Chester Cricket's New Home Read online

  “I can’t even tell if he’s looking at me. His eyes go—”

  “Did you think?” A familiar head flashed up so close that it almost toppled Chester over.

  A turtle’s chuckle is wonderful. Simon got one in his voice, and coughed to keep the laughter down. “Walt, Chester was saying while you were away, he can hardly tell which way you’re looking—”

  “Snake eyes!” Walter reared out of the water—at least his upper half. “I got the snake eyes, Chester—you bet! The authentic item—that’s me! Have a look—” He stared at the cricket in a highly unsettling manner.

  “Oo! Oh!” Chester blinked. “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Walter. It’s very disturbing. And dangerous for the eyes, as well.”

  “And not all snakes have the true and magic snake eyes.” Walter flipped some water with his tail. “Now, there’s a good friend of mine—a copperhead named Charleton—and, Cricket, Charleton C. has eyes like a little lamb—the darlin’! But he lacks snake eyes. Lives up the brook a piece, he does—and happy as a dandelion.”

  Walter whacked the surface of the pool—just for fun. “You want to hear how I knew I had snake eyes, Chester C.?”

  “Not really,” said Chester. “For a cricket it is somewhat worrying—”

  “I was out in the Meadow one afternoon, just sopping up sun for the fun of it, and this hoity-toity girl come along, with her boyfriend. They shouldn’t have been in our lovely, enchanted Old Meadow at all! They should have been in a roller disco! His name was Billy! Billy Sweetie, she called him.”

  “What was her name?” said Chester. Despite his worries—stiff neck, no home—the cricket was starting to like this story. Walter Water Snake, he decided, was quite a raconteur. (That word means someone who tells stories well. Once in New York the cricket had heard his friend Harry Cat describe an old acquaintance of his—an owl who lived in the church of Saint Mark’s in the Bowery—as a marvelous raconteur.)

  “Her name was Toots,” said Walter. “Or Tootsie. Billy called her both. She had shoes with high heels! Can you beat that, Crickety Chester—huh? Spiky heels!—to go strolling in the Meadow. Some people! And the clothes she was wearing! Yellow and purple slacks, and a blouse that started out to be green and ended up pink. It looked like ten different kinds of parrots had landed all over her. And—ooo, this made me mad!—a belt which suspiciously seemed to me as if it was made of snakeskin!”

  “Oh boy,” sighed Chester. He glanced at Simon, to share his sympathy, but found that the turtle was snickering.

  “Come to think of it now, Miss Ditsy may have been somewhat nutty on the subject of snakes.” Walt undulated his back in the water. He had a long back to undulate, too. “She had sequins all over that tacky colored blouse of hers. And sequins are just about as close as a human being can get to scales. Anyway”—he flipped himself out like a piece of rope—“I thought I would teach Tootsie Ditsy a lesson.”

  “Hee! hee!” Simon Turtle was wheezing in anticipation.

  “I reared straight up! And although I’m no cobra, Chester ol’ pal, I can rear pretty well—”

  “So I see!”

  “—and I gave her the old snake eyes!” Walt’s head swung high, and then low, over Chester. Then he lounged back in the water comfortably, like someone in a rocking chair. “Well, let me tell you that that girl screamed—she said, ‘Eek!’”

  “I heard it all the way here!” said Simon enthusiastically.

  “‘Eek!’ she screamed. ‘Oh, Billy, eek! There’s a snake!’ And, Chester, the two of them took off like a couple of broken dolls! The last I saw, they were falling all over a bunch of tuffets, scrambling toward the road. So that is how I know I’ve got the genuine snake eyes!” He finished his narrative happily, and poised before Chester. “Terrific—huh?”

  “Oh, very good,” Chester had to admit.

  “Some might say cockeyed,” Simon puffed through his chuckles.

  But Chester, inside himself, sighed. And decided—“Good friends are wherever you’re lucky enough to find them.”

  FOUR

  John Robin and Friends

  The morning had made up its mind by now: it was going to be hot. These last days of August sometimes were the sultriest ones of all. The summer seemed to have saved its strength, and then—perhaps warned by a single bright, cool day like September—in one week it burned up all its stored heat. A good time for insects, this time of year was. Chester Cricket and all his friends and relatives—cicadas, locusts, katydids—made music in the fields.

