“Didn’t anyone bring food?” Walter asked.
“Oh, plenty! At least two dozen did! Lovely nuts, and berries, and a few choice seeds, and some even brought worms!!”
“A robin’s delight,” sighed Walt.
“And within five minutes the ones who’d brought the tastiest things had eaten them up, congratulating each other—and me—on how delicious everything was!”
Without a word, as fast as a breeze that wrinkles the surface, Walter flashed away, to the other end of Simon’s Pool, where he did some shaking and spluttering.
“And, Simon,” said Chester, while Walt was gone, “the noise they made! You wouldn’t be-lieve—”
“Wait! Wait!” Walter was back. “I don’t want to miss a single word!”
“I was telling Simon about the racket.”
“That’s just birds, Chester,” Simon said. “They love to get together and flock, and talk and flap and have a party.”
“Well, they had a party, all right!” said the cricket. “That Dorothy Robin kept fluttering up, saying, ‘Company’s coming!’ ‘More company’s coming!’ ‘Chester, here’s some more company!’ It got so the sound of that word—‘company!’—would make my blood run cold. And then she’d reel off a string of names—none of which I’d remember. Except for Sam.” Chester tightened his mouth, as if something didn’t taste too good.
“Sam?” said Simon and Walter together. “Who’s Sam?”
“Sam Grackle. He flew in about five o’clock.”
“Five o’clock?” Walter Water Snake reared up—up—and then back, and hung suspended, incredulous, in the air. “How long did this party go on?”
“All day! There were birds dropping in the whole afternoon! Every friendly feather in the township of Hedley—in all of Connecticut!—must have shown up. That’s one more thing I found out about birds: the word spreads fast! Especially if there’s a party involved.”
Walter bobbed impatiently, prompting Chester. “So big Sam Grackle arrived when the festivities were well under way?”
“How do you know he was big?” said Chester.
“All grackles are big”—Walter whipped himself out impatiently, and then folded himself back into an S—“and a lot of them are stupid, too. Boors! Grackles are boors.”
“That’s Sam exactly. Big, stupid, and raucous. Was he noisy! ‘Hi, gang!’ he croaked, as he landed right on top of me. I was out on the branch by now—the nest was too crowded—and Big Sam came smashing right down on my back. He apologized, though. ‘Didn’t see you, kid. Ya’re kinda little. Har! har!’ And, Walt—when you say ‘har! har!’ I know it’s a joke. You sort of say it to make fun of yourself. But when Big Sam Grackle said ‘har! har!’ he really meant ‘har! har!’ That’s just how he laughed. With a beak full of seed. You should have seen how he ate! He tore into those berries and nuts as if there were famine dead ahead. And all the time he was doing his eating he kept on telling boring stories about his relatives!”
All Chester’s vexation wanted to burst—but the only word that came out was “Really!”
“Loud-beak bum,” Walter Water Snake muttered. “I know the type. Poor cricket. Poor cricket! What did you do?”
“I crawled out to the end of the branch and stayed there,” said Chester. “And nobody even knew I was gone. Those birds carried on till the sun went down. And then they all fell asleep everywhere. I thought the whole tree would fall down! Even the sturdiest willow tree can only support so many birds.”
“Where did you sleep, Chester?” Simon asked.
“Right out there—the little sleep I could get—in the crook of a twig, hanging on for dear life so I wouldn’t fall into the brook. This morning I was up before anyone—I was so glad to see that sun! The birds started waking up, one by one, hiccupping and coughing, and making their tune-up morning chirps. I just left. I hopped down, branch by branch, and—left. Rude, I guess—just jumping out like that. I’ll thank John Robin and Dorothy later. But—but—” Chester shook his head slowly. His antennae waved in wide, vague circles. “I knew this morning when I woke up that the willow tree was not for me. It’s not just the party. Sooner or later, the guests will leave. Don’t guests always leave?”
“Not grackles,” said Walter.
