Chester Cricket's New Home

by George Selden

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1. Tragedy! With a Splash

  2. Freedom—Finally!

  3. Simon’s Log

  4. John Robin and Friends

  5. Furry Folk

  6. Home Life—and Too Much, in Fact

  7. Donald Dragonfly

  8. The Lady Beatrice

  9. Tuffet Towers

  10. Home!

  By George Selden

  Copyright

  For Sarah, Beth, Mary, and Ben—

  From a somewhat inattentive, but genuinely loving uncle. G.S.

  ONE

  Tragedy! With a Splash

  Chester Cricket was feeling jumpy. And it wasn’t the good kind of “jumpiness” that he often felt—when he hopped across the brook, for example, all the way from his stump to the mossy bank on the other side. He sometimes would make that flying leap just for the pure young fun of it. But not now. This was more a worrying, fidgeting feeling. In fact, Chester Cricket had a foreboding. He decided it really must be a foreboding—although, to be honest, he had to admit that he didn’t quite know just what a foreboding was. But Simon Turtle had said that he had one a month ago, and that same afternoon—a lovely bright day in July it was—a storm had come up and a tall ash tree got struck by lightning. A mockingbird lost his home. (But he built a new one in Bill Squirrel’s squirrel’s elm.)

  “A foreboding,” said Chester gloomily, as he stared out the hole of the stump where he lived. “That’s what I’ve got all right.”

  It seemed a peculiar day to be gloomy. The rich light of a late August afternoon lay softly on the whole Old Meadow, now known as Tucker’s Countryside. It had been renamed after Chester’s friends Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat had saved it from destruction. And although all the folks who lived there referred to it now as Tucker’s Countryside—or simply The Countryside—in their secret hearts all the animals round about, be they rabbit or turtle or cricket, still felt that it was the good, familiar Old Meadow. It was Chester’s world—a world of grass, reeds, trees, of Tuffet Country and Pasture Land, with the brook running through it like a song running through your head when you’re happy. And now it lay under a golden sun at the end of a flawless summer day that should have felt as full and ripe as a peach. But it didn’t. It felt, well, nervous. The world felt nervous. At least to Chester Cricket it did.

  “I just can’t get enough of this place,” said a lady’s voice, behind Chester’s stump.

  A second lady sighed with pleasure. “Oh, neither can I, May! It’s like a little paradise. I’d die without it. Gosh, I’m tired.” The pleasure sighed off in a weary groan.

  Chester recognized those ladies’ voices. Ever since Tucker and Harry had rescued the Old Meadow by convincing the citizens of the town of Hedley that this was the site of the old Hedley homestead, the human beings had treated the place as if it were sacred. (Which suited the animals, birds, reptiles, insects, and fish who lived there very well indeed! They didn’t get hunted, captured, exterminated, or even stepped on any more.) By order of the Town Council, many delightful winding paths had been laid out, so that people could meander beside the brook and beneath the trees, to enjoy the “unspoiled nature.” But they had to stay strictly on the paths—a lot of disagreeable signs said so—in order not to spoil the charming wilderness.

  One of these paths ran behind Chester’s stump. Most stumps do not have a front or back, of course, but Chester’s did, because the opening to his hole overlooked a little patch of grass that sloped down to the brook. That obviously, both Nature and Chester decided, was meant to be a front yard—with a water view. What made it especially nice was that Chester could sit in his front door, observing the gurgling foam beneath him, where the brook raced over a stretch of stones, without having any human beings poke their noses down to spy on him. Chester Cricket, like many insects and animals—and a few wise human beings—enjoyed his privacy.

  But sometimes he liked to jump up on his stump and do a little spying himself. Human beings, from Chester’s point of view—the top of his stump, or a twig in a bush—were quite fascinating, a curious study, although somewhat clumsy compared to a cricket. It had been up there, on his roof, that Chester became acquainted with the two ladies who were talking now. (He became acquainted with them, but they never so much as noticed him.)

  They were Lola and May—he hadn’t heard their last names—and they’d come every sunny day that summer to walk in Hedley’s Meadow, which was what the human beings had renamed the Old Meadow, which was also Tucker’s Countryside. As a matter of fact, for a few square miles of greenery it had more names than any comparable plot of land in all of Connecticut.

  Their “constitutional” was how May and Lola referred to their daily walk. Although they were not old—indeed, they only referred to each other as “middle-aged” behind each other’s back—they were far enough along to know that they needed some exercise. Especially since—and this they never referred to at all, behind or in front of anyone’s back—they were both quite “stout.” (Not even in their secret hearts would either of them use the dread word “fat.”)

  “I love this part of the meadow especially,” said Lola, “but I wish they’d put more of those benches around here.”

  “Well, this is the wild part,” said May. “They just let Nature go back to itself.”

  “Hmm,” thought Chester inside his stump. He looked across the brook. “Wild Nature going back to itself” seemed to mean that at least here the human beings had left a few reckless weeds and a nervous sapling free to grow, without being trimmed back within an inch of their lives. Chester liked the fact that in this corner where the brook made its turn there weren’t those dratted benches all over.

  “My feet are just killing me!” Lola groaned.

