I had learned to ride him, however, and was seldom thrown unless he resorted to his mischievous trick of running under certain limbs of trees which he knew were high enough to clear him, but not to clear the rider. It was always a contest with Teddy, and you could gain his respect only by winning, whereupon he would reward you with a smooth, fast ride—his mane streaming in the wind.
However Teddy was demonstrating at this very moment that he didn’t like Rascal, and I wasn’t risking the life of my raccoon on such a violent mount. The twin colts were far too young to ride, and of course were untrained. This left only Nellie, a broad and comfortable little mare who was as tolerant of Teddy as my Aunt Lillie was of Uncle Fred.
Nellie took us aboard with no fuss whatsoever, as though she had spent her life carrying the double load of a boy and his raccoon. Rascal sat ahead of me as he had on the wooden ponies of the merry-go-round. We trotted down the lane to the pasture, passing still pools where spearpoints of ice extended over the black depths, and groves of hickory trees where I had already gathered more than a bushel of nuts. We came at last to the solitude of Kumlien’s woods and ambled along its winding paths.
There could be no better place to contemplate peace on earth than in this forest where the old naturalist had lived his quiet life.
That evening Aunt Lillie cooked a very special feast, not because it was my birthday, not even because of the rumored armistice, but because my father was driving out for dinner, after which he was taking me home. There was roast turkey with hickory-nut dressing, a special recipe of her own. There were mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and baked Hubbard squash and more relishes and preserves than I can now remember. Finally we had a choice of cold pumpkin pie with whipped cream or hot mince pie, fresh from the oven.
It didn’t seem to matter now that everyone had forgotten my birthday. But, of course, it was Aunt Lillie who thought of it. “Why, Sterling,” she said remorsefully, putting her hand to her mouth, “it’s your twelfth birthday, and not one of us remembered. And I didn’t even bake a cake.”
Then everybody sang “Happy Birthday” and I felt well rewarded.
My father didn’t apologize, but he reached in his pocket and brought forth his own personal watch with its chain finely braided from my mother’s chestnut hair.
For several generations that old watch has passed from father to son. (And may the tradition long continue.)
On the morning of November 11, 1918, the real Armistice was signed in a railroad car in France. Although men were killed up to the final hour, the cease-fire came at last and a sudden silence fell over the batteries and trenches and graveyards of Europe. The world was now “safe for democracy.” Tyranny had been vanquished forever. The “war to end war” had been won, and there would never be another conflict. Or so we believed in that far-off and innocent time.
In Brailsford Junction the celebration began early. The decorated fire engines, automobiles, and horse-drawn conveyances crowded the streets in a noisy, happy parade. I interwove the spokes of my bicycle wheels with red, white, and blue crepe-paper ribbons. With Rascal in the basket, I pedaled through the throng, ringing my bell as a small contribution to the joyous pandemonium. At eleven o’clock the fire whistle and all the church and schoolbells in town joined the chorus.
During the afternoon my elation slowly subsided, and I began oiling my muskrat traps for the season ahead. Rascal was always interested in whatever I was doing. But when he came to sniff and feel the traps, a terrible thought slowed my fingers. Putting my traps aside I opened one of the catalogues sent to trappers by the St. Louis fur buyers. There, in full color, on the very first page was a handsome raccoon, his paw caught in a powerful trap.
How could anyone mutilate the sensitive, questing hands of an animal like Rascal? I picked up my raccoon and hugged him in a passion of remorse.
I burned my fur catalogues in the furnace and hung my traps in the loft of the barn, never to use them again. Men had stopped killing other men in France that day; and on that day I signed a permanent peace treaty with the animals and the birds. It is perhaps the only peace treaty that was ever kept.
VIII: December January February
THE first flurry of snow came early in December, whirling a few flakes into Rascal’s hollow in the tree. I feared that a real blizzard might make that den quite uncomfortable. From a piece of sheet copper I fashioned a hood over the entrance, and I lined the hole itself with old blankets and an outgrown sweater of mine so that my raccoon would have a snug winter nest. Rascal took an immediate fancy to the sweater, perhaps associating it with me.
