Chester Cricket's New Home (9 page)

“No!” blurted Walt. “We need some more time. I mean—I mean—it's uncomfortable. Isn't it, Chester? Uncomfortable?”

“Well, yes,” began Chester, “but if that's all there is—”

“That isn't all there is!” said Walter. “There's—there's—the
West Wind!
A sleeper ship, if ever I saw one. She may not have staterooms or bunk beds, Chester—or even a hammock, spun by a spider—but she'll rock you asleep on the bosom of the deep, ol' pal. Won't she, Simon? Your pool
is
the deep.”

“It's deep enough for me, ol' pal.” Simon treated himself to a long and leisurely yawn. “And time to be turning in.” He crept to his favorite resting place. The old turtle had several comfortable beds, but this time of year there was one special spot, where the bank overhung his pool and the mud was soft and oozy and good, that felt most right, most covered and snug. He stretched his legs, then pulled them in, beneath his shell. His head was last. A final “Good night” echoed out in the dark.

For the first time ever, Chester envied his friend his safe, secure shell. When all else failed, that at least was a very private home.

Walter Water Snake whisked to a clump of reeds where he usually spent the night. “You get some rest now, Chester. And don't
worry!
Things are bound to work out. Just trust me.”

“I do,” said Chester. And added under his breath, “I guess.” He wondered just how many crickets had ever put their faith in a snake—and one with a devilish sense of humor at that.

He was tired enough, poor cheerless Chester—more exhausted that night than he'd ever been. Yet he still couldn't sleep. It wasn't his boat. As Walter had said, the rocking and bobbing was very restful. It lulled him sweetly, and the stars seemed to sway, as the
West Wind
drifted. Perhaps it was just those August stars that were keeping him awake. They seemed so huge this time of year, like lamps that someone had hung in the air. And, as always in August—
there!
one went—the sky was full of shooting stars. In New York, on his expedition to the Museum of Natural History, Chester Cricket had been taken to the Planetarium, which was right next door. And there he had heard that every August the earth passed through a shower of meteors, and they were the shooting stars. He sort of believed that. But also there was a legend among all insects that shooting stars were fireflies that had flown too high, and he sort of believed that, too. Whatever they were, falling stars could keep a soul awake—sometimes in the pure joy of watching and waiting for one, sometimes in the sadness that beauty can give when a man, or a cricket, has trouble.

Against his will, Chester leaped from the boat to the bank. He knew where he was going, all right, and knew that he really didn't want to go there—but didn't know how to stop himself.

One summer there'd been a bad fire over on Mountain Road. Nobody was hurt, but a whole house burned down. And the afternoon after the accident, the family that lived there—every single member of it—had gathered in front of the smoking ruins. Chester Cricket remembered that sad scene well. There were two children, a boy and a girl, and the man and his wife. No one said a word. They all just stood there, silently staring at smoking embers.

In just such a mood of helpless, hopeless emptiness Chester Cricket was drawn through the radiant, soft summer night to his stump. He felt like a little mechanical insect with no choice at all, as he leaped and landed, leaped and landed, beside the brook on the old familiar path. John Robin had told him the stump was in ruins. He'd seen it himself; the whole Meadow knew it. Still, he had to go back again.

Late moonlight silvered the tumbled wood. Because of the way the trees grew close, or the turn it made, or the rush of the current, the brook made a faint ghost-echo here. The water was talking to Chester's stump—still talking, the way it always had, but now in a lower, more private tone.

“Why,” said the cricket aloud, astonished, “it's beautiful!”

He jumped to one side and took another careful look. Dark fragments where the top was crushed stood up like towers, like battlements, against the star-struck sky. The stump was transformed. And it seemed to Chester as if the change had taken place not because of some silly accident but as if the magician's hand of Nature had passed above his well-known house and conjured it into something else. His home it would never be again—Chester stared at the stump as if in its ruin it somehow was new—and never belong to him anymore. “But, still,” he murmured to himself, “it always can be beautiful.”

He spoke one word aloud, “Brookview,” then began the hop back to Simon's Pool.

And halfway there, a flicker of misty light, like a tiny mooncloud hovering above the brook, caught his eye. Entranced by the sight, the cricket paused. The Meadow had many such gifts to give, unexpected jolts of sudden wonder, and Chester instinctively pressed each one as deep as he could in his memory.

He was trying to decide if the mooncloud was drifting on the brook's surface—or was it a patch of mist trapped in a spider's web?—when a dry squeak of voice asked, “Chister?”

“Donald,” said Chester, “is that you?”

“It's me, Chister. Jump out. Be kirful! My twig's pritty little.”

Chester saw a thin branch, like a finger of darkness pointing out in the soft darkness of night. Donald's voice and the cloud of light came from its end. The cricket jumped and landed beside Donald Dragonfly. They were only an inch above the brook, which swayed beneath them, until the branch had steadied itself.

“Why, it's only the moon on your wings,” said Chester. “I thought that light was mist, or something.”

“I kin make myself look like mist,” said Donald, “I kin fade in real good, whin I want to, Chister. It's how I stay alive.”

“And this is where you live, Donald?”

“
Yiss!
Right here in this fork of my twig. Not minny folks know it.” Donald gave off the puff of a dragonfly's laughter. “You like it?”

