Tucker's Countryside

  “Mmm!” purred Harry Cat. He looked out in the back yard, where he knew Tucker and Chester were watching him, and winked.

  SIX

  Flood

  The rain began as a soft, gray, summer shower. Tucker and Chester trudged home through it, and by the time they reached the tree stump, they both were soaked. Life was quiet in the meadow when it rained. The various rabbits and sundry fieldmice stayed in their holes. And gone was the usual glitter and bustle of insects, dragonflies, and water bugs beside the brook.

  “I hope you won’t get bored,” said Chester. “There isn’t much to do in the meadow when it rains.”

  “I’m not bored,” said Tucker. He was looking out the hole in the stump, drying off. The rain, pushed by the wind’s hand, swayed forward and back, like a curtain of silver. It fell on the roof of the stump and made a pattering sound. It fell on the grass, which seemed to turn even greener beneath it. And best of all, to Tucker’s thinking, it fell in the brook. It struck him as somehow right and nice and complete that the water from the sky met the water on the earth. “Usually the only falling water I see is the dirty stuff that leaks out of the drain pipes in the walls of the subway station,” said Tucker. “But this is different. I like to watch this rain.”

  And that is what he did all day long.

  And the next morning, when they both woke up, it still was raining. It tapered off a little toward noon, however, and Tucker insisted that they go over to the Hadleys’ and see if there were any further plans for building in the meadow. (Also, although he didn’t mention it, he was rather interested in what had been eaten in the Hadley home just lately.)

  The trip over was not so easy as it had been yesterday. Chester hopped from the top of one tuffet to another, while Tucker had to slosh through puddle after puddle. Pasture Land, too, was soggy and treacherous. But the going became easier when they reached the hill above Simon’s Pool, and at last they arrived in the Hadleys’ back yard.

  There was no one home. Tucker looked in at the screen door and whispered, “Psst! Harry, it’s us.” When there was no answer, he said louder, “Harry, where are you?” And finally he ended up shouting, “Harry Cat, you come out here!”

  “They’re all gone,” said Chester, who had hopped down to the end of a flagstone path that led to the garage. “The car’s not there. They must be at the market. Harry, too.”

  “Market,” said Tucker sadly, thinking of all the rows and rows of good things to eat. “I wish I was at the market.”

  They waited under the privet hedge for almost an hour. But the Hadleys did not come back, and it began to rain harder. The open earth where they were sitting turned into streaming mud.

  “We’d better go home,” said Chester. “We’re going to get drenched as it is.”

  “Drenched!” exclaimed Tucker Mouse. He was sopping wet, his whiskers were drooping, and he looked altogether bedraggled. “I couldn’t get any more drenched if I went swimming again! Which I’m not, thank you!” But he, too, agreed that they ought to return to the stump.

  Getting back was even harder than coming to the Hadleys’ house had been. In just the short time they’d been gone, Tuffet Country had turned into a shallow lake, the tuffets sticking up like islands. Tucker had said that he would not go swimming, but that, in fact, was what he did. Where the water wasn’t too deep, he could wade. But when it got over his head, he had to paddle as best he could. Chester waited for him on the tops of the tuffets where he landed.

  “This is awful!” said the cricket.

  “I’ll say!” said Tucker. He came puffing up to a bit of land that was still out of water below one tuffet, and collapsed for a rest.

  “First Harry gets chased by a Saint Bernard—and now you have to practically swim home!”

  “Oh, well,” said Tucker bravely, “I didn’t expect life in the wild to be easy.” He took a deep breath and felt as much like a pioneer as he could. “Shall we push on?”

  They pushed on and finally reached the stump. Fortunately the rain was slanting away from the hole, so the insides were still dry and comfortable. Tucker lay on a pile of wood chips, getting his breath back. “I’m turning into a champion athlete,” he said. He gave a cough and patted himself on the chest. “My wind’s still not what it should be, though.” As he rested, he became aware of a rushing sound outside. “What’s that noise?” he asked.

