The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

  Pertelote heard a series of sneezes (and minor curse words) arising from a Weasel’s hole.

  With some heat she said, “Mundo Cani!”

  Chauntecleer loved sleep. It irritated him to be awoken.

  “Mundo Cani,” Pertelote repeated. “The most glorious Dog!”

  “What?” Chauntecleer snorted. “What?”

  “Mundo Cani,” she said. “Nothing more. Good night.”

  Now Chauntecleer could not go back to sleep. Pertelote’s tone had been curt, forbidding. He tried various positions, shaking the limb heartily, giving the Hen herself something to think about.

  Finally he snapped, “Mundo Cani—and what?”

  “He’s on your mind.”

  “No! He is not on my mind.”

  A Weasel at the root of the maple sneezed and began to rub his nose violently.

  “No,” she said. “Of course he’s not on your mind. Why should he be?”

  “He is too on my mind!”

  “Of course he is.”

  “I haven’t forgotten him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Right. You memorialize him.”

  “But I don’t dwell on him.”

  “Of course not. The past is the past.”

  “Right!”

  For an instant the Rooster felt he’d won the argument. In the next instant he wasn’t so sure. Memories of Mundo Cani hurt and humbled him.

  “Pertelote?”

  “Chauntecleer?”

  “I miss him.” The Rooster spoke softly. “I miss him—terribly.”

  “Oh, my Lord, I know that.”

  She too had softened her words. For a moment she added nothing more because she wanted to hear her husband speak. She let his thoughts eat away at his soul.

  Wise was the beautiful Hen. She broke her silence. “Perhaps you see the Dog plunging his weapon into the jelly-flesh of Wyrm’s eye.”

  “Oh, Pertelote.” Chauntecleer remembered the last words the Dun Cow spoke to him: Moricae fidei. You of little faith, it has been all for you.

  Wretchedly, the Rooster murmured, “It should have been me. I should have gone down into the pit. I should have died, not Mundo Cani.”

  “Even so,” said Pertelote. “And what else?”

  “I was the Lord of the Coop. It was my duty. I am not right. Today is not right. Tonight and tomorrow….” he said. “I have no right to life.”

  “And this is why you work so hard these days?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “To busy yourself? To pay him back by breaking yourself? What else, Chauntecleer.”

  “What else? A leader lost and a Dog took over. A leader lives to be sick of living. What else do you want?”

  “What else do you owe the hero Mundo Cani?”

  “My life! Dammit, I have already said it!”

  “Penance.”

  “What?”

  “Penance. This is more than your life. Are you able to scrub the past from your soul? Forgiveness, sweet Chauntecleer, can cleanse your soul. This would be your deliverance. Honor the worth of Mundo Cani’s life. Confess your transgression. A Dog will forgive you.”

  “I have confessed!”

  “Oh, Chauntecleer, he knew he had to go down. Don’t you understand? There never was a question about who must make the sacrifice. Leader or not, it just wasn’t your place to go. You had killed the Cockatrice. That was yours. But Wyrm’s eye was Mundo Cani’s. With neither fear nor hesitation, he knew what was required of him. He accepted his destiny. His last act was not your deepest transgression. If you keep swaddling yourself in the guilt of your lesser transgression, you deny the greater. Penance for what, Chauntecleer? Say it.”

  “Oh, Pertelote, stop.”

  “Say it!”

  “I can’t.”

  “But you know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then say it.”

  Chauntecleer could say it in a hole, perhaps. But to speak the thing to his wife? To risk judgment and the loss of her love—?

  Chauntecleer said, “I despised him.”

  “You despised him even while he was making ready to save us all.”

  “I cursed him as a traitor.”

  “You did.”

  “I did.”

  “Thank you. God bless you, my husband. Saying so is the beginning of a new life. And saying so to Mundo Cani himself will be the ending of the old.”

  Side by side in the clear, star-sandy night, feeling breezes blowing hither from the sea, they sat on the limb of the maple in silence, the Hen placidly, the Rooster miserably.

  Pertelote touched his shoulder.

  He shivered.

  “Chauntecleer?” she said.

  He knew no other word to say. He said nothing.

  Pertelote said, “I love you.”

  “Ahhhhhh.”

  Shortly before the morning broke, something began to tug at Chauntecleer’s mind. Something Pertelote had said, but which must, it seemed to him, be impossible.

  “Whoa! You said I should confess the thing to Mundo Cani? Pertelote! Mundo Cani is shut underneath the earth!”

  “He was that. The Netherworld Scar is a fearsome closing.”

  “The Dog is dead.”

  “You know this for a fact? What if he is alive? What if he is a living, clawing cur in the flesh of mighty Wyrm? What then? He had a nose for intuition. Only the bravest,” she said, “can go to him and see him again. Perhaps it will be you, my Lord.” She increased the volume of her voice and sang out: “I doubt that a Weasel has the stuff of bravery.”

  “What?” A little word burped in a stinking burrow.

  “Because a Weasel has given up.”

  “What?”

  “The Weasel has buried himself in his own little hidey hole, which is about as deep as a Weasel can go, nothing as deep as the tunnel that can lead bravery into the dungeons where Wyrm hides.”

  “What? What?”

  “No more adventures for a Weasel with half a head—”

  And now a clamoring bubbled out of the burrow: “Double-u’s, they isn’t Double-u’s on account of their ears! John mourns a Mouse, you cut-cackle! But John can find tunnels better’n any Roster can. Ha! And ha, ha!”

  “Because Mundo Cani was never anything to a Weasel but a carriage to carry him about. No friendship—”

  “Ha, ha, ha!” cried John Wesley. “What does a Hen think about that?”

