The War for the Lot

by Sterling Lanier

  Of course, the next question was obvious. Why? And the boy asked it, without realizing how hard such a question is to ask with pictures. But he did it without even thinking and actually, as he later learned, very rudely by showing Scratch and Stuffer fighting. Then he showed them sitting side by side in a "question" picture.

  But the two simply would not, or could not, tell him the answer. They did tell him something else.

  "Can you get out at night?" said Scratch, resting a long-clawed front paw on Alec's knee. "Can you come out to the wood and see us here tonight? It's very important. We have to see you, but we can't tell you why right now."

  The big raccoon's black eyes seemed to implore the boy to say yes.

  Alec stiffened in dismay at the question. The thought of where he should be that night, secure in the big sleigh bed, brought back the human world he had left. Go out at night? Leave the house, come down here to the dark wood alone, in the pitch black?

  "Don't be scared," said the woodchuck. "We'll meet you. There is nothing to be frightened of in the dark. All of us will watch you and guide you."

  "Yes," Scratch said. "There is nothing to fear. We need you badly. To help us. But we must see you at night. You can rest in the afternoon, and then you won't need to sleep tonight. But you simply must come. We two will wait near the house, and the minute you get close, we'll be beside you. There's nothing wrong with being out at night."

  Alec relaxed a bit as he stared at the two earnest and pleading faces. He was both frightened and attracted at the same time. It was nice to know that he was needed, for whatever it was. His sneaker scuffed a clump of small pink mushrooms idly, and Stuffer promptly leaned over and gathered them up with his small front paws. He began to eat them in gulps and the sight of the bulging cheek pouches and busy face made Alec laugh.

  Scratch was quick to note the change in his manner. "You'll come, won't you?" he said, anxious to take advantage of the boy's happier mood. "It's terribly important!" His whole body quivered and the ringtail fluffed up like a round brush. "You will, won't you?"

  "I think so," said Alec slowly. "I'm not supposed to go out at night, and I'm sure I'm not supposed to come down here. Suppose someone hears me?" He was so wrapped up in what he was saying that he never realized that he had passed the last "language" test. He was now "talking" to the two animals almost as freely, if not quite as quickly, as they were to him.

  "You must be quiet, that's all," grumbled the woodchuck. "Can't you go quietly down from where you sleep, like one of us?"

  "Everything will be ruined if the big humans find out," added Scratch. "We can't talk to them. You're the first human any of us has talked to in—in well—in so long a time we've almost forgotten how. Once there were people here, not like you, with different colored skin, and they talked to us. But only a few of us remembered this and it was many, many lives ago." He did not say "years ago", but Alec understood him. Alec also understood what was said about the long-vanished Indians, better even than the two animals did, for of course he knew more.

  A sudden interruption brought all three to rigid attention. Down the wind, and over the forest noises came a wailing call, the sound of a human voice. "Alec, A-a-a-lec! Lunch ti-i-i-ime!" Even at that distance, it was readily identifiable to the boy as a summons from Lou.

  "I have to go," he said quickly. "But I'll try to come tonight. But I don't know how, or when I can sneak out."

  "We'll wait in the apple orchard," messaged Scratch, and Stuffer mumbled agreement. "We'll wait all night if we have to. But if you can, come as soon as it's dark."

  Alec was already running up the path as the last words came through. He stopped at the turn and looked back. The two animals sat up on their hind legs, staring after him. Something imploring in their manner touched his heart. Mentally, he vowed that he would get out that night, somehow.

  He ran on, panting a little, and soon burst out of the edge of the woods and into the open pasture.

  Up at the edge of the last fruit trees he saw Lou, who waved at the sight of him, and he was suddenly conscious of being both tired and very hungry.

  Behind him, the forest lay silent, even the bird voices hushed in the heat of noon.

  Chapter Three

  FROM HIS open window, Alec could just see the brow of the hill behind the house and the upper pasture outlined in the sunset's afterglow. A few scattered dwarf cedars, one of the few that will grow on worn-out New England soil, stood in black clumps in the field, their feet already hidden in the shadows of oncoming night.

