“Nothing,” said the mouse child. “I can see the nothing between the dots. Nothing at all, coming and going. Nothing is what is beyond the last visible dog.”
KLOP! C. Serpentina rose up from the mud and snapped his jaws. “Nothing!” he said. “Absolutely nothing! Accretions and abstractions of annotated nothing. Bafflements of nothing. Charismas, demiurges, and epiphanies of nothing. Note well. See above. See below. Nothing.” SCRUNCH! CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP. ULP. ULP. He had snapped up the snake that had eaten the tadpoles, and was a long time in swallowing it.
“Nothing!” said the mouse father. “What about the ultimate truth?”
“That’s it,” said Serpentina. “Nothing is the ultimate truth.”
“Nothing?” said the child.
“Nothing,” repeated Serpentina.
“Oh, I shouldn’t like to think that,” said Miss Mudd, dodging quickly away from the snapper’s jaws. “It scarcely seems fair, does it? Of course, I’m not really sure.”
“I don’t believe it,” said the mouse child. The colored dots were dancing in his vision; the dogs seemed to surround him. He felt his mind leap, as Muskrat’s had when he conceived the X. “I wonder what’s on the other side of nothing?” he said.
“Tiny upstart!” said Serpentina. “Who are you to seek the other side of nothing?”
“If I’m big enough to stand in the mud all this time and contemplate infinity,” said the child, “I’m big enough to look at the other side of nothing.”
“Even I am,” said Miss Mudd. She reached out her jointed lip, tore off the last visible dog, and began to chew it up.
“That’s cheating,” rumbled Serpentina, missing again as he struck. “You can’t swallow infinity.”
“I just want to see what’s behind it,” said the child. “In the work cited. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“Very well,” said Serpentina. “Develop your premise.” He retired once more into the ooze and went to sleep.
Miss Mudd chewed and swallowed steadily. As the paper of the label disappeared, the shiny tin behind it became visible, and the child saw a beady eye looking at him from the surface of the can. Gradually the area of exposed tin widened, and he saw his own face and his outstretched hands holding his father’s hands. His reflection in the counter he had stood on long ago had been below his field of vision; he had never seen himself before, but he recognized his father, and therefore knew himself. “Ah,” he said, “there’s nothing on the other side of nothing but us.” Miss Mudd looked at herself in the tin, then covered her face and turned away.
The mouse child felt himself fanned by a current of water as a large-mouth bass swam past him and glowered at the tin can. “Move along, buddy,” the fish said to his own reflection. “I’m nesting here.”
“You’re talking to yourself,” said Miss Mudd, stepping aside as the bass struck at her.
Unconvinced, he backed water slowly, saw that the other fish did the same, and withdrew. “And stay away!” he said over his shoulder as he left.
“They’re big and strong, but they’re silly,” said Miss Mudd. “Shiny things on strings are always coming down to catch them.”
The child looked at their reflection in the shining tin, and in the hands that held his own he felt his father’s grip grown weak. “There’s nothing beyond the last visible dog but us,” he said. “Nobody can get us out of here but us. That gives us Why. Now we have to figure out the Hows and the Whats.”
“I fear that Serpentina is right,” said the father. “Nothing is the ultimate truth, and this mud is like all other mud.”
“I don’t care if it is,” said the child. “I want to get out of here. Can you find some string?” he asked Miss Mudd.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “There’s a lot of it here on the bottom. It gets caught in snags. I’ll get some right away.”
The child stood muttering to himself while his father stared beyond him into the empty water and Serpentina snored in the mud. “Up times Down,” said the mouse child. “In divided by Out. Here into There.”
“Here I am with the string,” said Miss Mudd, returning through the ooze with one end of a fishing line in her mouth. “I’ve got quite a long piece of it. Will it do, do you think?”
“Yes,” said the mouse child. “And now I must have silence, so I can work out Mouse’s Much-in-Little.”
Far above him the sunlight drowsed on the water; the shadows flickered in the leaves, and the song of the cicadas vibrated on the warm air like the sound of summer’s clockwork running down.
