Meph, the Pet Skunk (American Woodland Tales) Read online

  “That skunk’s following you,” he called; and Sycamore Will heard his father laugh for the first time in months.

  THE MAN

  MEPH SCRATCHED AROUND the nail keg for several moments. He chewed at a fleabite, then looked out of the barrel door across the yard to the chicken house. He circled around and around in the straw and lay down. The night was still and hot. He put his head down on his feet and went to sleep. About midnight he awoke, aware that he was no longer restricted by the walls of the silo pit. He walked out of the barrel over the porch and back to the barrel again. The scent of the dusty chickens was carried to him on the breeze. He stepped off the porch and followed the odor across the yard. He came to the chicken coop and circled it. It was built well and there was no possibility of entering. Meph went back to the porch and curled up in the nail keg. Across the fields came the cry of a fox, a vesper sparrow sang in the moonlight. The barn owl called from the elm tree along the stream. Behind Meph, the rats came out of the cellar and strode boldly across the porch. Sycamore Will lay awake in his bed. He tossed and turned as he waited for the house to become quiet. As he waited, he thought. He thought about the man who was buying the farm and of his coming visit in the morning. Sycamore did not want to meet him or talk to him. The more he thought about him, the more he did not want to return the money. He might still need it. If he forced them to move to town, Sycamore was sure that he would want to run away. Maybe he could hire a lawyer with the money and together they would discover that the city man could not have the farm. Maybe—but he knew he must return the money so that he would feel at ease again.

  He sat up in bed. His father’s snores drifted down the hall from the front bedroom. It was time to return the money to the mason jar. Sycamore put his feet on the floor and then crossed the room to the door. He turned the knob, wrung his hands, and went back to his bed. The chickens were laying poorly now and his mother had sold only a few eggs lately. Chances were she would not go to the jar for another day, especially since the man from the city was coming to see them. He crawled back on the hair mattress and kicked off the sheet. It was warm, and Sycamore uncomfortable. For a long time he lay awake thinking of Sam’s face when he showed him the money, thinking of the bus winding up and down the Western mountain roads. At last he fell asleep.

  “Sycamore!” Molly called. He jumped out of bed and ran to the head of the steps.

  “What?”

  “Breakfast.”

  Sycamore breathed more easily. She had not called him to question him about the empty mason jar. In the bright light of morning he wished that he hadn’t kept the money. Its presence made him burn all over and jump with shame each time he was called. He must return it this morning when his mother was working in the garden. Sycamore Will dressed slowly and went down to breakfast.

  His father seemed to have endless jobs for him and his mother was never out of the kitchen. He could hardly work or think for worrying about the money.

  About ten o’clock a car pulled up at the wagon shed, and a wiry man of medium height jumped out. Sycamore was taking the tractor to hitch it to the manure spreader. He stopped the tractor and looked down at the weathered shining face of the man.

  “Is Mr. Lites around?” the man asked. His intense blue eyes twinkled kindly, and he thrust his hands into his hip pockets like a farmer. He glanced quickly around the barnyard and asked:

  “Are you going to manure the alfalfa?” Gradually it occurred to Sycamore that this was the man from the city. He was not as he imagined. He was not flashy and fat. He did not smoke a long cigar. He was dressed in a plain blue suit and looked like any of the men along the pike when they dressed for church on Sunday.

  Finally Sycamore nodded that he was manuring the fields.

  “Can it wait?” the man asked. “I’d like to talk to you.” Sycamore climbed slowly off the tractor. Seed Lites heard them talking and came out of the barn.

  “Oh, Mr. Crocket,” he said. “Glad to see you. This is my boy, Sycamore Will. William Burnes Lites by birth.”

  Mr. Crocket put out his hand and Sycamore took it slowly. Seed went on:

  “Guess we’d better get this over with. It isn’t easy. My folks lived here you know, and their folks before them … kind of goes pretty hard.”

  They walked silently to the porch and opened the screen door. Meph, awakened by the tramping feet, came stamping out of his barrel.

