“Fredle!”
Fredle yelled it out as loud as he could.
If their knowing that he had a name, knowing what that name was, would give him a chance to survive, then he wanted to have that chance. “I’m Fredle!” he yelled again.
11
The Rowdy Boys
“Fredle, is it?” Rilf said. “Well. Pleased to meet you, Fredle.”
Seized by a sudden inspiration, Fredle shouted up at the raccoon faces, “I’m inedible!”
This announcement was greeted by silence. Here, wherever it was that they were, with trees looming out of dark shadows—and he smelled stones, too—here the wind was less noticeable, so the silence was all the more loud. Fredle waited to find out if he’d been very smart, or maybe very stupid.
At last, “Woo-Hah,” said Rec, who really was about twice as big as the others. “Woo-Hah, Woo-Hah,” the others joined in, and Fredle hoped this was raccoon laughter, not raccoon irritation.
Captain Rilf’s snout had more silver mixed in with the dark gray-brown than the others, so it shone, slightly, in the pale predawn light. “Fredle inedible? That’s incredible,” he said. “Woo-Hah.”
“Woo-Hah,” the others echoed him.
Then the smallest of the four spoke up with youthful enthusiasm. “So, Cap’n, which part do you take? The haunch?” and Rilf answered sharply, “Back off, Rimble. Did you hear me say anything about eating the mouse right now? Did anyone? No, I didn’t think so.”
“He’ll tell us when,” said the fourth raccoon, whose round ears were as black as the stripe around his eyes. “You know you don’t have to worry about going hungry with the Cap’n in charge.”
“Yeah, Rimble. You shouldn’t just think about stuffing your face,” said Rec, and even Fredle could understand why the others snorted and huffed at this.
“Look who’s talking,” said Rad.
“Face-stuffer yourself,” said Rimble.
Rec growled and took a swipe at the smaller raccoon. Fredle edged closer to Captain Rilf, which he hoped was the safest place to be as Rimble snapped his teeth at Rec, warning him, “Better not.”
“Better not what?”
“Fight! Fight!” cheered Rad, but Rilf called a halt to it. “Not now. It’s almost morning and nobody’s hungry, are they? Are any of you hungry? After a good forage and then ice cream? So why fight over a mouse?”
The two combatants turned to him, their quarrel already forgotten. “It was a good night’s pickings,” they agreed. “And ice cream. And mouse! You got us quite a night, Cap’n.”
“Rec took a cheese wrapper and I saw it first. I called it. It was mine,” Rimble complained.
“Squealer,” Rec growled.
“He did. You know you did, Rec. So he has to give me some of his. Maybe his share of mouse.”
“Just you try—”
“Cap’n said none of that, you two,” Rad warned them.
Rilf spoke as if he hadn’t even heard the new quarrel. “Tonight’s food’s taken care of without including mouse. I say we introduce ourselves to our new little … friend. It’s getting light and we’ll be bunking down soon.” He looked down at Fredle, crouching uneasily near his front paws. “You already know who I am, and this young squirt is Rimble and this great, fat lout—”
Rec made a growling noise.
“—I should say, this big, strong giant of a raccoon—”
“Woo-Hah,” they all laughed, even Rec.
“—is Rec, and this is Rad. He’s my second in command.”
Rimble added, “We’re the Rowdy Boys. Everyone knows about us, all over the farm, both sides of the mountain. We’re the Rowdy Boys and we’re dangerous, so don’t try to mess with us.”
“Don’t be stupid, Rimble,” said Rad. “How’s a mouse going to mess with us?”
“You calling me stupid?” Rimble snarled. “That mouse needs warning.”
“Woo-Hah,” laughed Rec. “You’re scared of something that size? He’s barely two mouthfuls apiece, he can’t hurt us.”
“The mouse has a name, which is Fredle,” said Rilf. His bright, dark eyes studied Fredle. “I’d like to show the girls this fellow. I bet the coonlets could have a good time with him. I’d have loved a mouse when I was little.”
