The crash of metal and angry shrieks startled me awake. At Grammy’s cottage on Cayuga Lake, walls were thin and the wildlife abundant. That July night, she shuffled through the front room; the screen door slammed behind her. I jumped out of bed and followed.

Near her green-painted shed, under the porch light’s glare, a raccoon struggled against an overturned trash can. The wire Grammy had looped and twisted over its lid for this exact situation had snared him. His black claws skittered on the dented metal, and he screeched loud and frantic as we approached. Her short robe covered little of her skinny, wrinkly legs. Her feet flip-flopped along the stone path as she glanced back at me.

“Don’t come closer. He’ll scratch. Or bite.” She disappeared into the shed, rattled around a bit, and returned with the loppers she’d used earlier that day to trim back a drooping crabapple tree. The raccoon wore a purple collar and leash.

“His leash is all tangled up on the wire. He must be somebody’s.” I twisted the faded t‑shirt that hung to my knees. I didn’t know who it had belonged to. On its pocket were words I couldn’t yet read.

With the long garden tool, she pointed me back toward the cottage. “He’s not somebody’s. He’s a wild animal and some idiot … Go inside.” I didn’t move. “Now.”

I ran up the steps, letting the screen door bang closed behind me. From inside, I watched Grammy circle the hissing, screaming creature.

“What’re you going to do?” I hopped from foot to foot behind the screen.

She bent her bare, knobby knees, got in close to the raccoon, and, with the loppers, cut the purple leash. He tumbled to the ground and raced into the dark.

“Back to bed.” She righted the trash can, set it in its proper place.

* * *

The next evening, Grammy cooked chicken in the stone barbeque that looked like a giant fireplace. The chicken’s skin turned black, so I couldn’t eat it. I needed help with the bones—my mother used to make just chicken, no bones, no skin. “The bones make me sad.”

She tried to hide her smile. “Chickens would eat you if they could. Now don’t get upset. It’s the natural order of things.”

When the silvery half-moon shimmered against the night sky, we sat on the redwood deck, listening to the lake, searching for fireflies, and watching moths swim in the porch lights. I jumped up when I saw the flash of eyes low under Grammy’s rosebushes, beyond the light’s reach.

“Our raccoon! He’s back!” I squinted into the shadows, just able to see his purple collar and a few inches of frayed leash. “I thought of a name for him, Grammy. Bandit!”

Grammy’s face darkened. “He’s gotten used to people. Leona ought to know better, keeping a wild animal as a pet.”

Earlier, Grammy had picked up the phone to call her sister. She’d warned me, because of the party line, to always make sure I didn’t dial and interrupt conversations already going on. I could hear the ladies’ blaring voices from halfway across the kitchen—talking about their neighbor, Leona Rinkins, and the raccoon she kept in her house. They said she’d taken him for a walk but had a heart attack, or stroke or something, and her raccoon ran off. Her grown son found her lying on the road, and an ambulance came and took her to the hospital. The ladies said she’d begged her son to put up signs for her missing pet.

“He shouldn’t,” one of them said. “That crazy old woman. Raccoons can be vicious.”

“It’s just like Leona, taking in another stray.”

I scooted around the kitchen table and loud-whispered, “Grammy, should we tell them about Bandit?”

She shushed me and hung up the phone.

* * *

My mother’s friend—a man with a red beard—had driven me to Grammy’s cottage less than a week ago. On the way, he stopped at a store and told me to pick out a backpack. I chose a purple one with a sparkling silver elephant that held yellow flowers in her trunk. Sitting on the slippery seat of his pickup, I ran my hand over the rough glitter as he pulled my clothes from a plastic bag and stuffed them into my new backpack.

By the time we arrived, a storm blew the trees and covered the moon with clouds, stirring the lake. Grammy stood at the screen door under the flapping green-and-white-striped awning, arms folded across her chest. The man with the beard walked me to her.

She’d glared at him. “And you are?”

He’d already turned back toward his noisy, sputtering truck. “Just trying to do the right thing.”

That next afternoon, after it finally stopped raining, Grammy and I went for a walk and cut Queen Anne’s lace from overgrown places off the side of the road. We returned to her cottage and dumped rainwater from the barrel into a bucket she’d pulled from the shed then filled the dull metal bucket—its handle and hinges rusted—with our white flowers.

When the lake calmed down, Grammy walked down to the dock to check on her skiff. The minute she was out of sight, I picked up the phone to listen on the party line.

“She’s got the child again.”

“It’s her son’s child. She’s never said what happened to him. I don’t ask.”

“The child’s mother? Who’s she?”

“A real piece of work, that one.”

