Wainscott Weasel Read online

  There was a quiet pride in his voice when he spoke of his father that made Wendy like him even more. But suddenly she stopped and looked around. She’d been so busy asking questions she hadn’t noticed the lawns and houses that had cropped up on either side of the hedge.

  “Don’t worry, they’re just summer places,” he told her. “The human beings aren’t in them yet.”

  “Do they have cats?” she asked warily.

  “Some. In the summer I usually go by the dunes.”

  “Cats don’t like dunes?”

  He just shrugged, as if cats concerned him no more than foxes.

  “Do you ever hope . . .” she asked.

  “Oh, dear,” he said, giving her a sidelong look. “Do I seem completely hopeless?”

  “Oh, no!” Bagley Brown Jr., hopeless! “I was only going to ask . . . some weasels say your father just disappeared as soon as the second tunnel was finished. Do you ever hope he’ll come back?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he murmured.

  When they came to the end of the hedge, he led the way to a telephone pole at the side of a road. He looked both ways, then studied the sky again.

  “All clear,” he said.

  He dashed across the pavement, but Wendy, who didn’t care to lug the invitation in her mouth any more, strolled across on her hind legs. The pavement was pleasantly warm.

  She joined him in some tall reeds and cattails on the other side. As they weaved their way through the stalks, her nose began to twitch. She smelled water. And in a few yards the reeds gave way to a narrow strip of sand: the shore of an enormous pond. She could hear a faint roar, but there wasn’t a breath of wind, and the water was perfectly still—a huge mirror reflecting the soft blue of the twilight sky. Floating in the middle of the pond was a pair of swans, whiter than a weasel’s winter coat. Circling high overhead were half a dozen sea gulls.

  “Better than the brook?” Bagley asked.

  “Oh, it’s absolutely beautiful!”

  “The ocean’s just beyond that spit of sand. Listen. You can hear the waves.”

  That was the muffled roar.

  “It’s safe to swim here?” she asked.

  “Sure. You can go right through that log.”

  A hollow log stuck straight out over the pond like a pier.

  “Will you hold this?” she said.

  He took the invitation, and she stuck her feather in the sand and crawled into one end of the log. The other end rested on a rock out in the pond, so the opening was above water level. From there she lowered herself in.

  Weasels aren’t great swimmers, but they enjoy a dip now and then. And though it was only April, the pond wasn’t too chilly. Wendy splashed around merrily.

  But while washing off, she remembered how she’d worked up an odor in the first place. Dancing. She’d been so carried away with Bagley Brown Jr. she’d totally forgotten about Zeke Whitebelly!

  She swam straight to shore and shook herself dry.

  “I’m afraid I have to be getting back,” she said. “I just cross the road and follow the hedge back to the woods, right?”

  “I’ll take you.”

  “Don’t be silly. I can find my way.”

  But awful as she felt about deserting Zeke, she could hardly stand to leave Bagley Brown. While looking into the edge of the pond to put her feather back behind her ear, she had an idea.

  “Will you keep that?” she said, turning to him with a shy smile.

  “What?”

  “The invitation. It’s for the Tantails’ tea dance on Sunday. Or do you already have one?”

  “If I got one, I probably tossed it out. I’m afraid I’m not much on dancing.”

  “But you wouldn’t have to dance. It would just be so nice to see you again.”

  “Well . . . thank you, Wendy. I guess—I’d be glad to come. But I insist on walking you back to the woods.”

  She could tell he didn’t really want to leave the pond, though. Every time he glanced at it, his eye took on a dreamy glaze. Besides, if he went back with her, he might come all the way to the pines, and if Zeke was still waiting, things could get sticky. It was going to be sticky enough explaining to Zeke that she couldn’t get him an invitation to the tea dance.

  “I really do feel like walking by myself, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  “Well, I’ll see you to the road, anyway.”

  He escorted her through the reeds and the rushes. At the road she looked both ways and crossed.

  “See you Sunday, Bagley!” she cried, waving from the other side. “And thanks for showing me the lovely pond.”

  STEAMED

  Zeke Whitebelly was leaning against the stump under the pines. He’d been waiting for Wendy such a long time that Sally Spots and Mary Lou Silverface, who were dancing with his brothers, had started to point at him and giggle. The slinky stranger he’d deserted them for had deserted him—just as he deserved!