“Me too,” they all agreed, and then, without a further word to Fredle, they withdrew together into a wide-mouthed burrow dug into the soft ground near some large tree roots and there they curled up, four large, furry bodies, hidden away from sight. In the dim light, they could have been one huge creature, not four separate, smaller ones, except for the way they shoved at one another—“Get your paw out of my eye or I’ll bite it off!”—and quarreled—“Try, just you try. I’d like to see you try.” “Hey! Cut it out!” “Then don’t push me.”
Fredle stayed exactly where they’d left him, for a long time, a solitary small gray mouse hunched on a patch of dirt with big trees all around him and a low stone wall nearby. After a while, the air grew lighter. Eventually, all he heard from the burrow was the snoring of sleeping raccoons, which mingled with the sound of the morning breeze rustling branches and leaves. He waited.
Daylight came gently, out in the wild, came slowly. With daylight, Fredle could see what was around him. Trees rose tall, some leafy, others spreading out low branches covered with short, dark green needles. There were clumps of old brown grass, bent flat, and bright green blades of new grass growing among them. The air filled with the voices of birds.
The sounds of birds were very different from the sounds of chickens. Chickens seemed to be chattering away to themselves, but birds conversed. Conversed about what Fredle had no idea, but he thought, listening, that one bird would make a noise and another would respond. Their voices were much more pleasant to hear than the cawing of crows.
Fredle could no more have gone to sleep than fly up into the air and talk to birds. His brain was too busy. He thought he must be out in the wild, and he could conclude that the raccoons, like house mice, were nocturnal animals. So his escape—and he certainly did plan to escape before they woke up hungry and caught sight of him—would be best carried out in daylight.
Fredle had no idea where the wild was, how distant from the house, the compost and the garden. He had no idea which direction he should escape into. He wasn’t lost, but he very easily might be, and soon, so he wanted to notice everything he could about this particular place. He looked all around.
The low stone wall ran in a straight line through the trees, as far as Fredle could see in both directions. Some of its stones had fallen into the grass that grew beside it. High-limbed, leafy trees and some of the thick, bushy, low-branched trees encircled the small clearing where he stood. He locked the position of everything and of the place itself into his memory, and then he turned to leave it.
“Woo-Hah.”
Fredle froze. After a long minute he turned his head to peer at the pile of sleeping raccoons.
Not a one of them stirred. Even Captain Rilf, who slept with his nose pointed toward Fredle, had his eyes tightly closed.
Fredle waited a long, anxious time, while the air brightened around him. Then he ran off, in the direction of the growing light.
The way he had chosen was pathless, and rough with rocks and roots and low bushes. Trees rose up to block his passage. He had to circle around them before he could continue on his way. After a long time, he rounded a thick tree trunk and within six steps knew he could no longer be sure that he was heading on in the same direction. He felt it in his shoulders, the not-knowing, and stopped moving. He retreated to the safety of the tree trunk, to think things over.
But Fredle found that he could only think about being lost. Somehow, in the short distance from one side of the tree trunk to the other, he had gone too far and gotten himself well and truly lost.
This was so uncomfortable a feeling that he went back around the tree, until he knew where he was again. He crouched there to consider the situation.
He had been foolish to
just run off like that, just because that way led toward the light. Now he thought that he should have followed the stone wall. Those stone walls were built by humans, so if a mouse followed along one he would eventually come to some other place where humans lived. Where humans lived, there would be mice living, too. Fredle thought now that the wall near which the raccoons had their burrow probably belonged to Mister. After all, the raccoons wouldn’t live too far from the source of their food, and the source of their food seemed to be the compost and the garbage cans, both of which belonged to Mister, and therefore, Fredle concluded, the wall, too, must be Mister’s. Thus, he decided, if he followed the stone wall he might have a chance of finding the farm again, and the garden, and the way back into the house. The way home.
By the time he got back to the little clearing, it was midday and he was both tired and thirsty. But the raccoons were still asleep, so it was safe for him to approach the wall and try to decide in which direction to run along it.
