Chester Cricket's New Home Read online

  The best way to clear the ruined stump, Simon found, was to bite off pieces of wood with his mouth, spit them out, and then brush them away with a claw. The old stump was soft and sticky and dead. It smelled kind of stuffy and tasted queer. “Like a moldy sponge,” Simon said.

  “It’s my home,” said Chester ruefully. “Or it was.”

  After maybe the turtle’s third or fourth rest: “Light!” exclaimed Chester. “I can see light!”

  Simon took a fresh breath. “Be careful now. And hold still,” he warned. “This is the tricky part.”

  Chester shut his eyes and held his breath as Simon’s jaws crunched nearer and nearer. “If you’ll just—my antennae—be extra special—I feel something—”

  “I will be. I will be. There! Got one free. Can you move it?”

  “Yes!” Chester raised and dipped, and then swung his antenna around in a circle. “Gosh! What a relief—!” The fresh air—so often it’s taken for granted—felt like a silent, faithful friend.

  In a minute the cricket’s whole head was free. It stuck out of the stump like a little doorknob. He looked around—“Well, hello, everybody!”—and was shocked and a little embarrassed to see all the animals, insects, birds, one turtle, and everyone else who was gathered there. “One cricket, coming up,” he said, and would have blushed, if a cricket could.

  Apart from Donald, and John and Dorothy, there was Hank Blue Jay, and Beatrice Pheasant, a rabbit named Robert who got indignant if anyone called him Bob—although most animals wanted to, since Robert Rabbit was hard to say—and quite a few others, too. Emily Chipmunk, a fretful soul, was just hurrying up, saying, “My! my! my! This is awful! Oh dear! This is really awful! Chester—are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” He was free to his first set of shoulders now. “You calm down, Emily.”

  It seems that word of Chester’s predicament had spread through the Old Meadow like wildfire—the dreaded wildfire which all Meadow dwellers feared. Chester Cricket, despite his size and apart from his fame in New York, was something of a favorite. People looked up to him—or down to him, as the case might be—and respected his judgment. So when news of his danger was whispered through the grass, the trees, or sung through the open air, all gathered to see if they could help—and also, since beasts and people are like that, just out of curiosity.

  With a rather grand flourish—a little grander than need be, in fact, but this was his largest audience since he had chirped his songs in New York—Chester Cricket jumped from his imprisonment to the patch of grass beside the brook. “Da daa!” he couldn’t keep himself from singing, as he flew through the air—but then couldn’t keep himself from tripping as he landed off-balance and tumbled into the water himself. “Just like Lola and May,” he laughed, as he scrambled out. “And serves me right for showing off.”

  * * *

  For a minute or two, as Chester accepted congratulations from all his friends on still being alive, he didn’t look back at the stump. When he did—“Oh, my gosh!”—it teetered above him in much worse condition than he’d ever imagined. One whole side was gone completely. That was where May had sat—the heftier of the two. And the other was a shambles of twisted, broken wood. There was no nice flat top left at all—not even a space for a cricket to perch. It was late in the afternoon by now, and even the sunlight, gold as it was, and sloping in from the radiant west, seemed melancholy at such a sight.

  No one spoke. Then Simon Turtle said, “Well, Chester, I guess you’ll have to move.”

  “Move—?” The thought struck the cricket as if some stranger had flicked an antenna. “I don’t want to move! I’ve lived in that stump all my life.”

  “Can’t see how you’ll live there now.” Simon slowly shook his withered, wise head. “Not safe. And pretty messy, too.”

  “But moving—” The idea got bigger and bigger. It felt like a weight on Chester’s back, much worse than when he’d been trapped in the stump.

  Simon tried to help. “Well, most folks have to move, Chester—sometime.”

  “When did you move last, may I ask?”

  “Oh, I never move. I’ve lived in my pool, beside my log, for longer than stones.”

  “See!”

  “I move every year,” John Robin offered. “I build a new nest—new twigs, new pieces of string and things—all new furniture, every year!”

  “I want my old stump back,” said the cricket despondently.

  “You’re not going to get it, Chester, my lad,” said Simon Turtle, stern but soft.

