Tucker's Countryside (9 page)

“It says that the recent flooding has proved that the area is ‘a hazard to the community.'”

“Isn't there any other way they could stop the flooding?” said Ellen.

“I don't know, dear,” her mother answered. She went on reading. “‘Plans are being made to level the entire meadow and construct a conduit for the brook passing through it. Work is expected to begin later on this summer.'” The animals were shocked by the news. They stood motionless at the top of the staircase. “Now try not to be too upset, dear,” said Mrs. Hadley, her voice coming nearer the bedroom door. “I know how you feel, but—
a mouse!
”

Harry and Tucker plunged downstairs. Chester hopped after them, four steps at a time. But Mrs. Hadley wasn't concerned with the cat or the cricket—in fact, she didn't even notice Chester. Although her attic was a mess, and her cellar none too tidy either, she prided herself on keeping a clean house, and for her, mice spelled trouble. She ran to the hall closet, took out a broom, and chased Tucker, whacking at him as she went. Halfway downstairs she caught him and gave him such a whop that he tumbled, head over heels, the rest of the way. But he landed right side up and kept on running—through the living room, through the sun porch, and out the unlatched screen door. Mrs. Hadley charged after him and just caught a glimpse of his tail as Tucker vanished into the privet hedge.

“The very idea!” said Mrs. Hadley. “A mouse! Sitting right out plain in the hall! Just as bold as you please.” At that very moment, although she didn't see it, a tiny black shape, Chester Cricket, jumped over Mrs. Hadley's foot and into the hedge.

Ellen came out into the yard carrying Harry. He looked around, saw that Tucker had escaped, and heaved a sigh of relief.

“And Ellen,” Mrs. Hadley went on, “there's something very peculiar about that cat of yours. He was standing right next to the mouse, not doing a thing! Just as if they were the best friends in the world!”

“He may be peculiar, but he's nice!” said Ellen, and kissed Harry on the head.

In the Hadleys' front yard the mouse, next to whom that peculiar cat had been standing, was limping toward the road. He stopped to massage one hind leg. “That lady sure packs a wallop!” he said to the cricket hopping along beside him. “Wow! One Connecticut housewife—and she's worse than a whole herd of commuters! At evening rush hour, too!”

EIGHT

Bertha

News of its coming fate—apartment houses—spread quickly through the meadow. All the animals agreed that next to gas stations it was the worst thing that could happen. Individual houses would have been bad enough, but at least some of the smaller folk could have found homes in the shrubs and hedges around them. But with apartment houses—great, tall structures of brick and concrete—there wasn't much hope for anyone.

Secretly, although no one said so out loud, everyone was still hoping that Tucker Mouse could come up with a plan to save them. And Tucker knew it. When he went out walking and met Henry Chipmunk, he could tell from the hopeful way Henry said “Hello, Mr. Mouse!” that the chipmunk still had confidence in him. Henry was always asking him to come and visit him and his sister Emily in their home on the other side of the brook. But Tucker didn't go. It was too painful to be in the company of friends who trusted you to help them, when you didn't know how you could. Poor Tucker! He took long walks, and racked his brains—and became almost as fond of the Old Meadow as the animals who had lived their whole lives there—but still, he could think of nothing.

The summer gradually passed, July turned into August, and nothing happened. No bulldozers came to begin the leveling, no huge pipes were brought for the conduit. And little by little the animals came to believe that if they just refused to think about it, the destruction of the meadow could not take place. That was what Ellen did, too: she simply would not consider it. When she brought the little kids over, she wouldn't even let them talk about it. It is not a very good way to deal with a problem, but when all else fails, people often will not admit to themselves that something truly bad can happen.

So the days went by. Leaves thickened in the light and heat, flowers opened and blossomed beside the brook, the grass in Pasture Land grew smooth—the summer, as always, blessed everything. But hidden somewhere in the sunshine, in the happy chatter of the stream as it ran, there hung a dreadful threat. Ellen and the little kids, and all the animals too, might try to hide their minds from it and pretend it wasn't there—but it was, and it emptied August of all its joy.

