Tornado by Betsy Byars

Author:Betsy Byars
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

Tornado made a sound deep down in his throat that said, “Get out, please.” Then he made another deeper sound that said, “Get out.”

Five-Thirty did not budge. I would have tried to pick her up, but the cat didn’t let anybody touch her but Emma Lou. I had scratches on my arms to prove it.

I started walking to the pond and called Tornado to follow me. He stayed where he was. I called him to the barn. He didn’t budge.

He stayed right there looking at that cat in that hole until—you guessed it—five-thirty came around. Then the cat got up, yawned, stretched, and went to the house.

Tornado got in the hole, but not to lie down. He got in there to dig. He dug and he dug and he dug some more. Dirt flew everywhere.

I knew what he was doing—he was trying to get the feel and the smell and the memory of that cat out of his special place. And I knew he couldn’t. Even if he dug all the way to China—and he was already twelve inches on the way—when he got there, it would still be Five-Thirty.

“Stop that dog,” my mother cried from the kitchen window. “What’s gotten into him?”

“Five-Thirty,” I called back.

“I didn’t ask the time,” she called. “Get that dog out of there, and fill that hole in.”

I did what she told me. I knew I was doing Tornado a favor, but he didn’t see it that way. I pulled him out by the collar and locked him in the shed. He struggled a lot on the way there, and he barked the whole time I was shoveling the dirt back in the hole.

He took the loss of his lying-down hole hard. He never, to my knowledge, went in the pine trees again. Not even when we went in there to cut our Christmas tree—our half of a Christmas tree, I might say.

As far as I know, Tornado never dug another hole. And every time Five-Thirty came around, he looked the other way.

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