The Old Meadow

by George Selden

“That’s the wrong way, Walt!” John Robin chirped. “Mountain Road is over there.”

  “Oh.” Walter lifted his head and swung it around like a broken compass. “Don’t worry, you guys—I have an infallible sense of direction.”

  “Tchoor—we all can see,” muttered Chester despondently, as Walter began once more the most important writhe of his life. “John—follow him! And fly above him. Try to chirp him the right way.”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  The afternoon wore on. Then twilight wore on. Then evening wore on. And everyone tried not to show by a word or a cough or a quick look off toward Mountain Road that this day was becoming difficult. But when dark night took hold of the world, everybody gave up pretending and settled down to be downright scared—and in public at that. The night was very cloudy too, and the moon, almost full, was just a pale eye in the sky.

  “Where are they?” The cricket, at last, couldn’t stand it. “It’s been hours and hours!”

  “The pound is a long way off,” Simon Turtle tried to remind him.

  “I’ve done my darndest! I’ve done my best!” Without anyone noticing him—a robin can be so subtle, and especially in the dark—John had settled on Chester’s log. “And I lost him.”

  “John—”

  “I got him to Fisk—but then it got dark—and Walter blends in with the dark—and also, the humans were going home—horns honking—the horrible sounds humans make when day’s over—their radios blaring! He couldn’t hear my chirp any more!”

  “John—stop now,” said Chester. “Nobody blames you.”

  “I do,” said John Robin, and choked. “I’ve been looking and looking—under every streetlight—and chirping till my throat is sore! The wings, too. I’ll barely make it back to my nest. And what Dorothy will say—me coming back at this hour—I can’t even imagine.” Poor John was winded. His wing muscles ached, those miracle things that let him fly. And he felt guilty too, for having lost Walter. “I’m sorry,” his voice drooped sadly down. “I tried, but—”

  “Shh! Hush!” Simon interrupted. “I hear panting.”

  “Huh-huh—!”

  “There it is again!”

  “I don’t hear anything,” said John, but one note in his voice was hope.

  “Hush again! Someone’s blundering through those bulrushes—?

  “If it’s blundering,” said John Robin, “it’s got to be—”

  “Dubber!” Chester shouted—squeaked, shrieked. He made the loudest sound ever heard from one lone Connecticut cricket. “You’re back!”

  “Let me get to the pool! Let me get to the pool—”

  “Come on, houn’ dog,” Ashley Mockingbird encouraged him. “It’s right here—”

  “Not for me—”

  Around Dubber’s neck, the animals saw, was what looked like a ruined shoelace. “Oooo-ssss!” it hissed pathetically.

  “That’s him!” said John Robin. “My found-again friend!”

  “Let go, Walt,” Dubber encouraged. “We’re home.”

  With the weakest of “plops” the water snake dropped head first in the pool.

  “He’s awfully dry!” Dubber counseled the others. “You’ve got to be patient.”

  “What happened?” asked Chester.

  “Yes—after I lost him—what—?”

  “Wait. Just wait now. I want Walt to tell it.”

  The water snake stayed below for a worrying long time. No bubbles came up, no ripples to show that anyone was alive down there—just the pale echo of a moon smudge on the surface.

  “You better go get him, Simon,” said Chester.

  “No need,” said Simon.

  A head emerged from the depths. Then from that black head there emerged a long and luxurious sigh: “Oh, water—”

  “Welcome back,” said Chester. “I take it that city life didn’t agree—”

  “Oh, water!” crooned Walter Water Snake. He addressed all his friends, sounding very much like his old self. “Have any of you sweet field folk here ever thought of the beauty of water?”

  “Where were you?” asked John, who wanted not to feel so guilty.

  “Wet brook of my heart! I will never leave you again!”

  “Walt—”

  “Yes, water is my true home! It’s all around—it’s up and down—it’s here and there—when you’re in it, water is everywhere!” In a fit of relief, Walter kissed the surface of Simon’s Pool. Walter’s Pool now, too. “I love you, water.” He slurped up some. “It tastes good, too! Oh, water—!”

  “What happened?” hollered Chester.

  “The cool comfort of water bathes every scale. If you’re lucky enough to have scales,” said Walt.