Hours passed, and it was midday when Miss Mudd’s ugly little face appeared among the reeds and lily pads where the nutshell drum still floated quietly by the edge of the pond. She clung tiredly to the reed stem she had climbed, a length of fishing line hanging straight down from her jaws into the water. With what seemed the last of her strength she hauled up the end of the line with the good-luck coin attached. She ate up the algae that had covered it, and scrubbed it as well as she was able. Now, although it was not bright, the brass was capable of glimmering in the water, and she hoped it would suffice. YOU WILL SUCCEED … YOUR LUCKY DAY IS … said the alternating legend as the coin twisted on its string. Dragging it onto a lily pad, Miss Mudd left it there among the loose coils of line, then climbed down the reed stem and disappeared below the surface.
In an hour or so she reappeared, more line in her jaws, on the rocks near the bank, where a row of painted turtles lay basking in the sun. Risking her life as she passed each turtle, Miss Mudd crept stealthily on until she came to a flat rock overhung by the low branches of the sumac on the bank. Here she dragged the line through a narrow fork in one of the branches, then staggered on across the lily pads to where the nutshell drum still rocked in the ripples among the reeds. Working more and more slowly, she tied the end of the line to the strap of the drum. Then she took the end of the line coiled on the lily pad, tied it also to the drum strap, and pushed the coin into the water. The nutshell drum went under, then bobbed up again. Peering down through the water, Miss Mudd saw the coin swinging below her, its worn brass gleaming faintly, like a forlorn hope.
“There,” she said, “that’s it,” and she collapsed, exhausted, on the lily pad. “I feel so odd!” she said. “I can scarcely catch my breath, and my eyes are growing dim. Perhaps I’m dying, and my little muddy life is finished, and I never was meant to be anything but what I was.”
Miss Mudd began to cry, and as her body heaved it split down the back. “Oh!” she said, and felt the life stir in her wet and wrinkled wings that were already stiffening for flight. “It was so difficult to be sure!” she sighed. She climbed out of the empty, muddy shell of her discarded self, a dragonfly now, new and lovely, emerald green. She waited patiently until the sun had dried her iridescent wings, then launched herself uncertainly to fly. Her shabby nymphhood crouched forgotten on the lily pad; her old name was forgotten too, and all that lay below the surface in the dark. Glittering above the pond she flew away, lilting on the warm wind like a song in the sunlight, like a sigh in the summer air.
In the mud at the bottom the mouse and his child waited. The end of Muskrat’s string, still tied to the father’s arm, was now knotted to the fishing line that hung swaying in a slack curve up to the surface and the forked branch above the flat rock.
“Waiting,” said the child. “How much of our time we have spent waiting!”
Serpentina awoke, yawned, and snapped his jaws hungrily. “One rises afresh,” he said, “to new investigations of TO BE. What have you found beyond the farther side of nothing?”
“A way out,” replied the mouse child.
“Indeed!” said Serpentina. “Have you paused to consider that there is no way out? Each way out of one situation necessarily being the way into another situation, we may say that — Stop! Pay attention!”
But the mouse and his child, exploding from a cloud of mud, were halfway to the sunlit surface of the pond. Above them, the nutshell drum went slanting down into t
he water. The bass that had swallowed the coin was off like a bullet, and the line cut a V-shaped wake through the water as it ran smoking over the forked branch and hauled up the long-submerged tin mice.
Sodden and heavy with the silt of the bottom, they broke the surface, burst splashing into the sunlight, and went skittering across the turtle rocks. “Summer people!” hissed the turtles, and plopped into the water in rapid-fire order. Father and son banged into the narrow fork of the branch, the knot that tied Muskrat’s string to the fishing line slipped out, and they dropped with a soggy rattle to the flat stone by the bank.
The mouse and his child lay in a puddle on the stone as the water drained out of them. They were spotted, streaked, and pitted with rust at all their joints, and the arms they stretched out to each other were naked, rusty wires. What fur remained was black with rot, and green with moss and algae. Their tattered ears stood bent and crooked on their heads. Their whiskers hung in limp dejection.
