The Mouse and His Child

  She began to sweep up the gunpowder briskly, sending the bittern for a doll’s dustpan with which to pick it up. “What’s this?” she said as she uncovered the good-luck coin and the wire ends. “That rat’s an idiot,” she said, and called the frog.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe that Manny Rat knows any more about electricity than I do,” said the elephant, “and very likely less. Anybody knows that wires have to lead to something. Look, there are two nice little ends sticking out of that black box. Now, if you’ll just tie these to those, the whole thing will be neater, and the lights may possibly go on. That’s the way they did it in the store, I think.”

  “In any case, it can do no harm to try,” said Frog. He hung the good-luck coin around his neck once more, and spliced the wires.

  As Manny Rat climbed the pole up to the power lines beside the tracks he was a happier rat than he had been for a long time. Dusk had become night, the darkness caressed him lovingly, and he wished he could prolong this moment of delicious anticipation. But he dared not risk failure if he was ever to know peace of mind again.

  When he reached the top of the pole he stood among the glass insulators and felt among the wires there, instinctively avoiding those great, humming, thick ones that seemed too threatening. He had gleaned useful knowledge from the local rats in his researches in the town, and with that information and his own sharp intuitions he felt reasonably safe in what he was doing. The line that he selected was a relatively low-powered one that ran to the signalman’s shack some distance down the tracks. He hung the string bag on the power line, climbed into it so that he should not be grounded by the pole, and scraped away the insulation. The bare copper ends of the wires he carried terminated in alligator clips, and now, holding one in each paw, he made ready to attach them.

  He turned to look down at the dollhouse. The candles were lit, their soft light shining through the blue and green and amber glass, against which came and went the pacing shadows of the mouse and his child. The ex-forage-squad windups were singing some plaintive ballad the seal had taught them, and there was conversation and quiet laughter from the house as those inside it waited for the candles’ glow to pale before the glories of electricity.

  “Good luck, and happy burning!” said Manny Rat.

  As he connected the wires there was a blinding flash, and every hair on Manny Rat stood up and crackled with blue flame. He felt a shuddering thrill as the full voltage of the power line coursed through his body and sent branching lightnings into his brain. The dollhouse blazed with light at all the windows, but the darkness swallowed Manny Rat where he lay slumped inside the string bag, his body swaying gently in the evening breeze. After a time, when he was missed, the bittern and the kingfisher came for him, and he was carried back to the parlor that he had intended to set afire. There they laid him carefully on the floor, and all the family sorrowfully stood over him.

  “Poor Uncle Manny!” said the child as he paced around the room. “I will call him Uncle! He made us self-winding, he made our house beautiful, and now he’s dead because he gave us light.”

  “He should have been content to stay in the dark,” said the blind tin goat, and his squadmates laughed.

  “One can’t help feeling sorry that his life was cut short like this,” the father said. “He certainly was a changed rat at the end.”

  “I won’t say that I liked him,” mourned the elephant, “but I can’t forgive myself for this. It really is too bad!”

  “I don’t think he’s dead,” said the bittern. “He’s opening his eyes.”

  “Speak to us, Uncle Manny,” said the child. “Say something.”

  Lying limp and huddled like a worn-out rag doll on the floor, Manny Rat felt life returning to him. He half sat up, and looked around him. The house, he saw, had not burned down, and he found that he was glad. “Say vat again,” he murmured faintly.

  “Say what?” asked the mouse child.

  “What you called me,” said Manny Rat.

  “Uncle Manny?”

  Manny Rat nodded, and smiled a toothless smile, and felt the darkness that dwelt in him open to the light.

  The dollhouse seemed at last complete. Every night it shone in all its brilliance like a jewel hung on the darkness at the edge of the dump, and within it all were happy and contented.

  “There is, perhaps, just one more thing,” the elephant said one day. “A small thing, really. I think our house should have a little sign.”

  “What kind of sign?” said Manny Rat. “I’ll make one right away.”

