Tucker's Countryside (3 page)

“I couldn't believe it!” said Tucker Mouse. “Look at the size of that lawn over there! John was right—it's bigger than Bryant Park!”

“I 'ike it here!” said Harry enthusiastically. “It's beau'i'ul in 'onne'i'uh—'onnekikuk—” He gave up trying to say “Connecticut” with Tucker's package dangling from his mouth.

And on they padded. Until, on their left, a vast darkness appeared. No houses or lawns were there. But the moon, which was dropping toward the morning, silvered the branches of trees and bushes. And a sound of running water came rustling up to them. “The meadow starts here,” said John Robin. “Do you hear the brook?

“It looks more like a jungle to me!” said Tucker Mouse.

“This is one of the woodsy parts,” said John. “The flat part, with grass and everything, is down at the other end. That's where Chester lives. Can you make it?”

“Of 'ourse!” said Harry. In a minute, though, he suddenly dropped the package and said, “Did you hear anything?”

“Like what?” said Tucker.

From the dark ahead came a single chirp. Then another. And another.

“It's Chester!” shouted Harry. He grabbed up the bundle and dashed on into the night. Tucker Mouse scuttled after him, and John Robin took off and flew over them both.

A fence ran beside the road. With each post that Harry went past, the chirps sounded nearer and nearer. They seemed to be coming from one certain post. Harry stopped in front of it. “Chester!” he called up. “Is that you?”

And down, in one jump, from the top of the fence-post came Chester Cricket. “Harry!” he said. “I'm so
glad
to see you!” The cat gave him such a big lick on the head that it knocked him right over.

“Watch it, Harry,” said Tucker Mouse, who came puffing up just then. “With a kiss like that, you could knock the cricket unconscious.”

“Tucker!” exclaimed Chester Cricket. “Oh, isn't that wonderful!”

Then, naturally, everybody started hugging everybody. It isn't so easy to hug a cricket, either. And they all talked at once—exclaiming and laughing the way old friends do when they haven't seen each other for months and months.

“I've been waiting on that fencepost for hours!” said Chester.

“We've been
traveling
for hours!” said John Robin.

For no good reason everyone burst out laughing again. But gradually the laughter subsided into a few final chuckles. The robin began hopping around nervously. “I guess I'd better get back to my nest, Chester,” he said. “It's almost light, and I'd like to get a little sleep at least. I have a big morning of worming planned for tomorrow.”

“All right, John,” said Chester. “And thanks for showing Tucker and Harry the way.”

The cat and the mouse thanked him, too. Then the little bird flew off into the night. As he disappeared, they heard him saying, “Whee-
ooo!
Down to New York and back in one day! What a flight!”

“Come on,” said Chester to Harry and Tucker. “I'll show you the way to my stump.”

He led them under the lowest wire of the fence and out into the Old Meadow. There was a path worn through the grass, and the moon, although it was riding low on the horizon, still shed enough light for them to see where they were going. “Be careful you don't go too far off to the right,” said Chester. “The bank drops right down to the brook. Can you both swim, by the way?”

“I can, but I hate it,” said Harry Cat.

“I don't know if I can or not,” said Tucker. “And I don't want to find out tonight.” He moved a little over to the left.

Even before they reached his home, Chester insisted on hearing all about New York—and especially the Bellini family. So, as they walked, and Chester hopped, Harry and Tucker told him the news. Mario was studying violin at the Juilliard School of Music. He had become so interested in music during Chester's stay in New York that he had decided to make it his career. “And I heard him tell Mr. Smedley that he chose the violin because it sounded more like a cricket's chirp than any other instrument,” said Harry. As for Mr. Smedley, whose letter to
The New York Times
had launched Chester on his famous career, he had become one of the most successful piano teachers in the city. “Mostly because he keeps telling everybody that he was the one who discovered you,” said Tucker. “And it was really me!” And Mama and Papa Bellini were doing very well, too. Most of the people who began coming to the newsstand while Chester was giving his concerts there kept buying their papers and magazines from the Bellinis even after the cricket had left. “And you know what,” said Harry Cat. “After all those years of complaining about how old and rickety the newsstand was, when they
could
afford to have a new one made—they decided they didn't want to! Mama said it was too much like an old friend to have it changed. So there it stands—the same as always!”

“I'm glad,” said Chester. “I like to think of everything just the way it was.”

Their walk through the meadow had brought them at last to Chester's stump. “This is just the way I imagined it,” said Tucker Mouse. It was on a bank, not too high, not too low, just at the point where the brook made a turn. So it had the water bubbling on two sides. And a big willow tree dropped lacy branches over it.

“I hope there's room enough for Harry inside,” said Chester as he hopped through an opening into the stump. “I had some field mice gnaw out some more space this afternoon.”

“You have
mice
here?” said Tucker, following Chester in.

“Lots of them,” said the cricket. “You'll meet everybody tomorrow.”

“Plenty of room,” said Harry. He stretched out on the spongy wooden floor of the stump.

Chester pointed at something above their heads. “Do you recognize that?” The moonlight, reflected from the brook, picked out a spark of silver.

“It's your bell!” said Tucker.

