The Book of the Dun Cow

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

  The sixth crow came when the sun was going down. A Hen was glad to hear it for several reasons. For one, it sounded something like a compliment; it came across the evening air and patted each one on the back, and it made each forehead cool as if with a breeze: “Good,” it said. “Good and better than you did yesterday. Now, stop. Eat supper. And rest easy.” And so these were the other reasons a Hen was glad to hear it: Work was done and supper was coming.

  But the seventh was the kindest crow of all. This was as quiet as nightfall. This crow was the night at peace upon her nest. This was settle, and rest, and “You are safe,” and amen, and “Go, now, to sleep.” For “Done,” when it is well done, is a very good word.

  When Chauntecleer crowed his canonical crows, the day wore the right kind of clothes; his Hens lived and scratched in peace, happy with what was, and unafraid of what was to be; even wrong things were made right, and the grey things were explained.

  A third word concerning Chauntecleer’s crows must now be spoken, though he himself was unaware of it. A third category of crows would, within a year of Mundo Cani’s coming to the Coop, burst from Chauntecleer’s throat with a terrible power. For an enemy was gathering himself against this Rooster and his land. Within the year Chauntecleer would find his land under a treacherous attack; and then, in that war, this third kind of crowing would become his necessary weapon. Cruel crows; sharp, explosive crows, murderous and thwarting, they would be called “Crows Potens.” But Chauntecleer knew nothing of this now: of neither the enemy, nor the war which was to be, nor the killing crows which he had it in him to crow, the “Potens.”

  For the time being Chauntecleer was busy about lesser affairs, though he himself would have called them important enough.

  [THREE] Things begin to happen—treachery is discovered within the Coop

  As he saw it, Chauntecleer did not ask much in return for his constant, abiding, and well-intentioned leadership. Good dinners. Loyalty. A little color in his life. Sleep: unbroken sleep, to be sure. And a morning sunbath, undisturbed. As matters would have it, that sunbath was, once in a while, disturbed.

  One morning, several weeks after the appearance of a Dog who carried his baggage in front of his face, Chauntecleer the Rooster was strutting in front of his Coop, enjoying the bright sunlight and the day which went with it. Minor clucks in his throat announced his good pleasure. He had fluffed out his golden feathers so that the sun could shine down to the skin and warm it. His wings were ruffled and loose at his sides. And lazily he went scratching about in search of a proper dry sink of dust into which he would settle, nestle, and rest. This was the sweet progress of his sunbath; he had a dreamy smile on his face.

  But suddenly someone in the Coop behind him began to gabble a whole series of despairing clucks. All the other clucks went quiet while that one cry stuttered on with a true pain in it; and then it, too, fell silent, and the Coop was still. And that was wrong. An early morning Coop is almost never silent.

  Chauntecleer was irritated. His pleasure had lost its rhythm, and he knew by the silence behind him that he was about to be involved. Yet, for a certain spite, he would not turn around and face the door of the Coop, but continued with the motions of his sunbath, though the spirit of the thing had gone out of it.

  Presently a Hen came out and stood behind him. Her name was Beryl. She pecked the ground awhile, as if this were what she always did at this time of the morning behind the Rooster of the Coop. But soon her pecking turned to sighing, and her sighing to little explosions. “Ahhh,” she said. “Ohhh,” she moaned; and the problem for Chauntecleer was that there was real anguish in her moaning.

  So Chauntecleer said, away to the day: “What is it?”

  “If it pleases you, sir,” Beryl said, and Chauntecleer was irritated the more.

  “Sir” and “pleases you” are right and proper things to say to a Lord, of course. But they are also hindrances to clear speech: They keep someone, if there are enough of them, from ever getting to her point. They keep a certain lonely distance between the Lord and his subject. And they keep that Lord too long from his sunbath.

  “If it pleases me, sir, what?” Chauntecleer said to the day.

  “Well, and then I wish it hadn’t happened,” said Beryl, “but it did happen, and there we are.” She sighed wretchedly.

  “What happened?” Chauntecleer demanded.