No instinct told him to go this way, or that. So he simply chose: this way.
Even with the stone wall to walk beside, it was hard going. Fredle was full of new hope, however, and he persisted. He went on quite a distance before he began to feel wrong, again, and his hopes began to fade. He knew in his shoulders, just as he had known earlier, that this was the wrong way. Or, rather, he did not know that this was the right way. So he decided to turn back, again, and redirect his steps, again. He didn’t know what else he could do. He had no idea where he was, so he had only instinct to guide him home, and all his instinct was saying to him was wrong, and wrong, and wrong again.
At the word home, he saw in his imagination the little nest under the porch, and he felt how low and safe the ceiling lay over it, how the lattice wall protected him without closing him in, how spacious and comfortable his territory under the porch had been.
Then he corrected himself. That wasn’t home. Home was the wide nest behind the pantry wall, where his father and mother, his grandfather, his brothers and sisters, too, all slept together in the unchanging dim light.
He must be light-headed from hunger, Fredle thought, and tried chewing on some of the blades of new grass that were growing near the wall. They tasted bitter but he ate them anyway before he set off again, back to the raccoons’ burrow.
Once more he crossed in front of the pile of sleeping raccoons, their sharp-pointed noses tucked into their sharp-clawed black feet, their bright eyes shut and their browny-gray, silvery-black furry bodies piled up together, so that you couldn’t tell where Rimble’s shoulder ended and Rec’s haunch began. They did not stir as he slipped silently past them and headed off along the stone wall in the opposite direction, going that way, hoping for the best.
By this time, he was hoping for the best but at the same time fearing the worst. He had no idea what to expect, out here, in the wild. He went along as fast as he could, making his way beside the stone wall around and over and through obstacles that had by that time grown familiar. The air was warm, much of the day had gone by, already, and only insects could be heard. Then the wall stopped.
Fredle considered the empty way ahead. It was crossed by a dirt path with long ruts in it, like the road near the house. Could it be some kind of road? And if it was some kind of road, wouldn’t it lead him to a house? That is, if he chose the right direction.
The fact was that he had no idea where he was and had no idea how to forage out in the wild. The only thing he knew was how to get back to where the Rowdy Boys slept, and he didn’t know what lay in store for him if he did that.
Fredle thought: Wait a minute. I do know what’s in store for me, with those raccoons.
Then he thought: I don’t think there is anything else I can do.
So he stopped thinking and turned around, turned back, to make his way to the raccoons’ burrow. When he got there, he saw that they were still asleep. Late-afternoon sunlight was turning the air more and more golden, and Fredle, who had been awake for too long a time, was exhausted. He found a little sheltered space between two rough gray stones a good distance from the burrow and curled up there, but he was too miserable to escape into sleep. He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
With his eyes open, he saw that Rilf also had open eyes and was watching him. “You were right the first time,” he said, his voice low and growly. “That was the direction to go in, away from the wall, downhill. But you’re smart to come back. It’s too far for a mouse to go on his own, through the wild. You’d never have made it.”
The eyes closed again. “Go to sleep, mouse.”
In his state of hunger and thirst, despair and exhaustion, what else could Fredle do?
12
Living with Raccoons
A thump on the rump jolted Fredle awake. Rilf loomed over him, big and bright-eyed. “Up and at ’em, young Fredle. Thirsty?” he asked. “Hungry?”
Fredle nodded. His mouth was, in fact, too dry for speaking out of, but at least he was no longer exhausted. After all the time he’d lived outside, he was accustomed to sleeping in bits and patches, day or night, so he had had a refreshing rest.
Rilf lowered his snout to the ground beside Fredle. “Climb up, get behind an ear, and hold tight. And I mean tight. I’m not sure I’d hear you cry for help if you bounced off, and I know you’re too light for me to feel. As long as you don’t dig those nails into my ear, of course.” He lifted his nose off the ground, considering. “I wouldn’t try digging nails into me, if I were you.”
