— My Father's Dragon —
written by Ruth Stiles Gannett - illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett
narrated by Kevin Killavey

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Chapter One

MY FATHER MEETS THE CAT

One cold rainy day when my father was a little boy, he met an old alley cat on his street. The cat was very drippy and uncomfortable so my father said, “Wouldn’t you like to come home with me?”

This surprised the cat—she had never before met anyone who cared about old alley cats—but she said, “I’d be very much obliged if I could sit by a warm furnace, and perhaps have a saucer of milk.”

“We have a very nice furnace to sit by,” said my father, “and I’m sure my mother has an extra saucer of milk.”

My father and the cat became good friends but my father’s mother was very upset about the cat. She hated cats, particularly ugly old alley cats. “Elmer Elevator,” she said to my father, “if you think I’m going to give that cat a saucer of milk, you’re very wrong. Once you start feeding stray alley cats you might as well expect to feed every stray in town, and I am not going to do it!”

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This made my father very sad, and he apologized to the cat because his mother had been so rude. He told the cat to stay anyway, and that somehow he would bring her a saucer of milk each day. My father fed the cat for three weeks, but one day his mother found the cat’s saucer in the cellar and she was extremely angry. She whipped my father and threw the cat out the door, but later on my father sneaked out and found the cat. Together they went for a walk in the park and tried to think of nice things to talk about. My father said, “When I grow up I’m going to have an airplane. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to fly just anywhere you might think of!”

“Would you like to fly very, very much?” asked the cat.

“I certainly would. I’d do anything if I could fly.”

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“Well,” said the cat, “if you’d really like to fly that much, I think I know of a sort of a way you might get to fly while you’re still a little boy.”

“You mean you know where I could get an airplane?”

“Well, not exactly an airplane, but something even better. As you can see, I’m an old cat now, but in my younger days I was quite a traveler. My traveling days are over but last spring I took just one more trip and sailed to the Island of Tangerina, stopping at the port of Cranberry. Well, it just so happened that I missed the boat, and while waiting for the next I thought I’d look around a bit. I was particularly interested in a place called Wild Island, which we had passed on our way to Tangerina. Wild Island and Tangerina are joined together by a long string of rocks, but people never go to Wild Island because it’s mostly jungle and inhabited by very wild animals. So I decided to go across the rocks and explore it for myself. It certainly is an interesting place, but I saw something there that made me want to weep.”

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Chapter Two

MY FATHER RUNS AWAY

“Wild Island is practically cut in two by a very wide and muddy river,” continued the cat. “This river begins near one end of the island and flows into the ocean at the other. Now the animals there are very lazy, and they used to hate having to go all the way around the beginning of this river to get to the other side of the island. It made visiting inconvenient and mail deliveries slow, particularly during the Christmas rush. Crocodiles could have carried passengers and mail across the river, but crocodiles are very moody, and not the least bit dependable, and are always looking for something to eat. They don’t care if the animals have to walk around the river, so that’s just what the animals did for many years.”

“But what does all this have to do with airplanes?” asked my father, who thought the cat was taking an awfully long time to explain.

“Be patient, Elmer,” said the cat, and she went on with the story. “One day about four months before I arrived on Wild Island a baby dragon fell from a low-flying cloud onto the bank of the river. He was too young to fly very well, and besides, he had bruised one wing quite badly, so he couldn’t get back to his cloud. The animals found him soon afterwards and everybody said, ‘Why, this is just exactly what we’ve needed all these years!’ They tied a big rope around his neck and waited for the wing to get well. This was going to end all their crossing-the-river troubles.”

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“I’ve never seen a dragon,” said my father. “Did you see him? How big is he?”

“Oh, yes, indeed I saw the dragon. In fact, we became great friends,” said the cat. “I used to hide in the bushes and talk to him when nobody was around. He’s not a very big dragon, about the size of a large black bear, although I imagine he’s grown quite a bit since I left. He’s got a long tail and yellow and blue stripes. His horn and eyes and the bottoms of his feet are bright red, and he has gold-colored wings.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” said my father. “What did the animals do with him when his wing got well?”

