The Hollowed Tree

by R. K. Johnstone

  "Ma’am," the bear said firmly, bridling a bit under the patronizing pity of these hogs, "I will move on. But an injustice, no matter how unintentional it may have been, is an injustice all the same, and it wants something back for it. I don't necessarily hold those following their rules and such so much responsible; they didn't know any better. As Matron of the prison, you are carrying out your duties the best you can with what you have. Grits, I can even see your side somewhat, though I know that it was you who was in the thick of bringing about this very scene we are viewing here now, and it was all for self-seeking, ulterior motives. Never mind that--you acted in character and with the sanction of those around you in accordance with Hawg City principles at least; many a better warthog than you lacks the strength of character to rise above the failings of those around them. But those as do claim to know and do better, I am holding a grudge against them like you have never seen before!" The bear directed a look of seething resentment over at the lion and the owl.

  "Here comes the Magistrate," Horace said, straining his snout over towards the entrance.

  Over the heads of the crowd, they could see the Magistrate as he entered. Routers ushered him immediately over to the Modifier, parting the crowd before him.

  "Whatever is--isn't--and what isn't--is," the bear said. "Seems to be the way it goes around here."

  "What? What's that?" Horace said, turning to him with a look of surprise. "You talk in riddles, bear."

  After studying for a few moments the armadillo sweating it out on the bench, the Magistrate moved on over to join the others. With a perfunctory nod to Percy and Honorashious he approached Horace Picot.

  "How'd the bear do?" he asked.

  "About as good as any," Horace replied. "This armadillo, however, is truly the exception! He hasn't so much as cracked a smile the whole time. One can see the strain of it building in his forehead. What fortitude!" he enthused with admiration.

  The Magistrate glanced at the bear, who must be given credit for feeling not the slightest injury at the inevitable critical comparisons with his own performance.

  Finally, Agamemnon's time was up, and Jupe was brought out. Jupe exhibited a performance similar to Agamemnon's and equally inspiring. By the time the pair of armadillos was done, there could be detected in the crowd a tinge of grudging respect.

  Last of all came Egbert. Well before they brought him into the courtyard the squirrel's muffled, hysterical shrieks of protest could be heard coming from within the mound. Now as they brought him out the crowd erupted in spontaneous, derisive laughter at the picture he presented. His face was so contorted by fear and desperation, his eyes exposed so widely and roundly white, the whole so unnatural and macabre in appearance as to be ludicrous. Desperately twisting his torso and pulling on all his limbs at once, he struggled in vain to free himself from his impassive guards. When they had reached a point halfway across the courtyard and he caught sight for the first time of the fearful contraption, the sow poised grimly in the background with her feather sword, the squirrel shuddered violently and all at once increased his frantic exertions tenfold. The contrast of this cowardly performance with that just observed of the stoic armadillos served only to heighten a sense of bathos, and the crowd's mirth increased to nearly deafening proportions. The shameful insults, the disrespectful comments, the hoots and the catcalls which were hurled now at poor Egbert bear no recounting.

  Boston viewed the proceedings with disgust.

  "Buck up, Egbert!" he shouted in angry frustration.

  "Ye danged nut!" the Sergeant Major sputtered, furious in his shame. "Yer make'n us all look like durned fools!"

  "A disgraceful exhibition, even for the squirrel," Percy muttered and turned away.

  Jupe and Agamemnon, too, freed and fully recovered, joined in with the others, yelling their exasperated advice and encouragement to the squirrel, but these along with all of the other attempts to communicate were drowned in the general noise. Now the principals had reached their destination and the guards were strapping the squirrel down. Still struggling, he could be heard protesting shrilly:

  "Let me do the time!...the sixty days!...I refuse to accept the Modifier!"

