The Old Meadow

by George Selden

  “Really?”

  “Just one chirp—like Chester’s—was all I had to imitate. Then little Joey did it so well that all the other peepers stopped peepin’ an’ listened.”

  “How wonderful!”

  “Him an’ me peeped together all night long. ’Till that fuzzy blue came over the ridges of the mountains where our people live.”

  This little story—for a reason J. J. Bluejay didn’t quite understand—just broke his heart. And then mended it again. “Little Joey.” J.J. lived through the tale again. “I wouldn’t have eaten him either.”

  “An’ I’m here to tell you”—Ashley made his voice stern—“I’m not flyin’ off this branch till I’ve taught you, J. J. Bluejay, to sing! If Joey can learn, so can you!”

  “Do you think so?” Like the golden-green light that fell on his feathers, hope bathed the blue jay. “Me—?”

  “You! An’ we’ll start with the hardest thing: a trill. Now listen—” And Ashley trilled. It was as if two wings were sound, and one beat like a flicker of gold—then the other beat, just a little bit different, but also gold. Yet silver, too. It was as if—they were both so quick and so close together—it was almost as if they both were one. “It’s like—”

  J.J. interrupted. He lifted his wing, but timidly now, and rested it on the the mockingbird. “Stop.”

  “What—?”

  “I want to apologize. I hit you—”

  “J.J.—I had it due. A show-offy thing like me—” The mockingbird took one quick look, then yanked his eye from the blue jay’s eyes. “If somebody has a gift—I’m not sayin’ I do—but he shouldn’t ever use it to make someone else feel small. Now—about the trill—”

  Ashley cleared his throat and trilled again. The blue jay’s wing on his own wing felt good. It even entered into the trill. “Two notes—see? But even your throat don’t know which is which.”

  J.J.’s first attempt at a trill—but of course he was very nervous, and went too slow, and lost his breath—his first try sounded like a sick sparrow.

  “Mhmm,” said Ashley, who had perfect pitch. To hear something like that made his head and heart ache. “I think if you had some spit in your throat—spit’s very important—”

  J.J. tried again, with good spit in his throat. And then something did sound. It wasn’t a trill, but it wasn’t a dead branch falling off.

  “It won’t work,” J.J. laughed. “And, Ashley—I don’t care!”

  “But I do!” exclaimed Ashley, amazed. Only laughter could bring out J.J.’s trill. And there was a real trill in the blue jay’s unguarded happiness. “Y’all do it again! I’ll die on this branch unless I hear you trill again!”

  J.J. trilled. “Okay? Or would you rather have ‘awk’ ‘squawk’?”

  “J.J., I do believe you’re developin’ a sense of humor! And remember—good laughter’s the happiest sound there is.”

  “You’re being so nice,” said the jay, “I wish there was something that I—”

  “We’ll go into that later. Let’s try some scales!”

  A scale is a little run of notes that go up or down, depending on which way you’re headed. J.J.’s voice tried to head down first, and even Ashley, polite as he was, couldn’t hide a wince. For J.J.’s descending scale sounded as if a terrified child had fallen downstairs and screamed as he hit every step.

  “Pretty bad, huh, Ashley?”

  “Oh, it has promise!” But the only promise that that scale had was—the child just might live, with luck. “Let’s try ’er goin’ up.”

  By some dreadful miracle, it now sounded as if that unfortunate child had managed to fall upstairs.

  “Let’s quit! I’m hopeless!”

  “J.J.—we are not gonna quit! It may frazzle every leaf on this tree, but you will sing a scale!”

  Although they all shuddered a bit, not one leaf fell from the great beech before J.J. got his scales, both the up one and the down. That speaks a great deal about the strength of beeches. By working his “Doodly-oo” sound in, the bluejay softened his grating ‘awk-awk’—and Ashley was satisfied at last.

  “Creek didn’t rise, either,” murmured Ashley, who was happy and dazed at the wonder of what was possible.

  “All right now, mockingbird—let’s have it!” The sparkle was in the blue jay’s eye now.

  “Have what?” asked Ashley innocently. But inside his chest his small, hardy, reliable heart was beating with pride—not at J.J.’s scales, but at the thought that the blue jay could now make fun of someone without wanting to hurt. “Y’all think I have ulterior motives in teachin’ a fellow bird to sing?”

