The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

  The gross, lifeless corpse of Monstrous Hatred was decaying. It was the gasses of his corruption and the oils thereof that were boiling up through fissures in the mantel of the earth, through nozzles in the sea’s bed. The corrupt gasses seethed, and gouts of bitumen lay on the waters.

  Et ambulabo in latitudine.

  And I will walk in liberty.

  The kiss may have killed the Serpent. But his cunning mind lived on, causing the ocean to talk.

  There is an ancient prophecy:

  Should ever the Animals fail and their species perish, God would repeople the earth by weeping. His tears would fall from heaven and pot the dry clay, raising dust-puffs where they hit. Every one of God’s tears would moisten its spot of clay, turning dirt into a red daub, and every daub into a new race of two-legged beings.

  Which is to say, God would try again.

  [Seventeen] In Which the Weasel Reaches the Boreal Forests

  By now John Wesley Weasel thinks he is nearing the end of his assignment, because the populations have thinned and he has traveled miles without meeting another hungry tummy.

  A one-eared Creature can sometimes miscalculate the direction from which a sound is coming. A body needs two ears to find its distant source. To John Wesley most noises seem to come from one side of him. Therefore he has to adjust by spinning in circles.

  Now, as he is spinning in circles in the gloaming of the forest, several Creatures have set up a howling—remote and barely audible. Could be six or seven Creatures, by their awful harmonies. Wolves. It causes him sadness, for they are singing elegies.

  Heartbreak lends speed to his legs. John dashes around pine trees, over ridges, and through jumbles of fallen logs. He tracks the spoor of one Wolf. The howling reduces to yaps and mewings, then, suddenly, all the voices fall silent. The silence feels premonitory.

  Then John surprises himself by bounding out of the forest and into a clearing. He pulls up in front three Wolves. They sensed the Weasel’s approach and meet him now stiff-legged and war, rigid, their heads lowered, their snouts wrinkled, their upper lips curled back showing their fangs.

  But John Double-u (that mighty warrior) is equal to any situation.

  “Wolfies saved!” he announces. “John, he brings good news. Is food, Wolfies!”

  Whoa! Three Wolves can sound like a whole chorus?

  There is a White Wolf whose eyes are white, their pupils round, black pits. And Black Wolf with red eyes, and a Brown Wolf, yellow-eyed.

  The White Wolf gathers his feet and lunges.

  The Weasel hip-hops sideways, so the Wolf comes down on the tip of the Weasel’s tail, which loses a hank of fur.

  “Hey! Double-u’s is not for biting! Isn’t eatables. Not ‘gestables neither. But John, he can say where eatables is.”

  The Weasel has flash-quick eyes. When the White Wolf made his lunge, John saw a fourth Wolf lying loose and dead behind the other two.

  “Oh,” he whispers. “Oh, Wolfies. John, he knows—” knows why they were howling elegies.

  Perhaps it is his genuine compassion that shootes the White Wolf’s aggression.

  John moves mournfully toward the dead Creature. He pats her great head and sniffs a dribble back into nose.

  “What,” he says, “is dead Wolfie’s name?”

  The Black Wolf answers, “Favonius.”

  It is Lord Chauntecleer who knows the Crows for funerals and the prayers that lighten every darkness. John has never had the gall to sing them himself. But situations force impossibilities.

  Whether or not he has the right, whether or not God would accept a Double-u’s prayer, he does what he cannot do. John Wesley sings.

  “Lordy God, we begs you

  To bright-light Wolfies’ sadnesses;

  And all nights, all nights long

  Please wipe our poor hurtings away.”

  Ferric Coyote, hiding beneath a Lodge-Pole Pine, weeps when he hears the Weasel’s threnody. Tensions may deny all moods but fear. But this particular kindness moves him.

  Such a brave Creature! He sings to Wolves as if they were family. He teaches them where to find food, and they listen, and they go, and the forest is empty of threat.

  Ferric feels sympathy tickling in one nostril, and he sneezes.

  John says, “What? Is a Who somewhere in there?”

  Ferric freezes hard as rock. He has revealed his hiding place, has given up his advantage.

