The Book of the Dun Cow (11 page)

He turned Ebenezer's head to the side. The wound yawned. But the lesson was elsewhere: Clamped in the Rat's mouth was a foul section of a serpent, chewed away from its greater body. Organs enough clung shredded and gouty to the flesh to prove that that one had died as well. It must have been a hideous fight.

“Talk, Weasel,” Chauntecleer hissed, “when you know in God's name what you are talking about.”

In all his life Chauntecleer had never known Ebenezer Rat to speak a single word. Therefore he didn't expect an explanation now, and he asked no questions. He said, “Peace, Nezer,” and he watched in silence until the legs stopped their treading and the body relaxed. The feathers lolled a little; and then they were perfectly still.

Ebenezer Rat was dead.

Chauntecleer took the serpent from the Rat's mouth. Then he yanked both feathers from their sockets and threw them violently at the wind. He stroked Ebenezer's fur smooth, groaning while he did. He kissed the Rat.

And then he leaped high—to the top of the Coop.

“I want a Council!” he cried; his voice echoed from the forest in the morning air: “Council!”

“Every one of you! Have your kin here by the afternoon. Present your breed before me! Let not one of them stay away, not women, not children, not the old—everyone! Have them
all
here by the afternoon!”

Though none of them had slept, they all took to their heels and left—John Wesley Weasel among them; and the dawn light saw them disappear.

“Where is Scarce?” cried the Rooster. “Scarce, where are you?”

“Here,” said a small, buzzing voice. “Never, never gone.”

Chauntecleer looked and saw him just off the end of his beak. It did take some looking to see Scarce, even when one knew where he was. Scarce was a Mosquito. Scarce was all Mosquitoes; but then, all Mosquitoes are one. So they were all known by the one name, Scarce. And if someone had spoken to one of them, he had spoken to them all. And if someone avoided all of them, yet there was always one he couldn't avoid. On the whole, there was no better messenger than Scarce.

“I want you to put it into every ear in my land,” Chauntecleer said, “that I will have a Council in the afternoon. Do more than inform them. And more than urge them,
command
them to come. No one—no matter how large and powerful, how small and cunning—is safe who stays away. Perilous times, Scarce. I want every creature at this place by the afternoon.”

Scarce simply disappeared, and his buzzing went with him.

Then Chauntecleer went inside a hollow Coop to be with Pertelote. He went wordless, and wordless he sat beside her. He knew the size of her sorrow.

Between yesterday and today, between the time of her wretched discovery and the moment she fell into an exhausted sleep, between death and death, Pertelote had said nothing; and none, not even Chauntecleer, knew for sure what went through her mind. One thing, however, she did say.

Chauntecleer had been sitting beside her for an hour—not touching her, nor even looking at her, but yet writhing in his soul on her account—when she shifted position ever so slightly. Immediately his senses quivered, alert.

She said, “Beryl was a good nurse.”

Chauntecleer nearly made a noise of agreement, nearly sought to start conversation. But he thought better of it.

“This sacrifice was not meant for her,” Pertelote said. And then that was all.

An hour later the Rooster concluded by her breathing that she had fallen asleep, and he was relieved. Strangely, her sleep set him somewhat free. Since he himself had no trouble talking—indeed, lived, moved, experienced, and identified experience by the words of his mouth—her silence was a suffocation for him and her distance a torment. They bound him. They damned his love to helplessness. They made him feel mortal and small next to such self-possession. If she would offer him words, then he could heal her with words. Moreover, then he would win the right to spill his own feelings into the open by words—and could do so with impunity and without the fear that he might diminish himself by the blather. But when she slept, words were not even a remote consideration. And the sleep itself was a kind of unspoken word, signifying trust. Therefore Chauntecleer often waited for his Pertelote to fall asleep first before he let himself—a tiny, private conquest; a bitty proof of his own self-possession. And therefore her sleep on this particular afternoon set him free.

