The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

  The skinny Hen clapped her beak closed, for she realized that she’d spoken her wishes out loud. Chalcedony shrank back, burning with embarrassment.

  But Black-Pale swung his head in her direction, his sixteen-point antlers limning arabesques against the dusk.

  “Beg pardon, sir, oh sir,” she clucked a cluck of shame. “‘Twas but a slip of the tongue. ‘Twas a pure perversity.”

  But the Stag kept considering the Hen. Then he said, “Thou?”

  The Fawn De La Coeur said, “She tells me the tales that make me sleep, Papa. And I dream good endings for the stories.”

  “Aye,” the Stag said after a moment, “Thou.” His voice was royal, but the Hen did not recoil because of his next words: “You shall have a father’s lasting gratitude if you consent to befriend my daughter till I come home again.”

  And so it had been arranged. For a time (and maybe, please, a longer time?), the anemic Chalcedony had her child.

  But the child’s father never came home again.

  Pertelote had never doubted that her husband must spend days accomplishing his mission. Yet, two weeks were almost more than she could bear. It wasn’t only that she missed him now. She had been missing him ever since he’d lost sight in one eye and had withdrawn into mystery. And Chauntecleer had taken his challenge to Wyrm as a Rooster crippled.

  Two weeks. But Pertelote’s distress made it seem a month.

  She couldn’t sleep. She spent the midnight hours awake on her roost, watching the Beetle Lazara doing her slow duty below, playing the part of a Dung Beetle.

  Lazara wore a black babushka and black coverlets over her softer parts. From dusk to dawn she shaped the Animal’s waste into balls three times her size, then rolled them with her backward with her back legs to the woods. She who had been capable of digging through stone she dug through the iron of Fimbul-winter to bury the Animals’ dreck.

  Pertelote took some comfort from her sister’s presence.

  On the dot of every midnight the cowled Beetled paused and said, “My Lady.”

  And the Hen answered with the same grave formality, “My Lady.”

  Each kept company with the other.

  But by the sixteenth night Pertelote could no longer give herself over to her wasting apprehension. She had been measuring the stockpiles of food, how quickly they were diminishing. On that sixteenth night the Hen was hectored by a waking dream in which the apparition of her agate-eyed husband stood on the wind. He expression was dead-dull. His coral comb had become a grey slug.

  At midnight Lazara said: “My Lady.”

  Lady! The title scathed Pertelote’s spirit. She opened her wings and sank softly to the ground then crept from the Hemlock into the rigid winter. She flew south, the direction her husband had gone on his nighttime flights.

  In time a ghostly light presented itself above the southern horizon. Flying closer, Pertelote saw that the glowing exhalations hovered over the length and breadth of a great black island, a floating island, so it seemed, because its surface heaved with every heave of the ocean’s waves.

  Chauntecleer! Is this the sea? Is this the source of your “wisdom?”

  If Fimbul-winter could possibly have gradations, here it seemed more paralyzing than anywhere near the Hemlock.

  Coldness of the Cold. Darkness of the Dark. The dyings of Death itself.

  Yet even under the bitterest conditions the Animals were able to survive since adversity strengthened love, and calamity tightened the bonds among them. But Pertelote feared that it was survival itself that Wickedness sought to shred—by shredding the bonds of love. Therefore, new fears heaped upon old fears. Pertelote thought that neither famine nor the Fimbul-winter were the worst disasters about to befall the Animals.

  Where, exactly, where had Chauntecleer gone? Where was this tunnel through which Chauntecleer meant to brave great Wyrm in his dungeons? And how did he hope to defeat Hatred with but two weapons?

  He had chosen to characterize himself as Grandeur after Glory. Oh, God, would that this were true.

  But Pertelote, trust your husband. He has done great things in the past. Can’t the fault be yours? Haven’t you woven a cloak of your own suspicions? Wait upon him. Trust him as much as you have always loved him. It was he who took you into his community, he who married you, he with whom you bore your children.

  Chauntecleer, come home again. I need no victory to honor you. Exhausted, come home again. Defeated, come home again.

