Susanna Drbal read this story on Saturday, April 27, 2019, as part of the Tompkins County Public Library Readathon fundraising event.
Your days are numbered. Patty heard the man on the TV say that to another man. Both of them wore cowboy hats and neither of them had shaved for a few days. Patty rubbed her cheek, thinking of the kisses she got from her father every night when he tucked her into bed.
Patty knew days were numbered—she’d seen them on the calendar that hung in the kitchen next to the telephone. The calendar had pictures of cats wearing different, funny outfits. Right now the cat wore a cowboy hat and leather chaps. There was a number circled on the calendar, in red ink. Patty had watched her mother count on her fingers, with her lips moving, and then circle it. Patty didn’t know why.
Patty knew her numbers, or some of them anyway, and since Monica had taught them to her, Patty saw numbers everywhere. They were on tags inside her shirts and underpants, on the buttons on the telephone, around the dial on the TV, on the clock that ticked and chimed. Patty saw numbers outside too, on street signs, on a wooden board nailed to the front of the house, and on the back of the station wagon. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, Patty said to herself, over and over. Sometimes she counted on her fingers, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. She counted her fingers, but she didn’t count her thumbs. It didn’t seem right.
So Patty knew about numbers, she knew about calendars, and tonight she was allowed to watch channel 5, so when she heard the grizzly man say, ‘Your days are numbered,’ Patty knew exactly what he meant. But she didn’t know why he had to seem so angry about it.
When the commercial came on, the one where there was a little man on a little boat in a toilet bowl, the clock started chiming. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 and then another one. Patty didn’t raise her head up from her teddy bears and their tea party on the living room floor—she didn’t want her father to notice that it was bedtime. Patty wanted to see what happened after 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-and then one more.
But her father folded up his newspaper and her mother called from the other room that it was time for bed. Time for forty winks, she said, and Patty knew that was a number and that it was a big one, but she didn’t know how to get to forty and she couldn’t wink once, let alone 2-3-4-5-6-7 times plus one more.
Patty scooped up her teddy bears and her father scooped her up and said, one-two-button my shoe, and Patty wondered about shoes with buttons and then she wondered about shoes with zippers. She liked riding in her father’s arms and then he plopped her down on her bed and he helped her into her nightgown. The nightgown was blue and had darker blue flowers and squiggly lines all over it. Patty wasn’t sure if the squiggly lines were 6’s or something else entirely. Sometimes they looked like whales leaping out of the water.
Patty brushed her teeth and watched her father’s face in the mirror. He stood behind her, in the doorway, looking down the hallway at the TV. Patty could hear a pinging sound from the TV and horses neighing and people yelling. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, but her father watched and rubbed his chin where it was whiskery and grey.
Patty lay down in bed and her father pulled the covers up under her chin. She held her favorite teddy in her right arm and chewed on his left ear. The fur was starting to get thin and matted. Patty’s father sat next to her on the bed and read to her. His legs reached all the way to the bottom of the bed and his toes pointed right at the ceiling.
Patty didn’t listen to the story, not really. She knew it by heart. There was a barnyard with pigs and cows and sheep, and they were fed oats and slop and hay, and the farmer cleaned their pens and planted seeds and the animals ate a lot and ran around and played, and they tried to find a hole in the fence. They found a hole, but by then they decided they’d rather stay in the barnyard.
At the end of the story, the pigs and the cows and the sheep are lying in bed, with straw pulled up to their chins, and the stars twinkle overhead. One sheep looks at the stars and can’t sleep, and she starts to count, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, and before you know it, she is asleep.