“Oh, he will, too. Eventually. But it’s just that—well—I think that it would be very hard jumping, going up and down branches that aren’t your own. And I think that they’d taste pretty bitter, the leaves of somebody else’s tree.”
In the midst of the sunny August morning another pool—a pool of gloomy silence—lay over Simon Turtle’s pool.
“Poor cricket,” said Walter. “Poor cricket!” And meant it. “Ohhhhh—” He lifted the saddest voice he had, and sang dejectedly:
A cricket moved to an old squirrel’s nest—
To an old squirrel’s nest moved he.
He thought he’d get some peace and rest—
But he just got company!
FIVE
Furry Folk
Chester’s moping lasted—almost—till lunch. Simon Turtle, whenever he had to feel depressed, always tried to do it on a pleasant day, so he could get some sun at least. Walter Water Snake usually worked off his worry by doing figure eights on the water. He zigzagged there for about an hour—then Chester asked him please to stop. He was getting on the cricket’s nerves, and also splashing him every time he closed a loop. As for Chester himself, in the past, if his mood turned bad—which wasn’t too often—he’d jump his blues up onto the stump and sleep them off or wait for them to evaporate. But now—why, now there was no stump, no place to have a fit or a funk, alone, and then hop out into daylight again. Chester lay half in and half out of the crack at the top of Simon’s log, with his head resting on his bell, and wondered if either he or it would ever ring with pleasure again.
“Yoo—”
“—hoo!”
Two “yoo-hoos,” spoken almost together in piping soft voices, rose up to Chester. On the bank across the pool sat Henry Chipmunk and his sister, Emily. Even now, after all the time that they’d been friends, Chester still had trouble telling one from the other. They might have been twins, they were so much alike, although Emily was a little bit older than Henry. But Henry had a patch of light fur on the left side of his nose, and Emily’s voice was a few notes higher. Chester had to look very close, or get them talking, to know for sure.
“Hi, Em. Hi, Hen,” he said.
“I spent the night at Ellen’s house—” That had to be Henry.
“—but this morning I certainly told him what happened!” squeaked the other excitedly.
When Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat had been up in Connecticut, rescuing the Old Meadow, the cat had been more or less adopted by Ellen, a girl who lived across Mountain Road. After Tucker and Harry had gone back to New York, Henry Chipmunk had been elected to do his duty as Ellen’s pet. He sometimes slept over.
“We were down at your stump, Chester.”
“Such a lot of birds there, Chester!”
“Dorothy Robin was talking to this big black chatterer—”
“A grackle,” said Walter from the pool.
“Yes. Well, she was asking him if he didn’t think that his friends downtown would be missing him—”
“They won’t!” Walter sank down to his neck. “They may even be glad.”
“Anyway, John and Dorothy didn’t know where you were—”
“—so we guessed here—”
“—and here we are!”
“I see,” said Chester. The chipmunks made him grin inside. They always did. It was sort of like being with someone small who was having such fun being busy and fussing that he’d just decided to double himself.
“And look what we’ve brought!” said the light-patch chipmunk excitedly.
“Since it’s lunchtime—”
“—and also we thought that you might be depressed—”
“—since your home got wiped out—”
“—and the bush
just bloomed this morning, too—”
“—after all the waiting we’ve done all summer!”
The two of them were bearing the burden of a big blackberry, holding it proudly, a gift from them both.
“Remember how much Mr. Mouse and Mr. Cat liked blackberries?” trilled High Voice.
“Well, over near our new home we’ve found the most beautiful bush!”
Em and Hen had formerly lived on the edge of the tumbledown cellar of the burned farmhouse, where long ago a human family had lived that owned the whole Meadow. But since that location had now become famous—and not altogether accurately—as the site of the old Hedley homestead, the chipmunks had had to move. Too many sightseers. They’d followed the ruins of a fine stone wall, of which there are many in Connecticut, and discovered an even nicer home: a hole—in fact two holes which were joined—beneath a heavy, sheltering rock. And the entrance was well concealed and protected by a vigorous prickly old rosebush that had gone back to Nature ages past. Em and Hen, being rather timid souls, had grown very fond of that sturdy shrub, disheveled and wild as it might appear. They called it “Uncle” and felt, somehow, it went out of its way to keep them safe. To the left of Uncle—one stump and a white young poplar away—was the late-blooming blackberry bush.
