The Old Meadow (12 page)

“Ha, J.J.!” said Ashley, as he alighted. “Will I get busted up if I sit here a spell?”

“Oh—I guess not.” J.J. made a big show of moving over. “And why do you say that? ‘Ha?'—like that. It's ‘hi!'”

“The way I talk, J.J. In the South—”

“Well, you're
not
in the South!” J.J. begrudged the inches he'd moved and crowded Ashley against the trunk. “And we say ‘you'—
‘you!'
—not ‘yuh.'”

“I sometimes even say—‘y'all!'”

In the mockingbird's unblinking black eyes there was something that could have been laughter, or teasing, or just simply news about how a mockingbird talks. J.J. glanced at him and lifted a wing. But the light coming down, filtered green through the leaves, made him feel uncertain—was he being ridiculed again? Or not? And he folded his wing back into position.

“Tell y'all what,” said Ashley. “How about if
you
teach me how to talk—an' I'll teach
you
how to sing?”

J.J. jerked his head toward Ashley in startled disbelief. Then he squawked cynically. “
Aw, haw!
With this voice? I've been told—by some of my best friends, too—that I sound like a dead branch falling off.”

“Not so!” said Ashley. “You've got one nice song—‘Doodly-do' when you bob your head.”

“Oh, that!” scoffed J.J. “All blue jays can do that! And I don't do it very well.”

“I don't think y'all do it enough. Beg pardon—you just ‘awk' and ‘erk' too much. Can I tell you a story?”

“Oh—I guess so.” J.J. cleaned his right wing with his beak, as if he had much more important things to do than listen to stories.

“This tale could be called,” Ashley Mockingbird started,
“The Peeper Who Couldn't Peep.”
An' it happened to me. 'Bout a year ago, last spring, I was up much later than usual. The full moon just made me happy, an' I had to stay awake an' sing. Well, in between songs I heard this pitiful little
‘eep!'
I flew toward it, an' there, in a marsh, I found this peeper. Y'all have peepers here, J.J.?”

“Sure we do!” said the blue jay, who was very interested in the story by now. “Those tiny frogs—they're the only sign of spring I trust.”

“Me, too! Well, there the pitiful critter was, clingin' onto a bulrush—an' he didn't know how to peep! 'Course, when he first saw me, he got all riled up, me bein' a bird, 'cause he thought I was goin' to gobble him down. But though there's no Truce in West Virginia, I never would have done it. Poor Joey was just so miserable and little! That's what his name was—Joey Peeper.” Ashley took a glance at J.J. “I squawked at him not to be scared—”

“You squawked—” J.J. disbelieved.

“Sure I squawked! I always squawk, when the feathers are ruffled the wrong way. Or when somebody thinks I'm goin' to eat him. Anyways, after many attempts—durin' some of which I tried to show off—I taught that peeper how to peep!”

“Really?”

“Just one chirp—like Chester's—was all I had to imitate. Then little Joey did it so well that all the other peepers stopped peepin' an' listened.”

“How wonderful!”

“Him an' me peeped together all night long. 'Till that fuzzy blue came over the ridges of the mountains where our people live.”

This little story—for a reason J. J. Bluejay didn't quite understand—just broke his heart. And then mended it again. “Little Joey.” J.J. lived through the tale again. “I wouldn't have eaten him either.”

“An' I'm here to tell you”—Ashley made his voice stern—“I'm not flyin' off this branch till I've taught you, J. J. Bluejay, to sing! If Joey can learn, so can you!”

“Do you think so?” Like the golden-green light that fell on his feathers, hope bathed the blue jay. “Me—?”

“You! An' we'll start with the hardest thing: a trill. Now listen—” And Ashley trilled. It was as if two wings were sound, and one beat like a flicker of gold—then the other beat, just a little bit different, but also gold. Yet silver, too. It was as if—they were both so quick and so close together—it was almost as if they both were one. “It's like—”

J.J. interrupted. He lifted his wing, but timidly now, and rested it on the the mockingbird. “Stop.”

