The Book of the Dun Cow

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

  Though they were spoken in a quiet manner, Chauntecleer knew them to be poisonous words, filled with cursing in the language of the powers. The river was offering them to him as if they had been dishes or weapons. The river was inviting him. And so hot was the hatred in the Rooster’s soul that he chose one of the river’s words, and put it into his own mouth, and said it: “Ingrati!” Chauntecleer said.

  Immediately the dark spot was on the horizon again, and he saw it. For the second time the boats were coming around.

  At the sight Chauntecleer’s stomach lurched, and he didn’t know what to do. Swiftly they sailed to him where he stood. Would he call to them a second time? Would he humiliate himself again? Or would he stand proud in his lonely silence and let them pass by forever?

  But when they drew near to his island, he saw a horror. Each passenger on each boat lay dead. The Beautiful Pertelote, and all his Hens, dead; John Wesley Weasel, Lord Russel, the Widow and all her children, Mundo Cani, Tick-tock—every one of them dead.

  “Then they are well punished for their ingratitude and for your enforced loneliness,” the river sang. “Such is my gift to you, Lord Chauntecleer. Receive it with my benediction.”

  But the Rooster was staring at this procession with a killing guilt. He felt sick with his guilt, because he had said that he hated them. He wanted to die because of his guilt.

  Suddenly he began to slap the water with his wings.

  “You! You! You!” he screamed, but there was no goodness in the screaming now. “It’s you that I hate, you damned of God!”

  At once the island started to sink. The water rose up to his legs, and he could not see where he was standing. In his dream it seemed as if he were standing on nothing, surrounded in every direction by the river’s water. Yet he shrieked until his voice burst: “I don’t care! Dying is little enough for me! Dying is right for me! It’s you that I hate!”

  “I could cause the island to grow,” sang the river. “I could make an Eden of it.”

  But the Rooster wept for guilt and screamed the louder: “It’s you that I hate! I will fight you! Kill me now—right now! Or I will fight you! Fight you! Fight you!” And then, just before he drowned, he cried out: “Oh, Pertelote!”

  Pertelote—the real Pertelote—grabbed Chauntecleer in her two wings and shook him. He woke up.

  “Chauntecleer, Chauntecleer,” she said. She had been saying it over and over. “Chauntecleer. Oh, Chauntecleer, you’re dreaming.”

  For a long, long time that night the Rooster simply let himself be held, his head sagging—and he was grateful. He panted heavily. He swallowed often.

  Then, for a moment, he left Pertelote alone. He stepped down from his perch and went to each of the other creatures in his Coop. One at a time he touched them. When he had touched them, he said their names over to himself. “Beryl. Chalcedony. Chrysolite. Sardonyx. Topaz. Jasper. Jacinth. Emerald. Mundo Cani. And my children; oh, my children.” They slept on, so gently had he touched them; and they did not know that he was whispering their names with love.

  Pertelote alone knew.

  When he was beside her again he spoke. “I will never dream again.”

  “Can you choose not to dream?” she said.

  “I can choose against evil,” Chauntecleer said. “I can surely choose against evil, and my dreams have been filled with evil. It’s what I do in them. And then it’s what I bring out of them into this place. . . . If I have to stay awake forever, I will never dream again. Yes! I choose not to dream.”

  Pertelote considered the tone of her husband’s voice. It was different from what it had been, and so she said, “Will you talk now, Chauntecleer?”

  “Oh,” he said, truly turning to her, “I never stopped talking.”

  “Will you answer me a question?”

  “Of course. I’m okay now.”

  But Chauntecleer didn’t understand that the difficulty of the question wasn’t in him, but in her. When someone seldom talks about herself, she believes that everyone else is like her and that no one wants to talk about himself. But she asked her question:

  “Why have you been worried for so long?”

  Then Chauntecleer didn’t help her in her difficulty. Instead of answering, he gave her question for question:

  “Where did you come from, Pertelote?”

  She was quiet and didn’t answer.