  Chauntecleer ruffled his feather and let out a crow, “One more ‘Ha,’ John, and I’ll have your last ear for my pocketbook!”

  Dawn glowed on the horizon. Hens began to wake.

  “A Double-u, he’s a Dog’s friend too. Is more love in a Weasel than in a Rooster!” John popped up and stood erect beside his burrow.

  Chauntecleer leaned dangerously forward to spit his opinions at the Weasel. “You lost no love for him when he saved you!” thundered the Rooster. “I didn’t hear a Thank you then!”

  John spun in circles, so mad was he. “Speaks a Rooster, ha! A Rooster what was in a Dog’s mouth too. Ha, ha, to you, Rooster. Is Double-u’s what digs, but Roosters only flutter-gut about. Thinks a Rooster, he can find the Netherworld without a digger to dig?”

  “Just wait, you slow mope. I’ll find the tunnel before you scratch a grass-root!”

  “Ha!”

  As it happened then, at sunrise Pertelote spread her wings and sailed down calling her sister Hens to follow—while the adversaries held lively conversation with one another, pointing out the absurdities in each other’s characters, and promising mighty promises, each to be fulfilled at an early date.

  But the sounds of their bombastic chatter was music in Pertelote’s ears. She had been successful. Such contention was good after all. A Weasel and a Rooster were doing what they had always done, and order was restored.

  HERE BEGINS THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS

  PART ONE

  Russel, the Fox
of Good Sense

  [One] In which the Fox Strives to Talk

  Russel had fought as bravely as any other Creature in the battle against Wyrm and all his evil Basilisks. Serpents were the Basilisks, three feet long, as black as licorice, thick and dimpled when they writhed. They crawled the ground like little kings with their heads raised up on the loops of their necks. Their eyes were fiery and their flesh moist with poisons. Russel had dashed among them, cutting sharp corners with the snap of his bushy tail, talking, talking, challenging the enemies with a babble of well-constructed sentences. The Fox had rolled in the oils of the rue plant whose stench caused the Basilisks to tighten into helpless balls.

  “I route, not to say route you by the tens and the twenties, for I am clever and hearty and vulpine, am I!”

  But then he bit a fat Basilisk. His canaines burst the serpent, and the serpent wrapped itself round the Fox’s snout, and though the Fox dispatched it altogether, its poisons burned him, mouth and tongue and lips and his pointy nose back to the eyeballs—and that was that for Russel’s hostilities.

  He rubbed his snout with the joints in his forepaws, but only succeeded in smearing the poisons deeper and deeper into his fur, down to the flesh, and then it was that all the flesh of his face stung and, because of his furious rubbing, began to bleed.

  “No pity,” Russel managed to say. “No cause to pity a Fox, because his wounds, O dear Lord Chauntecleer, they are the wounds of his own folly.” Blood scored the gaps between the Fox’s teeth. But he could not stop talking. His words sprayed mists of blood. His sentences stretched and wracked his lips. But his love of talk was greater than his pain. For Russel, to talk was to be alive—was to be. By talk he had taught tricks to Pertelote’s three little Chicks. By talk he had instructed Mice in the ways of Coop-life. Russel was ever a charming orator.

  “Fight on,” he called to the warrior Creatures of the Coop. “Glorify the day, and triumph by the moonlight!”

  Then, when the war had indeed been won, the beautiful Hen Pertelote found the Fox lying inert in the grass, his jaws and his mouth and his muzzle swollen and hardening. Puss and a watery blood seeped through the scabs.

  “Russel,” Pertelote said with genuine compassion. “What did they do to you?”

  The Fox rolled his eyes up to the Hen. He said, “Umph,” and “Pumffel.”

  “Don’t talk,” she said. “I’ll get some salve for—“

  Russel said, “No pity, not to say pity, for a Fox who lost good sense.”

  When he spoke the scabs cracked and the blood gushed.

  “Please!” Pertelote begged, wiping the blood with her white wings. “Don’t talk! You’ll infect yourself.”

  “All is well,” Russel said. “Everything is well. The victory, why, the victory—“

  Chauntecleer crowed, “Shut up, you idiot! What’s the matter with you?” He leaped into the air, beat his wings, and alighted directly in front of Russel’s nose. “Do you want to die?”

  “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 Chalce
dony 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.”

  [Two] In which Wyrm Contrives New Strategies for Breaking Free

  Now, the Serpent was sly, brutish and powerful and thick through the bowels of the earth. But by his first assault against the Keepers of Evil he had learned that the greater his force the more tightly woven became the Meek of the earth. In the end their silken webbing had refused him his desires. Brute power had left him eyeless and blind. The light had been extinguished.

  Nevertheless, the Serpent was more subtle than any Beast on earth. He probed his loss. He studied his defeat. He schooled himself in patience, and contrived another stratagem. Blindness had made his own body the prison that now enclosed him, a tighter jail than had been the caverns underground. Oh, his hatred of the Creator was a furnace now. Wyrm contemplated annihilation. Freedom! Freedom—and he would swallow every luminary in the universe. He would blind the cosmos entirely and imprison creation, the handwork of heaven, in a perpetual, illimitable dark.

  Hatred engenders guile. Wyrm plotted vengeance, dividing it into several parts. First, he must test the disposition of the Rooster, the ruler and the union of his Keepers. If at any point Lord Chauntecleer was vulnerable, if there were in him the seed of some mortal sin, some bit of Wyrm’s own character, then Evil might enlist him as a confederate for his purposes.