  Soon he hears a tick-nailed scramble, and the Weasel appears.

  “Well, lookeehere! Is a woody Coyote and a buttable rump high’s a tent.”

  The Weasel crouches and touches Ferric’s nose with his own. He whispers, “Does woody Coyotes sleeps with his eyeballs open?”

  The Weasel puffs at Ferric’s eyes, and Ferric blinks.

  “Hoopla! Is awake! John, he knows wakefulnesses.” He crouches before Ferric’s snout.”Woody Coyote might-be wants food?”

  Ferric heard the Weasel’s promises to the Wolves. And the dangerous Animals believed him. Ferric saw malice drain from their muscles, replaced by need alone.

  Suddenly hiding seems a silly proposition.

  Then John Wesley is indeed at the end of his assignment, for he has come to the bleak, windswept and empty tundra. It is here that he finally permits his weariness to overcome him. He hopes to spend some time sleeping in the Coyotes’ den.

  But a gaggle of little Coyotes rouse him from slumber. Three Coyote-lings. The boy-Coyote wants to play-fight, and displays bravery by his tiny attacks. John Double-u laughs and cuffs the kid and nips him right back.

  Their mother smiles blessings upon their happy scrambling. A pleasant woman, this host who straightway finds in the Weasel a friend.

  Papa Woody-Coyote, he sits on the hard snow above. He gets up and paces, darts there, darts here, sits grimly again, made most unhappy by the noise of cheerfulness and by the dangerous clatter of carelessnesses.

  The boy-pup flies at John, yelling, “Benoni to the rescue!”

  Kid’s name is Benoni.

  “To rescuings?” says John. “Is for rescuings from what?”

  Benoni goes to the ledge in front of the den. He tells the Weasel to look down. At the bottom is a wide throat releasing steam. He tells John about the big stone steps and about the tunnel that goes deep, deep underground.

  “Badness lives down there,” whispers Benoni Coyote. “When I went into that tunnel, Mrs. Bird-friend scared me and mama scolded me.”

  [Eighteen] In Which the Weasel of Good News Returns with More Good News

  In one sense the Hemlock had become an infirmary. The Animals last to arrive had come sick with starvation, their ribs visible under the fur. Pertelote laid them close between the wooly Sheep, and she nursed them with her medicinals.

  A noble Stag arrived bearing his daughter on his back. The Fawn’s eyes had crusted shut. She asked Chalcedony to peck gently the yellow crust until her sight had been restored.

  Slow Moles came.

  Wolves came, but kept their distance.

  The home-Creatures served all of these while Pertelote carried food to that world-rim-walker, the Marten Selkirk.

  In another sense, then, the Hemlock hall was a frugal refectory, for the Mr. and Mrs. Cobbs and the Hens doled out small portions of food. The ice the Animals brought inside melted and satisfied a thousand thirsts.

  What the hall had not become was a charnel house. Absolutely no one died—which salved the wound in Pertelote’s soul, for Chauntecleer may have been Crowing the Canonical Crows, but he often left the burgeoning community to its own devices and the daily business to herself.

  And then another salve bounded into the hall: John Wesley Weasel, bringing with him the joy of a job accomplished.

  “Hilla hilla ho, Lady Hen!”

  “Oh, John. Oh, John, you’re back.”

  “Back with gleefulnesses, on account of, lookee: all John’s friends is here.”

 
Tick-Tock boomed, “Huzzah for a friends!”

  And all his armies shouted, “Huzzah!”

  The Brothers Mice tumbled and pummeled the Weasel’s noggin.

  “Hey! Mices! John’s head, it’s not no punch bag!”

  Skinny Chalcedony smiled.

  Jasper glowered. “Ain’t no one asked Jasper did she want to give up her three squares a day. Ain’t no one gave Jasper a thought.”

  John Wesley whooped, “Gots to see the Rooster! Lady Hen, where’s a Rooster for John to be seeing?”

  Pertelote suffered the moment, then she answered, “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t know where he goes?”

  “South, John. He flies south That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Hoopla!” cried John, and shot from the Hemlock off to the south.