  “Shush, shush,” he gentled her as if she had said something. “My question is as important as yours; they are the same question, Pertelote. Listen to me: You came to my land by the river, and so you have something to do with it, more than I know; and I need to know. Because it is the river that has worried me for so long. It’s flooded the entire south territory of my land—a strange, unholy flood. But maybe you can tell me of its source. Maybe you can teach me something so that I can understand this thing. Why did you come here, Pertelote?”

  “I, too, can choose against evil,” she said in a little voice.

  “Then we are one,” he said.

  “I lived in the land just west of the mountains.”

  “So far away?”

  “It is a long river.”

  “Longer than I know.”

  “But I can choose against evil as well as another,” Pertelote repeated, for it was important to her that Chauntecleer understand this before she told him her story. If she was to reveal the vulgar secret of her past, it must be on her own terms. She must not lose his love in the telling; and she must not, by his deeper knowledge of her, begin to hate herself.

  Chauntecleer said, “I know your heart, Pertelote. That I know very well, and it is good.”

  So then she told him of her land; of Senex, the Rooster with his Back to the Mountains; of his death and of the miraculous birth of his child. She told him, and Chauntecleer learned, of the being who bore the name Cockatrice—his tormenting of the Hens, his children the Basilisks, his destruction of the whole land. And then she stopped, and the night was quiet again.

  Finally Chauntecleer spoke. “Pertelote, Pertelote,” he said. “Not less, but so much more do I love you now.”

  Having heard her tale, he was calm and deeply happy; and he was confident that he would never dream again. What she had told him had not caused this peace, though he had listened well to it. But that she had spoken these things at all in his presence—that critical gesture was his assurance: It pleaded her love and her absolute trust in him. Why, she had placed her very heart into his keeping, believing that he would not harm it. And by heaven, he would not!

  [FIFTEEN] Now it begins—sorrow befalls Chauntecleer’s land

  In the morning every animal stepped out of the Coop—or else rushed toward the Coop—and rejoiced: The rain had stopped falling! For the first time in three seasons the air was clear, and a feather could expect to stay dry the whole day through. Oh, the clouds still covered the earth, and the sun still remained a mystery; but it was a high covering, now—pale, not glowering; luminous, not gloomy; more a white sheet than the melancholy blanket which it had been for so long.

  So the animals took a holiday. They gathered, ate, laughed, and danced a step or two. Picnics happened everywhere. Excursions to hunt for mushrooms (thousands and thousands of mushrooms that year) were formed in the blink of an eye. A Dog ambled out of the Coop and breathed through his nose. A Rooster crowed lauds as it had never been crowed before. (Chauntecleer was made joyful by the dry weather, to be sure; but more than that, his talk the previous night with the Beautiful Pertelote had done away with loneliness—and that was a joy unspeakable.) And a Weasel suffered seven little Mice to join him in a hunt. (“Is no talking! Is no running! Is no crowding John! A leaf—don’t step on it. A hole—God’s sake, don’t fall in. File single! Noses up, tails down, eyes bright—faugh! Listen: Maybe baby Mice rather stay to home. No? No? Faugh!”)

  But wh
at truly gave the day the special feeling of a holiday was that Tick-tock the Black Ant had given his workers the day off.

  “LAUDS TO TERCE: GAMES.

  TERCE TO SEXT: EXERCISES.

  SEXT: DINNER.

  SEXT TO NONE: REST,”

  he announced. “Ready—begin!”

  He marched the troops to the door of the Coop.

  “Halt, two, three, four. Games, two, three, four!”

  Properly he knocked on the door. Graciously he requested that the Three Pins come out and play a game with them—and the Pins came in a flash, bouncing and rolling over twenty serious Ants before Tick-tock could bark them into order.

  “Games!” he said significantly, as if such imprudent bouncing had no place in holidays.

  Then the Ant sought a good stream of water (there were so many about); had his workers trundle three chips of wood from the forest to the water; commanded his workers to form three chains of Ants, one from each wood chip to the dry land; suggested the Pins climb on—and, lo, they began to play their game. They gave the Pins rides, pulling them on little boats upstream.