  “I really am going to get mad,” Chester Cricket decided.

  “Anyway,” said Walt, and his zig-zags in the pool suggested a story with lots of twists and turns, “fearlessly I went out into a world of concrete, bricks and cement, guided only by a robin—who soon took off through fear of the dark.”

  “I did not!”

  “Who soon got lost, through no fault of his own, in the gloaming.”

  “That’s better.”

  “It’s a horrible world of sidewalks, curbstones, and gutters. But one thing it taught me: I was not made for hard surfaces!”

  “That’s big-eared news,” said Robert Rabbit, who’d added himself to the group without anybody noticing.

  “Despite John Robin’s excellent directions—but you’ve got to admit, birds have it easy—I found myself lost.”

  “It’s a wonder you found yourself in Connecticut at all!” said John.

  “I almost wasn’t,” said Walt. “I got to a part of town where there were no houses. So, logically, I decided that I’d taken a wrong road somewhere. I turned right around—my stomach scales were pretty sore by now—and inched my way back toward the lights of Hedley. And here I’ll omit certain incidents. Like the driver of that big Mack truck who tried to run over me three times. And the old lady tending her garden at twilight. How nice, I thought. But she caught a glimpse of me—that lady has problems!—and started screaming, ‘Snake! Snake! Snake!’—and went after me with a shovel, as if her last dahlia depended on it. You’d have thought I was King Cobra. Why do the humans hate us so much. Oh, well—”

  Walt took another deep dip. “I will not go into all those ordeals, because when I was about to give up and try to become a garter snake—in somebody’s garden! since I thought I’d never get home again—I heard a sound that lifted my heart.”

  “Music?” asked Chester.

  “No. Yowling dogs. I knew I must be near the pound. And I even thought I could pick out the potbellied bellowing of our dearest Dubber Dog. My buddy!”

  “But it wasn’t me,” Dubber explained. “I’d fallen asleep from hopelessness. It was a Saint Bernard named Siegfried.”

  “But it was dogs!” Walter declared. “And lots of ’em—all cooped up. It had to be the pound. I made for the noise—” Walt flashed under water, flashed up in the air, and flashed all over the calm pool’s surface.

  Drops of silver, which the moon reached to touch, fell on top of everyone. No one cared. Not even dry Donald Dragonfly, who’d added himself to the gathering, too. “It’s different,” he murmured to himself, as he shook his wings. “It’s annoying—but it may be a blessing, too. I like drops of water.”

  Walter’s head puzzled this way and that. “But this is what’s weird. They could have been expecting me, the dogcatchers. There could have been a sign outside saying, Welcome Walter Water Snake! The door was wide open!”

  “Of course it was,” said Chester. “It’s a summer night—they left the door open to get some air.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well—that fits. You’re logical, Chester C. Anyway, without the use of fangs as yet, I slipperyed right in—and what did I see?”

  “I know.” Robert Rabbit’s sympathizing voice sank low.

  So did Donald’s soft buzz. “Rows and rows of puppies in cages!”


  “Not exactly,” said Walt. “The dogcatchers were watching television! I slipped silently past them—three of them—and they were all so fascinated by who killed whom, and with what, that not a one of them saw a scale.”

  “But I did, Walt!” Dubber Dog’s pride bubbled in his voice. “I saw you right away.”

  “Sure you did!” said Walt. “The gunshots on the TV woke you up.”

  “I would’ve woken up anyhow.”

  “I saw the cages—D.D. was on the lowest shelf—and I saw him! I saw the bolt, and I knew that I could nose it out, ease it out, if only I could get the chance. But then I also saw, to my sorrow, that the barking of those mutts—”

  “I don’t much like that word,” rumbled Dubber.

  “I also saw that my snake’s presence in the pound had caused those lovable canine creatures to howl even louder—and the three dogcatchers, distracted from Murder in Manhattan, had begun to wonder what was up. I knew this moment was do or dry up. I coiled myself—and I don’t like to coil—and gave a loud gargle. But I was so dry, just breathing would do. And I shook my tail. Get it—?” Walter beamed on his friends. “Instant rattlesnake! You just add water—or rather, you take it away—and you’ve got a venomous serpent: me!” Walt sighed. “It’s so sad. Nobody trusts anyone. But it worked. The three TV freaks took off like rockets, and I very much doubt if they’ve landed yet. I shinnied up to the bolt on Dubber’s cage, gave it a push—one free mutt. Beg pardon, Dubber: one free canine.”

