The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

  But in the night and in its silences she begins to sing an awe-ful song in long and lofty notes:

  “He who is ungrateful, he refuses me.

  ‘I will not look on thee.’

  And she, untroubled by his strife, replies,

  ‘Who made the eyes but I?’”

  Chauntecleer fights to see before him what he sees inside his mind: her moist, resistless, long-lashed gaze.

  She sings:

  “‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’

  Come, child, sit and eat.”

  It is a beatitude, a palpable mercy. The Dun Cow stands unmoving. Waiting. Poor Chauntecleer is invaded by her compassion. She offers him no praise. Her promise is comfort, and in her presence even Fimbul-winter seems to release its grip.

  “Humility, Chauntecleer. It is the beginning of wisdom.”

  In spite of himself the Rooster lifts his head. He turns ghis left eye to the Dun Cow, finally to look at in hers.

  But he does not see her. He cannot see her! That eye is blind, frozen as hard as a marble.

  The charm breaks. He had almost…. Chauntecleer had almost fallen for her blandishments. But what high irony! He was saved by his loss of sight.

  Be gone, Cow!

  The Rooster repents humility and swells again with glorious purpose.

  PART THREE

  John Wesley is in his Element Now

  [Eleven] In Which Three Pups are Named

  Rachel is thirsty. It is a consuming thirst. Not that she is consumed by it, but that Ferric is. He worries, on account of, he is a Coyote and not a physician, and who is he to figure out the troubles in his dear wife’s tummy?

  But she will not stay protected in their den, and he cannot let her trot off on her own; therefore, they go together into the forest to find rivulets or streams or puddles. On this particular afternoon in the selfsame week after finding her den, Rachel is happily lapping fresh water with a blithe disregard of dangers. Ferric is hiding.

  All at once a shifting deep underground and a quake on its surface cause both Coyotes to stumble and fall. Ferric’s stiff bones nearly crack in half. His hissing comes so forcefully it bids fair to loosen a tooth or two.

  Rachel herself is up on her feet and would continue drinking, except that, all in a flash, the stream freezes solid.

  She looks at this wonderment and says, “Interesting.”

  Interesting! For his part, Ferric’s sinews go so taut he could skitter up tree trunks. And he would race to safety—but this earth-tremble like this one must have canceled safety everywhere.

  Rachel says, “Well, there is one warm place.” She canters north, out of the forest, across the iron-hard wilderness, and back to the den.

  As she goes, Ferric shoots past her.

  She is thinking about the heat of the steam that rises from the stones below their muskeg-hole. The den itself is a chamber at the end of a three-foot crawl-way, and is set about a foot below the tundra. At the opening of the crawl-way is a ledge wide enough to land four-footed on. The chamber large enough to accomodate two grown Coyotes and little pups, when the pups should come.

  Rachel says, “Well, would you look at that.”

  For the steam produces a wandering cloud in the cold above their hole, an exhalation more voluminous than it was when they left this morning.

  She jumps to the ledge and looks down and understands the reason for the greater heat. The stones at the bottom have moved, creating steps into a lower hole, a kind of tunnel that drops into blackness.

  Ferric is back on the edge of the defile, squinting down. Rachel says, “Ferric? It’s time,” then retreats into the den’s chamber.

  “Time? Time?” He crouches on the tundra. The cold has crisped his whiskers. The pads of his paws are melting small depressions in the unaccountable ice.

  Ferric Coyote thinks he hears sobbing in their den.

  “Rachel?”

  He pops his paws loose from the ice and drops onto the stony ledge. Yes! His wife is sobbing! She huffs between her sobs. She grunts pitifully on account of the pressure that pushes the sound out of her lungs.

  “Rachel!”

  The noises stop. For an instant Ferric is torn between freezing before the dangers in the den and rushing to his wife.

  “Rachel, here I come.”

  “Ferric?”

  “What?”

  “It’s time. But this is no time for you. Stay where you are.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t know now much I love you, Ferric. Let me love you from here.”

  So, then: he freezes again.

  And it seems that Rachel is trying with all her might not to laugh.