“They started training him to carry passengers, and even though he is just a baby dragon, they work him all day and all night too sometimes. They make him carry loads that are much too heavy, and if he complains, they twist his wings and beat him. He’s always tied to a stake on a rope just long enough to go across the river. His only friends are the crocodiles, who say ‘Hello’ to him once a week if they don’t forget. Really, he’s the most miserable animal I’ve ever come across. When I left I promised I’d try to help him someday, although I couldn’t see how. The rope around his neck is about the biggest, toughest rope you can imagine, with so many knots it would take days to untie them all.

“Anyway, when you were talking about airplanes, you gave me a good idea. Now, I’m quite sure that if you were able to rescue the dragon, which wouldn’t be the least bit easy, he’d let you ride him most anywhere, provided you were nice to him, of course. How about trying it?”

“Oh, I’d love to,” said my father, and he was so angry at his mother for being rude to the cat that he didn’t feel the least bit sad about running away from home for a while.

That very afternoon my father and the cat went down to the docks to see about ships going to the Island of Tangerina. They found out that a ship would be sailing the next week, so right away they started planning for the rescue of the dragon. The cat was a great help in suggesting things for my father to take with him, and she told him everything she knew about Wild Island. Of course, she was too old to go along.

Everything had to be kept very secret, so when they found or bought anything to take on the trip they hid it behind a rock in the park. The night before my father sailed he borrowed his father’s knapsack and he and the cat packed everything very carefully. He took chewing gum, two dozen pink lollipops, a package of rubber bands, black rubber boots, a compass, a toothbrush and a tube of tooth paste, six magnifying glasses, a very sharp jackknife, a comb and a hairbrush, seven hair ribbons of different colors, an empty grain bag with a label saying “Cranberry,” some clean clothes, and enough food to last my father while he was on the ship. He couldn’t live on mice, so he took twenty-five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and six apples, because that’s all the apples he could find in the pantry.

When everything was packed my father and the cat went down to the docks to the ship. A night watchman was on duty, so while the cat made loud queer noises to distract his attention, my father ran over the gang-plank onto the ship. He went down into the hold and hid among some bags of wheat. The ship sailed early the next morning.

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Chapter Three

MY FATHER FINDS THE ISLAND

My father hid in the hold for six days and nights. Twice he was nearly caught when the ship stopped to take on more cargo. But at last he heard a sailor say that the next port would be Cranberry and that they’d be unloading the wheat there. My father knew that the sailors would send him home if they caught him, so he looked in his knapsack and took out a rubber band and the empty grain bag with the label saying “Cranberry.” At the last moment my father got inside the bag, knapsack and all, folded the top of the bag inside, and put the rubber band around the top. He didn’t look just exactly like the other bags but it was the best he could do.

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Soon the sailors came to unload. They lowered a big net into the hold and began moving the bags of wheat. Suddenly one sailor yelled, “Great Scott! This is the queerest bag of wheat I’ve ever seen! It’s all lumpy-like, but the label says it’s to go to Cranberry.”

The other sailors looked at the bag too, and my father, who was in the bag, of course, tried even harder to look like a bag of wheat. Then another sailor felt the bag and he just happened to get hold of my father’s elbow. “I know what this is,” he said. “This is a bag of dried corn on the cob,” and he dumped my father into the big net along with the bags of wheat.

This all happened in the late afternoon, so late that the merchant in Cranberry who had ordered the wheat didn’t count his bags until the next morning. (He was a very punctual man, and never late for dinner.) The sailors told the captain, and the captain wrote down on a piece of paper, that they had delivered one hundred and sixty bags of wheat and one bag of dried corn on the cob. They left the piece of paper for the merchant and sailed away that evening.

My father heard later that the merchant spent the whole next day counting and recounting the bags and feeling each one trying to find the bag of dried corn on the cob. He never found it because as soon as it was dark my father climbed out of the bag, folded it up and put it back in his knapsack. He walked along the shore to a nice sandy place and lay down to sleep.

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My father was very hungry when he woke up the next morning. Just as he was looking to see if he had anything left to eat, something hit him on the head. It was a tangerine. He had been sleeping right under a tree full of big, fat tangerines. And then he remembered that this was the Island of Tangerina. Tangerine trees grew wild everywhere. My father picked as many as he had room for, which was thirty-one, and started off to find Wild Island.

