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Member
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 11
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The First Nut (second half of story)
* * *
“And you really believed that?” I laugh, for the tenth time that day. I have been counting the laughs, each one an explosion of concentrated happiness, better than the most succulent of acorns. I haul another nut to the lip of our hollow and roll it over the hump to the waiting stash below. “How old were you then? When your brother could still convince you that you’d be able to fly when you got old enough?”
“I was all of three moons old.” Hurgie responds with a smile, hurling his own prize into the cavern of our contentment. “I tried talking to the baby neighbirds about it, I was so certain I was gonna be like them.” He chuckles. “I asked them for flight tips; I took notes and I studied and studied. Our momma finally caught on and set me straight.” He sighs and plops down to sit, using the trunk for a back rest. “Oh, Murtie. Murtie, Murtie.” He shakes his head, teeth glinting from his grin. “He was always playing jokes on us. I wonder –” He stops, drops the smile. His gaze drifts off beside me.
“Yes?” I ask, so quiet it’s barely a syllable.
His eyelids flutter, blink hard a few times. His eyes swing hard to mine, now as still as I have been for the last thirty seconds, my nuts forgotten and swimming in the dirt below our father where they must have slid down to from my outstretched hands. I break the gaze to peer down at them. ‘A shame,’ I think. ‘A few more inches forward and they would have fallen into the hollow.’
“Do you, ever?” he returns. “About your siblings? Your parents?”
I raise my head slowly and squint at his wide eyes. “Not until now.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Me neither, until I started talking and telling you these things I hadn’t thought about for so long….”
I don’t know how long we sit there, facing each other awkwardly, having trapped ourselves in another impossible squirrel situation. Cats and dogs and animals like that – big, lazy creatures who can barely make it on their own without humans anymore – they sit around talking about their feelings all day, cats moaning, dogs yapping. They have the time for it. Squirrels, we’re of a tougher stock. We’re busy, we’re industrious, we’re….Oh, I’m sorry – where was I?
A rustling from above alerts us that our darling has arisen, and we are at last saved from this uncomfortable silence. It’s funny to think that in only a few weeks silence between us has become so foreign.
“Jojey, my lovely! I see from the wag of your tail that you must have had an especially pleasing nap!” I call out to her, my hand cupped against my mouth to
ensure safe passage of my words.
Hurgie smiles. I could choose to ascribe his expression only to relief at the interruption of our interminable moment, but I have been noticing a decline in antipathy of late, surrounding Jojey. A mutual abatement, hinting at a ceasefire.
A shake of her lower parts frees some dried leaves which found her bottom as a temporary detour on their way out of our tree. “I did, yes. I did.” She drawls, as always, when she’s woken from a particularly successful slumber. “And what are you two doing down there?” She squints through the autumn rainbow of our father’s remaining foliage.
“Why dontcha come see?” Hurgie answers a question with a question, a particular pleasure of his. “If you want you can store nuts, too, in our winter bank.”
“‘Winter bank?’” I ask. “I like that, Hurgie. I do.” I nod my approval.
“Well, alright, Hatchie.” Hurgie loses sight of Jojey for just the moment it takes to accept the accolade.
It’s long enough to draw her attention. She frowns. “Why don’t you bring it up to me?” She stretches her arms up as she yawns, not bothering to cover her mouth.
“Bring it up to you?” I ask, thinking I must have misheard her.
She yawns more loudly. “Yes. Up…to…me…..”
“Jojey, baby, if I could I’d do it for you in a heartbeat,” Hurgie starts, “but it’s in the tree, it’s where we’re storing up for the winter, so –”
“Oh, hurumph,” she grunts as she lowers herself gingerly to our level. It’s been weeks since I’ve been this close to her and her scent is…oddly, not as intoxicating as I remembered. Jojey peers forward toward the bank, now one-third of the way filled with acorns.
“What are you doing that for?” she asks, still scrutinizing the semi-darkness within our greatest accomplishment. “You’re not eating them? You’re just dumping them in there?”
Hurgie raises his eyebrows in my direction, behind her rounded shoulders. “Jojey, sweetheart,” he resumes, “it’s for the winter. When there’s no food around.”
