Whittington Read online

  The morning after the horses arrived, Bernie went out to his truck at five o’clock to go feed them. Abby and Ben were sitting in it, waiting. They said they’d help. The horses were prancing around the paddock with tails flying when the truck reached the top of the hill. The kids were as excited as the horses. Everybody was smiling. Inside the barn it smelled of fresh hay and horse.

  That afternoon Bernie bought brushes and currycombs at the Agway, and a stepladder so the kids could do the horses’ backs. After a couple of days the horses began to smell like the children and the children began to smell like the horses. Abby and Ben rode over with Bernie every morning at five to help muck, feed, and water. Before the horses arrived it was hard to get the kids up for the school bus at seven. Now they had friends who needed them. Sometimes when the kids doled out the sticky grain with molasses and vitamins, the horses would nuzzle and lick them, probably for salt but maybe for love. There is nothing softer or more delicate than a horse’s muzzle. Sometimes if Bernie was standing close by, they’d nuzzle him too. “Go on!” he’d mutter as he pushed them off, but it made him smile. His years fell away when he smiled. You could see the boy he’d been.

  AS SOON AS BERNIE drove away, the rats would rush from their holes, chittering and squealing, to chase the Lady and the chickens from the grain. They made off with all the bantam eggs they could find. One night they cornered the deckled gray and killed him for the food in his craw, tore him open and left him in a mess of blood and feathers. The Lady had nightmares that she’d be next because her wings were clipped and she moved slow. There were rat holes in the barn walls and tunnels in the back part, where it was dark.

  The morning she met the cat, as soon as she finished her bath the Lady went and told the other animals about Whittington. She didn’t giggle about his name or mention his old one. She’d heard enough of his story to understand why he’d given it up.

  The bantams churred and scolded at the idea of a cat moving in. “Cats eat birds,” the oldest one said. “We have enough problems with the rats.”

  Coraggio was opposed too. “No more predators,” he declared.

  There was an approving murmur from the bantams. The horses didn’t pay much attention. They’d known cats before, never had much to do with them. The rats crept out to listen. They didn’t have a vote, but they held with the horses until the Lady spoke again.

  “Whittington says he’s a ratter. I don’t know, but that’s what he says. He looks like a fighter. We could use a ratter,” she added, glaring in the direction of the rats. There was an “Ooh!” of approval from the fowl.

  The Lady reminded the horses how close they’d come to ending up dog food. It was the same with the rooster and the bantams; they’d been remnants at a livestock auction. The auctioneer had announced that if no one took them, he’d wring their necks, he wasn’t going to interrupt his weekend on their account. So somebody bid a dollar, borrowed a crate, and left them at Bernie’s. Bernie had a reputation. You could tell from his smile and the way he walked he was likelier to say yes than no to a crate of tired chickens.

  The barn hummed with talk about the cat. Not the moving-in part, they couldn’t stop him from doing that. The family part. You can’t get rid of somebody once he’s part of your family. Whatever happens, you’re responsible. But who could say who belonged in or out of that family?

  What clinched it for Whittington was Ben and Abby looking around the barn at five the next morning and asking in unison, “Where’s the cat?”

  Bernie looked up. “What cat?”

  WHITTINGTON WAS WAITING under the hedge. It was ticking snow. He stepped out when he saw the Lady.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll go down together. I’ll introduce you.”

  When they arrived, it was snug in the barn, pungent with damp dung and hay. The bantams murmured and cackled together like they were telling jokes. Now and then, Coraggio crowed. He always startled folks when he crowed because they never knew when he’d do it, and he didn’t either.

  The Lady and Whittington sat close in the hay talking about themselves and the news about Bernie’s selling out. Every winter Bernie talked about selling out because he had arthritis in his knee. The cold weather made it hurt. It was more and more painful for him to climb down and up the hill when it was too icy for the truck.

  The animals were all worried about moving. Talk about moving is like talk about divorce, nobody knows what it will mean except that everything will be different and not better. Who but Bernie would shelter and feed two old horses and an assortment of odd birds?