  “Well, that’s a nice one,” Mr. Crocket said. “Is he yours?” He turned to Sycamore.

  “Yes,” answered Sycamore. “I call him Meph, because the scientists have named him Mephitis mephitis.” The man turned around quickly and looked at the boy. A grin went over his face.

  “That’s right,” he said, “he is Mephitis mephitis.”

  They went in the kitchen and sat down at the table. Mr. Crocket looked from face to face and then said:

  “I was wondering if you would care to stay on and work the farm for me?” Sycamore lifted his head and looked at the stranger.

  “Well,” said Seed finally, “I don’t know. We couldn’t make a living on it ourselves. I don’t see how two families could live on it.”

  “That’s just the point,” Mr. Crocket said, “the land is run down and poor, but we’re going to make it good again.” He looked at the worn red check in the table cloth and said carefully:

  “I was born on a farm, too. Just up the road from here. When I was young I got the idea that I would like to become a scientist, and so I went off to school and studied. When I completed my studies I took a job with a firm and bought a home in the city. But all these years I have wanted to come back to a farm in this valley. My children are grown and married and Mrs. Crocket and I are ready to come back. I’ve been studying this valley and what needs to be done to make it the rich land it was generations ago. The soil is a very fertile limestone loam, and much can be done to help it grow bigger crops. I want to replan the farm, plow the hilly fields on the contour, and use a five-year rotation with three years in sod. I hope to put much of the farm in grass to build it up.”

  Mr. Crocket stopped and looked at the faces around him. Seed seemed a little shocked and confused, and not too pleased. Molly looked thoughtful, and Sycamore sat wide-eyed listening intently. Mr. Crocket saw that the boy was the key to his plan. He was an alert and enthusiastic boy and would like the change. He might even get his parents, who were more set in their ways, to like it, too.

  “Why don’t you take time to think it over?” he finally said. “I’ll leave some bulletins here about contour plowing and strip farming. That’s the first job.

  “If you want to stay we could plan on a one-third for me two-thirds for you contract. In the meantime, the men from the Soil Conservation Service will be out to map the farm and set the stakes for the strips. They’ll help with the plans as I’m a member of the Soil Conservation District.”

  “You mean we’ll have bigger crops?” Sycamore said.

  “Why, the land can do a better job if it is helped, and then, of course, some of the crops will be new ones. Crops that will build up the land.”

  Sycamore listened to the plans: plumbing in the house, diversion ditches, selective cutting in the woods. There were words he had never heard before. He thumbed through the bulletins Mr. Crocket had laid on the table and stared wide-eyed at pictures of fields that went round and round instead of straight and square.

  “By next spring the strips should stop the topsoil from washing away,” Mr. Crocket said as he watched Sycamore turn the pages. The boy suddenly visualized the farm bursting with crops and the meadows thick with clover.

  “The swamp,” Mr. Crocket went on, “has some good springs in it. I figure if we can ditch it, dry it up, put in a bulldozer, and build a dam we could make a good-sized fish pond down there.”

  “A pond!” Sycamore exclaimed and looked at his parents to see how they reacted to this wonderful news. Seed still looked suspicious, and Molly still thoughtful. They saw the boy’s beaming face, and then t
hey, too, smiled.

  The talk continued outdoors as they walked over the farm. Mr. Crocket told them how he would change this and change that, and why the water would not carry the soil off the hills if it were plowed around and around like a terrace of dams to hold back the precious rain. But Sycamore kept thinking of the fish pond, the dam, and fishing. When Mr. Crocket drove off the boy grabbed his father’s hand and exclaimed:

  “We will stay and build the pond, won’t we?” Seed said nothing.

  That afternoon Molly took the pail and went into the garden to weed. The hot sun beat down on her head and she worked slowly in the heat. She thought about the man from the city and the things he had spoken of: the plumbing, the walls re-papered, an electric stove. But how would she feel knowing this was not really her home, that she and Seed and Sycamore were just tenants. And yet, this might be the answer to everything, for she didn’t want to leave this land where they had spent their lives. She rose and looked across the fields to the blue mountains. A bluebird sat on the fence post near her head and watched her nervously, a green worm dangling in its mouth as it flicked its head brightly to look at her first with one eye and then the other.