  Zeke was getting hot under his fur. It steamed him to be put in such a ridiculous position. And yet, oddly enough, he wasn’t steamed at the weasel who’d put him in it. Somehow Wendy Blackish was too charming and gorgeous to get angry at. She’d asked him to wait by the stump, and wait there he would, no matter how much pointing and giggling he had to put up with.

  Finally, when the dance was beginning to wind down, Wendy came racing back under the pines. She was breathless, and her coat was shinier than ever, as if she’d washed off.

  “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting all this time, Zeke,” she said, coming straight up to him.

  “No problem,” he said with a grin. The thought that she’d spruced up just for him erased all his anger. She looked even prettier than before, if that was possible.

  “The thing is . . . there wasn’t an extra invitation. I looked and looked.”

  “That’s okay. Tea dances aren’t exactly my cup of tea, anyway—ha, ha.” He glanced up into the pines. The daylight was dying, but the catbirds were still crooning away. “How about one more dance, Wendy?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  Zeke didn’t smirk at Sally or Mary Lou as he led Wendy out, but he did stand his tallest—which made him taller than any other weasel there. Soon he forgot about Sally and Mary Lou altogether, forgot about everyone except Wendy. Not only was she breathtakingly beautiful, she truly was a natural dancer. He felt as if the pine needles had fallen there, as if the birds were singing overhead, just for the two of them.

  But as he swept her out to the edge of the needles, somebody grumbled. It was Mr. Blackish. He was tapping a hind paw impatiently on the ground.

  “Uhoh,” Wendy said. “I guess I better go.”

  Zeke didn’t feel a bit like stopping, but it was important to make a good impression on her relatives, so he led her over to them.

  “About time,” Mr. Blackish said.

  “Whatever became of you, dear?” Mrs. Blackish wondered. “We lost track of you.”

  Wendy looked down.

  “If we don’t get out of here, we’ll be the last to leave,” Mr. Blackish said sourly. “Evening, Zach.”

  “Zeke,” Zeke said.

  “I take it we’ll be seeing you on Sunday, Zeke,” Mrs. Blackish said with a smile, trying to make up for her husband.

  “ ’Fraid not, Mrs. Blackish. Wendy couldn’t find an invite.”

  “But it was just inside the—” She stopped, seeing Wendy squirm.

  “Yes, well, goodbye then,” Mr. Blackish said.

  With that, he gave his wife and niece a paw each and led them away. Wendy glanced over her shoulder, but she didn’t call out good night or anything.

  Left standing there alone, Zeke felt even more steamed than before. The invitation to the Tantails’ clearly existed, and Wendy knew it. Which meant she must have decided not to ask him. But that just didn’t make sense. She’d been having such a good time dancing with him. She couldn’t have been faking it. The only possible explanation was that she’d given the invitation to so
meone else while he was waiting for her by the stump.

  He quickly rounded up his brothers, ignoring the cold shoulders he got from Sally and Mary Lou.

  “You okay, Zeke?” Bill asked. “You look kind of mad.”

  Zeke snorted. “When I get my paws on that weasel, Billy boy, I’m going to pulverize him.”

  “What weasel?” asked Ben.

  “Whoever weaseled the invite out of Wendy.” Even now Zeke couldn’t be mad at her.

  “What invite?” chimed the twins.

  “Some bash the Tantails are tossing next Sunday. Come on, boys.”

  The last stragglers were leaving the pines, heading for their dens. But the Whitebelly brothers didn’t go home. They started marauding around the darkening woods, hoping to get their paws on a weasel with an invitation.

  THE STRIPED FISH

  After making sure Wendy was safely under the hedge across the road, Bagley Brown Jr. wound his way back through the reeds to the pond. He weighted the invitation down with a pawful of sand and slipped into the hollow log.

  Crouched in the far end of the log, Bagley kept watch over the water. It wasn’t as smooth as a few minutes ago, for now was the time of day when insects flocked to the pond. Swallows were swooping at them from above, while fish were trying to catch the poor bugs from below. Every time one of the feeding fish made a rip in the pond’s silken fabric, Bagley felt a little rip inside his chest.

  The sun was setting across the water. The sky turned rosy, and so did the pond. When the very top of the sun was about to sink below the horizon, Bagley poked his head out from the end of the log. A few feet away, a striped fish was drifting by. Bagley spat at it with all his might.