As cold weather set in, Rascal grew sleepy. Raccoons do not actually hibernate, but they do sleep for many days at a time, emerging only occasionally to pad around in the snow seeking a full meal. Every morning before I left for school I would go into the cage and reach into the hole. I wanted to make sure that Rascal was safe and comfortable. It was a great satisfaction to feel his warm, furry body breathing slowly and rhythmically, and to know that he was sleeping soundly in his pleasant home.
Sometimes he stirred when I petted him, and murmured in his sleep. Now and then he awoke sufficiently to poke his little black-masked face out of the hole to look at me. I always rewarded him with a handful of pecans.
I realized, of course, that our partial separation was only temporary. Many living things sleep through the winter: my woodchucks under the barn, frogs deep in the mud, seeds in their pods, and butterflies in their cocoons. They were merely resting for spring and would awake again with a great burst of new life. Rascal and I would have wonderful times together when the warm months returned.
So with a final pat or two I would tell my pet to go on sleeping. And Rascal, drowsy-eyed, would curl into a ball and return to his winter slumbers.
My financial problems increased as we approached Christmas. In recent autumns I had earned as much as seventy-five dollars trapping muskrats. This allowed me to purchase thoughtful gifts for the family. But since signing my peace treaty with the muskrats and other wild animals, I was finding that peace does not always bring prosperity.
I solicited nearby neighbors and shoveled many walks, earning a top price of fifty cents for moving a couple of tons of snow. I also increased my efforts to sell more Saturday Evening Posts. But the silver accumulated very slowly, and prices were frightfully high in the stores. A handsomely illustrated fishing book which I wanted to buy for Herschel was marked five dollars, and fur-lined gloves for my father would be nearly as expensive. Then there were gifts to be purchased for my two sisters, and small things for my pets. At this rate I would never be able to save enough to buy the canvas for my canoe.
One Saturday, after a discouraging tour of the stores, I stopped at the post office to find two cheerful letters in our box. One was the first from Herschel since the Armistice. The other was from my beloved sister Jessica, still taking postgraduate work at the University of Chicago. Both letters relieved my mind in a number of ways.
Herschel had survived the war and influenza. He said the Paris garters I had sent were better than a rabbit’s foot. No metal had touched him.
War censorship had been lifted, and for the first time my brother was able to tell us where his outfit had been fighting. His single paragraph, listing some of the bloodiest battles of the war, was so quietly factual that it might have been the report of a pleasure tour:
“We spent a couple of months in the Haute-Marne region and then went to the Alsace Sector. Later we joined the Château-Thierry Offensive, the Oise-Aisne Offensive and the Meuse-Argonne. We were on the Meuse at the time of the Armistice.”
Then came the disappointing news that he had been ordered to march to the Rhine to help establish a bridgehead near Coblenz, Germany, and that he would not be demobilized for six months at the earliest. He asked us not to send gifts, saying he would bring his presents with him when he came home.
My first reaction was sadness that Herschel would not be with us at Christmas. I had heard nothin
g concerning an Army of Occupation and had not realized that demobilization is such a slow process. But at least he was alive and unwounded, and I would have a few more months to scrape together the money for the fishing book.
Letters from Jessica were always a joy. Bright, salty, and affectionate, they told so much concerning her unselfish character. Flashes of temper were to be expected. But these were outweighed by the gaiety and Spartan good humor of this sister who had cared for my father and myself for so many months after my mother died.
Jessica was coming home for Christmas. She enclosed a ten-dollar check, made out in my name, to help me with my Christmas shopping. I was very fortunate to have a brother like Herschel and two such sisters as Theo and Jessica.
With my financial crisis eased, I turned to the pleasant tasks of buying a tree and sweeping and decorating the house. My father paid little attention to such matters, and furthermore he was again away on business.
