Toys Come Home: being the early experiences of an intelligent stingray, a brave buffalo, and a brand-new someone called Plastic

CHAPTER TWO

The Story of an Ear

As winter fades and spring blooms, StingRay spends most of her time indoors—learning to play checkers against herself, watching TV, playing with the Girl, listening to stories, nodding while Bobby Dot lectures.

Now the rains have stopped and the air is hot with the smell of earth and grass. It is finally summer. Today StingRay, Sheep, and Bobby Dot are in the backyard. There is a cluster of flowering rosebushes by the fence. The songs of birds and the buzz of mosquitoes.

The Girl and her mother go in and out of the house, bringing lemonade, a picnic blanket, and a parasol. The sun is warm and sinking in the sky.

A big kid comes over to play with the Girl. She is called Bethany and her hands seem very large to StingRay. She can stand on her hands, this big kid. And do a cartwheel.

Her voice is too loud.

The Girl and Bethany dig some holes and make roads for a couple of toy cars. They turn somersaults while the mommy reads a book.

“Let’s play ball!” says Bethany, her hair full of grass. (Sheep is eyeing the grass and making tiny, almost invisible chewing motions with her jaw.)

“I don’t have a ball,” says the Girl.

“Everybody has a ball,” says Bethany.

“I don’t.”

(What’s a ball? StingRay wonders.)

“We had a ball,” says the mommy. “But we lost it at the park. Why don’t you toss one of your animals?”

Bethany grabs Sheep and throws her up in the air, catching her neatly in both hands.

(A ball must be a kind of animal, thinks StingRay.)

“Maybe not Sheep,” says the mom. “She’s old. And you could hurt yourself on her wheels.”

“She’s a flying sheep!” cries Bethany, tossing Sheep to the Girl.

(A ball is a flying animal. StingRay thinks she knows all about it now.)

The mommy goes inside, muttering something about maybe having a tennis ball somewhere that would make a better choice.

Bethany throws Sheep. Blop!

The Girl throws Sheep back. Blop!

And again. And again.

Sheep is frightened. StingRay can see it. Her hard black eyes bulge in terror and her neck is tucked as tight into her woolly body as she can get it.

Blop.

Aaaaaaand blop.

Aaaaaaand blop. Sometimes they drop her, or miss the catch entirely. Then Bethany and the Girl run laughing across the lawn, grab Sheep from the ground, and—

Blop! Blop!

Keep playing.

“They shouldn’t do that!” StingRay whispers to Bobby Dot.

Bobby Dot grunts.

“Really!” StingRay is outraged. “It’s like they don’t even know she has feelings!”

“Better her than me,” the walrus whispers.

“Not better her than you. She’s old! She could break.”

“On the contrary,” says Bobby Dot. “She’s survived for years. Sheep is built to last.”

“Shouldn’t we stop it?” says StingRay.

“What can we do?” says Bobby Dot. “Anyway, she probably likes it.”

But StingRay can tell that Sheep does not.

Blop.

Aaaaaaand blop.

Aaaaaaand bang! Sheep is thrown too far and too hard! She hits the wooden fence and falls down—scrabble, scrabble, scriiiiitch—through the fat yellow blossoms and into the arms of the rosebush.

All is silent. The children walk over and have a look.

“It’s thorny,” Bethany announces. “Your mom is going to have to get her out.”

The Girl looks at Sheep, hanging in a tangle of branches. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” says Bethany.

“I think she’s hurt,” says the Girl. “I’m sorry, Sheep.”

“She’s fine.”

“Kids! Dinner’s ready,” calls the Girl’s father, opening the screen door. He trots down the back steps and collects the empty lemonade bottles, the parasol, and the picnic blanket. “Go on in. Spaghetti and tomato sauce.”

“Pasghetti!” yells the Girl. She scoops up Bobby Dot and runs into the house with Bethany close behind her.

The sun is setting. StingRay and Sheep are alone in the yard. StingRay can hear the sounds of the family, plus Bethany and Bethany’s dad, eating spaghetti and talking. Glasses clink. A piece of silverware clatters to the floor. People laugh.

“Someone will come outside and get us, right?” StingRay asks Sheep.

Sheep bleats, softly. Pitifully.

“Yes, someone will.” StingRay answers her own question. “Just like someone came and got me from the basement. Don’t worry. The Girl won’t be able to sleep without you, Sheep. She needs you in the high bed with her,” says StingRay, though that last sentence catches in her throat.

Sheep only bleats.

The two of them listen as the humans eat peach cobbler and the kids dance around the living room to a song about “glorious mud.”

They listen as Bethany and her father say good night and drive away in their car.

They listen as the people head upstairs and the Girl runs water in the bathroom. They can hear her splash in the tub. They can even hear the whizz of her electric toothbrush. Then the dad reading aloud.

And the dad singing.

The parents chatting downstairs. Washing dishes.

Going to bed.

“Okay. No one is coming,” says StingRay finally. “But they’ll come in the morning. I mean, they know where we are. And we’re not even anywhere scary. So that’s good.”

Sheep just bleats. And the bleat sounds frantic.

Sheep actually is somewhere scary, remembers StingRay. She is in a thorny bush.

StingRay flops over, the cool night grass tickling her tummy. Looking up, she sees that a single huge thorn pierces one of Sheep’s felt ears. Sheep is suspended by her ear from that thorn, her body and her wheeled platform dangling down through the branches.

“Does it hurt?” asks StingRay.

Sheep bleats.

Okay.

This is serious.