  “I do think that—yes!” said J.J. A squawk of the blue jay’s new laughter came out. “So let’s have it!”

  “Well—” And Ashley began to explain.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, two eager friendly birds had settled on Chester’s log.

  “Here’s the fourth member of the plot!” Ashley Mockingbird was in the midst of a big adventure. He knew it, too. And anyone could see, from the shuddering in his wings, he wanted to share it with everyone.

  Walt reared up and stared at J.J. “Will you behave?”

  “Ah’m a new bird!”

  “What? ‘Ah’m’? This blue jay’s gone crazy—!”

  “Let’s don’t waste time, Walt.” The mockingbird had taken over. “We ought to practice. John’s got to take your head—since he knows the crisscrossy streets of this town. J.J. gets your middle—you’re heaviest there—”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “—an’ I get your tail. I’ll just follow along, with as much of you as I can.”

  Walt poked his face at the mockingbird now. “All of me, I hope!”

  Ashley burbled a laugh. “All or nothin’!”

  “Oh, gosh!” said Dubber Dog, who’d been sitting on the bank. “I wish I could help! Can’t I go, too?”

  “Tchoor!” said Walt. “We’ll get thirty-five eagles, who aren’t afraid of fleas—maybe they can get you off the ground. I don’t mean it, Dubber, ol’ pal.” He darted up and made himself into a snakeskin dog collar, around Dubber’s neck. Very dashing, he looked. “Your fleas are my fleas—and partner, I am proud to have them! But the thing is, to get Mr. Budd out now. You’re a fugitive yourself, remember.”

  “Oh, I know,” Dubber gloomed, and gathered his haunches under him. “But I worry and worry.”

  “Of course,” said Walt. “With a wrinkly, furry brow like yours, what else could you do?”

  Walt dropped off of Dubber’s neck, stretched himself on the grass of the bank, and shouted, “Okay, guys—time! Let’s try it up here, since there’s three of you. Makes a better runway.”

  The three birds flew up into position: head, middle, and tail. They all felt a little strange. Without saying so out loud, each one wondered if any three birds—any birds at all—had tried to fly a snake before. In friendship that is. Walt took a last look at Simon’s Pool. Beneath and around its flickering blue-green surface he’d had his home for so long. “Mr. Budd has his cabin, and Chester his log, but I have you, pool,” Walter Water Snake murmured.

  “Come on, birds!” he shouted. “Let’s up and at ’em!”

  “But anyway”—a thought had just plodded through Dubber Dog’s mind—“if you do get him out, well, what’ll we do then? With Mr. Budd? And me, too! We’ll just be escaped criminals.”

  “Will you shut up, you mutt?” hissed Walt.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” said John.

  “Go tidy up the cabin—you fur-lined idiot!” said J.J.

  “Leave bad enough alone,” advised Ashley. “We’re off!”

  With a flurry of wingbeats that flattened grass, raised dust, made Chester’s and Simon’s eyes blink, the strange contraption left the ground. But the first trial of this airborne invention, made up of three birds and one water snake, was not too successful. The birds were out of flap: their wings didn’t beat together. Walter felt a jiggling, then wobblin
g—a lurching—he swayed from side to side—and then, without saying goodbye, the birds loosened their claws. Birds are terrified of crashing, and at the last moment they had to fly free, alone, and save themselves.

  Walter fell in a fern bed beside the brook. He hurt, in the lower part of his back, but he made up his mind, right there in the ferns, that this was a day for heroism. “It’s all right, you guys!” he called up. Just twenty-five broken bones, he wondered—but only to himself.

  The three birds flew round and round, apologizing in the air. They all felt guilty, swooping down and soaring up, as they tried to get back their composure. A bird doesn’t like to fail—even when he’s trying to fly a snake. They settled beside Walt, who was soothing himself in the ferns.

  “Just, next time,” said Walt, “water would be best. Next mud, heaps of grass—but for a snake’s sake, don’t drop me on Mountain Road. It’s hard! Off we go again! And by the way, let me count, like they do in a rowboat, so you’ll all beat your wings in sync.”

