The Old Meadow (6 page)

“An' you have your voice, too. A voice which is right for you, J.J.”

“I don't like this,” Chester Cricket whispered to Simon, down on the bank. “It's
awful
not to like yourself! J.J. is furious! Something bad's going to happen.”

“Let's have a contest.” J.J. stamped hard on the iron wing of the bird that was harder, much harder, than he. It hurt his foot, but he wouldn't admit it. “I'll beat you! And with my
voice.
”

“If you say so, J.J.” Ashley felt a shiver where his feathers fitted into his body—always a bird's most sensitive place. He wished he'd never left West Virginia. Too late, though, he knew. J.J.'s feathers were all fluffed up by his rage, and every one was bristling.

“I've got to do mah worst,” the mockingbird reminded himself.

“What's that—!”

“Nothin', J.J. Proceed. If you must.”

Chester Cricket had hopped, in a nervous fit, right into the middle of the vegetable patch. He settled beside Dubber Dog, who was equally worried. Walter Water Snake, after a soothing dip in the brook—he always took one before going topside—had slithered after him. And even Simon Turtle had crawled up as far as he could. He barely got as far as the beans.

“I really don't like this,” said Chester—to Dubber, Walter, the night; he was talking to himself. “J.J. is furious.” His antennae jittered. “It's awful not to like yourself,” he murmured again.

“Let's go!” squawked the blue jay. “And I'll go first.”

“He's had such a pitiful life,” chirped a voice from the dark. “Oh, J.J.—”

Oh, J.J.…

After Mr. Budd, J. J. Bluejay was the problem person in the whole Old Meadow.

His real name was Jonah Jeremiah Bluejay. That was problem enough. He hated his name, as he hated a lot of everything. His father, George Jay, had been killed by a boy with a BB gun who thought it was fun to shoot at birds. To do the boy credit—his name was Bill Furnivall—he cried a lot when he realized that he'd hit George in the head, where birds can be hurt most easily. As he saw the blue jay drop from the branch he'd been sitting on, he suddenly knew what he'd done and threw his BB gun into the brook. It lies there still, rusted and ugly, and the fish avoid it. So does Walter, and so does Mr. Budd.

Alma Bluejay, Jonah Jeremiah's mother, became a recluse, and wouldn't leave the nest. But J.J. left. And after finding his perch in a beech, the first thing he did, to begin a new life, was change his name. Jonah and Jeremiah sounded awful—like two black grackles. So the young blue jay just picked his initials—J.J. J. J. Bluejay—now there was a name! It sounded like an important person. And he'd whack any bird with his wing who nicknamed him Joe or Jerry or Jer-Jer or anything but J.J. The sparrows insisted on calling him Jerry. They were sociable and silly, and well-meaning too, for all their nonstop chattering. But J.J. whacked the sparrows as well. He was one of the biggest birds in the meadow, and a wingwhack from him could knock a sparrow into tomorrow.

So J. J. Jay it was. The blue jay repeated his name to himself: it sounded—well, like a bird of plumage.

There was nothing, however, that could make J.J. a bird of voice. Blue jays are born with a squawk! That's simply the sound blue jays make. They make another noise, too—a kind of “Doodly-oo,” up-and-down sound—but J.J. had never mastered those notes. It may have been that his daddy, George, was never there to teach him, but J.J. was trapped in his squawk. And he hated it. Despite his blue-and-white wings, as lovely as anything in the Old Meadow, and despite the grace with which he alighted on any bough—J. J. Bluejay was mad at himself. That ugly squawk: he could never forgive himself for it.

But also he never could stop attempting to sound as beautiful as his plumage. He'd go way off and find some corner of the Old Meadow that only the insects and wildflowers remembered, and there he'd practice, day after day, all alone with the trees and the wind and the bugs. He was sure that he was improving. And, indeed, he did learn to squawk somewhat softer.

“I'm first!” J.J. demanded again.

“I'm willin',” said Ashley Mockingbird.

J.J. fluffed his wings, which still glimmered in the lingering twilight, as if his feathers might help his voice. Then, since he'd decided to begin with a fanfare, he let out a shriek that almost left Chester Cricket cross-eyed.