  Her grunting grows intolerable. Then she cries, “Whoop!” And she whispers, “Here’s the first.”

  “Whoop!” she says. And, again, “Whoop!”

  Now the woman is giggling. He hears a Lick-licking back inside the chamber.

  After several wretched minutes, Rachel calls, “Come in, Ferric. Come meet my love for you.”

  Poor Ferric. Poor ignorant Coyote. He gets down on his elbows and his knees, hyperventilating himself dizzy, and crawls to his bumfuzzeling wife.

  “Oh, my solemn husband, I have three gifts for you,” she says at his approach. “And maybe you can laugh today.”

  In dim light Ferric makes out three glistering bundles. The bundles squeak. They wriggle. Rachel is lying on her side. He sees how big her nipples have grown. He sneezes, embarrassed by the sight of nipples. But look how the three bundles are squirming to Rachel’s nipples. And biting them! Mauling them?

  But Rachel sighs sweetly. She says, “This one is your son. These are your daughters. I will name the daughter-pups. You name our newborn boy.”

  Ferric Coyote thinks he is in pain. But the pain twists in him like pleasure. Such pleasure he has never known before. It brings tears to his eyes.

  Children.

  Compulsively, as though the name has always been waiting for its reason, Ferric whispers, “Benoni.”

  “Good,” says Rachel. “A perfect name. And to our pretty little girls I give the names Twill and Hopsacking.”

  The other part of his pain is this: now Ferric Coyote must protect not one, but four!

  Oh, the exhaustion of it all.

  [Twelve] In Which John Wesley Weasel Receives an Assignment

  Because Chauntecleer had been absent the long night through, Pertelote prepared to crow Lauds in his place. Lovely Lady of the community, she could comfort the Animals. That was her gift. But she could not excite them to generous and purposeful labors. That was her husband’s gift.

  But just as the dark started to resolve itself into a grey dawn light, the duty was taken away from her. Chauntecleer stood on the crown of the Hemlock.

  The first Canonical Crow of the morning streaked the low sky as if the sun had indeed arisen. Lauds seemed to strike heaven with vermillion spears: Lauds, as if the Rooster’s mouth were the bell of a silver trumpet.

  “Blessèd be the Lord

  Who keeps his word;

  The Lord of Lights

  Who shall redeem your lives—”

  Chauntecleer’s Jovian paean roused the Animals to a scarcely remembered wonder. Ears shot up. Eyes widened. A small hole spat up seven Mice, one at a time. Pertinax, unsleeping still, was transfigured. He raced the length of his tunnel and popped up perpendicular at the doorway. The passive Sheep slowly thought a thought. Someone was declaring them worthy and their presence important.

  “O worship the great Creator

  Who sends a Savior

  To make your labors

  Holy.”

  There had been no Matins that night. Sleepers had suffered deceitful dreams. They dreamed of banquets spread before them, and of invitations to eat. They tried to eat, but their stomachs cramped on hollow promises, and dinner turned to dust in their
mouths.

  Oh, but what a Laud’s! The Rooster’s Crow seemed to snatch back cloudy curtains to reveal a colorful stage and a magical entertainment for the delight of all the Creatures in Lord Chauntecleer’s care.

  “And I, by the Lord God’s choice,

  Shall be the voice

  That bids you eat

  The feast in peace!”

  Pertelote stepped from the thatched Hemlock into the waking day. She lifted her eyes and gazed at her husband perched on the highest spire, Chauntecleer, so golden and so coral-crowned.

  Except that this winter was a Fimbul-winter, he should have banished the fog and the foul air.

  The Roosterwas radiant, his jet-black beak, his stockings dipped in the purple dyes of nobility.

  When Lord Chauntecleer had brought Lauds to its last silvery notes, he sailed down and turned to the tasks of the day.

  Skinny Chalcedony was already at work on the frozen ground outside the Hemlock tower. She was scratching at the glassy ice under which a cone was visible. Its scales were open, its small wing-seeds exposed. She scratched and scratched at the ice until it was laced with blood.

  Chauntecleer stood beside her.