StingRay must rescue Sheep. Sheep—who is not really even StingRay’s friend; Sheep, who does not want StingRay to sleep on the high bed; Sheep, who keeps falling asleep while StingRay is talking; Sheep, who isn’t the sort of person to care a whole lot about anybody else’s loneliness but spends her days gently nibbling one corner of the Girl’s box spring or sometimes a shoelace—Sheep is in trouble. And it doesn’t matter, suddenly, that Sheep has never helped StingRay.

StingRay will help Sheep.

But if StingRay climbs the thorn bush, her good-looking plush will get thorns in it.

Plus, she might get stuck.

Even if she did get up to the branch, it is not clear that StingRay’s flippers will be able to unhook Sheep’s ear from the thorn.

“Slingshot.”

What? Did Sheep bleat something? StingRay was thinking important thoughts.

“Slingshot.”

StingRay knows what a slingshot is. She and Sheep and Bobby Dot saw one on television the other day, while the Girl was at school and the grown-ups at work. It is a contraption where you get yourself a big rubber band and a rock;

you stretch the rubber band around the rock,

and you attach ends of the stretched rubber band to two sticks in the ground,

and then you streeeeeeeeetch the rubber band and the rock back together soooooo far—

and let go.

Then the rock zings through the air and hits your enemies on the head!

Hopefully.

“What are you yammering about?” StingRay asks Sheep. “There is no slingshot here. There’s not even a rubber band.”

“Leg warmer.”

“I am trying to figure out how to help you,” says StingRay, irritably. Sheep must be talking nonsense from the stress of being hung in a thorny bush.

“Leg warmer.”

Oh.

StingRay sees it now, in the dark. A sparkly blue leg warmer is indeed lying on the grass, halfway under a bush.

“Very pretty, but I’m problem-solving here.”

“Slingshot.” Sheep’s bleat is feeble but persistent.

StingRay investigates the leg warmer. It is stretchy and quite long.

Like a rubber band.

Sheep wants her to build a slingshot. (Who would ever imagine that Sheep had the brains to think of it?)

“I’m going to rescue you with a leg warmer!” cries StingRay.

She gets to work. First she ties one end of the leg warmer to one post of the back-porch stair rail. Then she takes the other end of the leg warmer in her mouth and ties it around the other post, pulling it tight.

Then she wiggles herself into the center of the stretched warmer, and scootches up the steps until it is pulled as far back as it can possibly go. She is only holding herself in place by pushing down hard, hard with her tail.

Frrrrrr, Frrrrrr, Frrrrrr.

StingRay hears herself making this sound in the back of her throat.

It is a fear noise. Because she could slingshot herself toward where Sheep is hanging from the rosebush and—

Miss.

She could hit the bush full-on and end up covered in thorns.

She would be a thorny stingray forever and ever after that,

and everyone would call her Pokey because

she was always poking them with her thorns.

Or she could hit the fence behind the bush,

and be flattened into the shape of a waffle.

People would put butter and syrup on her

and cut her into bite-sized pieces,

or worst of all,

she could go over the fence and be lost

forever in the yard of strangers.

StingRay is about to ease herself out of the slingshot and just slither up the steps to wait sweetly on the doorstep for the people to find her in the morning, when Sheep bleats again. It is such a soft, sad bleat, it doesn’t even have a proper “b” in it.

“Aaaaa,” Sheep cries. “Aaaaa.”

StingRay stops thinking. She releases the leg warmer and launches herself across the yard,

Whoooooosh! Through the air,

bouncing off the garage,

twisting and turning—

zooping down to where Sheep hangs from the thorny branch.

Whap! StingRay grabs Sheep in her plush flippers and holds on as hard as she can to the woolly body as they hurtle, with a slight ripping sound, down to the ground, landing in the dirt beneath the rosebush.

They lie there together, Sheep and StingRay. Looking up through the dark.

StingRay glows with pride.

Rescue completed.

Rescue with a leg warmer!

Rescue from the horrible thorny bush.

Oh.

Wait.

Gazing up, StingRay sees Sheep’s softy ear.

It is still attached to the thorn.

“Look,” she says in quiet shock. “Look, Sheep. Your ear.”

Will Sheep yell at her? Maybe Sheep will call StingRay names and scold her for careless ear-losing. Weep and scream over that lovely ear that is so badly torn it can never be sewn on again.

StingRay waits, tense, for Sheep to begin yelling.

But Sheep says nothing.

Finally, StingRay flops over and peers, close up, at Sheep’s face. A small snore floats from Sheep’s nostrils. She is asleep.

. . . . .

In the early dawn, before any people in the house have woken up, Sheep opens her eyes.

Grass. There is unlimited grass here. And nobody to see her chewing it.

Nom nom nom.

Nom nom nom nom, nom nom nom!

Ooh, and clover.

Nom nom nom.

Sheep chews her way over to StingRay and gives her a gentle nudge. “Wake up. No one can see you. You can chew the grass!”

Oof. StingRay is sleepy and sore from the slingshot.

Grass doesn’t interest her.

“Or do you like clover? You can chew the clover!”

StingRay doesn’t even have teeth, but she raises her eyes politely. “How does your head feel?” she asks.

“What?” bleats Sheep. “I can’t hear you. I’ve lost my ear.”

“HOW DOES YOUR HEAD FEEL?”

Nom nom nom nom, nom nom nom. “Actual grass. Can you believe it?”

“I AM SORRY ABOUT YOUR EAR!” cries StingRay.

“You don’t have to shout. The other ear still works,” says Sheep. Then, unexpectedly, she leans her head sweetly against StingRay’s flank. “Oh. I never thought I’d get grass,” she says, sighing. “I never thought it.”

“That’s nice.”

“This is the best day of my life,” says Sheep.

“It is?” StingRay knows Sheep has been around a long time.

“Yes, it is. You, me, and a yard full of grass,” says Sheep.