by Van Reid
“Why, that very thing was discussed at the Shipswood!” exclaimed Ephram.
“The writer here finds it ridiculous,” said Thump, who, reading further, was a little disappointed with the drift of the column.
“The notion seems harmless enough,” said Eagleton.
“I would have thought,” said Thump. “But this fellow insists that it has a deleterious effect upon our attentions to the season.”
“Good heavens!” said Ephram.
“Pagan superstition,’ he says.”
“If he had been with me one midnight on Christmas Eve, some years back,” came a new voice to the conversation, “he would think twice before dismissing the theory, I can promise you right now.”
Thump turned to look at a man who sat across the aisle and behind him by one seat. Already facing in the stranger’s direction, Eagleton and Ephram simply leaned a little toward the aisle. Mr. Burnbrake, who sat beside Thump, cocked an ear but did not turn around, and the membership of the Dash-It-All Boys gave various interpretations of a raised eyebrow or a puzzled frown.
He was a very trim-looking man who might have been seventy, or he might have been eighty. (He was eighty-six.) He wore a close-cropped beard and fine mustaches of white, and his pate gleamed through thinning hair. When he turned sideways in his seat, the better to address the members of the two clubs and Mr. Burnbrake, they were apprised of a pair of bright blue eyes, wrapped in crow’s-feet and peering from a pair of spectacles.
“He would think twice, I promise you,” the man said again. “Gentlemen,” he added, in greeting. “I beg your pardon, but I couldn’t help hearing the tendency of your conversation.”
“Not at all,” said Eagleton.
Durwood had not raised himself much above a recumbent position for several miles and did not bother himself even now, but spoke without actually seeing the other man. “Are you saying, sir, that you have heard the animals speak at midnight?”
“I am saying that I heard one animal speak at midnight,” returned the man, “Christmas Eve, eighteen seventy-nine.”
“You interest me greatly,” said Durwood.
“The tale has some worth, I think, no matter what some pencil pusher might have you believe.” The older fellow gave a nod to himself and looked ready to turn back in his seat.
“We would certainly like to hear it!” said Thump.
“Oh, it is an old story,” said the man, and though he dismissed the thought with a wave of a hand, he was smiling.
“The older the better! Wouldn’t you say, Eagleton?” said Thump.
“I think it is safe to say,” said that worthy. “Wouldn’t you say, Ephram?”
“I was about to say that very thing,” said the third Moosepathian.
The old man laughed. “I shall not make a long tale of it,” he said, “though it has room for a wrecked ship, a shank of sheep, and wrong heeled boots. And there’s a dog, several cats, a shipload of rats, and a blue jay. How far are you going?”
“We are getting of fat Hallowell, sir,” said Thump.
“Are you, really? Why, that’s my destination, so let me tell it.”
A the man commenced his tale, even the Dash-It-All Boys managed to straighten their postures so that they might have a better look at him. He looked up at the ceiling of the car and thought for a moment before speaking again. (Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump looked up with him.)
“What did I say? Eighteen seventy-nine? Yes, that was it. Eighteen seventy-nine. I was taking it a little easy by then, living down Georgetown way on a moderate height of land overlooking the ocean on the one side and Sagadahoc Bay on the other. I had bought a little place and the sheep that came with it sight unseen from a man named Musterhag who’d taken a sudden fear of water and went, the last I heard, into the Arizona Territory, where he met and fell in love with the daughter of a French count or something and eventually set up household with her in Saskatchewan.”
“And that’s the last you heard of him?” wondered Waverley.
“I had a horse,” continued the storyteller without pause, “that would sit down when you told him to stand, so when I was on my way to Georgetown to take possession of my new abode and two men with shotguns accosted me and ordered me to stand, the horse sat down, and any retreat was summarily ended before it began. Being the philanthropic sort, the highwayman relieved me of that particular animal, and I was left on foot.