  With his special liquid melody—all birds have their own, like signatures—John Robin coasted down through the air and alighted next to Chester. “Hi!”

  “Hi, John.”

  “Nice day!”

  “Yes, very.”

  Walter Water Snake raised two eyes suspiciously above the surface of Simon’s Pool.

  To show how nice and share his pleasure, John sang his song a few more times. But, unlike every other day, his wordless tune brought no joy this morning to Chester Cricket. It hurt him, somehow. Ordinarily, hearing John pour forth his robin’s throaty happiness—even show off a little, if he felt extra well—was one of Chester’s greatest pleasures. Not now. It reminded him of all that had happened yesterday: that he had no place he could stand and say, “This is mine, my home, this is where I live.”

  “Hey, Chester—” John hopped from one foot to the other: a very good sign (among robins, that is)—“I’ve got good news! Your house—”

  “My stump—?” hoped Chester, for a moment.

  “Oh no. That’s gone. Worse even today than last night. What’s left of it’s all falling down of its own accord.”

  No hope. “Oh.”

  “Better even!” the robin boasted. “We cleaned out an old squirrel’s nest! My Dorothy and I, and whatever kids we could still collect—Jeanette and Joe volunteered—we spent half the night, oh, airing, and dusting, and shaking leaves out—”

  “I am not going to live in one of Bill Squirrel’s nests,” said Chester firmly.

  “Not Bill. You know Bill lives up there in the elm tree.” With a flick of his wing John gestured toward a hill that rose above Simon’s Pool. It was crowned by a soaring, splendid elm. Bill Squirrel had made his nest there for years. In fact, as John and Chester, and Simon and Walt, looked up, they saw a flash of gray in the leaves—which would have been a whisk of Bill, or else a patch of morning sky. “This is down at my willow,” John went on. “Last summer, or maybe two summers ago—it could have been three—there was this squirrel, whose name was Lou—or was it Luke?—anyway, he built his nest in my willow tree.”

  “So this nifty nest is going on four years old?” asked Walt. He sank his head down so that only his eyes were staring gloomily over the water. His expression seemed even more skeptical because of one eye that headed toward the north.

  “I think it’s only two,” said John Robin reassuringly. “Well—this Lou, or Luke, only stayed one year. He said he was restless, and never would take more than one summer in any particular meadow. Footloose is how he described himself.”

  “A bum, in fact,” commented Walt. “At best a hobo.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He just had the itch to travel, that’s all. So he put up this thing in my willow tree—”

  “Har-har! he-he! and ho-ho!”

  John Robin looked blank. Somebody unkind would have said he looked dumb—or at least dumbfounded. “Walt—what are you laughing at?”

  “Nothing, Friendly Feathers—nothing. Come on—tell us more about Footloose Lou and his flimsy folly, soon to be known as Chester’s Rest, or Cricket’s Crack-up, as the case may be.”

  John looked at Chester; his eyes were glazed, as if an acorn had dropped on his head.

  “Don’t mind him, John,” the cricket advised. “What else should I know? About this construction.”

  “Well, I’ll admit,” John Robin nodded, agreeing with himself, “it isn’t exactly like one of Bill’s nests. When Bill makes
a nest, he makes it to last. But honestly, Chester, I think you’ll like it. Dorothy and I were up half the night, patching with twigs all the holes that you might fall through. And the view is really beautiful! It isn’t as high as me, of course, but you see the whole Meadow, and the brook down below, with your mashed-up old stump.”

  “The heart swells at the thought,” said Walt. “A shack in the sky, overlooking a former home now squashed into ruins.”

  “Please come!” John urged. “I’ll be a good neighbor. Honest I will.”

  “I’m sure you will, John.” Chester shifted from one set of legs to the other. “It’s just that—it’s just—”

  “Just what?” The robin seemed puzzled, and maybe a bit hurt.

  Chester sighed. “I guess I have to move somewhere—”

  “Come on!” John bobbed up and down beside him. He was all eagerness, if Chester was not. “Let’s go right away! I’m dying to show you everything. And the folks are waiting.”