  Chester hopped to the hole. “It’s just the brook. It speeds up when there’s more water in it.”

  Tucker crawled over and looked out, too. It was still the same brook—but somehow different. “It doesn’t look the way it should,” said the mouse.

  Chester was silent a minute, studying the stream. Then he said, “I think the water level’s rising.”

  “Hmm,” said Tucker. He looked at Chester, then down at the hurrying current beneath them. “I keep saying these things as jokes—but maybe I am going to become a champion swimmer!”

  * * *

  It was no joke. Five days later Tucker Mouse wished that he was a champion swimmer. Or, better still, he wished that he and Chester hadn’t come back from the Hadleys’ house when they went to look for Harry Cat. Or, best of all, he wished that he and the cat hadn’t come to Connecticut in the first place!

  No one in the meadow could remember anything like it: it rained almost steadily for six days! Now lighter, now heavier, now seeming as if it was about to stop, but never stopping, the rain just kept coming. Sometimes the clouds opened up a little, a bit of blue was seen, a few stray sunbeams struck the stump—but then the clouds would close again, and water, always more water, fell.

  If Tuffet Country had been a lake on the second day, when Chester and Tucker woke up on the third day, they looked out over a positive ocean. Only the tallest tuffets stood up above the surface. And beyond them the mouse and the cricket could see that Pasture Land was flooded, too. They decided not even to try to get to the Hadleys’ house that day. But if they’d known what was in store for them, they would have swum and floundered up to the high ground above Simon’s Pool any way they could.

  The brook had risen steadily for the first four days. Then it had leveled off. Its channel was broad and deep and could accommodate the torrent that now raced through it. But Chester kept a sharp eye on the water level nonetheless. There was something that worried him—but he didn’t mention it to Tucker Mouse.

  Now, on the afternoon of the sixth day of rain, the two of them sat looking out of the hole at the waste of water all around. “Trapped!” said Tucker Mouse. “Like rats in traps we’re trapped!” He sighed. “I’ll never insult my nice leaking drain pipes again.”

  “It can’t last much longer,” said Chester.

  “That’s what you said three days ago—four days ago—five days ago! And look at it!” exclaimed the mouse. Chester said nothing. What could he say? It was true. “Are there any more nuts or seeds?” asked Tucker.

  “We ate the last yesterday,” said Chester. “But don’t worry—we won’t go hungry. John Robin said he’d bring us something if we ran out.”

  “Tell him to make mine a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich,” said Tucker grimly.

  The one bright spot in the whole soggy experience had been John Robin. He had his nest in the willow tree next to Chester’s stump, and he dropped in every day to give them the news. It was from him that they learned that the various rabbits and sundry fieldmice had moved up to the hill above the pool. A lot of burrows had been washed away, but so far no one had been killed. And over on the other side of the brook, where the land was a little higher, the folks were pretty damp, he said, but they weren’t suffering too much.

  “I can’t stand it any more!” said Tucker after another hour of watching the flood. “I’m going to jump for it and swim.”

  “Don’t!” said Chester. “The current’s much too strong in the brook—and you’d never make it all the way across the parts that are sunk.”

  “But I can’t stand it!” groaned Tucker. He was about to l
aunch into a lengthy description of what he couldn’t stand—the boredom, the hunger—when suddenly the whole stump trembled as if it had been struck. “Hey, what’s that?” said the mouse. He looked down and saw that just in the last few minutes the brook had abruptly risen much higher. Waves, some of them uncomfortably large, were beginning to pound at the base of the stump. “What’s going on?”

  Chester Cricket shook his head. “Now don’t get nervous, Tucker, but I think that maybe—”

  “Chester! Tucker!” John Robin appeared from nowhere and perched on the edge of the hole. “The reservoir’s overflowing!”

  Tucker looked at Chester. “Is that what you were thinking maybe?”

  “It’s what I’ve been afraid of all week,” said the cricket.

  “So now what happens?”

  “Well, it depends on how much it’s overflowing.”

