Saving Winslow: Chapters 1–26

“Another one of Uncle Pete’s, I presume?”

Louie’s house was old and cold and drafty and leaky, rising up out of its stone cellar with good intention but weakening as it reached the bowed roof topping the musty attic.

Until this snowy Saturday morning in January, with the wind plastering the windows with wet flakes, when Louie had awakened feeling floaty, suspended in the air, with something different approaching.

The pitiful creature tentatively touched its nose to Louie’s.

He could direct customers to the cow halters, the livestock feed bins, the portable cages and tick repellent and vitamin supplements for animals of all types, and to books on every farm animal, from pigs to donkeys.

He could direct customers to the cow halters, the livestock feed bins, the portable cages and tick repellent and vitamin supplements for animals of all types, and to books on every farm animal, from pigs to donkeys.

His father did not want to buy a bale of hay for bedding, but Mack’s dad offered to throw in a partial bale for free because it had fallen off someone’s truck.

Winslow was bleating pitifully, those little pleas: plea-plea-please.

Louie stayed with Winslow, holding him, talking with him, petting him, coaxing him to drink.

After one especially frustrating soccer practice, Louie’s coach said, not unkindly, “Louie, you seemed to, um, avoid the ball.”

They were hungry for his voice and his news, but he rarely phoned, didn’t write often, and his news was not elaborate.

Claudine interrupted her. “Oh, shush, Nora, your jabbering is bothering this poor little donkey. He’s quivering.”

And now the scene appeared even more perfect to him: an indigo bunting atop a golden sunflower beside a white fence beneath a blue sky with drifting white clouds.

Before he reached the store, he passed the small park, and on one bench near the walkway lay a disheveled, thin man in a tattered army jacket.

The man was unshaven, his hair long and straggly, his clothes filthy.

Would I want to freeze this scene, Louie wondered, this scene of the unkempt thin man in a tattered army jacket on the brown wooden bench on the green grass near the gray walkway?

Uncle Pete was a large man, tall and stout, with mammoth hands and feet.

He showed Louie how to fill the syringe, check the level, tap it to release air bubbles, insert the needle, and release the medication.

She stomped the snow off her boots and casually tried to peer over the edge of the blanket-wrapped bundle in Louie’s arms.

Was he pinched and poked and prodded?

Louie bundled Winslow in his arms, climbed on the sled, and, with a push from Nora, off they went, careening down the hill.

It was spring, the early days of spring, when the shock of bright green sprouting from the ground and from trees was new and cheery, and when daylight was filtered through a gauzy curtain.

Winslow was getting big and even the makeshift pen they’d added to the back of the garage did not have enough room for him, and his new, loud braying was becoming annoying, not only to the neighbors, but also to Louie’s parents.

Winslow was getting big and even the makeshift pen they’d added to the back of the garage did not have enough room for him, and his new, loud braying was becoming annoying, not only to the neighbors, but also to Louie’s parents.

They returned to the pen to see if the donkey had left a trail of any kind, but other than the normal patches of scuffed earth where Winslow and Louie frequently walked, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.