  “What folks?”

  “Just come on, Chester! You’ll see. You want me to carry your bell? I will—”

  “I think I’ll leave it here,” said Chester. “Temporarily.”

  “Okay then. Grab on. I’ll fly us over.”

  “I can fly,” the cricket announced, “when I want to. Don’t rush me. Anyway, I’d rather hop.”

  “We’ll hop,” said John obligingly.

  “Hippety-hop to the willow top! Crickety-crack! There and back!” Walter Water Snake sang gaily, and blew bubbles in the pool.

  “You’re in a good mood today,” said John.

  “Always! Always!” Walter declared. “My one and only lovable failing.”

  “I’m beginning to know what ‘zany’ means,” said Chester to Simon.

  “Thought you might,” the turtle replied.

  “My only regret”—Walt loomed from the water, but didn’t seem all that sad to Chester—“is that Cricket and I won’t make music together. However”—he vanished—whssh!—and then reappeared—“someday we may.”

  “Come on!” John Robin urged again.

  With one jump Chester cleared the pool and landed neatly on the bank. “Bye, Simon. Bye, Walter.”

  “Bye, Chester,” the turtle called.

  But Walter would have nothing at all to do with a farewell as simple as saying “Goodbye.” He surfed to where the cricket was standing uncertainly and gave him a wink of his snake eyes. “Your antennae are drooping, Chester friend. Be not so sad! All may yet be well. Take care of him, Friendly Feathers! He! he! ho! ho!”

  “—and har! har!” Chester Cricket finished it for him, none too happily, as he hopped away with John.

  * * *

  And next morning—“Ho! ho! What is this I see?” Walter sang his old refrain again, for there on the bank, in exactly the same place he’d been yesterday, sat Chester Cricket. “It can’t be that well-known homeowner—stump-jumper—”

  “Oh, stop it!” said Chester. “I don’t feel like joking.”

  “What happened?” said Walter. He lowered his head so it rested on the pool’s smooth surface as if it were only a blue silk cushion, just put there for Walt to lean on and listen.

  “Do you know what a housewarming is?” asked the cricket sadly.

  “Can’t say that I do. We had a little fire once, two tuffets down from the one where I often take the sun. Some idiot with a cigarette! But a bullfrog splashed water up from the brook. What is a housewarming?”

  “A housewarming,” began Chester, “I now know for sure, is a special party for someone who moves. His friends all get together and fix up his new home as nice as they can, and then they throw this enormous party, to mess it all up again.”

  “I see.”

  “And, Walter—” Chester sighed and shook his head, but decided he’d better get everything straight. “Now, I like birds, Walter. I really do. Relationships between birds and insects aren’t always too great, but honestly, I do like birds.”

  “I take it that most of these housewarming partygoers were birds,” said Walter.

  “You wouldn’t believe it! When me and Friendly Feathers—I mean, John Robin and I—”

  Chester’s story—he really was getting the feel of it now, and it felt kind of laughable—was interrupted right at the beginning by an old and creaky laugh, like a door on a squeaky hinge. Simon Turtle, who’d crawled up onto his log where it dipped in the water, had settled in to enjoy himself. “Go on,” he encouraged. “Don’t mind me. I just didn’t want to miss the fun.”

  “Fun,” Chester echoed. “Well—come to think—from all the jabber and bills clattering I guess everybody enjoyed themselves. Except me. But I was only the guest of honor. Anyway”—he took a storytelling breath—“John and I hopped down to the willow tree, and John flew me up to Lou’s Lofty Lookout. That’s what I decided to call it. Of course I could have jumped up myself, from branch to branch—I’d have had to learn, if that was going to be my home—but I thought this first day I might as well go up on the robin elevator. And I was tired. So much has happened these past two days—I just wanted to rest, and get my bearings.”

  “So how’s the location?” asked Walt. “As spectacular as Friendly Feathers said?”

  “It really is, but, you know, crickets are really earth types—stumps, logs—”

  “Fireplaces—”

  “Yes. But not so much for heights. And Lou’s nest is high! At least on the tenth branch up. And it does overlook the whole Meadow, since it’s built way out at the end. In fact”—Chester twitched an antenna—“a little too near the end. It made me feel woozy.”