  As the Ants always worked to a shouted rhythm, so they also played to rhythm. Tick-tock selected the right song for the game; and, with enormous bass voices, the boatmen chanted the chorus:

  “On chips of wood the Three Pins sail,

  With a puff and a blow and away they go!

  The breeze, it rocks them like a gale,

  With a wash and a woe—as the rivers flow,

  They’ll never be home for tea.”

  Ten Pin looked happily about himself and grinned. It was a good world to be in. It was good to be one whose father was Lord of the land, good to be met with respect and honor, good to be remembered by the Ants. Earnestly they pulled him. Properly they rocked the boat when their song said that something did rock the boat. Then they clucked their tiny tongues, as if they had treated the children to wild excitement. Ten Pin only wished that they might go a little faster. When little Ants are cautious, it is a vast caution for big Chicks: The boat was hardly moving.

  “To west, to west, across the sea,

  With a puff and a blow and away they go!

  Three ships, three sailors brave and wee,

  With a wash and a woe—as the rivers flow,

  They’ll grieve their mother and me.”

  Well, the game was becoming a little boring. Anytime Ten Pin rocked the boat on his own, Tick-tock gave him severe looks until the child sat down again.

  They had crept three inches up the water, the Black Ant popping his eyebrows up and down as if to say, “Isn’t this fun?” Well, thought Ten Pin to himself, fun. Lord Russel, on the other hand, had promised his nephews LARGE-SIZED games, dreadful escapes, things true to life. So then, how could he leave the Ants for something better without hurting their feelings?

  “One lost at sea, one drowned on lee,

  With a puff and a blow and away they go!

  And one still sinking silently,

  With a wash and a woe—as the rivers flow,

  They’ll not be home for tea, for tea,

  They’ll never be home for tea.”

  “Stop!” screamed a voice from within the Coop. “Evil tongues! Evil tongues! Not another word from your evil tongues!” Beryl exploded from the door, spilling feathers everywhere in her fury. She drove straight toward Tick-tock, her head pumping, her wings whirring, and jabbed the tip of her beak into his face.

  “What in the name of everything good are you doing?”

  “Halt, two, three, four,” Tick-tock called, and the slow boats stopped. “No harm to them, madam,” the Ant announced, staring coldly at the Hen in front of him. “Games most respectfully played.”

  “Games? Disasters! Incantations! Children could drown, for all your games!”

  “I beg your pardon. They may damp a feather or two, but they will not drown in a stream stone deep.”

  “You play reckless! You’re foolhardy with the children of my heart!”

  “Madam,” Tick-tock said with brittle offense, “I took every particular precaution with these children. I am not of a foolhardy nature.”

  “Stuff! Stuff!” Beryl cried directly into the Ant’s face; then she choked up before the wooden stupidity, the insensibility, of the ruffian, and she could say no more. Tick-tock, for his part, wondered about the Hen’s sanity.

  And for just a moment Ten Pin was delighted. This game seemed soon to be over, and another, better one could begin. To help matters along he began to cough as if a little water had gotten into his lungs.

  But his hopes died quickly.

  “Spells!” Beryl managed to splutter. “Enchantments!”

  Tick-tock only shook his head before this display.

  Gingerly, Beryl bumped the Pins from their boats with the tip ends of her wings, as if each one of them were red hot, then brushed them into a yellow heap. In the damp ground around them she scratched a circle with her beak. Then she beat her wings at the Ants. “Words curse, don’t you know?” she cried. The Ants stood stolidly by. “No more sense in your tiny black brains than slugs—to be handling words, to be light with words, and at the children’s expense! Oh, to be talking such things!” And, as the Ants never blinked an eye, moved, or even broke their chains, Beryl rushed away to find Chauntecleer.

