Young Fredle (7 page)

“Do you smell mouse?”

“Not again, Sadie. How about you stop with all this mouse-smelling?”

“This is a different mouse. This is a mouse under the porch.”

“All mice smell the same.”

Sadie wasn’t listening. She came snuffling up to the lattice wall. At the approach of her large black snout, Fredle froze. With her dog’s sharp ears, Sadie might hear him moving. Were a dog’s sharp ears sharp enough to hear even the
almost soundless brush of mouse paws on soft ground? Fredle wondered.

The snout blocked a whole opening, and blocked out much of the light, too. It snuffled, sniffing. “Someone’s there.”

Fredle didn’t move. Bardo didn’t move.

“I can smell you.”

The mice were silent.

Sadie said, “I
can
smell you,” in case she hadn’t been heard the first time. She waited some more, snuffled some more, and then asked, “Who’s there?” She waited and waited.

Fredle finally answered her, in a faint, whispery voice, as small as an ant’s, “Nobody.”

“Oh,” Sadie said, disappointed. “But I thought—” Then the snout was gone and the empty opening once again filled with light.

The two mice waited for a long time, silent, patient, the way mice do, making sure that all danger has passed. At last, Bardo broke the silence. “That was pretty stupid.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“She’ll figure it out before long.”

“Then we’d better get going,” Fredle announced. This time,
he
led the way out through the lattice wall. Once outside, however, his confidence left him and he let Bardo re-take the lead.

Keeping close to whatever wall was there, the lattice first and then a solid green wall that turned two sharp corners, they came to another lattice, a duplicate of Fredle’s. “Those were steps back there,” Bardo told Fredle. “Humans use those steps for going into and out of the house, and so do the dogs. And
the house cat does, too, sometimes. You never know when the house cat might show up.”

This lattice wall, like his own, had stalks of cut grass spread out in front of it. “Is this where you have your nest?” Fredle asked.

“What would our nest be good for here? No, our nest is way far away. You don’t know but it’s a dangerous trip I take to come find you. It’s dangerous everywhere out here so do me a favor and get moving, Fredle. Maybe inside things are different, but outside we don’t hang around out in the open.” Bardo hurried on ahead. “You have to know where the compost is if you don’t want to starve. Because I certainly don’t plan to spend the rest of my life bringing you food.”

Fredle ran after him.

When they arrived at the end of that second section of lattice wall, Bardo crouched up against a huge, high, green plastic container. “These hold trash,” he told Fredle. “There are two of them, impossible to chew through—although sometimes the raccoons knock them over, they know how to do that, they’re raccoons—and some food’s left for us. But garbage cans make good cover. Knowing where there’s good cover is important, outside.”

“Inside, too,” Fredle told him. Bardo might think that house mice had it easy, but Fredle knew better.

Bardo stared across more cut grass, ears cocked forward. “The barn cats, in daytime—” he said, but didn’t finish that thought. “Although daytime is safer than nighttime out here,” he advised Fredle, without taking his watchful gaze from what lay ahead. “Looks like rain,” he said mysteriously.

Fredle also looked around. The grass lay like a floor, green,
drying to pale brown. In the distance before him a different kind of lattice wall rose up, shiny thin lines of wall with tall, thick posts every now and then along its length; Fredle could see right through this wall to brown soil where little green things stood in rows. The air hung heavy and gray above everything. There were no white streaks across it, there was no sun shining even though it wasn’t night, there was no blue ceiling. Bardo glanced up briefly and said, warningly, “Clouds covering the sky, and it smells like rain coming. Let’s get going.”

Sky
, Fredle noted to himself.
Clouds
.

“Head for that fence, Fredle. This is the real dangerous part of the trip. Although, you’re so much bigger and fatter than I am, I’m not too worried. If one of the barn cats is out hunting, he’ll go for you.”

Before Fredle could take in what he was being told, Bardo had dashed off into the cut grass and was running away.

Fredle ran after him, across the grass and then over a wide strip of dirt—rough terrain, where he stumbled and scrambled down and then up over the rises—to more cut grass until finally they came to a halt, breathless, behind one of the posts.

