“Poison,” said Frog. “Just as I feared. Friend Rat has learned something from the shrews.”
“What do we do now?” said the kingfisher.
“Wait,” said the father.
“For what, exactly?” asked the bittern.
“I don’t know,” the father said, “but I’ll know it when I see it. Something will happen; some sign will indicate the X for us. My son and I have been a long time waiting; we can wait a little longer now that victory is close.” His eyes were fixed on the elephant as he spoke, and there was new energy in his voice.
“How can you be so sure of winning?” asked the seal.
“We have already done our losing,” said the father. “Our defeats are all behind us.”
Night fell, and a new moon, having risen early, showed its thin yellow crescent now declining in the west. The oak leaves pattered, and with the shifting night breeze came the faint sound of the town hall clock as it struck eight. A dim red glow, as always, lit the sky above the dump, and the sounds of evening, ascending one by one, merged in a general hum and clamor. The carousel played its cracked waltz on the rats’ midway; the gambling booths, the gaming dens and dance halls came noisily to life, then disappeared with all their mingled voice into the lonesome wail and rumble of a passing freight. Above the tracks the green and red lights on the gantry clicked and changed; the engine’s headlight slid along the shining rails, picked out leaf and branch and dollhouse where the boss of the dump still paced his tower. The sound grew with the train, as car by clanking car its passage shook the pole and set the dollhouse hottering on the platform. Clacking through the switches went the boxcars, rumbling on until the yellow-windowed caboose and its red lantern dwindled into darkness; the gantry blinked its changes, and the train was gone. An edge of cricket song and silence stayed behind it for a moment in the small and smaller clacking of the rails; then the cracked waltz of the carousel returned, the dance hall’s thumping whine, the distant cries of pitchmen and of vendors in the alleyways and tunnels.
By the starlight and the slender moon they could see nothing clearly, but the little group in the oak tree could hear the guards keep watch with steady thump and shuffle as they walked the platform. Several of the off-duty rats lifted their voices in a bawdy song, and two of the servants were squealing insults at each other in a dispute over some moldy cheese. Father and son listened carefully, focusing their complete attention on every sound in an effort to extract the information that would give them a plan of attack.
There was a clink and rattle in the weeds at the bottom of the pole. Someone had stubbed his toe on something, and was cursing softly. “Who’s that?” challenged Manny Rat.
“It’s me — Iggy,” answered his lieutenant. A string ladder rustled as it was let down, and the invisible Iggy climbed up to the platform. A muttered conversation ensued, too low to be audible, and then Manny Rat was heard again, berating his subordinate for his failure to find the fallen windups reported by the blue jay.
The ladder shook again as Iggy descended. They heard him moving about in the weeds, then the unmistakable sound of spring motors being wound up. The forage squad, their collective clockwork set in motion, receded into the distance with Iggy and their song:
Who’s that passing in the night?
Foragers for Manny Rat!
We grab first and we hold tight —
Foragers for Manny Rat!
There was a period of silence in the oak tree. Then the father spoke. “I think a sign has been given us,” he said.
“What?” asked the child.
“The same one that has been given all along,” said the father. “The last visible dog.”
“Where?” asked the child.
“On the label of Manny Rat’s spare-parts can,” said the father. “I’m certain that’s what rattled in the weeds when Iggy stubbed his toe. In that can we should find the equipment necessary both for fighting Manny Rat and for self-winding. Now all we need is a plan.”
“I think I have a plan,” said the child. “Did you hear a bobbling sound on the platform when the train went by?”
“Yes,” said the father. “What about it?”
“Manny Rat repaired the house and painted it and put it up on top of the pole,” said the child. “But there’s one thing he hasn’t done yet.”
“What’s that?” asked the father.
“He hasn’t nailed it down,” replied the mouse child.