Chester jumped, spread his wings, and coasted slowly above the pool, to land beside his friends. It felt good to fly; he decided there might be hope after all.
“Dig in!” said Light Patch.
“Yes, please! Yes, please!” the other dithered, in her giddy high voice.
While the three of them ate—and Simon and Walter had a taste as well—Chester told once more the story of the housewarming. That was how he had come to think of it: A Cricket’s Tale of a Robin’s Welcome, with lots of supporting characters. Chester Cricket had found that when something unpleasant happened to him, if he made a tale of it by telling it to some friends as a story—or best of all, if he sang it to himself as a song—then that sadness and unhappiness was easier on the heart. It sometimes even turned wonderful.
Walter and Simon, for instance, seemed to think the whole dismal experience was absolutely grand. They laughed and kept interrupting Chester to remind him of things—like the feathers which the birds had brought so he could build a nest—that the cricket had forgotten himself. Those poor, well-meant feathers! The second time around, they got to be even moldier.
The chipmunks relished the story, too. “My—” one would begin, and the other would end it, exclaiming, “—my!” Or “Good—” “—gracious!” “Oh—” “—dear!” By the time he arrived at his waking up that morning, Chester had learned to make little pauses so Emmy and Hen would be part of it all.
“Well, my goodness,” said High Voice, “I never did hear such a thing—”
“—in our life! But what now?”
“Yes, what now? You aren’t going back, are you?”
“No,” said Chester. An antenna waved. He pecked at the blue ruins of the berry with his right front foot. “There must be some place in this Meadow for me to call home.”
Both chipmunks burst out at once, “Chester Cricket!”
“Why don’t you come—”
“—and live with us?”
“Wellll—” Chester’s doubt drifted off, floating over the Meadow, in a single long note that sang I-don’t-know.
But the chipmunks, mad with enthusiasm, bobbing like toys made of rubber and fur, wouldn’t wait for one chirp of a cricket’s uncertainty.
“We have two rooms, Chester—”
“—don’t you see? And when I’m on duty, over at Ellen’s—”
“—then you can have Henry’s. And when he comes back—”
“There’s plenty of room for all of us! And so nice—”
“We really have made it nice, Chester! There’s a little bit of lawn—”
“—under Uncle, which we keep clipped—”
“—smooth! And dry ferns, to sleep on—”
“—we collect them ourselves—”
“—and then dry them especially—”
“—and keep them clean—”
“—oh, everything’s clean—!”
“—immaculate!”
Chester’s head was flicking left and right, to watch them talk, like someone at a tennis match. “Hold up now!” he called. “You’re going too fast.”
“Please come, Chester—”
“—please!”
A silence—deciding—held everyone still.
“What do you think, Simon?” asked Chester. The old turtle shrugged his shell—which took quite a long time. “What about you, Walter?” said the cricket, who was still somewhat troubled. “What’s your opinion?”
“I think it sounds divine!” said the snake. “A charming little country retreat.”
The chipmunks looked at one another. “We don’t live in retreats—”
“—we live right here.”
“Okay. All right, my pint-sized eager beavers—”
“We’re not beavers—”
“—we’re chipmunks!”
“All right and okay!” Walter loomed up high and smiled down on Emmy and Hen. “I know who you are. You’re tiny little furry folk, with hearts as big as all get-out. You take Creaky Cricket back with you and make him feel at home.”
“I wish I knew when you were teasing,” said Chester.
“Me? Tease?” If Walter had hands, he would have clapped one over his heart. “May all my skins fall off at once if ever this serpent should tease a friend!”
“Mmm,” grumbled Chester skeptically. There was lots to doubt in the air today—although to anyone except a desperate homeless cricket who was talking to a zany water snake it might have seemed like any other ordinary morning.
