The Book of the Dun Cow

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

  Oh, it was a wonder that Chauntecleer the Rooster, that a flock of broody Hens, a Dog, a Weasel, and tens of thousands of suchlike animals—and even that Ebenezer Rat—should be the Keepers of Wyrm! The little against the large. The foolish set to protect all the universe against the wise!

  “Sum Wyrm,” he roared all the day long, “sub terra!”

  Yet so deaf were the animals to the way of things that even this dreadful announcement they did not hear. Chauntecleer went about crowing his canonical crows and planning his plans and blustering his Hens through another day, deaf to the cry and ignorant of his own purpose upon the earth.

  Dumb feathers made watchers over Wyrm in chains! It was a wonder. But that’s the way it was, because God had chosen it to be that way. A Rooster stood in the middle—and on one particular day, he was irritated by the fact that he couldn’t finish his sunbath. But that’s the way that it was.

  [FIVE] Wyrm acts—Cockatrice is born

  East of Chauntecleer’s land, upriver from him a good many miles, and near the mountains out of which the river flowed, was another land ruled by another Rooster. No communication existed between the two lands, because a forest stood between, and nations lay isolated in those days; so neither Rooster knew of the other, and what went on in either place went on unto itself.

  Senex was this Rooster’s name: Senex with his Back to the Mountains. In his Coop there were nearly a hundred Hens, because his rule had been a long one. He was very old; it was evident to everyone that he would soon die. His head was pink, bald around his comb; his toes, which had once been a source of pride to him, were thick and bent into four directions so that he walked with a peculiar shuffle and could not perch well on a roost. His eyes were failing. His crow had diminished to a henny kind of cluck, and he apologized a great deal—which infuriated him, but he couldn’t seem to help it.

  Two other problems he had: He would crow the morning in the middle of the night. His clock was off, and that sent his animals into a scurvy confusion. The hundred Hens would flock outside, prepared to work, and find that only the moon was there to shine on them. Back inside they would flock again, mumbling, clucking, shoving, and bitching a nasty bitch.

  “Senex, button it,” the bolder ones would grump. Young wives to old husbands take astonishing liberties. “If you can’t crow right, Codger, don’t crow at all, is what I always say. I say, button it, and give a Hen her sleep. Or sleep in the trees yourself. Which is to say, if saying can be heard by your bung ears, get out!”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” the poor Rooster would apologize, and then despise himself for having done so—because he was Lord, after all.

  In a moment every Hen would be asleep again; but Senex, the Rooster with his Back to the Mountains, would remain awake, miserably worrying about his other problem. Which was that he had no sons, no heir to assume his rule—either now, should he abdicate (and it crept upon him with painful frequency that he was, perhaps, already unfit to rule), or later when he died. He had produced no prince. A hundred Hens and—nothing.

  Then, in the middle of the night, Senex would quietly weep.

  He wept for his land. If he left no ruler behind him, the various powers in the land would break their backs against one another trying to seize rule, and the land would itself suffer. Peace would die when he did.

  He wept for himself. For all of his past years of an ordained and gentle ruling, he received very little honor now. He was still carried in procession among his animals, and they still blessed him as he passed by. But that soon felt to him like a mock when his Hens forgot how to say “sir,” and called him, instead, by his first name, and sometimes even forgot that. They fed him gruel and gossiped womanish things in his very presence, as if the whole Coop were their kitchen and he a baby in a bib. He had gotten no son on them.

  And he wept for his name. Whatever they thought of him, at least the name of his father should be honored. But not only was it not honored, it would not even continue after him, because there was no son!

  Thinking all these things, Senex would begin to curse and swear under his breath, angry with an old and useless anger, until he had cursed his tears away. And then he would go to sleep.

  But because he was very old, he didn’t even then sleep well. He dreamed.

  “You fool!” his dreams would say to him—and even asleep he had the sense of a ghastly odor about him. “They ride you, Senex. They ride you mercilessly in your old age. They take advantage of every good thing ever you did for them. And they wait for you to die.”

  It was a half dream. The old Rooster was aware that he was asleep, aware of the Coop around him; yet his body was a lump of lead and he could move nothing. There was no vision to the dream, that he might see—only a mild and manicured voice, only the vile smell.

  “It is the way of things,” the aged Rooster answered in his dream. “I think it’s time for me to die.”

  “Senex, Senex,” the dream admonished him. “Die, perhaps. But die dishonored? Die weak? Die with your name befouled by a hundred ruinous Hens? Senex!”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” said the Rooster.

  “My dear Senex!” How the dream drooled his name. “Apologies belong to Hens and Rodents. But you are the Lord! Why, there’s not a soul under heaven to whom you need apologize.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the Rooster to his dream. And then, for apologizing, he apologized again: “Sorry.” After that he hated his mouth mortally, because it wouldn’t keep still. And he felt brokenhearted.

  “Let it be,” said the dream kindly. “I understand your dilemma. You feel a loss of power far before power should be lost to you. You are much misunderstood. And yet you feel constrained to reign over a thankless land. Am I right?”

