The Old Meadow (2 page)

“Oh, that's so true,” sighed Walter sadly. “Applies to snakes and people, too.”

“Anyway,” Dubber Dog went on, “Marvin said that otherwise—if I stayed fat and nobody got to like me—I'd have to go to the corner of Squigg Street and Lebel Avenue. And
you
know what's there! Even
I
knew what was there—at the age of six months.” Dubber paused, to let the terror and awe sink in.

“The dog pound!”
chorused Simon Turtle, Walter Water Snake, and Chester Cricket together.

Their doom-laden voices were just what Dubber needed to hear. “Yes! And right at that moment Mr. Budd came in and found me with my nose full of ice cream. Of course you field folk had known him before—”

“Lord!—for how many years,” wheezed Simon Turtle.

“—but that was the first I'd seen of him. It was just after Jimdandy, his dog who ate boiled beets, had died, and he saw me with my jaws dripping ice cream, and he said, ‘That's him! He needs me.' So that was it. I got adopted. But also, I secretly think inside—Mr. Budd is afraid of the pound himself. It was after a little talk with Marvin that he grabbed me up and rushed me away. To his cabin.”

“He's kind of fat himself,” said Simon. “Though Lord knows how he gets that way—just eating those scrawny vegetables.”

“Our vegetables are
good!
” woofed Dubber Dog indignantly. “They're not scrawny!”

“How
did
you get used to vegetables?” wondered Chester Cricket. “After all that sweet ice cream? Must have been a big comedown.”

“It took some doing,” admitted the dog. “But you know Mr. Budd: with a carrot in one hand and a beet in the other—he won't take no for an answer. Besides, I needed the vegetables anyway—to reduce after all that goo.” He heaved himself into a new position. “Not that it did so much good.”

“Tchoor—we know Mr. Budd,” muttered Walt. “He whops you. Does that help to reduce you, too?”

“It doesn't mean he hates me,” hoped Dubber. “In fact—that last day—he demanded of Aggie and Marv that they take a dollar bill. They had wanted to give me away—but Mr. Budd said, ‘Nope, nope—he's my dog now. He deserves to be bought.' They compromised on a quarter.”

In a stillness, the wind brushed Dubber's hair. For those who had no hair—like Simon, Walt, Chester—the wind felt like a smooth hand on their backs.

“So, Chester,” said Dubber, “that's why I was wondering”—his voice drooped to a plea—“I was wondering if as Chester Cricket you might solve the problem—I mean, take away all the worry—about words like ‘eviction,' and ‘unsightly.' I mean—as applied to Mr. Budd's cabin.”

“Me!”
squeaked Chester. He'd known all along that the sadness of Dubber Dog would end up right on his wings. “Why
me?
I'm just a little cricket. Who sometimes has friends who help. Why me?” Chester's voice got swallowed inside his throat. “This is a big problem—”

“Sometimes,” said Simon, “it takes a little, ingenious person to find his way through the holes of an enormous problem.”

Iron worry imprisoned everyone.

“Did he whop you—hard?” Walt had to ask.

“Not really,” said Dubber apologetically. He often had to defend his master before his friends.

“Oh—Mr. Budd,” Walt moaned with sadness and anger and sorrow. He let himself sink.

“Oh—Mr. Budd,” Simon, Chester—the whole Old Meadow—sighed back in echo.

TWO

Mr. Budd

Oh, Mr. Budd … Mr. Budd was the problem.

As the animals lingered beside the brook, they chatted together about the old man. Their talk drifted into the deep Old Meadow, a place that was fairly overgrown with the vines and the grass and the secretive flowers of Abner Budd's life.

*   *   *

“Scrawny vegetables! As if we'd ever raise such things!”

