The Wild Ones

by C. Alexander London

  Neither the snake nor the possum nor the rooster paid Kit any mind. No one noticed him at all . . . no one except the Blacktail brothers, who’d caught the young raccoon’s scent right away.

  Raccoons themselves, Shane and Flynn Blacktail had a keen nose for when one of their own arrived in the alley.

  “Look of the Big Sky on that one,” said Shane to his brother.

  “Doesn’t know his way around beneath our sliver of sky with its alleys and pavements,” Flynn responded.

  “He’s used to the woods and grasses of the wide-open spaces, I bet you.”

  “No bet there, my brother. We are in perfect agreement.”

  “And are we in perfect agreement that a newcomer here, and a pal of our own paw at that, might be needing friends?”

  “We are.” Flynn nodded. “Friends are what that lad needs, and friends are what we could be.”

  “Best of friends.”

  “Oh yes, best friends,” said Flynn. “A friend in need, after all, is a friend indeed.”

  The Blacktail brothers ran a shell-and-nut game—one nut, three shells, and the players try to guess which shell the nut is hidden under. Guess right, the nut’s yours. Guess wrong, it’ll cost you a nut or a seed or whatever else your pockets might hold.

  Many a traveler, rat and raccoon, bird and bunny alike, had emptied his pockets down to dust at the hands of these two Blacktail brothers, who used the word friend when they really meant sucker.

  With a wink, Flynn Blacktail told his brother to start the ballyhoo, that carnival call they used to bring players to their corner game, although they weren’t interested in any old player.

  No, they had their eyes on the young raccoon, who looked like a “friend” indeed.

  Chapter Five

  FRIENDS OF

  THE FUR

  YOU may have luck, you may have plenty!” Shane Blacktail cried out.

  “Five’ll get you ten, ten’ll get you twenty!” Flynn Blacktail responded right after.

  They spoke loud and clear, so loud the whole alley could hear, but their words were meant for Kit alone.

  “The game itself is lots of fun,” Shane sang. “A simple bet, pays two to one!”

  “You there! Fine lad!” Flynn called. “Come over here, why don’t you?”

  The young raccoon looked left and he looked right, certain these two fast-talking corner boys couldn’t be speaking to him. He didn’t know anyone in this alley. He glanced down at the scrap of bark in his fist. He shuddered at the memory of the dogs pouncing on his mother as he fled, then wiped a single tear from his fur and told his memories to be quiet.

  He decided there could be no harm in asking fellow raccoons to point him on his way toward his uncle. They looked friendly enough.

  Kit shuffled on over to the twins and sat up on his back paws to greet them with his fingertips touching in an A. They returned the greeting, and he was glad to know that raccoons under the Slivered Sky greeted one another the same way as raccoons did back home. At least one thing about this place was familiar.

  The Blacktail brothers smirked from the corners of their mouths. Shane brushed some dirt from his pin-striped pants, and Flynn rolled up the sleeves of his open black shirt.

  “What’s your name, boy?” Flynn asked.

  “Kit,” Kit answered.

  “A fine name, Kit is,” Shane Blacktail said. “This your first time beneath the Slivered Sky, Kit?”

  “It is,” said Kit.

  “Must be hard, not knowing a hide in this town,” asked Flynn.

  “I have an uncle,” Kit explained. “He’s supposed to live around here. I’m trying to find him.”

  He stretched out the piece of bark and Flynn took it casually from him, passing it to his brother without looking at it. Shane set it down on his side of the table, his claw covering it just enough so that Kit couldn’t take it back.

  “Oh, plenty of time for addresses and uncles,” said Flynn. “How about a friendly game to welcome you to the neighborhood?”

  “I don’t have time for games,” said Kit. “I really need to find my uncle.”

  “But we’re practically cousins,” said Shane. “Pals of the paw, all of one fur, and so on. All raccoons are cousins, you know? And where there are cousins, uncles are bound to be before long. Ankle Snap’s lousy with uncles.”

  “Lousy with lice too,” Flynn added.

  “Ankle Snap?” Kit asked them.

  “Why that’s where you are, young Kit!” Shane laughed. “Ankle Snap Alley.”

