Rascal

by Sterling North

  On the bank above the swimming hole we came upon the sorrowful sight of a great walnut stump where a giant tree had been standing only a few months before. I had often rested in the shade of that tree, and gathered its nuts in the autumn, staining my hands dark brown with the hulls. Here too I had captured the only Royal Walnut moth in my collection. Now the trunk had been cut for rifle stocks, as had so many walnut trees that season. I found a red “writing stone” in the creek and in big, angry letters printed on the stump: DAMN THE MAN WHO CUT THIS TREE.

  Gradually I forgot my anger, however, as we skirted the marshes and ponds to the north. Never before had I seen so many new muskrat houses—those conical piles of reeds, with underwater entrances, which make such perfect homes for these harmless and interesting fur-bearing rodents. I had raised several muskrat kits and turned them loose in other years. I could never bear to kill and skin those I had reared by hand. Rascal and I sat silently beside a marshy pond where a few mallards and black ducks were tipping and preening. As evening began to fall, the muskrats came quietly from their half-finished houses and began to cut cattails, which they carried in their mouths through the still water to pile upon their homes.

  We wandered happily back to town through the dusk, the flame of the maples muted in the dying light.

  VII: November

  SPANISH influenza, which had swept across Europe and the eastern states, hit Brailsford Junction late in October, killing more of our citizens than died in the war. The schools were closed, and people scurried along the half-deserted streets wearing eerie-looking masks of white gauze. At least one person in four was dangerously ill, with twice that number less seriously affected. Sometimes the disease struck with swift fatality. One ancient couple on the northern edge of town struggled out to their well to get a pail of water. The old man died at the pump, and his wife collapsed beside him, the handle of the bucket still grasped in her stiffening fingers.

  Mine was one of the milder cases. But on this occasion my father seemed concerned. He bundled me in several sweaters and blankets and helped me into the car. I begged to take Rascal with me, and he consented.

  We drove slowly through the increasingly leafless countryside toward the old North homestead, now operated by my father’s brother Fred and his gentle wife Lillian. I was to be placed in the care of Aunt Lillie, who never refused a sick child or an orphaned lamb. It had not occurred to my father to telephone her. He, like Uncle Fred, merely took her for granted.

  She had been an attractive young schoolteacher when my Uncle Fred had come courting in the 1890’s in a dashing rig behind a prancing team, and she still had traces of her former beauty after bearing three sons, cooking, washing, cleaning, and mending, gathering eggs and churning butter throughout these many years. She said that when she died she wanted to come back to the farm and do it all over again, because this was her idea of heaven.

  My Uncle Fred was of a coarser grain—but Aunt Lillie loved him. Rough, sun-browned, and strong, and weighing a well-proportioned two hundred pounds, his jocosity was tinged with cruelty. He delighted in teasing Aunt Lillie by playing, on his Edison talking machine, a cylinder record entitled, “Why I Picked a Lemon in the Garden of Love Where They Say Only Peaches Grow.”

  Aunt Lillie would sigh a trifle sadly and go on with her ceaseless labor while my uncle chuckled, immensely pleased with himself and his wit.

  However, no one worked harder or longer hours than my Uncle Fred. With fifty-two cows to milk by hand, two hundred hogs to feed, forty acres of tobacco to set, hoe, cultivate, top, sucker, harvest, strip, and bundle, and one hundred and twenty additional acres of hay, corn, and oats to plant and harvest, there were not enough daylight hours during the summer to do the work. Uncle Fred drove his three teen-age sons as hard as he drove himself. And if he ever gave it a thought, he must have felt that his wife’s work was easier than his own.

  His hobbies at various times included photography and taxidermy, the raising of canaries and goldfish in commercial quantities, the breeding of Merino sheep, Shetland ponies, ferrets, Belgian hares, and fancy pigeons. He bought and repaired threshing machines. And he loved nothing so much as butchering day (an agony to uncomplaining Aunt Lillie, as lambs she had bottle-fed, calves and pigs she had nursed, went to the knife).

  Somehow, despite all this, it was a happy marriage, and the great old farmhouse offered a warm rural welcome.

