Young Fredle (15 page)

Fredle waited a long, anxious time, while the air brightened around him. Then he ran off, in the direction of the growing light.

The way he had chosen was pathless, and rough with rocks and roots and low bushes. Trees rose up to block his passage. He had to circle around them before he could continue on his way. After a long time, he rounded a thick tree trunk and within six steps knew he could no longer be sure that he was heading on in the same direction. He felt it in his shoulders, the not-knowing, and stopped moving. He retreated to the safety of the tree trunk, to think things over.

But Fredle found that he could only think about being lost. Somehow, in the short distance from one side of the tree trunk to the other, he had gone too far and gotten himself well and truly lost.

This was so uncomfortable a feeling that he went back around the tree, until he knew where he was again. He crouched there to consider the situation.

He had been foolish to just run off like that, just because that way led toward the light. Now he thought that he should have followed the stone wall. Those stone walls were built by humans, so if a mouse followed along one he would eventually come to some other place where humans lived. Where humans lived, there would be mice living, too. Fredle thought now that the wall near which the raccoons had their burrow probably belonged to Mister. After all, the raccoons wouldn’t live too far from the source of their food, and the source of their food seemed to be the compost and the garbage cans, both of which belonged to Mister, and therefore, Fredle concluded,
the wall, too, must be Mister’s. Thus, he decided, if he followed the stone wall he might have a chance of finding the farm again, and the garden, and the way back into the house. The way home.

By the time he got back to the little clearing, it was midday and he was both tired and thirsty. But the raccoons were still asleep, so it was safe for him to approach the wall and try to decide in which direction to run along it.

No instinct told him to go this way, or that. So he simply chose:
this
way.

Even with the stone wall to walk beside, it was hard going. Fredle was full of new hope, however, and he persisted. He went on quite a distance before he began to feel wrong, again, and his hopes began to fade. He knew in his shoulders, just as he had known earlier, that this was the wrong way. Or, rather, he did not know that this was the right way. So he decided to turn back, again, and redirect his steps, again. He didn’t know what else he could do. He had no idea where he was, so he had only instinct to guide him home, and all his instinct was saying to him was
wrong
, and
wrong
, and
wrong again
.

At the word
home
, he saw in his imagination the little nest under the porch, and he felt how low and safe the ceiling lay over it, how the lattice wall protected him without closing him in, how spacious and comfortable his territory under the porch had been.

Then he corrected himself. That wasn’t home. Home was the wide nest behind the pantry wall, where his father and mother, his grandfather, his brothers and sisters, too, all slept together in the unchanging dim light.

He must be light-headed from hunger, Fredle thought, and tried chewing on some of the blades of new grass that were growing near the wall. They tasted bitter but he ate them anyway before he set off again, back to the raccoons’ burrow.

Once more he crossed in front of the pile of sleeping raccoons, their sharp-pointed noses tucked into their sharp-clawed black feet, their bright eyes shut and their browny-gray, silvery-black furry bodies piled up together, so that you couldn’t tell where Rimble’s shoulder ended and Rec’s haunch began. They did not stir as he slipped silently past them and headed off along the stone wall in the opposite direction, going
that
way, hoping for the best.

By this time, he was hoping for the best but at the same time fearing the worst. He had no idea what to expect, out here, in the wild. He went along as fast as he could, making his
way beside the stone wall around and over and through obstacles that had by that time grown familiar. The air was warm, much of the day had gone by, already, and only insects could be heard. Then the wall stopped.

Fredle considered the empty way ahead. It was crossed by a dirt path with long ruts in it, like the road near the house. Could it be some kind of road? And if it was some kind of road, wouldn’t it lead him to a house? That is, if he chose the right direction.

The fact was that he had no idea where he was and had no idea how to forage out in the wild. The only thing he knew was how to get back to where the Rowdy Boys slept, and he didn’t know what lay in store for him if he did that.

Fredle thought:
Wait a minute. I
do
know what’s in store for me, with those raccoons
.

Then he thought:
I don’t think there is anything else I can do
.

So he stopped thinking and turned around, turned back, to make his way to the raccoons’ burrow. When he got there, he saw that they were still asleep. Late-afternoon sunlight was turning the air more and more golden, and Fredle, who had been awake for too long a time, was exhausted. He found a little sheltered space between two rough gray stones a good distance from the burrow and curled up there, but he was too miserable to escape into sleep. He closed his eyes, then opened them again.

With his eyes open, he saw that Rilf also had open eyes and was watching him. “You were right the first time,” he said, his voice low and growly. “That was the direction to go in, away from the wall, downhill. But you’re smart to come back.
It’s too far for a mouse to go on his own, through the wild. You’d never have made it.”

The eyes closed again. “Go to sleep, mouse.”

In his state of hunger and thirst, despair and exhaustion, what else could Fredle do?

12
Living with Raccoons

A thump on the rump jolted Fredle awake. Rilf loomed over him, big and bright-eyed. “Up and at ’em, young Fredle. Thirsty?” he asked. “Hungry?”

Fredle nodded. His mouth was, in fact, too dry for speaking out of, but at least he was no longer exhausted. After all the time he’d lived outside, he was accustomed to sleeping in bits and patches, day or night, so he had had a refreshing rest.