  As the snow thickened, the Lady told Whittington her story. She’d been one of twelve ducklings that Bernie got one Easter. A stranger had showed up at the Texaco with a crate of ducks. He said he was going to drop them in the trash if Bernie didn’t take them.

  The fox had made off with a couple of the Lady’s brothers right away. The hawk took one, the rats took a toll, so did the raccoon and some coyotes. She was the only duck left.

  “Aramis and Li’l Spooker were racehorses,” the Lady explained, as if they weren’t standing there. “Aramis is a gelding. He was fast, but Spooker won purses. Aramis never finished in the money. Spooker won’t let him forget it.”

  “What’s a gelding?” the cat wanted to know.

  “It’s an operation they do to manage male horses. Otherwise he’d be wild.”

  Aramis looked away.

  “Because she won money, Spooker goes first for everything around here. The hay goes down, Spooker gets the first bite. Water in the bucket, her muzzle is right in there sucking it down. It’s the same when Bernie or one of the kids tosses out the grain and cracked corn with molasses, Spooker gets the first.

  “Bernie puts down grain for me and the other birds. We have to hurry to eat it, though. The rats hassle us. They’re aggressive. Norways, they call themselves, but what they have to do with Norway I don’t know. ‘Brown rat’ is a good enough name for them.

  “Despite the Moscow in my name, my ancestors were English,” she continued, swelling up some, the way people do who have ties to Great Britain. “There’s a college in England where they honor my line by marching around behind a duck held aloft on a pole. It has to do with the wings of knowledge.”

  At this point the Lady gave a great flap to show the wings of knowledge. Her wings went out as far as you could stretch your arms.

  Coraggio roused himself and flapped too. He was a Plymouth Rock, white with a red crown. He sang all day on the dung heap but he kept himself as clean as the president in his white starched shirt.

  “I got my name because of my bravery,” he said. “It was the night of the raccoon. She slipped in looking for eggs. She came after me, thought I was a hen. I drove her off. When Bernie came in the morning and saw the feathers, he figured what happened. He said I had courage. I took it from there.

  “Our family is descended from the wild red jungle fowl,” he continued. “In science we’re called Gallus gallus. We are the most important bird in the world. Wherever men go we go too because of our eggs. Men have kept us by them for four thousand years.”

  He didn’t mention drumsticks.

  There was a ruckus among the bantams.

  Coraggio ahemed. “Because of their eggs. But I keep things going. Some of them can do an egg every other day.”

  The cat looked around for an egg.

  “There aren’t any right now,” said the senior bantam. “We’re too busy keeping warm. Wait until there’s more sun.”

  The Lady turned to the horses. “Your turn.”

  Spooker said that she and Aramis were Arabians. Their ancestors had been brought here when America was a new world. “The Spaniards brought us in their ships because we’re the fastest ones. Other breeds can pull heavier loads, but we’re the fastest. In the Westerns they ride Arabians like us. We’re professionals. A big woman raised and trained us on dirt roads in the mountains in Vermont. She taught us to pull a sulky, a bare-frame cart with two wheels and a sea
t. The races were on level ground. Our drivers wore bright silks and helmets. They were all skinny, easy to pull. They carried whips to snap for signals, not to hit us. You don’t run a whole race flat out; there’s strategy in racing. That’s what I mean about our being professionals—we knew to follow the signals. We raced around a track with grandstands where people stood cheering. The cheering always made us speed up. I won purses, prize money.”

  Aramis made a loud noise that wasn’t a sneeze. He didn’t like being reminded that he’d never finished in the money. “There were more horses around before there were cars and trucks,” he said. “A hundred years ago even old horses like us were everything on a farm—truck, tractor, transportation. Horses don’t have work like that anymore. We’re pets. We’re helping Bernie raise his grandkids.”

  Whittington just listened. He could have mentioned that the word “cat” is found in various languages as far back as they can be traced.