  “Young Kit doesn’t know where he is,” Flynn mused. “Makes a raccoon wonder how he can know where he’s going?”

  “We can’t have a kid like Kit wandering about the Ankle Snap without knowing where he’s going,” Shane replied.

  “He could end up anywhere,” warned Flynn.

  “He could end up nowhere!” cried Shane.

  “Nowhere, indeed, which also spells Now Here,” said Flynn.

  “And yet, here he is now,” said Shane.

  “And now that he is here, we can’t let him end up nowhere,” Flynn agreed.

  “Wouldn’t be right,” Shane concurred.

  “Wouldn’t be friendly,” Flynn amended.

  “Wouldn’t be . . . safe,” Shane declared.

  The raccoon brothers had a way of bantering so fast it made Kit’s head spin, but he caught on to that last word and interrupted their twirling tongues with an alarmed question of his own: “Safe?”

  “Oh”—Flynn shook his head, sucked air through his teeth—“the Ankle Snap’s not safe at all for those who don’t know their way.”

  “Gets its name from the ankle-snapping traps that the People leave about,” said Shane. He said the word People as if it were a curse word.

  “People,” Kit echoed, spitting the word out like a curse word too, which made the Blacktail brothers laugh.

  “New traps pop up all the time,” continued Shane. “People put ’em out while we’re sleeping, rearrange them under cover of sunlight. And then of course, they send their house pets out to savor whoever gets stuck inside come sunup.”

  “Savor?” Kit swallowed.

  “To eat!” Flynn laughed. “The Flealess’d eat us all up if they could. Of course, it’s easy enough to get around the alley if you’ve got friends looking out for you.”

  “Friends to keep you from getting hurt,” added Shane.

  “And we, as upstanding representatives of the Rabid Rascals,” said Flynn, “do not want to see you get hurt.”

  Now Kit was really confused. “Rabid who?”

  Shane shook his head. “He doesn’t know the Rabid Rascals.”

  Flynn nodded kindly. “The Rabid Rascals are a neighborhood watch,” he explained. “We’re a cohort, if you will, of creatures committed to the safety and well-being of all the residents of Ankle Snap Alley.”

  “A cohort?” Kit scratched his head. Something didn’t sound right. He knew the word cohort meant a group, but he began to feel uneasy about how the Blacktail brothers were using the word, as if they meant far more than they said.

  “Well,” added Shane with a shrug, “some might call us a gang. But we only gang up on folks who don’t appreciate our protection. Folks that threaten the safety of our neighborhood.”

  “And its well-being,” added Flynn.

  “Of course,” said Shane. “We are very committed to well-being, as well as being well.”

  “Oh yes, being well most of all,” said Flynn. “And in the interest of your being well, Kit, I suggest you stick with us and play a game or three. I bet you crumbs to nuts that this uncle of yours finds his way to you before the sun comes up again on Ankle Snap.”

  “I don’t think I should be . . . gambling,” said Kit.

  “Just until an uncle comes along,” said Shane. “Uncle
s are drawn to the old shell game like church mice to peanuts.”

  Both raccoons looked across the alley at a cluster of three mice taking up the narrow path between P. Ansel’s Sweet & Best-Tasting Baking Company and a coop of chickens, settling in to their evening gossip outside the rooster’s barbershop. Passersby of all families and furs tried to sidestep the mice, but the little guys got right in the way of cat and rat alike.

  “Do you believe peace is possible?” a mouse demanded of a wobbly-looking skunk, shoving a bark pamphlet in his face. “Do you have faith the Wild Ones and the Flealess can live in harmony? We do! We know the way to peace and prosperity!”

  The skunk waved him off, staggered around him, and quickly vanished into the dark doorway of a place called Larkanon’s, where a mangy dog dozed by the door.

  “Morning, Rocks,” the skunk said as he tossed the dog a few seeds. The dog put them in a pocket of his jacket and grunted without lifting his head.

  The mouse with the pamphlet looked sadly after the skunk, sighed, and returned to calling out for other passersby. “All the families of fur and feather, paw and claw, predator and prey, all can live in harmony! We needn’t pay the Rascals for protection! We needn’t fear the Flealess! The woodpecker’s fate need not be ours! When the Bone of Contention is found, peace will be at hand!”