The sunlight seemed intolerably bright, and its warmth on their tin was delightful. Sounds were needle-sharp and clear; they listened to the rustling of the leaves, the drone of the cicadas, the slow, sweet notes of a white-throated sparrow, and a strange, loud sound that came from the marshes that bordered the pond. OONG, BONK, CHOONG! it went, pumping and thumping in the reeds; OONG, BONK, CHOONG! in a steady rhythm. In a nearby birch tree, high above them, a kingfisher watched curiously. In his claws he held a coil of fishing line, one end of which hung straight down into the water. The pounding in the marsh stopped as the child’s little tin voice rang out over the pond. “What shall we do now?” he said.
“Leave quickly, I hope,” said a sepulchral voice from the reeds nearby.
The father, who lay facing the sound, saw that the speaker was a heavyset brown wading bird, streaked and mottled in such a way that as he stood motionless he was almost invisible among the reeds. He stood like a reed too, his long beak pointing straight up. His eyes, however, set very close together like a little pair of yellow spectacles, stared straight ahead glassily at the mouse father.
“Who are you?” said the father, staring back at the bird, who seemed to come and go like an optical illusion.
“One who loves privacy,” replied the bittern. “Let that suffice. Our acquaintance need go no further. Do not let me detain you. Good-bye.” The wind stirred the reeds, and he swayed with them, maintaining his invisibility.
“If you could help us …” the child began.
“On your way — I should be delighted,” said the bittern. “How may I assist your departure?”
“Turn the key in my back and wind us up, please,” said the father.
The bittern left the reeds and waded skulkingly to the stone, as if begrudging the privacy he lost with every step. Holding the father firmly in place with one large foot, he took a strong grip on the key with his beak. His little eyes bulged alarmingly as he strained at it, and his neck twisted halfway around, but not the key. “What sort of hoax is this?” he said. “Your key won’t turn.”
“We’re a little rusty,” said the father. “Please try again.”
The bittern braced himself once more, took a fresh grip on the key, and grunted heavily as it began to turn. The cogs clicked as the rusty spring tightened inside the father, and he waited for the familiar feeling of release that always followed it. The bittern stood them on their feet and let go of the key. Nothing happened. The father’s legs did not move.
“Good-bye,” said the bittern. “Don’t stop to thank me.” And he vanished among the reeds.
“What’s the matter, Papa?” said the child. “Why aren’t we moving?”
“We’re broken!” said the father, hurt as much by the dreaded word as the painful tightness of his spring inside him.
“Broken!” said the child, too shocked to cry.
“Broken,” repeated the father. “We have survived bank robbery, war, the Caws of Art, the breaking of the dam, and the contemplation of infinity, only to come to this!”
“Perhaps you still have too much of the pond inside your clockwork,” said the child. “Perhaps when we’ve dried out a little …”
“Drying out won’t be enough,” the father said. “I can feel that it’s more serious than that. Muskrat is our only hope now. But how can we get to him?”
“EXTRA!” screamed a familiar voice above them, and the blue jay flashed into view. “MUSKRAT KILLED BY FALLING TREE. MEETS DEATH IN BEAVER DAM RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT. LAST WORDS: WHAT DIVIDED BY HOW EQUALS WHY. DIVING BEETLES ROUT BACKSWIMMERS IN WATER POLO. TADPOLES HIT BOTTOM IN LITTLE LEAGUE STANDINGS.” He looked down, nodded in greeting, shouted, “WINDUPS IDLE,” and flew away.
“Look out!” yelled the kingfisher from the birch tree.
“LUNCHTIME!” shrieked a third and harsher voice. A shadow fell upon the mouse and his child, and they felt the sudden, sharp grip of powerful claws. The whole pond, the trees around it and the marsh, all dropped away below, grew small, and tilted out of sight as father and son rose up into the air in the talons of a marsh hawk. “Kill!” sang the hawk with great good cheer. His eyes were fierce and yellow; his talons were like steel. “Kill!” he sang. “I have a kill! Blood to drink and flesh to tear!” He laughed, and his wings flashed in the sun.
