Ragweed

by Avi

  “What have you done with my darling mouse!”

  Silversides woke with a start. It was morning. The girl was holding her in midair by the scruff of the neck. Her face was angry and streaked with tears.

  “You naughty thing!” the girl shouted at Silversides. “You’ve done something horrible to my sweet Blinker. I know you have. Where is he?” she demanded.

  Silversides, dangling helplessly in the girl’s grip, stared with wrath at the human. Human faces were generally repulsive to Silversides—so utterly hairless, so emotional, so without dignity. There was no way the white cat was going to tell the girl anything.

  “What did you do?” the girl raged on. “Tell me!”

  It was all that Silversides—who wished she had done something to Blinker—could do to keep from hissing at the girl.

  “You must find him,” the girl demanded shrilly, “even if it’s only his poor, broken body. Bring him to me. Do you understand, you naughty cat? I want him home dead or alive, or you are not welcome here anymore!

  “Oh, you are so stupid!” the girl cried when Silversides refused to respond, not so much as a meow.

  “You wretched cat!” The girl burst into tears. “Don’t you dare come back unless you bring Blinker!” She flung Silversides into the backyard and slammed the door shut.

  Silversides stared at the house. Her bitterness was as deep as it was intense. She looked about. It was early morning. A slight breeze was blowing from the west. She lifted her nose and sniffed deeply. Amid the countless smells she could just detect Blinker’s scent. She tried to untangle his odor from the others. When it came it was like one thread pulled from a knotted ball of twine.

  It was enough. She would be able to follow the white mouse’s trail and find him. When she caught up with him she would kill him and bring his mangled body back just as the girl had asked her to. Then she’d search out that golden mouse and the green-headed one and deal with them, too.

  Nose to the ground, Silversides began to follow Blinker’s faint but unmistakable trail.

  CHAPTER 13

  Ragweed Wanders

  THOUGH RAGWEED WOKE UP in the old bus quite early, Windshield was already working hard on his painting. The stout mouse, lost in thought, spent long periods of time staring at his work. During these times he hardly moved except to glance at his caps of paint, then back at his work. It was as if he were painting the picture in his mind. Then he would burst into a fury of activity, dipping his tail into first one bottle cap, then another, all but throwing the paint onto the picture with wild abandon.

  Not too long afterward, Dipstick and Lugnut appeared. Clutch was roused from her sleep to greet them.

  The three members of the Be-Flat Tires embraced warmly. “Hey, dudes,” Clutch cried. “You made it. Far out. Cool. Killer cool.”

  “I’m glad to be alive,” Dipstick said. “I mean, those cats turned off, like, twenty dudes.”

  “Oh, mouse,” Clutch cried. “Totally nasty.”

  “And the club’s wasted. Knocked out of town. What was ain’t no more.”

  “Lost my bass,” Lugnut added in his sleepy way. “Dipstick lost his drums. What about your guitar?”

  “Blew apart on Silversides’s nose,” Clutch said. “My deck, too.” She told her friends how Ragweed used her skateboard to save her.

  “Awesome, dude,” they both murmured. Considering Ragweed with new respect, both put up their paws to slap. Ragweed was pleased.

  “But, bummer, dudes,” Dipstick said, “now we’ve got no place to play.”

  The band members looked at one another and nodded sadly. “Awesome ugly,” Lugnut said.

  “Way down,” Dipstick agreed.

  There was a moment of silence. Then Clutch brightened. “Hey, dudes, how about some chow?”

  “Yo, mouse,” Lugnut agreed. “I could eat a cat.” The three mice went looking for food. Ragweed held back. He had the feeling he was intruding, that the three band members needed to be together without him.

  He was still hesitating when Windshield came up to his side. “Wonderful how the band stays together, isn’t it?” the artist said enthusiastically, nodding in the direction of the trio. “As I see it, young mouse,” he went on, “it represents a whole new trend! Mice sticking together in the face of . . . That reminds me . . .” He rushed back to his painting.

