The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations (8 page)

Oh, the Weasel was in his element now!

There was nowhere where the winter was not, nor anywhere where Critters did not worry about their next meals. Vast territories awaited John’s good news. And who didn’t love a Good-News-Bringer?

“Hoopla, furry buggars! Gots vittles? Well, Him-What’s-Lord-and-Captain of All—he
gots
the vittles!”

Often it was his personal vigor that persuaded the hungry to leave their homes and travel to the Hemlock, where ("Bet on it, Buggars") they would find a hearty welcome.

“An acorn? Bite it. Sarsaparilla? Nip it. Sagebrushes? Stuff you mush-mouths full of it.”

Oh, so many Critters, shivering in their nesty denny houses, in the hollows of trees, in burrows under stone. Some, slack-eyed, had surrendered themselves to dying. John’s pity empowered him.

Those that could go, he asked to help them that could not go.

In a grove of aspen trees he came upon a Stag lying beside his daughter. John made friends by asking their names, always saying his name first: “John Double-u of the Double-u’s, fearsome warrior is he.” Then, fearlessly asking “What’s a Double-u to call a Stag by?”

The Stag answered that his name was Black-Pale-on-a-Silver Field. The child panting against her father’s chest he named The Fawn De La Coeur.

Under other circumstances, Black-Pale would have cut a noble figure. His head was dignified with two eight-pointed antlers, his shoulders glossy and strong, his haunches able to drive him forward by long, sailing leaps.

But his eyes were stricken.

In the day when the earth had trembled the Fawn’s mother fell, breaking her right foreleg. Soon Fimbul-winter had defeated the Doe, who on the third day perished. Now De La Coeur was herself feverish, panting faster than a Rabbit. Her father had gathered the baby to himself as though he would be her last abode.

As soon as he heard their grim tale, John Wesley began to rush around the pair, nattering, barking, thrusting a paw into the air, crying, “Do and do and do!”

Black-Pale remained aground. He murmured that his prayers were for his daughter, that she should meet a swift and painless death.

What did John know of subtleties? Compassion in the Weasel looked like anger. He buffeted the Stag’s snout. He pranced down the Stag’s neck, his back and his butt.

“Papa, he loves his baby? Papa’s what loves is papa’s what saves pretty little Critters!” He smacked the Stag on his chin.

Black-Pale lifted his head, lifted the grand branches of his antlers, and bugled, “Let go. Run away! Leave us to die in peace.”

Rather than frightened, the Weasel was delighted. “See? Papa, he gots him fire! Do and do, Papa! Up and fight him what’s a fearsome warrior!”

Black-Pale heaved himself to standing on all four hooves. Razor-sharp, those hooves could cut a Weasel in half. But John laughed. “Hoopla!” he cried and danced away. “Fight! Fight, poor bumfuzzled Papa! Fightings and foinings and hoopla! Is a Stag what’s life-ly again!”

All at once the Weasel began to sing. No subtlety this. A garbage can could make such a noise. John’s mind might have been civilized—but his voice was barbarian.

“Gots eatables and sweetables
For babies sad with troubables—”

Then it was not Black-Pale, stamping the ground, intent on bruising a Weasel. It was the Weasel himself who noticed that the Fawn had opened her eyes.

So he threw himself into a louder yell:

“Gots what’s good at roostering,
And Hens what roots and toots and things—”

John Wesley careered through the aspens, dodging the flashing black hooves. The Stag snorted in frustration—but then both battlers stopped and tipped their ears to listen. It sounded as if little bubbles were bursting back of the aspens.

And then it was a bell-like music.

The Fawn De La Coeur, she was giggling at the silly scene the adults were making.

Black-Pale ambled over to her. He lowered his magnificent head and nuzzled her neck with his moist nose.

“Oh, Papa,” De La Coeur said, twinkling, “you are so handsome.”

So, then: on and on John Wesley traveled through the territories, sporting for pure joy, going and coming with goodnesses and with fine solutions for Critters everywhere.

Once again Chauntecleer was keeping his midnight appointments, each one of which increased the heat in his veins, for the time was at hand.