The Rooster, without leaving Pertelote's side, turned his attention to the other Hens asleep in the Coop. Despite the daylight, he had commanded it; so they slept. But he heard the nervous cries of their dreams. He saw them shudder, rise up on their legs without waking. He knew that—though the name alarmed them—they had wished that the enemy
had
been Ebenezer Rat, because they knew him. Nezer had a head and tail which could be measured, a track which could be recognized, a wickedness which could be laid low, a name! He was a Rat, an animal: He was one of them. Feared, invidious, criminal, and right worthy the punishment he received—yet one of them, for all of that. But
now
the Hens dreamed faceless dreams, fought the bodyless, the eyeless—gibbering, screeching, wordless, nameless, immeasurable, unutterable, the enemy was in their dreams hagging them. And these dreams were the worse because sleep in the afternoon is a heated, sweaty, fretful affair. But the Rooster had commanded it.

Chauntecleer watched his Hens and his stricken wife with yearning.

Middle afternoon. Lord Russel, the Fox of Good Sense, stepped out of the forest, a solitary figure. He glanced furtively around the empty Coop yard, then snatched himself back into the brush. For the space of ten minutes the yard stood abandoned, flat, and still. Then another Fox, not Russel, twitched into view and slunk from bush to bush. One by one Russel's kin began to creep into the yard, obviously uncomfortable to be in open spaces, but coming. Cousins, male and female; red coats and black tips to their tails, as if the tails had been dipped in ink; silently on padded feet, and singly they came. They were a breed all unused to talking with one another; so it had gone against Russel's nature to gather them together, but he had nonetheless done it, and they came: Nieces and nephews, second and third cousins, aunts and uncles unto the fourth and fifth generation, the Foxes came.

Then the ground began to move, and the astonished Foxes rushed together for safety. Their eyeballs popped. The whole yard slid, shifted, crumbled toward the Coop—until Lord Russel himself, the most ecumenical among his relatives, began to giggle. It wasn't the ground moving at all, but countless thousands of Ants, like living dust upon the earth, come to the Council. Black Ants marching. Red Ants, fiery Red Ants full of the vicious bite. Hill builders and ground diggers, some as large as a Fox's tooth, some as small as grass seed, tickering and traveling in such masses that they could be heard—or else the earth itself was whispering. Like flowing sand they closed upon the Coop.

The Foxes had come from the north. The Ants, like thought, had come from anywhere. Now, out of the east and wet with the sticky water of the Liver-brook, Otters tumbled into the yard, scooting chaos into the Antian dignity which had preceded them, snapping left and right like a hundred fish, altogether unrestrained by the gravity of the Council, playing games. So abashed had John Wesley been by his morning mistake that he had swallowed his pride and carried the Rooster's command even to the Mad House of Otter—relatives of his which he would otherwise have disavowed with a curse and a quarrel.

If John had relatives which he classed below himself, he also had relatives who classed themselves above him. Had he swallowed some pride approaching the Mad House of Otter? Well, verily, then he gagged on pride approaching the Family Mink. But they came, too. Disdainfully they came, carrying their own approved food (enough for a day's excursion, a sad miscalculation!), their little heads and their bright beady eyes high and distant. They were appalled at the presence of so many Ants; and as for the Otters—on that matter they wouldn't even deliver an opinion.

And the Weasels themselves appeared, stumbling curiously in the light. Their eyes had been made for the night. Only John Wesley Weasel among them had learned adjustment. But Chauntecleer had called a Council for the afternoon, and they were here.

A deep, menacing buzz—at exactly the height of the treetops—announced the Bees; and they descended.

Rabbits blew out of the forest like cottonwood before a high wind: thumpers, jacks, stringy grey and puffy white; some lop-eared and some with ears like nickels, every ear twitching in every direction to judge the mood of the place.

The Deer walked out in grace.

Sparrows flocked, then settled, unnaturally, upon the ground.

The Pigs lumbered in, breathing heavily,

The Ducks, the Geese, and the Swans took note of one another in various nasal languages (they were a loose-knit family; but they
were
a family nonetheless, and it was proper for families to take note of one another) and squatted in separate areas around the Coop.

Sheep tiptoed in, and wished nervously that Chauntecleer would hurry up and appear.

Then the easy sequence of the coming was broken. The nice distinctions among families, which had heretofore been maintained, were absolutely shattered.