  From deep in the distant wood there came faintly the liquid notes of a veery, the loveliest singer and shyest of all the forest-haunting thrushes. Aside from scattered bird voices and the buzz of insects, the stillness of late evening lay on the softened landscape.

  Earlier, Lou Darden had not scolded him for dawdling in the woods and being late for lunch. She had seemed rather to be pleased that he had enjoyed himself, and had asked many questions about what he had seen. She had made it quite plain that she wanted to know if he had been frightened again, or had had any strange encounter such as that of the previous day.

  Alec did not like to lie and was strongly tempted to tell her all that had happened, but he remembered, just in time, that he would have to tell her also what his plans for the evening were, and he knew very well what her answer to that would be! And so he had given a totally fictitious account of how he had spent the morning unsuccessfully trying to catch small fish in Bound Brook. This seemed to satisfy her, and she asked no more questions.

  Alec had eaten two huge cheese sandwiches, a bowl of soup, a glass of milk and a piece of apple pie; and then he had gone quietly upstairs and lain down, for he was quite tired. Lou was not in the least suspicious and later told Darden that she thought the fresh air was doing wonders for the boy, but that he needed more rest.

  Alec spent the afternoon out of sight of the house, simply continuing his rest in the shade of a dogwood tree on the edge of the orchard, not seeing either Darden or his wife. He had loafed the long afternoon away, occasionally rousing enough to hear the sound of John's hoe in the garden lower down on the hill. Once he had wakened sharply to find a soft, warm body pressed against him, but realized immediately that it was only Worthless, who had sought him out to use as a pillow.

  Struck by an idea, he had tried for some minutes to communicate mentally with the big cat, but had got absolutely nowhere. The fat, whiskered face and great yellow eyes stared blankly back at him, and gave no sign of either interest or response. In fact, after a moment or two, Worthless fell asleep and even his deep, rumbling purr ceased entirely.

  This actually did not surprise the boy. It seemed plain to him that only wild animals, and perhaps not all of them, possessed the ability to talk. He simply accepted this fact without question. Worthless couldn't talk and there it was: a simple matter, nothing to get upset about.

  The warm afternoon had lazed on and so had Alec, in a pleasant dreamy state halfway between sleeping and waking. His plans were all made and it was only a matter of passing the time. He knew that he needed rest. He tried, not unsuccessfully, to keep his thoughts away from the night ahead, and although it was hard, he got through the afternoon somehow.

  He ate with his grandfather by request, since the old gentleman was hungry earlier than usual. They had a very good time. The Professor possessed reams of information on a thousand subjects and sometimes forgot, during a long speech about something or other, that he was not addressing a learned audience or arguing with a former university colleague. This suited Alec perfectly, since he could merely listen and extract fascinating words and not really have to answer at all. That evening, he had learned that something called "caltrops", devices apparently made for hurting horses, were a much underrated weapon in the Middle Ages. Also, that a good deal of field work was needed to solve the very real problem of the "Irish dispersal to Iceland". And finally, that Richard the Lionheart (one person Alec had actually heard of before) was a bad man and a ba
d king, worse perhaps even than his brother, King John, whom everyone thought so evil ...

  But now here Alec was, waiting for the last light to die and dark night to come. The stars were out and the full moon had appeared. The frogs in the distant swamp had begun to call, and a few more insect buzzings hummed in the air as night drew on. Alec sniffed a clump of honeysuckle blossoms which peeped over the sill and tried to see if he could spot any trace of light still left in the sky. It was ten o'clock by the chimes of the hall clock.

  "Are you ready?" said a voice in his mind. He almost fell off the window ledge as he bounced erect and jumped back. He could see nobody.

  "I'm on the vine," said the voice. "Don't be afraid, Watcher, I've come to take you outside to the others." It was a new voice, one he had never heard, he realized at once. It conveyed a touch of lightness and delicacy, of someone quick and dancing. And something else, too. As he fought to make his heart stop pounding and get his breath back, he realized that it was this difference which startled him the most. The raccoon and the woodchuck had been so clearly male that the first female animal voice in his mind was a real shock. Why, this was a lady!

