Chester Cricket's New Home (11 page)

“I was only sighing. It's beautiful.”

“I've grown very fond of Miss Jenny, I have! She's a lovely grand old soul! And say what you want about Beebee and Jerry—they love her, too. Although she makes their life a mess.”

“Some people—and pheasants—
need
to be messed up!” pronounced Mr. Water Snake, upright as a judge in the water.

“What's strange is, Beatrice said that she and Jerome wouldn't know what to do without Miss Jenny, but now they spend almost all their time taking care of
her.
I guess years ago, when she first came, she waited on them—she got their food, and cleaned the tuffets, and kept all Beatrice's things in order.”

“And what,” Walter wondered, “did the young Miss Field Mouse get out of all this for herself?”

“Room and board, and security. From some of her rambling last night, I got the idea she was left alone.”

“She was. It was terrible!” Simon Turtle remembered. “Her brothers and sisters just up and moved. And Jenny was left alone. Her last brother got killed in a Meadow fire. One horrible, dry August afternoon. Afterwards she was—taken by fright, you might say. She was scary. Can't blame her. It must have been somewhere along about then that she met the Pheasants.” The turtle brooded: time worked in his world, which was the Meadow, in strange unforeseeable ways. “'Course I wouldn't want to gossip, or cast aspersions or anything, but I've always suspected our Beatrice might just want a lady-in-waiting of her own.”

A silence lasted and grew so huge it was like a person standing there—some presence that was bigger even than a human being. It made Chester Cricket uneasy. “Well, she's got a fantastic home anyway. You should see all the stuff that the Pheasants have collected! That's one thing I found out right away—if you're rich, you never throw anything out. And you're very proud of your family, too. Beatrice let me see her eggshells. Of course I wasn't allowed to touch.”

“Her own eggshells?” asked Walter.

“She keeps them in a special place. It's a kind of bookcase—except it's for eggs—stitched out of twigs and branches and thatch. She's had several broods, so there's quite a few. There's Betty's eggshell, and James's and John's, Jerome Junior's, Floyd's—I can't even remember. The children are all scattered now. A whole bunch flew to Massachusetts—more room up there. But the queer thing is this: she thinks even more of the ‘ancestral eggs' than of her own!”

Walter didn't much like the sound of that. “What are ‘ancestral eggs'?”

“They're the eggshells her forebears came out of,” said Chester. “All kept in a lunch box she found one day. And is she ever proud of them! The older the better! There's Aunt Helen's eggshell, and great Uncle Ezra's, and Great-great-
great
-grandfather Floyd's—he's the one that Beatrice's fourth son was named for—”

“You've become an expert in pheasant family trees!” said Walter.

“—and Floyd's cousin Alice, twice removed, who flew west about seventy years ago with her half brother George—and neither of them was ever heard from again—”

“Chester Cricket, you stop that!” Walter lifted his tail, about to spank the surface again.

“All neatly stacked in a dented tin lunch box. Which has the name ‘Billy' scratched on it. The really old eggs get yellow, too.”

“I think it's creepy!” snorted Walt. “Whoever that kid might be, if Billy should find his lunch box again, he's in for a very peculiar surprise.
Yek!
”

“It takes getting used to,” Chester admitted.

“Does Jerome have his own dented lunch box of ancestors, too?”

“No. From hints that Beatrice dropped now and then, I gathered his family wasn't all that distinguished. At least not when compared to hers.”

“He could be a peacock—she'd never admit it.”

“Oh, and speaking of peacocks—you ought to see all the plumes.”

“Whose plumes?”

“Everybody's plumes.”

“She has ancestral plumes, too?”

“You bet!” said Chester. “Arranged in a circle, each stuck in the earth, around the central tuffet. Beatrice calls it ‘The Gallery: A Pheasant's Family Album of Feathers.'”

“That does it,” said Walter. “I'm going under. Goodbye forever.” He sank from sight.

“Walter Water Snake!” Chester pounded the water. “You come back here! You sent me off—at least you can listen.”

Walter's eyes appeared and blinked at the cricket. That's all of him he would let be seen.

“Last night, after supper—which Miss Jenny misplaced, but we found it in Sunnyreach—Beatrice pointed out all the colors that came and went in her family feathers. There was one special gold, a bright brown gold, that Floyd the First had—and Beatrice has it, too—”

“Oh, naturally,” Walter rose to say.

“—that she thinks is unique. No other pheasant in the whole world has it. She was hoping that one of her children would—but no luck. She has plumes from them, too.”

“Does she yank a pin feather before she lets anyone leave the nest?”

“To remember them by. And add to the family album. Tradition. Floyd the First made it a rule: Before any pheasant chick flies away—”

“It sounds to me,” Walter interrupted, “as if Tuffet Towers was haunted by Great-great-
great
-grandfather Floyd.”

“Well, it's not,” said Chester. “When anybody's as fascinated by ancestors as Beatrice Pheasant is, they don't need any ghosts. They make their own. And why not, say I. Everybody should have an interest. Hers is ancestors, mine is music—as Beatrice kept pointing out when we'd located dinner and eaten it. I didn't know what she was driving at, the way she kept on with the compliments: how ‘musical' I was, how ‘tuneful,' what pleasure she and Jerome always took in listening to me ‘toll the hours.' Do I toll, Simon? I ask you now, do I toll the hours?”

“Not so's I've ever noticed, Chester.”