The moon had set, and Manny Rat’s guests were due to arrive soon. The boss of the dump, awaiting them on the tower of his beautiful new house, stopped his pacing abruptly. Against the background uproar of the dump and the racket of servants and off-duty guards he had become suddenly aware of some unidentifiable sound that was quite close and unspeakably eerie. He strained to hear it again, but it was gone. Manny Rat thought about that horrid sound many times that evening, and when he did, he shivered. But it was only much later that he came to know that what he had heard was the combined hilarity of a kingfisher, a bittern, and a frog, above which rose the peculiar, creaking, squeaking, rattling noise of laughing tin.
MANNY RAT’S housewarming was a great success. He had invited the cream of rat society, and all of them attended, twittering and squeaking with high spirits as they climbed the string ladder to the dollhouse. Grizzled old fighters and their plump, respectable wives touched whiskers with gentleman rats grown sleek by cunning and lithe young beauties of vaguely theatrical connection. Debutante rats and dashing young rats-about-town, all the golden youth of the dump, arrived in little laughing groups that achieved an effect of brilliance even in the dark, while doddering dowager rats came escorted by gaunt artistic rats with matted fur, burning eyes, and enormous appetites. Last up the ladder were a scattering of selected social climbers, followed by various hired bravos, obscure ruffians, and cheap hustlers whose good will was worth cultivating.
The hungry guests made a concerted rush for the garbage buffet, and the thirsty ones squealed with delight when they found the sherry bottle, the contents of which were a vicious mixture of the dregs of many bottles. Several of the rats eagerly manned the Erector Set crane, the punch was swung onto the platform, and the housewarming got under way quickly.
As much as Manny Rat had looked forward to his party, he found his enjoyment flawed by a vague disquietude. It had begun with Iggy’s failure to find the windups dropped by the hawk and had intensified with that unearthly laughter out of the night, until now the boss of the dump was nervous and jumpy, and had scant pleasure of the distinguished company assembled under his roof. Having mingled briefly with the guests, he took himself off to his watchtower and paced restlessly above the merriment and the noise.
Beyond the platform quivered the darkness and the night, and Manny Rat knew well that something waited for him there. Back and forth he paced upon the parapet, hearing in the rhythm of his footsteps the words that Frog had spoken long ago in last winter’s moonlight: “A dog shall rise; a rat shall fall.”
The words were meaningless, he told himself. Undoubtedly it had been Frog’s hope that future circumstances, lending themselves at random to the prophecy, should frighten him into a wrong move that would cause his downfall. Manny Rat tried to put that thought out of his mind. There were no dogs rising now to threaten him, nor anything else that he could see. He recalled the wild, weird laughter he had heard, and long and hard he looked into the night from which the sound had come. There was nothing except the dark and rustling mass of the oak tree a few yards distant, nothing but the leaves that whispered in the wind.
Manny Rat did not care for that whispering, and the breeze that stirred the leaves brought to him undertones of scents that baffled and annoyed him. He became less and less happy with the oak tree; he found that he did not like to turn his back to it, and he strained into the darkness, watching and listening for he knew not what. He heard the draggled song of the returning forage squad, the sound of Iggy coming up the ladder, the creak and rattle of the crane th
at hoisted up the bags unloaded from the windups. Below him in the house the revelry continued, rat-style, in total darkness, its progress marked by shouts, giggles, playful bites, squeals, laughter, and boisterous song, but that which Manny Rat was listening for he did not hear.
He did not hear Frog’s stealthy movements in the weeds as the spare-parts can was put into the kingfisher’s string bag and hauled up to the oak tree. Nor did he hear the muffled flapping of the bittern’s wings as that bird, flying well out of spear range, landed in the top of the hickory tree that overhung the dollhouse and lowered the BONZO can with Frog inside it. Dangling in his armored gondola, the fortune-teller removed the clothesline pulley from its branch, and silently departed with it.
The active uncle made his next nonappearance on the railroad gantry that bridged the tracks, and later, when the midnight special passed the dump, the white beam of its headlight showed the clothesline pulley hanging there below the semaphores and signal lights.