He walked and walked and walked along the shore, looking for the rocks that joined the two islands. He walked all day, and once when he met a fisherman and asked him about Wild Island, the fisherman began to shake and couldn’t talk for a long while. It scared him that much, just thinking about it. Finally he said, “Many people have tried to explore Wild Island, but not one has come back alive. We think they were eaten by the wild animals.” This didn’t bother my father. He kept walking and slept on the beach again that night.

It was beautifully clear the next day, and way down the shore my father could see a long line of rocks leading out into the ocean, and way, way out at the end he could just see a tiny patch of green. He quickly ate seven tangerines and started down the beach.

It was almost dark when he came to the rocks, but there, way out in the ocean, was the patch of green. He sat down and rested a while, remembering that the cat had said, “If you can, go out to the island at night, because then the wild animals won’t see you coming along the rocks and you can hide when you get there.” So my father picked seven more tangerines, put on his black rubber boots, and waited for dark.

It was a very black night and my father could hardly see the rocks ahead of him. Sometimes they were quite high and sometimes the waves almost covered them, and they were slippery and hard to walk on. Sometimes the rocks were far apart and my father had to get a running start and leap from one to the next.

After a while he began to hear a rumbling noise. It grew louder and louder as he got nearer to the island. At last it seemed as if he was right on top of the noise, and he was. He had jumped from a rock onto the back of a small whale who was fast asleep and cuddled up between two rocks. The whale was snoring and making more noise than a steam shovel, so it never heard my father say, “Oh, I didn’t know that was you!” And it never knew my father had jumped on its back by mistake.

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For seven hours my father climbed and slipped and leapt from rock to rock, but while it was still dark he finally reached the very last rock and stepped off onto Wild Island.

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Chapter Four

MY FATHER FINDS THE RIVER

The jungle began just beyond a narrow strip of beach; thick, dark, damp, scary jungle. My father hardly knew where to go, so he crawled under a wahoo bush to think, and ate eight tangerines. The first thing to do, he decided, was to find the river, because the dragon was tied somewhere along its bank. Then he thought, “If the river flows into the ocean, I ought to be able to find it quite easily if I just walk along the beach far enough.” So my father walked until the sun rose and he was quite far from the Ocean Rocks. It was dangerous to stay near them because they might be guarded in the daytime. He found a clump of tall grass and sat down. Then he took off his rubber boots and ate three more tangerines. He could have eaten twelve but he hadn’t seen any tangerines on this island and he could not risk running out of something to eat.

My father slept all that day and only woke up late in the afternoon when he heard a funny little voice saying, “Queer, queer, what a dear little dock! I mean, dear, dear, what a queer little rock!” My father saw a tiny paw rubbing itself on his knapsack. He lay very still and the mouse, for it was a mouse, hurried away muttering to itself, “I must smell tumduddy. I mean, I must tell somebody.”

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My father waited a few minutes and then started down the beach because it was almost dark now, and he was afraid the mouse really would tell somebody. He walked all night and two scary things happened. First, he just had to sneeze, so he did, and somebody close by said, “Is that you, Monkey?” My father said, “Yes.” Then the voice said, “You must have something on your back, Monkey,” and my father said “Yes,” because he did. He had his knapsack on his back. “What do you have on your back, Monkey?” asked the voice.

My father didn’t know what to say because what would a monkey have on its back, and how would it sound telling someone about it if it did have something? Just then another voice said, “I bet you’re taking your sick grandmother to the doctor’s.” My father said “Yes” and hurried on. Quite by accident he found out later that he had been talking to a pair of tortoises.

The second thing that happened was that he nearly walked right between two wild boars who were talking in low solemn whispers. When he first saw the dark shapes he thought they were boulders. Just in time he heard one of them say, “There are three signs of a recent invasion. First, fresh tangerine peels were found under the wahoo bush near the Ocean Rocks. Second, a mouse reported an extraordinary rock some distance from the Ocean Rocks which upon further investigation simply wasn’t there. However, more fresh tangerine peels were found in the same spot, which is the third sign of invasion. Since tangerines do not grow on our island, somebody must have brought them across the Ocean Rocks from the other island, which may, or may not, have something to do with the appearance and/or disappearance of the extraordinary rock reported by the mouse.”

