Ellen's Lion (2 page)

E
llen screamed into the telephone.

“Help! There's a lion in my room!”

“Where?” said the lion.

“You!” Ellen pointed at him.

“Me? But I've always been here,” the lion said. “Since the Christmas before last.”

“You've got a tail with a brush on the end of it and a mane!” Ellen let her eyes grow wide. “I just realized you're supposed to be a real lion!”

“I suppose so.” The lion sounded a bit annoyed. “What of it?”

Ellen stared at him with a terribly frightened expression on her face.

“What of it?” she repeated, in a trembling voice. “If you're supposed to be a real lion you're supposed to eat people when you're hungry.”

“You are not in the least frightened of me, Ellen,” said the lion, losing patience. “You know very well that a stuffed lion cannot be hungry and cannot possibly eat people.”

“You're stuffed, so you can't be hungry.” Ellen began to laugh and laugh. “That's a funny joke. Don't you see?”

The lion did not smile.

Ellen became serious too. She looked guiltily at the telephone as she set it on top of a heap of other toys.

“I don't blame you for being angry,” she said. “I should have asked you if you ate people before I called a policeman.”

“You didn't call on a real telephone,” said the lion.

“But I called a real policeman,” said Ellen. “He'll be here any minute to take you away.”

The lion said nothing. Ellen rested her chin on a fist and thought.

“Don't worry, though,” she said. “I'll think of something.”

“I am not worried,” said the lion.

“Well, you ought to be,” Ellen said. “They'll put you in the zoo, in a cage. You won't be able to get out, or go anywhere.”

“I never go anywhere anyway,” the lion said.

Ellen looked at the window. She jumped up and opened it wide.

“I know what,” she said. “I'll tell the policeman you went away. I'll tell him you made a big leap out of the window. And you can hide.”

Before the lion could argue about it Ellen snatched him up and put him in the bottom drawer of the bureau, on top of a pile of clothes. She had to press him down hard to get the drawer closed. Even so it would not close all the way. The lion's tail was caught and half of it hung down outside the drawer.

“Ouch,” said the lion when Ellen finally noticed what the trouble was.

“Be quiet,” she whispered. “Here comes the policeman.”

“Hello, Ellen,” the policeman said. “Where is the lion? I have come to put him in a cage in the zoo.”

“You are too late,” Ellen told him, standing in front of the bureau so he would not see the lion's tail. “The lion jumped out of the window.”

“Oh.” The policeman sounded disappointed. “Then I cannot put him in the zoo.”

“No,” said Ellen, shaking her head.

“Good-bye,” said the policeman, and he went away. Ellen opened the drawer and took out the lion. She squeezed him all over to unflatten him. But there wasn't much she could do about the kink in his tail.

“Anyway, you're safe now, thanks to me,” she said as she made him comfortable on the arm of the big chair. “And you can live here happily ever after.”

“I
wish I had a drink of water,” said Ellen in the middle of the night.

“Well, get one,” said the lion, from the other end of the pillow.

“I'm afraid,” Ellen said.

“Of what?” said the lion.

“Of things,” said Ellen.

“What kind of things?” said the lion.

“Frightening things,” Ellen said. “Things I can't see in the dark. They always follow along behind me.”

“How do you know?” said the lion. “If you can't see them—”

“I can't see them because they're always behind me,” said Ellen. “When I turn around they jump behind my back.”

“Do you hear them?” asked the lion.

“They never make a sound,” Ellen said, shivering. “That's the worst part of it.”

The lion thought for a moment.

“Hmm,” he said.

“They're awful,” Ellen continued.

“Ellen,” the lion said, “I don't think there are any such things.”

“Oh, no? Then how can they scare me?” said Ellen indignantly. “They're terribly scary things.”

“They must be exceedingly scary,” said the lion.

“If they keep hiding in back of you they can't be very brave.”

Ellen frowned at the lion. Then she considered what he had said.

“I guess they're not very brave,” she agreed. “They wouldn't dare bother me if I could look both ways at the same time.”

“Yes,” said the lion. “But who has two pairs of eyes?”

“Two people have,” Ellen said, staring up at where the ceiling was when it wasn't so dark. “I wouldn't be afraid to go down the hall for a drink of water if I was two people.”

Suddenly she reached out for the lion, dragged him to her, and looked him in the eyes.

“Mine are buttons,” he said. “They're sewn on. I can't see very well in the dark.”

“Nobody can,” Ellen whispered as she got out of bed. “But the things don't know that.”

“How do you know they don't know?” said the lion.

“I know all about them,” said Ellen. “After all, I made them up in my head, didn't I?”

“Ah,” said the lion. “I said there were no such things.”

“But of course there are,” Ellen said. “I just told you I made them up myself.”

“Yes,” the lion said. “But—”

“So I should know, shouldn't I?” said Ellen, putting the lion up on her shoulder so that he faced behind her. “Stop arguing with me and keep your eyes open.”

“They're buttons,” said the lion, bouncing on Ellen's shoulder as she walked across the bedroom. “My eyes never close.”

“Good,” said Ellen, and she opened the door to the hall.

With a firm grip on the lion's tail to hold him in place she marched down the hall to the bathroom, drank a glass of water, and marched back to bed. She looked straight ahead all the way while the lion stared into the darkness behind her and during the entire trip not a single thing dared bother either of them.

T
he doctor listened to the lion's stuffing and she shook her head so sadly that her stethoscope fell off her ears.

“You're a mighty sick little lion,” she said. “You'll have to stop smoking.”

“You know very well that I have never smoked in my life, Ellen,” said the lion, speaking in a muffled voice through his bandages.

“You are so sick you can't tell one person from another,” the doctor said, reaching into a paper bag and taking out a licorice cigar. “I'm not Ellen.”

“Uh?” said the lion as the cigar wedged into his mouth.

“I'm the doctor,” the doctor said. “And I say you have to stop smoking. You want to get well, don't you?”

She snatched the cigar from the lion's mouth and frowned at it. She put it in her own mouth and she ate it while she took the lion's pulse and tapped his knees with a small rubber hammer to check his reflexes.

“You're going to be all right,” she said. “But you'll have to take things easy for a while.”

She took off the lion's bandages, bundled them up with her instruments, and closed her doctor's bag. With a BANG-BANG-BANG of the ambulance bell she drove off a hundred miles an hour through heavy city traffic. When she reached the main highway she called back over her shoulder to the lion.

“Remember, now. You have to take things easy.”

The main highway widened and spread out into the prairie, where she had to use her whip on the horses to outrace a band of Indians attacking her covered wagon, and she barely made it across the Rocky Mountains, where she discovered gold.

“Gold!” she cried, and suddenly she became aware of the pirate ship sailing in close to the gold mine.

She drew her cutlass and held her own in the fight until the gang of pirates were joined by a gang of cattle rustlers and a gang of gangsters. Then she called to the lion on the end table.

“Help!”

The lion made no move to come to her aid.

“Pirates! Rustlers! Gangsters!” she shouted.

The lion didn't even look up.

“I have to take things easy,” he explained.

She frowned at him.

“We were just making believe that you were sick and I was the doctor,” she told him. “I'm really Ellen. And pirates and rustlers and gangsters are after me.”

Exasperated, she got out the stethoscope. Holding off the pirates and rustlers and gangsters with one hand, she listened to the lion's stuffing.

“Anyway, you're perfectly all right now,” she said. But by then the pirates and rustlers and gangsters had made off with the gold. And besides, it was lunchtime. As Ellen left the playroom she made a face at the lion.

“You always spoil everything,” she said to him.

The lion continued to take things easy.