The War for the Lot

by Sterling Lanier

  "Look here, boy," said John, halting and pointing at a lovely, pink flower on a short stem, which grew next to a rotted log.

  "That's a moccasin flower. City people call it lady's slipper, and your grandpa told me it's an orchid, related to them they sell in fancy florists. But it looks like an Indian moccasin, don't it now?"

  The word "Indian" started a fresh chain of thoughts surging in Alec's mind, and he looked at the beautiful plant in silence, wondering if anything else Indian in nature was still lingering in the forest.

  A busy scratching in a pile of leaves to the left of the path drew his attention next, and observing his desire to see the scratcher, John halted and whistled loudly. Out of the leaves appeared a robin-sized bird with a short beak, red breast and a smart black back and tail, fringed with white. It chirped loudly at them. Then it flirted its long tail and plunged back into the leaves, sending them flying and making a loud scrabbling noise.

  "Towhee, some call him," said John. "Chewink is what I call him and so do most New Englanders, I guess. Makes enough noise for an elephant for all he's just a little bird looking for bugs. Come on now. If we stop and look at everything, we'll be here til next week, and I've got chores to do besides digging these roots."

  There was life all around them, birds flitting from branch to branch, their song exploding in bursts of music, their small shapes showing as they darted from tree to ground or branch to bole. Insects buzzed steadily in a constant background of low-keyed noise.

  On the ground itself, small furtive movements seemed never to cease, and its direction was far more purposeful. Alec could never get a clear look at any of it; but walking along behind John, he saw small whiskings and dartings behind trees, going on continually on either side of their line of march. Whenever he tried to pin one of these elusive flurries down, it halted and he would be conscious of another small movement somewhere else.

  Once he saw a bright eye staring at him from the depths of a small cluster of wild grape vines; but as soon as the two humans drew close, it vanished. Again, as his head swiveled about, the boy caught the barest flash of motion on the other side of the path, and saw something dark brown and low-slung dart behind a large granite boulder projecting from the leafmold.

  John seemed to see none of these things and the boy walked as closely as he could behind him as the old man strode along, slat basket creaking as he swung his arm. But the tiny movements and the sense of being observed never left Alec for a moment. It seemed somehow familiar, recalling something to his mind that he badly wanted to remember. He tried hard to recall what it was, while never failing to notice the shadowy comings and goings with all of his senses.

  Winter, that was part of the memory! Now why winter, when it was certainly summer now? A book, that was another part! Winter and a book, he thought, keeping his eye on John's broad, blue shirt back. And faces!

  Suddenly, it all came back with a burst of memory. A narrow little wedge-shaped face. The Wild Wood in winter! Mole and his desperate flight in The Wind in the Willows, which Alec's father had read aloud to him back when he was six. He and John were being followed. If not hunted, they were at least being kept under constant observation by a lot of animals!

  This thought was almost too much for him. He had to speak to John, to tell him what he had seen and share the knowledge, as well as gain some comfort.

  But he hesitated. Lou's warning had specifically named her husband. Alec had to keep silent. Besides, he thought, perhaps the animals were really doing nothing unusual. Maybe they always followed people. His grandfather had told him that few human beings ever entered the woods. Maybe the little wild things found them merely a new sight, something fun to look at.

  Alec swung his spade in a casual way. But deep inside he felt that none of the "maybe's" were true. The animals followed for a purpose; they watched for a purpose; and he, Alec March, was part of that purpose!

  But his mind refused to accept this idea and he tramped on, his eye now excluding anything but John Darden's tall form in front of him.

  Then a new noise came into his range of hearing, deeper than the birdsong and the muted insect throb. Ahead, John had stopped, and there before them lay Bound Brook.

  It ran down through The Lot from the higher land to the west, gurgling in its bed of sand and dark pebble, twisting and turning around mossy boulders and elbows of snow white quartz. Not for nothing is most of Connecticut famous as the rockiest ground in New England, and the stone underlying its surface was clearly visible where the waters of summer and the ice of winter had cut through the soil and deposited leaves of countless years.