Above the wide, tarry island that rode the face of the sea, there glowed a gaseous rouge-red light, the
ignis fatuus
of wisdom.

Quem mittam?
sang the sea in the language of the Powers. Whom shall I send?

The sea was teaching Chauntecleer how to answer:
Ecce ego, mitte me.

“Here I am. Send me.”

Soon, my son, the sea sang fatherly. “Soon the sign shall be shown to you. Galle superbe, you will hear it in the mouth of the humblest of Creatures. He shall point you to the portal of the cathedrals of Wyrm, and courage shall not shrink from the deed before you.

The gross, lifeless corpse of Monstrous Hatred was decaying. It was the gasses of his corruption and the oils thereof that were boiling up through fissures in the mantel of the earth, through nozzles in the sea’s bed. The corrupt gasses seethed, and gouts of bitumen lay on the waters.

Et ambulabo in latitudine.

And I will walk in liberty.

The kiss may have killed the Serpent. But his cunning mind lived on, causing the ocean to talk.

There is an ancient prophecy:

Should ever the Animals fail and their species perish, God would repeople the earth by weeping. His tears would fall from heaven and pot the dry clay, raising dust-puffs where they hit. Every one of God’s tears would moisten its spot of clay, turning dirt into a red daub, and every daub into a new race of two-legged beings.

Which is to say, God would try again.

By now John Wesley Weasel thinks he is nearing the end of his assignment, because the populations have thinned and he has traveled miles without meeting another hungry tummy.

A one-eared Creature can sometimes miscalculate the direction from which a sound is coming. A body needs two ears to find its distant source. To John Wesley most noises seem to come from one side of him. Therefore he has to adjust by spinning in circles.

Now, as he is spinning in circles in the gloaming of the forest, several Creatures have set up a howling—remote and barely audible. Could be six or seven Creatures, by their awful harmonies. Wolves. It causes him sadness, for they are singing elegies.

Heartbreak lends speed to his legs. John dashes around pine trees, over ridges, and through jumbles of fallen logs. He tracks the spoor of one Wolf. The howling reduces to yaps and mewings, then, suddenly, all the voices fall silent. The silence feels premonitory.

Then John surprises himself by bounding out of the forest and into a clearing. He pulls up in front three Wolves. They sensed the Weasel’s approach and meet him now stiff-legged and war, rigid, their heads lowered, their snouts wrinkled, their upper lips curled back showing their fangs.

But John Double-u (that mighty warrior) is equal to any situation.

“Wolfies saved!” he announces. “John, he brings good news. Is food, Wolfies!”

Whoa! Three Wolves can sound like a whole chorus?

There is a White Wolf whose eyes are white, their pupils round, black pits. And Black Wolf with red eyes, and a Brown Wolf, yellow-eyed.

The White Wolf gathers his feet and lunges.

The Weasel hip-hops sideways, so the Wolf comes down on the tip of the Weasel’s tail, which loses a hank of fur.

“Hey! Double-u’s is not for biting! Isn’t eatables. Not ‘gestables neither. But John, he can say where eatables
is.”

The Weasel has flash-quick eyes. When the White Wolf made his lunge, John saw a fourth Wolf lying loose and dead behind the other two.

“Oh,” he whispers. “Oh, Wolfies. John, he knows—” knows why they were howling elegies.

Perhaps it is his genuine compassion that shootes the White Wolf’s aggression.

John moves mournfully toward the dead Creature. He pats her great head and sniffs a dribble back into nose.

“What,” he says, “is dead Wolfie’s name?”

The Black Wolf answers, “Favonius.”

It is Lord Chauntecleer who knows the Crows for funerals and the prayers that lighten every darkness. John has never had the gall to sing them himself. But situations force impossibilities.

Whether or not he has the right, whether or not God would accept a Double-u’s prayer, he does what he cannot do. John Wesley sings.

“Lordy God, we begs you
To bright-light Wolfies’ sadnesses;
And all nights, all nights long
Please wipe our poor hurtings away.”

Ferric Coyote, hiding beneath a Lodge-Pole Pine, weeps when he hears the Weasel’s threnody. Tensions may deny all moods but fear. But this particular kindness moves him.