“Now this did not seem an auspicious beginning for a new endeavor, but I was philosophical and not entirely unpleased when it turned out that being on foot meant that I was able to wander in search of a distressed bird I caught wind of on the Stage Road within sight of Flying Point in Arrowsic. On the far side of a fold in the field, overlooking the Sasanoa, there was a thicket of alders, where I found a half-grown blue jay.
“I’d had a crow once, as a youngster, and a macaw too, from the West Indies, not to mention a turkey that hid beneath my bed come every Thanksgiving, and so I thought nothing of taking up the little mite and carrying him in my coat pocket. I named him Mr. Thicket.
“I hadn’t a cent on me to eat by, but a fellow by the name of Carny Shalleck gave me a ride in his buckboard, the last mile or two, and when he heard my tale, he lent me some fish, which amounted to my first meal in my new home.
“It was a handsome little white two-room house with red trim, standing by itself on a bit of granite overlooking the point of land before it. Below the house was a small shack where the sheep stayed in bad weather, though most days they roamed the rock soil in search of feed. Mr. Thicket took occupation of the windowsill above the sink when he was indoors and the peak of the house when he was without, and out or in he liked nothing better than to holler and screech every morning till I was up and scrounging something special for him to eat.
“For myself, however, a little more than mutton seemed in order before too many weeks passed, and I was fortunate enough to take on with Carny Shalleck, who lobstered for a few dollars in his pocket till August and line fished for his own pot and his ow amazement when the weather permitted thereafter. First thing in the morning I would hike dow to the beach and Carny would bring in his dory, and we would go out for the day, which made for a pretty good life as Carny was practiced at both silence and fine storytelling by turns; you never got too weary of either.
“Now my shoes had not been thick when I began my trip to Georgetown, and the unexpected distance I had ridden shank’s mare had worn them to a considerable nothing, so that I repaired to the local bootmaker as soon as I had a few extra coins in my pocket. Feeling a little penurious, however, I accepted a pair of boots from the man with the heels on wrong.
His son had made them but wedged the heels the wrong way and simply turned them back to and nailed them, the result of which was that I made a strange print, with the toe of my boot pointing in one direction and the heel indicating the direct opposite. I kind of liked them.
“Mr. Thicket was with me when I got the boots, flying about, that is, and grazing the top of my head or landing briefly on my shoulder whenever he thought I had forgotten him. When we returned to the slopes that overlook the rocks and shore, I was startled by the sight of a fourmasted schooner foundering on the wrong side of Outer Head. Two or three boats were already meeting her in case she required abandoning, which she quickly did, and I clambered down the clify banks to see how I could help.
“I knew the ship was doomed when a school of tiny heads appeared between her and the shore. It is a strange sight when rats abandon a ship, and I was astonished, though I had been to sea, how many of these brutes paddled their way onto the little spit of sand where I stood. It is some eerie too when a swarm of these creatures reach the shore and mow by you like a herd of tiny buffalo, but they were past me and disappeared into the cliffside and the brush above before I had much time to think about it.”
This image was proof to some shivers among the old fellow’s listeners, and Thump in particular looked wide-eyed and astonished to think of such an army
of rats swimming to shore.
“No one was lost in the wreck, and the ship itself was recovered soon after, which is a story itself, but I went home with my wrong-heeled boots and Mr. Thicket swooping over my head and thought the day had provided something interesting.
“I had not been long in my new abode before I noticed that a small herd of cats wandered by on most mornings, at about eight o’clock, like they were going to work, and I was careful about them around the house with Mr. Thicket nearby. I thought perhaps they were finding sport among the new rats in the neighborhood. There was also another old fellow, by the name of Hughie Borkhum, who had a large dog, and I seldom actually met the man, though I did see him once or twice, from my kitchen window, as he and the dog walked the short stretch of sand below my house.
“I rarely saw them, however, as they were not such early risers, and I was an hour or two out with Carny before Hughie made his rounds with his great dog.
“It was about this time that some odd things began to happen-that is, a run of bad luck. My sheep got further afield, and once or twice I was obliged to search them out. They knocked down a side of their shack one night, and I grew conscious that the rats were inhabiting the height of land with me and my sheep and Mr. Thicket with impunity. What were the cat doing? I wondered.
