Homecoming

A month and a half earlier, after dumping their little sister in the ditch, Six, Seven, and Eight had raced each other home. While they were out, a loud commercial had woken Mr. Hubble, but he’d just padded into the kitchen for another beer, and by the time the three kids slipped in the front door, he’d already passed out again in front of the TV. Six, Seven, and Eight crept up the stairs and into their beds.

When Mrs. Hubble came in to wake them the next morning, the first thing she noticed was the empty crib.

“Where’s your little sister?” she said.

Six, Seven, and Eight rubbed their eyes and blinked innocently.

“You got me,” said Six.

“Me, too,” said Seven.

“Me three,” said Eight.

“She must have climbed out,” Mrs. Hubble said. “I wonder if she could have crawled all the way to the kitchen.”

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“Uh-oh, the fridge’ll be cleaned out,” said Six, sounding convincingly worried.

But the little girl wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the house at all. After checking everywhere, even inside the washing machine, Mrs. Hubble went back upstairs to her and her husband’s bedroom.

“Mr. Hubble!” she cried, shaking him awake. “Sally’s disappeared!”

“Who?” grumbled Mr. Hubble, who was always cranky before noon.

“Sally. She’s gone.”

“Nine?” he muttered. “Well, good riddance.” And he rolled over to go back to sleep.

But Mrs. Hubble didn’t let him, and later in the day, after they’d searched the whole neighborhood and alerted the police, Mr. Hubble felt ashamed of his first words of the day. His baby daughter, kidnapped!

“But why would anyone take one of our kids?” he asked his wife. “We’re much too poor to pay a ransom.”

“That’s true, Mr. Hubble. She must have wandered out in the night somehow.”

“Oh, my lord,” he thought guiltily. “While I was dozing in front of the television.”

Poor Mr. Hubble did everything he could think of. When the police came up with nothing, he organized search parties. He and Mrs. Hubble stuck missing-child posters on every lamppost and telephone pole. But no one contacted them, and the child didn’t return.

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At first, Six, Seven, and Eight went around drawing mustaches on the posters, but as time passed and the danger of their little sister’s return diminished, they started leaving their crayons at home. In the privacy of their tree hut, they came to the conclusion that a wolf or a bear must have found the child in the ditch and eaten her. They couldn’t work up much remorse over it. Life was so much more peaceful without her, and they got more to eat at the dinner table.

For a while, they got a lot more to eat. Mr. and Mrs. Hubble both lost their appetites completely, so the children divvied up their portions. Mr. Hubble blamed himself for the whole tragedy. If he hadn’t been in such a drunken stupor, he would have heard the door opening and closing behind the toddler. He gave up beer.

After a week Mr. Hubble had lost thirteen pounds, and Mrs. Hubble eight. After two weeks he’d lost twenty-five. He began to get up early in the morning again. After three weeks he applied for his old job and got it back. He could climb ladders again without huffing and puffing or breaking the rungs.

School ended, and Mr. and Mrs. Hubble made out a summer schedule. She worked mornings and he worked afternoons, so there was always someone home to watch the children. They also took books on dieting and nutrition out of the library and started shopping at the health-food store. No more syrupy pancakes and bacon for breakfast; now the family had granola and juice. For lunch, yogurt and fruit. For dinner, fish and salad. When Mr. Hubble’s cousin the pig farmer let them know about a deal on a side of bacon, Mr. Hubble said: “Not interested, Hank. Sorry.”

It was breathtaking how their lives changed for the better in one short month. And all because of losing their little girl! Mr. and Mrs. Hubble became very sentimental about her memory. They forgot about her howling and snatching and spoke of her in reverent tones, as if she’d been a little saint. They also spoke of her in the past tense: they’d given up hope of ever seeing her alive again. They consulted the minister of the church about a memorial service.

At dusk on the day before the memorial service, a truck pulled into their driveway.

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“Dad, it’s the pigmobile!” two of the kids yelled in unison.