  "Sit down, boy, and look around," said John, choosing a large, smooth rock for himself. "Nothing prettier than clean water, running through a woods. Take a drink if you want. Like I told you, it's safe, and it tastes better'n any city water you ever had. Got the soil and the trees in it."

  "Are there fish?" asked Alec, who was kneeling by the bank, trying to see into the brown depths of a pool which was all of three feet deep.

  "Just little minnows, maybe a tadpole or a baby hornpout or madtom small catfish," said John, peering about for signs of a sarsaparilla plant. "There's some bass and pickerel down in the pond where it's deep, lower on The Lot, but that's got a lot of swamp around it. It's pretty, though, if you can stand a few mosquitoes. I'll take you there later on if you want, but there's a lot of mud."

  Alec saw a movement in this particular pool and instantly plunged his bare arm in up to the shoulder. He yelped in surprise a second later and yanked back his arm with a creature like a tiny brown lobster clinging by one claw to his thumb. As his arm left the water, the small animal released its hold, dropped back in with a plop and disappeared, leaving the boy rubbing his pinched finger.

  "Ho, hooh," said John, laughing at Alec's indignant face. "Crawdads don't fancy being picked up, now, do they?"

  "That hurt!" said Alec, although the soreness was quickly leaving. "Was that a baby lobster, John?"

  "Just a crawfish or crawdad, we call them. Good for bait, and not much else. But don't you go a-grabbing everything you see, Alec. A madtom catfish no bigger than that crawdad could give you a poison sting with his fins and your finger would be almighty sore for a week. Best to look before you grab. Now come along and let's find us that sarsaparilla before we forget why we came."

  In a short time, he located a clump of short, five-leaved plants with white puffball blossoms and began to dig them up. Alec assisted, and before long the basket was full of the white roots. John cut the leaves and tops off with a large pocket knife.

  Alec noticed that wherever they dug, John was careful to fill the holes with leafmold and leave as little trace of their work as possible, always smoothing the ground back as well as he could into its original condition. The leaves of the dug-up plants he buried in one of the holes.

  "Alec, if you want a place to look nice and stay the way it ought to be, you try not to make a mess. Don't leave trash around. Put back what you take out. There's lots of little things can be hurt easy and the more people mess up a pretty place the harder it is to get it back the way it ought to be."

  His voice died away in a murmur about "kind of a special place down here, and ought to be kept right."

  John hauled a large silver watch from his denim shirt pocket. "I'm going to take these roots back. Some hours still until your lunch time, Alec. Want to come back or stay here? The path is right behind you, so's you can't get lost if you stay by the brook. Or would you rather come back with me?"

  Alec wanted to go back, but he also wanted to stay. He was afraid of the forest, but he also felt a sudden tremendous compulsion not to leave. A feeling of pressure built up inside his head. Before he knew it, he had said, "I'll poke around right here for awhile," and sat down by the edge of the dancing water.

  "Right," said John, shouldering the basket of roots and picking up his spade. "Don't get too wet. Water's still a might cold, but that never hurt a boy in June. Come back up the path w
hen you've a mind to eat, now."

  He swung off up the little slope between two laurel bushes and disappeared over a rise almost immediately. And then Alec was alone in the heart of the ancient wood. He looked about nervously. The thought of the animals he had glimpsed on the way down from the meadow returned with full force, but he could see nothing.

  Patches of amber sunlight glowed on the leaves and lit clumps of fern and an occasional skunk cabbage. Worn granite boulders, flecked with pale lichens and rock tripe, lay all about, half buried in the dead leaves of the old year. A large red dragonfly darted past to perch on the withered stalk of a wild iris for a second and then hover and flash away down the stream toward its mates on the distant pond.

  The pressure, the sense of being expected and even needed, which the boy had felt so strongly before John left, had vanished. Instead, he felt relaxed and comfortable. He was conscious only of peace and a desire to rest. Without being at all sleepy, he was yet in no mood to move, but only to sit and stare at the brook. Minutes passed and he still sat, rapt, hugging his spade, his mind idle, transfixed by the melody of the water and the breathing, throbbing background of woodland noises.