  Ragweed wandered about the dilapidated bus. When he came upon Clutch’s mother, Foglight appeared not to have moved since he first had seen her. She was still hunched over her work, her writing stick chewed to a nub.

  She looked up at Ragweed, puzzlement in her eyes. “Are you a friend of Clutch’s?” she asked.

  “Well, like, actually, yes,” Ragweed replied. “I came yesterday and . . . you and I were introduced.”

  “Clutch has so many friends,” Foglight said, though there was no recognition in her eyes. “Do you know a good word for brave?”

  “Fearless?” Ragweed said gravely.

  “That’ll be the day,” Foglight murmured and went back to pondering her writing.

  Feeling completely at sixes and sevens, Ragweed returned to where the three mice were eating and talking. “Hey, dudes, I think I’ll go.”

  “Catch you at my pad,” Clutch called after him.

  Ragweed, who gladly would have changed his plans if his new friend had asked him to join the threesome, gave a casual wave and made his way out of the nest.

  Once outside, he squinted at the bright sun. He had almost forgotten about daylight. The thought brought an unexpected wave of homesickness. At the Brook, one was always aware of the time of day. In the city, apparently, daylight came as a surprise. “It is different here,” Ragweed murmured to himself without much enthusiasm.

  With no particular desire to return to Clutch’s place without her, he crept along the sidewalks, keeping close to the bases of walls and old human nests. From time to time he would dart forward, pause, and sit up to look about, mainly checking for cats. Seeing none, he continued on, heading no place in particular, just wandering aimlessly.

  The size of the human nests awed him. They appeared to him almost as big as the sky. When cars tore by, emitting smoke, fumes, and noise, he was terribly frightened. Clearly, such contraptions were to be avoided at all costs. But there were so many of them.

  From time to time Ragweed saw humans, too. Though also huge, they generally paid no attention to him. There were moments when Ragweed wondered if they even saw him. But when a human finally did notice him, the person stopped, uttered something like a gasp, and moved around Ragweed in a wide circle.

  “This city certainly doesn’t like mice,” Ragweed murmured to himself.

  Still, what did impress him about the city was the endless variety of things to be seen. The range of color was extraordinary, rather like one of Windshield’s paintings—shapes and colors that were endlessly fascinating. Equally engrossing to him was the angularity of everything. In the country, one rarely saw a straight line. Even the tallest, straightest tree had some curve to it. In the city, you had to search for a curve, though you could of course find them.

  As for the smells, they were infinitely varied. Some were pleasing, others not. Most simply hung in the air. Ragweed suspected it would take a lifetime to sort through them all.

  It was also hard to determine where city noises came from. They were nothing like the quiet rustling of the country. More like the music of the Be-Flat Tires.

  As Ragweed continued to wander he heard a sound that seemed familiar. It took him a moment to recognize the train whistle. It came to him like the call of an old friend. In his meandering he had drawn close to the railroad.

  He reached the end of the block. The railroad tracks were just across the way. Clutch’s car stood on the far corner. He could even see her entryway.

  Ragweed faced his choices: to board the train out of Amperville or to wait for his new friend to return.

  He thought again about the death of so many mice and the destruction of the Ch
eese Squeeze Club. With a sigh he had to admit there was every reason for the mice to be discouraged. Struggling against F.E.A.R. just didn’t seem worth it. “I mean, like, maybe that’s what city life is about,” he told himself. But if he left, didn’t he owe it to Clutch to at least explain why he was leaving?

  “Stop making excuses,” he told himself. “Go while you still have the chance. Face it, dude, city life isn’t for you.”

  As Ragweed moved closer to the tracks, he noted the pile of junk where he had hidden from Silversides upon his arrival. Though he knew it was not the sweetest-smelling of places, he decided he could hide there safely, at least until a train came by.

  A quick dart took him deep within the pile. “Phew!” he murmured. “Totally stinky.” Detouring around some old cans, he found a high, dry perch that provided an unobstructed view of the train tracks.

  “Which direction should I go?” Ragweed mused. After some reflection he decided he would leave that decision to fate. He would hop the first train that came from either direction.