  The flying machine assembled itself once again. Walt said, “Okay! I’m thinking airy thoughts now—I’m light!—I’m a feather! Flap two three—and flap two three—”

  He happened to glance down, and his breath stopped in his throat. The birds, however, who were used to this view, had gotten the beat and went on flapping rhythmically.

  “Oh, look!” Walt exclaimed. “We’re flying.”

  Below him, Pasture Land, Tuffet Country, the course of the brook as it flowed past Chester’s ruined old home, the battered old stump, in the north J.J.’s beech and a growth of untended trees, in the south the paths the Town Council had planned, and even—when Walter looked under and behind—the shimmer of Simon’s Pool: Walt’s whole world was below. And every single part, like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, fitted into every other part. And Mr. Budd’s cabin. It, too, appeared to Walter’s eyes and seemed to fit in, and make the whole meadow complete.

  “Once more!” Walter shouted. “But lower and slower.”

  His wings obeyed, and below him his world spun under again. “Oh-ah—” For the first time in his life, Walter Water Snake was speechless.

  On the ground, a few field folk saw him. Not many. Few animals expected a snake to appear in the sky.

  “That’s Walter!” said Emily Chipmunk.

  “And flying!” said her brother, Henry.

  The fussy chipmunks were cleaning their front yard, as usual.

  “He shouldn’t be up there.”

  “No,” Henry said, sighing. He was sick of cleaning. “But sometimes I wish that I was.”

  Ms. Beatrice Pheasant also saw the flight. She only gave it a glance. “Hmm!” she sniffed, as the water snake soared through the heavens above her. “Some people just never know their place!”

  Donald Dragonfly lay on his twig. The brook hurried beneath him. He was just about to take a nap, when something happened in the sky.

  “Hi, Don! Hi, Don!”

  Donald sleepily looked up.

  “Come on up and join me!”

  “I flew this morning, Walter,” said Don. But something bothered the dragonfly. He cradled his head on his twig again. Walter Water Snake was up in the sky. It did seem strange. But not so strange that it kept him awake.

  “I’m flying!” hollered Walter Water Snake down.

  “Well, that’s nice,” mumbled Donald. He dreamed about wings—not his own—that day.

  “Oh, flying!” Walter said to his wings. “We all belong up here!”

  “We do!” said John Robin. “We’re birds! We do this all the time.”

  Crestfallen in heaven, Walter said, “All right. Let’s—oh, wait! Once over there—”

  There was a single human being who saw this rickety miracle. Young Alvin Irvin had been wandering, alone, near Mr. Budd’s cabin. He was wondering if he’d done the right thing—that is, getting his father and uncle involved—and he also felt dismal. As if the world was a boring and disappointing place—full of grandmothers. Then above him he saw—

  “Hooray for snakes!”

  “Do you hear that?” Walt said to his wings. “For two years that kid has been trying to bean me with rocks. And now he’s shouting ‘Hooray for snakes!’ Fly over him—near! I want him to know that I like him. Despite the rocks.”

  Wings did as they were told.

  “I’m awfully tired already,” puffed John.

  “All right, my fellows,” said Walter Water Snake, “I’ve seen my home as it ought to be. From above. Now let’s go to jail.”

  NINE

  Jailbreak—Number Two

  Chester Cricket decided that waiting was the worst torment of all. It was worse than a flood in the brook. It was even worse than one of the sudden meadow fires that swept through Pasture Land, after days and days without rain. The human beings caused most of them, but sometimes lightning did, too. But waiting, not knowing, the fearful endless wondering—that had to be the worst. Yesterday the cricket had waited for Dubber Dog; today for Mr. Budd.

  “It’s really too much,” Chester said to himself, as he fidgeted on top of his log. “I’m only an insect, after all. I ought to be chirping merrily—not a care in the world.”

  The glowing golden late afternoon didn’t help one bit. There had been a brief thunderstorm about half an hour after that marvelous flying machine made of birds and serpent had vanished into the southern sky.

  “They could have been struck by lightning!” said Chester. “Blasted all to smithereens!—the four of them.”

  “What?” mumbled Dubber. He’d fallen into a nervous doze.

  “I was talking to myself.”

  “Then why talk so loud? Can’t you hear yourself?”

  “Oh, go back to sleep!”