“What—?”

“I want to apologize. I hit you—”

“J.J.—I had it due. A show-offy thing like me—” The mockingbird took one quick look, then yanked his eye from the blue jay's eyes. “If somebody has a gift—I'm not sayin' I do—but he shouldn't ever use it to make someone else feel small. Now—about the trill—”

Ashley cleared his throat and trilled again. The blue jay's wing on his own wing felt good. It even entered into the trill. “Two notes—see? But even
your
throat don't know which is which.”

J.J.'s first attempt at a trill—but of course he was very nervous, and went too slow, and lost his breath—his first try sounded like a sick sparrow.

“Mhmm,” said Ashley, who had perfect pitch. To hear something like that made his head and heart ache. “I think if you had some spit in your throat—spit's very important—”

J.J. tried again, with good spit in his throat. And then something did sound. It wasn't a trill, but it wasn't a dead branch falling off.

“It won't work,” J.J. laughed. “And, Ashley—I don't care!”

“But I do!” exclaimed Ashley, amazed. Only laughter could bring out J.J.'s trill. And there was a real trill in the blue jay's unguarded happiness. “Y'all do it again! I'll die on this branch unless I hear you trill again!”

J.J. trilled. “Okay? Or would you rather have ‘awk' ‘squawk'?”

“J.J., I do believe you're developin' a sense of humor! And remember—good laughter's the happiest sound there is.”

“You're being so nice,” said the jay, “I wish there was something that I—”

“We'll go into that later. Let's try some scales!”

A scale is a little run of notes that go up or down, depending on which way you're headed. J.J.'s voice tried to head down first, and even Ashley, polite as he was, couldn't hide a wince. For J.J.'s descending scale sounded as if a terrified child had fallen downstairs and screamed as he hit every step.

“Pretty bad, huh, Ashley?”

“Oh, it has promise!” But the only promise that
that
scale had was—the child just might live, with luck. “Let's try 'er goin' up.”

By some dreadful miracle, it now sounded as if that unfortunate child had managed to fall upstairs.

“Let's quit! I'm hopeless!”

“J.J.—we are
not
gonna quit! It may frazzle every leaf on this tree, but you will sing a scale!”

Although they all shuddered a bit, not one leaf fell from the great beech before J.J. got his scales, both the up one and the down. That speaks a great deal about the strength of beeches. By working his “Doodly-oo” sound in, the bluejay softened his grating ‘awk-awk'—and Ashley was satisfied at last.

“Creek didn't rise, either,” murmured Ashley, who was happy and dazed at the wonder of what was possible.

“All right now, mockingbird—let's have it!” The sparkle was in the blue jay's eye now.

“Have what?” asked Ashley innocently. But inside his chest his small, hardy, reliable heart was beating with pride—not at J.J.'s scales, but at the thought that the blue jay could now make fun of someone without wanting to hurt. “Y'all think
I
have ulterior motives in teachin' a fellow bird to sing?”

“I
do
think that—yes!” said J.J. A squawk of the blue jay's new laughter came out. “So let's have it!”

“Well—” And Ashley began to explain.

*   *   *

A few minutes later, two eager friendly birds had settled on Chester's log.

“Here's the fourth member of the plot!” Ashley Mockingbird was in the midst of a big adventure. He knew it, too. And anyone could see, from the shuddering in his wings, he wanted to share it with everyone.

Walt reared up and stared at J.J. “Will you behave?”

“Ah'm a new bird!”

“What? ‘Ah'm'? This blue jay's gone crazy—!”

“Let's don't waste time, Walt.” The mockingbird had taken over. “We ought to practice. John's got to take your head—since he knows the crisscrossy streets of this town. J.J. gets your middle—you're heaviest there—”

“Thanks a lot!”

“—an' I get your tail. I'll just follow along, with as much of you as I can.”

Walt poked his face at the mockingbird now. “All of me, I hope!”

Ashley burbled a laugh. “All or nothin'!”