  Chester looked at all his feet and laughed. He had quite a few—to be precise, six—and he couldn’t remember a single one of them ever being sore.

  “There is that old stump—”

  Chester Cricket stopped laughing.

  “—You might be able to rest on that, dear.”

  “Aren’t you tired, May?”

  “As a matter of fact—”

  “Come on, dear. It’s broad enough for us both.”

  Chester wanted to warn—chirp—shout!—that his stump was absolutely not broad enough for two overweight ladies. He would have jumped up there himself, in hopes that the two ladies were afraid of insects, but if he did that, he realized, a terrible fate was sure to befall him—besit on him, in fact.

  “I hope it won’t smear us. It looks sort of wet.”

  “We’ve had so much rain this summer.”

  “Here goes—”

  “No!” The cricket gave his loudest chirp.

  Too late.

  For the stump was soggy. And it was old. And worm-eaten too. (The worms didn’t bother Chester at all. They kept to themselves. Worms like living in the woodwork, alone.) Indeed, Chester’s very last thought, as the feeble, weakened walls of his home came crashing in around him, was actually for the worms. He hoped a few of them might survive—since he was certain that he would not—and he tried very hard to think of the worms, in order not to feel his fear. With a heavy sqwunch the stump collapsed. A big splinter of wood fell across Chester’s back—he lay in the darkness, still as death.

  “Good Lord!�
�� came May’s voice.

  “Mercy!” said Lola.

  There followed two very copious splashes: the ladies had slipped from the sagging stump and fallen in the brook. And the squeaks, the squawks, and the spluttering that then arose would have made a whole flock of geese landing in a lake sound shy by comparison.

  In the choppy and chaotic black it occurred to Chester that he could hear the women floundering in the water—a very good sign. He stretched a leg—he could feel as well, although he was pinned beneath the wood. With a surge and a silent chirp of joy he realized that he wasn’t dead. Just trapped, he was, but badly trapped: he could only move three legs a little and couldn’t shift his position at all.

  Outside, the feminine commotion was moving up the bank as the ladies rolled and crawled from the brook. There were many “Land sakes!” and many “My stars!” and several “Oh, dears!” and one or two swearwords—polite ones, though—before Lola and May had righted themselves. The last thing Chester heard, as they squished away down the path to the road, was one asking the other if she thought the driver would let them on the bus— “in all these sopping clothes!” (He did. And to tell the truth, it was only a week or so before the whole accident became an adventure, and fun, for the ladies. Their “stump story” they called it, and told it and boasted and laughed about it for the rest of their lives.)

  It was no fun for Chester, however. After testing his six legs, he tried to move his antennae. There was no space to wave them around, of course, but he could feel them both, unbroken, which seemed like kind of a miracle, they were so very long and delicate. One wing ached badly—it was caught in an awkward position—and the other was tucked and trapped beneath him. But that splinter of wood that held him fast had saved his life. It was propped at an angle that kept him from being completely crushed.

  So, having discovered that he hadn’t yet flown his last flight or chirped his last chirp, Chester Cricket wondered what to do. There was no point in trying to dig his way out. He was buried in stump, surrounded by stump, with at least a foot of crushed stump above him. The only thing to do was wait—and waiting, simply keeping still, especially when you can barely move, as anyone knows who’s been forced to do it, is the hardest, most trying task of all. Impossible, even. Horrible! Chester wished he could chirp his shortest song. But his wings, which he used to make his music, were locked.

  * * *

  Was that a twitter from outside the stump?

  “Hello!” Chester shouted. “Hey! Hel-lo!”

  “That you, Chester Cricket?” asked a burbly voice.

  “John Robin—?”

  “He’s alive!” shouted John, and sang a sweet phrase out of sheer happiness. There seemed to be a little murmur of voices, a wave of relief, as if many other folk from the Meadow were gathered around outside the stump, in the rich gold light Chester couldn’t see.

  “Oh, John”—the cricket heaved a huge sigh of relief himself—“I’m so glad that—”

  “Chester, you never will guess what happened!” said John. “There were these two ladies—both plump as quail—and I guess they got tired, because they sat on your stump, and—”

  “John—”

  “—and then fell right smack into the brook! Can you beat that?”

  “No, John, I can’t beat that,” said Chester Cricket, as patiently as he could. “But, John, I sort of was wondering—”

  “The one in the red blouse went in head first!” John Robin went on merrily. He was one of Chester’s really good friends, but being a robin, he was rather birdlike—flighty, in fact—and had a tendency to twitter. “Dorothy said—she was up in the nest—” Dorothy was John Robin’s wife. They lived in the same nest together, in the willow tree beside Chester’s stump. “—And she said that something like that—falling into the brook head first—could mess up a woman’s hair badly.”

  “John!”

  “But we did have a good laugh! Until we saw that the stump was smashed. And then we wondered—”

  “John Robin! Get me out of here!”

  “Oh,” said John. And then he fell silent. The silence lasted. Too long. “How?”

  “Well—well—can’t you find a way, John? Who’s out there, anyway?”

