The big dogs are sleeping. Silky goes first to one, and then the other, stretching out on the floor to lay nose to nose until they grumble, like old thunder, far off and benign.

  

“Who is this?” Silky asks.

     It was Silky’s turn to choose a bedtime story.

    On the cover of the book Silky found stands a befreckled girl, hands poised defiantly on her hips and orange-red braids sticking nearly straight out from either side of her head. She wears a broad, mischievous grin, a monkey on her shoulder, and enormous black and dilapidated shoes on her feet, that may or may not have once belonged to a Pirate.

     “This,” I tell Silky, “is a most adventuresome girl, to whom the rules of man have never managed to apply themselves.” 

     “What does that mean?” Silky asks.

    “It means, little angel, that she is a great deal like you."

      Silky's eyes widen. She's terribly fond of herself and anything like her. 

     "This one then," Silky says of the book, and off we go to bed. 

     I suspect we'll be adding Longstockings to someone's name soon.  

You know those fidgety, distractable children in school, who don't seem to be learning anything at all, until they're tested, and then they end up being super geniuses and stuff, knowing everything that was taught to them and more? I think Silky Joe is one of those children.     

Silky is just that. She shines, black as a crow but for her long tan socks, muzzle and smudged on brows. 

Four months, Dr. Miller says she is, twenty-three pounds. 

She stands tall and still on the high metal table as he listens to her heart beat.

"Good girl, Silky," I tell her, "Good girl."

Silky wags only the very tip of her tail. She beams though, with pride at my praise, her eyes sparkle at the sound of her new name. 

"She'll make somebody a fine dog," Dr. Miller says, having finished his examination. "Somebody." And he shoots me a wink, because we both have a good idea of who that somebody is going to be.  



   

‘Oh no, no, no, you don’t,’ I hear Agatha, above the Semi-Secret garden, say.

          
     I turn to see a flutter of rust, high in the Cherry tree there, and down Agatha swoops from its branches into the Garden.

          
     ‘Steven!’ she calls.

           
     I am already at the gate, letting myself in.

          
     ‘Your boy ...’ and by this Agatha means, of course, Peter Pan. ‘Your boy is snooping where he ought not to snoop.’

          
     Being a Thrasher, Agatha is something of a recluse, to whom the Semi-Secret garden, with its high Privet hedge made for the perfect place to home. Her chicks tend to grow brave before they grow strong, often venturing from the nest able only to fly enough to keep them from dropping to the ground like a stone. There they hop about under Agatha’s watchful eye until they can take fully to the air.

          
     Peter Pan is indeed between the flowers, with his nose to the ground. I would guess on the trail of a rabbit, but Peter Pan is young and not one to discriminate when it cuts to the chase.

          
     ‘Peter Pan!’ I call, and he comes, taking his time, on a path of his own devise, tromping and stomping and wagging his tail.

          
     ‘Gads,’ Agatha says, ‘What that boy does to your flowers.’

          
     I sigh in agreement. 

     ‘If only he was half as considerate as your chicks, Agatha.'

          
      It’s best to pay Agatha a compliment or two after ruffling her feathers so.

       We wish her a good day then, Peter Pan and I, and behind us close the gate.

“Peter Pan?”

          
    When I wake and leave the bed, Peter Pan takes my place. He curls into the warm hollow that my shoulder makes there, his head on the pillow as mine had been.

          
      “I have your breakfast,” I tell him, and raise the bowl in which I carry his two eggs, sunny side up. 

          
      His eyes open just the tiniest bit.

          
      They close.

          
      They open.

          
      They close again. And this final time, remain closed.

          
     I sit on the bed beside him, place the bowl near to his nose and stroke his pearl white fur.

          
      He sighs ... a soft snore, a dog’s purr, if you will.

          
     “I don’t think I’m a morning person,” Peter Pan, in time, confides to me. “I just don’t.”

          
      No buddy, I don’t believe you are. 



   

Six halves of eggshell lay on the ground beneath the back porch light, on top of which Carl and Priscilla’s nest resides. 

     “What are those?” Peter Pan asks of the shells. 

   As eggs are quite often involved in Peter Pan’s breakfast, I answer carefully, “I believe the babies have arrived.” 

   Peter Pan wants to see, so I lift him and we count together three bald heads, there inside the fluff of the mudded nest. 

    “Just three,” we hear Priscilla confirm behind us, and before we can turn, she has swooped in and is perched on the porch light with food in her beak for the chicks: something with wings and a great deal of disheveled legs. 

   “I figured that was enough,” Priscilla says, “For my first.” She's a sensible girl, who learned from her mother, who learned the hard way, that five makes for a crowded nest.    

  Hearing her voice, the chicks raise up, wobbling and bobbling, all mouth, their bright yellow beaks opened wide and needing to be grown in to. 

     Peter Pan and I watch as one, two, three the chicks are fed. 

     "Just enough," Priscilla says, and off she flies again.