*   *   *

There came a morning when a great clanking and clattering was heard on the road. People lined up on both sides to see what was happening—the kids, both big and little, on the side with the houses and the animals from the meadow on the other. Down the street drove a long, flat truck, and on its back a steam shovel was riding. The steam shovel's name—BERTHA—was printed in large letters on one side. The truck stopped at the corner of the meadow, and the two men who ran the steam shovel—their names were Sam and Lou—began driving her down a ramp, off the truck's back, and straight toward the hill above Simon's Pool.

Now, as a rule, steam shovels are very nice. They are wonderful fun to watch while they're working, and they're even more fun to get inside, if the man who is operating one should let you come into the cab. But only the big kids enjoyed watching Bertha work that morning. For she had come to begin the destruction of the meadow.

“Well, it's started,” said Chester Cricket.

Tucker Mouse, who was sitting beside him, said nothing at all. He felt as if he had turned to stone. There was nothing he could do but sit there and stare at Bertha Steam Shovel.

When she'd been unloaded, the truck that brought her drove away. And after a while the big kids got tired of watching, and they went off too. The only ones left—on the human side of the road, that is—were the little kids and Ellen. She made them all take hands and led them, with Ruff, across the road. On top of the hill, well out of reach of Bertha's shovel, they stood and silently watched.

The men in the cab saw them standing, motionless, just looking and nothing more, and began to grow uneasy. Sam, who was working the shovel just then, pulled the lever that lowered it to the ground. “Hey, you kids!” he shouted. “What do you want?”

The little kids bunched around Ellen. Jaspar pulled her hand. “Go on!” he pleaded. “You promised, Ellen!”

Ellen detached herself from the hands that were holding on to her and walked to the edge of the gouge the steam shovel had made in the side of the hill. “Mister,” she called, “will you do us a favor?”

She was wearing a pair of blue short pants and a blouse with insects pictured on it—butterflies, beetles, and a couple of crickets, too—and she looked very pretty as she asked for her favor. The men in the cab smiled at each other. “Sure, kid!” said Sam. “What is it?”

“Well—um—would you please stop digging up the meadow?” said Ellen. “I mean, as a favor—would you?”

The men looked at each other again, and they were not smiling now. “We have to, kid,” said Lou. “The company we work for's been hired to put up apartment buildings here. If it wasn't us that worked ol' Bertha, somebody else would.”

“Oh,” said Ellen. “Oh. I see.” She turned away—then turned back again. “Thanks anyway.” And she returned to the little kids on the hill. As before, they stood silent, watching.

The men in the steam shovel talked quietly together. When they spoke out loud, their voices sounded embarrassed and unhappy. “Hey—you kids better get across the street!” said Sam.

“Yeah—we don't want you to get hurt,” said Lou.

Ellen made the little kids take hands and took them across to the Hadleys' front lawn. But there they stopped and continued their vigil, staring, without a word, at the steam shovel and the men who ran her. Sam worked the levers, and Bertha took a few more bites out of the hill. Then, since it was almost noon, and since Sam didn't seem to be enjoying his work as much as he usually did, Lou suggested they stop for lunch. They walked over the hill and found a comfortable patch of grass—out of sight of the children. From brown paper bags they took sandwiches and soda pop, and began to eat. Chester and Tucker crept close enough to hear what they were saying.

“I don't blame those kids,” said Sam. “When I was that age I used to live next to a swamp. I had this ol' dog—he just wandered into the yard one day an' took a likin' to me an' stayed. Him and me used to go hunt'n' an' fishin' in that swamp.”

“What happened to it?” said Lou.

“They filled it all in an' made a shoppin' center. An' that dog got one look of that shoppin' center, an' he took off. He wasn't stickin' around for any shoppin' center!” Sam put down his sandwich—a meat-loaf sandwich, which his wife knew was his favorite—and looked out over the meadow. Its living green sparkled and glowed below them. “Best time I ever had as a kid was trampin' around that swamp with that dog.”