“Oh, boy,” whispered Chester, who was leaning on a stringbean to recover, “this contest is going to be something special.”

“I'm going underwater,” said Walt.

“I'm going into my shell,” said Simon.

“Oh no, you're not!” the cricket squeaked. He couldn't roar, but he did his best. “You're both going to stay right where you are. We've all got to see this through together. My antennae are telling me that there's more at stake here than a couple of birds on a weather vane.”

“What's at stake?” Walter wanted to know.

But Chester didn't have a chance to answer.

“Mah turn?” asked Ashley politely.

“Yes!”
J.J.'s voice was challenging, hard.

Ashley worked his mouth a bit, to get moisture into his throat. Then, when he was ready, he aimed for the high note that J.J. had tried to hit, and struck it dead center. The tone swelled over Mr. Budd's cabin, just like the light of the filling moon that was rising in the south.

Ashley Mockingbird seemed to like that note. He held it—and held it—then dipped to a note just below it and sang them together, one after the other, very fast.

“That's a trill,” sighed Chester. He leaned on the stringbean now in bliss. “The most beautiful I've ever heard.”

“Okay! okay!” On the weather vane, J.J. admitted that he had lost that round.

“Y'all may have had somethin' in your throat—”

“Just listen to
this!
”

J.J. croaked a melody—every note of which would have put out a star. They were just appearing.

“How's
that?
”

“Mighty fine,” lied Ashley. “But how about if you an' me did it like this? Just a little bit less crackly maybe—”

Ashley sang the blue jay's melody. And the stars came out again. It was as if a soothing hand had passed over the face of the whole Old Meadow.

J.J. suddenly thought of Alma, his mother, and how one time—there'd been thunder and lightning—she'd lifted her wing to shield him from the rain.

“You're not playing fair!”

“I sure am! I'm just singin' what you do—”

“You're
mocking
me!” squawked J.J.

“If I was mockin' you—” Ashley Mockingbird had a peaceful and a loving soul, but he, too, could become infuriated. And most of all when he—of all birds—was accused of being cruel. “J.J., if I was mockin' you, like what mah name suggests, I'd let go this!”

In a peal of sound that amazed the fortunate few who heard it, Ashley summoned up all the birdcalls and the animal noises he'd been gathering in his throat from the time that he'd lived in the Old Meadow, and he wove them out in a tapestry of music. In his song there were the conversations of sparrows, the peeps of finches. There was even the snarl of a nasty cat who'd tried to catch John Robin. There was Robert Rabbit's gulp of joy as he downed a carrot. And also Chester's chirp was there, though he never dreamed that he'd be remembered. All the meadow noises were in one throat—but made musical and beautiful.

And lastly, in this collected music, there was Jonah Jeremiah Bluejay himself. Ashley Mockingbird imitated J.J. He made a squawk—high, funny, and ridiculous. Then, even more mischievous, he turned the squawk into something wonderfully lovely, as if to remind the blue jay of what he had always longed for but never could achieve. But even as he made the sounds that derided his fellow bird, who sat beside him on an iron perch, Ashley knew that he'd made a great mistake.

Chester knew it too, below, in the dark. “I
wish
Ashley hadn't squawked like that. J.J. has no sense of humor.”

Ashley wasn't afraid, but J.J. showed fear. His head jerked away, and his eyes sought the night. His small heart had been devastated—more by the beauty of Ashley's song than by the mockery.

“J.J., I apologize. It's not like me to do that. I hope.”

With one rush of his wings, the blue jay rose from the weather-vane wing. He hovered in the moonlight, loomed dark and strange and threatening.

“One of us has got to get up on that roof!” urged Chester Cricket breathlessly. “To stop them.”

“I doubt if I—” began Simon Turtle, about to explain why he personally might have a hard time.

“Someone hurry!” interrupted Chester. “It'll be too—”

Already it was too late.