  “Oh, stuff your cheese holes!” Flynn shouted at the mouse, his fangs flashing. The mouse ignored him completely.

  “What’s the Bone of Contention?” Kit wondered.

  “Don’t mind about those church mice and their fables, Kit.” Flynn captured his attention once more, all smiles. “You know the game, shells-and-nuts?”

  “I . . . uh . . . ,” Kit mustered.

  “You got any seeds in that fine coat of yours?”

  “Well . . . I have seeds, but I really shouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t want to—”

  “If we all lived by shoulds, we wouldn’t do a thing worth doing!” Shane cut him off. “Seeds are meant for spending, not for shoulding about in pockets!”

  Kit was still puzzling out what shoulding could possibly be, but Flynn talked right over his thinking. “We’ll put down one nut to four seeds, how about that? You won’t find more generous terms in any alley this side of the Slivered Sky. Now, how do those odds sound?”

  “Uh . . .” Kit fidgeted nervously. “I don’t know what you’re saying, really. It is pretty odd.”

  “Well put, young lad!” Flynn patted him on the back, laughing. “Well put! We’ve given you odd odds and odd words. What good are words, when the odds are so odd, am I right? Actions speak! Begin, brother. Young Kit here has no use of odd words. But of the odds, he has our word!”

  “I . . . what?” Kit was bewildered, but Shane picked up a small nut in his delicate black claw and placed it on a scrap of old cardboard laid across two empty red cans from a toss-away fizzy drink. He laid out three walnut shells and then put the nut beneath one. Then his hands slid and slipped around the table, mixing up the shells.

  As Shane’s paws moved, Flynn talked, and Flynn’s talk was more like a song. He sang:

  It’s a simple game of ifs and buts,

  of shells and nuts.

  You pick a shell, you try your luck.

  Select a shell, the one you choose.

  If right, you win, if wrong, you lose.

  Shane’s hands sped up; the shells moved faster and faster. Kit thought he knew where the nut was one second; the next he started to doubt. His eyes couldn’t keep up with the moving paws, but his ears perked. Even with all the racket of Ankle Snap Alley, he could hear a small knocking sound. It was the sound of the nut knocking against the side of the shell. If he could follow that sound, he could find the nut. That was why Flynn sang . . . to distract the ears of the players!

  The luck itself, it comes from you

  or from Azban, if saints be true.

  The eye won’t lie, or will it, so?

  You find the nut, and then you’ll know!

  Kit did his best to ignore the song and listened for the sound of the nut.

  Shane stopped moving the shells and lifted his hands away with open palms. As he stopped, Kit’s keen ears picked up the sound of the nut under the farthest shell. It wasn’t where he’d thought it would be, but he trusted his ears far more than his eyes.

  “It’s there!” He pointed triumphantly. “It’s under that shell.”

  “You’re certain?” Flynn asked him.

  Kit nodded to Flynn and Flynn nodded to Shane and Shane tipped the shell back to reveal the nut exactly where Kit had said it would be.

  “Winner, winner, nuts for dinner!” Shane called out and Kit felt a rush of excitement. A crowd around him cheered. He hadn’t even noticed a crowd gather.

  “Nicely done, pal o’ me paw,” said Flynn. “You’ve a knack for the game, like all of our kind. He rolled a nut toward Kit, then stopped it with the tip of one claw just as Kit reached out for it. “What say you give a friend, a cousin like meself, a chance to win it back?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kit, who thought it best to quit while he was ahead. He’d wagered four seeds and won a hazelnut, which was worth a lot more than four seeds. It’d be best if he went to find his uncle now, got back to the task at hand. He hadn’t come all this way to play gambling games. He’d come for a purpose. He just needed to get his piece of bark back.

  “I’ll give you double odds,” Flynn proposed. “Triple odds on top of that. Win you five nuts for the price of one, you could.”

  Shane gasped.

  “See that?” Flynn said. “My brother don’t want me to bet so, but the night is young and so are you, Kit. Let’s keep up the game! It’s all good fun, right?”