  “Except, no way I’m going back home to the Brook,” he promised himself. “Not yet. Wouldn’t be cool.”

  So resolved, Ragweed squatted down, fixed his gaze upon the tracks, and prepared to wait for as long as it took for the train to show up.

  He had been there for some time when his eyes began to wander. Only then did he see that not far from where he was, near the heap of dirty-white clay chunks, Silversides was crouching. “Oh, bummer,” Ragweed groaned. “It’s her again. What’s she doing here?”

  Moving carefully so the cat would not notice him, Ragweed edged himself higher on the pile in order to get a better view.

  It was then that he saw what held Silversides’s rapt attention. On the mound of white clay, some eight feet from where the cat crouched, a mouse was perched. To Ragweed’s amazement the mouse was entirely white.

  Ragweed had never heard of, much less seen, a completely white mouse before. His first thought was that he was seeing a ghost. He stared at this mouse intently to reassure himself that the mouse was in fact real. Moreover, not only was it real, it was very frightened.

  Ragweed’s speculations were interrupted by the sound of a whistle. A train was coming.

  “Bummer! All I want to do is get out of here,” Ragweed reminded himself. “Nothing but weird cats chasing weird mice. Too much. No way do I mess with this dude Silversides again.”

  Even so, Ragweed could not take his eyes from the scene. The cat was creeping closer and closer to the white mouse. For his part, the white mouse kept poking his head up, then ducking down into a hiding place. It dawned on Ragweed that the mouse was not aware of Silversides.

  “Hey, dude,” Ragweed murmured under his breath, “unless you do something fast you are, like, going to be a ghost for sure.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Ragweed Makes Up His Mind

  AS THE TRAIN WHISTLE grew louder, Silversides continued to creep forward, drawing ever nearer to the white mouse.

  Horrified by what was unfolding before his eyes, but not knowing what to do, Ragweed rose up on his hind legs. Silversides was too intent on the other mouse to notice him.

  The huge train—headlamp flashing, bells ringing, motors roaring—swept into view. Every few seconds the whistle blew its lonely tune of mournful wandering. Ragweed could see nothing but boxcars, many of which had their doors open.

  The train moved slower and slower until, just as it had done when Ragweed was aboard, it lurched to a banging stop. Boarding would be easy.

  A deep longing came over Ragweed. He wanted to be home. He had been a fool to leave. Instead of hiding in the midst of garbage, he could be frolicking in the clear, bright Brook with his brothers and sisters. What was Amperville to him? Nothing but dirt, danger, endless talk, and F.E.A.R.

  He glanced toward the mound of clay. The white mouse was still oblivious to what was about to happen to him.

  “Hey, dude,” Ragweed said, talking to himself, “like, that’s his lookout. I mean, I’m out of here.” Though he said the words, he remained where he was and kept his eyes on the scene before him.

  Forcing himself to turn from what surely was going to be a scene of carnage, Ragweed darted toward the train. Halfway there he halted and looked back.

  Silversides was crouched low. Her rump was wiggling. Her rear legs were tensed. She was preparing to pounce.

  Ragweed’s stomach churned. His pulse quickened. It was all too ghastly. Once more he began to move toward the train before stopping again. Could he just go and leave this strange white mouse to its terrible fate? “No,” he said aloud, “I can’t do it. It’s too awful. Like, if I don’t try to do something for that mouse I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

  Glancing around, he saw that he had reached a spot that might enable him to distract the cat, yet still get to the train.

  Rising up tall, Ragweed cupped his paws around his mouth and shouted, “Hey, dudes! Like, what’s up?”

  Startled, Blinker looked around. Then and only then did he see Silversides. Taken by surprise, he was terrified.

  Silversides was equally startled by Ragweed. Her head snapped up and she looked about to see who had called.

  “I’m right here, dude,” Ragweed taunted, stealing a nervous glance over his shoulder to make sure his path to the train remained clear. “Remember me? The one who got away from you when I first came to town. The one who, like, popped Clutch’s deck into your mouth. Remember? Yah, yah, you can’t catch me!” he jeered.

