Toaff's Way Read online

  Cheered by the whuffling, Toaff took a careful look around. I’m going to—

  He ran, leaping, across the drive—safely!—and through high grass to the stone wall. He crossed the stone wall to the nearer of the fir trees. Searching up and down its trunk, he found a place high up, where a branch had been broken off long enough ago for the space to have been eaten away, first by insects hunting whatever insects ate, and after them by woodpeckers hunting insects. He set to work to enlarge the soft hollow with his sharp teeth.

  It was almost dark before Toaff had scraped a space large enough to be a den. During that time, although he was aware of many sounds, he didn’t care what any of them might be. He had to have a den so he never stopped working, not even to forage. That left him to a long, hungry night.

  Hunger is no friend to sleep. It stuck itself onto Toaff’s tongue and hollowed out his throat. It jabbed its nails into his stomach. Having hard wood under him instead of a soft nest also kept sleep at a distance. And this side of the nest-house was noisy with machine sounds in the drive near the nest-barn and occasional rushing rainwatery sounds from inside the nest-house and always there were human voices, saying who knew what, and the yarking of dogs, and everywhere—or so it seemed to Toaff—the silence of cats.

  Toaff dozed and woke until at last he slid into a deep sleep, for how long he couldn’t have said, except that it was in a full night darkness that a loud thump smacked down on the black air and made it quiver like a branch seized by the wind.

  Toaff jerked awake.

  As suddenly as it had come, the thump was gone. A thicker quiet than any Toaff had ever heard before filled the farm, as if every living thing, like the gray squirrel in his tiny den, waited for whatever terrible thing was about to happen. He would have burrowed deeper into the tree if he could have, but he couldn’t. He had to stay right where he was, nose out in the air, ears cocked forward, expecting—

  Toaff had no idea what that noise might mean.

  After a while, low voices spoke, close to the nest-house. These were voices he could understand. Was it squirrels? But these words came in rounded pebbles of sound: These voices chip-chipped, which merely sounded almost like squirrels. What did that matter? Because he could understand what they were saying.

  “Think they heard?”

  “Don’t be such a dumbhead, acourse they heard, here come the—”

  “Run!”

  Growling and snarling and yarking so wildly that Toaff had trouble understanding what they said, the two dogs charged up from the nest-barn. “Where yark rrggrrrns?”

  “By rrgggrrbg cans, Sadie!”

  “I smell rrggrrrns!”

  “Thieves! Bad thieves! I see you!”

  “Where? Where, Angus?”

  “Run, rrggrrrns! Get out!”

  A light came on and Mister appeared, without his orange head this time, and said something that made the dogs stop yarking. They ran over to him and he said something else.

  “We did a good job!” Sadie yarked.

  “Those raccoons won’t come back,” Angus growled.

  Raccoons, Toaff thought. No wonder he could understand what they were saying. But what were raccoons doing that the dogs and human didn’t want them to do, so close to the nest-house and in the dark of night?

  Curious, he sat in the entrance to his new den, watching, and soon noticed that one of the big round things had fallen over: Was that the thunk?

  Mister bent over, stood up, and the round things were standing up again, too.

  “Garbage yark safe,” Angus told Sadie.

  “We saved the garbage!” she answered happily. “Play?” she yarked.

  Mister stood looking down on the garbage—which must have held food of some kind, Toaff decided, since the raccoons were probably out foraging. For a long time the human stood still, not saying anything. Toaff watched the tall black shape, and eventually Mister said something to the dogs.

  “Sleep!” Sadie yarked.

  “Whssshshsh,” said Mister.

  “Quiet! Yark wake baby!” Angus ordered.

  “Sleep!” she yarked happily, as if she hadn’t understood him.

  Toaff whuffled quietly. He was sorry Sadie was a dog, and dangerous to a squirrel. For a while, he wondered why it was that way; then he fell asleep again and was not disturbed until morning.

