The can was lowered to the dollhouse roof and the frog stepped out, while the kingfisher appropriated the poisoned-spear arsenal and with the bittern patrolled the doors and windows to ensure the fortune-teller’s safety. Having made certain that the roof was strongly fastened, Frog secured four doubled lines to its corners with large fishhooks, setting them deep into the wood. A fifth line was attached to the porch, and then Manny Rat, fuming inside the house, saw the little black-and-white dog on the BONZO can glide upward past the window as the frog took off again. “A dog shall rise,” he whimpered, and was sick at heart. Not yet ready to give up the fight, however, he crept to the window, saw the lines trailing from the roof, and saw what Frog was doing at that moment on the railroad gantry. He snarled defiantly and went to work with his teeth again, this time gnawing at the floor.
In the tree the mouse child, the seal, the elephant, and the ex-forage-squad windups waited, silent while the minutes passed, until they heard the whistle of a freight approaching on the tracks. “Now is the time,” the child said, “and where is Uncle Frog?”
“Here,” answered the panting Frog as he landed on the platform. With the kingfisher’s help he made fast all his lines to the capstan bar and hitched the ex-foragers to it in tandem rows, the elephant at their head. The danceless bear, the roarless lion, the lame, blind, moldy goat, and all the others took their places and felt their springs wound tight. The freight train whistle blew again, much closer this time, and they heard the clacking on the rails. “Now!” said Frog.
The battered toys strained at the capstan; the lines ran through the creaking clothesline pulley on the railroad gantry, drew taut, and quivered as the fishhooks dug into the dollhouse roof. The platform in the oak tree lifted slightly, but the lashings held; the crossbar went around, and the lines, inwinding slowly, climbed row on row the stick that was the capstan drum. “It’s coming!” said the frog, and put his shoulder to the bar.
The bittern, still on duty at the watchtower, gripped the parapet more tightly with his feet and flapped his wings to keep his balance as the dollhouse slid across its platform toward the railroad tracks. It tilted off the edge and swung in a long arc to the gantry, accompanied by one collective wail from all the rats within. Now the house was hanging from the clothesline pulley, poised directly over the tracks as the engine of the freight train passed beneath it.
“RATS, FAREWELL!” roared Frog, and hauled away on the trip line fastened to the dollhouse porch. “JUMP, RATS!” he commanded. The house dipped sharply, flags and bunting fluttering in the freight train’s passing. The bittern flew up off the tower, and rats poured out of all the dollhouse doors and windows, thumping to the roofs of the boxcars rattling below them.
Picking themselves up in amazement, the cream of rat society — all the grizzled fighters and their wives, the beauties and the gentlemen, the dowagers, the gaunt artistic rats, the hustlers and the bravos and the golden youth — all stood on the boxcar roofs and watched the dump recede along the curving track and vanish in the distance and the haze of autumn.
The blue jay, arriving later on the scene than was his wont, had missed the main part of the action, and although confused, was still concise: “RATS RAILROADED,” he informed the world at large, and let it go at that.
“Now,” said Frog, when the elation of the party in the oak tree had quieted a little, “we must return the dollhouse to the platform, and let us not forget to nail it down as quickly as we can.” The bittern and the kingfisher took off immediately and set to work.
“We’ve done it!” said the father. “We have endured and we have fought and we have won our territory!”
“Have you indeed!” said a quiet voice below them. Manny Rat, a poisoned spear in one paw, climbed wearily up to the platform and looked around him at the little group.
“We almost won!” said the mouse child. His courage now at last gave way, and he began to cry.
“Almost!” whispered the father. “Good-bye, my little son!” The elephant stood behind him, and he felt her eye upon him. Silently he said good-bye to her, and silently received her answer, as Manny Rat picked up the beer-can opener and moved toward the child.
In that moment Frog, noting that all the catapult stones were gone, seized the first object within reach, the good-luck coin. Holding down the father’s donkey-leg arms, he laid the coin on them and quickly wound him up.
“Hold me back!” the father whispered. “Don’t let go yet!”