“Oh, gosh!” said Dubber Dog, who'd been sitting on the bank. “I wish I could help! Can't I go, too?”

“Tchoor!” said Walt. “We'll get thirty-five eagles, who aren't afraid of fleas—maybe they can get you off the ground. I don't mean it, Dubber, ol' pal.” He darted up and made himself into a snakeskin dog collar, around Dubber's neck. Very dashing, he looked. “Your fleas are my fleas—and partner, I am proud to have them! But the thing is, to get Mr. Budd out now. You're a fugitive yourself, remember.”

“Oh, I know,” Dubber gloomed, and gathered his haunches under him. “But I worry and worry.”

“Of course,” said Walt. “With a wrinkly, furry brow like yours, what else could you do?”

Walt dropped off of Dubber's neck, stretched himself on the grass of the bank, and shouted, “Okay, guys—time! Let's try it up here, since there's three of you. Makes a better runway.”

The three birds flew up into position: head, middle, and tail. They all felt a little strange. Without saying so out loud, each one wondered if any three birds—any birds at all—had tried to fly a snake before. In friendship that is. Walt took a last look at Simon's Pool. Beneath and around its flickering blue-green surface he'd had his home for so long. “Mr. Budd has his cabin, and Chester his log, but I have you, pool,” Walter Water Snake murmured.

“Come on, birds!” he shouted. “Let's up and at 'em!”

“But anyway”—a thought had just plodded through Dubber Dog's mind—“if you do get him out, well, what'll we do then? With Mr. Budd? And me, too! We'll just be escaped criminals.”

“Will you shut up, you mutt?” hissed Walt.

“We'll worry about that later,” said John.

“Go tidy up the cabin—you fur-lined idiot!” said J.J.

“Leave bad enough alone,” advised Ashley. “We're off!”

With a flurry of wingbeats that flattened grass, raised dust, made Chester's and Simon's eyes blink, the strange contraption left the ground. But the first trial of this airborne invention, made up of three birds and one water snake, was not too successful. The birds were out of flap: their wings didn't beat together. Walter felt a jiggling, then wobbling—a lurching—he swayed from side to side—and then, without saying goodbye, the birds loosened their claws. Birds are terrified of crashing, and at the last moment they had to fly free, alone, and save themselves.

Walter fell in a fern bed beside the brook. He hurt, in the lower part of his back, but he made up his mind, right there in the ferns, that this was a day for heroism. “It's all right, you guys!” he called up. Just twenty-five broken bones, he wondered—but only to himself.

The three birds flew round and round, apologizing in the air. They all felt guilty, swooping down and soaring up, as they tried to get back their composure. A bird doesn't like to fail—even when he's trying to fly a snake. They settled beside Walt, who was soothing himself in the ferns.

“Just, next time,” said Walt, “water would be best. Next mud, heaps of grass—but for a snake's sake, don't drop me on Mountain Road. It's hard! Off we go again! And by the way, let me count, like they do in a rowboat, so you'll all beat your wings in sync.”

The flying machine assembled itself once again. Walt said, “Okay! I'm thinking airy thoughts now—I'm light!—I'm a feather!
Flap
two three—and
flap
two three—”

He happened to glance down, and his breath stopped in his throat. The birds, however, who were used to this view, had gotten the beat and went on flapping rhythmically.

“Oh, look!” Walt exclaimed. “We're flying.”

Below him, Pasture Land, Tuffet Country, the course of the brook as it flowed past Chester's ruined old home, the battered old stump, in the north J.J.'s beech and a growth of untended trees, in the south the paths the Town Council had planned, and even—when Walter looked under and behind—the shimmer of Simon's Pool: Walt's whole world was below. And every single part, like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, fitted into every other part. And Mr. Budd's cabin. It, too, appeared to Walter's eyes and seemed to fit in, and make the whole meadow complete.

“Once more!” Walter shouted. “But lower and slower.”

His wings obeyed, and below him his world spun under again. “Oh-ah—” For the first time in his life, Walter Water Snake was speechless.