“Scurry along now, Squeaky Creaker,” Walt advised. “Em ’n’ Hen are anxious to leave.”
“I don’t scurry!” declared Chester. “I hop, I jump—sometimes I fly—”
“These two will instruct you in scurrying.” Walt laughed.
“We won’t! He can go—”
“—any way that he wants!”
“And why do you call Chester Squeaker—”
“—and Creaker?”
“Because he’s an insect,” Walter explained. “He has the hard part of himself outside. An outside skeleton, one might say. And when he moves”—Walt lowered his head and spoke very confidentially—“he makes a little squeak. He goes ‘Eek! eek! eek!’ Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“We haven’t. Do you—”
“—Chester, really? Go eek?”
“Of course!” Walter proclaimed. “He eeks all the time! Go on, Chester friend, bend a joint, stretch a leg—stretch lots of legs—and give us a little eek, why don’t you?”
“I won’t,” said Chester, and hung his head. “I’m embarrassed.”
“Har har. Har! har!” Walt zipped all around the pool in a circle. “Better hurry, too.” He coasted and slowed, and stopped at the bank. “There’s a shower coming.”
“Yes, hurry—”
“—please, Chester!”
“We don’t like—”
“—to get wet.”
“I may as well,” the cricket sighed. “I’m beginning to feel like a bump on that log. Bye, Simon. Bye, Walt. I’m off again.”
“Off to your little green home in the West!” Walter Water Snake caroled poetically.
“We don’t live in the West—”
“—we live halfway down the old stone wall!”
“And our home isn’t green—”
“—it’s the color of stone!”
“Beg pardon.” Walter bowed. “But so long, anyway. So—” He stopped. “Come on, Simon—help me. So—”
“—long!” The turtle finished it for him, and laughed.
They watched as Chester hopped his hardest to keep up with the chipmunks, who had a happy special bustle about them whenever they turned their noses toward home.
“Chest
er forgot his bell,” said Simon.
“I don’t think he really forgot it,” said Walter.
“Poor soul.” The turtle shook his glossy black head. “Do you think he ever will find a place?”
“And that reminds me, Turtle-urtle!” Walt knifed through the water, next to him. “There’s something I want to discuss with you.”
SIX
Home Life—and Too Much, in Fact
And that afternoon, to the frisky delight of everyone who got caught in it, there was a brief shower—a downpour that lasted just long enough to rinse the day, what was left of it, and hang it out in the sunset to dry. Walter Water Snake and Simon Turtle barely noticed the rain. They were watery people and both of them enjoyed basking in either sunshine or shower. But not today. There was too much to talk about—plans to be laid—decisions taken. By twilight, they had made up their minds. Yet the stars found them still awake—too excited to sleep.
At sunup, after a fitful rest that lasted no more than a couple of hours, they both were awake and hard at work. Simon was busy, huffing and puffing, over and under and around his log, and Walt was dashing back and forth in the water, half out of sheer enthusiasm, but partly to clear debris away.
They both were so preoccupied that only by chance did Walt happen to look up and see on the bank—“Why, can this be? No, surely not. He went off yesterday to a cozy cottage, a lovely lair, a beautiful burrow. Oh no! But yes! It really is! It’s—”
“Hi, Walter,” said Chester, who was just too tired to be amused or angry or peeved, or anything else at Walter’s way of speaking.
Walt raced like a cutter across the pool. “What are you doing here?”
The cricket shrugged—but only one shoulder, things seemed so hopeless. “I don’t have any place else to go.” He glanced around—at the log, the pool. “What are you two doing? What’s all this stuff?”
“Why—why”—Walter Water Snake seemed at a loss for words, which was very unlike him—“we’re making boats!”
“Boats?”
“Aren’t we, Simon?” Walter demanded. “Making boats—”
“Oh, boats! To be sure!” the turtle agreed. “Comes over us every August, it does—this urge to build boats.”