Angel

Angel

By Rick Rounds

It was several years before the Great Depression, but hard times had already fallen on the King family.

A fierce November storm had leveled the net houses and smashed the fishing boats of Bob’s commercial fishing business on the neck of Presque Isle in Erie, Pennsylvania, leaving him financially ruined. The State of Pennsylvania was more than glad to take the valuable land and give Bob and his family a small pension to live on.

Bob was Florence’s second husband, her first, Bill Reed, having died when he fell from his horse and his gun tragically discharged in 1918. She and Bob met in 1920 and wed the following year. This would not have been unusual except for the fact that Florence had been blind since the age of six.

Now days, Bob and Florence spent most of their time doting on their eldest granddaughter, Ruthie, the child of Florence’s daughter, Jane Reed Allen, or Jenny as her mother always called her. Ruthie’s grandmother and step-grandfather, called "Unk" for Uncle Bob, often welcomed the girl's visits as she acted as eyes for her grandmother.

Christmas, 1932

That year, 1932, just before Christmas, Grandma and Ruthie took the trolley car to downtown Erie,PA to shop. The stores were aglow with colored lights and decked in their Christmas finery. The streets were filled with shoppers hurrying on their way.

As they walked, Grandma inquired what wish Ruthie would have this Christmas. A doll, maybe some toy, Grandma asked.

"No," Ruthie said simply. "A puppy."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Grandma, thinking of a million reasons why she could not have a puppy. So expensive I might trip over it... and so on.

Grandma made her purchases and the pair returned to the trolley, Grandma knowing that the quiet Ruthie had her heart set on a puppy.

The Answer to a Prayer

That night, and the next, Ruthie prayed for that puppy.

Early the next morn, as Ruthie trundled outside to use the outhouse, she found, nearly buried in the deep snow, a pup—an answer to the prayers of a child.

"Unk, Unk!" she shrieked. "A puppy!"

Unk rushed to the youngster’s call to find a small black wolf pup in the snow. As he calmed Ruthie and attempted to explain the difference between wild and domestic animals, she told him in her most authoritative voice, "It’s an angel God sent to me."

"Is it an angel, aye—it is! I’d be watchin' him close," Unk said in his heavy Irish brogue. Encouraged by the words, Ruthie found the courage to ask, "Can I keep him?" "We’ll see," came the reply.

That day, Ruthie held the pup as if he might disappear as mysteriously as he came, until she fell finally asleep in the big rocking chair by the pot-bellied stove.

When she awoke, she found herself covered with a warm blanket, and discovered her Angel sleeping peacefully in a cardboard box lined with some clean rags in the corner of the room.

Life with Angel

Such a wonderful Christmas for Ruthie! The pup she so wished for was hers. As for Angel (or Black, as Grandma and Unk called him), he was a new-found loyal friend, protector—truly an angel (except for the time he brought home the neighbors’ beef roast still wrapped in butcher paper!).

One day, when Angel was about two, Grandma got ready to go shopping. Ruthie and Unk watched in amazement as the older woman put her hand on the canine's head and gently commanded, "Let's go to the store, Black". The two started off with Ruthie and Unk following at a distance, marveling that maybe Black was an angel after all.

In the 17 years Angel lived with the Kings, he was never confined to a leash or chain. One day he left and just didn't return. Unk felt old Black must have gone off to the wilds to die, but Ruthie shook her head.

"He just went back to heaven."

Thanks to Rick Rounds, owner of the Brass Chair in Bainbridge, for this fiction contribution to the Banter pages.