  Sycamore dug the shovel into the crusted layer of the droppings in the chicken house and tossed a load into the wheelbarrow. He was so excited by Mr. Crocket that he had forgotten the money. Not until he saw his mother leave the kitchen and walk toward the garden did he remember the empty jar. He must get the money back. He dropped the shovel, walked out the door, and crossed the yard to the house. He brushed the flies from the screen door, opened it, and slipped into the kitchen. For some moments he listened. The house was cool and smelled of summer, of the wind blowing through starched curtains, and apple pies cooling on the shelves. A fly buzzed against a windowpane, and the boards in the living room cracked. Sycamore jumped at the sounds, and began to lose his nerve. Then, he made up his mind, strode across the floor, climbed up the shelf, and carefully put all the money back.

  The screen door squeaked and Sycamore looked around. His mother stood in the doorway looking at him. Sycamore felt cold and hot all over, and the sweat made his hands slippery. He just hung there and stared at her. What could he say? How could he explain what he was doing? For many moments they looked at each other. Finally Molly walked to the kitchen table and sat down on one of the wooden chairs.

  “I’m glad you’re not going, Sycamore,” she said.

  The boy dropped his head in the grimy crease of his arm and tried hard not to cry. Slowly he crawled down from the cupboard and came over to her.

  “You knew I’d taken your egg money?” he asked.

  “Yes, I knew,” she said. She wiped back a lock of her dark hair with her arm. Sycamore ran to her, threw his arms around her, and buried his head in the folds of her cotton dress. He ached deep in his heart and now tears poured down his cheeks.

  His mother spoke:

  “The only thing I’m sorry about is that you did not ask me for it. Sycamore, couldn’t you tell me, son?”

  Sycamore shook his yellow head.

  “I didn’t want to take it. I just couldn’t help it. I wanted to go away.”

  “I know, I know.” She ran her ringers through his damp hair and looked out the window across the fields.

  “Once when I was a little girl I wanted a little iron stove. I wanted it more than anything else in the world, and my father wouldn’t buy it for me. One night my aunt came to visit us and she left her coat and purse in my bedroom. I was looking through her purse at her compact, her hankie, her ever-writing pencil, when I found a folded bill. I took it. When we went to market the next day, I bought the iron stove. I hid the stove under the horse blankets in the buggy. When I got home I hid it in the barn. I never played with it. I hated it and the terrible thing it had made me do. When my aunt came again, I couldn’t look at her; I was too ashamed to even speak, and wished she would go away forever and never come back. I kept waiting for her to tell my parents. She never did. That night as she was leaving she came to my bedroom to tell me good night. I remember still, how hot and sick I felt when I saw her standing in the doorway. She came over to me and sat on the bed. ‘I want to give you a present,’ she said, and put a bill on my pillow. ‘And you can have the other one, too; but this one will be nicer because it’s given.’ That’s all she said. Then she kissed me. I’ve never forgotten that.”

  Sycamore looked up at his mother through burning eyes. He saw his mother as a little girl and knew that she understood this terrible thing he had done.

  “I’m so sorry, Mother. I was trying to be big and tough.”

  “Why, you are big and strong, son, and that’s what you really want to be.”

  Sycamore slid to the floor and rested his head against his mother’s knees.

  “I guess I really don’t want to be an outlaw and rob banks. You feel so awful inside.”

  Molly nodded.

  “What do you want to do, Sycamore?”

  “Maybe go to the school where they study all the things Mr. Crocket was telling me.”

  “Would you like to stay and help him with his plan?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” the boy answered and looked up in his mother’s face. “Don’t you?”

  “Well, it means living on someone else’s farm, and doing what he wants. You can never feel that the house is really your own any more, or the fields or the barn. Would you mind that?”