  The morning was so busy on this new side of the nest-house that Toaff was trapped in his den until he could figure out how to come out and forage safely. There was a muuh-muuhing call from the nest-barn and Mister went to answer it. When he went in, the dogs ran out, heading for the nest-house, yarking, then they stuck their noses down into something not grass, something the color of a stormy sky.

  “Eating!” Sadie yarked. “Eating food! Eating good food!”

  “Eat every morning,” Angus reminded her.

  “Eat good food every morning!” Sadie yarked.

  “Just eat,” Angus said. “No talking.”

  Mister emerged from the nest-barn, following two large animals that stepped down heavily and groaned to one another, muuh-muuh. Were these the cows Nilf had mentioned? Mister returned to the nest-barn without them, and not much later the machine Toaff had escaped from on that long-ago winter afternoon went down the driveway, carrying Mister away. After another little while, Missus came out of the nest-house, with the baby. The baby fell down in the grass and said wnaah-wnaah and Missus made her gha-gha-gha coughing sound.

  Toaff wondered about this. Like every other baby squirrel, he had not been allowed out of the nest until he could get around easily on his own legs, but Missus just let her baby get up onto its back legs, fall down again, and get up again, without paying much attention. She carried it across the drive, to set it down on more grass while she went off behind the row of poles.

  Nothing more moved, so Toaff descended to forage in the empty field by his fir. In the rough grasses that grew around the edge of the field, he found seeds to eat and dew to drink. After eating, he went back up to enlarge his den, so that when he carried up some soft grass, there would be enough room for a nest.

  All morning long, noises continued, from machines and humans and dogs, coming and going, nearby and off in the distance. There was also the silent stalking presence of cats. There was the occasional whispery sound of a mouse slipping through grass. There were crows. There were, however, no squirrels.

  By midday Toaff had made himself a comfortable nest in the safety of the new den and he had located a pinecone to carry up with him and eat as he sat on a strong branch, watching the afternoon activity at the nest-house.

  There was a lot of activity to watch.

  Missus and the baby, with Sadie, went together into a little field behind the poles and sat down, out of sight. Mister and Angus returned to the garbage. Mister held pieces of wood close together, then waved a front leg at them with short thwap sounds, thwappety-thwap-thwappety. Mister talked while he thwapped and every now and then Angus yarked, “Yes,” but Toaff had no idea what they were discussing. Besides, he was more interested in seeing the way Mister was turning the boards into another nest-house. A nest-house for garbage? Apparently it was, and it was just tall enough so that they could stand up in it. Mister put more boards on to make a top. Toaff couldn’t imagine what Mister was thinking of, building a nest-house for something that wasn’t alive.

  By that time Missus and the baby and Sadie had returned to the nest-house. Mister said something to Angus. “Yes!” Angus agreed, his feathery tail sweeping across the ground.

  Mister patted the top of the garbage-nest and then he lifted it, and dropped it, crack! He said something more to Angus.

  “Yes!” Angus agreed again, and they went off together, back into the nest-house, where the voices of Missus and the baby, who was now saying mah-mah-mah, greeted them.

  Toaff stayed hidde
n among the wispy needles of the fir and watched the day end. Mister brought the maybe-cows back to the nest-barn. Birds returned to their nests. The two cats slunk around the drive and the nest-barn and the pile of dirt. They even came up close to Toaff’s tree, but they didn’t seem aware that he was up there, sitting back on his haunches, looking down with his bright eyes at their long backs and thin tails. A cat could never catch a squirrel in a tree, he was sure of that now. Cats were too slow, they couldn’t leap from branch to branch, and besides, even if a cat climbed up and trapped you on your branch, his balance wasn’t good enough to allow him to attack, and he knew that even better than you did. Toaff was safe.

  The golden air paled, turned purple and then gray and finally black. Mister took the dogs to the nest-barn. A muuh-muuhing welcomed them, but then Mister came out, alone, and returned to the nest-house. After a while, the nest-house settled into silence. The sounds of insects faded away. A wind blew quietly through the trees in the woods and across the fields, and Toaff curled up in his nest.