For now the whole forest raised a careless, stupid noise—a guttural, pleasant, throaty, meaningless chatter so foreign to its regular nobility. Stuttered words tumbled from between the trees, like: “Goo-goo-good!” Inane noises like: “Ge-ge-get a gallop on, my bubble-brother! We're tardy-dee-dee!” Then a hundred voices chorused together: “Goda-goda-speed the rutabaga Rooster! And goo-goo-good afternoon to him!” And a thousand said: “Galoot!” for no perceptible reason whatever. All of these sounds—constituted chiefly of bumps, burps, and g's—thumped out of the forest. And then, from the wooded uplands of Chauntecleer's land, where they did not even know enough to come in out of the rain, but where they learned good breeding and decorum in abundance, here came the Wild Turkeys. Ridiculous heads on ridiculous, tubby bodies with ridiculous, good-natured chatter in their throats, they came. Smiling, nodding, and burping on everyone, from the Ant to the Deer, no matter. Greeting this one and that, they spread out among the company in the yard. Salutations, compliments, well wishes, they sprinkled on every available head as if it were their business—and, indeed, they were convinced that it was:
Someone
, so their reasoning, must cast a little cheer wherever he goes. There's little enough of that in the world.

The animals came. Not representatives only—
all
the animals who dwelled in Chauntecleer's land.

Animals brown and soft, animals quick and grey, animals ruddy, animals black and melancholy, animals with piercing, suspicious eyes, animals plumed and animals pelted, winged animals and those footed for the ground, the fleet and the contemplative, the leapers and the dodgers and the crawlers and the carriers, the racers and the trotters and the climbers and the fallers, singers, croakers, whistlers, barkers, gabblers, philosophers, orators, and mute—they all pressed into the great yard around Chauntecleer's Coop; they had heard the word which Scarce had borne to them; they had obeyed.

And having come, what a sight they made! What a jumbled, whichaway, particolored traffic they made as they moiled around finding places for themselves. Heads and ears, noses and eyes, backs of every stripe and pattern—a very carpet of animals. The rest of the land was deserted; but this place boiled with life—obedient and waiting.

It was wonderful that in all this rabbled congregation, no one stepped on another one's tail. Perhaps there was a reason for that. For it was noticeable, too, that these were every one of them the meek of the earth. They were meek by inheritance. Only John Wesley and his kin were born to meanness; but Chauntecleer had some time ago made them meek by instruction. They were catechized into meekness.

And as he took his position now atop the Coop, Chauntecleer wondered painfully if he should ever have done such a thing, taken blood out of the Weasels' eyes. For what were these before him? As many as they were, as noisy and as varied as they were, what were these against the evil which now assailed them? Chauntecleer looked out over this enormous company of souls, and he was silent for a time.

One by one, family by family, he recognized all his animals, and his heart rushed out to them. Who was he to command them? A nothing! He was himself weak and filled with fault. He was afraid, as Pertelote knew right well. He was ignorant and foolish.

Yet, what an enemy he must lead them against!

And dear God! Where were their claws with which to fight a fight? Where were the teeth for ripping and tearing? Where among this assembly was the heart to kill an enemy? Look at them! They hadn't the least idea even of the purpose of this Council. They came only at a command. Then how in God's name would they battle? Fight? War?
Win
a bloody war? How can the meek of the earth save themselves against the damnable evil which feeds on them?

All of these things Chauntecleer thought in a tiny space of time. All of this burned through his mind while the noise and the contumely died down and the animals composed themselves to hear him speak.

And then, in a flash before he crowed a greeting, he noticed Mundo Cani far in the rear of the congregation. The Dog had brought no family. He must have none, thought the Rooster.

But the Dog did have a companion; and the moment Chauntecleer recognized her, two separate feelings buzzed his brains: both gratitude and resentment. She was the Dun Cow; her presence stilled the Rooster's soul. But she was talking—talking low, insistently, into Mundo Cani's ear, who himself kept his head bowed; and she was not looking at Chauntecleer. In spite of the gravity of the moment; in spite of the importance of his high position and the office which must now demand his whole attention, Chauntecleer was piqued: The Dun Cow hadn't spoken to him so much as a single word. What was this attraction to a Dog with a bulbous nose?

But almost before he commanded them, his beak opened and his throat crowed a crow of salute to the thousands of animals in front of him.