I nearly asked them what a real piece of work meant, then remembered I wasn’t supposed to be listening. Grammy’s footsteps on the deck reminded me; I hung up the phone as quiet as I could.

She carried in the bucket full of flowers. “My skiff fared just fine. I had her secured, not too tight, not too loose.” Pulling mason jars from a low kitchen cabinet, she waved me closer and set the jars on the counter. She opened a drawer, fishing out a red-and-white box that held four tiny bottles. “This is food coloring.” She handed me one of the big glass jars and pointed to the faucet. “Fill this about halfway. I’m going to show you how plants work.” She held up a bottle of blue. “Squeeze a few drops into the jar.”

I dripped deep blue into clear water. It swirled like smoke until the water reminded me of pictures of the ocean. We did the same with the green, the yellow, the red. She poured a little lemon-lime soda into each jar and gave me the can so I could drink the rest. Grammy grabbed fistfuls of Queen Anne’s lace by their stems and chopped the ends off each one.

“See?” She pointed to the cuts she’d made with the sharp kitchen scissors I wasn’t allowed to touch. “I cut them at an angle. Not straight. That way the stems will take up more water. You wait and see what happens.” She’d repeated this three more times, each jar full of jewel-colored water and flowers from the ditch.

* * *

Deep in a cedar Adirondack chair, my chin in my hands, I stared into the bushes at our raccoon. Wondering about the difference between wild animals and pets, I asked, “What about Junebug? You found her in the woods.”

Junebug turned up half-starved a while back. Grammy had brought her to the cottage, explaining that some hunters abandoned their dogs, and she wouldn’t search for Junie’s owner. “Some people don’t deserve animals.”

A few days ago, Junebug ate a sock and needed an operation. If Junie hadn’t been at the vet, she would’ve chased off our raccoon.

I watched the glowing eyes peer from the thorny bushes. “I wonder if I could teach Junie and Bandit to get along.”

“Dogs have been bred to be pets. You know that. A raccoon is a wild animal and they carry disease.” She waved away a moth.

She’d read Old Yeller to me last summer in this same chair. Remembering what happened to Old Yeller made my eyes burn and my throat hurt. I pointed to the eyes in the dark. “Do you think he’s sick?”

Grammy looked toward Bandit for a long time. “Probably not. He’s been living in Leona’s house for who knows how long.”

“I’ll get him something to eat.” I braced my hands on the chair’s arms and scooted up and out until my bare feet landed on the deck.

“Now wait a minute. We don’t want him getting used to being fed. He’s on his own now.”

Her words stopped me at the screen door. I’d hoped to take care of Bandit for the rest of the summer. But I didn’t know how long he’d stay. I didn’t know how long I’d stay. “Just tonight? Can’t I just feed him tonight?”

Grammy sighed, put out her cigarette, and drew herself to standing. She walked to the shed, opened the door, and, half turning, she pointed to Bandit. “Get him some fruit or lettuce. Something like that.” She disappeared into the shed, and I heard her rummage around, moving things, something scraping across the concrete floor.

I darted into the kitchen. Our flowers stood on the counter, each bunch a pale version of the vibrant liquid beneath. Blue like I’d only seen in books at Grammy’s house. Red like cherries in a jar. Yellow like the elephant’s bouquet on my new backpack. Green like broken glass bottles. She’d promised the flowers would “brighten up” the longer we let them take in the water.

I found grapes in the fridge and washed them. Cradling the green globes in a checkered dish towel with frayed edges, I marched to the porch, determined to show Grammy that Bandit needed us.

Back in her chair, Grammy chuckled when she saw what I carried. “You washed them? He eats trash, remember?”

Embarrassed I hadn’t thought of that, I avoided her gaze as I tossed the first grape onto the grass toward the glowing eyes. I waited. He waited. I ate one of his grapes to show him. “See?”

He crept into the light, stopped, and took a few more steps. He snatched the grape in his black human-like hands, then scrambled back into the dark. The buckle from his collar glinted in the glare of the porch light.

So excited my hands shook, I tossed a second grape to him. This time, he came right out and ate his grape on the grass. By grape number seven, he loped to the edge of the deck. I rolled the fruit to him; he finished the last grape, watching me with his dark eyes.

I held up my hands to show him I had no more. “All gone!” I sang and crouched down toward him.

He stretched up on his hind legs, bared his teeth, and hissed. I stumbled back as Bandit disappeared into the dark.

Grammy thumped the deck boards with an old wooden baseball bat. I expected her to shoo me off to bed, but she fixed her eyes on the shadowed bushes, her warm hand strong and firm on my back.

THE END