For the first time that day, Manny Rat found something to laugh at. “Hold him back!” he shouted gleefully. He crossed the platform to the father, and looked down at him where he leaned back against the branch that he was lashed to. “Yes, hold the hero back!” said Manny Rat. “He mustn’t hurt me!” Then he snarled, and brought his face and the beer-can opener close to the father. “Smashing you and that brat of yours won’t satisfy me now,” he said. “I won’t rest content until every blasted wheel and gear and every little trashy piece of your tin is scattered far and wide. Then let us see whether you or Manny Rat shall fall!”
The father’s eyes were on the coin before him. “YOU WILL SUCCEED,” it said with silent letters. He felt the point of the beer-can opener in his tin, and saw the eyes of Manny Rat fixed on his own. “Let go!” he said to Frog. The spring’s coiled power was released, the donkey legs flew up, the brass coin caught Manny Rat squarely in the mouth, knocked out his teeth, and flung him headlong from the platform. The kingfisher and the bittern, returning to the oak tree, saw him bump from branch to branch, scattering leaves and teeth about him in his fall to earth.
There was a silence in the tree. Then from below there came a rending wail, a chilling cry of pure despair. “No teef!” wept Manny Rat. “I am finished! I am done! No teef at all! No teef at all!” And off into the dump he took his broken spirit, his aching bones, and the good-luck coin that had undone him.
The completeness, the overwhelming finality of their victory left everyone speechless in the oak tree. Then a tinny giggle broke out from the lame, blind, moldy goat. A three-legged bear chuckled rustily, then began to roar with laughter. One by one the others joined in, until all the windups and the frog, the kingfisher, and the bittern whooped with hysterical mirth that sent the echoes leaping on the rubbish mountains, ringing from the tin-can slopes.
Startled swallows heard, and flew up from the wires along the tracks like notes of music winging from their staves. All the dump too, from the valley of the trash fires to the midway and the silent carousel, heard that laughter and knew that Manny Rat had fallen.
Gradually, squeak by squeak, rattle by rattle, gasp by gasp, the din subsided, and there was silence again. The elephant, still harnessed to the capstan at the head of the forage squad, was facing the mouse father’s back, and her one eye shone with a curious brilliance. A rusty whirring sounded in her works as the last unwinding coil of her spring released itself. She moved the capstan bar a creaking inch, and came into the father’s field of vision. She tried to speak, was overcome by emotion, then tried again. “Well done, sir!” she burst out, then sobbed so hard the platform shook and all the windups rattled with her.
“Oh, no!” the father said. “You mustn’t cry, my dear — I beg your pardon — madam! I cannot bear to see you cry! Oh, please be happy now! We have won at last! Our time of suffering is over!”
“I — am — so happy!” said the elephant, and then sobbed louder than before.
“Well,” said the kingfisher. He laughed a little ratcheting laugh, then coughed and cleared his throat. He peeled a bit of oak bark from the branch he stood on, fussed with it, and shifted from one foot to the other. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’m off now.” But he hesitated hopefully.
“Can’t you stay?” said the seal.
“Won’t you stay and be our uncle, like Uncle Frog?” begged the mouse child.
“All right,” said the kingfisher, “I will.”
“What about me?” demanded the bittern. “Must I take up my lo
nely life in bog and marsh as if all this has never happened?”
“I had thought you wanted only to be left to yourself,” said the father.
“It’s too late for that now,” replied the bittern in a voice as dismal as ever. “Let me be an uncle.”
“We should be delighted to have you,” said the father.
“Now we’ll have our house and a family with three uncles!” said the child happily. “Remember when you said it was impossible, Papa? Remember? I said I wanted the elephant for a mama, and you said —”
“That will do,” said his father. An awkward silence descended on the party. The mouse father and the elephant, unable to avert their eyes, continued to look directly at each other. The father tried to hum a tune, gave it up, then he and the elephant both spoke at the same time.
“You must excuse my son’s impertinence,” said the father.