Almost immediately I realized that Rascal presented a new and difficult problem. It had always been our custom to invite some of the animals to be with us on Christmas Eve when we distributed the gifts. In the past we usually had limited the four-footed delegation to Wowser and the best behaved of the cats. But it was unthinkable to exclude Rascal, who, however, could never discipline his hands when shining objects were within his reach.
He could examine a glass paperweight or lift the lid of the sugar bowl without breaking glass or crockery. But I could well imagine the damage he might do to the fragile glass balls and figurines on the Christmas tree.
How could we have both Rascal and a Christmas tree? And yet we must have both. The answer to this dilemma struck me as a real inspiration.
There was a large semicircular bay extending from the living room, with six windows that overlooked the flower garden. This was where we always mounted our Christmas tree. I bought and decorated a thick spruce, which tapered gracefully to the star at its tip and nearly filled the bay with its fragrant greenery. This took me most of one Saturday. Then I made careful measurements of the rectangular opening leading to the bay and hastened to my work bench in the barn. I had sufficient chicken wire left from building the cage to cover a frame, designed carefully and precisely to fit the opening I had just measured. In less than an hour I was maneuvering this construction through the big, double front door into the living room. The lumber was white and new, the chicken wire shining. But for a few moments I hesitated before nailing it to the unmarred woodwork of our respectable old house. Still, it required but one nail at each corner of the frame, and I could fill the holes later with putty or wood-filler. Another few minutes and the job was complete. And there, safe behind the wire, was the decorated tree, every bauble secure from my raccoon.
I put a Christmas wreath above the fireplace, laced Christmas ribbons through the ribs of my canoe frame, hung a few sprigs of holly from archways and chandeliers, and stood back to admire the total effect. I was immoderately pleased with my work and could scarcely wait to show it to my father and to Jessica.
When my father returned from his trip, I led him happily into the living room and pointed to the Christmas tree, wired off from the rest of the world as though it might try to escape to its native forest.
“My word,” my father said mildly. “What are you building, Sterling, another cage for Rascal?”
“You’re warm,” I said. “It’s so that Rascal can’t climb the tree and spoil the ornaments.”
“Well,” my father hesitated, “at least it’s unusual.”
“Do you think Jessica will hit the ceiling?”
“She might,” my father said. “You never can tell what Jessica might do.”
There was one train a day from Chicago, an old ten-wheeler pulling a baggage car, a passenger coach, and sometimes a freight car and a caboose. We loved that train and listened for it to rumble across the river bridge, blow four times for the lower crossing, and come huffing and puffing up the slight grade to the station. My late grandfather had often spoken of the first train that had ever rolled over these tracks, with twenty yoke of oxen helping it up the grade. But ours was a better and much newer engine.
There seemed to be a special music to the bell of our ten-wheeler, and a special corona made by its exhaust steam as it pulled to a halt and hissed its hot vapor into the sunlight. Train time was exciting even if the passenger coach did not carry someone as much loved as my sister Jessica.
The conductor helped her down the steps and my father and I took her suitcase and her many packages. She was wearing a wide-brimmed velvet hat which looked very fashionable, a new coat with a fur collar, and high-laced shoes that came to the hem of her dress. She had recently sold several groups of poems and a short story, and she seemed quite affluent.
“Merry Christmas, Jessica. Welcome home,” we cried.
She kissed us, and then held me off and looked at me critically. “You’ve outgrown your Mackinaw, Sterling. And you’ll catch your death of cold not wearing a cap.”
“He never wears a cap,” my father explained.
Obviously I was clean, and had combed my stubborn curls into some semblance of order, so Jessica wasn’t altogether disapproving.
We went homeward through the iron-cold air and bright sunlight, up Fulton Street, past all the stores. We turned right on Albion, past the Carnegie Public Library and the Methodist Church, then left on Rollin Street, and there we were, still laughing and chattering and asking a hundred questions in the manner of most families gathering for Christmas.