  “Chalcedony.”

  The Hen snapped upright, glanced at him, then swiftly bowed her head.

  “The Lord Rooster,” she murmured, “dasn’t spend breath on this tag of a barren, unpretty Hen.”

  But with his beak Chauntecleer jackhammered the ice until he’d broken through and Chalcedony’s seeds were free.

  The tasks of the day: he became the assessor of bins, of storage rooms, and of all the foodstuffs stockpiled against the sub-zero winter. The Animals had gathered a bountiful harvest.

  Here, then, was the salvation of every Creature that otherwise would starve on the iron, unforthcoming earth. And he alone, Chauntecleer himself, had been appointed their Savior, the Lord of the populations whose homes were spread even unto the ends of the earth—for hadn’t the sea told him so?

  “John Wesley Weasel,” Chauntecleer called, “I have an assignment for you!”

  He heard a snort inside the Hemlock hall.

  On splendid wings the Rooster flew through the boughs and straight to the Mouse-nest. He poked his beak inside and said, “It’s a vocation, John. No one but you can do this thing.”

  This time there came no snort.

  “Come, my little Buster, and go. Run through the forests. Run through the fields and the valleys and all the wilds, persuading Animals find food in this place,.”

  “It’s a John Double-u the Rooster wants?”

  Chauntecleer withdrew his beak. “No one but a Weasel,” he announced. Then he called to all the Animals, “Which one of you has the gumption to brave strange lands and bring the hungry ones in?”

  A vast silence followed his call.

  John Wesley said, “Is a Double-u, right? Chickies and nobodies else, right?”

  “Right!”

  And so it was that John Wesley Weasel laid aside his gloom and jumped into the light and plumped his fur and said, “Is a John Double-u what’s got scars of mighty battles. Is a John what’s gave up his ear to win wars.”

  “And no he is a Weasel of independence and admirable fortitude. Are you ready, John?”

  “Hoopla! John, he’s ever ready!”

  Chauntecleer, proud of his own providence, watched the Weasel shoot out of the Hemlock hall. At the same time he noticed a flash of white outside. His Pertelote.

  He went to her.

  “What medicinals, Lady?” he asked. “Balms? Lotions? Can you heal the famished when they come?”

  “Everyone who comes.”

  Chauntecleer smiled and kissed the fire-red feathers at her throat. He felt a shiver pass through her body. “For thou art beautiful, my love,” he murmured.

  And she murmured in return, “He peeled a straw, a summer’s thistle….”

  “Just so,” he said, then he raised his coral-red comb, the banner of the undefeated, and turned and took to his wings.

  So quickly had the Rooster begun to solve the starvations not only of his Animals, but of all the families under heaven, that Pertelote felt an adoration greater than when she first met the him and gave herself to him in marriage.

  But at his turning she gasped.

  In spite of his radiance and his lordly confidence, her husband was not whole. If he had waited, she would have begged an explanation. His left eyeball revolved in its socket a solid, pale-blue orb.

  As for the rest of Chauntecleer’s community, at the end of this wonderful day they went cheerfully to their beds and fell into dreamless, peaceful sleeps.

  Alleluia! The golden Commander had crowed the duties of the daylight hours with such assurance and with such good order that no one could not not labor, nor anyone neglect the needs of the others.

  “Pertinax Cobb,” Chautecleer had called, and the Ground Squirrel, stunned that the Rooster knew his name, popped up from his hnole.

  The Rooster had said, “I know the ways of the frugal. They fill their warehouses with food enough to outlast the winter season.” He’d swept one wing wide, gesturing to the Creatures busy around the Hemlock. “Behold your brothers and your sisters. They are here to serve you as much as you serve them.”

  Mrs. Cobb came and sat beside her husband, her quartermaster Mr. Cobb.

  The Rooster said to both of his whole community, “Serve each other as faithfully as kith serves kin.”

  Pertelote spent that night roosting on the limb she shared with Chauntecleer, though once again the Rooster was not beside her. The affection she felt for the communion of the Meek almost balanced his absence, except that she had missed the opportunity to ask him about his blind left eye. He seemed unaware of the loss. If he had acknowledged it, the deformation would not have diminished him a whit. He would still be hers. But ignorance separated them.