“Cover,” panted Bardo. “There are posts all along this fence. They make good cover.”

Once he’d caught his breath, Fredle asked, “Is that compost behind the fence?”

Bardo shook his head. “It’s the garden. You know, vegetables?” He didn’t even give Fredle a chance to say
Of course I know vegetables
before he went on, “Beans, peppers, tomatoes, lettuces—sometimes if you dig you find a potato. Potatoes are the best. Or carrots, carrots are good, too, you have to dig for
carrots, too. Missus comes here, in the daytime, and so do the barn cats, sometimes, so it’s not good for foraging.”

Then how did Bardo know so much about it? Fredle wondered, but what he asked was, “What about at night?” He asked that even though he wasn’t sure he’d dare to make the long journey at night, if there would be owls coming out of the air at him as well as ground-level hunters.

“Raccoons,” Bardo answered. His voice grew serious and his feet shifted uneasily, as if just saying that word made him anxious. “No mouse in his right mind gets close to a raccoon. They’re wild, unpredictable. Dangerous, the way—You never know what they might do, they might do anything. Keep clear of raccoons, Fredle.”

“Where’s your nest?” Fredle asked. “Here in the garden?”

“Ha-ha. No, we’re woodshed mice. Over that way,” Bardo said, without indicating which way he was speaking of. “Past the chicken pen. There’s a snake—Snakes live on mice, look out for snakes, Fredle. They’re all over that woodshed. You have to know their habits to keep safe from them.”

“What are chickens?” asked Fredle.

“Chickens are nothing to do with you. Compost is to do with you. That’s if you’re still hungry?”

“Then what’s compost?” Fredle asked.

Bardo didn’t answer. He just turned to scurry along beside the fence, running from the cover of one post after the other, until the fence came to a wide hill that smelled of rotting things and turned off in another direction. Bardo stopped at that corner and announced, “This is compost.”

It was brown like dirt, but it wasn’t really dirt, and there
were green and white and dark gray and orange things scattered around all through it. Compost smelled like food. A black animal—not a mouse, or a cat, or a dog, or a human—was hopping up the side of the compost on two thin legs, poking into it with a sharp snout and saying something in a loud, ugly voice.

“That’s a crow,” Bardo said. “Remember I told you I’d show you a crow? It’s a bird. See the feathers?”

Fredle had no idea if he was seeing feathers or not.

“Watch, I’ll show you
fly.
”

Bardo screeched, a high, sharp sound as if his back had just been pierced by a cat’s claws. The crow grew wider and wider as it spread out two fat flat arms, and then it jumped up into the air and stayed there, stayed up in the air with no ground under its feet. Moving its arms it went up into the air, higher and higher, and then it was out of sight.

“Flying is what birds do instead of running,” Bardo told Fredle.

“Oh,” said Fredle. “Oh.” He’d never even
imagined
anything like this.

“Pay attention to the compost, Fredle,” Bardo said now. “Compost is what’s important here.”

“Do we eat it?” asked Fredle, too amazed by the sight of that bird, that crow, to be irritated by Bardo’s bossiness.

“Not exactly,” Bardo laughed. “We forage in it. There’s always something here, like, an apple peel or core.” Bardo stuck his nose into the dirt and pulled out a dark gray, sweet-smelling thing. “Apple peel. Go ahead, take a bite. Just one, and not a big one.”

Fredle did. He’d never tasted this before, and it was a little chewy, but it was certainly food. It had a quiet sweetness, too, and he hoped Bardo would offer him another bite.

“Or banana peels or lettuce or—almost anything,” Bardo told him. “If you come foraging every day, you’ll find all kinds of different things to eat. And now that the weather’s getting warm, they’ll feed the dogs outside, right by your lattice, so you’ll get some kibbles, too, because those dogs are messy eaters.”

Fredle was tired of Bardo being the one who knew things, so he didn’t ask about kibbles. Besides, he thought he could guess now exactly what it was: the brown things the dogs ate, and the cat, too. He didn’t need to ask.