  When the voices woke him that night, he crept out to listen. The raccoons were quarreling in front of the new garbage-nest. When raccoons quarreled, there was a lot of growling in the words. They sounded almost like angry dogs.

  “There’s nothing good in a garden yet. Let’s just go on up to the lake.”

  “I say we try the garden first. Remember those tomatoes last fall? Okay, maybe a tomato doesn’t fill your belly like a fish will, Rec, but most of us don’t have bellies the size of yours. Woo-hah.”

  “I’ll open your belly, Rimble—”

  “That’ll do!” This was a new and bossy voice, a voice that expected to be obeyed. “Moon’ll be full night after next and that’s when we go up to the lake. No sooner and no later and no more discussion.”

  “Yessir, Cap’n,” the two quarreling voices said.

  “Even if we get that top off, there’s still the covers,” said Cap’n.

  “He’s got us this time,” a fourth voice answered.

  Cap’n said, “What’s wood can be chewed through, if you’ve got teeth. And I’ve got teeth. We’ll test it when we return for winter. Tonight, it’s the garden. And keep it down, boys. I don’t want those dogs after me in the garden. Not with just the one hole in that fence.”

  Four low dark figures humped along toward that row of poles. They didn’t return to the garbage, although Toaff hoped they would, and waited well into the moonlit night in that hope. He was wondering about that garden, which had to be the place behind the poles where Missus and Sadie and the baby had disappeared. If raccoons could forage there, so could a squirrel, maybe. But not in daytime. In daytime, the cats were always stalking—Fox alone, Snake alone, Fox and Snake side by side, Fox right behind Snake, Snake right behind Fox….Didn’t cats ever stop hunting?

  He wondered—of course he did—if he shouldn’t return to the horse chestnut tree. He could do that, he knew, and maybe he would. But he also wondered what the garden offered that the raccoons had been so eager to have. Tomatoes? What might tomatoes be? He’d never even heard of them. He might discover some food no squirrel before him had ever eaten. He liked the idea of being the first squirrel to discover something. He wondered if he dared to go into the garden at night.

  Of course he did. Didn’t he?

  That was how it happened that on his third night alone, while the whole farm—except for one gray squirrel—was silent and sleeping, Toaff made his way down the trunk of the fir. Tail high, he dashed across to the nearest of the poles that marked the edge of the garden. There, he found another thin wire wall, but this one had holes large enough for a squirrel to squeeze through onto soft dirt, and there he was—in the garden.

  Before he wandered off from the protection of the wall, Toaff sat up on his haunches and looked around. Bright moonlight sucked the color out of everything, leaving just silvery grays and sharp blacks. Little grassy shoots were growing in straight lines, casting tiny dark shadows onto the bumpy ground. Everything was still, and silent, so Toaff left the wall and walked slowly along a row of shoots, keeping alert to any change in the air. From the center of the garden he could see that the poles carried their wall all the way around. Humans liked walls, he decided, stone walls or these wire-and-pole walls, and even the sides on their nests were high wooden walls. He wondered what was on top of those poles and decided to climb up one after he had eaten.

  But squirrels didn’t eat green chewy things, or even leafy things, and green, chewy, leafy things were all Toaff could find. Raccoons had different eating habits from squirrels, he decided. He turned to make his way across the moonlit garden back to the wire wall, and his fir. Maybe the leafy, chewy shoots were tomatoes, he thought, and wondered what garbage tasted like, since that was something else raccoons ate. That was the moment he heard them.

  At first they were a low murmur of voices from the side of the garden farthest from the nest-house. It was Cap’n he heard, chipping his words clearly. “It’s right here, boys, we’ll get ourselves some nice spinach or—”

  Silence.

  A listening, sniffing, stalking silence.

  Toaff started to have a bad, nervous feeling. It ran up and down his legs and he checked to see where the nearest tree was. But there were no trees nearby, just the poles, and those poles had no branches.

  “You smell that, Rad?” Rimble asked.

  “Squirrel,” Rad answered. “You think it’s squirrel, Cap’n?”

  “I think. And close,” Cap’n answered. “Keep it low, boys, we don’t want the dogs….”