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After a long silence the other boar said, “You know, I think we’re taking all this too seriously. Those peels probably floated over here all by themselves, and you know how unreliable mice are. Besides, if there had been an invasion, I would have seen it!”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said the first boar. “Shall we retire?” Whereupon they both trundled back into the jungle.

Well, that taught my father a lesson, and after that he saved all his tangerine peels. He walked all night and toward morning came to the river. Then his troubles really began.

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Chapter Five

MY FATHER MEETS SOME TIGERS

The river was very wide and muddy, and the jungle was very gloomy and dense. The trees grew close to each other, and what room there was between them was taken up by great high ferns with sticky leaves. My father hated to leave the beach, but he decided to start along the river bank where at least the jungle wasn’t quite so thick. He ate three tangerines, making sure to keep all the peels this time, and put on his rubber boots.

My father tried to follow the river bank but it was very swampy, and as he went farther the swamp became deeper. When it was almost as deep as his boot tops he got stuck in the oozy, mucky mud. My father tugged and tugged, and nearly pulled his boots right off, but at last he managed to wade to a drier place. Here the jungle was so thick that he could hardly see where the river was. He unpacked his compass and figured out the direction he should walk in order to stay near the river. But he didn’t know that the river made a very sharp curve away from him just a little way beyond, and so as he walked straight ahead he was getting farther and farther away from the river.

It was very hard to walk in the jungle. The sticky leaves of the ferns caught at my father’s hair, and he kept tripping over roots and rotten logs. Sometimes the trees were clumped so closely together that he couldn’t squeeze between them and had to walk a long way around.

He began to hear whispery noises, but he couldn’t see any animals anywhere. The deeper into the jungle he went the surer he was that something was following him, and then he thought he heard whispery noises on both sides of him as well as behind. He tried to run, but he tripped over more roots, and the noises only came nearer. Once or twice he thought he heard something laughing at him.

At last he came out into a clearing and ran right into the middle of it so that he could see anything that might try to attack him. Was he surprised when he looked and saw fourteen green eyes coming out of the jungle all around the clearing, and when the green eyes turned into seven tigers! The tigers walked around him in a big circle, looking hungrier all the time, and then they sat down and began to talk.

“I suppose you thought we didn’t know you were trespassing in our jungle!”

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Then the next tiger spoke. “I suppose you’re going to say you didn’t know it was our jungle!”

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“Did you know that not one explorer has ever left this island alive?” said the third tiger.

My father thought of the cat and knew this wasn’t true. But of course he had too much sense to say so. One doesn’t contradict a hungry tiger.

The tigers went on talking in turn. “You’re our first little boy, you know. I’m curious to know if you’re especially tender.”

“Maybe you think we have regular meal-times, but we don’t. We just eat whenever we’re feeling hungry,” said the fifth tiger.

“And we’re very hungry right now. In fact, I can hardly wait,” said the sixth.

“I can’t wait!” said the seventh tiger.

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And then all the tigers said together in a loud roar, “Let’s begin right now!” and they moved in closer.

My father looked at those seven hungry tigers, and then he had an idea. He quickly opened his knapsack and took out the chewing gum. The cat had told him that tigers were especially fond of chewing gum, which was very scarce on the island. So he threw them each a piece but they only growled, “As fond as we are of chewing gum, we’re sure we’d like you even better!” and they moved so close that he could feel them breathing on his face.

“But this is very special chewing gum,” said my father. “If you keep on chewing it long enough it will turn green, and then if you plant it, it will grow more chewing gum, and the sooner you start chewing the sooner you’ll have more.”

The tigers said, “Why, you don’t say! Isn’t that fine!” And as each one wanted to be the first to plant the chewing gum, they all unwrapped their pieces and began chewing as hard as they could. Every once in a while one tiger would look into another’s mouth and say, “Nope, it’s not done yet,” until finally they were all so busy looking into each other’s mouths to make sure that no one was getting ahead that they forgot all about my father.

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