  The message came as a shock, even though the one bearing it tried to make the transition as easy as possible.

  "Turn around and don't be afraid. We have been waiting for you."

  The boy stared. Two animals, moving quietly, had emerged from the path behind him and were sitting not six feet away, looking him over as he sat on the bank of the stream.

  The one on the left was a large raccoon, grizzled coat and black mask gleaming in a stray sunbeam, black-and-white ringed tail coiled neatly by his side. Alec knew at once that his was the voice he had heard, although how he knew it he could not explain.

  The other animal was an enormous old brown woodchuck, who must have weighed at least as much as the raccoon, say thirty pounds, and whose gray muzzle was lifted high in the air as he peered nearsightedly from his small eyes. Great square front teeth, yellow with age, showed as he wrinkled his nose at intervals.

  "Now don't go jumping around like a silly grasshopper," came the voice again. "We have to talk to you at once, and we aren't going to hurt you. Or you us," he added.

  The blood throbbed in Alec's temples and he remained unmoving on the ground as if rooted there. Everything in his body seemed numb and he could hardly breathe.

  "And put that spade down!" The animal stirred irritably, shifting his weight on his plump haunches.

  Alec relaxed and obeyed, although he kept the spade at his side.

  "That's better," said the raccoon. "You have a lot to learn in a short time and nobody can learn anything if they're scared half to death. Now just be sensible. This isn't easy for us, either, you know. I can talk to you but it's hard. You can't talk to me yet, because you don't know how. That takes learning. So simply relax and it will all go more smoothly."

  Despite his astonishment, Alec could not help being fascinated. Just as in his previous encounter with the skunk, the conversation was clear, although it seemed to come to him almost instantaneously.

  "Call me Scratch," said the raccoon. "This is Stuffer," he added, indicating the big woodchuck. "Say something to the human, stupid."

  "Hello," said Stuffer slowly. To Alec the woodchuck's "voice" was totally different from the quick conversation of the raccoon, being heavy and labored, quite like the clumsy-looking animal himself.

  "We don't have names, like you humans," said the raccoon, "but you have to call us something. Stuffer never stops eating unless he's asleep, and I'm always scratching something up. I thought of Washer," he added, "but I don't really wash all of my food, so Scratch is better."

  "I'm not eating now," said the thick woodchuck voice suddenly, "and I'm not asleep, either. What's his name, anyway, or does he know it?"

  "Aha," said the raccoon. "Glad you woke up. Of course he has a name, but he can't say it to us. That's why we're here, remember?"

  He directed his attention back to Alec and moved a few feet closer. The boy felt his fear ebbing away as he watched. The animals were obviously not about to harm him.

  The raccoon sat down again and looked up at him.

  "You have to talk to us, too," he said. "Try and tell us your name."

  "I'm Alec!" the boy said loudly.

  Both the animals visibly flinched. The raccoon, Scratch, raised one paw in protest. "Not so loud, for goodness' sake," he said. "All we get is a tremendous noise that doesn't mean a thing. You don't have to talk by using noise, you know. We don't."

  It was true, Alec noted in amazement. Although the animal's conversation sounded clearly in his mind, they were not speaking to him with words at all.

  "Try again, but not so hard."

  The boy shut his eyes to concentrate better, and tried to think his name.

  "No good," came a grunt from the woodchuck. "He's trying, I will say, but it doesn't tell me anything."

  "Nobody thought this would be easy," retorted the raccoon. "Give him a chance. A beaver dam wasn't built in a day, as the saying goes." He sent another thought to Alec.

  "What do you like to do best, human? Try thinking of yourself doing that, whatever it is."

  Alec thought hard and finally decided he liked playing with, or watching, animals. He was nervous about thinking of himself at the zoo or museum (for fear of hurting feelings), but he tried to think of the zoo as having no bars and the animals in the museum as being alive.