“It's marvelous!” said Chester Cricket, holding on tight to the jiggling twig. “Very safe here, I imagine.”

“Kik! kik! kik!”
That was how Donald laughed. “It's safe, all right! Thir's not minny can balance here.” Very hard to describe, a dragonfly's laughter, but very infectious: the cricket found himself chuckling, too.

“I barely can, myself.”

“I heered about all your troubles, Chister. The whole Middow's talkin'. The way you can't find a new home.”

“I'll just bet,” said the cricket.

“And I want you to know”—Donald took in a breath, to help the timid truth along—“you kin live with me here, Chister Cricket! Jist is long is you want. Feriver, even!”

“Why, Donald Dragonfly!” Chester gasped. The dragonfly had a reputation, among the reeds, along the grass, for being—“eccentric,” a few people said, and “peculiar,” said others. But everyone, insects, animals—even the fish in the brook who knew him—agreed that he was solitary. To be asked to share a home with Donald: “I honestly don't know what to say.”

“It's Augist now, Chister, and a bug's most a bug in Augist. Jist listen to ivrybody!
Kik! kik! kik!
The world's ours ivry year this time.”

In the dark that trembled with pale moonlight, Chester Cricket was learning a lot. “I didn't know that you thought about things like this, Donald. August—and the time of year.”

“Will, what ilse should a bug think about, Chister? Till me.”

The cricket shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. I've been thinking about stuff like that the whole night myself.”

“Innyway, it's not a good time to be by yersilf,” said Donald. “Yer wings kin drop off.”

Chester shook his head. “You're quite a soul, I have to admit. You're not—” He stopped. As always—or at least, as often—good manners seemed to come too late.

“Oh, you kin say it,” the dragonfly squeaked. “I know what people think of me. They think I'm titched. And you know something, Chister? They're right.
Kik! kik! kik!
It's the light is does it. I bin titched so often—my wings, I mean—and by so many diffrint kinds of light—by sunlight, and moonlight, and starlight, too—why, 'course I'm titched!”

“I think your wings are beautiful, Donald! And the colors that dance all over them—they're the very most beautiful things in the Meadow.”

‘Will, I think so, too,” agreed Donald. “Ixcipt you have to pay a price. And the price is that I'm titched, I guiss. And as far as being beautiful goes, I think the music that you kin make goes ivry bit is far is my light!”

“Oh no—” began Chester.

“We could find out!” the dragonfly interrupted him. He was shivering with excitement—so much that his wings shed a cascade of silver drops. “If you were to come and live with me—will, I could flicker my wings in the light and make my colors look like your music. Wowy me!
Kik! kik! kik!
How would that be, Chister?”

“Terrific, Donald,” said Chester. “But…” Whatever the “but” was, it made him pause. “I just think—somehow—you make colors, and I make music, and—”

“Yiss, I see.” Donald nodded philosophically. “It's bitter to keep thim apart.”

“Most times,” said the cricket. “But
some
times, of course, we could do it together.”

“Fer spicial occasions!”

“
Yiss!
I mean, yes.”

“You still could live with me, Chister, though.”

“I could,” agreed Chester, “but—” And this “but”—the biggest—needed no explanations.

“I know,” said Donald. “I'm a loner, too. But I jist had to
ask.
”

“I will always be grateful,” said Chester Cricket. He hesitated, but then decided to speak his whole heart. “And, Donald, after this talk we've had—which I really enjoyed very much, more even than I can say—I always will think of you as being my secret best friend.”

They touched wings, which is something that insects do.

EIGHT

The Lady Beatrice

The next morning, back at Simon's Pool, the cricket didn't tell either the snake or the turtle about what had happened the night before. It was too private—just insect to insect, one might say.

However, the problem still remained. In fact, it stayed around all day.

Walt Water Snake didn't seem too upset—impatient, if anything, Chester thought. He was frisking and fidgeting all afternoon, as if he simply couldn't wait for Chester to leave on another trial flight toward home.

“Surely
some
kindly soul will offer you a night's lodging,” said Walter. “As a matter of fact, I do believe that I spy a kindly soul—who looks like a whole week's worth of lodging—waddling toward me this very minute!”

Chester glanced at the bank. “Shh!” he whispered.

“She'll hear you. You know how sensitive Beatrice is.”

“Why, Madame Plumage”—Walter made a very elaborate bow, which had at least three curves in it—“I just this second was saying to Chester, I wish those elegant fowl the Pheasants would come toddling over and pay us a visit.”

Ambling along, by the side of the brook, were Beatrice Pheasant and her husband, Jerome. Now, it is well known that in most pheasant families the male bird always grows the most beautiful plumage. It's his right—Nature says so. And, indeed, in the case of Jerome and Beatrice, if you looked very closely, you would see that the gold and the amber and the brown—and perhaps a hidden trace of green—that his feathers contained were more brilliant than hers. Yet, somehow, Beatrice seemed the more grand. Perhaps it was just that she always walked first, and talked first, and spoke with such quiet authority. Or maybe her size, which was very impressive, made her look rather special. Whatever the reason, and despite what Nature might say, Beatrice was the Pheasant who favored the Old Meadow with her presence, and Jerome was a pheasant, her husband, whom everyone tended to like and forget. (On most matters, in fact, Beatrice Pheasant liked to have the last word, and not leave it to Nature or anyone else whose views might differ from her own.)