but only misshapen mouse-tracks.

“Please forgive my skepticism,” Mary said to Andrew, “but the colony's wisest mice have tried and failed to learn to read. Why were you able to do so on your own?”

“I had certain advantages,” Andrew said modestly, “including an almost infinite supply of reading material at the newsstand, and the lack of distractions like a social life, or pups.”

Mary felt a pang at the mention of pups. How were her own girls faring? Had they arrived at their new home safely?

“Mary?” Andrew cocked his head. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “It's just—”

“What a bonehead I am,” Andrew said. “You miss your own pups, don't you? I shouldn't have spoken so casually.”

Mary wiped her nose and shook out her whiskers. “Tell me how you did it, how you learned to read.”

Andrew continued his story. “There was a male human pup who visited the newsstand sometimes,” he explained. “His name was Mario, and he was very badly behaved. He tried to steal candy when no one was looking, and comic books, too.”

“A thief like us,” Mary said.

Andrew disagreed. “Not at all. We stole only for the good of the colony. This little Mario stole out of greed.”

Mary conceded the point. “I see.”

“Also, he was not very skillful and always got caught,” Andrew went on. “But Mr. Valenti, in spite of his heavy boots, was a kind man. When Mario's mama told him Mario was having trouble in school, Mr. Valenti offered to help him with his reading. Since there were no schoolbooks at the newsstand, Mr. Valenti taught him by using newspaper headlines.”

“What are newspaper headlines?” Mary asked.

“The words at the top of each newspaper story, the title,”
Andrew explained. “Over and over, Mr. Valenti read Mario the words in the headlines, and Mario repeated them. After a while, I noticed how often the same words appeared—words like
Truman
, who is the chief director of the human territory in which our colony is located; and
Korea
, which is another territory, one that's very far away; and
war
—well, every mouse knows what war is. Because the headlines were simple and the words repeated, I began to recognize some of them. From this, I saw where our auditors had gone wrong.”

“Where?” asked Mary.

“All along, the auditors had assumed the marks were pictures. What I realized was that each mark represents a sound, and then the sounds combine to form words. After that, the marks, which are actually called letters, started to make sense.”

Mary knew just enough about reading to see how this might be true. “And after that you could read?” she asked.

“Not as well as I thought I could,” Andrew said. “The more I studied, the more I realized that reading is more complicated than just knowing each letter's sounds. Sometimes there are tricks and a letter makes no sound at all. Sometimes letters represent one sound in one word, and a different sound in the next. Take
o,u,g,h
, for example. It might be
ooh
, as in
through
, or
oh
, as in
thorough
, or
aw
, as in
ought
, or
uff
, as in
rough
and
tough
.”

Mary nodded . . . even though he had lost her completely.

“Also,” Andrew went on, “when you think about it, why
is there a
g
in there at all? If reading English made any sense,
o,u,g,h
would be pronounced
owg
, and yet it never is.”

Thoroughly confused, Mary nodded again. “How very true. But”—she hoped she was not asking too big a favor—“can you show me?”

Andrew seemed gratified to be asked. “I will,” he said, “just as soon as the newspaper arrives in the morning. Does the boss still keep it in her office?”

Mary nodded. “Jimmy brings it in and puts it on her desk. But it's too heavy for us to steal, and the boss would certainly notice it was gone.”

“We don't need all of it, only a small piece,” said Andrew. “Trust me, the boss will never notice it's gone.”

Shortly after sunrise, Mary and Andrew watched from behind the crack in the baseboard as Jimmy laid the newspaper on the boss's desk. When he left, they scurried across the oak floor and the deep-piled rug before making the climb up the steep face to the plateau above. As thieves of the colony, both were thoroughly familiar with the desktop and its landmarks. For her part, Mary couldn't help thinking how much her life had changed since the last time she'd been there.

This was no time for reflection. There was hardly time for a deep breath. By Mary's calculations, they had only about a quarter hour to carry out their mission.

In the hours before morning, the two thieves had planned each maneuver and practiced. Now, without so much as a squeak, they bit down on opposite corners of the front page, then pulled and yanked till the newspaper had unfolded and lay flat.

Next came the hard part, flipping the entire paper over.

This was because—according to Andrew—the back page was less important than the front. Thus it would be even less obvious to the boss if the missing square came from the back.

Working together, Mary and Andrew bit the right top
corner and scooted backward diagonally, pulling the corner with them. By this time, Mary had regained full strength in her wounded shoulder still the work was exhausting. At last she felt the weight of the paper shift, and . . . they had done it! The back page was on top.

Now it was up to Andrew to choose the square he wanted, so Mary sat back as he studied the markings. Was he really reading? She would soon know. When he pointed his nose at a spot near the page's edge, Mary went to work.

Nothing gnaws like a mouse, and soon the square Andrew wanted was detached. Flipping the newspaper was easier the second time; then Andrew took a moment to align it with the edge of the desk. There was, unfortunately, no way for the mice to refold it in two. They would just have to hope the boss had other things on her mind.