*   *   *

Of all the field folk, Simon Turtle understood the problem of Abner Budd best, although the two, man and turtle, had had, for over sixty years, just a nodding acquaintance. Long before Dubber or Chester or Walt had been born—and in fact just after he himself had come out of the egg—Simon Turtle had known about Abner Budd. And the man's life had grown to be entwined with the fate of the whole Old Meadow. He was the single and—as he liked to say—the ‘onliest' human being to live there. That is, to live in the meadow since the farms failed, were sold, or the barns burned down. He was just something there, in his cabin, upstream, like the old gnarled tree that grew beside his vegetable patch. That tree dropped its leaves in the brook, and for years they'd sailed past Simon's Pool on their way to a river and then the great sea. But since Mr. Budd had gotten to be a problem—and no one knew how: he just
was,
one day—those leaves seemed to Simon like anxious notes. They'd been written by weather on an old willow tree and mailed by a brook, and each one was received by a worried old turtle. His fear had been very slow to grow, like his legs heaving up the bank or his head as he craned around, but it got there, fear did, just where it was headed—deep into his heart. Turtles get where they're going.

*   *   *

“The lettuce is especially lovely this year.”

“Oh, Dubber—
drat!
By my shell—we've got something much more important than vegetables to think about!”

*   *   *

The Old Meadow had a great, deep past. Simon's forebears were the only field folk who remembered its whole long history. Farmer Hedley had been the first to live there, and love that land that the brook ran through, and cultivate it, and make it a farm. He'd made peace with the proud Indians who lived thereabouts in Connecticut, and in exchange for services, like medicine when they were sick, they'd sold him the Old Meadow. In fact, that tribe—the Sistikontik—had liked him so much that they'd helped him pile the boulders and stones of his new property into a splendid natural wall. It still could be seen, if a field person or a human being had the eyes for such things. Beneath the ivy and shrubs and the clinging wildflowers that the years had encouraged, there the stone wall stayed. One eager crimson morning-glory vine had rioted over half a mile. But those stones were well laid. Though tumbled in places, they seemed to remember the hands that had put them where they belonged. And they were as faithful to the farmers who worked as a turbulent nature—wind, rain, snow—would allow.

Farmer Hedley sold out to a man named Santell, and Andrew Santell left the farm to his son-in-law, rich Phillippe LeBel, a French Canadian who'd come down from Quebec. Phillippe's son, Edmund, came back every Saturday night quite tipsy from the local tavern, the Cow Lick, so the farm and the meadow went again to a son-in-law, Paul Squigg. Edmund, by the bye, went to California to search for gold—and never discovered as much as a nugget. The Squiggs had the land for two generations, doing middling well, but the last Squigg, Simon, bred a new kind of corn and made a fortune. He sold—and this was a gloomy sign—to someone who didn't live where he farmed. His tenant farmer—named Pett—did all he could, but it wasn't enough. Edward Stroke, who'd bought from the Squiggs, just wanted land. He was greedy, and felt he was rich just if he owned earth, brook, trees—even tuffets. And Edward Stroke the Second, his son, was even more careless of land. He'd found that even owning it and doing nothing was profitable. You just had to wait till there wasn't enough land to go around—and then you sold out, and were rich. So for two generations, father and son, the earth, raw soil, didn't do a thing, except play. Weeds grew—and trees—the bushes went wild—hidden flowers flourished, which no one saw. The stone wall was covered by layers of years. The Old Meadow stood still—in the heart of the state of Connecticut—uninhabited, wild, so everyone thought.

But everyone was wrong.

*   *   *

“And the beet greens are marvelous!—this year.”

“Oh, beet greens! Oh,
beet greens!
I must retire below.”

*   *   *

The Old Meadow was inhabited, and not only by the field folk, although the field folk knew more about the man who was living there than any human being did.

Edward Stroke the Second, along with the Old Meadow, had inherited a lonely soul. And this neglected human being was just as alive—and just as determined to stay alive—as the wild morning glories that covered the old stone wall.

*   *   *

“Mr. Budd is also inventing a new kind of squash this year.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes! And Walter, don't you laugh! Snakes could learn to like squash, too.”

“
Oh
—boy.”

*   *   *

Mr. Budd had become, at the age of sixteen, a success in the Old Meadow. This was his only happiness, since he knew that outside Tuffet Country, Pasture Land, the brook—outside his green world—he was a failure.