  As he stared at the window, something very small moved there, and he realized that he had been looking right at it for several seconds, but missing it because of its size.

  "Call me Whisperfoot," said the voice, and as the boy moved slowly forward, the tiny creature came out further from the vine and sat looking at him. It was a mouse.

  For some seconds, the two stared at each other without speaking. Whisperfoot was a white-footed, or woodland, deermouse. She had a snow-white belly, legs and feet, while the rest of her was a warm reddish-brown color, save for the large, pink shell-like ears and the long tail. She looked incredibly neat and tidy, and gave Alec an instant feeling that his hair wasn't combed, or his face washed.

  "Well," said her tinkling mind-voice at length, "are you scared of me?" There was just a hint of laughter in the voice and Alec blushed as he caught it.

  "Hello," he said slowly. "Did you say I was coming with you? I don't think I can, climbing down that vine. I'd fall."

  Again there was a hint of elfin laughter in her voice. "No, we didn't think you could climb that well. I'm going with you. That is," she added demurely, "if you don't mind carrying me. I can ride on your shoulder and tell you where to go."

  Alec considered. He could creep downstairs, carrying his wee guest, and go out the side door in the library, which he had carefully left unlatched that afternoon. And now that he would have a companion, the whole trip no longer seemed so frightening.

  "Okay," he said. "I guess I'm ready if you are." He came closer and gently laid his hand on the window sill. Quick as a flash, Whisperfoot was up his arm and onto his shoulder. She was so light that he could hardly feel her tiny feet through the cloth of the T-shirt.

  Scratch had decided to leave nothing to chance in his scheme to get Alec out to the wood. The wise raccoon had sensed the boy's fear. Knowing that an animal the size of a mouse could hardly be a fright to anyone, he had issued a call for volunteers to some of his small allies, and the young deermouse, only a half-year old and with no family, had bravely said that she would go.

  The whole idea had worked exactly as Scratch had hoped. Alec felt heartened and he also felt protective. He realized that it was a tremendously heroic thing for such a little creature to place herself at the mercy of a strange human giant a hundred times her size, who could crush her by a mere wave of one hand. He resolved that she would not regret coming to him.

  "I'll take my spade," he said to her. "Then if anything bothers us, I'll whack him over the head!"

  "Don't do that," she answered. "The other animals might be afraid of it. And no one will bother us, unless it's that yellow cat you humans keep here. And he's so stupid and slow a blind beetle could get away from him. You can hear him breathing a mile away, he's so fat," she added contemptuously.

  Alec was amused at the description of poor Worthless, for he saw that to a wild, free creature, the bulky tomcat would probably look pretty funny.

  "All right," he answered. "Shall we go?"

  "Yes, let's hurry. There's a lot to do tonight and we have to go down deep into the wood where all the others are waiting at the Council Glade."

  Alec felt a return of uneasiness when she said "deep into the wood" and "all the others", but he fought it down gamely. After all, he had done a lot of thinking since the morning, and it was plain that Scratch and Stuffer had not just been speaking for themselves, but for a lot of other animals as well. Whisperfoot's presence on his shoulder was a clear proof of that.

  He tiptoed over and opened his bedroom door. Whisperfoot thought he was terribly noisy, but then no wild creature thinks a human is properly quiet. Actually, Alec made very little sound (he had tied two knots in each of his sneakers earlier, to prevent loose shoelaces) and he passed into the long upper hall like a shadow.

  Down the hall from the Dardens' sitting room came the faint sound of a television set in action, an occasional popping noise indicating that Western badmen and heroic marshals were conducting their nightly gun duels for Lou and John's benefit.

  The hall was dark except for a thin line of light under the Dardens' door. The hall windows, opening on the outside of the house, were merely patches a lighter shade of gray than the rest of the wall. The entrance to the front stairwell loomed like a black pit just in front of them. No noise or light were apparent from the ground floor.