“I chirp, that's all. On nice days I chirp. And on bad days, too, if I feel like it. But Beatrice got it into her head that as long as they had this great big tuffet—the one in the middle, and it was a tower—well, why not make it a bell tower, and why not make me the bell? I just was supposed to hop up there, on top of the tuffet, and strike the hours. And wait, Walter Water Snake! Just you wait—before you start doing somersaults underwater! Not only was I going to count the hours—ring them off all day and all night—she had this little melody that she wanted me to play first. Here, listen.” The cricket chirped a simple tune. But it didn't come out exactly right. “No, wait—I'll sing it. I haven't quite got the hang of it yet. It goes: ding dong, ding dong—dong ding, ding dong.”

“Why, I know that!” blurted out Simon Turtle. “That's a famous tune for a set of bells. They play it every Sunday morning in that church on Fern Street.”

“That's probably where she heard it,” said Chester. “And it's very pretty, too. For a church.”

“A little grand for a tuffet, you think?” Walt shook his head—and the shake went down all the way to his tail. “I never heard the like of it. Our very own cathedral cricket.”

“Ridiculous!” exploded Chester. “Imagine!—me telling the time. I mean, I wouldn't have cared so much, being turned into a cuckoo clock—but a tolling bell is something else. 'Course, never did I dream it would go on all night long. I thought to myself, I'll ding a few ding dongs and put them to sleep and that'll be that. Not a bit of it! Miss Jenny's got insomnia! She sleeps all day and just naps at night. And whenever I was nodding off—the Pheasants were both off in Chillington, where they sleep in the summer, and out like logs as soon as night fell—and just when I was dropping down to a marvelous dark, soft rest myself—which I need so much!—I'd hear this squeaky voice in my dream, ‘Chester dear—it's time to chime!' And all night long! I said, ‘Miss Jenny, everybody's asleep. And I don't even
know
what time it is.' She said, ‘Well, you're a cricket, aren't you, dear? And crickets work by sun and moon and stars, don't they? And summer and fall and things like that. I thought all insects had time in their wings.'”

Walter shook his head, impressed and surprised. “She's got a lot of poetry—for a fuddled field mouse.”

“So, just to make the poor soul happy, I'd hop up on the tuffet and ding some more. Believe me, I learned to hate that tune!”

“It must be boring,” Walter agreed, “to be a clock. Ding dong, ding dong—and round and round—till the end of time.”

“Toward dawn Miss Jenny nodded off herself. And she talks in her sleep, too. I heard her mumbling—why, I think she was saying ‘I smell smoke.'” The cricket's eyes glanced quickly at Simon.

“Ah me, ah me,” sighed the turtle sadly. “It well may be she was saying that. So long ago—yet never past.”

Chester hurried on, “When the sun came up, I dinged my last ding dong, and came back here. So come on, Walter—let's hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“Ohhhh—!”
Chester was feeling desperate. His voice had a reckless note in it—a crazy and gay tone of hopelessness. “I'll start it myself: ‘A cricket he lived with an elegant pheasant—'”

“I can't,” said Walter, and shook his head. “I'm not that mean. It's sad—sad!
sad!
—the way you get shunted around the Meadow.”

Chester Cricket, however, would not be stopped. A fit was upon him; he was hectic and glum, all at once. “Now, what rhymes with ‘pheasant'? ‘Peasant' does! ‘However, she thought he was rather a peasant…' I'm sure that Madame Magnificent thinks I am. Or else you could say, ‘But life there rapidly grew unpleasant—as he ding-donged merrily!'”

“You are flipping, Chester—”

“I'm not even hopping—”

“You're flipping out! Now simmer down. This isn't the end.”

“Oh yes, it is! And I've made up my mind! I'm going over to Mountain Road and let myself be squashed by the very first car that comes along! If I knew how to—and was big enough—I'd eat worms and end it all!”

“I hear some worms are quite tasty,” said Walter. “A buzzard once told me—”

“I don't care what a buzzard told you!”
shrieked Chester. “I have no home! I'm homeless! There's no place in the whole wide world I can call my home! I
am
going to let myself be run over!”

“Why not take a little nap first?” Walt suggested.

“Before ending it all?” The cricket's antennae, which had been stiff and wiggling with rage, began noticeably to droop.

“Sure! Don't you want to look your best? Just lie down there on the—on the”—Walter dunked his head, then lifted it up, like someone's finger testing the weather—“on the
Southerly Breeze,
and rest awhile.”

“Well, I—I—”

“Rest!” Walter ordered. Using his chin, he gently forced the cricket down flat. “You rest, Cranky Cricket. Poor cheerless Chester—just rest.”

“Oh, all right.” Chester heaved a sigh. “Why not? Since all is lost, anyway.”

Before the eyes of Walter and Simon, in barely the time that it took for a floating cloud's shadow to pass, he was fast asleep.

“My land!” said the turtle. “I never heard Chester take on like that.”

“We got finished just in time,” said Walter. He circled Chester, on his boat. “Now, the best way to get him up there is—don't watch this, Simon, you might get the wrong idea.” He opened his jaws as wide as he could and took Chester in his mouth. The sight was quite dreadful. A stranger passing by just then would have thought a heartless, hungry snake was about to devour a cricket alive.

TEN

Home!

Home …

You always will know it. It may be a mansion on a grand avenue. Or a little bit of shivering nest, where a hummingbird can relax at last. A two-family house—or a two-owl barn. An apartment above a busy street. Or a niche for an insect—just a cell in the bark, and so tiny the tree doesn't know it has guests—but, oh, how it overlooks life, teeming there in the grass! Whatever the nook, niche, or hole may be, the creature that lives there—owl, mouse, or man—will instantly know it: like your fur or your feathers or your own close skin, a home feels only like itself.