“My bell.” The cricket nodded. “I found some string beside the road and tied it to the ceiling.”

“Well, I have something else to remind you of New York,” said the mouse. He began carefully untying the package, which he had carried himself since they left the road.

“At last we see what it is!” said Harry. “We've lugged that thing all the way from Times Square.”

“Liverwurst!”
exclaimed Chester. For Tucker Mouse had undone the wax paper to reveal a big chunk of the meat.

“Stolen only this morning from the Nedick's lunch counter,” said Tucker. “Remember your first night in the city, when we had the liverwurst together? I thought it would be nice again.”

“Oh, that
is
nice of you!” said Chester. “I haven't had any since I left New York.”

So the three friends sat down to a delicious, late-night snack of liverwurst. And they talked and reminisced about Chester's adventures in the city, as always happens when old friends meet. And outside the tree stump the night wore away.

A lull came in the conversation, and Harry Cat said, “Now what's this big problem about the meadow, Chester?”

The cricket shook his head. “It's something very serious. Come on—I'll show you. It's almost sunrise—you'll be able to see.” He jumped out the opening in the stump, then up on top of it. Harry and Tucker scrambled after him. Above them, a pale lavender light, the color of lilacs, seemed to lift the sky upwards. The heavens stood high. “Now look all around,” said Chester, “all around the meadow, and tell me what you see.”

Tucker and Harry did as they were told. They could see the flat, grassy land around Chester's stump, and farther off the woodsy part where the meadow began, and still farther, toward the west, a ridge of hills that were also covered with trees. Here and there, through the brush, through the reeds, they caught a glitter of the brook in its course. In the dawn the meadow looked so fresh, and everything in it, that it seemed as if it had just been created today.

“Beautiful!” said Harry Cat.

“But look
outside
the meadow!” said Chester. “Look all around outside.”

Everywhere, on all sides—beyond the hills, beyond the woodsy parts—there were houses. To the east, where the sun was just coming up, two new ones were being built. “I only see houses,” said Harry Cat.

“That's just it,” said Chester. “Houses!”

Tucker Mouse scratched his head. “I don't get it, Chester. What's wrong with houses?”

“It's too long to go into now,” said the cricket. “I'll explain it when we wake up. Let's get some sleep while we can.”

THREE

The Old Meadow

None of the animals could sleep very well. Tucker and Harry were too excited at being up in Connecticut at last. And Chester Cricket, overjoyed as he was to see his friends again, was too worried about the Old Meadow to do anything but doze awhile. So after a few hours of napping they all decided it was silly to pretend to sleep when you weren't really sleeping, and got up.

The first thing they did was go down to the brook for a drink.
“Delicious!”
exclaimed Harry Cat as he tasted the icy, bubbling water. “It's certainly fresher than that stuff we collect from the pipes in the subway walls.”

“Yes, but how many flavors does this brook come in?” said Tucker Mouse, who was thinking of all the soda pop he scrounged from the lunch counters in the station.

“Nothing tastes as good as my brook,” said Chester Cricket. With his two front legs he sloshed a little cold water in his face. It was his habit to do that first thing every morning, even on the coldest days in winter, to wake himself up. “Let's go up on the stump again,” he said. “You can see what the meadow looks like in broad daylight.”

The cricket jumped up in one hop, and Tucker and Harry followed him. All around them the bright June morning sparkled on young leaves and blossoms newly opened. For a mouse whose only garden up till then had been three pathetic blades of grass, it was an overwhelming sight. Tucker felt his heart grow large with poetry. “Look how lovely, Harry!” he said. “Trees, flowers, little green growing things—ha-
choo!
” He gave a huge sneeze.

“God bless you,” said Harry Cat.

“Thank you, Harry,” said Tucker, and launched into a hymn in praise of Nature. “Oh, the countryside, the countryside!—ha-
choo!
” But it was interrupted by another sneeze, even larger than the first.

“What's the matter with you?” said Harry.

Tucker wiped his nose on one front paw—not a very nice thing to do, but he had no newspapers handy. Then he rubbed his eyes, which he suddenly realized had begun to itch. “Harry,” he said gloomily, “I think I have hay fever.”

“Don't tell me you're allergic to all those lovely little green growing things!” said Harry Cat slyly.

“You wouldn't rub it in, please, Harry,” said the mouse. “Chester, do you have a newspaper or a Kleenex or something in the stump? I have to blow my nose.”

“I'm sorry, but I don't,” said Chester Cricket.

“Then I'll have to use a leaf,” said Tucker. He climbed down from the stump.

“Watch out you don't use poison ivy!” Harry Cat called after him.

Tucker searched along the bank of the brook and finally found a clump of fern. They were nice and soft, like Kleenex, but weren't really ideal for blowing the nose because they were very lacy and full of holes. Still, Tucker thought they were the best he could find. He picked a few extras and went back to the stump.

“Here's our nature lover—back from the fields and the glens!” said Harry Cat when Tucker sat sniffling beside him and Chester again.

Tucker blew his nose on a fern and then threw it in the brook. “I may be the only mouse in the world who has to use ferns as handkerchiefs,” he said.

Harry Cat turned to Chester. “Now explain about the houses. Why do they worry you so much?”