  “You can be sure that we didn’t wish it, sir. Often we’ve prayed against the thing. Already at the first time we trembled with pain,” she said, and a whole volley of little clucks came out of the Coop, which were as much as to say, “Yes, yes. We were pained about it even then.” Beryl took courage from those clucks: “The second time was yet worse, you see,” she said.

  Chauntecleer decided that he had better turn around. He did, and he eyed the Hen: “What was worse, Beryl?”

  His full face, his eye, and her name in his mouth made Beryl timid again. “Oh, well, nothing, really, my Lord. Except that we can’t do much about it, though heaven knows we’ve made the effort.” She was looking at the ground.

  “About what?” the Rooster shouted.

  “The eggs,” she said quickly.

  “Ah,” said Chauntecleer. “The eggs.”

  Beryl curtsied. “Right glad I am, sir, that you understand about the eggs.”

  Chauntecleer made his black beak to smile. “But you see, little Beryl”—he smiled dreadfully—“I don’t understand about the eggs at all, which leaves it up to you to tell me about the eggs.” Lordship is always easier in the ordering than in the listening.

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, they’re missing. But then they haven’t been missing either, sir.” She paused, as if this meant something dolorous to the Rooster. He pretended that it did and shook his head a few times so that she wouldn’t stop now.

  “My meaning is, sir, that the shell is always still there, broken into pieces. And the good inside of the egg is gone. Eaten. Gone.” And Beryl clucked miserable clucks, while several chickens in the Coop clucked with her. Tears glistened in her eyes.

  “You can be sure that they were eaten?” Chauntecleer was suddenly altogether serious. Eggs could become children. But not if they were eaten first.

  “Licked,” Beryl managed to say, “clean.”

  Chauntecleer was silent for a moment. The moment stretched into minutes, so that Beryl became uneasy; and still the Rooster was bleakly still—coiled.

  “If it pleases you, sir,” Beryl said full quietly, “then would you crow a crow for me? Sir, the crow of grief?” She was able to look him in the eye when she said this, for a sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker.

  But Chauntecleer had something else on his mind, and he did not answer her. Instead he gazed at her with blank eyes. And then he stretched his wings and leaped to the top of the Coop, leaving her behind. He looked to the woods nearby and stared at one place only—at a small heap of earth which was at the base of a certain maple tree.

  “John Wesley!” he cried out fiercely, suddenly, never moving his eyes from that heap of earth. “John, yo! Wesley, yo! Weasel!” he cried again, but nothing moved. In fact, the heap did such a good job of not moving that it seemed to move in order to keep so still. “John Wesley Weasel!” Chauntecleer cried for the third time.

  Then a lonesome voice arose from behind the Coop: “But then again,” it mumbled, “if the Doctor thinks up a better name for me, and if he supposes that Weasel is a better title for this sorrowful nose than Doormat, why, that is acceptable. Ugliness has little enough to say in this world. I am no Weasel. I think that I am no Weasel. I was a Dog, once. But, considering the matter for a second time, and hearing the Doctor’s sweet proclamation . . .”

  “Oh, you mournful lummox!” Chauntecleer shouted down at Mundo Cani Dog. “Get up on your legs. Do something!”

  “Lummox,” said Mundo Cani, aris
ing, “is a great kindness, too.”

  “John Wesley Weasel lives under that maple,” cried the Rooster, pointing. “Bring him to me.”

  Mundo Cani ambled over to the woods, talking to himself all the way. The heap of earth grew to be even more still, if that is possible. When the dog arrived, though still mumbling, he displayed a sudden and astonishing speed. His paws dug, and the dirt flew out between his hind legs like a brown fountain. Amid the dirt there whirled a furry varmint, which spun for a second in the air and then was snapped into the dog’s jaws before it hit the ground.

  So then there were two creatures talking as the Dog ambled back to the Coop, both of them incomprehensible. One mumbled sadly to himself about this name and the other, testing which one fit his long countenance the best. This he could do even with fur in his mouth. The other squeaked a hundred words per second, all of them protests and denials.

  When they came to the Coop, Chauntecleer shouted, “Shut up!” and they did. Except that Mundo Cani first said, “Mmf clmf,” which was to say: “It is a kindness that you ask me to do this thing for you. Should I, perhaps, bite his head off?” But as nobody understood him, the Rooster didn’t answer one thing and the Weasel didn’t answer another.