  “I’m not sure,” said the lady of the house. “Something dignified and simple — you know the sort of thing I mean. Sometimes they say, ‘The Gables,’ or ‘The Elms.’ ”

  “There’s only one possible name for our house,” said the child.

  “And only one favorable sign,” said the father.

  The BONZO label that had flown above the watchtower had long since blown itself to shreds in wind and rain. But a new one was found, and Manny Rat executed a faithful copy, painting the infinite black-and-white dogs on the traditional orange background on an oval board, and lettering in THE LAST VISIBLE DOG quite handsomely. The effect was magical: The sign completed the place as dramatically as the eyes in a painted portrait might complete a face. The house seemed visibly to grow taller, grander, and more expansive.

  “That’s odd,” said the elephant as she looked at the repetitively receding dogs. “It’s certainly a lovely sign, but now the house looks like an inn or a hotel.”

  “A hotel,” said the pacing mouse father thoughtfully as he passed his wife in one of his regular circuits of the platform. “Why not?” he said the next time around.

  “It’s the kind of place that birds would like,” the seal said. “We’d have travelers from everywhere to talk to.”

  “They could stop here every year,” said the child, “flying north and flying south, and we could give them shelter in the night and in the storms.”

  Manny Rat lettered a little signboard that was appended to the larger one. MIGRANTS YES, it said, and the house seemed at last to have attained its full identity. The sign swung with a motion so august, and creaked with such a seasoned, veteran creak, that it and the house seemed always to have been in that predestined place, at the edge of the dump, beside the railroad tracks, between the earth and sky. “Here I am,” it said as plainly as possible. “The Last Visible Dog, ladies and gentlemen, at your service. Shelter and good cheer for the weary traveler. Enter and be welcome!”

  Thus invited, the migrants came. Day fliers setting their course by the sun saw the gay colors of the hotel by the dump and stopped to rest at nightfall. Night travelers navigating by the stars saw The Last Visible Dog shining like a lighthouse, and steered for it as darkness faded into dawn. Geese honked, passing overhead, and kept it as a landmark on their mental maps. Most of the migratory birds had already made their passage south, but late-departing warblers and thrushes landed on the platform; swallows, starlings, orioles and tanagers, and soft-voiced mourning doves all praised the house and its hospitality, and promised to return on the northward trip.

  All of the uncles were active as never before. Chairs and tables multiplied; red-checked tablecloths appeared, and potted plants. The place resounded to the cheerful racket of arrivals and departures. As fast as rooms were added they were occupied, and twice that fall the platform had to be enlarged.

  Tin ex-forager musicians, splendidly renewed by Manny Rat, accompanied the feathered ones at evening musicales; tin clowns and jugglers entertained; tin animals did tricks; the blind goat carried trays of canapés; and the seal, when the lights were low, dimmed by Manny Rat’s transformer, waggled among the tables, singing tender ballads. Father and son, pacing tirelessly among the guests, exchanged stories of travel and adventure with them, and made everyone feel thoroughly at home. The kingfisher designated himself chef, and the once-reclusive bittern became a wildly outgoing welcomer
who kept a constant lookout from the tower and hailed all passing fliers. It was the elephant, however, who more than anyone else set her stamp upon the place; her immense dignity and noble carriage, charmingly relieved by the knockabout look of her black eye-patch and the pirate-style kerchief, lent the whole establishment a raffishly patrician flavor that was irresistible.

  One bird told another, and by wintertime the operators of the hotel were everywhere acclaimed as matchless hosts. Indeed, The Last Visible Dog was said, by birds in the know, to be the first and only place to roost when traveling by the dump. When the last migratory waves had passed there were still frequent visitors: Chickadees, sparrows, nuthatches, and cardinals came to spend their idle hours around the tin-can stove installed in the parlor by Manny Rat. The blue jay reporter too, indefatigable in his neverending search for news both great and small, found the parlor stove and the tray of birdseed near it to be more or less the center of his winter rounds, and there he spent much of his time, sifting the local gossip and discussing the affairs of the day.