  “But that isn’t all he did!” interrupted Dubber. “Tell the rest, Walt—tell!”

  Walt hung his head, in becoming modesty. “My kindness overcame me. I freed all the dogs! And such a joyous yowling and howling was never heard before.”

  “But now I come in!” gurgled Dubber again. “’Cause the ruckus of us animals, pouring out in the street, was like something never heard before, I said, ‘Let’s go, Walt! While we can.’ Walt said, ‘I can’t. My tummy scales—! Goodbye, old friend. This is farewell.’”

  “Walt said that—?”

  “Yes, he did!” said Dubber. “Then I had my idea! I don’t have too many—but some of the ones I have are darn good. I said—why didn’t he wrap himself around me like a collar—and I’d run him home lickety-split!”

  “Which he did! The darling dog—!” Walt leaned over and gave Dubber Dog a kiss on his buttony nose. Then he butted the buttony nose with his head, so as not to seem too sentimental. “And I’m here to tell all you field folk—I will never bite this dog again! He’s a hero—as my tummy scales can testify!”

  “But, Walt,” Dubber chuckled, “you never did bite me.”

  “Well, then—I’ll never even threaten,” said Walt.

  A good feeling of fellowship went round and round the pool. The moon had cleared, too.

  “So we’ve got one back,” said Simon Turtle. He liked the friendship—the moonlight, as well—but he lived among real things. Mud. Irises. Thunderstorms. Ragusa roses. And the fact of jail. “How about Mr. Budd?”

  “The team of Dubber and Walt will rescue him, too!”

  “It won’t be so easy,” Chester was thinking. “A dog—a wanted dog, at that—even without a snake collar—is still a dog. But a man?”

  “I’ll go alone!”

  “With that tender tummy?” asked Chester.

  “How long are y’all, Walt?”

  “Besides—you’d get lost. The human pound is much farther into the center of Hedley than the dog jail is.”

  “How much do—I mean, you’re in great shape!—but—how much do you weigh?”

  The good partnership of happiness that the animals shared began to loosen.

  “Please excuse these personal questions, but—”

  “I have got to get to that jail!” said Walter. “Maybe tummy scales can be replaced.”

  “Tchoor!” said Chester. “And so can my wings and antennae!”

  “How heavy are you, Walter?” the mockingbird demanded to know.

  Snake looked at bird. Without the Truce, it would have been murder. But now, like a spark or a star, a flicker of hope was kindled.

  “You have an idea?” Walter Water Snake asked, but skeptically.

  Ashley sang one of his most private tunes. “I do.” Then he added several flourishes to it. “It just might work, too—the Good Lord willin’ an’ the creek don’t rise.”

  EIGHT

  A Singing Lesson

  “No use,” panted Ashley. “You’re just too fat. And long.”

  “I’m trying, hard, to be thin!” said Walter. “And short!”

  “We’re all doing the best we can.” John Robin had collapsed halfway down Chester’s log. This strange experiment was taking place on—and was also supposed to take off from—the log. “Two birds just aren’t enough.”

  “Trouble is—we’re not big and strong,” said Ashley. “Let’s try ’er one more time. Was I grabbin’ too tight with my claws?”

  “No, no,” said Walter, who was stretched straight along the log, in the easiest position for a robin and a mockingbird to grasp him and grapple him into the air. “What is pain, when I’m making history? The first water snake to fly! And also the last, I suspect.”

  For that was the idea: John Robin and Ashley Mockingbird would fly Walt Snake to the human jail. The trouble was—they weren’t husky enough, despite the fact that Walter had tried to lose weight overnight.

  “Here we go!” cheered Ashley.

  And there they went—for three feet. Then the two birds had to let go their grasp. The whole weird cluster of birds and snake was plunging toward Simon’s Pool. Claws opened—snake fell.

  Walter came up with no complaint at all. “That’s the nice thing about all this history-making.” He smiled happily, and lounged on his back around the pool. “When the victim gets dropped, he falls right were he lives—into comfortable water.”

