The War for the Lot

by Sterling Lanier

  "We do," said Alec, "but not from somebody running around doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants. We all have to work at exactly the same time and obey orders or not at all. We can't lick all those rats by each one being the boss and doing only what he feels like."

  "All right, all right, no need to be unpleasant," said Worthless more calmly. "I have a right to know what's going on, I suppose? I didn't actually say I wouldn't obey anybody's orders. Your orders, though, not from some woods animal. That's why I came to find you up here and have a quiet chat. You tell me what to do and I won't make any trouble."

  "To start with," said Alec, "I want you to leave any animal around here alone. All the woods animals have a truce until this rat business is settled. You don't need to hunt anyway, with all the free food you get by just asking."

  "That's no trouble," said Worthless. "I seldom hunt anyway, except to try out my claws now and again. I promise not to touch anyone but rats. That good enough? What else do you want me to do?"

  "Listen," said Alec earnestly, "I have to go to the dump tonight, to try to explore and to catch a rat alive if I can. Whisperfoot's going, I guess, and we're trying to get a woodrat to come and disguise himself as one of the dump rats. Want to come along and help?"

  "That sounds interesting, I must admit," said the cat, yawning widely. "What else is going on?"

  "It's almost lunchtime," said Alec. "I'm going to go exploring down by the pond right after lunch. I'll take Whisperfoot, the mouse. Want to come along then, too?"

  "Hardly," said the cat. "I might get all wet and dirty. I'll rest now so I'll be ready for tonight." Yawning and stretching his front legs, Worthless climbed off the boy's lap and sauntered away.

  "All right, Worthless," said Alec. "I'll go get lunch. Come and see me later."

  "I'll be there, ready to supply any advice needed," said the cat and disappeared around a tree.

  Alec ran back down to the house feeling a thousand times better than when he had left. He had a new friend and, moreover, one who could think cleverly. He felt that the problems and the endless waiting for news were not so bad now.

  Rushing into the kitchen, he seized the astonished Lou by the end of her snowy apron and danced around her, pulling at the apron edge until she was compelled to spin around in circles following his laughing face. Finally, out of breath, he dropped the apron and hugged her.

  "Hi, Lou," he said, squeezing her as hard as he could. "Isn't it a great day?"

  "Well," said Lou, at last having been allowed to stand still, "I can see you feel just fine. Go along with you now, boy, and play some. Get the devil out of you." With her gruff words, she tried unsuccessfully to hide her affection. He tore out of the sunlit kitchen and raced up the back stairs to his own room, to find Whisperfoot and possibly Creeper to learn the latest news.

  As he ran down the long hall on the second floor toward his door, his eye took in without noticing the many pictures which hung the length of the corridor. He had looked at them all before, including the painting of a little woods scene by someone named Homer, which he had been told was very valuable. Near it hung a funny old colored map of an ancient battle in Europe called Ramillies, drawn (it said) by a Captain Mossburger, of General Dopf's dragoon regiment. He had liked the old map especially, both because of its bright colors and also because all the old-fashioned "s's" were written as "f's" so that the words looked all wrong "Ramillief," "Moffburger" and "dragoonf." He used to say the names aloud to himself as if the letters were really "f's" and then scream with laughter. Just beyond where the old map hung on the wall was the entrance to his bedroom.

  Today as he rushed past the map, it caught his eye. And suddenly the fact that it was a map and not simply a picture registered in his brain. A map, and the map of a battle at that! He came to an instant stop and stared at the faded old print. The hills, valleys and streams were clearly marked in green at intervals. Between all these things, he saw the armies, shown as narrow rectangles and square blocks of different colors, red for the Allies of long ago and blue for the French of Louis XIV.

  As he looked at the map, he began to think hard. This was what he needed, a map of The Lot on which to place the various animals and the areas they would fight in. If he could do this and get everything where it belonged, then all would become much clearer. He stood, lost in thought. Could he draw such a map? Aside from his efforts at school, he did very little drawing. Perhaps, though, if he asked properly, his grandfather would help him.