  “No, don’t!” said Simon. He eased his head out from under his shell just as far as it could go. “Don’t sleep!” he rasped, with an urgency unusual for a turtle. “Hide, dog!”

  Silently, on the fat pads of his paws, Dubber sneaked down the bank and concealed himself in a clump of reeds.

  Two men were approaching on the path that led to the brook. It wound down from the hill where Bill Squirrel lived in his maple tree—his first tree, an elm, had been smitten by blight—past Simon’s Pool, then crossed the brook on stepping-stones and went on to Mr. Budd’s cabin. The town Councilmen, who’d voted to preserve the Old Meadow, thought stepping-stones were a lovely touch—so natural and quaint. However, these stepping-stones weren’t like Mr. Budd’s. His were stones. These were made of concrete.

  “He couldn’t be anywhere else,” said one man. “They always go home. No place else to go. Especially the dopy, soulful ones, with eyes like that pooch.”

  “Yeah, but if he isn’t there, in that cabin—”

  In his hole in the log, with all his small heart, Chester Cricket willed—Dubber Dog, don’t move! Or make a sound!

  “Then we’ll come back tomorrow. They always go home. He won’t have a home to go too much longer. Those old fogies from the Council said a vicious dog and a senile old man are good reasons to pull the hut down. They’ve been looking for reasons. And now they got them. The pooch has to be lurking somewhere.”

  “Yeah—and we’ve got to catch him. You know what those guys said: we catch all the dogs that escaped—and we’ve only got six—or no job!”

  “We’ll come back tomorrow. He’s sure to be here. Where’s the old guy, by the way?”

  “In jail. They’re trying to decide where to send him. There’s a lot of old folks’ places that won’t take him. No money.”

  The first man—his name was Moe Saffer, and he had one son and two daughters—paused. He looked ahead. Through an opening in the trees he saw the cabin that he was going to have to ransack, for a dog. “You know something, Dennis. I used to play here a lot. ’Course, I was little then.”

  “Me, too.” Moe’s partner, Dennis Reynolds chuckled—but somewhat ruefully. “One Halloween, I remember, I came all the way here. And none of the kids would come with me. But
Mr. Budd—I think he’d been waiting—he had some candy. He said, ‘Well, Dennis Reynolds!—thank goodness you’re here, at least. No one else came.’ And then he filled up my bag with candy.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” said Moe. He shivered. Perhaps there was a chill in the air. “The Old Meadow is full of my childhood. It makes me feel—creepy—”

  “Yeah. Me, too,” said Dennis.

  The two men stepped carefully, but not with pleasure: they had to use those artificial concrete stones. Mr. Budd’s hut was this side of the brook.

  “You see! You see! They’re going to ship him off!”

  “Now calm down, Dubber,” said Chester. “They were looking for you—”

  “But they’re talking about Mr. Budd—”

  Dubber Dog had lumbered up out of the rushes, and now seemed about to have a fat fit. Red sunset flamed over Avon Mountain, but the brilliant colors on his coat just made him seem more wild—mad!

  “They’re trying to find a place for him. You know what that means: a place—a ‘home’—a little room somewhere.”

  “Dubber, please calm down—”

  “No, I won’t calm down! I’ll—I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do! But I’ll terrorize the world! And I’ll shake up the whole Old Meadow! Potbelly or not.”

  “I’m back.”

  In the frenzy, jowls shaking and hackles raised, of Dubber’s fury, nobody had noticed John Robin alighting without a sound on the log.

  “The others will be here later. It’s much harder,” John Robin explained, with a confidential chirp, “when one of the group is an old man walking. And with a snake in his pocket at that.” He warbled a giggle.

  “What happened!” shouted Chester. It seemed to him that for two whole days that was all he’d been able to say.

  “Why don’t you just wait.” John laughed at his private joke. “You’d never have guessed where Walter is hiding. Nobody would.”

  “Oh, waiting! Waiting! I’m going crazy! I just wish I had some big fangs, like Walt. I would bite somebody!”

  For more than an hour, Chester fumed. And fidgeted. And shifted from one set of legs to the other. That was one of the great advantages of being a cricket: when you were so nervous you had to shift legs, you had a lot of legs to shift.