  “You have acrophobia, Chester ol’ pal?”

  “I didn’t think so till yesterday, Walt. In New York, Lulu Pigeon took me up to the top of the Empire State Building. Of course I fell off!—that’s enough to give anyone fear of heights. But it wasn’t so much it was high, Lou’s nest, it’s that it swayed. Back and forth, back and forth—ooo-ah! ooo-ah!—I got downright queasy. And there wasn’t that much of a wind yesterday. Also”—Chester wrinkled his face in a grimace—“I may have gotten a little seasick because it still did smell of squirrel.”

  “I see.” Walter did an S-curve in the pool. “Are there any other charms of this place you’ve neglected to tell us?”

  “Not really. John and Dorothy had mended most of the holes. There was one rather big one left. But if I’d fallen out any time, I’d have had something soft to land on. The nest is so far out on the branch that it overhangs the brook. Kind of shivery, in fact, to look through that hole and see the current swirling beneath.”

  “Umhmm,” said Walter. “So the truth is, if you had fallen asleep one night—rocked seasick in the cradle of air—you might very well have dropped through a hole and fallen ten branches or more into the water.”

  “Yes, more or less,” agreed Chester.

  “Please proceed,” Walt invited, in a silky, sly voice.

  “Anyway, I didn’t have very much chance to be sick. Because right away my life got almost scared out of me. I was only just starting to look over the nest—”

  “Picking your way among the potholes,” Walter put in.

  “—when from everywhere there came this tremendous shout: SURPRISE! It’s a good thing a squirrel’s nest is all safe and snug. I’d have been blown clear out otherwise.”

  “A surprise party!” Walt frolicked around in the water. “But I thought it was a housewarming party.”

  “It was a combination surprise, housewarming, welcome-in and bring-a-little-something-you-don’t-really-want-as-a-gift party. And, Walter, you cannot imagine how many birds crashed that party! That whole willow tree was just crawling with birds. They’d been hiding—behind leaves, under branches—just everywhere! Even some in a neighboring maple. And birds are very good, I’ve found, at not being seen when they don’t want to be. But how they kept quiet I never will know. They made up for it later, that’s for sure!”

  “Take it from the big ‘SURPRISE!’” said W
alter Water Snake.

  “‘Surprise!’ they all shouted, and started piling into that nest and out along that branch. Within two minutes there were jillions of birds lined up. I thought, she’s going to snap for sure. But she didn’t. She held. I guess willow trees are used to birds’ shenanigans. So anyway, Walt, there I was—”

  “Birds to the right of you! Birds to the left of you! Birds above, and birds below!”

  “It was utter pandemonium! And Dorothy Robin kept dashing up, saying, ‘Chester dear, more company! More company, Chester!’ She was the hostess, more or less.”

  “Dorothy always liked being hostess,” Simon Turtle wheezed.

  “A model of self-control, I’ve no doubt.” Walter flipped his tail over his heart: a picture of innocence.

  “Self-control! I thought to myself, if I don’t fall out of this nest, she will. Walt”—a different little thought struck Chester—“are you making fun of me?”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it!” said the water snake. “But what about the things they brought? Little gifties, I presume. Come on, Creaky Cricket—tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”

  Chester looked at Walter Water Snake quizzically; his eyes were asking him what he meant. He decided that even if Walter was making fun, it wasn’t mean fun he was making. And also Chester—who’d been quite a star performer once—was rather enjoying Walter’s rapt attention. With his grinning head poked up out of the water, the snake was an avid listener.

  “The ‘gifties’ mostly were little things I was meant to enjoy in my new home,” Chester went on. “But, actually, in a lot of cases I think it was stuff that the birds didn’t want, or else they’d outgrown. I mean literally outgrown. Quite a few were molting, and they’d brought me a few of their own old feathers that should have been thrown away. ‘For nesting,’ they said. Well, Walt, I don’t nest! Insects don’t nest—except wasps and bees and others like them. If you call a hive a nest. And if I did, I wouldn’t want to make my nest out of smelly old feathers and pieces of Kleenex and burlap scrounged up from heaven knows where.”