  “Pouring over the spillway like crazy!” said John Robin helpfully.

  “Uh—Tucker—I think perhaps we ought to get up on top of the stump,” said Chester.

  “You mean you think it could come all the way up to the hole?” said Tucker.

  “Never saw such a waterfall in my life!” said the robin.

  “Please, John, you needn’t give us the details,” said Tucker. “Just get out of the way so we can climb on the roof!” John fluttered up on to the stump, and Tucker and Chester clambered after him. From out there the view of the wide lake the Old Meadow had become was even less to Tucker’s liking. “Now what?” he said.

  “Now we wait,” said Chester.

  And wait they did—as the torrent below them frothed higher and higher around the stump. John Robin kept flying off to the reservoir—no trip at all as a robin flies—and coming back with encouraging news like “Even more water coming over now!” and “Looks as if the whole thing may give way!” The only hopeful thing to occur was that late in the afternoon the thick curtain of clouds did finally lift. A broad band of blue sky appeared in the west, grew larger, and in a few minutes the sunlight, dense and warm, was glittering over the acres of water.

  “I think it’s actually cleared up!” said Chester.

  “Beautiful!” said Tucker. “We’ll have a nice, sunny day to get drowned in.” By now the water was beginning to lap over the top of the stump. “Listen, Chester—there’s no point in having both of us go down with the stump. You’re little—John Robin can carry you up to his nest. Didn’t you say you had a nest up there, John?”

  The robin pointed to one of the branches of the willow tree that overhung Chester’s stump. “That’s me—third branch from the top on the left.”

  “Now Tucker,” Chester began, “I will not leave—”

  “A moment, please,” said Tucker. He was feeling very noble and tragic and wanted to deliver a little eulogy on himself. “Never let it be said that Tucker Mouse allowed a friend of his to be sacrificed needlessly. And speaking of friends—” His tone changed considerably. “—if you can catch Harry Cat some time when he isn’t being brushed or having his tummy rubbed, you can tell him what a bum I think he is! Tell him if he ever decides to go back to New York, I leave all my Life Savings to him–he can buy his very own tummy-rubber with them!—and tell him I hope he enjoyed the lobster Newburg!”

  Chester ignored Tucker’s outburst. The sight of the willow tree had given him an idea. “John, some of those branches are hanging right over us. And willow branches are nice and bendy, too. If you flew up to that lowest one there, maybe your weight would push it down far enough so Tucker and I could grab it.”

  “I’ll try.” The robin flew up and got a grip on the branch. It lowered a bit but still remained high above the stump. “I’m not heavy enough!” the robin called down.

  “Go get lots of birds!” shouted the cricket. “And hurry! The water’s already over our feet.”

  “And tell him I went down proudly! A proud mouse to the end!” said Tucker, who still was ranting at Harry Cat. “A valiant fight I fought—while he was lounging around on cushions!”

  Chester began to lose his patience. “Oh, Tucker, stop raving! We’re not going to drown!”

  “We’re not?” Tucker seemed surprised and a little miffed that his heroism might not be necessary.

  “Just get ready to grab that branch.”

  When the water had risen to Chester’s knees—but a cricket’s knees are not very high—John Robin flew back. With him were two sparrows, the oriole who lived in the trees above Ellen’s Special Place, and a grackle named Sam. They all clung to the branch. It drooped down farther but was still above the heads of Chester and Tucker.

  “Not low enough,” called Chester. “Ask Beatrice to come over.” The robin flew off.

  “Who’s Beatrice?” said Tucker.

  “A pheasant who lives in the woods on the other side of the brook,” said Chester. “She’s the biggest bird in the meadow.”

  The water was up to Chester’s shoulders when John flew back with Beatrice Pheasant. When she settled on the branch, it sank down within reach of Tucker’s front claws, if he stood on his hind legs. He boosted Chester up, the cricket got a grip, and then Tucker too grabbed hold with both claws for dear life. “Now all you birds fly off one by one, or we’ll be flipped all the way back to New York!” said Tucker. He sighed to himself. “We should be so lucky!”