J.J.'s wings—he began to beat them furiously—created a downdraft that almost knocked Ashley off his perch. The mockingbird clung for his very life to that iron wing. In the hollers of his home he had never met a single soul—not even the rattlesnake, when disturbed—as enraged as J. J. Bluejay. But echoing, like a bad off-key tune in the back of his mind, was the fact that he'd never been so unkind himself.

“I
said
I was sorry—”

“You said! You said—!” J.J. idled in the air. His claws were extended. They looked like talons, as he toyed with this bird, whose pale feathers shone in the pale moonlight. “I heard what you said. And sang—you creep!”

Abruptly the blue jay made a dive and yanked out a feather from Ashley's head. It seemed to excite him, and satisfy his anger. J.J. began to squawk. But he wasn't just making his natural blue-jay sound now. It was an ugly cry of triumph.

“J.J.—stop!” shouted Chester Cricket.

J.J. didn't even hear. He swooped—then regained altitude—then swooped again, to torment the mockingbird. “You—you
stranger!
You wimp! You come to my Old Meadow, where I've been unhappy all my life, and you start your charm over everyone—”

“Y'all want me to go away?” asked Ashley. He didn't want to get beaten up, but more important, he knew from the pain in J.J.'s anger that a life was at stake—the blue jay's, not his. He'd just launch off and fly back home. But J.J. could not escape from himself. “'Cause I will! I'll fly—”

“Oh, don't!” barked Dubber.

But neither bird heard. J.J. was beating Ashley now with all the force of his two wings. And he didn't make a squawk while he did it. He was too much afraid of sounding absurd. Yet mercilessly he took out his spite on his enemy.

“There's still a little light in Mr. Budd's cabin—”

“Yes, Chester. It's his candle—almost always lit. He can't go to sleep in the total dark.”

“Go wake him, Dubber!
Now!
”

Dubber Dog rushed up to the cabin and began to scratch. That didn't make enough noise. He pounded his head on the door. But that hurt. So Dubber howled: his first howl in years, except for the phony howls he made when Mr. Budd tried to whop him.

This desperate howl worked.

Mr. Budd heaved out of his sleep and mumbled, “What? What's that. I am grateful for the corn, Luke!” Then he was awake. “What's goin' on?” He heard the birds screaming on his roof. “What
is
goin' on?” Like a wounded bear, because of the arthritis, Mr. Budd hauled himself off the mattress and limped outside.

What he saw on the tilted roof of his cabin made Mr. Budd forget his own pain. He'd slanted the roof to let the rain run off. But now, on the roof of the home that he'd built for himself and his dogs and his friends from the meadow, a battle of birds was taking place. The iron weather vane seemed loving in comparison.

Life flexed his rigid old bones. “You stop that, darn blue jay!” He picked up a rock, but then just held it, uselessly, in his hand. In this dim light he might have hit the mockingbird. “Please don't, blue jay! Don't hit him no more!”

J.J. was now pounding methodically—his right wing on Ashley's back. He'd always picked on little birds—the sparrows—out of his own misery, or else just a nasty streak, but Ashley was quite big. He could have put up a fight. But mockingbirds aren't fighters, and Ashley especially was not. To fight seemed not to be musical.

“Do something, Dubber!” shouted Mr. Budd, in despair.

“Bow-wow-wow!”
hollered Dubber. It wasn't even dog talk. Neither Chester nor Simon nor Walter could understand a word. It was just plain furious barking.

Above, when a chance occurred—J.J. had to catch his breath, because hitting a person who doesn't resist is very tiring—Ashley tried to fly away. J.J. gulped air and took one more swipe with his wing. He hit the mockingbird on the head and stunned him momentarily. He fell to the roof of Mr. Budd's cabin—and the fall did stun him badly. Unconscious, he started to slide. The slant that Abner had built for rain now poured down a mockingbird.

“Oh, mercy!” On the ground, Mr. Budd was running back and forth. His arthritis was all forgotten. “That bird'll break his neck!”

The moonlight was dim. But enough shone off the tar-paper roof so that Abner could follow the limp shape as it slithered down. He positioned himself—held out cupped hands—and thanked the Lord when a soft feathered weight fell into them. It was so still, though.