He'd always been a loner, but never by choice. Few people are. And, at sixteen, to be a loner hurts. Abner Budd was sixteen when he ran away. His parents had died when he was so young that about the only thing he remembered was milk. He'd been taken in by a well-meaning neighbor, a single man with a crippled arm, who tried for years to do his best by the boy. But in those days, which were years in the past, most people felt that whopping a boy was how you made him learn to behave. Also the neighbor—his name was Paul Santelle, and he owned a little delicatessen, and he was quite nice, or at least he wanted to be—Paul went to the principal of the school where Abner was studying, and the principal said, “Keep him in line!” That meant
whop!
when necessary.

Abner Budd, at sixteen, decided that it was no longer necessary. And he got only one whopping more. This one, strangely, did what the other whippings hadn't; it gave him a sense of right and wrong. He'd run off and hidden himself in the Meadow. Farmer Pett, the last who lived on the land, found him sleeping beneath the bushy vines on the east side of the wall. It was August, and Abner had planned to eat some corn—raw. When Pett heard that, he decided that he'd been whopped enough. After lunch, after dinner, Abner ended up as the hired hand of Luke Pett.

Luke grew to think of Abner as kind of a wild son, an accidental gift like the irises the Old Meadow gave him every year. Those were happy years for Mr. Budd, who wasn't Mr. Budd as yet. He was “Abner” or “Ab” or “Kiddo” when Luke was in an especially good mood. Happy years—the happiest in the boy's life. He found that he really did like farming; he liked Luke Pett very much—and most of all he liked not getting whopped anymore. But the years of feeling like a family, if only a thrown-together one, didn't last very long. In the very month of Abner's twenty-first birthday, Luke Pett got killed by an oil truck that went out of control on Mountain Road. That afternoon, with its sudden emptiness which the boy felt within his heart, may have been the day when Abner turned into Mr. Budd, the cantankerous character of the Old Meadow.

It didn't help either, that same afternoon, that Edward Stroke appeared on the scene and told Abner he was fired. As long as his tenant farmer was gone, he was going to take a tax loss on the whole place. Just let it sit. He'd be glad if Abner was out in a week.

He was out in a night. He packed his few things from the room he'd fixed—a corner of the attic, hung with unused curtains and draperies, to make it warm and colorful—and rushed them all across the brook. He buried them, and the calendars, too. But after the cabin was built, they all were molded to earth, and not a single thing could be used. He'd run through the cornfield, the apple orchard, and settled down at last, like a thief—which he wasn't yet—in a far-off, hidden thicket in the northwest corner of the Old Meadow. No goodbyes—to anyone: there was no one to say goodbye to—and no words in his throat anyway. He ran.

And stay hidden two weeks. And now he really did become a thief. Stole apples from the orchard and whatever little vegetables he thought the Strokes wouldn't notice.

Mr. Stroke, who had chosen not to live there, put boards on the windows and locks on the doors, and the great homestead stood alone.

However, that farmhouse was not uninhabited. Mr. Budd, after two months of living beneath the trees and sleeping on pasture grass, ventured back—and pried open a cellar window. He made himself a bed of leaves and luckily found four moldy blankets. And for that first winter he lived on the vegetables—boiled in brook water—he'd been able to collect. The turnips helped, and the fire to cook them kept him warm, almost.

But he didn't dare make too much of a fire: someone might suspect that a human soul was living there, and finding his food in a meadow that had been let go.

That first winter was the worst: the coldest and the loneliest. Mr. Budd had to stay covered up by those blankets for days at a time. But he had no place to go. He was big enough now not to be whopped by anyone. But the trouble was—there was no one he knew! No one even cared enough to whop him now. Luke had gone—he'd always called him
Mister
Pett—and in all Abner's green, golden, snowy world there was no one he knew. Or knew him. Or he liked. And he
knew
that no one could ever like him. And in summer, winter—in spring and fall—in all the wide, terrifying world, there was only one place where he felt at home: the Old Meadow. Where he was alone.