  Silversides suddenly seemed to understand who was calling her. Abandoning her pursuit of the white mouse, she started to move toward Ragweed.

  “Hey, whitey,” Ragweed shouted to the mouse. “Now’s your chance! Run for it!”

  Blinker, however, was too frightened to do anything other than blink and gape.

  Not so Silversides. She leaped toward Ragweed.

  Ragweed was ready. The instant he saw the cat coming, he spun around and dashed for the train. Even as he did, there was a sudden progression of loud bangs as mechanical couplings went taut. The train began to roll away.

  Unnerved, Ragweed made a desperate leap in hopes he could grab hold of a dangling coupling hose. Not only did he fall short, but the train increased its speed so rapidly he was afraid to make a second attempt. He might be crushed by the steel wheels. He had missed the train.

  Hearing a sound behind him, he whirled just in time to see Silversides barreling down at him, yellow eyes ablaze with wrath, sequined collar glittering, pink mouth and sharp white teeth fully exposed.

  “Bummer!” Ragweed cried. “She’s got me!”

  Silversides took a giant leap through the air.

  As the cat plunged down, Ragweed dove beneath her. His size and speed enabled him to slip under the cat, but so close did they come that Ragweed felt the cat’s belly fur rub along his own back. No matter. By the time Silversides landed, Ragweed not only had passed her but was racing madly toward the white pile.

  When Silversides landed, she was completely confused as to where the golden mouse had gone. She looked now this way, now that. She finally glanced behind her and caught sight of Ragweed racing away. With a yowl, she spun on the spot and tore after him.

  Ragweed was aiming for the white mouse. Blinker, who had observed everything that had happened with little more than numb comprehension, saw Ragweed coming.

  “Head for the junk pile, dude!” Ragweed screamed.

  All that Blinker could manage was to open his eyes wide.

  Ragweed reached him. Without ceremony, he grabbed one of Blinker’s paws and yanked, spinning the petrified mouse around. “If you want to live, mouse,” Ragweed yelled, “hit it!”

  The mouse, shocked into motion, scrambled after Ragweed.

  Coming right behind and gaining quickly was Silversides.

  “Faster!” Ragweed cried. “Faster!” It took Ragweed seven running leaps to reach the pile. With no hesitation, he plunged into the stinking garbage, clawin
g desperately beneath the surface until he sank knee-deep into the trash. Turning, he saw he was safe, but the white mouse was struggling. Ragweed grabbed one of Blinker’s paws and dragged him to his side.

  From outside the pile, they heard Silversides yowling with frustration.

  “We’re safe,” Ragweed replied. “For a while.”

  The white mouse was weak to the point of collapse. “Thank . . . you. You saved my life. I . . . had . . . no idea. Who . . . are you?” he asked.

  “The name’s Ragweed, dude. Like, what’s yours?”

  “Blinker.”

  “Cool.”

  Blinker looked around at the garbage. “Is . . . this your nest?” he asked.

  “This dump? No way, dude. Actually, I don’t even live in this town. Like, I’m just passing through. Where are you from?”

  “I . . . I live in the nest where . . . Silversides lives.”

  Ragweed was taken aback. “Her nest?”

  Blinker nodded mournfully.

  “Are you friends?”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” Blinker assured Ragweed. “On the contrary.”

  “Were you, like, running away from her?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Blinker said with a sigh.

  Ragweed gazed at Blinker. This was one odd mouse. “Stay here, and chill,” he said. “I’ll go see what’s happening with the cat. We don’t want to be surprised. Then you can tell me your story.”

  “You won’t leave me, will you?” Blinker cried.

  “Hey, trust me.”

  Ragweed pushed his way up through the junk. He poked his head out of the top of the heap and surveyed the scene.

  Silversides was sitting a few feet off, angry eyes fixed on the pile of garbage.

  Ragweed returned to Blinker. “I think she’s going to try and wait us out. So we need to chill out for a while. You cool?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Okay, go ahead,” Ragweed said. “You were about to tell me your story.”

  “It’s not very interesting.”