  Unto his spirit, unto herself, now sitting on the battlefield, Pertelote began to sing:

  “My Lord, what is

  This poor world’s blisse,

  That changeth as the moon?

  That winter’s day

  You went away

  Was blacked before the noon.

  I heard you say,

  ‘Farwell. Oh, nay!

  Depart me not so soon.

  Why said ye so?

  Where did ye go?

  Alas! What have ye done?

  My weal is woe.

  He cannot know

  Who loveth two, not one.

  Thou hast bestowed

  Upon my soul

  The wimple of a nun—”

  Suddenly Pertelote stopped the song and listened. She heard something like ice grinding between herself and the sea.

  Next the wind blew from the waters a loathsome odor. Pertelote gagged. She turned aside and retched.

  Again, louder, came that rasping on ice—no, on stone! Then the stone fractured and cracked like a gunshot.

  Pertelote ducked. She peeped across the ground. Shards of stone clattered backward through a Beast’s hind legs. A Beast of outlandish proportions. Large. He was fifty pounds large, with massive forepaws, legs long and thick with fur, a voluminous bush of a tail, and a mini-sized head!

  Pertelote breathed the name of the Beast’s race: “Wolverine.”

  Larcenous Wolverines who prowled only in the dark of night, never letting himself to be seen. At the least little noise, these Creatures would dissolve, as agile as a shadow.

  Because the Animals had ever only knew the fetid Wolverine’s stink, they called him, “Mr. Fart.”

  Now, among the shards of stone, Pertelote saw the silhouette of a small bone spinning away. Then another. Then the Wolverine pulled back from the cavity with rib bones in his jaws. These he broke in a single bite and swilled their marrow. The Woverine rammed his snout into the cavity and brought up a skull.

  Pertelote whispered, “Russel, my Fox of Good Sense.”

  And the Wolverine vanished.

  [Twenty-Five] In Which the Weasel Considers Endings

  It has always been an article of John Wesley’s faith that ”Thinkings buggars a blaggard’s brains.” Nevertheless, here is the Weasel—thinking.

  For the first time in his life the Weasel met an ending.

  He stands beside the poor Woodie Coyote, both of them staring at the corpses of a mama and her son, and John was filled with mighty emotions. They drove him up and out of the rocky defile and sent him racing across the tundra, following a bloody trail. Maybe he would catch up and fight the Rooster himself. Maybe he would curse the murderous Rooster.

  Instead, the Weasel finds Black-Pale returning alone.

  “Oh, Stag,” says John.

  Black-Pale is weary, the sides of his neck slashed.

  “Stag?” John repeats as the Stag approaches him then passes him by. The noble Deer walks with his head hung low. He is doubling the bloody tracks of his going—and keeps going until he is out of sight.

  The Weasel’s bowels twist into a knot: rage and pity and hysteria. He leaves Black-Pale and bullets the freezing red trail after Chauntecleer.

  But the blood ran out before the Rooster is found.

  John keeps running, but hopelessly. Finally he loses purpose altogether, and here now he sits—thinking. He is meditating on endings. T
his grim wilderness seems to be the end of the earth. No bush, no hummock, no outcropping rock, not so much as a ridge of ice to break the visible reaches of the wasteland.

  Endings, for there are only so many Critters left on earth, and few at that.

  Endings: one by one the Critters will perish. Could be all the Critters would die. Then the stars would turn and turn silently—no eyes to see them, nor no voices to cry out.

  John Wesley shrivels. Finally his own little life would wink out and then the universe would be deserted altogether, wind and stone and the ice alone.

  “Hey! Ho!” The Weasel tries to make the phrase a shout. “Double-u’s gives your butts a hundred cuts.” Then he says, apropos of nothing, “Please pass the sugar, yo!”

  No good. His taunt is a mere puff in his mouth, blowing feathers.

  Endings.

  [Twenty-Six] In Which a Daughter Begins to Grieve

  The Fawn De La Coeur raised her head. She opened her nose and sniffed the wind.

  “Papa?”

  She stood up and walked across the great hall of the Hemlock. She paused a moment, then went out through the silvery boughs and into the brittle weather.

