The Painted Ponies of Partequineus and The Summer of the Kittens (20 page)

I waited a while until I figured he had time to put everything away, and then went outside and looked around the end of the fence to see if he was sitting on his front porch, and he was. He doesn't come over as often as he did when the kittens were really little, 'cause he says it's just too hard going up and down stairs, so I go to his house, just to talk. He always asks how they are, and I think he likes it that I go over to visit him almost every afternoon, and sometimes after supper, too. Maybe he even waits for me to come.

It's hard to remember when I thought he was mean.

Mr. Harding knows a lot of stuff. He was born before World War Two, which is really amazing. I didn't know there was anybody still alive who remembers things that are in history books. He even saw President Roosevelt once - in person I mean, not on television, 'cause they didn't have television sets then - when he was on a school trip to Washington in nineteen thirty-six. My Mom and Dad weren't even born then.

I wanted to know why he decided to be a vet, and he told me it was so he could help people who lived on farms to take care of their cows and horses and sheep and stuff, 'cause it was really hard to make a living back before the war, and without healthy animals to give milk and for wool and meat to sell, the farmers would starve. Only by the time he was ready to go to college to be a vet, the war was on and he had to go fight overseas. He joined the Royal Air Force in England and flew fighter planes.

I have to remember to tell Jimmy that.

Mr. Harding told me all about going to Guelph University in Ontario after the war, and about coming back to Nova Scotia to start his business, and how he took care of people's pets as well as farm animals, and he did that for a long time. He doesn't say much about the war, though, just that he was in it. I think talking about it makes him unhappy. Once he said that most of his friends didn't come back from overseas, which I think means they got killed.

This afternoon I asked him what it was like to shoot at other airplanes, and he tried to change the subject, but I kept after him. He told me that he hated having to fight, because the pilots in the German planes were people too, somebody's sons and brothers and husbands who were just trying to survive, like him. So I asked him why he did it, and he said, “‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'”

I asked him what that meant, and he told me, “A very wise man named Edmund Burke said that. It means that it's every individual person's responsibility to try to fix whatever's wrong with the world, just like you did when the college students abandoned Maggie and you made a home for her so she could give birth to her kittens in a safe place. The war was evil too, and we had to do something to stop it, even if it meant shooting at the soldiers on the other side.”

I guess I was quiet for a while, thinking about what he said, because he asked me, “Something bothering you?”

“I was just wondering,” I said. Then, “Never mind.”

“Why won't you tell me?”

“Because it'll sound rude.”

“Try me.”

“Okay. If it's so important to try to make things right when other people do something that's wrong, how come you told Jimmy and me not to feed Maggie?”

I felt bad as soon as I said it, because I knew it made him unhappy. I could tell from the way he looked at me.

“Hanna,” he said, “everybody makes lots of mistakes in their lives. That was one of mine, and I wish I could take it back.”

“I'm not mad at you or anything.”

“I'm glad. Anyway, I tried to make up for it by showing you how to take care of the kittens.”

“Why did you do that, anyway? You acted at first as if you didn't care.”

He didn't answer me right away, just stared out toward the dykes as if he was remembering something that happened a long time ago. Finally he said, “I think I stopped caring when things happened in my life that I couldn't do anything about. I found out that no matter how much you care, you can't always stop people from dying. I'm not sure how to explain to you how I felt. It was self-pity, I guess.”

I knew he must be talking about his wife when she had cancer, and then the crash that killed his children and grandchildren. “So what made you change your mind?”

 “You reminded me of my son when he was your age. He was a reformer too, out to save every stray cat or dog that wandered by. He once even brought home an injured bird perched on his finger. It wasn't the least bit afraid of him. He used to capture tadpoles from the pond in the meadow behind our house and put them in the goldfish tank until they became frogs, and then he'd return them to the pond.” He laughed a little. “One year he waited too long, and we had frogs hopping all over the house.”

I laughed at that, but he looked kind of sad, remembering, and I scootched over close to him. We just sat there for a while, and I was happy. I have two best friends now, Jimmy and Mr. Harding.

July 17
^th

 

I'm in trouble, Diary.

I made a really big fool of myself in church on Sunday. But I don't care. Somebody had to say something, so I did, and I'm never going back there, no matter what Mom says.

I usually don't pay any attention to what Reverend Davis is preaching about, except this time he was going on about why people are different from animals, so I listened for a change. He said that the Bible is right about God creating the whole world and everything in it, including all the animals that are on the earth, and that evolution is a bunch of crap. Okay, he didn't say “crap” 'cause he never swears, being a pastor and all, but that was the gist of it, only I'm not sure what evolution is so I don't know whether he's right or wrong about that. But I
do
know that if there was really a big flood way back then, like it says in the Bible, there's so many different kinds of animals in the world that you couldn't fit two of each of them on even a hundred boats like the Ark that Noah was supposed to have built. Besides, they'd eat each other up, right?

Anyway, it was what he said next that made me so mad. He said that the biggest difference between people and animals is that people have souls and animals don't. That didn't bother me much, on account of I'm not really sure what a soul is, but then he said that it's only people who go to Heaven when they die, and not animals. I couldn't believe he'd say that! He went on and on like that, about how people are special and not like anything else on earth, and I thought about Jimmy's little tiny guppies, and about how they've got bones and a heart and eyes and stuff just like me, so why couldn't they have a soul too?