Such a brave Creature! He sings to Wolves as if they were family. He teaches them where to find food, and they listen, and they go, and the forest is empty of threat.

Ferric feels sympathy tickling in one nostril, and he sneezes.

John says, “What? Is a Who somewhere in there?”

Ferric freezes hard as rock. He has revealed his hiding place, has given up his advantage.

Soon he hears a tick-nailed scramble, and the Weasel appears.

“Well, lookeehere! Is a woody Coyote and a buttable rump high’s a tent.”

The Weasel crouches and touches Ferric’s nose with his own. He whispers, “Does woody Coyotes sleeps with his eyeballs open?”

The Weasel puffs at Ferric’s eyes, and Ferric blinks.

“Hoopla! Is awake! John, he knows wakefulnesses.” He crouches before Ferric’s snout.”Woody Coyote might-be wants food?”

Ferric heard the Weasel’s promises to the Wolves. And the dangerous Animals believed him. Ferric saw malice drain from their muscles, replaced by need alone.

Suddenly hiding seems a silly proposition.

Then John Wesley is indeed at the end of his assignment, for he has come to the bleak, windswept and empty tundra. It is here that he finally permits his weariness to overcome him. He hopes to spend some time sleeping in the Coyotes’ den.

But a gaggle of little Coyotes rouse him from slumber. Three Coyote-lings. The boy-Coyote wants to play-fight, and displays bravery by his tiny attacks. John Double-u laughs and cuffs the kid and nips him right back.

Their mother smiles blessings upon their happy scrambling. A pleasant woman, this host who straightway finds in the Weasel a friend.

Papa Woody-Coyote, he sits on the hard snow above. He gets up and paces, darts there, darts here, sits grimly again, made most unhappy by the noise of cheerfulness and by the dangerous clatter of carelessnesses.

The boy-pup flies at John, yelling, “Benoni to the rescue!”

Kid’s name is Benoni.

“To rescuings?” says John. “Is for rescuings from
what?”

Benoni goes to the ledge in front of the den. He tells the Weasel to look down. At the bottom is a wide throat releasing steam. He tells John about the big stone steps and about the tunnel that goes deep, deep underground.

“Badness lives down there,” whispers Benoni Coyote. “When I went into that tunnel, Mrs. Bird-friend scared me and mama scolded me.”

In one sense the Hemlock had become an infirmary. The Animals last to arrive had come sick with starvation, their ribs visible under the fur. Pertelote laid them close between the wooly Sheep, and she nursed them with her medicinals.

A noble Stag arrived bearing his daughter on his back. The Fawn’s eyes had crusted shut. She asked Chalcedony to peck gently the yellow crust until her sight had been restored.

Slow Moles came.

Wolves came, but kept their distance.

The home-Creatures served all of these while Pertelote carried food to that world-rim-walker, the Marten Selkirk.

In another sense, then, the Hemlock hall was a frugal refectory, for the Mr. and Mrs. Cobbs and the Hens doled out small portions of food. The ice the Animals brought inside melted and satisfied a thousand thirsts.

What the hall had
not
become was a charnel house. Absolutely no one died—which salved the wound in Pertelote’s soul, for Chauntecleer may have been Crowing the Canonical Crows, but he often left the burgeoning community to its own devices and the daily business to herself.

And then another salve bounded into the hall: John Wesley Weasel, bringing with him the joy of a job accomplished.

“Hilla hilla
ho,
Lady Hen!”

“Oh, John. Oh, John, you’re back.”

“Back with gleefulnesses, on account of, lookee: all John’s
friends
is here.”

Tick-Tock boomed, “Huzzah for a friends!”

And all his armies shouted, “Huzzah!”

The Brothers Mice tumbled and pummeled the Weasel’s noggin.

“Hey! Mices! John’s head, it’s not no punch bag!”

Skinny Chalcedony smiled.

Jasper glowered. “Ain’t no one asked Jasper did she want to give up her three squares a day. Ain’t no one gave Jasper a thought.”

John Wesley whooped, “Gots to see the Rooster! Lady Hen, where’s a Rooster for John to be seeing?”

Pertelote suffered the moment, then she answered, “I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t know where he goes?”