She raises her hand and grunts again. She turns to him. “Why are you thinking about that now? Wait – who made that?”
“We, uh,” I interject, drawing her gaze, “we both did.”
She turns to me, lovely eyes big as plums and just as dark. “You both did? Together?” One corner of her upper lip rises in veiled contempt.
“Um,” I stammer, realizing at once how foolish that must sound.
Now Hurgie intercedes. “Yeah. Together. Alone, there’s no way we could have done it in a season, but together: we hollowed a tree.” In the squirrel nation, that’s like moving a mountain to a larger animal, like a big dog, or a human.
She begins to back away, doubt dousing her delicate features.
“Jojey,” I say, wanting to bring her in to the fold, our fold. “I know it sounds strange, two grown squirrels working together like this, but it’s been such an experience! I know that you had much sleep to catch up on while you weren’t eating the acorns we brought you, but if you would like to help us work….
And in collecting the nuts to store – such a feeling of accomplishment for the future, I cannot tell you! And the talks we’ve had, Hurgie and I! I never knew –
” I cast a fond glance in his direction, “that I could find such comfort, such strength in talking with another squirrel.” I smile at her. “Strange as it must sound to you for us to be doing this, it has been wonderful, and we would like you to join us. I’m sure Hurgie –” a look and I catch his confirmation, “would agree that your company would be much welcome.” I exhale deeply, not aware of when I must have taken in such a deep breath.
“Um, uh.” Jojey, head bowed, shuffles her considerable weight from one foot to the other for a few minutes. I detect a scent of maple sap carried in to us by the wind, wonder where it came from. “But – what about me?”
I stare at her, waiting for more.
“You need to keep battling until one of you wins. Wins me. I still don’t know who’s stronger yet. How will I know who’s stronger if you stop fighting?”
“Yeah but, Jojey -” Hurgie says, “we don’t want to fight anymore.” Now that he’s said it out loud, I have a sudden urge to run, to jump off our father and never be seen again. What he’s suggesting is ludicrous, of course, unheard of. But I don’t jump. The leap I take is not off the tree.
“We’re happier when we talk, Jojey,” he continues. “We’re – ” he looks over at me, “happy. Wouldn’t you say, Hatchie?”
This is it, I think. This is the moment where I uphold who knows how many generations of squirrel culture, of the squirrel way – or I dash it all against the rocks. “Yes,” I say. I’m surprised to hear it louder than a whisper. “But,” I add quickly, for Jojey’s benefit, “you can still choose between us. Why don’t you talk with us both, get to know us, and then decide who you like better?” I quickly confer visually with Hurgie before going on. “That would be fine with us.”
Jojey swings her pretty head from one of us to the other a few times, her hairs bouncing as they catch the light from the setting sun. Finally, perhaps deciding that this is indeed not a joke, she guffaws. “You’re kidding, right?” She laughs. “You’re not kidding? You two are, like, all buddies and what not? And I’m supposed to talk to you? Just out in the open, like I got nothing better to do?”
“Do you?” Hurgie asks. I look up, startled at the annoyance in his voice.
“And work,” she continues. “I’m supposed to work my butt off for your crazy winter thing here?” She shakes her head, regal as the queen that she looks to be, that I used to think she was. She emits a snort the likes of which I never imagined could fit through those dainty pink lips, and she flicks her tail out behind us as she prances off to the end of the farthest branch on this level. And with a crouch and a thrust from her haunches, she’s found her new home on the next tree.
* * *
The days following Jojey’s desertion are cold. Hurgie and I work. We look up only in passing. A few times, I hear a rustling among the leaves above us and eagerly survey the upper branches, for any hint of her becoming bottom, which is by far the most familiar part of her. Twice, it was the wind. Once, a sparrow, maybe two. There are still enough leaves to obscure our view of the next tree. I could venture out to get a better look, but I don’t. I wonder if Hurgie ever does, but I don’t ask him.
On the fourth day, we have a visitor.
