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housekeeper she is—I know she doesn't mind my saying that because I only mention it for her own good, and believe me, when I'm a famous actress I'll hire a maid to give her a hand, because, heaven knows, she isn't getting any younger." The wolf saw that Bob's eyes were beginning to bulge as his hand slipped from the handle of his ax, but Little Red continued: "But even leaving Granny's messy habits out of it, you come in here trailing big globs of mud and grass, shoot a hole through the bowl, which
my family
bought Granny for Christmas last year, gouge a perfectly fine door with your ax, not to mention pulling my hair, and look at this—
look at this!
" Everybody looked. "You are stepping in the goodies my mother made and which I brought here for my sick granny, never mind that I had to walk for hours to get here and that I'm even now missing a class with Madame Yvette to be here, inhaling wolf dander and catching a chill from sitting on this floor, which no doubt will ruin my stunning speaking voice. And you call this a rescue?"
    Bob shook the basket off his foot.
    The wolf saw that the azaleas were crunched, but the food was surprisingly undamaged. He straightened the nightcap, which had fallen to cover one eye. He, Granny, and Bob looked at one another. They looked at the basket of goodies. They looked at Little Red.
    There was only one thing they could do.
    They locked Little Red in the closet, then they went out in the backyard and had a picnic.

FIVE
Excuses

Where did the children of Hamlin go,
following the piper's song,
across the patterned fields
and through the woods
and into a crack in the mountain
that wasn't there before
and will never be there again?
    If he truly meant them ill,
he might have drowned them with the rats.
But if he truly meant them well,
he might have forgiven their families.
    And did he have a family of his own,
demanding explanations for
a townful of children trailing along behind?
And what does a magical piper say
in such a case:
"Look what followed me home—
can I keep them?"

SIX
Jack

    Once upon a time, after the invention of teenagers but before there were shopping malls for teenagers to hang around in, there lived a young man named Jack.
    Jack was a lazy boy. When his mother asked him to help around the house, he always said, "I'm too tired," and when his mother asked him when he was going to get a job, he always said, "Tomorrow." Until, one day, Jack's mother told him that—unless he started looking for a job—the next time he left the house to visit his friends, she was going to change the locks on the doors so he couldn't get back in.
    Jack decided this would be a good time to go to the village to see what sorts of jobs there were. But being the lazy boy he was, he didn't want to walk. And being the lazy boy he was, he hadn't earned any money to buy a horse. So Jack rode his mother's cow into the village.
    "That's a fine cow," the tavern keeper said when he saw Jack ride up the street. "I was just telling my wife that we should get a cow of our own since we have so many children."
    "A cow is a very nice thing to have," said Jack. This looking-for-a-job was not as hard as he had thought it would be, he decided. He could get a job in the cow-selling business. "How much would you give me for this cow?" he asked.
    "Ah, well," said the tavern keeper. "Times are tight. I don't have any spare cash. But I could give you a free meal and all the beer you can drink. There's a party going on in the tavern right now. Feel free to join in."
    So Jack handed the tavern keeper the rope that was tied to the cow's halter. As far as Jack was concerned, he didn't have much choice: What other job was he likely to find besides cow salesman? And where else was he going to find someone who wanted to buy a cow?
    In the tavern, the tavern keeper's wife thanked Jack for the cow and brought him a bowl of bean soup and a mug of beer. Beer after beer Jack drank. The people in the tavern talked