  The one-eyed rat they called the Old One stayed quiet too. For his part he could have told an interesting tale about his ancestors arriving at Jamestown with Captain John Smith and, long before that, rats coming to Europe from China and the plague they carried. Men bring rats along wherever they go. They don’t mean to; the rats that travel with men travel as stowaways. The fleas and the Black Death were both stowaways on the rats. He might have mentioned that in India the rat is the companion of Ganesha, the beloved god with the elephant’s head.

  The Old One didn’t speak because he was sizing up the cat. He’d never seen a cat before but he’d heard about them. It was the way this cat wove from side to side that worried him, like a snake ready to strike. The Old One knew about snakes. Snakes ate rats.

  BERNIE HAD A GUARD DOG at the Texaco. Every noon, when he drove out to the barn to water the animals, he’d bring Havey along so she could have a run and do her business. Her favorite thing was to chase the Lady and nip at the horses. Bernie always yelled but it was a halfhearted yell because this was Havey’s only exercise. To tell the truth, it was the horses’ only exercise too. The rest of the day they stood around in the paddock and she sat chained up behind the Texaco.

  The Lady warned Whittington about Havey. “She’ll kill if she can. She has scores to settle. She lives to get even.

  “I heard Bernie tell the hay man how he got her,” she continued. “‘One afternoon,’ he said, ‘I saw this dog wandering around in the churchyard across from the Texaco. She looked lost. Real skinny, like she’d just had puppies, teats hanging down. There’d been some drifters hanging around. I figure they kept the puppies and dumped her. I brought her some meat. She snarled but she took it. She was starved. Next day I brought some more. Called the dog officer. He took her away. I felt bad about what might happen to her at the pound, so I called and said if nobody claimed her I’d take her. Nobody called. A couple of days later I brought her back to the Texaco. She’s too much of a biter to take home, so she lives chained up out back. Keeps people away from the broken-down cars. Had her fixed so she wouldn’t have any more puppies.’”

  Whittington listened carefully. “An odd name, Havey,” he said. “Where did she get it?”

  The Lady gave him a look. “She’s proud of it,” she said. “It’s the name of a motor oil. Havey says her full name—Havoline—used to be on posters in gas stations. It was famous.”

  Havey left her scat around. That helped keep the coyotes away, and the fox. When Havey visited, the rats lay low.

  One windy morning before Whittington arrived, the Lady was in her bathing place and didn’t hear the truck when Bernie stopped at the top of the hill. Havey raced down and caught her unawares. She got some of her tail feathers and all of her dignity as the Lady squalled into the pond.

  Havey had rushed the cat a couple of times too and sent him up a tree, but it was her daily assaults on the Lady that made the cat mad. That had to stop. He and the Lady made a plan. The Lady would wait for Havey near the barn door. Instead of rushing into the pond, which is what she usually did, the duck was to dive under the barn door. They practiced. She just fit. The risk was that she wouldn’t be fast enough. Whittington rehearsed her. He was the dog. He zipped up, she shot under. She could make it.

  Their plan was that once she got Havey close to the barn Whittington would give the dog a surprise.

  By the time they heard Bernie’s truck the next morning, everybody was wound up tight. The horses were tearing around the paddock, the Lady was flapping in front of the barn, Coraggio was crowing, the bantams were yawping. It was melee time.

  Havey hit the ground before the truck stopped rolling. Bernie swore as she tore after the duck, but no more than he usually did. The Lady let the dog get just close enough before she dove.

  Then there was a screech that made Bernie’s hair go up. From the beam over the barn door something dropped like lightning. What followed was like a bronco rider going bareback on a wild horse.

  Whittington had landed on Havey’s back just as the dog tasted the tip ends of the Lady’s tail feathers. The cat locked his jaws on an ear, planted his front claws deep in the dog’s shoulders, and with his hinders he kicked out hair in tufts so thick you’d think he was trying to dig a hole back there. The dog’s bark shifted from fury to terror. She rolled over. Whittington jumped clear.