  Senex was comforted. “Yes,” he said, panting and answering as fast as an old Rooster could, before the dream would fade. It was a good dream!

  “And you have no son. A son would make your death honorable. An heir would preserve your name. A prince upon any one of them would snap your Hens into order. Am I right?”

  “Yes! Yes!” cried the poor old Rooster, almost giddy with the thought of it.

  “Then I promise you that you shall have a son.”

  Suddenly the dream was over, and it was the morning. Senex jerked his head up and blinked into the grey light, surprised that that was all there was around him and suddenly feeling very lonely.

  He was unusually silent all that following day, something which his Hens barely noticed, what with all their own personal primping and activity. He was trying desperately to preserve the good mood which the dream had given him, again and again remembering the words of it, and particularly its last promise to him: “And I shall have a son,” he thought. Oh, he didn’t do anything about getting a son. He was too old for that. But to remember the promise, he fought against heaven and earth and against the ease with which the elderly forget. Senex had a new thing in his soul. It was called hope.

  On the following night the smell and the dream returned. It lasted all night long. Not everything could he remember from it; but some things clung to him:

  “I promise you more than a son. I promise you your own life back again. Senex, Senex, if only you knew!”

  “I’m young!” Senex cried in his sleep. “I can learn. Teach me!”

  “Oh, bless you, proper bird!” the dream sang mildly. “Then learn this: You don’t have to die. You can be born again, feather fresh and new. You can keep your land, but rule with a young vigor and with iron. And then you need not be remembered, Senex: But you will be seen and known.”

  This time when the dream passed, Senex walked straight over to the Hen who called him Codger and bit her viciously on the back of her neck. She woke with a shriek, and the old Lord went away, immensely pleased with himself. There was a new strut in his step that day.

  “I will tell you the secret of
the ages,” said his dream sometime later—during the day, now; for Senex had taken to sleeping all the time. To be awake had become disagreeable for him; to be asleep was very pleasant. He had begun to feed upon his dream.

  “The secret of the ages,” the stunned Rooster mumbled in return.

  “I will tell you what God has hidden from everyone. God meant to keep it unto himself; but I know it and will tell it to you.”

  God has kept something back from me! The Lord of the land! thought Senex. He uses it only for himself? Well, then, it must be wonderful indeed.

  “Indeed!” whispered the insinuating dream. “The wonder is this, that you can be born again as your own son. Thus the land remains yours, and the ruler is you. But you are young and healthy in your rule, and by a single crow you may kill a hundred Hens.”

  The old Rooster fell from his perch and doubled up in silent laughter, so that the Hens thought he was having a convulsion.

  “Let it be!” he cried in a brittle voice, and the Hens were frightened. But he had cried, “Let it be,” and so it was.

  “Void the Coop!” roared his dream, a sudden, imperious commandment. “Hen for Hen, get them out of here! Lock the doors against them. No one but yourself! You and I shall be alone. NOW!”

  Suddenly the Rooster felt his soul wither, and he was terrified. If he could have spoken, he would have apologized. If he could have run, he would have done so. If he had been able, he would have died; for the voice was not like the voice he had known. But he could do none of these things, being asleep. And he did as he was told.

  With his eyes closed—asleep—he charged his Hens savagely, ripping feathers and causing the blood to flow, until every last Hen had scuttled screaming from the Coop. He did as he was told. The doors and the windows were locked, and he was alone with his dream.

  The days passed, and the Coop became very hot inside. The Rooster ate much and grew fat, and the fat made his body all the hotter. And then, when the heat came to a certain temperature, Senex felt a wild pain in his loins, and his body did a strange thing. First it clucked, exactly as if he were a Hen. Then it squatted just above the ground, as strange desires drove him in spite of himself. Then it laid a small, leathery egg.

  Senex, the Rooster with his Back to the Mountains, awoke.

  The terror had left him. There was a fierce light in his eyes, now, because he had been given proof of the dream’s promise, and he believed it with all of his being. An egg, after all, is an egg! And this Rooster worshiped his strange little egg.

  He threw open the doors to the Coop and cried out in a voice so loud and majestic that everyone heard: “Here! Come and see, every one of you!”

  They came. Something had happened to their Lord during his isolation; his voice was hard, wooden, and not to be denied. They came, and he showed them his egg.

  “This shall be my son,” he said, and the animals were amazed. “When he has hatched he will bear my name, and he will rule over you—righteous, just, and . . . punishing!” Oh, the old evils would be scoured clean!

  The animals didn’t know what to say. They didn’t understand the light in Senex’s eye. So they filed past the egg in silence and out again. But this time Senex commanded one Toad to stay in the Coop with him. And again the doors were locked.

  The Toad was forced to sit upon the little egg, while Senex fed him sumptuously upon bread and filled his head with all manner of wild sayings. The poor Toad held his peace and passed his time in fear.

  When it became clear that the egg was about to hatch, the old Rooster called all of the animals into the Coop again. He hopped about on his crooked toes and chuckled to himself and shook his head violently at the joke which was about to be played. But the animals were there because they must witness this birth, and—he told them gleefully—they must welcome their new ruler.

