- A Country Tale
the way my sister Lisbeth and I did last year. You'll find a stable is
the noisiest of places. The animals huff and puff in their sleep-folks
aren't the only ones who snore - and they dream, too, you can tell just
by listening. And hens talk in their sleep-
Our henhouse is connected to the barn, and the rooster perches
at the door to guard. Only he sleeps real sound, which is not a good
quality in a rooster. There are all kinds of little animals in a stable
too.
All the cats who live around the farm -
seven last count, including one Tom who just visits regular.
And mice - or rats, I guess, which is kind of a bad thought when
you figure they were rustling in the same straw that Lisbeth and
I were hiding in. I don't mind a mouse, but I don't much like the
idea of a rat as a bedmate - well, strawmate - especially at midnight.
- And then there's the wind, and
the weather in general, since this
was Christmas Eve and the farm's on the river. Barns have creaks
and whistles and buzzings and a whole marching band of sounds
they make at night, till you think every nails loose and all those
boards are going to come down on your head and they probably
won't find you for a week, and then they'll say it was your own
fault. On account of sneaking out at midnight, on Christmas Eve.
Which would have been a cheating thing to do, and I realized that,
except we had a good reason, Lisbeth and me. And I wasn't scared,
not really. I mean, I wouldn't be scared now if I did it, because now
I'm eleven. But then I was ten, so maybe a little bit, but only on
account of the rats. Lisbeth said she wasn't scared at all, and she was
eight, but she always says just the opposite of me, and she lies a lot,
too, just to get me in trouble, and I wouldn't have brought her except
she caught me sneaking out the back door, and she said she'd tell if
she couldn't come. You do what you have to in this life, so I brought
her along.
It all started with Bobby McEndridge who told me his brother'd told
him that he had it for certain from Mr. Anderson, down at Parson's
store, who is a knowledgeable man, my daddy says, that on Christmas
eve, right at midnight, the cows get down on their knees to pray for
the baby Jesus, and the rooster crows just like it's sunrise. Only our
rooster's real lazy, and sometimes he waits a while, and we live with it.
So I said he was just making a fool out of me, what did he take me for,
but Bobby, he said his brother swore it on his grandmother's name,
which is more powerful than swearing on your momma's name, and
crossed his heart and no fingers crossed, he checked. So we made
an agreement, Bobby and me, that each of us would sneak out at
midnight and go to the stable and see if it was true. Only I ended
up with Lisbeth tagging along, which shows you make a good plan
and then things happen.
Now I had a real pocket watch,
which my granddaddy gave me for
my tenth birthday, and I could
just barely see the time, there in the
dark, but it looked to me like
we had about ten minutes to go, and
the rooster was asleep and the
cows too. So I began to think about
this, pretty fast too. It seemed
to me the cows couldn't kneel down
to pray, if they were already
kneeled down sleeping. And the rooster
- being unusually lazy - maybe
wouldn't wake up at all, even when
any normal rooster would have
been up and at 'em, getting ready
to crow. Now I think that when
you've thought something through,
best you can, you have to be
a man of action, and not just sit around
in a sea of doubt. So I told
Lisbeth to go poke the cows and get them
on their feet, so they could
kneel down again, and I went to take
care of the rooster at the door
to the henhouse.
- Lisbeth did her best, pulling
at one of the cows, and pushing her this
way and that, till it tried to kick her, and mooed at her to go away.
And I went over to that rooster, who was kind of wavering on his
perch, and pulled a tailfeather just as hard as I could. And that
rooster just fell right off that perch, any normal rooster would have
stayed upright but not him, and he hit the stable floor and woke up
real mad. So he began squawking and flew up at me, which made
me yell - not loud, but sort of a whisper yell - and then the cows
got nervous, and began mooing, and the hens picked it up in the
henhouse, which naturally set off all three of the dogs, on account
of them being good dogs and alert to strange noises. Which we were
making, although that had not been our intention.
I think it was around then that
we heard the front door slam, and we
both sort of dove back into
the straw, and tried to burrow under, but
Daddy can make it from house
to barn in 20 seconds flat when he has
a reason, and he was at the
barn door before we were half-way hidden,
and he lit a lantern. So I stood
up, cause I felt stupid there, half covered
in straw, and Lisbeth stood
up too. And right away she says she tried to
stop me, which of course was
a lie and that is typical of her, more even
now that she is nine. But I
didn't say anything, because I was getting
ready to give an explanation,
so I was thinking pretty fast.
The rooster'd gone back to his
perch, but he was grumbling a lot, and
he kept giving me stares that
would've killed me except he was just
a rooster.
Well, my mind kept coming up
just blank on me, so I ended up telling
Daddy - and Momma, who'd arrived
too - the exact truth as it happened,
about Bobby and his brother
and Mr. Anderson, and how I decided to
help the cows and roosters do
the right thing, them being so sleepy and
all. And Daddy looked like he
was going to laugh, which I thought was a
good sign, only he wasn't sure
he should, but Momma was definitely
angry. She has strong feelings
about folks staying in their beds once
they're put there, which is
okay but we had a good reason, only maybe
not good enough for her, I figured,
so then I just shut up. The cows
were all standing then, too,
like maybe they thought we were going to
put them out to pasture at nighttime,
just for a change.
So no one said anything for a
while, except the chickens, who were
still making a ruckus.
Then Daddy began to talk. He
said that maybe the legends were true.
That when he was a boy, he'd
tried to find out as well. But he'd fallen
asleep, and granddaddy had found
him the next day, and he'd had a
cold for two weeks after. But
he said a legend is a lot like a beehive
- there's sweetness within,
but if you try to pick it apart with your
bare hands, the way I'd done,
it'll rear back and sting you. Which it
had, so there was some sense
in that. Maybe they kneel down, he said,
and maybe they don't - but there's
things folks aren't meant to see
that animals do, and this is
one of them. That sometimes, the wise
thing to do is not to watch,
but just to let the legend happen if it's
going to, all on its own.
And then he told us to go to
bed, without even yelling at us, only
Lisbeth hit me on the way to
the house, so naturally I hit her back,
and we got yelled at for that,
which is purely routine for everyone
involved in the matter.
But as we reached the front
door, the midnight chimes from the
church sounded, the wind being
just right. And that rooster began
crowing like a crazy bird, which
got the hens going again, and the
dogs, and even momma had to
laugh at it. And maybe, in the barn
with no folks around, the cows
were kneeling down. Which proves
that Bobby's older brother is
a reliable person, and I will go to him
with other questions about life.