  “Beryl, get the shells,” Chauntecleer commanded, still lofty on top of the Coop. While she did, he turned to the Weasel hanging out of Mundo Cani’s mouth.

  “John Wesley—” he began, but the Weasel didn’t wait for a question or a finish.

  “Not John!” he chattered. “Nor not John Double-u of the Double-u’s neither. Look in other places. Other haunts and hollows. Flip rocks. Root roots. Shake trees. Find a villain. But John Double-u—he’s no villain. He didn’t do it!” The Weasel’s heart was beating so fast that Mundo Cani’s eyes jumped.

  “Do what?” said the Rooster.

  “It! It!” the Weasel cried. “The what that put John’s little body in a monster’s mouth. Whatever. The Rooster knows. This Weasel doesn’t. Oh, tell a Dog to put me down. John’s wet, he is.”

  At that moment Beryl came out of the Coop with the empty shells and with grief in her eyes. John Wesley saw her and was silenced.

  “John Wesley,” Chauntecleer said, “look at those shells.”

  “Shells,” said the Weasel miserably. “Are most certainly shells.”

  “And empty,” said the Rooster.

  “Empty,” said the Weasel, suddenly of very few words. He knew the tragic importance of eggs eaten out. He knew the loss of children; for one greater than he had taught him. “This is the what,” he moaned.

  “I know what you have done in the past, John Wesley,” said that one. “I know what you are capable of doing.”

  The Weasel stiffened abruptly. Mundo Cani gagged. “Past is past. Past is not present. Did is not do. Was is not is,” chattered John Wesley again, desperate. “This! Oh, not John.”

  Chauntecleer stared at the Weasel for some moments and considered. Then, with a dreadful measure, he said quietly: “If this isn’t your work, John Wesley; if we don’t fault you for swallowing children even before they are formed, then whose is the fault? Name a name before me, John.”

  The Weasel closed his eyes and answered nothing. He shivered.

  “Mf rmfl,” said Mundo Cani—awoken, perhaps, by the shiver. He meant: “One should supper on such a wickedness and be done.”

  But Chauntecleer cut the silence with a crow and a command:

  “A name, John Wesley! It was one or another who’s been eating children. One I have here for the punishment. Another’s name I do not know. Then: Unless I am given a name, John Wesley, it shall be you!”

  “Um,” squeaked the Weasel in a tiny voice. His eyes opened and tried to see every corner and every hiding place around him.

  “A NAME!” roared the Rooster.

  “Nezer,” squeaked the Weasel hastily.

  “Ebenezer Rat?”

  Then the Weasel stood up for himself, the name having been said, as best as one might stand up for oneself in the mouth of a Dog: “Rats is rats, past, present, and forever,” he chattered. “Weasels change. But rats is rats!”

  “Ebenezer Rat,” the Rooster pronounced the name blackly.

  Suddenly there was an explosion in the Coop, and thirty Hens burst out the door all at one time. They had heard the name.

  The commotion caused Mundo Cani to turn circles and to open his mouth. A wet Weasel fell to the ground. Hens spluttered all over the yard, while the Weasel tested his legs and flung sharp glances at a Dog.

  “Is ways to bite a Weasel,” he mumbled. “Is ways to bite a Dog, too.”

  Mundo Cani, however, had burst into tears. “White loveliness,” he wept, pawing Hen after Hen. “Loveliness of white. How is it, Master of the Universe, that you set such grace among the Chickens but to me you give a brown curse for a hide?”

  But the compliment was lost on the Hens, who shot about in panic.

  “Cock-a-stop!” Chauntecleer crowed from the top of the roof. “Cock-a-lorum! Cock-a-silence! COCK-A-RUDDY-SHUT-IT-OFF!”

  And they did. They all fell silent. All except Mundo Cani, who had a white feather between his paws and the sniffles in his nose.

  In the quiet, first one Hen and then one other walked to special places in the yard and scratched at the soft earth. Little holes were made. Chalcedony took something from her hole and brought it below Chauntecleer. She laid it, with great care, upon the ground. Jacinth did the same; and the things which they laid below him were pieces of empty eggshell.