Perhaps we were extra gay to cover an underlying sadness. Mother would not be at the gracious double door to greet us. Herschel was still in France, but “alive and unwounded” as we kept repeating. Theo and her kind husband Norman would be spending Christmas in their own home far to the north. Already our closely knit family was dwindling and dispersing as all families eventually must. But the three of us would do the best we could to bring cheer to the old house.
As we entered the living room, I wasn’t sure whether Jessica wanted to laugh or cry. I had done my best in decorating the tree and the canoe, which was supposed to hold our cargo of gifts. But suddenly I saw it through my sister’s eyes—an unfinished boat, chicken wire, and dust on the furniture.
“You simply can’t go on living like this!” she said. “You must hire a full-time housekeeper.”
“But, Dottie,” I pleaded, using her pet name, “I worked so hard on the tree and decorations, and the cage to keep Rascal out.”
Then Jessica was laughing and hugging me in the crazy way she often acted (much the way I acted, too). She was, and is, the most spontaneously affectionate, thoughtful, brilliant, and unreasonable sister one could wish for. A very attractive combination, I have always maintained.
“At least we can take the canoe to the barn,” Jessica said (not wishing to lose her advantage).
“But, Dottie, I can’t take it to the barn. It’s cold as blazes out there. I have to put on the canvas first.”
“Well, put on the canvas, and we’ll still have time to clean this room for Christmas.”
“That sounds sensible,” my father agreed.
“But you don’t understand,” I explained. “I had to spend all my money to build the cage, and then all the other money I could scrape together to buy Christmas presents, and . . .”
“Sterling, get to the point,” Jessica said.
“So I haven’t any money left for canvas, and it will cost about fifteen dollars, I think.”
Jessica looked at my father severely, and he said, “Now be reasonable, Jessica. I’m a busy man. I can’t know everything that’s going on in Sterling’s head and I didn’t know he needed money for canvas.”
Jessica sighed, realizing that we were both quite hopeless and greatly in need of her care. “Well, at least I can cook you some decent meals and clean up this house.”
“It’s perfectly clean,” I protested. “I swept every single room and shook out the throw rugs and scoured the bathrooms. You do
n’t know how hard I worked getting this place beautiful for you. And, besides, we like our own cooking, and we don’t want a housekeeper. You sound like Theo.”
“We’re happy,” my father said. “As happy as we can be since your mother died.”
“Don’t be sentimental,” Jessica said fiercely, wiping tears from her own eyes. “You just wait until I get on an apron! And another thing, you’re going to have a housekeeper whether you like it or not.”
On the day before Christmas we wrapped our gifts in secrecy in various rooms of the house, camouflaging some in odd-sized packages. We arranged them according to the recipient: those for my father in the prow of the canoe, those for Jessica in the stern, and those for me amidships.
After an early dinner we brought in the animals—Rascal first, to allow him to wake up for the festivities, then Wowser, and finally the selected cats. Jessica immediately fell in love with my raccoon. And when she saw how he struggled to reach through the wire to touch the Christmas-tree baubles, she forgave me for building the barricade.
The Yule log was blazing in the fireplace, shedding light on the tree and its ornaments and making the chicken wire gleam like a dew-drenched cobweb. The argosy of brightly wrapped gifts greatly intrigued my raccoon.
Animals, like children, find it difficult to wait for a gift which is almost within reach. So we always gave them their presents first. Each cat received a catnip mouse, making the old toms and tabbies as playful as kittens, and causing a certain amount of possessive growling. For Wowser, confined to his bath towel on the hearth, I had a new collar which Garth Shadwick had fashioned. But for my pampered pet, Rascal, I had only Christmas candies and pecans, being unable to think of a single other thing he might need.
In opening the family packages we proceeded in rotation. This gave us a chance to admire each object and to express gratitude. There were many thoughtfully chosen books, ties, socks, warm gloves, scarves—all appreciated.
Rascal Page 12