I got to thinking about Maggie being killed and buried under the maple tree, and how that's what happens to people too, they get buried in the ground when they die, and why is that so different? And if I get to go to Heaven when I die, provided I don't commit any really big sins and have to go to Hell, why doesn't Maggie, who never did anything bad in her whole life and took such good care of her kittens?

And that's when I did it. I stood up right there in church, and I guess I looked mad because Reverend Davis stopped preaching, and he said, “Is something wrong, Hanna?” and I said in a real loud voice, “You're wrong!” and I pushed out of the pew and accidentally stepped on old Mrs. Beaton's feet and ran out the door.

Mom followed me out, and she was really mad. I tried to explain, only she said it was no excuse, that I had no right to be rude like that and disrupt the church service, and that I had to go back inside when the service was over and apologize. I didn't think I should have to, 'cause after all, he was wrong about animals not having souls or whatever and being different from us, only Mom said I had to, so we sat in the car for another twenty minutes, and after all the other people left she made me go back inside the church and we found Reverend Davis in his little room back behind the choir loft. He invited us in, and Mom said, “Hanna has something to say to you.”

“I'm sorry I walked out,” I told him. I had on what Dad calls my sullen face.

“Thank you, Hanna,” he said. “But I don't understand why you did.”

“Because you said animals don't go to Heaven.”

“Hanna's pet cat was killed a couple of weeks ago,” Mom said.

“I'm sorry, dear,” he said. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

“So it isn't true, is it?” I said. “Maggie's in Heaven, right?”

He didn't answer right away, so I knew I wasn't going to like what he said next, and I felt myself getting mad again.

“The Bible says that people have dominion over the earth, and everything that lives in it,” he said, and I said, “What's that mean?”

“That we're unique,” he told me. “Different. That's what I was explaining to the congregation, that human beings are made in the image of God, and that's why when we die we go to be with Him.” I tried to interrupt, but he kept on talking. “That's the glorious promise made to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, and it's nothing to be sad about. Animals don't go to Heaven because they don't have souls like we do.”

“Whatever that means,” I said, and Mom looked at me as if to say, “Watch yourself, young lady,” but I kept on going. “The Bible says all that, does it?”

“That's right,” Reverend Davis said.

“So everything in the Bible is true, right?”

“That's what we Christians believe.”

I figured I had him there. “Then how did Noah get all the animals on the ark when it was only forty cubits long or something” - I didn't know what a cubit was, and I didn't care - “and how come he didn't take the dinosaurs too? Did he let them all drown because they were too big to fit?”

“That's one of the mysteries we aren't meant to know. God is all-powerful, and he can do anything, even make room for all the animals in the world in a single boat.”

“What is he, magic?” I said.

“In a way, yes.”

“My Dad says there's no such thing as magic, only tricks.” This time he tried to interrupt me, but I was on a roll. “And how about those dinosaurs, anyway? How come the Bible doesn't even mention them?”

“There were giants in the earth in those days,” Reverend Davis said, and it sounded like a quote, and this time Mom interrupted, which she always told me never to do.

“Hanna, we have to go home now,” she said, but she didn't sound as angry as when she was yelling at me in the car. “I want you to apologize again, and nicely this time.”

I was
so
mad, and what I wanted to say was that everything he was talking about was a load of crap, only I wasn't thinking “crap” exactly, but something worse. But I knew I wasn't going to win this one, so I said in a really polite voice, “I'm sorry that I made a fuss in church,” and Reverend Davis said, “That's all right, dear,” and I said, just as quick as I could, “And I'm sorry that you're wrong about animals not going to Heaven.”

Mom was really quiet all the way home, and even when we went inside the house. After lunch, while I was feeding Veronica, she sat down on my bed.

“Hanna,” she said, “do you know why I was upset with you this morning?”

“Because I believe that animals go to Heaven just like us?”

“No, that's not it,” she said. “In fact, I'm very proud of you, that you think for yourself and don't just accept what other people say without asking questions. But you went about it in the wrong way.”

“I couldn't help it. He made me mad.”

“I know. But people have the right to believe what they think is right, and when it comes to religion, nobody has all the answers.”

“Reverend Davis thinks he does.”

“But
I
don't think he does, and you have the right to disagree too, except there's a right way to go about it and a wrong way. You picked the wrong way.”

Veronica stopped eating and was just playing with the nipple, so I put her down and picked Smudgie up instead and stuck a different bottle in her mouth.

“What was the right way, then?” I asked, and Mom didn't answer right away.

“You have to remember that you're still very young,” she said, “and that adults have a lot more experience than you do. They know a lot more.”

“Are you saying that adults are always right?”

“No. But children shouldn't contradict them.”

“Even when they're wrong?”

“Even when they're wrong, unless they ask for your opinion.”

“That's pretty stupid. So just because somebody's grown up, I'm supposed to believe everything they say?”

“I didn't say you have to believe them.”

“That's what it sounded like. And I'm never going back to church again if I can't express an opinion when somebody tells lies like he did.”

Mom looked tired. “You can find out many important things in church. You can learn a lot about the world from the Bible, and from Reverend Davis, too.”