“Now there are several creatures that follow man about the globe-the flea, the bedbug, the mosquito-but none so daunting in its craftiness, or so difficult to be rid of, as the rat that populates every wharf and ship’s hold and wanders the comers of the earth as well as we do. If you have ever tried to dominate a piece of acreage or a cellar over the ambitions of a single one of these creatures, you will know that it takes some doing to catch or kill them. I was facing, then, an entire ship’s company of rats and whatever recent offspring they were busy raising, and it became all-out war that I must eventually lose, without the aid of the neighborhood cats.
“And then my well, which was spring-fed, dried up, and I searched out the source of the water on a height above me; the bank on the opposite side had broken away, and the spring was now flowing down the further slope. I tried to redirect the water back toward my home, but my engineering skills and a shovel were not up to the task. Any headway I made was soon knocked’ down by the force of the stream itself or the next ram.
“That was the late fall, and it did rain pretty hard through November, and I set up a cistern. Carny didn’t like the weather much, so we never got out for a month or so, and I had leave to think on the bad run of luck I was experiencing. I lived on mutton and rain till winter came.
“When the weather got bad, Carny would come up and play cards with me and we would talk about what was occurring in the neighborhood: a new set of twins, a boat lost in a storm, Hughie Borkhum, who was convinced that some sort of water troll or selkie had been frequenting the beach. He’d even gone so far as to plant a cross on the dunes above the sand, and as sign of the creature had not returned, Hughie considered the measure successful.
“Winter set in with due earnestness, and I hadn’t looked toward a snowy season with so little promise since I had a farm half wrecked up in Shirley Mills-well, come to think of it, that was a Christmas Eve as well…”
The man scratched at his beard, thought of something, and fished through his pockets till he found a pipe and some tobacco. There was not another word heard in the car, people were so anxious to hear the rest of his tale, but the wind howled outside the car, and the snow sprayed the windows.
When he had the pipe lit and puffed a few billows of smoke, the old fellow took stock of where he had left off and said, “Yes, Christmas came apace-all too quickly, for my money, since I knew how slow the rest of the winter would seem. I have often thought they should move Christmas to February, at least around these parts, when a body needs real distraction.
“Some of the neighbors came around on the day before Christmas, and there was a little cheer beyond the strict tenets of law, I am sure, but everything was fat and jovial, and I met several people I had only heard of before then. Everyone was glad to visit with one another, for the winter could be a long and lonely affair, there being some distance yet between houses outside the village.
“But I was near wore out with talk and a drop here and a drop there by the time the yule log was blazing and Mr. Thicket and I were dozing before the hearth. I must have fallen right to sleep after Carny dozing leck up and left, for I don’t remember much but a strange dream or two. I had a good deal on my mind in those days, for the rats had offered to join our little household and the battle had grown accordingly. I had even gotten myself a cat, along with an added nervousness for Mr. Thicket, but the great orange tom seemed disinclined to do his duty and slept beneath my chair, where he thought the rats would be least likely to bother him.
“Don’t imagine that I was living with the creatures running over me at night or scampering across the floor, but they were about, skittering in the walls and gnawing at the floor timbers. My dreams that night were filled with them, and nagging me as well was the sense that something indeed had brought me ill luck: the rats, the sheep ranging too far, the broken wall in the shack, the dried-up well.
“Then came a voice, saying, ‘It’s your boots! It’s your boots!’
“I woke with a start. I had no idea anyone was in the house with me, and I nearly tipped my chair into the fire as I leaped to my feet. The room was dark, save for the lowering fire, and I scanned about to see who had spoken.
“‘It’s your boots!’ came the voice again, and it sang out with an odd, somehow familiar pitch.
“‘What’s my boots?’ I asked, and lifted one foot then another to glance at them, though my feet were but shadows in the dark room. ‘Who’s talking?’”
“‘Quick, it’s midnight!’ came the voice, and I located it with enough accuracy to be pretty sure that Mr. Thicket, sitting on the mantel, was speaking to me.
