“But, you see, if I can’t talk, well, that‘s a sort of dying.”
Chauntecleer took the Fox’s jaws between his talons and shut them in an iron grip.
By the second week of his convalescence Russel wore a carapace from his eyes to the tip of his nose. “Mmmm!” he mewed, his eyes like boiled eggs. “Mmm. Sss,” and “Mm-ffle.” Fleas had begun to scurry at the roots of his fur.
Pertelote suffered for the sake of her patient. His snout and his breath were foul in her nose. “Oh, Russel,” she said softly in his ear. “We can wait to hear you again. Can’t you wait to talk?”
Russel tried to obey. But the word that popped into his brains popped immediately out of his mouth.
He said, “Presenting you with thanksgivings, pretty Pertelote.” The carapace cracked. The wounds separated, and Russel’s P’s (Presenting, Pretty, Pertelote) sprayed blood.
Wearily Chantecleer said, “For the love of God, you miserable faucet—shut up.”
Two Hens walk in a yellow field: white under the sunlight, pure beneath a deep blue sky.
The one in the lead is adorned with a burst of crimson feathers at her throat. The one who follows is fat. Her comb is vestigial, an abrupt, pinch, surrounded by pink baldness on her skull. She huffs and puffs to keep up. This one thrusts her head forward with every waddling step. Her wings hang loose in order to cool her corpulence. She is drenched with sweat.
“There,” says the beautiful Pertelote. She gestures with her beak. “There, Jasper. Do you see it? We’ve found what we came for.”
“See, Missus? Not to be doubting you. Pardon me and all that—but it ain’t no more’n a tree.”
“Look beyond the tree. To the green vegetation thick on the ground. There are the medicinals. Let’s go.”
Pertelote spreads her wings to fly.
Jasper says, “Butt pimples.” This is the way the fat Hen swears. “Chicken dribbles. Ain’t I already gone gut-weary, Missus?”
Pertelote laughs and sails forward.
Jasper grunts. She generally hates laughter, for she believes that most of it is aimed at her. Fatty, fatty, two by four…. Jasper is of the opinion that Animals are mean and fully of mockery. Couldn’t get through the kitchen door…. Mockery wants a pecking, for pecking gets respect.
Pertelote calls backward, “And don’t I love you, Jasper?”
Well. And so. And all right. The fat Hen is mollified. But unable to make a true flight, she plods after her Missus.
The first patches of the green vegetation is jimson weed. Beyond that is a tough tangle of juniper.
Under the jimson Pertelote looks for dark datura.
Jasper comes behind, cussing. “Goat pee.”
Pertelote brings up a warty-green thornapple and tosses it back to Jasper:
Thunk!
“Fox farts.”
Suddenly Pertelote pauses. She tips her head, listening. She thinks she heard a rustling under the juniper. She shakes her head and she finds another thornapple and tosses this one too at Jasper.
Thunk!
“Hen’s teeth, Missus! Is it for knocking down a sister Hen that you throw bombs at her?”
Pertelote says, “Not bombs, Jasper. Sacred datura. There isn’t a stronger Hen than you, nor a better one to carry the medicine back.”
“Well, folderol,” Jasper swears. “Chicken livers in vinegar juice I say. If that’s what you wanted, I’m gone, and no skin off’n my beak.” She tucks the thornapples one under each wing and leaves.
Again Pertelote hears the rustling ahead of her. She knows the sound. It fills her with sympathy. Someone has isolated herself. Someone is hiding under the juniper.
Pertelote bends to pick berries. She speaks as if to the air. “The sacred datura will put poor Russel to sleep. And it’s the juice of the juniper will bathe his infections.”
Picking berries. Picking berries. Giving her hidden sister time to adjust to her coming.
Pertelote begins to sing:
“My sister, she left us for sorrow,
Poor sparrow.
We craved her return by the morrow,
Black laurel.
When, when will she come forward?”
Pertelote has made a small heap of berries. She stands and raises her head and sings that first line again, but with one variation: “Chalcedony left me in sorrow.”
A thin voice peeps, “Sorrow? Not never did I hope to sorrow my Lady. No, not never.”
“Of course not. Chalcedony would never mean to sorrow my heart.”
Chalcedony falls silent. Even the rustling ceases. Then she says, “Maybe my Lady can go away now?”
“Oh, my sister, why should I go away?”
Again, a long silence.
When Chalcedony speaks again, her voice is moist with tears. “Private matters. Unhappy matters.”
“Lady of Sorrows,” Pertelote murmurs, “why are you sad? Perhaps I can comfort you.”
Now Chalcedony begins to sob. “Hoo, hoo, hoo.”
Pertelote spreads the juniper branches aside. Chalcedony is gaunt. In heaven’s name, what has she been doing here, alone?
Then the skinny Hen draws back, and Pertelote sees an egg lying before her.
Chalcedony says, “I’m sorry. I am that, my Lady. I didn’t never want to cry.”
“Sister! You’ve begun to bring a child to birth.”
“I never couldn’t lay another since the Rat kilt the first, and that the first of all I ever made. But I says to my soul, ‘And why mayn’t Chalcedony be layin’ an egg like any other?’”
“A lovely little egg. Unblemished.”
“Oh, Lady, oh Lady.” The thin Hen gives herself over to heavy sobs and tears. “But I been sittin’ broody on my perfect egg weeks and weeks, and the pretty bairn can’t hatch. Chalcedony, she’s got a motherly heart, but never no baby to mother.”
Now Pertelote sits down beside her sorrowful sister and lays a wing over her back.
“It is time,” she says. “It is surely time to cry.”
The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations is available from all major ebook retailers.
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The Book of the Dun Cow Page 23
