The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations (14 page)
Read The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations Online
Authors: Walter Wangerin Jr.
Tags: #FICTION/General
Pertelote and a Psalm of Innocence
Madness
Wyrm deliberate, Wyrm malefic! Wyrm who has destroyed good order and caused community to be divisible wiped out that past of playfulness. And the Rooster? Well, the Rooster has by some fierce reversal taken Wyrm’s place.
John Wesley can smell the salt of the sea. But before he sees its waters he feels its breakers pounding the shore. Yet between the thunderous waves, in the wash of the wave’s withdrawing, he hears a hissing.
Sing,
says a voice.
And voices say,
What shall we sing?
The voice says,
Immolation.
And the voices answer,
Fires in the fabric of the Keepers.
The conflagrations of the Lord.
But when he reaches the salt sea, John Wesley finds no fires. He can make out a broad, dark, thick tar riding the swells, and nothing more.
Then like a cyclone a wind gets up and slams into the Weasel. Likewise, it tears pieces from the black island and flings them like rubber balls ashore.
Suddenly a an almighty crow dominates the wind and the waves: “
Consummatum est!
The bill is ended!”
Lord Chauntecleer! John sees the form of Lord Chauntecleer aloft and under the clouds, crowing a taunting Crow.
“Oh, taste my weapons, Surt! Though I come alone, though you may cinder my feathers and I die in your furnace, I shall first stab you and cut out your flaming heart, and you shall be quenched!”
At the zenith of his life and of all his flights, John Wesley thinks to himself, the Rooster sails in a whistling solitude, and he only, John Wesley Weasel, is here to witness his madness.
“Despair be damned! Come to me, O all ye powers! I am the Lord of vengeance! I shall be deified!”
Chauntecleer lays back his wings, balls his claws, and, like the Falcon, plummets.
Harmony
Ferric Coyote minces toward the Hemlock through a dismal, despoiled camp. Times past, he would have snapped into a spectacular freeze. Tonight it’s Rachel’s spirit in his breast. He steps around the bodies of insensate Creatures, seeking scraps to feed his daughters. He recognizes the death-scent everywhere. The corpses of his son and of his wife gave off a smell of spices. Here the scent is of corruptions.
Ferric has always loved the forests more than the plains. This tree is itself a forest. He leads Twill and Hopsacking under its boughs.
The plain Brown Bird flies down from darkness.
“Zicküt,” she calls and leads Ferric to a form on the ground which is shaped like a dumdum.
The Coyote sits on his haunches and lowers his nose and crosses his eyes.
Ah. A Beetle. The plain Brown Bird has found a companion. And at the Beetle’s back—what? For heaven’s sake, it is a large, round dollop of poop.
The Beetle says, “Lazara, sir. Housekeeping.”
Ferric frowns, because, what’s a Lazara?
The Brown Bird says, “Zicküt.”
The Beetle says, “Your friend the Bird tells me that your name is Ferric.”
“Zicküt.”
“And she tells me you are hungry.”
Twill yaps, “Starving!”
Hopsacking seconds her sister: “Me too. Starving!”
Some of the inert animals begin to groan.
The Beetle leans back, twiddles her forelegs, parts her coverlets as if to fly, but calls with decorum, “My Lady?”
A tree branch shudders. Ice slides down the boughs outside.
Lazara repeats, “My Lady.”
A Hen speaks in the limbs above: “No reason for greetings. But it isn’t midnight, Lazara. It will never be midnight again.”
“We’ve guests, my Lady.”
The Hen says, “Lazara, we have become a charnel house.”
The Black Beetle maintains her courtly timbre. “Obligations,” she says, “are wanting.”
The Lady Hen sighs, “Obligations. Obligations. Obligations.”
“My Lady. Your guests are hungry.”
The Hen is a spirit wandering the sands. “I am hungry for sunlight. I am hungry for sleep. I am hungry for summer, and the seasons, and the harvest, and righteousness. I am hungry for Chalcedony. O my God, I am hungry for—”
She would have said
Chauntecleer,
but the Coyote’s sudden wailing. His sympathy has overflowed. He points his snout upward and howls a song of lamentation and bitter weeping for the woman who suffers on her perch.
Ferric’s daughters join him. They raise pennywhistle voices and howl along.
The expressions of their own sorrows disturb the sleepers. There is a general waking both outside and inside the Hemlock hall. Animals are listening, but they stay in their places. This is like no song they’ve ever heard.
Oh, for children lost and for innocence.
The littlest Creatures close their eyes and begin to rock. Birds bow their heads. The four-leggeds fold their paws together. And everyone in every voice begins to hum lows moans:
Mmmm
. A wordless, steady middle music:
Ahhh.
And the Coyote’s wailing mounts the firmament.
In this moment the community have become the choirs come down from heaven. They are the music of the spheres. Their hearts cry out in a global harmony. They are one. It is a renewed blessing.
Pertelote, grateful for the reunion, breaks from her desolations and sings a benediction:
“My loved ones, rest securely,
For God this night must surely
From peril guard your heads.