  “Um—there’s a gang of beetles”—Chester could almost feel John inspecting the crowd—“and a dragonfly. Oh, and Dorothy’s here, too. She flew down. Say hello to Chester, Dorothy.”

  “Hello, Chester.”

  “Oh dear,” Chester sighed. “Hello, Dorothy. If you both pecked together—”

  “Not a chance,” said John Robin jauntily. “That’s a lot of stump you’re inside of, Chester.”

  “I see,” said Chester. “Well, in that case I’ll just have to lie here patiently, with my aching wing, and wait until I starve to death, or suffocate, or the rest of the stump collapses on me and squashes me flat. Goodbye, everybody. John—Dorothy. You have all been grand! Give my love to the world.”

  There was some muffled but urgent talk outside the stump.

  Then John said, “Chester, are you really very worried about being trapped in there?”

  “Oh bug!” muttered Chester to himself. “That John sings a lovely song, he does—but he’s one dumb robin!” Then right away he was mad at himself, for thinking that such a good friend was dumb. Aloud he said, “I am very worried, John! In fact, I can’t begin to tell you how concerned I am.”

  “We’ll think of something,” said John.

  Chester Cricket decided that if he waited for John to think, he might very well die of hunger—or old age. So he did a little quick thinking himself.

  “John,” he called, “is that dragonfly’s name Donald?”

  “Is your name Donald?”

  “Yiss!” came a squeaky, raspy, thin voice.

  “I know him,” said Chester. “Donald, would you go ask Simon Turtle for help? Perhaps he can chew me out. Would you do that, please, Donald?”

  “Yiss!”

  There was a skittering of quick wings, which would have been inaudible to anyone who wasn’t tuned, as Chester was, to insect things.

  “I would have gone, Ches,” John Robin said, and he sounded a little bit hurt.

  “Oh no!” said Chester. “I want you to keep me company.”

  Simon Turtle had by far the strongest, sturdiest jaws in the Meadow. However, like John, he enjoyed conversation. And if the two of them got to talking, the day, the season, perhaps the year might very well have worn away, with Chester locked inside his stump like an insect frozen forever in stone. (When the cricket lived in New York one summer, he saw such a thing at the Museum of Natural History: an ant trapped in amber. It made him shiver.)

  “Chester, are you still in there?” John called, after what seemed to both a very long moment. It seemed long to Chester because he was trapped, and to John because he’d gone almost a minute without saying a word.

  “Oh, I’m still here,” the cricket called back. “I won’t make a move without letting you know.”

  To cheer his friend up, and pass the time, John told Chester all about how his son George—the youngest chick in his and Dorothy’s latest batch—how George had flown all the way to East Puddum. That’s the neighboring town, East Puddum is, next to Hedley. How George had flown to East Puddum last Wednesday just to test his wings—they were sound as two sails, too, just as sound as two sails! And then how his other son, James—he’s the one who had his mother’s markings—

  “Can you see anybody yet?” chirped Chester plaintively.

  “Well,” said John, “that dragonfly’s back.”

  “Donald? You there—?”

  “Yiss!”

  “Is Simon Turtle coming?”

  “Yiss!”

  Chester’s wing was hurting more now, and the dark was getting on his nerves. It wasn’t the free, starred dark of the night—it was close and cramped and dark, with only enough room left for worry.

  He tried to rearrange his legs—just a little shift in position would he
lp—and flexed an antenna, to prove he could. And he did wish that Simon Turtle would hurry. But turtles are slow, and Simon was old, and time dragged like an anchor.

  TWO

  Freedom—Finally!

  Around the stump a soft murmur of insects, birds, and all the Meadow folk waiting there rose up like a bubble, excited, and burst.

  “Hey, Chester—he’s here!” John shouted.

  The whole stump shivered a little as slow but methodical claws tugged a heavy weight up its broken side: Simon Turtle, inside his shell. “Got down as fast as I could, Chester.” Puff! “Came down by brook instead of by bank”—puff!—“swimming and rolling most of the way. Thought that’d be quicker.” Puff! Puff!

  “Take it easy, Simon,” Chester said. The good old turtle’s raspy voice—not pretty but somehow reassuring, with all the unrushed wisdom of age—made the cricket feel almost safe already. “Rest now. Catch your breath. John Robin will tell you what happened.”

  “Don Dragonfly has already. Haven’t you, Donald?”

  “Yiss!”

  The dragonfly could speak, if he wished—he once had told Chester about an encounter he had had with a bee—it’s just that he was tight and private, the most private soul in the Meadow, in fact.

  “I reckon the best place to start is where your front door is. Or was. Was this your front door, Chester?”

  “I think so, Simon. My head is pointed toward your voice, and just before Lola and May sat down I remember looking out. If I’d been smart, I’d have jumped—brook or not.”

  “You keep talking now. You sound pretty close, and I wouldn’t want to take your head off by mistake.”

  Working now with his claws and now with his formidable black jaws—they came together just like a vise—Simon Turtle started in to work.

  “I was wondering,” said Chester, “are you a snapping turtle, Simon? With those big jaws of yours?”

  “No, I’m not,” Simon answered. “I mean, naturally I’ve done some snapping in my time—all turtles have—but nothing professional, you might say.”