  And yet, as popular as it was then, the house had not yet reached its final flowering and full fruition. That was to come later, as the fame of the windup family and its four uncles spread in ever-widening circles. The first intimation of what was to be occurred when the Caws of Art, visiting their old friends, turned the platform into a stage, and got successfully through all three acts of The Last Visible Dog at The Last Visible Dog. Having achieved that, they immediately made plans for an annual drama festival that was to become one of the most eagerly anticipated events at the dump. It was to be followed, in time, by the Caws of Art Workshop, personally directed by Crow and Mrs. Crow, which program was to be rivaled in attendance only by the yearly Deep Thought Symposium, under the profound and powerful leadership of C. Serpentina. It was said by many that the strain put upon the Erector Set crane when it hoisted the voice of swamp and pond to the platform was equalled only by the strain upon the local intellectuals when they hoisted some of his heavier thoughts, but all agreed that it was an experience not to be missed.

  The residents of the dump, when they heard what was happening by the railroad tracks, were for a long time apathetic; then curiosity got the better of them. Fearful and unsure at first, but growing by degrees more confident, they crept out of their alleyways and came to The Last Visible Dog to breathe the keen and bracing air of cultural revival and new thought.

  The Muskrat Foundation was set up, and the first course in practical physics was taught by Manny Rat himself. He, who was to win renown as a beloved teacher and mentor to the young, never aspired to the realms of pure thought, and many of his happiest hours were spent repairing broken windups or simply tinkering around.

  Frog, with the advent of the Committee for the Surveillance of Territories and the Resolution of Inter-Field Enmities, or STRIFE, as it came to be known, was elected its first chairman. He brought to that office his characteristic wisdom and foresight, and although constantly occupied with field trips, peace missions, and delegations of irate animals, he still found time, when his services were requested by customers either in doubt or in love, to tell fortunes and perform weddings.

  The Fashion Forum and Homemaker’s Clinic, under the joint guidance of the elephant and the seal, was an immediate success from its inception, and for several seasons eye-patches and kerchiefs were all the rage throughout the dump.

  The mouse and his child, who had learned so much and had prevailed against such overwhelming odds, never could be persuaded to teach a success course. Popular demand was intense, but they steadfastly refused. The whole secret of the thing, they insisted, was simply and at all costs to move steadily ahead, and that, they said, could not be taught. They were not idle, however, and were regularly involved to some extent in all projects going forward at The Last Visible Dog.

  All of this expansion and amplification, however, was still in the future. For the present, the little family, having worked long and hard to make a success of the hotel, had reached that time of year when they might relax a little and enjoy the fruits of their labors. Fall had long since gone; the hickory stood stark and bare, and brown leaves rattled on the oak. Snow lay on the roofs and chimneys of the dollhouse, and icicles hung from the eaves. The Dog Star took his wintry road across the glittering night sky, the sign swung creaking to the north wind’s blast, the colored windows threw their green and blue and amber tints across the gleaming whiteness of the platform, and the tin-can stove in the parlor glowed cozily as the year drew to a close. It was then that the family found the leisure in which to grasp for the first time the full dimensions of their happiness, and they felt themselves too small a group to contain it all.

  So it was that now, on Christmas Eve, while the bells of the town rang out their carols and the night was bright with stars, the mouse and his child paced the platform with the heavily gloved Frog, listening to the jovial hubbub of the gathering inside the house. Here they were joined by the elephant; and the three windups, guided by the guardrail, walked around the house in companionable silence with the slowly hopping uncle. They heard the seal’s voice as she led the singing in the parlor, and the windows rattled as the company joined in the chorus.