Bardo pointed with his nose to a place farther up the compost. “Look, over there? See it? There’s an orange peel. You should go get it.”

Fredle went off, and climbed up through the soft dirt to nose out a stiff piece of orange peel and pull it after him back to where he had left Bardo chewing on the apple.

But Bardo was no longer there.

6
Alone

It took a while for Fredle to figure it out—and then he knew: Bardo had run off. Run off
where
Fredle didn’t know, but run off
why
he was afraid he could guess. What if Bardo’s go-between job was really a keep-away job? Or even a push-out job? When he understood that Bardo had intended to abandon him there on the compost pile, Fredle could only feel the not-all-rightness of everything.

He hunched down just where he was, on the compost pile, in broad daylight, unable to move his feet. Where did he have to go to, anyway, if he
could
find his feet and make them run somewhere? He didn’t even want to eat, although he could smell how good that orange peel would taste. It was eating that had gotten him where he was, out here in the open, lost, alone, afraid. It was wanting to eat something because it
smelled so good, and also following another mouse’s tail, that’s what had done it to him. He’d followed Axle and he’d followed Bardo, and look where that had got him. He wished … He wished he’d never gone looking for that good thing on the pantry shelf. He wished … He wished he could go back to before he smelled it, back to when everything was comfortable and familiar and safe, and he wasn’t alone and sick at heart.

How long he huddled unhappily there on the compost, Fredle didn’t know or care. He crouched on the moist, dark brown hill, the chunk of orange peel uneaten between his front paws. He kept his eyes tightly closed and his ears flat against his skull, then he let his ears perk up and opened his eyes, so that he first heard and then saw all the space around him, stretching out beside him over the garden, stretching out before him into that broad expanse of cut grass until the house ended it.

There was no place to hide in cut grass.

Fredle thought maybe he should dig himself a little hole in the compost, which was soft enough for a nest. If he had a nest here, the compost would be his territory and he would never have to go out alone into those empty spaces in search of food.

But Bardo said that the raccoons came foraging in the compost at night. Bardo said no mouse in his right mind went anywhere near a raccoon. On the other hand, if Fredle dug himself a little nest in the compost, and if he made it deep enough to hide himself in, and if some other mice came to forage, Fredle could sneak after them to discover where their nest was, and he might then be able to make himself another little
nest near to them and at least be close to company. Even if he would still be absolutely alone.

Really, what he needed was to find a way back into the house. If he could just get back inside … As he imagined the journey across the kitchen floor and up through the wall, then the surprise of his father and mother, Grandfather, and especially Kidle when he crept over the rim of their nest, Fredle found himself chewing on the orange rind. With food in his stomach, he found his thoughts becoming quieter, more useful, and he decided that the compost pile would
not
be a good place to live. It was too far from the house and too exposed to predators. It was surrounded by open spaces.

As soon as he thought of those spaces, Fredle could feel fear begin to swell up inside of him again, starting in his belly and growing bigger and darker and—

So he made himself think about other things. About what he would ask Bardo, if he ever saw that mouse again. If Bardo ever came back, Fredle wouldn’t ask what that mouse had been thinking of, leaving Fredle on the compost pile like that. Instead, he’d ask if there was any way into the house. He’d ask if any other mice lived nearby, and where they were. He would ask Bardo about those lights in the night air, too.

And then, after he had answers to all those questions, he might give Bardo a good snap on the snoot, just to let that faithless field mouse know what he thought of him.

Fredle ate until he was full and then he began the journey back, back past the garden fence and across the strip of uneven dirt, with its ruts to slip down and high ridges to scramble over, back at a run across the cut grass to take shelter and catch his
breath behind the garbage cans, back to the first lattice wall and then, this time at a slow creeping pace, all around the steps until—at last—he scrambled through his own lattice wall to the safety of his own little nest. The soft lining of grass that he had put into it welcomed him and he curled up in its comfort. Loneliness was all around him, like the air, but he ignored it as best he could and dropped off into an uneasy sleep.