  As much for the love of the sleeping Animals, then, as for comforting her own soul, Pertelote sang fully the ancient song that she had begun before:

  “Lullay lully, lully lulay,

  A fawcon hath borne my mate away.

  He bare hym up, he bare hym down,

  He bare him off on a thundercloud.

  And in that cloud there was a hall,

  Hangid all with a purpil pall.

  And in that hall there was a bed,

  Hangid with a veil so red.

  And in that bed there lythe a knyght,

  His wowndes bleeding day and nyght….”

  [Thirteen] In Which Wolves Appear

  For Rachel, everything is good and nothing is bad.

  Ferric Coyote has terrible suspicions regarding the stone chimney at the bottom of their rocky defile. It is as a “rocky defile” that he thinks of the tundra-hole in whose wall his pups were playing. To him the stones below led into a sewer pipe.

  But Rachel? She says, “See what we have? Enough for all of us.”

  She was referring to the water droplets which was the steam’s condensation on the facings above the ledge, water to quench five thirsty throats. And, moistened by the water, there sprouts a green shrub through a crevice in the rock. And, smiling on the slender branches of the shrub, there dark purple berries hung in the shapes of tiny apples. And all over the snouts of her three children are smears of purple juice.

  What can Ferric do but streak south into the northern forests and watch for the dangers that love persuades him must lie in wait to endanger his family?

  Forth and back. Forth and back—and, once before he dashes away, Rachel nuzzles him and says, “O Ferric, my unquiet defender. I pray that your son and your daughters live more tempered lives than yours.”

  But Rachel does not know what Ferric knows: that there are bad Creatures skulking throug the forest!

  A White Wolf roams the frozen bracken.

  Ferric hides and watches.

  It could be that someone of mor
e bulk and bravery might consider taunting the Wolf, maybe challenging the Wolf. But the Coyote’s backbone is as thin as a zipper. His coat is rusty red, his cheeks retracted in a baleful grin, his black gums evident.

  This Wolf foots the ground with stiff-legged threatfulness. He lifts his nose to the vagrant breezes. (Hide downwind, Ferric!) His white eyes flick the forest quicker than lightning. (See and not be seen, Coyote!)

  For the love of his family, Ferric heaps courage upon courage and follows the White Wolf where he goes.

  Forth and back. Then comes the night when the Wolf sits on his haunches in a small clearing, points his muzzle heavenward, narrows his slant eyes, rounds his lips, and howls.

  Ferric’s hot blood freezes.

  The great White Wolf wails a long, long note. That note ascends by several harmonics until it finds a higher pitch.

  The Coyote hides, his skinny butt bunched like a carving. Retreat is impossible. He grits his teeth.

  Then the Wolf’s ululation falls by a slow yodel into silence. Ferric too knows how to howl. He hears in this one an enticing invitation. Suddenly it breaks off. The Wolf stands up, his ears like cups turned to listening.

  Another howl, a second howl, now echoes in the distance. Two howls. Two Wolves! Merciful heavens, must Ferric hide from a pair of Wolves? The Coyote’s instincts battle inside his spirit. Run from the danger. Stay close to witness the danger.

  The White Wolf raises his tail. He paws the ground in anticipation. Then, out of the trees and into the clearing a Black Wolf arrives, her eyes shining like red fires in small lanterns. The Black Wolf walks to the White, grovels before him, and looks up into the face of the White Wolf, who lays the wrist of his forelegs across the other’s neck, receiving her companionship. Both Wolves wag their tails. They nuzzle each other, making strange, squeaking sounds. Joy. This is a Wolvish joy. What does Ferric know of joy? The Black Wolf greets the White Wolf: “Boreas.” The White Wolf answers, “Nota,” and they begin to frisk like children.

  Ferric searches his soul and finds two advantages. The predators do not know that he knows them. And he knows their names, but they don’t know his. Knowing a name grant one some little power—if he has the fortitude to call that name aloud.