“South, John. He flies south That’s all I can tell you.”

“Hoopla!” cried John, and shot from the Hemlock off to the south.

South and yet farther south, until the Weasel found himself on the ravaged land where the Coop once stood. He rejoiced in the place, and mourned it too, for here had been his martial successes. But here the Wee Widow Mouse had perished.

South and south, and then John Wesley heard the
Whump
of a sea wave. It seemed to say,
Quem mittam?

Of course the Weasel knew nothing of the language of the Powers. But he knew his Rooster’s crow when he heard it, and he heard it now: “
Mitte me!”

Off again, racing across the earth-scar.

And there was the Rooster, soaring golden above the ocean and under the bellies of the clouds, causing them to glow.

John grinned at the sight. Lord Chauntecleer was riding thermals like an Eagle.

Chauntecleer heard the waters below say, “Heed me! Your sign, my son, is on the beach.”

Immediately the Rooster trimmed his flight. He swooped into a wide spiral, scanning the white, salty beach of Wyrmesmere. He saw John Wesley Weasel jumping up and down, throwing his paws up in delight.

“My gallant chevalier!” Chauntecleer laughed, alighting beside the Weasel. “My messenger gone, and my messenger home again, home from the perils of exploration!”

Against every tendency in poor John’s character, he sobbed. Oh, the joy of his great Lord’s praise.

“Ah,” said Chauntecleer, touching a tear. “Even so much do you love me.”

John nodded. He quickly figured that it was no weakness, here and out of the sight of the Animals, to reveal his affections in such a girlish manner.

“Weep your weepings,” the Rooster said. “I am nothing if not patient. Purpose has given me patience. But as soon as you can, tell me the message you bring.”

John Wesley grinned. He swallowed the raw lump in his throat, dredged up his voice, and croaked: “Is a family Coyote what John’s gots to feed. He gots to go back.”

Chauntecleer paused, frowning.

“This isn’t what I want to hear.”

“Is a den farthestmost north, and nothings north of that,” John said. “Woody Coyote, he says, No, no. He won’t come. So John, he gots to go there.”

Chauntecleer’s frown became baleful. “This,” he said, “is no sign, John Wesley. This is not what I want to hear.”

The Weasel jabbered faster and faster: “Woody Coyote, he won’t come, on account of, it’s a hole where the den is, and it’s a deep, deep tunnel under that, and little kid Benoni Coyote showed John the tunnel. Little kid Coyote, he tells John what is down there. Says, Wickedness is down there. Wickedness inside the earth.”

Chauntecleer’s neck snapped straight. He glanced toward the sea. “John!” he crowed a glorious crow.
“That’s
what I want to hear!”

Lord Chauntecleer settled on the highest spire of the Hemlock tree.

“All is well!” he crowed. “And all will be better than well. All my company,I pledge you my oath. All the world shall be cleansed of Hatred, of Evil. I go to execute the heinous Wyrm!”

All the Animals crowded out of the Hemlock hall and filled the fields beyond.

Chauntecleer was sunlight.

Pertelote looked, and grieved.

“None need worry,” the Rooster declared. “None need follow me. I go to win your salvation. I will select two only to go with me, but neither one to fight with me. They shall be my passage north. John Wesley Weasel, lead me to the tunnel. Black-Pale-On-A-Silver-Field, bear me thither that I might save my strength for the conquest.”

Unto glory went the Rooster, riding the Stag whose nobility was meant to herald the puissance of this Crusader’s weapons: Gaff, his sharp and shining left spur, and the Slasher, his right.

Pertelote watched the departure. Her husband rode Black-Pale’s antlers as if he rode a chariot.

“Wyrm!” She heard his voice as they cantered over the horizon. “Forsake your soul!”

For the rest of that day Pertelote wandered away from the Hemlock.

If her grief was evident, if was casting a pall over the company she had deserted, she didn’t know.

At night she sailed silently her roost.

No one crowed the Canonical crows.

At midnight she was moved to sing, though quietly, under her breath:

“—made love to me so slow and sweetly,

Singing names, he came discreetly

Home.

And I to him gave children after;

I it was had cried through laughter,

Come—”