  This last idea struck him as a piece of genius. Without going into his room at all, completely forgetting why he had come up there, in fact, he wheeled and rushed down the front stairs headed for the library. He burst into the room and found the Professor seated at his big desk, buried as usual in papers and opened books, his pen scratching on a yellow pad as he prepared a ponderous attack on some other professor's latest theory. Alec's sudden appearance, however, in no way disconcerted the old gentleman. He looked at the boy over his horn-rimmed glasses, then took them off and waited for what he had to say.

  "Grandpa, can you help me draw a map of The Lot, the whole place, just like a real one? I want to have one for my room so I can look at it whenever I want and see where I've been and where everything goes and well, like that."

  All of this came out in one tremendous burst and the words ran together like machine-gun fire. It took a few seconds for the Professor to absorb it, and then he looked thoughtful. Getting up from his desk, he walked over to a tall walnut cupboard in one corner and bent down to reach for the lowest drawer.

  "Come here, Alec, and give me a hand. I haven't opened this dratted thing since your grandmother died and no one else has either, from the feel of it. But there used to be some stuff in here that just may be what you want. Ah! Easy does it."

  The two of them, tugging and hauling, managed to pull the stiff old drawer open, and it disclosed a mass of papers, some spread out flat and others tightly rolled and bound with pieces of ribbon and string. Settling back on his knees, Professor March began to remove the various sheets carefully, examining them as he did so. Alec waited expectantly.

  "Let's see now. Here's that set of colored prints of all the sea battles Lord Nelson fought in. I forgot I never had them framed. Your grandmother never liked them. She said they made her sea-sick.

  "What's this? A set of charts of the Florida Keys. I must have planned to sail there once, I suppose." The old man kept up a running commentary, half to the boy and half to himself, as he unwrapped the papers, finding long-forgotten treasures and family mementos, occasionally chuckling as he recalled the origin of some sheet or other.

  "Here's your great-great-grandfather's commission as a lieutenant in the Navy, signed by Lincoln during the Civil War. I'll keep that out. You ought to have it. Now, these should be what we want. Not bad for an old fellow to remember where he put something thirty years ago, eh?"

  From the bottom of the heap, Professor March had pulled a sheaf of maps, laid flat and still un-creased. They were all identical copies and were beautifully and clearly inked in black showing the whole acreage of The Lot brook, fields, walls, and even individual trees if they were large enough.

  "This what you want, boy? I had these made as presents for friends when we first bought the house. They're based on the local survey, but for fun your grandmother and I re-surveyed everything ourselves. See, here's the pond, Musquash Pond it's called. That's the Indian name for the muskrat and there are always some there. Notice all the little numbers in the water? For the heck of it, I went out in an old canoe we had then and took soundings, so you can tell exactly how deep it is in each part. A piece of silliness, but I wanted it to be as exact as possible. We mailed out a lot of them at Christmas that first year, then put em away and forgot about them. You'll never get a better map of The Lot than that, though, no matter who does it."

  Alec asked whether he could borrow one of the copies.

  "Borrow, borrow!" snorted his grandparent. "What do you mean 'borrow'? You
can have all of them. No, wait, let me keep one. I'd forgotten how good they were. I'll have one framed. No, I'll have three framed, one for me, one for your parents and one for you. No, I'll have four, another one for John and Lou. I had them done before they came; I'll bet John's never seen one. He'll be tickled pink."

  By this time, Alec's face had grown longer. How many were left? He needed one to draw on, and not to frame and hang on a wall.

  "Let's see, there's seventeen copies, minus four, leaves thirteen. Thirteen enough for your own exploring?"

  "Gee, Grandpa, one's enough. Just so I can draw on it things I find and stuff I see and want to remember. One'll do fine."

  "Take the one, then, and go find out everything I missed and put it all down. And remember, don't worry if you lose it; there are twelve more whenever you want them." The old man carefully replaced all the papers and shut the drawer, keeping out four copies of the map. Standing up slowly, he dusted his hands and returned to his work, never noticing that Alec had vanished.

