The stairs out of the old ship rattled once off in the darkness. Holman
looked away from the fire and toward the ship.
Coming across the grass toward them was a giant teddy bear.
Laughing, Nancy rose. "It's Shandy." She glanced at Holman. "Be nice to
him."
Holman watched Shandy approach and didn't answer.
The teddy bear sat down, like a dropped rag doll, next to Nancy. He
rubbed his fuzzy brown paws over his black nose and blinked his button
eyes at her.
"Nice old Shandy," said Nancy, pulling one of Shandy's round ears. She
smiled at Holman. "This is what he was being when dad and I first found
him."
Holman, tilting forward, flipped a flat stone into the fire and
scattered sparks. "That's a coincidence."
"I was just, you know, about ten," Nancy said, patting Shandy's head.
"What had happened was I'd been playing in the woods. And, anyway, I
left my own teddy bear out there. Lost it. And I told dad, because it
was almost night when I remembered. Well, he found it and right beside
it there was big old Shandy. Dad and I both decided after looking at
him for awhile that his name should be Shandy."
Shandy blinked his eyes and clapped his paws.
Holman's left heel jammed hard against the ground as he shot up. "God
damn, Nancy, will you knock off all this maudlin, banal, boy and his
dog stuff. We're not taking that monster away anywhere."
"I know, I know, Ken. Don't talk about it now." She kept patting the
teddy bear gently. "Nice Shandy."
"And you, Shandy," Holman shouted. "I'm doing the courting around here.
Go hibernate or something, dammit."
Shandy's eyes stopped blinking. Nancy's hand slipped from his head
and trailed down his woolly back as he rolled over and away. Without
turning Shandy started off for the ship, slowly, on all fours.