  Aunt Lillie came out to greet us, wiping her hands on her apron in that perpetual gesture of humbleness which seemed to afflict whole generations of farm wives, who gave so much to so many in return for so little.

  “Oh my, it’s Willard and Sterling! Why, Sterling, are you sick?”

  “Just a touch of influenza, Lillian,” my father said. “I thought that perhaps . . .”

  “Why of course, Willard. He needs my care. We’ll put him up in the bedroom next to ours, off the parlor. It won’t be a bit of trouble. Come in for a cup of coffee and a second breakfast.”

  We went into the pleasant, fragrant kitchen with its great range dominating the middle of the room, its long table always spread with a clean gingham cloth, plants blooming at the windows, rifles and shotguns stacked in a corner.

  From the range she brought the huge graniteware coffeepot and poured steaming coffee into thick ironware cups.

  “Now I can fix you ham and eggs or bacon and eggs in just a moment,” Aunt Lillie said, “and toast of course. It isn’t store bread—just some I baked.”

  I looked up at my father hoping he would say something adequate, but he didn’t. So I tried to be gracious.

  “Your bread is the best I ever ate,” I said. “And we don’t need ham and eggs, Aunt Lillie . . . and thank you for everything.”

  “Why bless you,” Aunt Lillie said happily, “you’re always welcome—you and your little raccoon too. You’re like a fourth son to me, Sterling.”

  I think that for just a moment my father was aware of the imposition upon Aunt Lillie, perhaps even remembering my mother and how she bore all four of us—Theo, Jessica, Herschel, and myself—while he was conveniently absent. But all he said was, “Just toast and coffee, Lillian. I hope Sterling won’t be a burden for a couple of weeks.”

  “I know Fred will be sorry to miss you,” Aunt Lillie said, bringing the toast and preserves. “He and Charles are shooting squirrels down on the old Kumlien place. Wilfred is repairing a threshing machine and Ernest is upstairs studying his schoolbooks. He’ll be down in a little while.”

  I sipped the good coffee, munched the wonderful toast, and thought that in this world there must be few such human beings as Aunt Lillie.

  For several days I spent most of my time in bed, arising occasionally for tea and toast or a short walk with Rascal. In the evening, however, I donned bathrobe and slippers to listen to Aunt Lillie reading to the family in the parlor. The big base-burner with its glowing coals sent ruddy light toward the dim corners where well-worn, red velvet chairs and couches and an ornate parlor organ lent touches of faded elegance.

  Aunt Lillie sat in her rocker beside a small table where a kerosene lamp threw its pale radiance upon the pages of a farm magazine. We sprawled around her in comfort, listening to her gentle voice as she read an endless serial.

  Rascal had absolutely no interest in this story, but he was fascinated by the jungle of beasts and birds inhabiting this room. Safely above the floor level, cardinals, scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, and two of the last passenger pigeons ever seen in Wisconsin perched in perpetual silence on varnished branches amid wax foliage and flowers.

  Grouped on the floor, eyes gleaming with reflected light, were many four-footed creatures Uncle Fred had shot, skinned, and stuffed in lifelike poses. Badgers and wood-chucks, a fox kit and a ferocious timber wolf made one unlikely grouping under the curve of the stairway. Rascal moved among potential enemies, alert and cautious. He was particularly intrigued by a mother raccoon and her offspring, arranged on the bole of a wild cherry tree.

  During a
pause between chapters of the story, my uncle observed that raccoons are very interesting animals. “Mighty good eating too. Looks like you’re fattening Rascal to make a ’coon dinner.”

  “Now, Fred,” Aunt Lillie admonished mildly, “Sterling loves his little raccoon.”

  “Who taught you how to stuff animals, Uncle Fred?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “Thure Kumlien,” my uncle said, a note of respect in his voice. “A great old fellow, Kumlien. Knew taxidermy from A to Z. Only trouble was, he’d draw a bead on a bird he wanted and then lower his gun—too tenderhearted.”

  “He was fond of birds,” Aunt Lillie said. “He couldn’t bear to kill them.”

  “I could kill birds all day,” my uncle said. “Used to shoot down passenger pigeons by the bushel basket.”

  “And they’re all gone now,” Aunt Lillie reminded him. “Not one passenger pigeon left in North America.”