  “Papa? Papa?”

  Chalcedony rose and flapped her wings and tumble-flew after her ward.

  De La Coeur was trotting toward the woods.

  “O best beloved,” Chalcedony called. “‘Tis a troublous thing, to go alone.”

  But the Fawn out-walked the frail Hen and disappeared among the trees.

  Chalcedony pushed her poor self forward. “Ma’am?” she cried back to the Hemlock, “help me! My bairn’s gone barmy!”

  Then she too was breasting the prickly briars at the edge of the woods. Chalcedony’s head had been picked bald. Her feathers gave no protection against the thorns. But what was that when her charge had lost all sense and was endangering herself? And if she, Chalcedony should catch caught up to De La Coeur, what would she do then? Weakness chasing weakness.

  Then Chalcedony heard her Fawn’s voice, pleading, “Where is my papa? When is he coming home?”

  De La Coeur stopped, her nostrils flaring. The words came all from one place. The skinny Hen, gasping at she stumbled around a last tree trunk, saw Creature beside De La Coeur. It was he that she was questioning, “What have you done with my papa?”

  John Wesley Weasel. It had been his that the Fawn had smelled. John sat in misery, shaking his head.

  He said, “Oh, poor, poor little daughter, your papa—he is hurt. John, he saw his body-hurts. John thinks, might-be his heart is hurt. Oh, little girl. John thinks your papa, he is not coming back. Is two Coyotes killed.” John’s voice was thick with misery. “Kicked dead,” he said. “Not saying the who nor the what did kick them dead. Sad, sad, sad news. By-cause….” John cannot finish the sentence.

  De La Coeur began to cry.

  [Twenty-Seven] A Torpor of Guilt

  Ferric Coyote has fallen into a deep, reproachful sleep.

  “Reproachful” because this is the first thing he did after suffering the sight of his wife’s and his son’s tortured bodies. Horror kept him from touching their corpses. Horror dizzied him. Suddenly he could not hold his water. Wetness puddled the stones beneath him.

  Finally horror drove the hyper-strung Coyote out of the defile, onto the blank tundra. And now, in spite of all, he has fallen asleep.

  Ferric refuses to wake. If he did wake up, he would have to endure impossible desolations. O God! What Ferric has feared for most of his life, it has happened. In the end wasn’t able to protect his Rachel. He proved himself inadequate. Those he loves have perished. Ferric has become a wretch he cannot look upon.

  So: sleep.

  But in his sleep he dreams what in fact he saw and heard: the Tock of a Stag’s hoof. Tock, tock, the hoof-sounds descending the rocky defile. And then other sounds: a Huff-huffing, and then the bugling of despair.

  Ferric dreams that the Stag is whacking his antlers against the stone wall. The tines splinter and crack. Then the great Stag delivers such a hit to the wall that one entire antler breaks from his head, like a timber axed. The hole that was made now begins to bubble blood. Black-Pale collapses. He releases one final, receding sigh and then he too breathes no more.

  Ferric dreams another sound: Yip, yip! Papa!

  The poor Coyote, fearing to dream a dream of his daughters, burrows deeper into his torpor, until he is hiding so profoundly that he becomes a nothing in a nowhere.

  [Twenty-Eight] Pertelote’s Sorrow-Song

  The Wolves pad softly through the woods, drawn by the coppery scent of blood. Their tongues loll. Their jowls drip saliva.

  The White Wolf leads the other two. Therefore, he is first to see the commotion ahead and the first to halt.

  A foolish little Hen clucks encouragement. A listless Fawnis weeping. The Hen begs, “Come, child. Dasn’t remain. Oh, come with Chalcedony, and take your rest under the Hemlock.”

  A Weasel seems to be floating away without the benefit of feet.

  “Oh,” said Boreas, understanding.

  It is a wide carpet of Black Ants that carry the Weasel bodily away. And a Hen with browning feathers at her thoat follows them, funereal.

  The Hen pauses and turns, and the White Wolf is seen.

  “Boreas?” she says.

  The White Wolf tingles, so to be found out and named.

