The Old Meadow (17 page)

“Look! There He is!” whispered Walt.

A black shape hovered against the moon—then slowly edged out of the shining white face. Chester knew that the Hawk was circling, for stars disappeared, momentarily, as he blotted them out in his flight.

“I'd like to meet him,” murmured Ashley. “A wonderful flyer. He lives so high.”

“No one knows the Hawk,” said Chester. “Not even the ones who have talked to Him.”

“Well—back to work! Here I go—”

“Good luck!” Chester shouted.

“Good luck to all of us!” added Walter Water Snake.

Ashley flew to the maple. His song this time was all about Simon's Pool—and Simon and Walter and Chester Cricket. He'd been saving them up, all day, for one of his most important melodies. And all the while he kept an eye cocked toward the west, where rising black clouds were canceling stars.

Simon's rhythm, in the song, was sort of plodding, slow but sure. Walter has a slithery tune. It was beautiful, but teasing, too. Chester got four chirps—and Ashley imitated him exactly—but they formed a music that pierced the hearts of the human beings, the animals too, whoever heard it.

Those clouds reached the moon. The sky was now black.

“Oh, now!” Chester Cricket said to himself. “If ever—now!”

The Hawk couldn't have heard him. Perhaps he felt Chester's urgent wish. For high up in the sky a scream was heard—a terrible shriek, which felt like a threat to everyone. Down it plunged, that sound, until animals and human beings blocked their ears. The August sky was filled with terror.

“He did it!” said Chester, to himself.

Ashley broke off his song in mid-melody.

And the Old Meadow vanished.

The scream that fell down from the sky and the silence of the mockingbird were the signal for the world to end.

It was utterly dark, and when Ashley stopped singing, the jubilant sounds of summer died. The happy, confused din of insects and the rustling of the animals failed. There was little wind, but it, too, seemed to fall still. Or did Chester only imagine this? The brook, too—there was no silencing it—but a living stream hushed its rapids and eddies. And the cricket didn't imagine that.

No human being dared to speak, and no animal would. In the cars lined up on Mountain Road, where men and women had been chatting, happy—some kids had been crying, because they were tired—all around the Old Meadow the human beings seemed frozen with fear.

For this was the dreadful and endless dark that filled the enormous emptiness—which was all there was—before the heavens and earth appeared.

Ashley stiffened himself for several minutes, in Bill Squirrel's maple. He wanted the human beings to know what this silence and this darkness felt like. Then soundlessly he flew down to Mr. Budd's cabin. He'd memorized the way. Flew in through the open door, and perched on Abner's only table. Abner always kept a candle there. Ashley made the softest chirp he could.

The man and his dog had been outside, amazed and marveling—like everyone else. But Mr. Budd knew that voice. “Is it you, my friend?”

“Chirp!”

Mr. Budd went inside. “Do you want a little light! Is that it?”

“Chirp.”

“Well, all right, then. But for me—I'm not scared of the dark. At least not tonight.”

“Chirp.”

Mr. Budd found his matches and lit the candle.

Those human beings who were in a position to see the cabin first saw a single bright spark shine out. Then a steady thread of light appeared. The fate of the meadow—not only the meadow—the future of the whole world seemed to hang from this filament of light that shone through the cracked glassine window of an old man's ramshackle cabin.

Ashley stayed by the candle a while and let the light shine on his feathers. Then he flew through the door and up to his proper perch: Mr. Budd's weather vane.

He waited there, for a couple of seconds. So much, he knew, depended on him. He took the deepest breath of his life—and sang a scale. In a voice that no mockingbird had ever had to use before, both beautiful and powerful, his sound raced from high to low. Then reversed. Up.
Up!
His voice went from low to high. Then he sang about Mr. Budd, and his years in the meadow, his loneliness and his happiness there—his age and his youth. And not one soul understood that song—not even Mr. Budd.

“Now! Now!” whispered Chester to Donald.

The dragonfly flew off.

“Me, too,” said J.J. “And they'd better be awake!” He, too, flew away.

Fireflies, like children with sparklers on the Fourth of July, came alive beside the brook. When the woodchuck saw life was possible, he began to belly-laugh. Robert Rabbit beat his left foot on a tree trunk. And underground, Paul Mole sang the song of the earth.