  “Let’s get on with the story, Lillian.”

  Contrite for having been so bold, Aunt Lillie began again in her tired voice, column after column of small print, hard to decipher by lamplight. Outside, an autumn wind was slowly rising, moaning at the corners of the house. One by one, Charlie, Wilfred, and Ernest had fallen asleep—and finally Uncle Fred. Rascal had come to curl in my lap. Aunt Lillie’s voice faltered and then was still.

  The coals in the base-burner glowed less brightly now, and the eyes of the silent animals, watching from the shadows, dimmed in the outer gloom. The kerosene lamp still shed its pool of light over Aunt Lillie’s graceful head. In a moment now we would be off to our beds—Rascal’s and mine, warm and inviting; my cousins’ less so in the frigid rooms above.

  Another November night had dropped its curtain on southern Wisconsin.

  On the fifth morning of my visit, Rascal and I joined the family at four A.M. for “first breakfast.” Aunt Lillie, of course, had been the earliest to arise, building a fire in the kitchen range with dry wood which Ernest had ready for her in the wood box.

  Uncle Fred arose next. His method of waking his sons was to strip back all the covers in those freezing rooms, shouting jovially, “Milking time. Rise and shine.”

  We gathered in the kitchen for a “light” meal of ham and eggs, hot muffins, and coffee served by lamplight which gleamed upon the black windows. Charles, oldest of the boys, was always a little sullen in the morning. But he roused himself enough to tickle Rascal’s belly, trying to make him fight.

  Wilfred was soft-spoken and gracious. He fed my raccoon bits of ham from his own plate and promised to give him a fast ride on his motorcycle.

  Ernest performed a strange service for any male in that household. He helped his mother put breakfast on the table, and suggested that she sit down to eat with the rest of us. Aunt Lillie gave him a grateful look, but said she would eat later.

  While we consumed her country breakfast, my aunt busied herself lighting the lanterns we would need. Among her many chores was the daily task of keeping the lamps and lanterns brightly polished and filled with kerosene.

  Her four “menfolks” arose without a word of thanks, put on old hunting caps, plaid jackets, and cowhide boots. Each took a lantern and a shining milk pail.

  I was as warmly bundled as the others as we plunged into the outer darkness, lowering our heads to fight the blustering wind. My uncle led the line. Rascal and I brought up the rear. The swinging lanterns hollowed out the dark, throwing our shadows grotesquely against the barn and straw stack which loomed, mountainous and forbidding, just ahead.

  Inside the barn we were swallowed by a beamed cavern, inhabited by rows upon rows of drowsy animals. These stables were well cleaned and freshly limed each day. They had an odor that will always be nostalgic to me—faintly acrid of course, but mingled too with the fragrance of clover hay, the sour tang of silage, the astringent dust of lime, and the warm, good smell of the cows themselves.

  Hanging their lanterns on convenient pegs, my uncle and my cousins took hay forks and distributed the morning feeding to the cows. Then, sitting on three-legged milk stools, with their milk pails firmly clasped between their knees, they began sending rhythmic and ringing streams of milk into the buckets. It is a soul-satisfying sound, soothing to cows and milkers. The bells soften and the music deepens as the pail fills.

  Again it was fortunate that I had Rascal on his leash, for as we walked the feed lane ahead of the animals, a few old cows were cantankerous, hooking their horns and bellowing at him.

  The barn cats too were a trifle suspicious. But when Rascal learned their trick, sitting up just as they did and opening his mouth to get his share of the milk being squirted their way, they accepted him as a veritable equal.

  Each milker had thirteen cows to milk—a long, long process. Rascal and I soon went to sleep on a pile of fresh hay beneath the hay chute. When we awoke it was to the cheerful boom of Uncle Fred’s voice: “Come on, boy! Come on, ’coon! Milking’s done. Time for second breakfast.”

  As I grew stronger I helped with all the minor chores such as gathering eggs, feeding the calves, and swilling the pigs. The autumn litters were becoming plump, vociferous porkers with greedy appetites.