  Havey was big and tough but she was out of shape, like the football player who was very good years ago but has mostly sat down since.

  She made a run at Whittington. The cat would let her get just so close, then he’d dance aside. Havey was used to cats that ran. On a straight-out run she had a chance of getting what she went after, but this cat didn’t run. The dog made another pass. This time Whittington met her head-on with a pawful of claws. Havey gave that cat a death bite that would have done in a football. The cat seemed to be all hair and air. The dog ended up with a mouthful of fur. Her nose felt like she’d met the business end of a porcupine. She’d had enough.

  It didn’t take a minute and Bernie was there the whole time, kicking at the cat, kicking at the dog, missing everything, yelling and cursing. He lost his cigar. When it was over, he locked Havey in the pickup and spent the next half hour quieting the horses so he could barrow out their manure without getting run over.

  When she heard the truck door slam, the Lady came out.

  “Thank you,” she said to the cat. “I always wanted to do that.”

  “I do like a fight,” said Whittington, “but they cost me.” He had bare places on his thigh and tail where Havey had given him the death bite.

  It was Christmas before the hair on Havey’s back grew in. The cat carried his patches to Valentine’s Day.

  After the fight, the cat no longer wove from side to side. Whittington figured it was the flip he did when Havey bit him.

  “Chiropractory” the Lady said, nodding firmly. “A good snap works every time.”

  THERE’D BEEN SNOW, then there was a string of mild days before winter finally slammed the door. It was so still you could hear the freight train a half mile away. Northfield is an ancient lake bed, a fertile pudding of fine silt: tap it hard at one place and it jiggles. The noon freight grumbling its way made the barn dance a little.

  It had just passed when Whittington was started out of his doze by yells and clacking and the horses tearing around.

  The Lady was unperturbed.

  “It’s the crows,” she said. “They come over here to show off, twenty or thirty of them. Their yelling reminds the horses of what the race crowd sounded like, so they run. They can’t help themselves.”

  The Lady waddled to her special place in the road, squatted, then flapped hard, sending up silt and worn-out feathers. She paused and rested like a movie star in her bubble bath, then did it again. When she finished, she billed and preened her luxuriance. In the sunlight her black tail feathers glistened purple like oil on water.

  Whittington took a bath too, paws in air, twisting and rubbing on his back to scratch some places he couldn’t reach. When he stood up, he
shook out a small cloud. He stretched and yawned. It was surprising how wide he could open his mouth. His upper and lower fangs were long and narrow, skim-milk white.

  The animals knew it was the last day for baths. Spooker ambled to the far side of the paddock near her standing-still place. She pawed the dirt to get things ready, then in one easy motion she went to her knees and rolled on her side, switching and kicking like a puppy. When she stood, she snorted mightily and gave herself a tremendous, dusty shake.

  Later, the ducks went over, headed south in long, ragged V’s, yelling encouragement to one another. The Lady and the cat watched with admiration. Their calls made the Lady restless; those were her kinfolk. She didn’t really want to join them, though. The barn was her home. She couldn’t fly anyway.

  The crows had settled next door to glean the cornfield. There was excited calling back and forth, whees and caws and all the other voices crows make. The cat and the duck went to investigate. Crows stick together like rats. One crow always keeps watch. Gregory, the watch crow, yelled alarm and with the others drove them off. The crows were only half the Lady’s size, but they dove and pecked. The Lady hustled back to the barnyard with Whittington close behind. Then, because the sun was warm and they had pictures in mind to doze over and a friend close by, they slipped under the tangle of blackberry whips to be safe from hawks and took a snooze.

  AS WINTER CAME ON, it got colder. The Lady’s pond froze solid and the ground got so hard there wasn’t much for the chickens to scratch. The winds got sharper. Only on still afternoons would the horses go stand in the sun for an hour. When the big snow finally came, everyone was shut up in the barn. They were bored. The Lady turned to Whittington. “You said your name is in history. Tell us the story.”