  “Apologize to you?” he cried again and again. “Apologize to a pack of ungrateful parasites? Ha! Don’t look for it! Look for recompense!”

  But, as no one understood his rambling, no one answered. They shrank from him, and they watched the egg.

  It hatched. Better, it ripped apart. A new Rooster was born.

  For seven days, as the animals began to come and go through the Coop, Senex sat and stared at his son with a wild intensity—saying nothing, but grinning and nodding with hungry satisfaction.

  Then, on the seventh day, the Rooster chick began to grow a tail. The tail had no feathers on it and no hair. It was a serpent’s tail. But it grew with an astonishing speed, and old Senex lost his grin. Very slowly a sense of cheat began to eat at his heart; and then he began to shoot glances at the other animals, who always filled the Coop to see this wonder.

  The Rooster chick continued to grow, though it ate nothing at all. It was fed and nourished by the earth itself. As it grew, it developed grey scales underneath its body, from the throat to the tail; and the tail itself was covered all over with scales. Yet it had a rooster head and the wings of a rooster. But they were like fire, and its eye was red.

  Senex, the Rooster with his back to the Mountains, began to feel the urge to apologize again, and he kept his head bent very low—not only to hide from the gaze of his animals, but also because this thing of his ancient loins, this Rooster chick, had begun to glare back at him, coiling and uncoiling its tail.

  On the fiftieth day since the arrival of the Rooster chick two things happened:

  Senex could stand it no longer. The cold stare had broken him. He went to the door of his Coop, shivering, shaking his bald head, and chattering in a voice very weak: “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  The animals gathered and watched him, some of them with disgust, some with curiosity, and some full of pity.

  One Hen saw her opportunity. She began a speech: “The wheel turns, Senex! And now we know the stuff the Lord is made of. Peck a Hen and pay for your trouble, is what I always say.” She began to walk forward from the crowd. “Peck me and pay me, Codger! Now it’s my turn—”

  The Hen never finished her speech. She had a loud, husky voice; but another voice cried out now which swallowed hers entirely:

  “Damn the name Senex!” screamed the monster from within the Coop. The animals froze, horrified. Senex snapped up his head without turning around. A look of infinite knowledge passed over his face, and despair.

  “I am my own,” the shriek continued, “and my name is Cockatrice!”

  Then this was the second thing which happened. While every animal watched unmoving, Cockatrice stepped out behind the old Rooster, whispered something into his ear, and killed him—piercing his head through and through with its beak. Senex fell feather and bone into a little heap. Then Cockatrice swept the poor, exhausted body aside with its tail and began to rule in his place.

  [SIX] Chauntecleer deals with Ebenezer Rat

  Nobody had to tell thirty Hens where to sleep that night. Not one of them was going back into the Coop, once Nezer’s name had been named and his guilt proven. But somebody might have told Chauntecleer where to crow compline, for the close of the day. He usually did that from the top beam of the Coop. However, the top beam of the Coop was now a long bunch of Chickens from one end to the other, sitting ghostly, patient and pillow still. No crowing there, unless one wanted to knock a Chicken off.

  So Chauntecleer grumbled his way to a stump and crowed the close of the day from that. Then he went to see how Mundo Cani Dog was doing.

  Mundo Cani had put his nose to use.

  Immediately after crowing the crow of grief that morning, Chauntecleer had strutted round the Coop until he had found a hole through the wall. He was bitter with himself that he had never noticed it before; but now he could be certain that it was Nezer’s own door into Chauntecleer’s Coop because enormous Rat droppings were discovered immediately inside. And he marveled at the size of the Rat’s entrance: Nezer had done himse
lf proud.

  Having found the door, Chauntecleer wanted to do something about it. He wanted Nezer to stay under the Coop until nighttime, so he wondered what might be large enough to plug the tunnel.

  At that precise moment a storm of sniffles, followed by a rushing, mighty wind, sailed around the Coop. Mundo Cani had just blown his—nose. And for the rest of the day the Dog lay belly flat upon the ground, his knees poking high above his back, his nose stuffed into the Rat’s doorway. Chauntecleer took a particular pleasure in that arrangement.

  “Me, mutt. It’s me,” he whispered now, because the night was mortally dark. “Have you heard anything?”

  The Dog said something. But if his nose was under the Coop, so was his mouth; and who can understand a voice from underneath a chicken coop? After he said his something, Mundo Cani coughed; and his eyes rolled around like twin moons in his head, beseeching the Rooster with tears. Chauntecleer was tickled.

  “Or have you felt anything?” he whispered.

  What the Dog had next to say he said very fast, crossing his eyes. And then he coughed again, and his wide eyes nearly popped out. Chauntecleer was delighted.

  “Surely,” he whispered, “you haven’t smelled anything?”

  Mundo Cani said one word. It was a very short word and, by the sound of it, a sad word. But then he didn’t have the time to say a second word, because his eyes filled up with water; his ears flew up from his head; and he sneezed.