“And does he still?” asked the elephant. Neither heard the other, and both laughed.
“I beg your pardon,” said the father. “Please go on. You were saying?”
“I was saying, does he still want me for a mama?” said the elephant.
“Oh, yes!” said the child. “And I know that Papa —”
“Can speak for himself,” said his father, and forthwith lapsed into silence.
“And will he?” prompted the elephant gently.
“He hardly knows how to begin,” said the father. “He has come to admire — more than that, to love — someone so far above him that he dare not hope she will reciprocate his feelings.”
“Ah!” said the elephant. “Though perhaps a little taller, she has never really been above him. Were he to speak, he might find an interested listener, a listener who has seen and learned much, who knows at last the true worth of the brave and gallant gentleman she met so long ago when she was young and foolish and thought the dollhouse hers.”
“It is yours now,” said the father.
“Only if you offer it,” said the elephant. “You fought for it and won it.”
“I do offer it,” said the father, “and myself, if you will have both.”
“I will,” said the elephant.
The swallows, who, note by note, had flown back to the wires, once more were scattered as the echoes started up anew. “Hurrah!” shouted all the voices in the oak tree. “Hurrah!” And once again, “Hurrah!”
THE INTERRUPTED TASK of moving the dollhouse back to the platform was completed, the father’s wartime donkey-leg arms were laid aside and his regular ones put on, and he and the elephant were married by the frog on the front porch that afternoon.
The wind sighed in the oak and hickory leaves; the tall weeds rustled in the yard of the abandoned cottage by the railroad; a train went clattering past and hooted once. In the distance the dump glittered and smoked in the waning golden sunlight as the ex-foragers sang “O Promise Me.” The child stood up beside his father as best man, the seal was bridesmaid, and the kingfisher and the bittern gave the elephant away as she and the mouse father swore that they would take each other, to have and to hold.
“Winding and unwinding,” intoned the frog, “whole or broken, bright or rusty, until the end of your tin. I now pronounce you mouse and wife.”
“LATE SPORTS FINAL!” yelled the blue jay on his last trip for the day. “DUNG BEETLES CLINCH SERIES. ROACHES SIGN NEW COACH. WINDUPS WED.”
* * *
THE FATHER LAUGHED with happiness as he looked at the sun, low in the west over the dump. “This time yesterday we had nothing,” he said. “And today the world is ours.”
“And now for self-winding,” said the child.
“Blue,” said the elephant. “A very pale, faded, seashore kind of blue outside, I think. Ivory trim. And inside, ivory with blue trim. Perhaps not ivory exactly — something more off-white.”
“Cream, maybe,” said the seal. “Almost a buff, but lighter.”
“What are you talking about, my dears?” said the father.
“The house,” said his bride. “Of course, that dreadful black paint has got to come off first.”
“And even before we get to that, we’ll have to give the place a good scrubbing and air it out,” said the seal.
“Quite right,” agreed the elephant. “I can see that you and I are going to get on very well. Between us I have no doubt that we shall soon have everything well organized. Then if the men will simply work out the means of doing what needs to be done, we can quickly put our house in good order.”
“And what about self-winding?” said the child.
“Later,” said his father. “First things first.”
The autumn nights were colder now; the crickets chirped more slowly; other insect songs fell silent. Through the days the air quickened, the leaves changed, the wind from the fields and meadows beyond the dump was sharp with wood smoke, and there was constant activity in the dollhouse atop the pole.
Every day two of the uncles combed the dump for supplies, while the third stood guard at the house. Either the bittern and the frog or the kingfisher and the frog were regularly to be seen returning home with salvage to be hoisted up to the platform by seal or crane. Steel wool and strong soap had been requisitioned by the elephant; sandpaper and turpentine, paint and paint brushes. Furnishings were spoken of, and glass for the windows; drapery fabrics were discussed at length. The resources of the dump were strained to the uttermost limit, and none of the males in the family knew where it would end.