  Sycamore thought a moment.

  “It would really still be ours, because we plant the seeds and we will live here and watch them grow, and as Mr. Crocket said, the land is ours only if we use it wisely.”

  “I guess that’s right,” she smiled, and Molly’s mind was clear. In the intense young face she found her answer. They would stay.

  “And we can keep Meph, too.” Sycamore said brightly, then asked:

  “Do you think Pa wants to stay?”

  “I think Pa wants to stay.”

  “How do you know so awful much?”

  “It comes with my gray hairs.”

  NEW LAND

  THE NEXT WEEKS were confusing to Meph. Motors roared, men called across the fields, and hammers clanged on nails. Meph stayed in his keg most of the day, coming out only when Sycamore Will came with food. When work stopped at sunset, he would venture off the porch and wander down to the swamp for water or an occasional frog.

  One day the porch shook with footsteps of men going in and out of the old stone house. Every time Meph would get comfortable and almost asleep, another booted pair of feet would shake the wooden boards of the porch and start his keg rocking. He stood it just as long as he could and then he marched out of his den and waited for the next trespasser. Two men carrying a heavy modern sink came up the walk, making great vocal sounds. Meph moved over in front of the screen door. As soon as their heavy feet touched the porch boards he raised his tail. He sensed the direction he wanted to spray and waited. There was a startled cry:

  “Hey! Hold it! Hold it!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s a polecat here; and he’s aiming right at me. Put this thing down quick.” Carefully, but hurriedly the men set the sink on the porch and sprinted for the apple tree in the yard.

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “I don’t know, but get rid of him!”

  “Get rid of him? What do you mean get rid of him? I’ve got a date tonight. You get rid of him.”

  “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty; nice kitty.” Meph swished his tail slightly so that the contrasting black and white hairs glittered and sparkled in the sun. Suddenly the screen door struck him and he scooted across the porch with it. Enraged, he stamped and aimed. It was Sycamore.

  “Watch it boy!” one of the men called. “Watch what you’re doing.”

  Sycamore looked down and laughed.

  “Poor Meph, did I hurt you? I didn’t see you.” He picked up the little animal and rubbed his ears, but Meph was not so easily soothed. He bit Sycamore’s fingers and ran h
is claws across his hand.

  “Gee, he’s a pet,” said the first man. “Probably had his scent glands removed. Couldn’t spray us if he had wanted to.”

  “Sure, nothing to be afraid of,” said the second. The two men came forward and looked at Meph more closely. He was calmer now, and was rubbing his head affectionately on Sycamore’s arm.

  “He can spray if he wants to,” said Sycamore. “It’s just that it takes an awful lot to make him want to spray. He sprays only if he’s hurt or scared.” The men stepped back again and stood their distance unconvinced, while Sycamore put Meph down. Meph shook and walked calmly away. He went down the cellar steps and slept among the potatoes until dark.

  The moon was shining through the dusty cellar window when Meph awoke. He yawned, stretched, and plodded out the bin and up the steps into the air. The bullfrogs in the swamp were grumping, each deep voice a different note. Meph knew most of them personally. The low vibrant voice belonged to the bullfrog by the pear tree; the frog of the stump had a downward ending to his note. Both of them were good jumpers. Meph had tried to catch them many times. The highest voice belonged to the young frog in the cattails. He was not singing tonight; perhaps the night heron had found him earlier in the evening. But Meph just listened. He did not go to the swamp. The locusts were abundant in the fields, and he would take the lane to the dry alfalfa field to hunt them.

  He crossed the road and sniffed the rat trails that led to the granary, then skirted the edge of the barn, and headed for the lane. But there was no lane. He went back to the barn to start all over again. His sense of direction led him northwest past the sumac and yarrow to where the gullied lane should begin. Again he did not come to it. He walked on a few steps, sniffed, and reared. There was no familiar landmark. The old fence post that stood at the end of the lane was gone, the brush and weeds that grew along it were gone. The deep eroded ditch that had once been the lane was no longer there.