Rilf lowered his snout to the ground beside Fredle. “Climb up, get behind an ear, and hold tight. And I mean
tight
. I’m not sure I’d hear you cry for help if you bounced off, and I know you’re too light for me to feel. As long as you don’t dig those nails into my ear, of course.” He lifted his nose off the ground, considering. “I wouldn’t try digging nails into me, if I were you.”

Fredle clambered onto the nose and ran up between the raccoon’s eyes to take shelter behind one bristly round ear. When he had a good hold, with all four paws, he asked, “What makes you think I’m so young?”

“Woo-Hah” was the only answer he got. With a ground-eating, loping run, Rilf headed off.

He went
that
way along the stone wall and when the break came, he turned onto the rutted road that sloped downward. After a while, he left the road and crossed a wide, overgrown field in those same long strides. At last he stopped and lowered his head.

Fredle had been trying to simultaneously hold on—but not with his nails—and remember the route, while all the time bouncing around on the raccoon’s hard head, in danger of falling off at any moment. The sudden stop surprised him.

“Come
on
, Fredle.” Rilf hurried him along. “Get down.”

Fredle crawled shakily onto the ground, where the grass grew tall. “Where—” he started to ask, but he knew. Among all the other smells, he recognized the answer to his question:
Water
. Rilf had already buried his snout in water that was passing between two low banks right in front of them, rushing by—from where Fredle had no idea, and neither did he know where it was going. Although, just before he took his first taste, he almost remembered something. But then he had a mouth full of cold liquid, and was swallowing it, and he only thought about how good it was to drink.

After a while, he lifted his nose out of the water. “Thank you, Captain Rilf.”

“Don’t call me that, mouse. I’m not your captain. You’re not one of the Rowdy Boys and you never will be.”

“But—You said—Last night …”

“Yes?” Rilf growled.

“Sorry about that,” Fredle said. This wasn’t a quarrel he wanted to have. “It’s just—I feel much better. I
was
thirsty.”

“Plain Rilf will do, between a mouse and a raccoon.”

Fredle nodded and said no more. He didn’t need to understand raccoons. He just needed to get away from them.

As the light faded out of the air, Rilf turned his attention to a tall plant. He scratched at the base with his strong paws and then pulled something up out of the earth, letting it fall onto the ground. “You take this one, I’ll get more.”

Fredle looked at the thing. Its end was whitish and not large; its long leaves were green. He smelled it and it smelled like dirt, but something else, too. “What is it?”

“Try it, it’s food. It’s not poisonous. Well, not to raccoons, at least. We’re about to find out about mice.”

Fredle
was
hungry and he did need food of some kind. Rilf pulled up several more of the tall things and then took one himself. He reached down to put it into the water and rub it between his paws. Then he lifted the long, dripping thing up into the air to cram it—white bottom, long stem, leaves and all—into his mouth.

Fredle didn’t see any other choice. He bit into the white end. It was crisp like apple peel but fresher than any apple peel or core from the compost. It was not sweet, not really; its flavor was sharp and it tasted good in a way Fredle had never tasted before. He took another bite.

“Ramps,” said Rilf, taking up another and once again washing it in the water that flowed so quickly by them. “The stream grows watercress, too, but that’s too bitter for me.” He reached a paw down into the water to pull out something limp and dark green and leafy. “A mouse might like it.”

“Should I wash this ramp before I eat it?” Fredle was trying on the new word, to be sure he’d gotten it right. He wasn’t interested in watercress, whatever that was. “Should I be washing it in the stream, like you do?”

“It’s too late now. Besides, I don’t know why I do. A little dirt never hurt anyone, but if there’s water and I’ve got something to eat, I wash it. Go figure. Finished with that one? Good, have one more and I will, too, and the rest I’ll take back to the boys. I like to surprise them every now and then. It’s one of the things a good captain does, if he wants to stay on top.”

“But won’t they be off foraging by now?”

“Maybe. Could be. Depending. But I bet we find them waiting.”

“Where do they think you’ve gone?”

“Woo-Hah,” Rilf laughed. “My guess is they think I’m off eating you on my own. That’s a captain’s privilege. Of course, a smart captain never takes advantage of his privileges, I can tell you that, my mouse. But as captain, I can eat what I want when I want it. As long as they’re not hungry. And we all know they have that chicken carcass.”

“If they don’t forage, will they eat me instead?”

“They’ll think about it. They’ll want to. But all a raccoon needs to start him off at night is enough food to get him going. The chicken will do that. We’ll have fresh ramps for after, if
we want. Hop back on, young Fredle. We know your name,” he said as Fredle made his careful way up the long snout and between the dark eyes. “So unless we haven’t had anything to eat for a while, I’d say you’re safe enough. For the time being. If the weather holds.”

Fredle gripped an ear and thought about all this. He reminded himself of the appearance and the taste of the food Rilf had shown him, ramps, and the watercress the captain had pulled out of the stream. You never knew when you might need to know something. Rilf gathered up a mouthful of the long stalks and then he and Fredle were off again, heading through grainy darkness toward the burrow.

Rilf was proved correct. Three raccoons were waiting in the clearing when he came loping back. “We saved you the backbone, Cap’n.”