  The Hen says, “None of you should roam the hinterlands alone. Come. It would not be wrong to walk with me. There is room.”

  Nota and Eurus retreat into the shadows.

  Boreas murmurs, “Room. But I think there are too many Creatures for our liking.”

  He thinks that he has spoken privately.

  But the Hen hears him. “As you please,” she says, then spreads her gracious wings and sails away.

  Pertelote has seen the Wolves’ eyes as three pairs of lanterns: one pair white, another fire-red, and the third pair as yellow as Wasps.

  When the Fawn De La Coeur returns to the hall of the Hemlock, the entire community is borne down by her mood. They close their mouths and walk softly. Mourning requires respect.

  The Fawn brings the taint of death.

  Then comes John Wesley home again, wounded and dispirited. Those who ask after Chauntecleer, those who want to know how the mission was concluded, receive no answer. It wasn’t that the Weasel refuses to answer. Rather, he is as hollow as an Eagle-bone whistle. The Animals have only the Weasel’s body by which to reckon events. And this is torn, the eyes barren. Clearly, John Wesley has not returned triumphant.

  “Step-Papa?” The Brothers Mice pat John’s back. “We are happy to see you. Aren’t you happy too?”

  But all his fur from the neck to his tail is a tangled mess. Little Mouse-claws cannot comb it clean again.

  The entire community loses strength. Tasks are left unfinished. Foodstuffs are only half-eaten. Good relationships dissolve.

  Pertelote does her best to provide some hope.

  She walks among the Animals singing their names.

  “Ratotosk. String Jack. Honey-Queen and your Family Swarm! Tick-Tock. The Mad House of Otter.” And, outside of the Hemlock hall she says to one Ewe Sheep, “Baby Blue!”

  Oh, Pertelote wears herself out, trying to lift the spirits of her benumbed community.

  And wears herself out the more because she cannot know the state of her husband. John Wesley’s condition has destroyed her last shred of confidence. All her guessings lead only to calamity.

  So her worries concerning the Rooster are fast becoming anger. Who does he think he is, abandoning his Animals? It never was his calling to save the world. Save these, Chauntecleer! For this were you appointed by the Creator. Save the Keepers who save the world Wickedness and Hatred. Maintain their unity.

  Oh, the proud fool, off to make himself a her, but reducing the divine “We” to one only: He!

  Chauntecleer, Chauntecleer, why do you not come ho
me again?

  Oh, how Pertelote yearns to gather the Animals like Chicks under her wings.

  And so it was that in the wee hours of the morning, the Hen begins to sing a sorrow-song:

  “For safety I commend my friends,

  Their spirits, sleep, and all their ends

  To God.

  And he whose life myself I live,

  His name Sweet Singer, most I give

  To God.”

  [Twenty-Nine] Nourishment

  Ferric Coyote may have slept for a month, or else for one fathomless night. He slept in a place of no time, and in a time of no place.

  And then he wakes to find himself drinking a rich milk.

  A low voice says, “Your children, Ferric.”

  The Coyote opens his eyes. A dun-colored bulk overspreads his vision. Ferric’s snout is straight up. When he is able to focus, he realizes that he has been drawing milk from a soft, consoling udder.

  At once he jumps backward and begins to shake his head as if he’s just pulled it out of a pool of water.

  Ferric realizes that he is being watched. Brown eyes, compassionate eyes; a brow furrowed with the truth of the Coyote’s grief; nostrils that breathe forth the scent of sweet timothy and a motherly cud; one rangy horn that sweeps the air like a scythe—and the entire Cow covered with a coat the color of dun.

  The causes of his grief exist in her as well, but her aspect does not judge him. His mourning has become her mourning, and her lowing gives voice to his heart’s inarticulate pain. They grieve together. The reproach that sent him to sleep she has taken into herself, and the water than spills from her eyes may be tears of suffering, or the tears of a heavy repentance.

  Now the Cow begins with her tongue to wash the Coyote. And finally he, too, begins to weep.

  The Cow lows, “Twill.” And she lows, “Hopsacking.” And then she drifts away.

  Ferric knows. He has been given a job to do. Two jobs, as he understands it.