  South and yet farther south, until the Weasel found himself on the ravaged land where the Coop once stood. He rejoiced in the place, and mourned it too, for here had been his martial successes. But here the Wee Widow Mouse had perished.

  South and south, and then John Wesley heard the Whump of a sea wave. It seemed to say, Quem mittam?

  Of course the Weasel knew nothing of the language of the Powers. But he knew his Rooster’s crow when he heard it, and he heard it now: “Mitte me!”

  Off again, racing across the earth-scar.

  And there was the Rooster, soaring golden above the ocean and under the bellies of the clouds, causing them to glow.

  John grinned at the sight. Lord Chauntecleer was riding thermals like an Eagle.

  Chauntecleer heard the waters below say, “Heed me! Your sign, my son, is on the beach.”

  Immediately the Rooster trimmed his flight. He swooped into a wide spiral, scanning the white, salty beach of Wyrmesmere. He saw John Wesley Weasel jumping up and down, throwing his paws up in delight.

  “My gallant chevalier!” Chauntecleer laughed, alighting beside the Weasel. “My messenger gone, and my messenger home again, home from the perils of exploration!”

  Against every tendency in poor John’s character, he sobbed. Oh, the joy of his great Lord’s praise.

  “Ah,” said Chauntecleer, touching a tear. “Even so much do you love me.”

  John nodded. He quickly figured that it was no weakness, here and out of the sight of the Animals, to reveal his affections in such a girlish manner.

  “Weep your weepings,” the Rooster said. “I am nothing if not patient. Purpose has given me patience. But as soon as you can, tell me the message you bring.”

  John Wesley grinned. He swallowed the raw lump in his throat, dredged up his voice, and croaked: “Is a family Coyote what John’s gots to feed. He gots to go back.”

  Chauntecleer paused, frowning.

  “This isn’t what I want to hear.”

  “Is a den farthestmost north, and nothings north of that,” John said. “Woody Coyote, he says, No, no. He won’t come. So John, he gots to go there.”

  Chauntecleer’s frown became baleful. “This,” he said, “is no sign, John Wesley. This is not what I want to hear.”

  The Weasel jabbered faster and faster: “Woody Coyote, he won’t come, on account of, it’s a hole where the den is, and it’s a deep, deep tunnel under that, and little kid Benoni Coyote showed John the tunnel. Little kid Coyote, he tells John what is down there. Says, Wickedness is down there. Wickedness inside the earth.”

  Chauntecleer’s neck snapped straight. He glanced toward the sea. “John!” he crowed a glorious crow. “That’s what I want to hear!”

  Lord Chauntecleer settled on the highest spire of the Hemlock tree.

  “All is well!” he crowed. “And all will be better than well. All my company,I pledge you my oath. All the world shall be cleansed of Hatred, of Evil. I go to execute the heinous Wyrm!”

  All the Animals crowded out of the Hemlock hall and filled the fields beyond.

  Chauntecleer was sunlight.

  Pertelote looked, and grieved.

  “None need worry,” the Rooster declared. “None need follow me. I go to win your salvation. I will select two only to go with me, but neither one to fight with me. They shall be my passage north. John Wesley Weasel, lead me to the tunnel. Black-Pale-On-A-Silver-Field, bear me thither that I might save my strength for the conquest.”

  Unto glory went the Rooster, riding the Stag whose nobility was meant to herald the puissance of this Crusader’s weapons: Gaff, his sharp and shining left spur, and the Slasher, his right.

  Pertelote watched the departure. Her husband rode Black-Pale’s antlers as if he rode a chariot.

  “Wyrm!” She heard his voice as they cantered over the horizon. “Forsake your soul!”

  For the rest of that day Pertelote wandered away from the Hemlock.

  If her grief was evident, if was casting a pall over the company she had deserted, she didn’t know.

  At night she sailed silently her roost.

  No one crowed the Canonical crows.

  At midnight she was moved to sing, though quietly, under her breath:

  “—made love to me so slow and sweetly,

  Singing names, he came discreetly

  Home.

  And I to him gave children after;

  I it was had cried through laughter,

  Come—”

  PART FOUR

  Chauntecleer: When Weal Is Woe

  [Nineteen] ‘I’m Going to Lose Him,’ She Thinks, ‘Too Soon. Too Soon.’