Fredle clambered onto the nose and ran up between the raccoon’s eyes to take shelter behind one bristly round ear. When he had a good hold, with all four paws, he asked, “What makes you think I’m so young?”
“Woo-Hah” was the only answer he got. With a ground-eating, loping run, Rilf headed off.
He went that way along the stone wall and when the break came, he turned onto the rutted road that sloped downward. After a while, he left the road and crossed a wide, overgrown field in those same long strides. At last he stopped and lowered his head.
Fredle had been trying to simultaneously hold on—but not with his nails—and remember the route, while all the time bouncing around on the raccoon’s hard head, in danger of falling off at any moment. The sudden stop surprised him.
“Come on, Fredle.” Rilf hurried him along. “Get down.”
Fredle crawled shakily onto the ground, where the grass grew tall. “Where—” he started to ask, but he knew. Among all the other smells, he recognized the answer to his question: Water. Rilf had already buried his snout in water that was passing between two low banks right in front of them, rushing by—from where Fredle had no idea, and neither did he know where it was going. Although, just before he took his first taste, he almost remembered something. But then he had a mouth full of cold liquid, and was swallowing it, and he only thought about how good it was to drink.
After a while, he lifted his nose out of the water. “Thank you, Captain Rilf.”
“Don’t call me that, mouse. I’m not your captain. You’re not one of the Rowdy Boys and you never will be.”
“But—You said—Last night …”
“Yes?” Rilf growled.
“Sorry about that,” Fredle said. This wasn’t a quarrel he wanted to have. “It’s just—I feel much better. I was thirsty.”
“Plain Rilf will do, between a mouse and a raccoon.”
Fredle nodded and said no more. He didn’t need to understand raccoons. He just needed to get away from them.
As the light faded out of the air, Rilf turned his attention to a tall plant. He scratched at the base with his strong paws and then pulled something up out of the earth, letting it fall onto the ground. “You take this one, I’ll get more.”
Fredle looked at the thing. Its end was whitish and not large; its long leaves were green. He smelled it and it smelled like dirt, but something else, too. “What is it?”
“Try it, it’s food. It’s not poisonous. Well, not to raccoons, at least. We’re about
to find out about mice.”
Fredle was hungry and he did need food of some kind. Rilf pulled up several more of the tall things and then took one himself. He reached down to put it into the water and rub it between his paws. Then he lifted the long, dripping thing up into the air to cram it—white bottom, long stem, leaves and all—into his mouth.
Fredle didn’t see any other choice. He bit into the white end. It was crisp like apple peel but fresher than any apple peel or core from the compost. It was not sweet, not really; its flavor was sharp and it tasted good in a way Fredle had never tasted before. He took another bite.
“Ramps,” said Rilf, taking up another and once again washing it in the water that flowed so quickly by them. “The stream grows watercress, too, but that’s too bitter for me.” He reached a paw down into the water to pull out something limp and dark green and leafy. “A mouse might like it.”
“Should I wash this ramp before I eat it?” Fredle was trying on the new word, to be sure he’d gotten it right. He wasn’t interested in watercress, whatever that was. “Should I be washing it in the stream, like you do?”
“It’s too late now. Besides, I don’t know why I do. A little dirt never hurt anyone, but if there’s water and I’ve got something to eat, I wash it. Go figure. Finished with that one? Good, have one more and I will, too, and the rest I’ll take back to the boys. I like to surprise them every now and then. It’s one of the things a good captain does, if he wants to stay on top.”
“But won’t they be off foraging by now?”
“Maybe. Could be. Depending. But I bet we find them waiting.”
“Where do they think you’ve gone?”
“Woo-Hah,” Rilf laughed. “My guess is they think I’m off eating you on my own. That’s a captain’s privilege. Of course, a smart captain never takes advantage of his privileges, I can tell you that, my mouse. But as captain, I can eat what I want when I want it. As long as they’re not hungry. And we all know they have that chicken carcass.”