  Upstairs in his room, stretched on the big bed, Alec went over every inch of the map with his eyes. Tracing the different places with one finger, he found in turn Bound Brook, the old orchard, the house itself and Musquash Pond deep in the wood.

  Around the pond on three sides were strange little marks like this -L, repeated over and over again. He studied the rest of the map and found them nowhere else. He was puzzled for a minute until he remembered John had said it was "boggy and marshy" down there. The little marks must mean swamp or wet, muddy ground. All the rest of The Lot was higher, so of course the swamp must all be down around the pond. He studied the pond again with more care. The little marks were on three sides; now what did that mean? The fourth side was the one closest to the road to town, the way to Mill Run. Alec thought hard, then looked back at the map. It must be steeper on that side, he thought.

  The pond seemed to be shaped like the letter U upside-down, with the entrance of Bound Brook coming in at one arm in the U. The other arm, nearest the road, had the number 10 written on it twice. The arm lying furthest away from the road said 4 and 3. At the curve between the two arms the number was 6.

  Feeling a sense of being watched, although he had heard nothing, he looked up and saw Creeper's face peeking at him out of the knothole. Then he remembered his apologies.

  "Hey, Creeper," he said. "What's happening? Any news? Where's Whisperfoot? What about the rats?"

  Creeper came out of the hole and swelled with self importance. "Nothing new. I'm keeping very closely in touch. All the news comes straight to me. Same old thing so far. The rats are going to move some place soon, and they're still asking questions about the roads and trails in this direction. That's all, though."

  "Where's Whisperfoot?" repeated Alec.

  "Dunno. She hasn't been around since I saw you this morning. Maybe out seeing the field mice. Well, I've got work to do. Be nice to find some cheese here this evening for dinner, now, wouldn't it?"

  "Suppose I told you I was going down to the dump tonight?" said the boy mischievously. "And that I wanted you to come along. Would cheese still interest you as much?"

  Creeper looked appalled, if a small, fat mouse can do such a thing. "Down there?" He seemed to choke with emotion. "That's plain crazy. The rats have guards out everywhere. Some of them are hid way away out from the dump. Why, a cockroach can't get near that place without them knowing about it. You won't get me into such a thing, no sir!"

  "Okay," said Alec. "I'll have to go alone or with someone else, I guess. Don't worry. And I'll try to remember some cheese."

  Downstairs Lou rang the big kitchen cowbell and Alec knew that lunch was finally ready.

  He went downstairs and found the kitchen table set for three.

  "Your grandpa's out to lunch today," Lou informed him.

  The back door opened and John came in, mopping his face with a red bandana. He went to wash up at the kitchen sink and then seated himself.

  After grace had been said and eating commenced, Alec reverted to a subject occupying his mind to the exclusion of most other things.

  "John, are you busy this afternoon?"

  "No more than usual," was the reply. "What you got in your mind?"

  "I thought I'd like to go down and look at the pond," said Alec. "It's not hard to find, is it?"

  "Don't see why not," said John. "Come and find me at one-thirty, cause I'd like to go too. But that consarned power mower broke down again and I got to try and take her apart first. I'll be ready for a jaunt around then. Dad-blasted thing ought to be sold for scrap," he added.

  "Professor March offered to buy a brand new mower, Darden, and you know it," said Lou briskly. "You just love that old piece of tin and won't part with it, that's all. Don't go ablaming the tools when you could get new if so be you wanted."

  "I don't get any credit for being a real, saving, tight-fisted New Englander," said John, straight-faced and helping himself to more hamburger. "Over to New Milford where I come from, we still drive our first cars, but around here the spending urge has took over from the New Deal."

  Alec watched and listened to the ensuing battle with only half an eye or ear. John and Lou endlessly bickered in an affectionate way over everything under the sun, and the boy had soon realized that this was their tart Yankee way of expressing their deep love and devotion for each other.

  "John," he said during a temporary lull in the Mill Run-New Milford conflict, "do you know all of the animals that live around here? All the different kinds, I mean?"