  Benoni Coyote has stopped his life of play and has grown more serious than is natural for one so young.

  His father’s refusal to go with the Weasel (as Benoni himself would gladly have gone) gave the little Coyote pause. The Weasel was a Creature filled with hilarities and good will. Coyotes should trust such a someone—as Ferric seemed to do when he first came. But when the Weasel suggested that Ferric leave the den, Benoni’s papa’s spine went rigid. He crouched in alarm. And now that John Weasel has taken off for the south, Benoni sees an odd collision of feelings in his father. A guilty Coyote, maybe? For not having braved the journey? A troubled Coyote? For not finding food? A desperate Coyote. Benoni’s papa seems to want to protect his family more fiercely than ever before—on account of what?

  Twill and Hopsacking are losing weight. They drink the steam’s water, but the bush has withered, and they have nothing left to eat. Even his mother doesn’t smile. She stays with her daughters inside the den. She tells them tales to distract them. Sometimes one of his sisters will nip at her mother’s cheek, begging for food, and Rachel will try to regurgitate some little something and fail. There was nothing left in his mama’s tummy.

  With a mother’s love she conceals her worries.She ends each tale with a prayer. “Rest, my children. God will bless you, and I’ll be here in the morning.”

  Actually, Rachel is doing more than comforting her daughters. She is watching her son too, and feels his burden. What was the boy-cub thinking these days?

  “I’m going to lose him,” she thinks, “too soon.”

  For he doesn’t tease his sisters anymore. When the plain Brown Bird (whom the children call Auntie) comes to visit, Benoni doesn’t greet her. He seems oblivious of her presence.

  Rachel asks, “Do you think your Auntie is too silly for you?”

  “No’m.”

  “Do your sisters annoy you?”

  “No’m.”

  “What’s happening, Noni?”

  “Nothing.”

  Rachel gazes at his soft, earnest face. “I don’t think that it is nothing. I think you want to grow up before your time.”

  Benoni looks away from his mother’s gaze. “I,” he mumbles. “I have jobs to do.”

  Comes the morning when Rachel hears the sound of a little Coyote gone. She springs from the den.

  “Noni? Benoni?”

  Her immediate fear is that he’s run down the decline again, braving the tunnel and the denizen below.


  “Benoni! You’ll kill yourself down there!”

  The plain Brown Bird flies down and says, “Zicküt!”

  She flutters in front of Rachel. “Zicküt! Zicküt!”

  The boy is not by the portal again.

  “Please,” Rachel cries, “watch my daughters.”

  The icy tundra is grand and deadly. Rachel dashes into the dark interior of the forest.

  “Benoni!”

  Echoes laugh. Ice cracks. A load of crystal crashes to the ground, and Rachel runs headlong.

  “Benoni!”

  As she goes she noses the ground, trying to find her baby’s spoor.

  “Benoni, tell me where you are!”

  She hears a faint wail to her left. She stops and holds still. Again the wail. It sounds so vulnerable. Rachel breaks in that direction. She takes extraordinary leaps over hillocks and across ditches. Quick, efficient arcs around the pine.

  “Mama!”

  Benoni! It’s you!”

  Then here comes her son like a red pellet with serious eyes. They thumps into his mother’s bosom and pushes and pushes as if to crawl inside.

  “Benoni, what is this? Why did you run away?”

  The young Coyote mews in her fur.

  She steps back. “Were you lost?”

  He nods and bursts into tears: “Hoo, hooooo.”

  Oh, how tightly Rachel gathers her son to herself, under her chin, against her breast.

  “Oh, Benoni, I was so afraid for you.”

  Ice slides from the treetops and smashes the ground like bones and glass. Benoni shivers.

  “Why did you run away? Didn’t you know that this is a lonely world?”

  The child beneath her neck says, “Yes’m. I knew.” Gravely he explains, “It’s why I came.”

  She sees her son in her mind: his face-fur standing out like a soft sunburst, his tail no more than a trigger cocked. But he is a deep Coyote.

  “What? To be hurt?”