The air was warm and pleasant as they flew; the gentlest of breezes sped the hawk along and sighed and murmured after him. Below smiled sleepy green-and-yellow fields that wore flashing streams like jewels, while stately trees stood nodding by their own cool shadows. The world had never seemed so fair.
Still waterlogged and heavy from his long immersion, the father hung from the child’s hands and felt his own weight dragging at him. He felt his hands, rusty and crumbling, begin to slip away from those that held him. His tight spring ached inside him, and a great longing for peace and rest came over him. “Why not give up the struggle?” he sighed. “I can hold on no longer.”
“Don’t say that, Papa!” cried the child. “I’ve got you! You won’t fall!”
“We had our hopes, and they are gone,” said the father listlessly. “Let me drop into some peaceful meadow where the grass will grow among my scattered clockwork! Why wait to be smashed upon some lonely rock when the hawk finds out we aren’t edible!”
“If we’d been edible we’d never have lasted this long,” said the child. Ahead on the horizon hung the smoke of burning rubbish. “See below,” he said. “I think we’re heading toward the dump.” He was silent for a few moments. “Do you remember,” he said, “that Muskrat told us we’d have to be taken apart before he could figure out the Hows and Whats that would make us self-winding?”
“Yes,” said the father, “but Muskrat is gone.”
“We aren’t,” said the child. “Not yet.”
They were high above the earth, the ground below them tilting in slow sweeps as the hawk soared in an updraft. The mouse child saw the dump in the distance, the railroad tracks and the swamp beyond them, the highway, the junkyard, and the roofs of the town. The hawk circled, climbing higher. The child saw something else, and laughed. “You there!” he said to the hawk.
“What’s on your mind?” said the marsh hawk. “You do a lot of talking for a small-sized kill.”
“What are you having for lunch today?” asked the child.
“The usual thing,” said the hawk. “Blood to drink and flesh to tear. Yours. I’m just working up an appetite so you’ll taste that much better when I get home.”
“Skreep, skreep!” laughed the child.
“What’s so funny?” said the hawk.
“You’re not going to eat us,” said the child.
“That’s how much you know,” replied the hawk. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you about the balance of nature? It’s like a beautiful pyramid, with a lot of juicy mice and chipmunks down at the bottom and a hawk up at the top. Naturally the hawk eats up the mice and the chipmunks. That’s how it is. I eat and you get eaten.”
They were almost over the dump now. The mouse child
saw the tin cans glinting in the sunlight. “That’s all very well,” he said, “but you won’t eat us.”
“Yes, I will,” said the hawk, “and I’ll take a little bite right now, just to show you what I mean.” He tore at the tin bodies of father and son, and shrieked with pain as he chipped his beak. “Ugh!” he said, “you aren’t part of the balance of nature!” He let them fall from his talons and flew away, shaking his head as he tried to get the taste of rusty tin out of his beak. Down dropped the mouse and his child, turning over and over in the air, the wind whistling through their tin as they plunged to the earth.
They struck with a rattling crash on the tin-can slope that overlooked the fires, and the dump leaped and shuddered in their vision as the impact broke their grip on each other’s hands, split their bodies open, and flung them violently apart. The scattered pieces of the mouse and his child lay on the path where once the frog had told their fortune, and they saw and heard no more.
Below them winked red embers through the broken skeletons of umbrellas and the carcasses of old shoes, while flames flew up in wrecked birdcages, singing where silence long had been. Empty bottles and dead lightbulbs popped dully, and a stench rose with the drifting smoke and ashes. On the tracks beyond the dump a freight train whistled. The wind sighed over the rubbish mountains.
The rusty clockwork rolled from the wreckage of the father and came to rest nearby. A tiny snail crawled out of it and slowly made his way across the dented scraps of tin. Half of the child lay facing the fires; the other half turned blindly to the sky, where slow clouds drifted in the golden light of late afternoon.