“Say, there.” A squirrel with dark flecks in his fur appears at the foot of our father when the sun has just passed her high point. Though he is plump enough, I can see the winter leanness starting to come upon him. His face bears no traces of worry. I drop a nut into our bank and glance to Hurgie, already positioned on lookout.
“Hello,” he responds.
“Do you mind if I come up?” the stranger asks.
Hurgie confers with me quickly in the unspoken language which has become our currency of late, and says, “Sure.”
The squirrel makes his way up with a little effort in the new terrain. “I hope you don’t mind. I just heard that there were some things going on here.”
“You heard?” I ask.
“A pretty squirrel named Jojey?” Hurgie elaborates my question. He places a paw against his hip, leans into the bark of the trunk.
“She’s been saying a couple of perfectly good squirrels have gone mad up here. You boys seen them around anywhere?” On closer inspection I see that our visitor is advanced in years; thin wrinkles about the eyes bespeak his experience with many more winters than we have had. I’ve never seen one so old before.
Hurgie laughs. “I guess you’re looking at ‘em, chief.” I chuckle, too.
Our visitor tilts his head toward the hollow. “Whatcha got there?” he asks.
We smile. “What we got here,” I say, “is a winter bank and – ” I hesitate, “a friendship among squirrels.”
He raises his eyebrows. I see the confusion in his eyes, and I wait it out.
“Yes,” Hurgie adds in. “A friendship.”
“So you two are working together?” he asks.
“We are,” I say.
He whistles and shakes his head, the air moving in ellipses around his motion. “Well, now I seen it all.”
“What’s your name, anyhow?” I ask.
“Sorry, sorry. Name’s Enace.”
“Well, Enace,” Hurgie says, “if you’re not doing anything else today, you’re welcome to join us storing up nuts for winter. Matter of fact, you can stick around and join in with using the bank over the winter. But there’s one requirement.”
I nod at Hurgie, amazed again at this unspoken communication, and that I know exactly what he’s going to say. “You just gotta find another squirrel to join with you, and you gotta get to know him.”
“Or her,” I add. Hurgie looks thoughtful for a moment, then nods.
“Or her,” he confirms. “You both gotta come and tell us about yourselves, and we’ll tell you about ourselves. Then we can talk about day-to-day stuff. Just talk.”
“Talk? Just talk?” Enace repeats. “But why?”
I roll my shoulders and neck around, thrilled at how easily they move now with so much of the usual tension gone. I remind myself to ask Hurgie about his, later.
Hurgie shrugs. “It’s nice.”
Enace squints at him. “Really? What can a squirrel have to say that’s worth hearing?”
I smile. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”
* * *
Over the months until winter, our colony grows. We branch out to neighboring trees. Our numbers swell. I notice the neighbirds watching on, twittering to each other about the strange happening. I don’t know how long this experiment of ours will continue, but I’ve noticed that my memory has improved. Each burst of laughter is like a light under my feet. I smile sometimes, to no one in particular. Those in our colony walk differently now than we used to; it’s like we have learned to stroll, as the felinias do. We’re losing less of our number to those metal behemoths in the roads – no longer scattering as we did, we have gained some uncanny ability to stay out of their way. Once I even heard one of ours yell out to warn another of a behemoth approaching as they walked back to their father from a gathering mission.
The felinias have taken this all very poorly. They watch us, scrutinize our comings and goings, meowing to each other in low hums as if they mean to intimidate us but they know now of our stores of nuts; they sense that an attack on one of us outside the tree would incite a hurl of acorns from some tree somewhere nearby onto their corpus. A few times, I have let the humans, when they come out to get their felinias or just to stand next to our father and enjoy his presence, to pet me. My newfound joy encompasses them as well, and to my delight when they talk to me they coo in a low tone that does not damage my ears. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that. The felinias grow so agitated at the sight that I wonder if the humans don’t prefer our company to theirs. I have not pressured my fellow squirrels into emulating my new relationship with the humans; I know I have to allow them more time for the joy to seep into their bones and coat their fur as it has mine. But I think it’s possible that someday, we may not have to store up nuts at all anymore….
Last edited by balanceseekr : 05-29-2008 at 01:32 PM.
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