The War for the Lot

by Sterling Lanier

  The sun had gone down quite a bit toward the brow of the hill behind the house, when the boy, feeling slightly cold and stiff, got up and walked slowly home.

  He trudged up the gentle shoulder of the hill, kicking the tall, new grass and weeds until he passed under the old fruit trees and reached the edge of the lawn by the side of the house. Here he turned to stare back at the wood. The tall trees, radiant in the light of late afternoon, nodded and swayed in the golden air, green, impenetrable and silent.

  Alec began to run toward the house, turning the corner and flying to the back steps, head down and breathless, caught up in a sudden feeling of apprehension.

  Here he was brought to a sudden stop by running smack into Lou Darden, who was coming with an armload of wash which she had removed from the clothesline.

  Barely managing to avoid falling backwards, wash and all, she recovered her footing and stared hard at Alec. She had seen at a glance that the boy's set white face and abstracted expression meant some kind of problem.

  "Now, honey, tell Lou. Something give you a scare? A snake, maybe?" She knew that a few copperheads lived in the woods and that, rarely, a rattler moved down out of the hills from the northwest.

  Alec only shook his head mutely. For a minute they stood facing one another, Lou puzzled by his reluctance to speak. Then he sat down and looked up into her wise eyes and lined face.

  "Lou," he said slowly, "is there anything funny about the woods down there? Does anyone live there?"

  The woman also sat down on the lowest step, cradling the laundry, and beckoned wordlessly to the boy to come close. For a moment they sat together in silence.

  "Did you see something, boy? Or hear it?" she asked quietly.

  "I thought I did," he answered. "I thought I heard an animal talk, Lou. But I know that's not possible. Is it? I just day-dreamed it, didn't I?"

  For a space of seconds, the old woman stared at him. She looked away before answering.

  "Some can hear them," she said finally. "My brother, Jared, could. He's been dead and gone, nigh on thirty years now, but he could do it. Not often and not always. And mark you only around here!"

  She sighed, rose and laid the wash carefully over the back porch rail and then reseated herself on the step, smoothing out her white apron.

  "I used to think I heard the birds and critters talking when I was little, younger than you. I expect most small children do. We played all over this area when we was young and school was out. But Jared was different. My family, the Griders, have been here since the white men first came to Mill Run." Her voice dropped until it was almost a whisper.

  "And maybe earlier yet. It ain't nothing to brag on, but my granny told me once, when I was sassing her, that I was a throwback to Chief Paccomuc, and no wonder! I asked my ma what she meant later on and she took on something terrible, wouldn't speak about it at all, and told me I was a bad girl.

  "But I asked Pa one night when she'd gone to bed, and he didn't seem so het up or surprised. He said we was supposed to have Indian blood in the family and that one of his early great-grands had married a daughter of Paccomuc, the biggest medicine chief in all Connecticut."

  She smoothed her apron again and then glared sternly at Alec, whose wide, brown eyes stared blankly back.

  "Now don't you go repeatin' this, not to Darden or your grandpa or nobody," she went on. "It's my business who my family was, and I'm telling you for a reason. My brother Jared told me time and again never to say nothin' to anyone. We were close, me and Jared, being only a year apart in age. He told me he was going to shoot a squirrel once, right down there in the swamp, with his old shotgun, and he heard that squirrel say, No, no, don't!

  " 'Twas an easy shot, he said, but he couldn't do it after that. He knew better than to tell anyone but me, though. Times after that, when he'd been prowling, he'd come to me later and say, 'Lou, it happened again,' he'd say. A cottontail rabbit or maybe a raccoon. He figgered out by himself it all came from The Lot, or the woods here, anyway. I tell you, it skeered him! He'd look plumb white afterward. But he'd come back here again and again, just to see if it would keep on happening. Sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't." She paused for breath and locked her hands over her bony knees, rocking back and forth.