All of this went on unknown to Manny Rat and the guards on duty, who, having sampled the punch, may have been somewhat less than fully alert. All that night the boss of the dump walked his tower and thought long thoughts of rising dogs. Night was his daytime, and in his present state of mind the coming dawn called up a bright and nameless dread. He thought of sunlight on those whispering leaves, and shuddered, covering his eyes with his paws.
So he did not see, low on the horizon just before the dawn, the star that for the first time rose to trace its circle in the end-of-summer sky. And had he seen it he would not have known its name, he who turned from sun and moon and stars alike. Sirius it was, the brightest star in all the heavens, that flashed its fire on the paling sky; Sirius, called the Dog Star, that steadily burned afar and looked down on the dollhouse and the dump.
The party and the sherry bottle had lasted through the night, but both had reached the end of their resources in the dim blue mists of morning. Most of the guests lay where they had fallen, replete with good cheer. A few of the gaunt, artistic rats, their burning eyes still half open, prowled hopefully among the remains of the garbage buffet. Outside the house a sleepy guard, the only one still at his post, looked on while some of the golden youth and maiden rats amused themselves by seeing how close to the edge they could ride the elephant without falling off the platform. On his tower Manny Rat dozed fitfully, his head cradled in his paws. And in the weeds below, the forage squad, their rusty tin and rotting plush still damp with night, stood and lay where Iggy had unloaded them.
The dark horizon was suffused with light, and in the dump the voices of the night grew faint, passed into silence and the dawn. The carousel was still, the gaming booths were shut. The sexton beetle snuffed out his candles, closed his show, and buried the fish head he had taken in that night. The little wizened vendor of orange peels and library paste slowly made his way home, crunching over broken glass and leaving tracks in ashes wet with dew. A train clanked sleepily on the tracks, stopped, started again, and pulled away toward the town.
“What day is it?” chirped a frazzled sparrow to his wife.
“What’s the difference?” she replied. “It’s the same as all the others. Work, work, work.”
“It’s a brand-new day!” said a chickadee. “Such a day, day, day!”
“Don’t be a fool,” said the sparrow.
“Morning’s come again!” crowed a distant rooster. “This dunghill’s mine!”
“Morning,” said the town clock. “For good or ill, this day begins,” and it gravely struck the hour.
The oak leaves still were whispering, but behind them now another sound was heard — a tiny, rolling drumbeat, sharp with rage and growing louder, crying war. Out of the tree, his wild crest spiky with grim purpose, his wings fast flashing in the sun, burst the kingfisher. His rattling challenge rang on the startled ears of Manny Rat, but the boss of the dump had no eyes for the bird. Passing low over the watchtower, swinging and revolving at the end of a line held by the kingfisher, was the mouse child with his nutshell drum. He and his father and the frog, racing desperately against time, had figured out the installation of clockwork. Now, equipped from the spare-parts can with a motor and a pair of red tin arms, he beat a rataplan both fierce and loud, for the little drum was newly headed with tin.
The child’s eyes briefly met the furious gaze of Manny Rat, but any fine and ringing words rehearsed for this moment had vanished from his mind. “Yah, yah!” he yelled, and off he flew.
Manny Rat leaped up, but not quite high enough, and fell back cursing. “Iggy!” he shrieked. “Guards!”
The lone guard on the platform whirled and flung his spear, but the kingfisher dodged cleverly and let it whistle by him, then hauled the child up short and turned for a second pass over the dollhouse. The guard ran to the rack for another spear, but before he reached it the bittern was upon him, his little yellow-spectacle eyes blazing, a large rock clenched in his feet. OONG, BONK, CHOONG! The dollhouse echoed to the blows, and the guard lay on the platform, pounded nearly flat.
The golden youths and maidens screamed and ran for shelter. Manny Rat, half mad with rage, had almost gained the spear rack when he turned and saw the kingfisher, who seemed all beak, coming at him like an arrow from a bow. He threw himself flat on the platform, felt the rush of fiercely beating wings, and received a resounding whack on the back of his head from the mouse child’s tin feet. “Ours!” said the child passionately. “Our territory!” and was gone again.
