Young Fredle (14 page)

The head was so big that he couldn’t see its ears. He
could
see the whiteness of teeth, as the mouth opened. “Whazzis?” it asked in the nasal voice Fredle had heard earlier. The eyes stared down at Fredle. “C’mere, Rad. C’mere and look what I’ve caught.”

That face withdrew and another, identical to the first, took its place. “Tell me it’s not a mouse,” a different voice said. “You caught us a mouse, Cap’n. Rimble, you ever seen a mouse close to? You wanna take a look? You ever tasted fresh mouse?”

What was probably a third face appeared, although it could have been either of the first two. Fredle couldn’t tell them apart. “Good work, Cap’n,” it said.

“That’s why I’m the boss,” said the first voice, Cap’n.

“Pity I’m not hungry,” said the second, Rad.

“I’m hungry,” said a fourth, and was immediately answered by the others: “Doesn’t count, Rec.” “You’re always hungry, Woo-Hah.”

Even if he couldn’t see them, Fredle could hear them, but he couldn’t have spoken, even if they had asked him to. He had forgotten every word he ever knew.

“So you all say, but what I say is, you never know where
your next meal is coming from,” Rec answered.

“How long’s it been since we got ice cream?” asked the third voice, Rimble’s, Fredle guessed. “And now we’ve got ice cream plus a mouse. I’ve said it before and I say it again, there’s nobody like the Cap’n. Here’s to Cap’n Rilf, hurrah!” he said. “Smartest raccoon on both sides of the mountain!”

At least, Fredle thought, he’d been right about them being raccoons.

“The mouse is just luck,” Rilf admitted.

“I hate not to be hungry when there’s mouse on the menu,” Rad said. “And a house mouse, by the size of him.”

“We all know that after this they’ll be extra careful about the tops on the garbage cans for a while,” Rec observed, “so we better fill ourselves up while we can. The garden’s just being planted, the dogs are
outside more, and finding food’s not going to get any easier.”

“Yeah, but we’ll be heading off to the lake, now it’s getting warm again, right, Cap’n?” asked Rad. “It’s not long now and there’s plenty to eat there. Remember fish?”

“I haven’t noticed that it’s ever easy finding food,” Rimble pointed out. “Here or there, it’s hard work.”

“This mouse is mine,” Rilf announced.

“If you say so,” they answered reluctantly.

“It’s mine and we don’t eat it until I say so. Got it?”

“Yessir, Cap’n,” they answered, and one of them knocked the container over on its side, then picked it up from the bottom, and Fredle tumbled out into the raccoon-filled night.

Crouching as close as he could get to the ground—as if that would make him less visible—Fredle looked up at four hairy faces, each one with a black band around two bright black eyes. Four narrow snouts pointed down at him, four mouths and four sets of sharp, gleaming teeth.

Fear returned, as strong as before. Fredle huddled on the ground, shivering with terror and wet with ice cream.

The mouths all came at him at the same time. They opened wide, four bright white tooth-filled circles. Then four tongues came out to lick at Fredle, licking all over him, his head and back, stomach, paws. They knocked him around with their big, rough tongues, and rolled him over. They didn’t say a word until they had licked him clean. Then one of them picked up the container in his paws and stuck his nose into that for a little while, before passing it on to the raccoon next to him and turning his attention back to Fredle.

They were big, these raccoons. Not as big as the dogs, but to Fredle they looked huge, and he knew that compared to him, they
were
huge.

“I’m Rilf,” said the raccoon who had just passed the ice cream carton along. “It’s Captain Rilf to you, mouse.”

The others were busy passing the container around, each taking a turn.

Fredle couldn’t swallow.

“And you’d be?” Rilf asked.

“You don’t want to know its name,” protested Rad as he passed on the ice cream container.

“Why not?” asked Rec, who Fredle could now see was larger even than his large friends. “You got a problem with eating something whose name you know?”

“Not everyone’s a greedyguts, like you,” said Rimble.

“Fredle!”

Fredle yelled it out as loud as he could.

If their knowing that he had a name, knowing what that name was, would give him a chance to survive, then he wanted to have that chance. “I’m Fredle!” he yelled again.

11
The Rowdy Boys

“Fredle, is it?” Rilf said. “Well. Pleased to meet you, Fredle.”

Seized by a sudden inspiration, Fredle shouted up at the raccoon faces, “I’m inedible!”

This announcement was greeted by silence. Here, wherever it was that they were, with trees looming out of dark shadows—and he smelled stones, too—here the wind was less noticeable, so the silence was all the more loud. Fredle waited to find out if he’d been very smart, or maybe very stupid.

At last, “Woo-Hah,” said Rec, who really was about twice as big as the others. “Woo-Hah, Woo-Hah,” the others joined in, and Fredle hoped this was raccoon laughter, not raccoon irritation.

Captain Rilf’s snout had more silver mixed in with the dark gray-brown than the others, so it shone, slightly, in the
pale predawn light. “Fredle inedible? That’s incredible,” he said. “Woo-Hah.”

“Woo-Hah,” the others echoed him.