Lou lay back. Usually he and Sam worked more toward the center of Hedley; all they had to sit down on was a hard, stone curb. But now there was soft, warm grass beneath them. “I don't see why they have to build apartment houses right here anyway,” he said. “There's lots of places downtown they could find.” He lifted himself up and looked over the hill. “Those kids are gone. They must be havin' lunch too.”

“Don't worry,” said Sam, “they'll be back!”

And he was right. As soon as lunch was over, Ellen and the little kids assembled from their various homes and stood at the edge of the Hadleys' yard—and just looked.

“Listen—let's let them sit in the cab,” said Sam.

“The boss doesn't like us doin' that,” said Lou.

“I don't care what the boss likes!” Sam said angrily. “Here we are, rippin' up the place where those kids play—I know how they feel! Hey, you kids!” he called across the street. “You want to sit in the cab of the steam shovel?”

The children came across the road. Lou lifted them up, one by one, and each sat a minute in the driver's seat, with all the levers in front of them. When Jaspar's turn came, Ruff insisted on climbing up in the cab with him. Lou let him, too. “Turn on the motor!” commanded Jaspar. “I want to work the shovel!”

“Wait a couple of years.” Lou laughed. “Maybe then you can.”

While the little kids were having their fun in the cab, Sam was talking with Ellen. He asked her what her name was. “Ellen,” she answered.

“I'm Sam,” he said. “I'm sorry about—about havin' to dig the place up, Ellen. But you can't fight City Hall. The only thing those men on the Town Council pay any mind to is a picket line.”

“What's a picket line?” said Ellen. Sam had been on strike a few times and he explained about picket lines: how people marched back and forth carrying signs that said what they thought was wrong with something. It was a way of making everyone pay attention to something that they didn't know, or didn't want to know, or had forgotten. “And if there's a picket line, then—then, can you
change
things?” asked Ellen.

“Sometimes you can,” said Sam. “Sometimes not.”

Lou had finished lifting the little kids into the cab and brought them back to Ellen. “Your turn,” he said to her.

“Don't bother about me,” said Ellen. “I've got something important I have to do this afternoon!” She made the little kids take hands and get ready to cross the road.

“Listen, Ellen,” said Sam. “Would you do
me
a favor now? Would you all please stop starin' at us? It gets under our skin—you know?”

“I'm sorry,” said Ellen. “We won't watch you any more.” She told the little kids to say thank you—which they did, one by one, Nancy, Anne, John, and last Jaspar—and quickly took them back to the houses. They wanted to stay with her, but she sent them off to play hide-and-seek and then hurried home to take care of her own important business.

Sam watched her go. “Nice kid,” he said.

“They're all nice,” said Lou.

Sam was silent for a while. Then he said, “Listen—I'm goin' to take out Bertha's spark plugs.”

“You're
what?
” said Lou.

“Bertha's gett'n' old,” said Sam. He patted the steam shovel's side. “She has a right to a breakdown.”

“Boy, are you goin' crazy!” said Lou. “The boss'll—”

“Forget about the boss!” Sam interrupted. He looked at Lou sharply. “You aren't goin' to tell him, are you?”

“Course not!” said Lou. Sam stepped up into the cab and opened the door to the motor's compartment. He unscrewed two little things and put them in his pocket. “It won't do any good,” said Lou. “She'll be outa commission this afternoon, but they'll fix her by tomorrow.”

“That's right,” said Sam. “But at least this afternoon we won't have to dig up this hill.” He gave the big caterpillar tread of the steam shovel another friendly pat. “You take a rest, ol' girl!”

And Lou and he walked down the road, toward the corner where a larger avenue crossed it. They could get a bus there downtown.

For a minute the hill seemed deserted. It wasn't, however. Tucker Mouse and Chester Cricket crept out from the bushes where they'd been hiding. “Those men are nice,” said Tucker.

“Most people are,” said the cricket. “If they just get left alone. It's when they all get together that they start doing stupid things—like digging up meadows!”

Tucker looked at the steam shovel towering above them. “Um—Chester—I know Bertha shouldn't be here, but as long as she is—um—”

“Go ahead,” said Chester. “Go sit in the cab if you want to.”