Leaving all dignity behind him, Manny Rat dove through a window into the dollhouse, scattering startled guests all around him, then very cautiously lifted up his head and looked out in time to see the elephant being carried off in the string bag by the bittern. As the outcries of the company subsided he heard again the whispering of the oak leaves and the steady war beat of the nutshell drum. The dead guard lay on the platform, his whiskers stirring lightly in the morning breeze. A shadow passed over the body, there was a heavy flapping, a thump on the roof, and the bittern settled himself into place on the tower. The rats inside all held their breath and waited. A heavy stone bounced off the platform, and the house shook slightly. “Higher and a little to the left,” said the bittern.
Manny Rat peeped carefully from the window and saw nothing. “Iggy!” he whispered.
“What?” said his lieutenant from the other side of the room. One of the lithe young theatrical-beauty rats had thrown herself into his arms at the first sign of danger, and he was well contented with his work.
“Don’t ask me what!” hissed his master. “Look out of your window and see what they’re doing now.”
Iggy disentangled himself from the distressed beauty, put his head out of the window, caught the second stone full in the face, and fell back lifeless. The ladies recommenced their screaming.
“That’s it,” called the bittern to the oak tree. “You’ve got the range now.”
“Very good,” said Frog, and sent another rock whistling through the window. The catapult he employed for the purpose was the mouse father. He had been reassembled and specially modified, the hind legs of the long-departed tin donkey now replacing his arms in such a way that their kicking action made him an effective weapon. In order that the force of his motion might not hurl him from the tree, he had been lashed securely to a makeshift platform tied to a crotch of the oak. Beside the father was the seal, the rod in her nose turning slowly as she winched up a bagful of rocks from the kingfisher on the ground below. The spare-parts can stood on the platform, its contents scattered all around it: There were a beer-can opener, a pair of miniature pliers, a little screwdriver, a sardine-can key, and a tangle of fine copper wire; an array of clockwork jumbled together with the tools indicated many choices of action open to the father and son, from string-climbing to fiddle- playing. The kingfisher’s hooks and lines completed the total of the little group’s equipment. The father had asked to have the good-luck coin near him, and it lay there now, its uppermost side proclaiming silently: YOUR LUCKY
DAY IS … The elephant, still without a word, stood near, awaiting her part in the action, and next to her was the mouse child, drumming as regularly as the frog could wind him. Having worked out with his father the strategy to be followed in the coming hours, he was now content to be a drummer boy until the battle should be won.
“We can’t keep them inside indefinitely,” said the father as he hurled another stone at the enemy. “Manny Rat’s no coward, and he’ll find some way of striking back in a matter of minutes.” A squawk from the bittern attested to the truth of his observation. Manny Rat had gnawed a hole in the roof and attempted an attack from the rear, but was put down again quickly.
“We’ll move as fast as we can,” said Frog. He watched through the leaves as the kingfisher flew to the bottom of the pole and attached lines to the windups of the forage squad. The other ends of the lines were made fast to the crossbar of a capstan fashioned from two strong sticks and mounted by Frog on the platform. Now he hitched the elephant to the crossbar and wound her up. Round and round she walked, turning the bar, and the foragers were dragged through the weeds to rise swaying up through the leaves to the platform. Next, Frog picked up a bundle of coiled lines and hooks, and stepped into the BONZO can as the breathless kingfisher returned, picked up the can’s towing bridle, and took off.
“RATS!” bellowed the airborne fortune-teller as he approached the dollhouse, the empty canvas fingers of his glove sticking up out of the can. “RATS, HEAR THIS!” The angry murmur in the house subsided, and the frog continued. “RATS, THE HAND OF FATE IS UPON YOU,” he boomed. “RESISTANCE IS USELESS. ALL IS LOST. DO NOT STIR.”