  The Ant delivered himself of an opinion. “Daft,” he said. “Words are nothing. Work is all. And that, men,” he said, turning suddenly to the rest of them, “is quite enough of holiday madness. Take a lesson: When duty is laid aside for play, troubles arise. Let’s get back to work.”

  And they did. In an instant, and with great relief, the Ants marched away. And then somebody was, after all, busy on the holiday.

  Beryl dearly loved the Pins. She had been proud at their birth. She had been proud at the size of them and the speed with which they learned. And she had burst with pride to be chosen their nurse. No one knew how often she stole to their nests of a night, merely to hear their breathing and to assure herself that they were at peace. No one knew how deeply her heart yearned for them each time they went out of her sight—and for that reason she had never permitted them to leave the yard around the Coop. Did they want something from the forest? Well, then, she troubled herself to go and get it, whatever it happened to be. Great was her heart for the children, and great her care for them.

  Beryl also had an abiding respect for words. As far as she was concerned, the word for a thing somehow was that thing. Therefore she never spoke frivolously what she did not mean to say; and she surely never put into words anything which she did not wish to happen. For the words themselves could trigger it, and then it would happen. To say something was to send the thing itself out into the world and out of her control. It was to curse. She never analyzed this faith of hers; she merely believed it and, with a dreadful care, acted accordingly.

  Under her breath she prayed blessings upon the heads of the Pins continually. Continually? Why, she had never ceased to pray for them since their birth. With words she was constructing a defense around them, against danger, against disease, against ill will, against misfortune. All alone, in the secret of her soul, she was building their peace and their good growth—and that with words.

  But now, despite all her careful spinning, this blind, wretched Ant decides that he shall play a game with the children of her heart. Well and good. She permitted the game. But not the song! She did not know that they were going to sing a song over the Pins, a chant which lightly predicted death by drowning for the Pins. What did the fools think they were doing? A game? Oh, Lord God—mischance! Disaster! They had set the children in harm’s way!

  So Beryl hurried to find Chauntecleer. And she found him in the Coop. But he, too, was slow to
understand the Hen’s distress.

  “A crow, please, sir,” she pleaded with him. “A prayer for the safety of your sons.”

  “Why?” Chauntecleer was startled that such a day as this one should need such a crow as that. “Are they sick? Hurt? Has anyone threatened them?” He stood up, ready to go.

  “Not as yet sick nor hurt. Threats, sir, perhaps—”

  “Who?”

  “No one, sir, but—”

  “No one! Threats fall from the sky these days?”

  “Well, but there could come the threat. The Ants, you see, have made your sons unsafe.”

  “How?”

  Chauntecleer’s fired questions did not help the Hen any, and she was at mortal pains to state her fears clearly. While she tried, and while she wrung her wings before him, the Rooster sat down again and assumed an air both lordly and knowing in front of her. All of this, of course, took time; and the nervous Hen, starting and stopping in her explanation, glancing from the door to the Rooster, stumbled often as she spoke.

  And so it was that, for the first time in their young lives, the Three Pins were left utterly alone, their nurse and then their tiny playmates having left them. Ten Pin immediately saw the treasure of the opportunity. By a judicious use of his own words, he persuaded his brothers to join him in adventure; and gingerly—as gingerly as Beryl had herself set them there—they stepped over the line of the circle. Then they skittered like water bugs over the yard, out of the yard, and into the forest.

  Ten Pin laughed as if his heart would break. He was free!

  “Well. So. And then, yes. Indeed, it is a trick which I have been saving until a special time. And this, Nephews, I propose—this is a special time. Mark it: The air is dry. What do you say to that? And besides all that, the air is not wet. Holiday, you see. Special day. And judging by the halcyon qualities—not to say expansive qualities—of your father’s canonical crows, this morning, I believe—that he believes—that this is a special time. Personally, that is to say, speaking from my own view of the matter,” said the Fox of Good Sense, “I am persuaded that now is a special time—because now is the, er, right time!” And he paused to smile, satisfied that he had presented remarkable proofs to shore his argument; he was much learned in rhetoric.