  "Indian blood could have done it, I guess. They say them things dies hard. A big chief, a sachem, they called them could maybe talk with animals. They claimed to do all manner of things, and most of it was lies, likely as not. But Jared's long gone, died of the influenza years back, and now there's you. You ain't got no Indian blood?" she asked.

  "I don't think so," Alec said.

  "So it must be The Lot. Always was a holy sort of place for the Indians, you know. Kind of like a church is for us. The poor heathen had no other churches."

  "I know," Alec said. "Grandpa told me it was a special place and no one could hunt the wild animals here."

  "Now then, don't be such a wise-head," Lou said sharply. "Who do you think told him that, for all his book learning and long words? Me, that's who! Not another person in town knows a thing about it. So there!"

  Conscious of having reduced her audience of one to silence, she continued, half to herself, half to Alec. "Yes, it's The Lot. I think some people, not just anyone, mind, can get through. Kind of like a one-way telephone. Might be easier for a young 'un, too. Not so much clutter on their minds, so they can hear the critters better, 'specially when they're scairt."

  She turned back to Alec and took his nose between two long fingers, tweaking it gently to and fro as she spoke.

  "Now look, boy, this here's a secret, all we've spoke about. I want you to tell me if it happens again and I want you not to be frightened. Them little things down there can't hurt nobody, not a soul. I expect all they want is to be let alone. There's nothing to scare you. Think of yourself as lucky and don't tell anyone but me!"

  "I won't tell, Lou," he promised. Had it really happened? Surely not. He had imagined it. When Lou went into the house, Alec even allowed himself a small smile. He wouldn't say anything about the skunk's talking. People would think he was crazy!

  When Alec finally relaxed on the big sleigh bed in the attic bedroom that night, sleep did not come. He lay and listened to the sounds of the night, the hum of insect life and the whickering of a screech owl, long after the noises downstairs had faded to silence. It was a warm night, and the window was wide open only a few inches from his pillow. The scent of a giant flowering honeysuckle vine, which grew up the side of the old house, poured into the room and the bright stars of early June glittered in the night sky.

  He felt more disturbed than ever before in his life. But had the impossible really happened? Alec decided he must believe it had not. People did not hear animals talking, regardless of what Lou said. This was the only way to treat the situation.

  Eventually, sleep did overcome him. He never saw the great shadow which drifted out of the night an hour later and landed on his window sill, making no more noise than a single feather falling.

  He dreamed on as two great yellow eyes stared solemnly at him and blinked and stared and stared and blinked.

  Chapter Two

  IT SEEMED to Alec that he had never been asleep, he awoke so quickly. One minute he was dreaming, the next awake, and the transition was so sudden that he almost flew out from under his yellow blanket.

  A father robin, who had been teaching his fully-feathered child a few fine points about wing strokes, pushed the startled young bird off the window sill and flew down after it, calling loudly. The sun was on the other side of the house, but light streamed in the windows anyway as the New England day began.

  Dressing quickly, Alec raced down the corridor and the back stairs to the kitchen.

  "Well," said Lou, turning from the long, iron sink. "I thought the Indians had got out of the TV screen and were charging down the stairs. I see you're awake, anyway."

  "Awake enough for three boys, I'd say," said John from the kitchen table, where he had been loafing o
ver a second cup of coffee. It was only seven o'clock, but he had already put in fifteen minutes weeding his garden before breakfast.

  "Anything we can do today, John?" said Alec. "Any jobs I can help you with?"

  "Not so much of a shout, there, please," said Lou, advancing on him. "You ain't tied your sneakers. And you're going to have breakfast with your grandpa before you go wandering off and getting into trouble with Darden."

  When at length Lou had got him looking "decent" and not "like a heathen", she sent him, quieted down a little, back upstairs to brush his teeth and comb his hair.

  As he brushed away, he reflected that older people attached far too much importance to neatness and cleanness and made a prompt resolve that he would never brush his teeth when older, but would have them pulled and wear false ones, made of purple glass, so that people would be appalled when he smiled. Finishing his teeth, he ran a comb through his hair and stuck his tongue out at his face in the mirror. Then he ran back downstairs, this time the front way, arriving in the big dining room with a rush and a clatter.