  One by one the birds left the branch. And very slowly, steadily, the mouse and the cricket were lifted up, as if by a firm, sure hand, till they hung amid the branches of the willow tree. Beatrice Pheasant was the last one off. When her weight was gone, Chester and Tucker were able to transfer from their elevator branch to a larger one nearby—the one on which John Robin had his nest.

  “Wheeoo!” groaned Tucker with relief. “Thanks for the help, Miss Pheasant.”

  “Mrs. Pheasant!” said Beatrice proudly. She had a good heart, but she was very conscious of the position she and her husband occupied as the two least common birds in the meadow. “Jerome is back in the woods, minding the children.”

  “Well, tell your husband I’m glad he’s got such a—” Tucker was about to say “fat wife”—for Beatrice Pheasant was indeed a very large bird—but he stopped himself in time. “Plump helpmeet” was the only other thing he could think of, but that didn’t sound right either.

  “Just tell him thank you for letting you come over,” said Chester.

  “We’d do anything for you, Chester,” said the pheasant. “Or for any friend of yours. Although, Mr. Mouse,” she went on reproachfully, “you don’t seem to be having much luck in saving the meadow, do you?”

  “Please, Mrs. Pheasant, you wouldn’t rub it in. I’m doing the best I can. Right now I’d just like to stay alive for a while!”

  Beatrice Pheasant spread her beautiful auburn wings, held them poised a moment—probably so Tucker could admire them—and then flew off over the brook toward the woods.

  “Climb on back to the nest,” said John Robin. “You can stay with us till the flood goes down.”

  Very carefully Tucker inched his way along the branch, mumbling to himself. “I go swimming—I climb trees—oh!” He caught a glimpse of the water swirling far beneath him, and hung on tighter. “And me with my fear of heights! This is no life for a mouse from New York.”

  Near the willow’s trunk John Robin had his nest. It was occupied by John’s wife Dorothy and three young robins, who were very surprised to see a mouse come climbing into their home. “Move over,” said the mouse. “Your Uncle Tucker has come for a visit!”

  Chester hopped in after him. “Now the first thing to do is for John to fly over and tell Harry that we’re all right.”

  “Let him wait,” said Tucker. “Let him worry awhile.” But Chester nodded to John, and the robin flickered off in the direction of the Hadleys’ house. Tucker went on sulking, though. “He’s probably over in that sun porch having a chocolate sundae right now!”

  SEVEN

  Indoors

  And so, after having spent almost all his firs
t week in Connecticut in Chester’s stump, trapped by the flood, Tucker Mouse spent almost all his second week in a robin’s nest, waiting for the waters to subside. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, however. The three young robins proved to be a very enthusiastic audience. Tucker told them stories of his life in New York—how he sometimes rode the shuttle from Times Square to Grand Central Station, just for the fun of it, and how exciting it was to scrounge for the small change that the human beings lost, especially during rush hour. The three youngsters were so thrilled that one morning they announced to their mother, Dorothy Robin, that when they grew up they were going to New York and live in the Times Square subway station. Dorothy was a sensible robin, and a very good mother too, so she didn’t tell them that they could not go to New York. She just kept feeding them the worms that she plucked up from the lawns of the houses across the street, and told them she thought it would be best if they waited until they were grown up before they decided where they wanted to live.

  Chester and Tucker didn’t have to eat worms to survive. John Robin brought them nuts and seeds, and by the time their stay in the willow was over, Tucker had actually gotten to like them—although he still missed the human food he was used to. For diversion he also learned to climb around on the branches of the willow tree. “Who would have thought it?” he said to himself. “An underground mouse like me—and now I’m a champion tree climber and swimmer!”

  The flood gradually receded, and a day came at last when dry land appeared in the meadow. Chester and Tucker thanked the robins for their hospitality, promised to come back for a visit very soon, and scrambled down, branch by branch, to the earth beneath the willow tree.

  “Doesn’t it feel wonderful to be on solid ground again?” said Chester.