  Despite these protestations, however, the squirrel was secured. The guards stepped away and the sow moved forward to her task. She began by working the feather sword expertly along the instep of an extended paw. To the naturally sensitive and nervous disposition of the squirrel, shown to such ill effect during his traversal of the courtyard, could now be added the somatic trait of a tactile sensitivity so extreme as to make this form of punishment well nigh unbearable. At the first touch of the feather he erupted in a paroxysm of hysterical, gasping giggles, which soon grew so violent that they caused the sow to step away in surprise and give him time to breath before continuing.

  A subdued Honorashious grunted and turned his head away, unable to look on. His old friend was behaving very poorly by any standards.

  This interminable and miserable scene seemed to drag on forever in all its infamy and degradation. Refusing to witness such indignities visited upon their comrade, the armadillos withdrew from the courtyard to wait it out in the vestibule of the jail. Percy and Honorashious, forced by their official positions of authority to preside at the proceedings, kept their eyes averted from the scene and attempted to occupy themselves with other thoughts. Mercifully, the punishment came to an end. The squirrel was released, so exhausted that once they had removed the straps and unlocked the stocks he found that he could hardly stand. He staggered over shakily to the others amidst the crowing catcalls and guffaws of the crowd.

  The Sergeant Major met him with an unrelenting glare of martial sternness. The sparrow burned with shame at the discredit which he felt the squirrel's performance reflected upon the rest of the party; and, unlike the others, his heart was not in the least moved to forgiveness.

  "Couldn't ye do no better'n thet?" he said contemptuously.

  But the squirrel merely staggered past as if he had not heard the rebuke.

  Boston wrinkled his forehead in anxiety at the sparrow's lack of sensitivity. In spite of his previous irritation with the squirrel, the bear knew Egbert well and realized that the squirrel could not help himself. His naturally sensitive, fragile, and nervous disposition prevented his showing as well as the others under duress; to expect otherwise would be futile. As he watched the bent figure stumble by, in his heart he had already forgiven him for his deficient deportment.

  "Haarumph!" Honorashious grunted and directed a fierce scowl at the Sergeant Major. "Well done, Egbert!" he said heartily in a bluff and somewhat guilty attempt to put a good face on the whole thing. "We've done with these warthogs now. Let us be on our way!"

  The lion too averred that the squirrel had performed most magnificently, and the party turned and began to move with the crowd to exit the prison complex.

  37. An Untoward Event

  At the conclusion of the despicable proceedings fully described in the previous chapter, our party assembled before the prison complex preparatory to getting underway from Hawg City. At Grits' behest, Captain Campbell had mustered an escort of Routers to usher them from the city, and in the center of their protective ring the group was now making some last minute adjustments. Captain Campbell gave final instructions to the surly non-commissioned officer in charge. Naturally, traffic had come to a complete stand still, and the avenue was filled solidly with interested warthogs.

  The Magistrate held forth from the entrance to the jail. At his side stood Grits, Horace Picot, and the Matron. Honorashious had ascended and perched upon the overhang above them, whence he viewed critically the preparations below.

  "We would have you extend your stay, Perceival Theodilious," the Magistrate was saying magnanimously, "and enjoy the finer side of life in our excellent city."

  "Another time, Magistrate," Percy said brusquely.

  "Haarumph!" Honorashious grunted with an accompanying flap of the wings. "We must be on our way immediately!"r />
  "On your return, then," the Magistrate said with a diplomatic grace to which the glint in his eye added something sinister. "We will host you in the style which you deserve."

  The lion only nodded. Then one of the constabulary came out carrying the feather swords and returned them to the former prisoners. All of the appropriate paperwork authorizing the carrying of such had been filled out and signed by the owl and then impressed with the official seal of the Seventh Juridical, which, fortunately, Agamemnon still retained in his pack.

  The group took their places and made ready to depart. Boston, swollen with his hurt pride and a profound sense of betrayal, stood silently in the rear of the formation, out of his normal position at the lead. In front of him Egbert engaged in a minor, if somewhat spirited, dispute with Agamemnon over the necessity of his riding upon the armadillo's back; amazingly, the traumatized squirrel seemed already to have made significant progress towards achieving a full recovery. The Sergeant Major stood impatient and irascible upon Jupe's back. The soldierly armadillos, unlike the others, were entirely unfazed by the events of the last two days in Hawg City, unless it were to have realized an increase in orneriness and a heightened sense of self-importance, adjuncts to the generally recognized superior fortitude with which they had faced the punishment in the courtyard. At the head of the group was Percy.