Sweet slumbers he must send you,
And bid his hosts attend you,
And through the night watch o’er your beds”
‘Love Wounds Me’
It has been a night of solace. Moreover, the day breaks warm. So warm, in fact, that the sheath of ice that enclosed the boughs of the Hemlock is melting, trickling down the needles. Runnels of living water giggle along the ground.
Pertelote wakes to the water-music. In wonder she drops from her limb and walks outside, and another water fills her eyes.
Something cosmic has come to pass. The sun is shining!
Dear Lord God, the sun is shining, and the sky is blue.
“Lady Hen! Help me!”
Help who?
“John gots a Rooster what’s a Rooster here!”
John Wesley Weasel!
Pertelote runs to the south side of the Hemlock. The Weasel is striving backward, dragging a tarry body with his fore-claws. Pertelote takes a position beside John Wesley.
“No wars,” he grunts. “Is no wars, was no wars.”
Pertelote reaches to John’s burden and begins to comb the tar away—then stops, shocked.
It’s Chauntecleer! His eye is closed.
John says, “Salty waters, they shrivels little pinky worms. Worms outa the Rooster’s eye, Worms outa the Rooster’s nose and ears and mouth and feathers—all! Little maggots floats crispy like crackers.”
Is he…? Is Chauntecleer alive?”
“Might be,” says the Weasel.
The two of them lug their Rooster through fresh mud to the Hemlock.
“Chanty-cleer?” says Wodenstag. “Step-papa John, is it Chanty-cleer?”
Seven Mice spit on the Rooster. Seven Mice use their furry sides like rags and try to wash him.
The Mad House of Otter does a better job, and the Fawn De La Coeur still better. The Queen brings her Family Swarm, who cluster on the Rooster’s body and work as if they were gathering pollen. One of them happens to sting Chauntecleer’s comb, and the fallen Rooster twitches. His eye opens.
Pertelote thinks, What a beautiful iris. Why have I never seen that blossom in his eye before?
She murmurs, “Chauntecleer?”
His eye finds her.
“Pertelote.”
“You have come home.” She seeks to embrace her messy husband, but he draws back.
“No, no, I am not worthy.”
She embraces him anyway.
He cries out. “Oh, how your love wounds me!”
“Wisht, wisht,” Pertelote answers. “My love will heal you.”
John Wesley says, “Lady Hen. John thinks the Rooster, he might-be dying.”
“No, John! Don’t say that!”
“John, he’s a truth-teller.”
Chauntecleer gargles in pain.
His wife’s heart twists within her. “Somebody come!” she cries. “Somebody carry him out of the sun!”
It is Ferric Coyote who steps forth.
Chauntecleer sees him. Recognition destroys the Rooster. He begins to wail. “No, no, no, no, no—“
Ferric looks upon the Rooster without recrimination.
“Don’t look at me!”
Ferric says, “Why?”
“Kill me instead!”
And Ferric says, “Why?”
“I killed your wife! It was me. I killed your son!”
“I know.”
“I am so sorry, so sorry.”
Pertelote says, “O my husband, do you know what you have done? Confessed. And your affliction is your penance. My sweet Chauntecleer, I love you. I love you. I have never
not
loved you.”
“My God, who can forgive me now?” Having said that, Chauntecleer falters. He struggles against the tar. The Rooster is so exhausted.
Ferric Coyote says, “I forgive you.”
John Wesley says, “John, he heaved you like a load. Was
his
forgivy-ness all right.”
Pertelote says, “Don’t leave us, Chauntecleer. You are good again. I want my good husband back. Don’t leave me now.”
A great lowing now fills the world. Soft with compassion the Dun Cow lows, “Almighty God forgives the sinner.”
Chauntecleer is weeping. He opens his beak. His weeping becomes a long, long sigh. His eye closes, and he gives up his spirit.
What Had Come to Pass
Out of the north there blew a great and mighty wind.
It stirred the clouds in heaven. It blasted them into flying scuds, then swept them clean away.
Dawn broke in the east.
The wind was an omnipotent tempest that lifted the blanket of Wyrm’s ocean and rolled it back like a scroll.
It was from the summit of the cosmic mountain that this gale was rushing. The Dun Cow had elevated her head and had distended her nostrils. She breathed across the continents. She was an ungentle spirit. Her single horn was an ivory wand.
She did not reveal her purpose, not by her posture nor by in any aspect of her being. Simply, the Dun Cow is sovereign of the air.
Her breath was the vernal spring. Fimbul-winter cracked and perished. Seedlings sprouted.
In Which Pertelote Sings a Memorial Song
After the wind ceased, the plain Brown Bird brought a winding sheet which she hasd knit with the needle of her beak. Together, she and Pertelote spread it over Chauntecleer’s corpse.
Four Hens wrapped it closed, and seven Mice tucked it under.
The digging Animals had opened the tomb. The Family Swarm had sealed its sides and its floor with a sweetly scented wax.
And as the funeral procession moved to Chauntecleer’s grave, Pertelote sang:
“He woke me from my slumbering
And taught softly how to sing
The songs.
To him my mornings and that part
Of me most holy—oh, my heart—
Belongs.
And who was bolder on the ground?
Or who more golden sailed around
The skies?
Remember you? Oh, Lord, I will
Remember none but you until
I die.
My dear, my dear,
My Chauntecleer.”
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