  “If it pleases you,” they clucked each a lowly cluck to him, “a crow for the grief of these?”

  Chauntecleer heard them. He would do this thing for them.

  The morning had turned into a lasting irritation. The night to come, Chauntecleer could foresee, would be without sleep; and so it would be an irritation, too. And there was a plan to be formed in the time between. Irritation. But the plan was necessary, if they were going to do anything about the cruelty of Ebenezer Rat. Chauntecleer sighed. He had seen something fixed in the dry yolk on a piece of Jacinth’s shell, a whisker, black, sharp, and exceedingly long. A Rat’s whisker. Ah, Nezer, the Rooster sighed; for John Wesley Weasel had been right. And something would have to be done tonight.

  But for the present moment . . .

  Into the silence—with Beryl, Chalcedony, and Jacinth standing close below him—Chauntecleer lifted up his voice and crowed. And even John Wesley Weasel forgot himself for the moment and listened.

  The Coop was empty. Someone took advantage of its emptiness. A small hole existed between two floorboards. Through that hole there slipped a silent, long, long, black nose, and after that a head like a finger pointing: eyes as narrow as needles; a body like black liquid; a tail which came and came and never ceased to slide out of the hole. Dark, smooth, and as quiet as this one was, yet he was no mere shadow.

  While the crow of grief rolled out over the countryside, Ebenezer Rat crushed and swallowed one more egg.

  [FOUR] A cosmography, in which Wyrm is described, and one or two things about him

  In those days, when the animals could both speak and understand speech, the world was round, as it is today. It encountered the four seasons, endured night, rejoiced in the day, offered waking and sleeping, hurt, anger, love, and peace to all of the creatures who dwelt upon it—as it does today. Birth happened, lives were lived out upon the face of it, and then death followed. These things were no different from the way they are today. But yet some things were very different.

  For in those days the earth was still fixed in the absolute center of the universe. It had not yet been cracked loose from that holy place, to be sent whirling—wild, helpless, and ignorant—among the blind stars. And the sun still traveled around the moored earth, so that days and nights belonged to the earth and to the creatures thereon, not to a ball of
silent fire. The clouds were still considered to flow at a very great height, halfway between the moon and the waters below; and God still chose to walk among the clouds, striding, like a man who strides through his garden in the sweet evening.

  Many tens of thousands of creatures lived on this still, unmoving earth. These were the animals, Chauntecleer among them, whom God noticed in his passage above. And the glory of it was that they were there for a purpose. To be sure, very few of them recognized the full importance of their being, and of their being there; and that ignorance endangered terribly the good fulfillment of their purpose. But so God let it be; he did not choose to force knowledge upon the animals.

  What purpose? Simply, the animals were the Keepers. The watchers, the guards. They were the last protection against an almighty evil which, should it pass them, would burst bloody into the universe and smash into chaos and sorrow everything that had been made both orderly and good. The stars would be no help against him; and even the angels, the messengers of God—even the Dun Cow herself—would only grieve before him and then die; for messengers can speak, but they cannot do as the animals could.

  The earth had a face, then: smiling blue and green and gold and gentle, or frowning in furious gouts of black thunder. But it was a face, and that’s where the animals lived, on the surface of it. But under that surface, in its guts, the earth was a prison. Only one creature lived inside of the earth, then, because God had damned him there. He was the evil the animals kept. His name was Wyrm.

  Deep, deep under the oceans and the continents, under the mountains and under the river which ran from them to Chauntecleer’s land, Wyrm crawled. He was in the shape of a serpent, so damnably huge that he could pass once around the earth and then bite his own tail ahead of him. He lived in caverns underneath the earth’s crust; but he could, when he wished, crawl through rock as if it had been loose dirt. He lived in darkness, in dampness, in the cold. He stank fearfully, because his outer skin was always rotting, a runny putrefaction which made him itch, and which he tore away from himself by scraping his back against the granite teeth of the deep. He was lonely. He was powerful, because evil is powerful. He was angry. And he hated, with an intense and abiding hatred, the God who had locked him within the earth. And what put the edge upon his hatred, what made it an everlasting acid inside of him, was the knowledge that God had given the key to his prison in this bottomless pit to a pack of chittering animals!