  Under a huge iron kettle near the pig yard, Ernest and I built a crackling fire. Into the kettle we dumped forty or fifty gallons of fresh buttermilk to which we added ground feed, stirring the supplement into the liquid as it heated. When the mixture became warm we dipped it out, pouring it into long feed troughs. This produced such a wild scramble among the squealing, struggling, slurping beasts that Rascal climbed a nearby apple tree and refused to come down until the pigs had cleaned the troughs and were grunting drowsily in satiated contentment.

  Rascal liked the lambs, the big work horses, and most of the other animals. But he never did learn to love pigs.

  My small part of the farm duties left me with plenty of time for pure pleasure. With Rascal on his leash, we visited the haylofts, filled almost to the eaves with clover and alfalfa hay. Here there were always sounds of pigeons cooing, sparrows bickering, and mice rustling—such somnolent music that we sometimes fell asleep, cupped in a hollow in the hay, safe from the wind and cold.

  The grain bins, filled with wheat and oats, invited a dangerous leap into deep waters. But since on one occasion I had barely been rescued from smothering in wheat, I now restrained my raccoon, who was unaware of his danger.

  In the tobacco sheds the leaves were brittle and brown. They held no fascination for Rascal, who preferred the hams and sides of bacon hanging in the smokehouse, the cream and fresh-churned butter in the spring house, and particularly the top delight of the entire farm (as far as this little bear was concerned), the honey in the honey house.

  It was Aunt Lillie who thought of this special treat. She put on an old gray sweater, neatly mended at the elbows, threw a shawl over her head, and led us through the bee yard to the little brick building where honey was extracted. Inside this efficient room was a big metal drum containing revolving racks which threw the honey from the combs by centrifugal force.

  The extractor was not in operation at the moment, but enough liquid honey was in the bottom of the drum to fill several Mason jars. It ran slowly because of the low temperature. However, the golden stream filled one jar after another as we waited—the net result of tens of thousands of journeys by the bees bringing nectar from clover fields all over the countryside.

  “Now it’s time for you and Rascal to have your honey,” Aunt Lillie said, handing me a clean spoon.

  Rascal and I shared the spoon, of course, having been messmates on many another occasion. But I didn’t get my share of the honey because Rascal had found his favorite delicacy since sweet corn. Aunt Lillie did not laugh very often, but she was laughing now until she had to wipe her eyes on a corner of her apron. The wildly excited raccoon had found the dripping honey faucet, and was upside down, doing his best to get every drop left in the drum.

  “Oh, Sterling, what a charming little animal.” She put an arm around
me as we watched, and I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to tell her how much she meant to me.

  I think she knew without words, because when I looked up she was not laughing, only smiling tenderly. We took the Mason jars of honey and, leading the very reluctant raccoon, headed back to the farmhouse through the bright and frosty morning.

  False Armistice Day and my twelfth birthday fell on the same date. Aunt Lillie answered three long rings on the party line, which meant a general message for all phones.

  It was during second breakfast, and we were at the table. Even before she hung up the receiver she was saying. “Oh how wonderful! Oh thank our Heavenly Father! It’s over, it’s all over. They’ve stopped all that terrible killing in France.”

  “You mean the war’s really over, Lillian?” Uncle Fred asked.

  “All over. They’re signing an armistice.”

  I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present than this (even if everyone had forgotten it was my birthday). I wanted to be alone to think about it. And so I went with Rascal to the pony stable and we sat for a time on a bale of straw looking at Nellie, her mate Teddy, and their twin colts Pansy and Pancho Villa.

  So the war was actually over at last, and that nightmare had come to an end. Herschel would return from France, and we could go fishing together.

  The realization came slowly, then with a rush, and I was jubilantly happy. I picked up my raccoon and danced him around, while he cocked his head and chirred a question.

  “Let’s have a pony ride, Rascal.”

  Of all these ponies, Teddy was my favorite, a little black devil of a stallion with more tricks than a trained seal. No one had taught him these wicked, joyous quirks and eccentricities. They were built into his nature along with the winds and storms of the Shetland Islands—a throwback to some wild ancestor centuries before his time.

  He nipped the flanks of cows when we were driving them home from pasture. He backed into tethered teams, kicking and squealing until he sometimes started a runaway. He was a veritable bucking bronco on occasion, rearing and whinnying his defiance to the whole world. He had a very tough mouth (and none of these pony bridles had a curb).