  "Sergeant Major," the lion said, looking regally back over the assembled party. When his eyes came to rest upon the glowering bear he held the next words which were on the verge of crossing his lips. Boston returned his gaze with coldness, then averted his eyes. Percy looked at the Sergeant Major. The sparrow waited stiffly at attention for his orders. "Take the lead, Sergeant Major," he said softly.

  "Aye, Perceival Theodilious!" the sparrow shouted with an explosive release of pent up energy.

  The Sergeant Major and Jupe promptly moved up and took their place in front of the lion. Agamemnon, meanwhile, had taken pity on an invalid and given up arguing with the squirrel; with Egbert on his back he moved up unbidden to take the number two position.

  With a final look of weariness the lion swept the group of hogs, who waited expectantly to see them off; then, with a nod of the head he signaled to the owl his readiness to set out.

  At that moment, however, an unexpected and untoward event occurred which delayed our party's departure. To explain this event it is necessary to divert from the scene before the jail to another setting earlier on that same day in Hawg City.

  A familiar looking boar plodded along one of the crowded main boulevards in the southern suburbs. Arriving at a nondescript path that appeared identical to a thousand others in the city, he turned off. A street post at the corner emitted the familiar smell of urine, identifying it as his own. The boar proceeded slowly here, negotiating the still significant though much lighter traffic of hogs. He followed the path as it curved on around a prominent mound and then straightened out. Rows of closely packed burrows, lining either side of the path, swung into view as he came around the mound. The boar frowned. Before one of these burrows--our boar's own--squatted a good sized hog, defecating into the ditch which ran in front of it. A few feet before reaching this individual our boar stopped and stepped aside to the edge of the ditch to allow the traffic of hogs to pass. The squatting boar turned his head briefly to the side in order to identify his audience, then looked back straight ahead.

  "Howdy, Bort," he said, staring with comfortable oblivion into the passing traffic.

  "Hullo Leonard," Bort said. "Early day?"

  Finishing up, the squatting hog stood and, bull-like, pawed the dirt a few times vigorously with his back hooves. He turned to face our boar, whom we now recognize, formally, as none other than Bort Swinson.

  "Have you heard the latest?" Leonard snorted.

  "Huh?"

  "Over at Cornfed & Bull. Bill got the axe today. Cut backs."

  "What? But I just saw Bill yesterday at the wallow!" Bort cried. "Everything seemed fine!"

  "Well," Leonard said grimly, "you'll see Bill wearing a much changed expression on his snout today, I'll warrant you."

  Bort digested this bit of news somberly.

  "What'd they let him go for?"

  "More of the same," Leonard sighed with resignation. "Falling revenues."

  "But I thought Cornfed & Bull was having their best year ever."

  "Nope. Not if you've been tracking the commodities market they haven't. They say it's because of a declining consumer base–or slow growth in the consumer base, at any rate. Not enough compaction."

  "I agree. I've always said they needed to compact more."

  "That business with the shaman wolverine last month didn't help any either."

  "That charlatan!" Bort cried with angry resentment.

  "It looks like some of his radical views were upheld by the Seventh," Leonard said.

  "Oh, don't tell me about the Seventh," Bort said wrathfully. "I just got finished dealing with the Seventh. And I'm a good deal poorer for it too, I might add! I guess he took it pretty hard?"

  Leonard only nodded. A moment of silence passed as the two hogs gazed absently into the traffic, which was moving along only inches away.

  "That boy of yours giving you trouble?" Leonard said.

  "Wha–? No, no," Bort said somewhat defensively."

  "I heard he was up for hawg hopping."