“You can imagine that I pinched myself pretty hard, and I did. But Mr. Thicket cocked his head, gave a wink, and said again, ‘It’s your boots!’
“‘My boots?’ I said. ‘Are they bad luck then?’
“‘Hughie haunts the beach with his dog, and the cats don’t come,’said Mr. Thicket, and then he let out a more normal sort of screech for a blue jay and I knew that the minute of midnight was over.”
The fellow’s pipe had gone out. Hardly stirring himself from his languid position, Brink was able to offer the man a lighted match.
“Thank you,”said the white-bearded fellow.
“Had Hughie Borkhum been seeing your footprints on the beach?” asked Mr. Burnbrake.
“He had indeed,” said the man. “And he was alarmed to see something shod so waywardly as to have the toe pointing in one direction and the heel in another. It didn’t help that my prints always came down off the dunes and disappeared into the water, where Carny picked me up in his dory. Of course the waves would wash away the footprints nearer the water as well as the keel sign of the boat.
“So Hughie was haunting the beach for hours at a time with his great dog, and his dog would chase after the cats when they came, so they quit coming and simply took up visiting someone’s fish shack on the other side of the point. The rats were left more or less unhindered, and as their population increased, they frightened the sheep and ate their feed. The sheep of course knocked down a wall of the shack to get away from them one night and began, as is understandable, to range further for something sweet. Nothing was sweeter than the ground surrounding the head of the spring, but with the grass and plants grazed down, a good rain was all the further bank needed to wash out and redirect the water away from my well!”
The storyteller looked up to find one of his listeners scaratching away into a book. The mention of the cross upon the beach had reminded Eagleton of the cross he wore beneath his shirt, and he was torn between recording the story that was presently being yarned and recounting the experience with the blasphemous cabdriver and the French lady before he lost the sense
of urgency and all the details.
“I never did disabuse Hughie Borkhum of his notions regarding the sea troll, he was that pleased with driving the creature off with his cross in the dunes. I enticed the cats back with a trail of bait, and it was not long before the rats had packed their things and floated themselves out to the wrecked ship, just as she was being raised. During the winter I was able to shore up the opposite bank of the spring, and my well filled up again.”
There was half a minute’s silence then as the Moosepathians and the Dashians and Mr. Burnbrake digested it all.
“The bird spoke,” said Thump quietly, trying to imagine such a thing.
“What happened to him?” asked Waverley.
“Mr. Thicket? He has passed on to his reward.” The old man nodded, but barely, and looked into his pipe as if something interesting were there.
“And did you ever hear him speak again?” wondered Mr. Burnbrake.
“I never did. I don’t know if it was considered good form to actually communicate with me, but we were good friends, and it had been a rough season. You can imagine, though, that I have stayed up past midnight most Christmas Eves since.”
“St. Nicholas won’t come by if you’re awake,” assured Durwood.
“That’s another story,” said the fellow, and he nodded softly again.
“I am sorry I didn’t get that fellow’s name,” said Eagleton later in the day. “I know the name of the bird, but not the man.” They had gotten of at Hallowell and bid the storyteller a good day, then hired a sleigh to the Worster House. The snow had not let up, and they wondered that the driver could find his way. Eagleton wished he had a name to attach with the story of the talking jay, and in his concern he once again forgot the chain around his neck and the talisman that depended from it.
24. The Tor
The way up the side of the tor was steep and treacherous, flanked by ledges that rose in a circle about the conical hill like giant steps, and bristling with low brush and scrub trees. Two or three of these ledges they used as goals in their climb, and Sundry, who took the lead, helped the others as they came up behind. They were a fit party: Capital was a common haunt in the woods, and Frederick and Isabelle were plainly used to physical exertion of this sort; even Mister Walton, despite his portly figure, proved to have strong legs and good lungs. While the others caught him up, Sundry looked below them, where Moxie sat dutifully beside the horses, and behind them in the woods, where silence and snow reigned.