Then the smallest of the four spoke up with youthful enthusiasm. “So, Cap’n, which part do you take? The haunch?” and Rilf answered sharply, “Back off, Rimble. Did you hear me say anything about eating the mouse right now? Did anyone? No, I didn’t think so.”

“He’ll tell us when,” said the fourth raccoon, whose round ears were as black as the stripe around his eyes. “You know you don’t have to worry about going hungry with the Cap’n in charge.”

“Yeah, Rimble. You shouldn’t just think about stuffing your face,” said Rec, and even Fredle could understand why the others snorted and huffed at this.

“Look who’s talking,” said Rad.

“Face-stuffer yourself,” said Rimble.

Rec growled and took a swipe at the smaller raccoon. Fredle edged closer to Captain Rilf, which he hoped was the safest place to be as Rimble snapped his teeth at Rec, warning him, “Better not.”

“Better not what?”

“Fight! Fight!” cheered Rad, but Rilf called a halt to it. “Not now. It’s almost morning and nobody’s hungry, are they? Are any of you hungry? After a good forage and then ice cream? So why fight over a mouse?”

The two combatants turned to him, their quarrel already forgotten. “It was a good night’s pickings,” they agreed. “And ice cream. And mouse! You got us quite a night, Cap’n.”

“Rec took a cheese wrapper and I saw it first. I called it. It was mine,” Rimble complained.

“Squealer,” Rec growled.

“He did. You
know
you did, Rec. So he has to give me some of his. Maybe his share of mouse.”

“Just you try—”

“Cap’n said none of that, you two,” Rad warned them.

Rilf spoke as if he hadn’t even heard the new quarrel. “Tonight’s food’s taken care of without including mouse. I say we introduce ourselves to our new little … friend. It’s getting light and we’ll be bunking down soon.” He looked down at Fredle, crouching uneasily near his front paws. “You already know who I am, and this young squirt is Rimble and this great, fat lout—”

Rec made a growling noise.

“—I should say, this big, strong giant of a raccoon—”

“Woo-Hah,” they all laughed, even Rec.

“—is Rec, and this is Rad. He’s my second in command.”

Rimble added, “We’re the Rowdy Boys. Everyone knows about us, all over the farm, both sides of the mountain. We’re the Rowdy Boys and we’re dangerous, so don’t try to mess with us.”

“Don’t be stupid, Rimble,” said Rad. “How’s a mouse going to mess with
us
?”

“You calling me stupid?” Rimble snarled. “That mouse needs warning.”

“Woo-Hah,” laughed Rec. “You’re scared of something that size? He’s barely two mouthfuls apiece, he can’t hurt us.”

“The mouse has a name, which is Fredle,” said Rilf. His
bright, dark eyes studied Fredle. “I’d like to show the girls this fellow. I bet the coonlets could have a good time with him. I’d have loved a mouse when I was little.”

“Me too,” they all agreed, and then, without a further word to Fredle, they withdrew together into a wide-mouthed burrow dug into the soft ground near some large tree roots and there they curled up, four large, furry bodies, hidden away from sight. In the dim light, they could have been one huge creature, not four separate, smaller ones, except for the way they shoved at one another—“Get your paw out of my eye or I’ll bite it off!”—and quarreled—“Try, just you try. I’d like to see you try.” “Hey! Cut it out!” “Then don’t push me.”

Fredle stayed exactly where they’d left him, for a long time, a solitary small gray mouse hunched on a patch of dirt with big trees all around him and a low stone wall nearby. After a while, the air grew lighter. Eventually, all he heard from the burrow was the snoring of sleeping raccoons, which mingled with the sound of the morning breeze rustling branches and leaves. He waited.

Daylight came gently, out in the wild, came slowly. With daylight, Fredle could see what was around him. Trees rose tall, some leafy, others spreading out low branches covered with short, dark green needles. There were clumps of old brown grass, bent flat, and bright green blades of new grass growing among them. The air filled with the voices of birds.

The sounds of birds were very different from the sounds of chickens. Chickens seemed to be chattering away to themselves, but birds conversed. Conversed about
what
Fredle had
no idea, but he thought, listening, that one bird would make a noise and another would respond. Their voices were much more pleasant to hear than the cawing of crows.

Fredle could no more have gone to sleep than fly up into the air and talk to birds. His brain was too busy. He thought he must be out in the wild, and he could conclude that the raccoons, like house mice, were nocturnal animals. So his escape—and he certainly did plan to escape before they woke up hungry and caught sight of him—would be best carried out in daylight.

Fredle had no idea where the wild was, how distant from the house, the compost and the garden. He had no idea which direction he should escape into. He wasn’t lost, but he very easily might be, and soon, so he wanted to notice everything he could about this particular place. He looked all around.

The low stone wall ran in a straight line through the trees, as far as Fredle could see in both directions. Some of its stones had fallen into the grass that grew beside it. High-limbed, leafy trees and some of the thick, bushy, low-branched trees encircled the small clearing where he stood. He locked the position of everything and of the place itself into his memory, and then he turned to leave it.

“Woo-Hah.”

Fredle froze. After a long minute he turned his head to peer at the pile of sleeping raccoons.

Not a one of them stirred. Even Captain Rilf, who slept with his nose pointed toward Fredle, had his eyes tightly closed.