  The bittern and the kingfisher had gone out weeks before with invitations, and they had diligently searched out all whose presence was essential on this night. Crow was there, and Mrs. Crow, both in fine voice. Euterpe, the repertory parrot, was quoting from her favorite works while sipping a more or less moderate punch prepared by Manny Rat for this occasion. Several shrews, from both the meadow and the stream, had put aside their enmity for this evening, and were very dashing with their erect, soldierly figures, their decorations and campaign ribbons. Jeb and Zeb, older muskrats now, and not so giddy as they used to be, were propounding a new Much-in-Little to Manny Rat, and were amazed that anyone so old should be capable of the mental leaps he made.

  The triumph of the evening was, of course, the massive presence of C. Serpentina. It was with considerable trepidation that the kingfisher and the bittern had approached the voracious deep thinker to invite him to the party. The bittern had broken the ice — literally, with a rock — and the kingfisher then took the plunge and woke the celebrated voice of swamp and pond. Both birds had been suffering from colds ever since, but Serpentina was in excellent health and spirits. Reclining by a private buffet assigned especially to him, he ate steadily, while sharing with a circle of admiring starlings his latest cerebrations. It was on this very night, in fact, that the conception of the annual Deep Thought Symposium arose within his powerful mind and cast its shadow toward the future.

  “I hope our guests won’t miss us for a little while,” said the elephant to her husband and her son as they completed another circuit of the house. “This night is such a happy one for me that I simply cannot take it in all at once. I find myself wanting to look at it from the outside for a moment or two. It’s so difficult to believe that we have one another and all this besides!”

  The father bumped against her gently as they walked, and their tin clinked softly. “I have felt that too,” he said.

  “Do you remember,” said the elephant, brushing the mouse child with her swinging trunk, “how I sang you a lullaby when you were afraid of the great world outside the toy shop window?”

  “I remember,” said the child.

  “And yet,” said the elephant, “it was I who was afraid when I found myself alone in the world, and it was you and your papa who were brave, and rescued me. I find that very pleasant to think about.”

  The mouse child cried a little. He could not help it; he was so proud of himself and so pleased with his mama.

  The front door opened, sending laughter and warm air out into the frosty night, and the seal came out to them. She waggled slowly around the house with her mother and her father and her brother, spinning a new ball that Crow had brought her. “The year’s almost over,” she said. “It was the best year I ever had. What will the coming ones be like, I wond
er?”

  “Better yet,” said Frog authoritatively, and together they continued around the platform, enjoying one another’s company in silence.

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed the father. He had been walking more and more slowly without noticing it, and now he stopped, astonished, as the reciprocally winding springs inside him, having lost a little energy each day through friction, came at last unwound. “I’m not wound up anymore!” he said.

  “Well,” said Frog, “I don’t suppose anyone ever is completely self-winding. That’s what friends are for.” He reached for the father’s key, to wind him up again.

  “Not yet,” said the father. “It’s pleasant to rest for a little while. The road has been a long one. We have been low in the summer darkness of the pond, high in the winter light here in our house; time brought a painful spring, a shattering fall, and a scattering regathered, all as you foretold.”

  “And the enemy we fled at the beginning waited for us at the end,” the child said as he too came unwound, and stopped beside the frog. “But he’s not an enemy anymore — he’s my Uncle Manny. Will you tell our fortune again?”

  “Your fortune has been made,” said Frog, “and needs no more telling.”

  They stood together, looking out into the night. The platform shook as a lonesome whistle was heard and a white light slid along the tracks past the house. A rumbling freight went slowly clanking toward the town. One of the boxcar doors stood open, and as the train rolled on, a bundle was flung out into the snow beside the roadbed. The bundle was followed by a ragged man holding a little dog in his arms. Man and dog rolled over together and rose to their feet as the train grew smaller and was swallowed in the night. The tramp brushed himself off, picked up his bundle, and with the little black-and-white dog frisking at his heels, he crunched across the starlit snow to the abandoned cottage. He walked up to the open door, then stood there, his attention caught by the dollhouse that blazed like a beacon atop its pole.