  “I’ve got to talk to him.” Ashley settled next to the opening to Chester’s home.

  “But he hates you,” said the cricket. “He’s jealous. And he doesn’t like Mr. Budd—”

  “I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “—and you might have another fight. He is strong, too—from beating up all the little birds.”

  “That’s why I’ve got to talk to him. Where’s he likely to be?”

  “In his beech tree,” said Chester. “When J.J.’s mad, or when he sulks, he has to be in that beech tree alone. He chases everyone—even those dim-witted sparrows—and they like him! And there he sits, like an angry king who was just forced to quit.”

  “Where’s the beech tree, Chester?”

  “If you make for the northwest corner of the meadow, you can’t help but see it. It’s the brightest, most beautiful tree in that part. Except when J.J.’s sulking there.”

  “I’ll see y’all, then,” said the mockingbird. And most birds would have just chirped “bye”—but Ashley favored his friends with a song that lasted almost half a minute. They never forgot it.

  * * *

  There was no mistaking the bright beech tree. It rose up in the splendid noon like a castle of wood—a castle that had a few battlements falling. But even the dead branches, hanging down, seemed beautiful in their decay. In the center of it, where the trunk forked apart, sat J. J. Bluejay, all alone. And he seemed, as Chester had said, like a sad deserted king on his throne.

  “Ha, J.J.!” said Ashley, as he alighted. “Will I get busted up if I sit here a spell?”

  “Oh—I guess not.” J.J. made a big show of moving over. “And why do you say that? ‘Ha?’—like that. It’s ‘hi!’”

  “The way I talk, J.J. In the South—”

  “Well, you’re not in the South!” J.J. begrudged the inches he’d moved and crowded Ashley against the trunk. “And we say ‘you’—‘you!’—not ‘yuh.’”

  “I sometimes even say—‘y’all!’”

  In the mockingbird’s unblinking black eyes there was something that could have been laughter, or teas
ing, or just simply news about how a mockingbird talks. J.J. glanced at him and lifted a wing. But the light coming down, filtered green through the leaves, made him feel uncertain—was he being ridiculed again? Or not? And he folded his wing back into position.

  “Tell y’all what,” said Ashley. “How about if you teach me how to talk—an’ I’ll teach you how to sing?”

  J.J. jerked his head toward Ashley in startled disbelief. Then he squawked cynically. “Aw, haw! With this voice? I’ve been told—by some of my best friends, too—that I sound like a dead branch falling off.”

  “Not so!” said Ashley. “You’ve got one nice song—‘Doodly-do’ when you bob your head.”

  “Oh, that!” scoffed J.J. “All blue jays can do that! And I don’t do it very well.”

  “I don’t think y’all do it enough. Beg pardon—you just ‘awk’ and ‘erk’ too much. Can I tell you a story?”

  “Oh—I guess so.” J.J. cleaned his right wing with his beak, as if he had much more important things to do than listen to stories.

  “This tale could be called,” Ashley Mockingbird started, “The Peeper Who Couldn’t Peep.” An’ it happened to me. ’Bout a year ago, last spring, I was up much later than usual. The full moon just made me happy, an’ I had to stay awake an’ sing. Well, in between songs I heard this pitiful little ‘eep!’ I flew toward it, an’ there, in a marsh, I found this peeper. Y’all have peepers here, J.J.?”

  “Sure we do!” said the blue jay, who was very interested in the story by now. “Those tiny frogs—they’re the only sign of spring I trust.”

  “Me, too! Well, there the pitiful critter was, clingin’ onto a bulrush—an’ he didn’t know how to peep! ’Course, when he first saw me, he got all riled up, me bein’ a bird, ’cause he thought I was goin’ to gobble him down. But though there’s no Truce in West Virginia, I never would have done it. Poor Joey was just so miserable and little! That’s what his name was—Joey Peeper.” Ashley took a glance at J.J. “I squawked at him not to be scared—”

  “You squawked—” J.J. disbelieved.

  “Sure I squawked! I always squawk, when the feathers are ruffled the wrong way. Or when somebody thinks I’m goin’ to eat him. Anyways, after many attempts—durin’ some of which I tried to show off—I taught that peeper how to peep!”