  “I never want the dogs, woo-hah,” said Rec, but in a low, whispery voice.

  “Over there,” said Rad.

  Toaff bolted. Across rough dirt, not trying to avoid the shoots. The shoots would have to look out for themselves, he thought, setting his paws right on them to leap up onto one of the poles and dig his nails in to scramble up to the top. The top was flat! He was standing on something flat, and round, and not very high off the ground. High enough off the ground? he wondered.

  “Up there, Cap’n,” Rimble murmured. “Want me to get him?”

  “You go up, we’ll surround the pole,” Rad answered. Then he added, “That’s your plan, isn’t it, Cap’n?”

  “That’s it,” Cap’n said. “We’ve got him trapped.”

  Trapped? The four dark humped shapes had gathered right below him, and they sounded sure that he was trapped. Toaff didn’t feel trapped, but if he couldn’t go down to the ground, because that was where they were, and they could get up to where he was, what else was he but trapped?

  Toaff looked down at the dark shapes and tried to think, but all he wanted to do was run.

  “Don’t be frightened, little squirrel,” Rec whispered up. “It’ll all be over soon. Up you go, Rimble.”

  One raccoon wrapped his legs around the pole and started to climb.

  Toaff looked around, looked everywhere. Rimble was a slow enough climber that Toaff had time to scramble down, except that they had the pole surrounded and he knew he wouldn’t have time to get himself through one of the holes before—

  He gathered his feet under him, getting ready, because hopeless or not, he’d have to move. Except not down, and there was no more up.

  He looked across at the next of the garden poles. He couldn’t be sure in the untrustworthy moonlight, but maybe he had a chance. If he didn’t have that chance, he didn’t have any chance at all. Do I have to—?

  Toaff leaped. He leaped up and out, the empty dark air beneath him. He leaped across…and he landed! Safe on the top of the next pole! If there hadn’t been raccoons on the ground below, he would have whuffled, whuffling at their surprised grunts, whuffling at his escape. Whuffling for happiness, a sudden and entirely unexpected happiness. Because even though Rimble jumped easily down and the raccoons were now lumbering after him, Toaff had an idea. He knew wh
at to do.

  “Chuk-chuk-chuk,” he screeched as loudly as he could. “Chuk-chuk!”

  “What’s he—?”

  “Stop him!” Cap’n whispered hoarsely.

  The raccoons gathered together, but not around Toaff’s pole.

  “Chuk-chuk-chuk!” he screeched, and a dog answered him from the nest-barn. “What?” it yarked, once, sharply, then fell silent. All of the creatures in the garden knew it was listening.

  Toaff waited. Raccoons were wild creatures, like squirrels, and he didn’t want the dogs to get them. Not as much as he didn’t want the raccoons to get him, but enough to give them a choice.

  “He’s like that Fredle,” Rimble complained, but still whispering. “Think it’s his brother?”

  “Fredle wasn’t a squirrel, dumbhead,” Rec answered.

  “You think I didn’t know that? You’re the dumbhead,” Rimble said.

  “Anyway,” Cap’n announced in a low voice. “We can’t drive him down. That’s clear.”

  “We could outwait him,” Rad suggested. “Make him go from pole to pole until he’s tired, and he falls, and we get him.”

  Cap’n wasn’t convinced. “And give him time to make another ruckus? It’ll be daylight before he gets tired. Didn’t you see him? He jumps easy as some bird.”

  The dogs yarked again, Sadie asking, “Is somebody out there?” and Angus joining in, “I see you!”

  They were all silent, the squirrel to give the raccoons a chance, the dogs to know if they had really heard something, the raccoons to be sure it was safe. After a very long time, “All right, boys,” Cap’n said, and he sounded tired. “Let’s be on our way. Tomorrow’s the day.”

  “You heard him.” Rad repeated the orders in a cheerful voice, and concluded, “Tomorrow’s the day. Tomorrow, the Rowdy Boys go back to the lake. There’s fish waiting in the lake for us, and fish’s better than squirrel any day.”