  Silently, Alec padded to the head of the stairs and started down. A pinch of claws on his shoulder told him that the mouse was not quite as brave as she had made out to be.

  Halfway down the stairs, on the landing where they turned, he stopped and listened, all of his senses alert. He could see the library door, slightly ajar, with no light behind it, and at the sight he realized that he had completely forgotten his grandfather in his calculations. Where was the old gentleman? Asleep in his chair in the library? Wandering around the house? Outside, having a walk in the cool night air? Alec's heart almost stopped as he wondered what to do.

  "What's the matter?" came the crystal mind voice of his companion. "Why are you scared again?"

  "It's my grandfather," said Alec, feeling miserable. "I forgot to figure out where he'd be. If he catches me, I'll never get out."

  "Hmm," said the mouse thoughtfully. "Is that the old human with the white fur on his head? If it is, you need better ears, Watcher. He won't bother us. Listen!"

  A long muffled snore, which Alec had been hearing without even realizing it ever since he had left his bedroom, echoed clearly down the upper hall from the master suite occupied by the Professor. Having eaten early, he had probably decided to retire early as well.

  Alec stole down the rest of the stairs and into the library, shutting the door gently behind him. He wondered for a second when he would get back, then headed for the French doors opening onto the side lawn.

  As he eased one of the doors open, the fresh, scented air of the summer night cooled his face. He took a deep breath and then walked out of the house and stood for a moment under the stars.

  "Whew!" said Whisperfoot in relief. "Now we're safe, with nothing to worry about." Alec realized for the second time that she had been really terrified inside the house, and again he appreciated how brave she had been.

  "I'll look after you," he said. "Don't worry. I can punch anyone on the jaw who bothers us."

  "No one needs to look after me," she said somewhat crossly. "I'm just glad to be away from all those nasty smells. I don't see how you humans live with them. I thought I'd choke before I got out."

  "But we have mice in the house already," said Alec without thinking.

  "Mice, indeed!" came back the angry answer. "Those dirty little things? They don't even come from around here. They followed you humans from some horrid place over the big salt water, and all they can do is live in your houses and steal your leftover food. And the dirt they live in!" Her thoughts expressed the
dislike that a wild leopard might feel for a poor alley cat, covered with mange. It was a contempt mixed with pity and a little sorrow, that an animal could so lower itself as to both be dirty and deliberately live with humans. To an untamed woods animal, always spotlessly clean and living on freshly-gathered food, the humble likes of a house mouse seemed beneath contempt.

  "Come on, Watcher," she said, as Alec still stood by the wall of the house. "We have a long way to go. The others are waiting out under the last apple tree."

  Reluctantly, the boy moved away from the building and out across the lawn. He crouched a little and quickened his pace as he left the house, finally breaking into a run as he headed for the nearest trees in the orchard. He felt that numerous eyes were peering out of the night, all directed at the center of his back.

  Once under the shadow of the first big Seckel pear tree, he stopped, his heart pounding with the sudden excitement.

  "Why are you stopping?" came the mouse's voice.

  "Come on, now, hurry up, or we'll be late. Straight ahead, out to the edge of the orchard and that last big tree."

  His white shirt showing momentarily as he dashed from tree to tree, Alec worked his way out in the direction Whisperfoot had indicated. Finally, one lone tree, a giant aged apple tree, its outer branches sweeping the ground, lay before them. His sight by now perfectly attuned to the dappled moonlight, the boy stared around him from the shade of another tree. The starlight made fine details hard to pick out, but he could see clearly the slope of the meadow and the way it fell toward the old wall. Black and grim a quarter of a mile away, the forest reared like some impenetrable wall a shade darker than the night sky, the tops of the trees barely outlined against the stars.

  The scent of clover and other meadow flowers mingled with the pungent odor of wild onion in Alec's nose. Wet grass, soaked with early dew, brushed his knees. He unconsciously quieted his breathing and tried also to stop his heart from pounding. He knew that once he had crossed the patch of pale meadow to the last tree, that there would be no going back.