  The crowd leaned in, waiting for Kit’s answer. The busy moles had stopped being busy and crowded in behind Kit to see the Blacktail brothers work. A stoat in a gray trench coat leaned over Kit’s shoulder, while a whole flock of pigeons peered down on him from the dark wire above. The mangy dog outside of Larkanon’s opened one eye to watch, and from the door, the skunk popped out his head at the entertainment.

  “Blacktail brothers found an easy mark, eh?” he shouted. “Watch out, kid. They’ll take you for that jacket and all else!”

  “Do it, kiddo,” the stoat in the coat urged Kit, nudging his attention back to the game. “You’ll be rich by sunrise!”

  “Raccoons to Riches!” called a voice from above, a finch Kit’s age, fluttering over the game with a visor on his head that said NEWS. Two more young finches joined him, shouting out their own versions of the headline.

  “Blacktails’ Bad Luck Brings Fortune!”

  “Nuts to the Newcomer!”

  A chorus of voices pressured him: “Do it!” “You’ll be famous!” “Come on!” “You got ’em!”

  Kit smirked, thinking how swell it would be to show up at his uncle’s place a rich raccoon. In Ankle Snap Alley, it seemed, anything was possible.

  “Okay,” said Kit. “I’ll make that bet.”

  Kit would, of course, come to wish he hadn’t.

  Chapter Six

  SURE BETS

  AS soon as Kit agreed to play again, Flynn slid the hazelnut under the walnut shell again and passed a smile back to his brother. The ballyhoo began, but this time, Kit found it a lot harder to follow; Shane’s paws and Flynn’s tongue moved much faster.

  Hither and thither and thither and yon,

  you look, you see, but where’s it gone?

  It’s time to point and pick your spot;

  if the nut is there, you win, why not?

  Shane stopped singing, and Kit heard the tiny sound again, the nut knocking the edge of the shell. The crowd leaned in around him, waiting with bated breath. He pointed.

  “You’re sure again, eh?” asked Flynn.

  Kit nodded.

  “Certain?”
/>   “I’m certain,” he said, suddenly wondering if Flynn was trying to get him to change his mind.

  “I think you’ve got doubts,” pressed Flynn.

  “I don’t,” said Kit. He found the bigger raccoon’s friendly smile not so friendly all of a sudden. “I’m sure.”

  Shane scratched behind his ears. Rather than turn over the shell, he spoke to his brother. “I don’t think young Kit’s very sure. He wants to change his mind.”

  “I don’t!” Kit objected. “I am sure! That’s the spot! The nut’s under that shell there.”

  “Well, if you’re so sure, let’s up the bet,” suggested Flynn. “All our nuts to all your seeds.”

  “What?” Kit felt his stomach sink. “No . . . I can’t bet all my seeds . . .”

  “Told you he wasn’t sure,” said Shane. “Kit’s not the player we thought he was. Just a bit of baby fur in a shiny coat.”

  “I am not,” Kit shouted. “I’ll take that bet. You’ll see!”

  “The bet is made,” Flynn announced for the whole crowd to hear. “Young Kit’s a player after all!”

  The crowd cheered again, because they loved nothing more than a high-stakes wager. If Kit won, he really would be rich. If he lost . . . well, it was too terrible to think about.

  Without another word, Shane smirked, pushed the other two shells aside, and told Kit to flip over his choice.

  Kit reached out, lifted the shell, and saw . . . nothing. There was no nut.

  “Loser! Loser! Wrong Nut Chooser!” one of the young news finches shouted.

  “Oh, come off it, Weebly.” Another news finch rolled her eyes. “This ain’t news. Just another sucker made a bad bet. Happens every day.”

  The news finches flew off to find more interesting happenings in the alley, leaving Kit dejected before the gaming table.

  “But . . . I was sure of it,” Kit said.

  “Never be sure of anything here in Ankle Snap, young Kit,” Flynn told him. “A game of chance is the least sure thing of all. Now, that’s all your seeds if you please.”

  “I . . . I . . . ,” Kit stammered.

  “Or we could extend you a loan,” Flynn suggested. “A line of credit to borrow. You could win and pay us back with your winnings, no harm done.”