  His grandfather, who was wearing an old blue wrapper over his pajamas and carpet slippers, was waiting for him. Once Alec was seated, the Professor reached for the large brass elephant bell in front of his plate and rang it loudly.

  Lou entered at once from the pantry, carrying a tray laden with hot buckwheat pancakes, maple syrup and fresh country sausages, the blend of delightful odors preceding her like a wave.

  "Well," said Professor March. "I've been asking for a breakfast like this for months and haven't breached the boiled egg barrier in a cat's age. Do I infer that Alec gets preferential treatment?"

  Lou glared at the smiling old gentleman, whom she spoiled in every conceivable way, and answered tartly.

  "Alec ain't on no doctor's orders, Professor, and not likely to become an old man with too much weight in front, like some I could name."

  "I see that I am once more reduced to silence, a prey to slander in my own house," murmured her opponent. Nevertheless, he seized a healthy portion of the cakes and sausage from the serving plate when it was passed to him. Lou retired to the kitchen, vindicated.

  Alec ate voraciously but silently. He knew it was impolite to talk with a full mouth and he wanted to get the food in as soon as possible, because he had thought up a thousand questions that badly needed answering. As a result, he was finished in no time.

  "Grandpa," he said suddenly. "Do any wild animals around here bother people? Do they bite people who walk in the woods? Did the old Indians get bitten? Can you get lost in the woods? Are there any big animals? Does anybody but animals live there?"

  "Hold on there! Whoa, take it easy!" said his grandfather. "I haven't even finished eating and I get enough questions to answer in a split-second that would last me all day. Wait 'til I get to my coffee, will you?"

  "All right," said Alec, "but I want to go down into the woods and I thought I'd better ask first." He subsided and waited as patiently as he could, staring out of the large rounded windows in the bay at the end of the room at the bright day outside. The light flooded in and the center window was open, although screened, letting in a profusion of sweet odors and a welling chorus of birdsong.

  Finally, the Professor's chair scraped back, and he crossed his legs and looked thoughtfully at the boy, stirring his large coffee cup absently as he did so. He spoke now professorially.

  "The largest animals you are likely to glimpse will be Odocoileus virginianus—the local white-tailed deer, my young zoologist," he said, "and they will take good care to stay out of your way. Still, you may get a look at one, particularly in the evening, near the edge of the pasture.

  "A buck in the fall—that's when they mate—can be bad-tempered and ugly; but I never heard of anyone in these parts getting bothered. There hasn't been a painter—that's what they used to call the mountain lion or cougar in this area—since the early 1800's. No bears for nearly that long, either, and no wolves since the eighteenth century, when the locals killed the last ones off. So that takes care of two of your questions.

  "Let's see. If my mind functions properly, you wanted to know if anyone but animals lived down in the wood? Presumably you mean people?"

  "Yes," said Alec. "Indians maybe, or somebody like that. Somebody who would hide and not want to be found." This was as close as he could come to saying that he had a strange feeling of some presence other than that of the animals out beyond the wall of trees.

  "The answer is no," said the old gentleman. "What were you thinking of? We have never had any gypsies in these parts that I know of, and the last Indians left before your great-grandfather was born. Even the old tramps have left the roads and I never heard of a local hermit around here, such as some towns have. As a matter of interest, Alec, the town children don't come out here, although it's not far from the center of Mill Run. I don't discourage them, but they just don't come. Too much to do in town, I imagine.

  "The Lot is heavily posted with signs, you know, against hunters and fishermen; and John and I keep a pretty sharp lookout in hunting season. The local people know this. It's been three years since we caught an illegal hunter, and he was a city man.

  "Any more questions, or is that it?" he said, as Alec stared past him out the window.

  "I asked if any of the animals that were here, the smaller ones, bit people," the boy answered, still thinking over what he had just heard.