  Right there, beside his brook, and bathed in a puddle of sun, surrounded by most of his friends in the world, Chester Cricket felt more alone than he ever had in his life. More even than on that day in the Times Square subway station when he found himself hiding in a pile of rubbish. He felt downright desolate.

  “Well,” he said, “I can always go back to New York. I’m sure Tucker and Harry will take me in.”

  A chorus of “No’s!” rose into the air. Consternation buzzed in this ordinarily quiet corner of the Old Meadow. Wings, whiskers, antennae—whatever it was that the animals had, to show deepest feelings—everything wiggled nervously at the thought of Chester Cricket leaving.

  John Robin chirruped impetuously, “Why, Dorothy and I would love to have you—”

  And Emily Chipmunk squeaked her idea: “There’s plenty of space! Now that Henry’s away at Ellen’s house.”

  Even Beatrice Pheasant burbled politely, in her most cultivated tone of voice: “Jerome and I live under some most attractive tuffets, Chester. Oodles of room! On the other side.”

  “Do you want to go back to New York?” asked Simon.

  “No,” said Chester. “I did that once. New York just never felt like home. But this”—this was all his cricket’s eyes could see: trees, reeds, low shrubs, the August flowers—a world—“this does.”

  “Then it’s settled,” said Simon. “We’ll find a place. For now, you better come home with me. There’s a crack in my log you can stay in tonight.”

  “Well”—Chester took one last, dejected look at his stump—“all right.”

  “Come along, then. Have to go by bank. I can’t swim upstream. Maybe once, when I was younger, but—”

  “My bell! My bell’s still in there!” Home might be destroyed—but one thing at least must not be lost, so the past wouldn’t be forgotten completely.

  “What bell?” said Simon.

  “It came from New York—from way downtown—from Chinatown!—and Sai Fong gave it to Mario and Mario said it was mine—and it is! I brought it all the way from New York. And I won’t budge a jump without it!”

  “Well, land!” said the turtle. “If it means that much—!” He lumbered and waddled up on his four legs, hauling his heavy shell along, and began scratching at the ruins of stump, near the place where Chester had been pinned down. “Mm, let me see—” A few private mumbles helped him to work. “—No bell here, none that I can see. My goodness, what a mess!”

  A little muffled clink came from the dead center of the stump.

  “That sounds like it!” called Chester from below.

  “I b’lieve it is.”

  “Try not to dent it, Simon—please.”

  “I won’t dent it if—drat!” There was more mumbling, and then some fussing—Simon seemed to be trying to push something out of his mouth with a claw—and then what sounded suspiciously to Chester like spitting. “Simon,” he called, “did you swallow it?”

  “’O!” Very slowly the turtle came backwards down from the stump, with his rear legs feeling a safe way behind. “I ’ot it ’uck on ’y ’aw! ’Et it off!”

  The hook of the little bell was caught on the inner corner of Simon Turtle’s lower jaw. Chester gently reached in and pried it off. “My very own bell! No bigger than a honeybee.” He held it up and shook: pling! pling! “And it’s safe! Undented.”

  Although the bell was very heavy—after all, a grown-up honeybee is at least half as big as a cricket�
�in two hops Chester had it at the edge of the brook, where he washed off little chips of wood. “If my bell survives, then so can I!” In his secret heart Chester Cricket had always believed—at least he had hoped—that his chirps sounded sort of like his bell.

  “Come on,” said Simon. “It’s ’most dark now. We’ve got to be getting back to my log.”

  Chester thanked everybody for worrying and coming to help him. “And thank you especially, Donald,” he said. “It was good of you to get Simon.”

  “Yiss!”

  In the last ray of afternoon light the elegant wings of the dragonfly dripped myriad colors—green, gold, blue, ruby red, and silver—as if a whole rainbow had formed a single drop on Donald. He hovered a moment, motionless, miraculously still in the air. Then dashed away—vanished. Evening fell on the Meadow.