Chester Cricket sang, too—all the songs, both animal and human, that he could remember.

Some insects simply banged their antennae together, and hoped that the sound would be heard. Most thrilling of all—in the dead of this night, all the birds of the meadow began to sing.

Far above, the clouds lifted from the moon, like a veil lifting off of a human face. And the Hawk, who had one sweet note in his voice, as well as a scream, sang it over and over, as he circled around. Perhaps he, too, had been taking singing lessons.

The human beings breathed again. And the world was remade.

*   *   *

There
was
gridlock in Hedley that night. But as the cars and the human beings extricated themselves, not one person dared to honk a horn.

TWELVE

Avon Mountain

“There he comes again!”

Walter Water Snake was a very different snake than the one who'd grumbled at Dubber's arrival a short few weeks before. He also knew he'd be greeting a very different dog.

“Hi, Walt!” Dubber Dog lumbered up and settled himself on the bank. There was a single tuffet there that made a great backrest. “Hi, Chester! Hi, everybody! Can I join y'all?”

“Tchoor!”

Everybody—a squirrel, a robin, a rabbit, one turtle, one cricket—said, “Hi!”

“Am I part of everybody?” asked Donald Dragonfly hopefully, in his crackly, uncertain voice.

“You sure are! You dashing dragonfly!” Walt was feeling expansive. Not expansive in his neck, as in his cobra impersonation at the Hedley Police Station, but his heart was expanded with happiness.

“Me? Dashing?” Donald rasped his laugh, which sounded as if someone using sandpaper had just come down with the hiccups.
“K! k! k!”

“How is the Grand Old Man of the meadow?” Walt asked Dubber.

“The Grand Old Man—” Now Dubber laughed. And his laughter sounded like someone's stomach who'd had too much to eat. “The Grand Old Man is as mad as a hornet!”

“I once—” began Donald.

“When wasn't he?” interrupted Simon, whose memory was as long as Abner's.

“The old gaffer! They're letting him stay. He ought to be grateful!”

“Don't you call him that, Walter! He's not an ‘old gaffer'!”

“I meant it in the very best way.” Walter apologized grandly, by bowing in the brook.

To prove that all he had said was true, he whipped himself up and became a dog collar—once more—around Dubber Dog's neck. Since the trip from the dog pound, poor Dubber had never known when to expect this playful and loving behavior from Walt.

“Am I chokin' you?”

“Yes!”

“Har! har!”
Walter loosened his grip and dropped down on the meadow grass. It felt almost as cool and smooth as the waters in Simon's Pool. “So the Grand Old Gaffer's as mad as a hornet.”

“I once knew a hornet who
niver
got mad!” mused Donald Dragonfly, all by himself in his thoughts somewhere. “His name was James.” He thought about this peaceable hornet for as long as he could remember to think—at least a minute. “I wonder where James is now.” Then the yellow of a passing butterfly's wing set him thinking about the sun. And that was Donald's favorite topic for thought.

“What's he mad at?” asked Walt.

“The Town Council's not only letting him stay. They're putting in plumbing and electricity!”

“Oh!” moaned Walter Water Snake. “Can things get any worse?” Then he started to laugh, and slipped over the bank and into the water.

“They almost wanted to put in gas!” said Dubber. “For a brand-new stove. But Abner—in my heart I call him ‘Abner' now—said he'd burn down his house if they did. So it's going to be an electric stove.”

“We didn't know things had gone that far,” said Chester.

“They went that far the day after Dark Night. The Town Council met—whoever does run it—and while whoever was making up everybody's minds, the Irvins roared in, Malvina at the head of them. Of course they'd been out on Dark Night and all of them realized how much Mr. Budd meant to everything, and Malvina demanded that he be protected—as if Abner was a mountain or valley. Anyway—‘Something
natural!
' she screamed.
‘He cannot be replaced!'
One son suggested he be ‘an endangered species,' but nobody cared for that. If one lonely old man was an endangered species—then everyone is. They decided to spruce up the cabin—mostly, I think, just to get Malvina out of the room.” Dubber sighed. “And, given Malvina—I think I'd agree to anything, too.”