  "The only danger from any small animal, unless you bother it, of course, is this," said the Professor, "and it's most uncommon. I'm referring to rabies, a very serious and fatal disease that drives animals crazy, and people too, when they get bitten. Dogs catch it, but cats seldom do, for some reason. Move too quickly, I guess.

  "Anyway, I never heard of any signs of it in this area. A good rule is to avoid any animal you see acting oddly. If you see a fox, say, stumbling blindly around in daylight or a little bat flying about in the sunlight, bumping into things, or a stray dog with foam around its jaws, then run as quickly as you can and get away from there. But that's all very unlikely. It's something to remember and not worry about, like watching for a green light before you cross the street. Now then, what's left? You know what a porcupine looks like, so don't try to pat one. We get them here once in a great while. The same goes for a skunk. Leave him alone and you'll be fine, because he'll do the same. We have a few copperheads, poisonous snakes. I've never seen one but John has, and even a rattlesnake or two, he tells me. Don't stick your hand into anything you can't see into, like a hole in a stone wall, or under an old log. The rattler is a gentleman, and you'll hear his tail snapping if you're anywhere close. The copperheads are very shy. You practically have to sit down on one before he'll do anything ... And that's the whole shebang. Anything more?"

  Alec shook his head. He could think of nothing more to ask which would not have come dangerously close to revealing matters better kept to himself.

  "Thank you, Grandpa," he said, and got off his chair. "John said he'd take me around. If I think of anything else, I can ask him, can't I?"

  "I should think so, and better than me for everything outside," agreed the Professor ungrammatically. "Why, John has more knowledge about this area and what's in it than I do, by a million times. He had the whole place soaked into his bones, and I sometimes think he knows when each blade of grass starts growing." He picked up the morning newspaper as Alec ran from the room and out to the kitchen.

  "John is out rambling," Lou informed the boy, "but he's somewhere nearby. Give a good yell," she said firmly, "outside the house and that will fetch him."

  John appeared at once around the corner of the house in response to Alec's call, carrying a bushel basket and his long, iron spade. Worthless, the cat, orange tail aplume, came padding in his wake.

  He grinned at the boy and gestured at him with the basket. "Get your own spade now," he said, "and we'll take a walk down to the brook. Lou makes homemade sarsaparilla, and she can't do it without fresh roots. That means you and me, 'cau
se somebody's got to dig 'em first."

  The spade having been secured, the two strode off through the green-shaded orchard and into the lower pasture, where John led off toward a clearly defined break in the old tumbledown wall. Worthless followed behind.

  At the entrance to the wood, however, the big cat ceased to accompany the pair. Planting his fat behind firmly on the earth, he meowed loudly that he was going no further. The cool, green shade which beckoned so invitingly ahead was clearly a barrier to him.

  Alec looked down the meandering little path which started at the gap in the wall and then back at the cat before asking:

  "John, why doesn't he want to come? Is he scared?"

  "Must be," said the man, staring at Worthless. "Come to think of it, he never has liked the woods. Once in a while he'll come in a little ways with me, then he just clears out quick-like and I find him back at the house. Probably met a skunk or something when he was a kitten."

  Worthless meowed in apparent agreement and then began washing himself. Without another word, John started off down the path, and Alec followed close behind. Not far inside the shade of the first trees, Alec looked back and saw the cat staring after them. Then a bend in the path hid him from sight, and the boy forgot Worthless as the forest closed around him.

  Poplars, tulip trees, great oaks, and maples towered above the heads of the two as they pursued a gentle, winding slope deeper into the heart of the wood. Around them, revealed in flecks of sunlight, the exuberant undergrowth of an uncleared forest had burst from the mat of brown fallen leaves and was struggling for light, the oldest struggle on earth.

  Dark green ground pine and lighter mayapple formed patches of blanket-like growth under elder and laurel bushes. Green predominated, but for the white blossoms of the laurel, but there were a thousand shades and permutations of hue, and Alec noticed that no two different plants seemed to have quite the same color. Ferns of every size and tint of green were everywhere.