  "Oh...no, no. They tried to imply that, but they couldn't prove it. They had him up on false charges--non-consensual assault."

  "Non-consensual assault?" Leonard said, taken aback. "That shouldn't have been a problem."

  "It wasn't. The charges were dismissed without trial."

  "What kind of restitution did you get for your trouble?"

  "Nothing. As a matter of fact," Bort said in the injured tones of the unjustly accused, "it cost me money."

  "Unsatisfactory," Leonard declared firmly. "They incarcerated an individual on trumped up charges, and it cost you money. Unsatisfactory. I would protest these charges directly to the Magistrate himself!"

  "The Magistrate himself! But he's the one who charged me," Bort said. "A processing fee is what he called it."

  "Then I'd protest it right back. I'll help you with the paper work, if you like."

  Leonard was a well known amateur litigant and frequently met with great success when he went head to head with the bureaucrats downtown over such matters. This was a bit different, however; the Magistrate himself was involved.

  "I don't know," Bort said without enthusiasm. "It was Perceival Theodilious and the Seventh he interfered with. If not non-consensual assault, they could have brought him up on something else, it seems to me."

  "Not now they can't!" Leonard countered with immoveable conviction.

  Bort wavered.

  "Let's go," Leonard said. "It'll only take a minute to draw up those papers; and we can deliver them to the city center before they close today."

  Bort looked to either side, as if seeking a way out.

  "At least go on record, for crying out loud," Leonard said. "I'll go down with you. We'll stop off and chew a few corn cobbs on the way back. I'm buying."

  At last Bort gave in, somewhat reluctantly, and the two went back the way our boar had just come and proceeded to another burrow in a similarly situated neighborhood not far away. Here it took almost no time to draw up the proper paper work, and the two were soon on their way to city's center.

  On leaving the Magistrate's office earlier that day, Bort had propelled his family homewards while directing his own movements to his place of employment. There he had checked in briefly to organize the past two days of business dropped as a consequence of the court proceedings, then headed on home. By now it was getting on in the afternoon. The two boars would have to hurry if they wanted to reach the city's center before the offices closed for the day. To speed their progress they took the most direct route, which would carry them through the middle of the low rent district and right past the prison complex. Normally this low rent di
strict was an area they would avoid; under the circumstances, however, they would never make it in time if they went the more usual, circuitous route. Now, as the pair neared the prison complex, the traffic thickened and a bit further on halted altogether. Leonard groaned.

  "We'll have to go around," he said, looking with displeasure at the fetid ditches alongside the avenue.

  A steady stream of impatient hogs were slipping into the ditches and making their way around the traffic jam. Soon the ditches too threatened to come to a standstill at this rate. Without further deliberation Leonard put his head down and butted and gouged his way over to the ditch. At the edge he paused for only an instant before slipping down the greasy side and submerging up to his neck.

  From above Bort looked on, regretting that he had taken his friend's advice.

  "Come on," Leonard said, looking back up at him with the effluvium dripping from his tusks, irritated by this show of irresolution.

  With a sigh of resignation Bort slid into the soupy mixture and waddled over to his friend. By means of a combination of waddling and swimming movements the two made their way forward amidst the muttered curses and general grumbling of the others. Soon, however, the traffic in the ditch began to clog too, and they came once again to a complete halt.

  Leonard snorted with frustration.

  "What's going on?" he said angrily.

  Looking up out of the ditch, they could see the great prison mound rising into the air on the other side of the avenue. They were nearly abreast of the jail. The Magistrate, Grits Hamby, Horace Picot, and Madame DeKooncey were clearly visible, standing in front. Directly over their heads Honorashious T. Hardwood perched on the overhang. In the street the brown, thickly furred head of a bear could be seen rising above the crowd.

  "What's this?" Bort said with interest. "Perceival Theodilious and the Seventh Juridical?"

  Leonard narrowed his eyes and a malicious glint appeared on their glassy surfaces.

  "There's the boar we need," he said, looking intently at the Magistrate. "Got his stooges with him too."