  "Hm, huh, hmm," came the rough voice of Stuffer. "I think I'm getting something now. He likes to look at animals, I think. No metal sticks or killing things, just looking. A nice enough young human, I guess."

  "We already knew that," said Scratch brusquely. "Why do you think he was picked? But it gives me an idea. We can call him Watcher. Now, Watcher," he went on, "think of yourself, a picture of you, watching an animal. Can you do that?"

  Alec tried to fix his mind on seeing himself standing watching a raccoon. In his thought he removed all background so that only he and the animal appeared in his thoughts. Watcher. I am Watcher.

  "Not bad," said Scratch. "Did you get that, you rooteater?" he threw in for the woodchuck's benefit. "He's trying hard and it's coming through. Almost as good as one of my own young ones!"

  "All right, all right," said Staffer. "But all he's said is his own name. We need a lot more than that." Alec heard all of this, of course, and flushed with shame. The human irony of being jibed at by a woodchuck never occurred to him. He just felt badly about not being able to do better at something the animals seemed able to do so easily.

  "Try again," said Scratch patiently. "Give us your name picture. Good. That came over clearly. Now try something harder. What did you eat this morning?"

  The boy tried.

  "Round meat things and flat cakes, I got that faintly."

  Now it was Stuffer's turn to defend Alec. "He's just learning," said his slower tones. "All young animals talk blurry when they're starting, Scratch."

  "I know," said the raccoon, "but he's making my head itch!"

  The practice went on. After about an hour of learning to send out simple pictures, such as those of his family, his belongings, and the house up on the hill, Alec began to feel more confident.

  By this time the woodchuck and the raccoon were sitting right next to him, and at times were actually pawing his legs when they wanted to emphasize something or became impatient. Around them the rest of the wood went on about its regular business, the birds and insects behaving as usual, the sun shining down through the green canopy of leaves overhead and light breezes ruffling the tops of the trees.

  But below on the ground, the three figures remained intent and preoccupied, paying no attention to anything else except what they were doing. The white shirt stayed bent over the two small pointed heads and they in turn kept their eyes fixed on the human face staring down into theirs.

  Alec had now attained a limited ability to send two or three pictures at once. While not yet ready t
o "talk" on the same level as Scratch and Stuffer, he could at last ask questions. He had discovered that the easiest way to do this was to make a picture and then make his mind a total blank immediately afterwards. While not as fast as human speech, at least as yet, he learned that he could still find out a good deal.

  "What do you eat?" Alec asked Stuffer. He thought about a picture of a bare patch of earth and the woodchuck sitting in front of it.

  Back came a series of pictures of grass, roots, leaves and fallen fruit.

  "What about you?" The boy turned to Scratch. This time the list was far longer. It included items ranging from green corn to frogs and mice, which gave rise to still more questions.

  "Do raccoons and woodchucks always go around together?" Alec did this by showing Scratch and Stuffer with a wall between them.

  This last question made the two creatures terribly excited, and they both began to "talk" so fast that Alec could hardly understand them. Conflicting pictures poured into his mind. But he had picked up a lot in the time he had already spent learning, and he was able to grasp, after a good deal of hard effort, most of what they were saying.

  Apparently the local animals were acting very strangely, and were not fighting and hunting as they usually did. In the ordinary way of things, a raccoon and a woodchuck had nothing at all to do with one another, nor did a skunk and a fox. Deer and mice had even fewer interests in common, any more than did birds and animals that lived on the ground or in holes.

  But now this normal state of things was all upset. All, or at least most, of the resident forest people had buried their past animosities. The hunting animals, such as the foxes, all hunted outside The Lot, as far away as possible, and did not disturb any of their small neighbors. Squirrels had stopped robbing the local birds' nests; and the big birds of prey, such as owls and hawks, hunted miles away from their home territories.

  A complete and very effective truce was in fact being carried on both night and day throughout the whole length and breadth of The Lot. The two animals were quivering with nervous energy and delight when Alec made it plain that he finally understood all this.