  THREE

  Simon’s Log

  A ripening moon that was swelling toward the full shone down on Chester and Simon as they made their slow way through Tuffett Country and Pasture Land. The cricket was hopping heavily because of the bell he was carrying with his first two legs, and Simon Turtle was never one for hurrying. On one side of them were the tall reeds, barely silvery green in the dark, that grew beside the brook, and on the other the land stretched away, past shrubs and stretches of open grass—the kind of delicious meadow grass that cows had browsed on long ago when farmers pastured their herds there. Beyond low hills there was the road—the lights of cars were flashing along it—and past the road the houses began. The Meadow always felt to Chester—and never more so than on this night, with the sound of running water beside him—like a wet rich refuge where things could grow, surrounded by the dry town outside.

  They forded the brook a little way before Simon’s Pool. Luckily, there were two stepping-stones—set there for the human visitors. Otherwise, with that bell of his, Chester couldn’t have made it in one jump.

  “There she be,” said Simon, nodding up. “My log.” From the comfortable tone in his voice Chester knew he meant my home.

  Actually, Simon’s “home” was more of an estate than one certain special place, like Chester’s stump. He spent just as much time down in his pool, where he had a comfortable pebble bed, or up on the bank, as he did on his log. But somehow, when Meadow folk thought of Simon, they always pictured him up on his log, remembering something from times gone by or lecturing one of the younger beasties—a baby rabbit, say—on how a task should be properly done—say, eating clover: not too close to the ground—it won’t grow back.

  “Hop up there, Chester. Crack’s on top, so you’ll see the sky, but facing poolside, for a nice earth view.”

  Chester got on the log with one big jump, still hugging his bell, and then inched forward, toward where it lifted into the night.

  “You find it?”

  “Yes. It’s pretty small.”

  “Can you fit in?”

  “I guess so. Barely.”

  There was just enough room for the cricket to tuck his bell in the crack—the bell seemed much larger now—but that didn’t leave enough space for Chester.

  Simon Turtle called up, “You all snugged down for the night?”

  “Oh, I’m snugged, all right!” said Chester. “My head’s inside my bell. That’s the only way I can stretch out.”

  “You don’t say!” remarked Simon, with philosophical interest. “I don’t doubt you’re the very first cricket to do that.”

  “I don’t doubt it, either. Good—”

  Chester never said “—night.”

  For from Simon’s Pool, in a raucous, wheezy, madcap voice—some might have said that it sounded crazy—there rose this song: “Ohhhh—

  A cricket lived in a rickety stump—

  In a rickety stump lived he.

  But May and Lola sat down—Whump!

  Said cricket, “Woe is me!”

  “What on earth—?” began Chester.

  But Simon was laughing. “I hear you, Walt!”

  “He! he! har! har! and ho! ho!” came the voice.

  “Now stop that, Walt! Go to sleep. Chester’s had a tumultuous day. So’ve I. You let us rest.”

  “Okay.” There was a quick little swish in the darkness—by no means a plop—as if someone clever had ducked under the water.

  “Who is that?” said Chester. “A fish?”

  “You get to bed, too,” Simon Turtle advised. His voice got suddenly small, far away, as only a turtle’s voice can get when he pulls back his head in his shell. “Tomorrow morning you’ll know all.”

  * * *

  But next morning, when the sun in his eyes woke him up, Chester Cricket at first knew nothing—not even where he was. He found out soon enough, by bumping his head, with a very dull thunk, on the inside of his bell. That brought it all back. He found out that he had a stiff neck, too, from the awkward position in which he’d slept, with his head resting on the clapper. He craned up to look.

  The crack in Simon’s log faced southeast—a nice direction, despite the sun, for there across the sparkling pool the low part of the Meadow, dewy and fresh, was glistening under an August dawn. It shone as if Nature were made of wet gems.

  Chester hopped to the highest part of the log. To one side, a little way back, there was kind of a mysterious place, a section of the Meadow that Chester didn’t know too well. A spring rose there and formed a small trickle that fed the brook through the pool. And that trickle was snaky and strange. Queer weeds were waving like hair, back and forth, very slowly back and forth, beneath the water. The earth was damp and fertile and full. Unusual flowers and reeds covered it. There were lots of hidden things living there. Chester looked at that place. In its difference it seemed sort of scary and wonderful. He gave it a name: the Mystic Marsh.

