one rotten hero and one long scarf

I’ll tell you straight off that Pilot is alright now. If you’ve been worrying anything like to the way I was worrying, well it would just be mean to ramble on and on before letting you in on that.

Truth is, most of the world just kept on like usual and it may be that I’m really the only one who was lost without four legs to follow. I fell asleep over my knitting that night and when I’d finished caring for the chickens and Wilbur in the morning, I picked up the needles again. The whole day passed like that, with Aunt Kitty bringin’ me food I didn’t eat and Ben trying to start a conversation. (It’s a sorry thing when Ben tries to start a conversation, and even on a good day I don’t know that I could have joined in on talking about the bugs that are causing his lettuce to wilt or the whine the truck’s been making.)

I set up on the front porch so I could holler every once in a while and keep my eye out. Every time I called Pilot’s name, Wilbur would come running, wagging her little tail, only to turn away woebegone when she realized Pilot was not coming.

Sometime in the afternoon I finished off my ball of yarn and Aunt Kitty tied on another for me. The day was about gone and Aunt Kitty was just calling me in for bed when I spotted movement on the road.

Here’s what I saw coming over the hill: just the silhouette of a man carryin’ a burden, and the sun a red glow at his back. I stood up, I did, and squinted my eyes. My knitting fell to the floor with a woosh and a click-clack. I raised a hand to shade my eyes, but it was no use. That sun was glued to that man’s back and all I could see of him was the orange line that traced his frame. But that burden– oh, the hope that filled me then!

I fairly flew off of the porch and met him before he’d reached the barn.

“Pilot!” I said, and I said it again. “Pilot!”

When I reached for him, Ezekiel backed up a step.

“He tousled with a cougar, I’d say,” he said.

It shames me to say this was the second time that boy saw me cry. I could not seem to stop myself, though I am sorry for it today. In my defense I’ll tell you that Wilbur did not conduct herself with any more decorum. She sent up wails the likes of which I’ve only read about and imagined, of funeral processions and villages overcome with the black plague.

“He’s alive, see.” Zeke went down on one knee. I knelt there beside him, and Pilot–sweet dog!–lifted his head and nuzzled into my hair.

It’s been near on to two weeks now, and Pilot is starting to seem himself again. I can’t hate that boy near as much as I’d like to, seeing as how he brought Pilot home to me. He said Pilot was just laying on the ground, whimpering, away up the hill, at least a couple miles from home. What Zeke was doing up there I do not know, nor do I much care.

Aunt Kitty says she’s not quite sure what a four-foot girl is going to do with a twelve-foot scarf, but she reckons if I wrap it three or four times around my neck, I may not trip over it too much.