“Your cousin with one of his deals, Mr. Hubble,” Mrs. Hubble said. “Please don’t let him track in any of that slop.”

Mr. Hubble went out to the front doorstep to head his cousin off. But Hank didn’t have a deal. He had a fat, filthy child in his arms.

“Isn’t this the one you lost?” he said.

Mr. Hubble hadn’t passed out since quitting drinking, but he nearly did so now. Partly from amazement, partly from the stench.

“Dead?” he said.

“Nope, not quite. Just plumb worn-out, I’d say. Found her in the sty with the oinkers. One of yours, right?”

“Well, I—”

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“There you go,” Hank said, relieved to get the smelly thing off his hands.

Mr. Hubble was at a loss for words. Indeed, the smell of the child in his arms was so strong he was momentarily at a loss for breath. But he finally managed a choked “Thank you.”

“Don’t give it another thought,” his cousin said. “Need any ham hocks?”

“Um, not today, Hank.”

There was quite a hubbub when Mr. Hubble carried the child into the kitchen. Mrs. Hubble let out a screech and dropped a colander full of lettuce, the oldest boy cried “P-U,” the oldest girl sprinted upstairs to run a bath, and Six, Seven, and Eight hightailed it out the back door and up into their tree hut. But none of this woke the child, who’d had more exercise that day than all the other days of her life combined.

The strength of the odor helped Mrs. Hubble recover from the joyful shock of realizing her youngest was alive.

“You say she was in the pigpen, Mr. Hubble? The smell seems even . . .”

“Even worse, I know. I could swear there’s some skunk, too.”

It was a good thing they’d switched from soft drinks to juices, for tomato juice is the best remedy for skunk smell and there was a can of it in the refrigerator. Mrs. Hubble laid Nine out on the counter, sponged her off, and gave her a thorough tomato-juice rubdown. This took quite a while, for there was a lot of territory to cover. Since disappearing, Nine had put on an astonishing amount of flab.

Once the child was completely coated with tomato juice, Mrs. Hubble wrapped her in a towel and got her husband to carry her upstairs to the tub. When he lowered Nine into the steaming water, she woke up and started howling. “I better go work on her crib, Mrs. Hubble,” said Mr. Hubble, who had forgotten the strength of his baby daughter’s vocal cords.

He got his oldest boy to help him lug the crib down the stairs and out to the garage, where he kept his scrap lumber and tools. Within an hour he’d doubled the height of the crib’s bars so the child wouldn’t be able to get out again in the middle of the night.

By the time he and his son carried the crib back inside, Mrs. Hubble was serving dinner: codfish, fat-free cottage cheese, and salad. Everyone but Six, Seven, and Eight was at the table. The guest of honor was wedged in her high chair, looking clean but groggy.

“Wonderful,” Mrs. Hubble said of the remodeled crib. “Call the others while you’re upstairs, will you? It’s funny, they’re usually the first ones down.”

The rubdown and bath had delayed dinner an hour, but even so, Six, Seven, and Eight didn’t answer when Mr. Hubble called them.

“They must be up in their tree hut,” Mrs. Hubble said when he got back downstairs.

Stepping out into the backyard, Mr. Hubble saw that she was right. “Dinnertime!” he called up.

“We’re not hungry,” Six called down.

“Don’t be silly,” Mr. Hubble said. “You can’t stay up there all night.”

“We like it up here,” said Seven.

“Suit yourselves,” Mr. Hubble said.

Just as the back door closed behind him, it began to rain, and not long afterward, lightning made a brilliant rip in the sky. The thunder was almost simultaneous.

“Uh-oh,” said Eight. “That’s awful close.”

“I don’t care,” said Seven. “They’ll kill us when the brat spills the beans.”

“Yeah,” Six agreed. “Better wet than dead.”

And wet they soon were. The rain sluiced right through the tree’s canopy of leaves. Before long, there was another bolt of lightning. The three huddled-together kids felt this one tingle up and down their spines—but they had no idea it had actually struck their branch till they heard the ominous crack.