But there was nothing to be alarmed about; it was only Towser who had crawled into bed with him and now lay sprawled across his feet.
Towser whined softly and his back legs twitched as he chased dream rabbits.
Taine eased his feet from beneath the dog and sat up, reaching for his clothes. It was early, but he remembered suddenly that he had left all of the furniture he had picked up the day before out there in the truck and should be getting it downstairs where he could start reconditioning it.
Towser went on sleeping.
Taine stumbled to the kitchen and looked out of the window and there, squatted on the back stoop, was Beasly, the Horton man-of-all-work.
Taine went to the back door to see what was going on.
“I quit them, Hiram,” Beasly told him. “She kept on pecking at me every minute of the day and I couldn’t do a thing to please her, so I up and quit.”
“Well, come on in,” said Taine. “I suppose you’d like a bite to eat and a cup of coffee.”
“I was kind of wondering if I could stay here, Hiram. Just for my keep until I can find something else.”
“Let’s have breakfast first,” said Taine, “then we can talk about it.”
He didn’t like it, he told himself. He didn’t like it at all. In another hour or so Abbie would show up and start stirring up a ruckus about how he’d lured Beasly off. Because, no matter how dumb Beasly might be, he did a lot of work and took a lot of nagging and there wasn’t anyone else in town who would work for Abbie Horton.
“Your ma used to give me cookies all the time,” said Beasly. “Your ma was a real good woman, Hiram.”
“Yes, she was,” said Taine.
“My ma used to say that you folks were quality, not like the rest in town, no matter what kind of airs they were always putting on. She said your family was among the first settlers. Is that really true, Hiram?”
“Well, not exactly first settlers, I guess, but this house has stood here for almost a hundred years. My father used to say there never was a night during all those years that there wasn’t at least one Taine beneath its roof. Things like that, it seems, meant a lot to father.”
“It must be nice,” said Beasly, wistfully, “to have a feeling like that. You must be proud of this house, Hiram.”
“Not really proud; more like belonging. I can’t imagine living in any other house.”
Taine turned on the burner and filled the kettle. Carrying the kettle back, he kicked the stove. But there wasn’t any need to kick it; the burner was already beginning to take on a rosy glow.
Twice in a row, Taine thought. This thing is getting better!
“Gee, Hiram,” said Beasly, “this is a dandy radio.”
“It’s no good,” said Taine. “It’s broke. Haven’t had the time to fix it.”
“I don’t think so, Hiram. I just turned it on. It’s beginning to warm up.”
“It’s beginning to—Hey, let me see!” yelled Taine.
Beasly told the truth. A faint hum was coming from the tubes.
A voice came in, gaining in volume as the set warmed up.
It was speaking gibberish.
“What kind of talk is that?” asked Beasly.
“I don’t know,” said Taine, close to panic now.
First the television set, then the stove and now the radio!
He spun the tuning knob and the pointer crawled slowly across the dial face instead of spinning across as he remembered it, and station after station sputtered and went past.
He tuned in the next station that came up and it was strange lingo, too—and he knew by then exactly what he had.
Instead of a $39.50 job, he had here on the kitchen table an all-band receiver like they advertised in the fancy magazines.
He straightened up and said to Beasly: “See if you can get someone speaking English. I’ll get on with the eggs.”
He turned on the second burner and got out the frying pan. He put it on the stove and found eggs and bacon in the refrigerator.
Beasly got a station that had band music playing.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“That’s fine,” said Taine.
Towser came out from the bedroom, stretching and yawning. He went to the door and showed he wanted out.
Taine let him out.
“If I were you,” he told the dog, “I’d lay off that woodchuck. You’ll have all the woods dug up.”
“He ain’t digging after any woodchuck, Hiram.”
“Well, a rabbit, then.”
“Not a rabbit, either. I snuck off yesterday when I was supposed to be beating rugs. That’s what Abbie got so sore about.”
Taine grunted, breaking eggs into the skillet.
“I snuck away and went over to where Towser was. I talked with him and he told me it wasn’t a woodchuck or a rabbit. He said it was something else. I pitched in and helped him dig. Looks to me like he found an old tank of some sort buried out there in the woods.”
“Towser wouldn’t dig up any tank,” protested Taine. “He wouldn’t care about anything except a rabbit or a woodchuck.”
“He was working hard,” insisted Beasly. “He seemed to be excited.”
“Maybe the woodchuck just dug his hole under this old tank or whatever it might be.”
“Maybe so,” Beasly agreed. He fiddled with the radio some more. He got a disk jockey who was pretty terrible.