  "Reckon I mostly do," said John thoughtfully. "Some you don't see much, of course. I seen a fisher marten last winter, though, and there ain't supposed to be any around these parts. Like a great big dark mink and climbs better'n a squirrel. Haven't seen one since I was a boy. Didn't tell a soul but Lou, though. The pelt's so valuable, some trapper might try a line in the woods. Why you asking?"

  Alec hesitated, framing his next question carefully. The mention of the fisher marten had thrown him off. He made a mental note to ask Scratch if it were still around, then went on.

  "Grandpa told me that deer were the only big animals around here. But he said to ask you because you know everything about the woods and he doesn't go out much. Is that right? Are deer the only really big animals?"

  Darden selected a home-made doughnut from a pink china bowl in the center of the table and pushed his chair back. Eating the doughnut, he stared, not at the boy, but at his wife.

  "Bible says you can't tell a lie, don't it, Lou?" he queried between bites. "The tad here asked a question needs an honest answer."

  Lou knew her man and came alert at once.

  "Darden, you been keeping something from me! What's down in them woods? Been nothing but deer all my lifetime and long before. You know something, though, don't you?"

  "Yep," said John. "There is something else, or at least now and again there has been. Maybe dead now."

  Alec's spine tingled with excitement as he waited for more. "What's there, John?" he implored.

  "Bear," said John firmly, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "An old he-bear from the way he claws trees up high. Never saw him, but I been seeing his fresh tracks and claw marks, five, ten years back now, usually in summer."

  "Darden," cried Lou from across the table. "You let this boy go down alone in them woods to be eat by a hungry bear? You ain't got the sense God gave a chipmunk! What are you thinking of?"

  "Now, now, just take it easy," said John. "First off, the boy's in no danger. A bear that can even live in this crowded part of the country is so gun-shy, he won't stop running ten miles if he even smells a human nearby. Black bears don't bother people anyway, 'cept a she-bear with young. This is a male, woman, and he won't bother no one. The only way the boy'd be in danger is should word get out and a hundred crazy city people come tramping around with guns. We'd all have to wear red shirts to bed to keep from getting shot. That's why I never told."

  His voice hardened, a rare thing for the quiet, easygoing ol
d farmer. "And that's why I don't want no one told, either. Alec's more liable to get run over by a car down to New York City than he is to even see that bear. One old bear, maybe the last in five hundred miles of here, ain't bothering no one, and I want him let alone. He don't really live here anyway; just comes around once in a great while."

  Lou sat in silence while Alec's head swam. Despite what the animals had told him, he had not really believed in the bear. But there was truly a bear, an old male bear, and he, Alec March the Watcher, had to find and talk to the animal.

  "John," said Lou, her voice now gentle, "Alec won't be in danger, will he? You and me argue a lot but this is different. A bear, any bear, can be mean. Are you sure?"

  "Think about it, Lou," said the man in an equally gentle voice. "Between us we hear gossip from all over this county. There's a million Boy Scouts up here every summer. There's all them tourists up at the lake to the west. And us locals. Legal hunters every fall as thick as fleas. And illegal ones all year, too, enough to keep the game wardens busy. And never one whisper, not one mention ever that there's an old bear around.

  "He's an old brute, so spooky that he won't let any human get within sight even. Bears is shy anyway, much more than most critters. If he even saw Alec's shirttail, he wouldn't stop running until he fell in the Connecticut River. There ain't no need to take on." He finished and stirred his coffee a little.

  "All right," Lou said reluctantly. "On your head be it. I guess you know more about animals than most. Still, it does give you a turn, don't it? A real live bear after a hundred years or more." She turned to Alec. "Are you scared to go down in those woods now?"

  "If John says he's harmless, I'm not afraid," he said. "Besides, he's not there very much, is he?"

  "Nope," said John. "Only in summer so far as I've noticed, and only at night, if my thinking's right. Since you're tucked in your bed every night I doubt much you'll know he's around even if he does come. I figger he just roams a bit. Probably looking for a wife, though he'd know when he was well off if he thought about it some." A grin accompanied this last, which made even Lou's lips twitch.