The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin Jr

Author:Walter Wangerin Jr.
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FICTION/General
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-05-16T22:00:00+00:00

There was movement there in the dim light, as if the animals were waking up. But that movement was all pretending, since not one of them had been asleep. No rain, no wind—but there had been a storm that night nonetheless; and the silence of the last several hours had been unreadable. So the animals had blinked and breathed their ways through the long night, all of them awake: the Hens, the Mice, the Fox, the Dog, the Black Ant, too; the beautiful and mourning Pertelote—and a Weasel.

Everyone saw solemnity in their Lord. Everyone permitted him to walk to his perch undisturbed. Everyone except—

“Rooster knows who, don’t he?” said John Wesley Weasel from a position directly in front of Chauntecleer.

But Chauntecleer hardly saw him. “I’m tired, John Wesley.” His eyes rested instead on Pertelote; and by the bowing of her head he saw that she was filled with sorrow. She was also very tired and should sleep.

“John knows who!” snapped the Weasel. “Once is, always is! No changing the wicked. No teaching the vile!”

“Ah, John—speak to me at prime. Explain yourself then.”

But the Weasel wouldn’t let the Rooster pass.

“Is only clawing and killing for his like. Execution! Execution! Chop away his head!” He was warming to his subject.

Chauntecleer looked him in the eye for just a second, then looked away again. “You make no sense,” he said. Compulsively he glanced back to Pertelote. She was shivering. The Rooster felt that the Weasel’s chatter added trouble to her sorrow. “Clear out!” he commanded.

But John Wesley suddenly hunched his back so high that his fore and hind legs pressed against each other. It was a fighting posture. He had waited all the night long to say what burned inside of him, and now it swept him away:

“Hate him! Hate him!” he hissed, flashing his teeth. “One murders Chicks! One breaks a Hen what should live! Oh, how John does hate him!”

That triggered Mundo Cani. Reading threat, the Dog reared from his place at the door and plunged toward the Weasel to pitch him out.

“Off, mountain back!” cried the Weasel. “Touch me and I touch you with what for!” The Weasel’s teeth were razor sharp and furious. His courage was phenomenal.

“Mundo Cani!” Chauntecleer ordered. “Sit down!” He did. “You, John Wesley.” He glared at the Weasel. “I don’t ever want to hear that again. Never again in this Coop or on this land do I want to hear that you hate a living soul.”

“One wants hating,” the Weasel persisted. “Pleads for hating. Kills for hating.”

“Not hating, John Wesley.”

“Look what he—”

“Not hating!” Chauntecleer’s crow was full of thunder. Hens tottered and began walking on their roosts. The Weasel cowered. But yet he didn’t stop talking.

“Here’s one Double-u,” he mumbled, “what won’t kiss no Rat.”

Then Chauntecleer gazed at him with sudden understanding. “Wise little Weasel. So you think you know who killed my children.”

“Think! I think and then I know. I know!”

“Good thinking, perhaps, John Wesley. But your conclusions are bad. He couldn’t have done it.

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