  “Good mornin’!” a voice behind him sang, in kind of an up-and-down melody—the same voice that Chester had heard last night.

  He hopped around, and there in the pool he saw two eyes. There was something perplexing about those eyes, apart from the fact that they were almost submerged. Chester couldn’t think what—but then he knew: those eyes looked like a magician’s eyes: hypnotic, strange—and wonderful! Unnerving, they were. Chester realized that he hadn’t even said “Hello.”

  “Hello!” The eyes disappeared—then a whole snake’s head popped out of the water, just up to the neck. (The neck of a snake starts behind the head, but only the snake knows where it stops.)

  “Morning, Walt.” Simon Turtle was crawling methodically up his log. He’d slept pool-bottom, as he always called it, but now he was out to check on the weather. He usually took a few minutes each morning, testing the breeze, observing the sun or gauging the strength of the rain on his shell—giving the day his permission, you might say. It took him a long time to get next to Chester. “You know Walt yet, Chester?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Walter Water Snake—Chester Cricket.” He coughed importantly. (Introductions can do that, sometimes: make people and animals feel important.) “Chester—Walt.”

  Now, Chester Cricket would have to admit that snakes were not his favorite folk. They had a reputation for eating insects. The only snake that Chester knew well—not well, you never could say they were really friends, but they had a working relationship—was a big, fat black snake named Frank. Their relationship worked largely because whenever Frank Black Snake looked hungry, Chester Cricket stayed out of his way. Other times they were cordial with one another, and always remained on speaking terms. But still … snakes …

  “How-dee-do!” chortled Walter.

  “Oh—I’m fine,” replied Chester, and thought to himself that Walter Water Snake didn’t seem much like his old acquaintance Frank at all. He wasn’t big, and he wasn’t fat—rather trim and sleek, in fact. And he was sort of—Chester searched for a word, and “goofy” was all that came to mind. “That is,” he went on, “if you think anybody is fine who just had his house sat out of existence.”

  “I heard all about it! Whump! Sqwu
sh!”

  “Who told you?” Chester asked.

  “Guiss!”

  “Oh.”

  “That dragonfly was all over the Meadow while you and Simon the Swift were toddling home. Didn’t say much, though. ‘Chister’s stump got squished!’ was all. Then he lit out like greased lightning to bring the bulletin to a family of frogs. Good gossip it is, too! I have to admit. The bulrushes all alive with it!”

  “Mmm!” muttered Chester, who was having mixed feelings about this snake. (Mixed feelings are those that you can’t quite sort out. Some feel good, others don’t.) For one thing, he thought it was rather impertinent to refer to the oldest Meadow dweller as “Simon the Swift,” especially since even the mosquitoes knew that the venerable turtle was the slowest soul in the world. For another, “good gossip,” he thought, was hardly a sympathetic description of his own catastrophe.

  “Hey! How did you like my song last night?” Walt’s head bobbed up and down in the water, like a cork expecting a compliment. “‘A cricket lived in a rickety stump—’”

  “Oh, very nice.” Chester fudged a bit.

  “Say, in New York they never called you ‘crickety,’ did they?”

  “No. Mama Bellini said ‘cricketer’ sometimes.”

  “Too bad,” said Walter. “I could have composed, ‘A crickety lives in a rickety’—et cetera. Crickety-rickety. Nifty rhyme! Get it?” His head ducked down—then out it popped. “Get it?”

  “I get it,” said Chester without too much enthusiasm.

  “You and I could make sweet music, Chirpy Chester! I like to do words, and you make up the tunes. How about that?”

  “I’ll have to think,” said Chester Cricket, but he didn’t plan to think too long.

  “You think then. Think!” Walter disappeared.

  “Is he always like this?” said Chester to Simon.

  “Most always.” The turtle laughed. He didn’t seem to mind Walter Water Snake at all. “He’s zany, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t think I know what that means,” said Chester.

  “You stick around Walt long enough,” said Simon, “you’ll learn.”