All thoughts of self-winding were put aside, and the spare-parts can was in steady demand as one set of works was exchanged for another, depending on the day’s activities. It was found that string-climbing clockwork produced a motion ideally suited to sandpapering paint off houses, fiddle-playing arms and motors were good for scraping, bicycle-riding mechanisms lent themselves to the stirring of color mixtures; and all were used accordingly by the mouse and his child.
The elephant, with a little toy broom attached to her swinging trunk, swept out all the rooms. Behind her hopped the frog, wetting down the floors with a water pistol, followed by the bittern, who held the mouse father’s feet while the father administered a vigorous scrubbing with brown soap. Then the frog retraced his steps for the rinsing, and the forage squad, shuffling after him with rags and fragments of sponges tied to their feet, finished the job.
The house, as it happened, was not painted completely blue, that color being in short supply at the dump; there was only blue enough for one porch and one dormer. From the bottoms of the available paint cans, however, came other colors in all their possible combinations — crimsons and scarlets, pinks, yellows, ochers, and oranges, and several shades of green. Each color was made to go as far as it could, but no two dormers were painted the same, and every surface of the siding and all the angles of the roof were different.
Day after day the work progressed, and night after night, by the wavering light of candle stubs, the tireless windups swung from strings hauled up and lowered by the birds, while Frog hung giddily in a variety of slings and bosun’s chairs, putting in the finer touches. The house was firmly nailed to the platform — the bittern saw to that, and then went on to strengthen old repairs and make new ones, until the OONG, BONK, CHOONG! of his hammering became as familiar throughout the dump as the carousel’s cracked waltz.
For some time the glassless windows were as a thorn in the elephant’s side, and her immediate family and all the uncles spent sleepless nights over the problem, until one day the frog, having seen a lightbulb melting in the trash fires, conceived a method of glass cutting by means of a red-hot wire. Flat glass was scarce in the dump, but there was an unlimited supply of bottles. Owing to variations in size, shape, and curvature, some of the resulting windows were bowed and some were not, but the amber, blue, and green panes glowed like jewels when set into their frames.
Drapes and carpets were equally varied, as was the improvised furniture, but the place began to be homelike. With each dawn the Dog Star, progressively higher over the hori
zon as winter approached, looked down on new improvements, until at last the hammering stopped, the platform was cleared of paint cans, brushes, nails, and scraps of wood, and the elephant pronounced the dollhouse fit for occupancy.
The house’s character had changed much with the fire that had wrecked it and the several stages of reconstruction that renewed it; phoenixlike, the place seemed reborn of itself. Odd bits of graceful ornament and carving still clung here and there throughout the new repairs; the crooked porches faced the weather with an easy poise; the watchtower, smartened with orange and yellow paint and finished off with a railing and a flagpole, lost its grimness. The mansard roof, however much off-true it might be, was solid as a rock, and all the wonky chimneys and dormers stood defiantly askew and felt themselves to be atop a going concern once more.
The dollhouse would never again be what it once had been; its stateliness and beauty were long gone, but something new and different emerged from the concerted efforts of the little family. When the last touches of trim had been applied and the varicolored curtains hung at the bottle-glass windows, the house assumed a look of wild confidence and reckless bravado. Indeed, it swaggered on its perch as if it dared the world to show it and its occupants a single peril they had not seen and laughed at.
One last touch was lacking, and the spare-parts can supplied it. From the BONZO label a paper flag was made and run up the flagpole early one morning. The mouse child kept up a steady drumroll as the banner rose to the top of the staff and fluttered in the dawn breeze. The little dog on the flag smiled up at the great one fading in the sky, while at the edge of the dump, brought there by the mouse child’s drum, a pathetic figure, shabby in a torn and draggled dressing gown, stood watching.
Manny Rat felt the sharpness of the coming winter in the morning air, and he shivered, mumbling his toothless gums forlornly as he looked up at the heights so lately held, so briefly his, so irretrievably lost. He fingered the good-luck coin that hung now around his neck, and touching with his paw the words YOU WILL SUCCEED, he crept back slowly to his failure and his shame.