“Anyway,” he went on, “they're putting in plumbing, electricity. And the fights have been avoided so far. We had a near one, though. One plumber stepped on a squash. The foreman had to offer Abner a lettuce-and-tomato sandwich—or else there'd have been a brawl. Of course, Abner would have lost. Because the plumber was husky and young, and ready to take offense. But they shared a sandwich, and tempers cooled.”

Dubber Dog reflected. “Like an ornery bulldog, that plumber was. But I guess Abner, too, must have been like that—feisty—when he was young. Anyway, it's all right now. Except Abner said, ‘If they tear up one tomato plant—or one string bean—watch out!'”

“Here he comes!” said Walter Water Snake. “And he hardly ever comes down to the pool.”

A lumbering was heard upstream.

“I came down myself,” said Dubber Dog, “'cause I did not like to hear Abner use awful words to the workmen. You've got to be nice if he swears a little.”

“Is swearing like—swearing to keep a promise?” asked Donald Dragonfly.

Mr. Budd lunged through thickets, shrubs, and bulrushes. “Where are you, dog—!” He broke through a patch of vines. “Oh,
there
you are—you Dubber you! My mutt—!”

There was that one tuffet that grew on the bank above Simon's Pool. It seemed like a seat—an empty throne. Abner Budd sat on it. “Got lots of friends here, too, don't you, dog?” Mr. Budd looked at all the animals—who were not afraid, and didn't hide.

“I'm ready to give up,” said Abner. “Come here, Dubber—”

The dog jumped up in Abner's lap—that was happening more often now—and Abner stroked his head.

“It's not only plumbing and the electricity—they're insulating my cabin now! Why, I don't need insulation! Comes a cold night in February—I just put on two or three burlap blankets. You'll lie beside me. I get to the spring. At least—I always have. So far. Perhaps we should go to Maine. They may not have
‘improvements'
there.”

Dubber slipped off Mr. Budd's lap. He could see that his master was tired. And Abner eased off the tuffet. He rolled up his trousers, “These knees are hurtin' again.” Abner Budd lay back and looked up at Bill Squirrel's maple. Its green had reddened, the last few days. “Why, I didn't know it was so near fall!” Abner mumbled something important about the fall, but no one could understand what he said. Then he fell asleep.

Dubber looked up sadly. “I guess he'll be falling asleep more and more.” He was thinking of hours of loneliness, while he waited, as Mr. Budd slept. Then he stopped feeling sorry for himself. “All you guys here have to help me take care of him—!”

“We will,” said Chester. “And we'll all keep both of you company, too.”

“We'll never leave, though,” said Dubber.

In a silent reverie, the cricket was thinking—On Dark Night the insects seemed like the heart of the meadow. Now Mr. Budd and Dubber are. I guess the Meadow has many hearts. Chester hoped that he was one, too.

A hurrying of wings was heard in the air above the animals.

“Just had to have one last look around. With my virtuoso friend here.”

“Mm!” grumbled Walt. “‘One last look—' I don't like the sound of that.”

“Now, don't go on. I told you right from the start that I had responsibilities, back in West Virginia. An' J.J.'ll guard y'all—with a squawk or a trill—whatever he feels like makin' that day, if somebody bad shows up. Like a kid with rocks or two men with butterfly nets. Funny, though,” the mockingbird thought, “that family turned out to be the Old Meadow's best protection.” He whistled happily.

But his laughter didn't work.

He'd meant to soothe all his friends' disquiet. The field folk didn't make a sound. They all fidgeted nervously and didn't dare even glance at each other from the corner of worried eyes.

“Now don't y'all do that!” hollered Ashley—and tried to make his mockingbird's voice sound ugly. But couldn't. “Don't you dare to be miserable—!”

“But you'll wait a while—” said Chester Cricket anxiously. He looked upwards, as if expecting something. “A week—or a couple of days—”

“Right now!” said Ashley.

“No—later,” pleaded Dubber Dog.

“This very second,” the mockingbird said. “It's no use to make it worse—”

The field folk fell still. No one had a word to say.