  A dark wad landed in the water and gradually came apart, turning into four separate specks: four dead insects. Bagley had plucked them out of the spiderweb near his den that morning. They’d been stored in his cheek the whole time he’d been with Wendy. The fish came up almost to the surface, looked the bugs over, and daintily swallowed them, one by one. After the meal she made another pass in front of the log, giving Bagley a curious glance as she swam by. Then she disappeared into the depths.

  Bagley stared after her for a long while. He’d first caught sight of her about a month ago, from this same log. He’d been coming to this log for ages. The pond had had a mysterious attraction for him ever since his father had showed it to him when he was little. And the hollow log, with its overhead protection, was the ideal spot for crouching and watching the magical way the land and the sky communicated through the pond’s everchanging surface. Even so, he never used to come more than once a week. Since spotting the striped fish, he’d come every day.

  The first time, of course, he’d had no bugs in his cheek. He’d just been staring idly at some gnats buzzing over the water when all of a sudden something blinded him. He’d blinked. There, hanging in the air, was a fish, the sun striking off her lovely silver scales. She had dazzling eyes and glorious greenish stripes—and for a split second only her tail was in the water. Then she splashed back into the pond.

  The sight left him spellbound. He’d never seen such a ravishing creature in his life. And soon her head broke the surface again, as if she was scouting for more gnats. Bagley moved to the brink of the log. Usually he didn’t speak to strangers before they spoke to him. Striking up conversations led to exchanging names, and his name generally made a sensation and got him special treatment—which he hated, since it was all because of his father, not him. But that day, without even thinking, he’d called out:

  “Good afternoon!”

  The fish had taken one look at him and sunk from sight. Bagley remained in the log till nightfall, but she never returned.

  It was late when he’d gotten back to his den, and after a small supper he’d curled up to sleep. But as soon as he closed his eye, he saw the beautiful fish. He tried to blink the image away. A weasel had no business mooning over a fish. They didn’t even live in the same element. He lived on land, she lived in the water.

  After promising himself to put the striped fish out of his mind, he’d finally dozed off. But the fish simply glided into his dreams. Worse, she was the very first thing he thought of when he woke up the next morning. He clenched his teeth and reminded himself he was a weasel, with four legs and a fine coat of fur, not a creature with scales and no legs at all. And yet every time the sleek, silvery, greenstriped fish swam into his mind, a tingling ran down his spine all the way to the tip of his tail. Why should a fish seem beautiful to him? Was it perhaps because he saw things through just one eye? Whatever the reason, he was fighting a losing battle with himself, and by the end of that day he surrendered and returned to the pond.

  The fish had been feeding when he got there. He’d crouched at the end of the hollow log, waiting, and just before dark he’d caught sight of the striped fish, coasting along just under the water, a few feet away from him. But she never broke the surface. It was still early in the spring, and there weren’t all that many bugs out.

  He’d thought about bugs on the way back to his den, which was on the bank of the brook that wound through the Wainscott woods. This brook was springfed, so it never ran dry, and Bagley’s father had chosen to live there in order to have a handy and dependable water supply. The nearest neighbors were a pair of spiders who had cleverly constructed their web between two branches of a tree limb that had fallen across the brook. Bugs spawned in and around the brook, so the web always trapped twice as many as the spiders could eat.

  Still, the spiders were horrified the morning Bagley Jr. walked out onto the limb and started looking over their bugs.

  “May I take a few?” he asked.

  Neither spider had ever heard of a weasel liking bugs, but they were deeply relieved that he bothered to ask, since he could easily have cleaned out the web without their permission. They invited him to take a few bugs whenever he liked.

  “Though we’d appreciate it,” one of them added, “if you wouldn’t damage the web.”

  Bagley had removed three bugs with great care and, later in the day, carried them to the pond in his cheek. He’d waited at the end of the log. When the striped fish eventually swam by, he spat the bugs in her direction. She vanished into the deep water with a flick of her tail. But it wasn’t too long before she returned. She poked the floating bugs a few times with her pretty snout, then swallowed them, one by one. Since that time, Bagley had brought bugs for her every day, and she would often peer up at him before gliding off into the mysterious depths of the pond—just as she had this evening.

  Once the last glow of the sunset died away, Bagley shuffled back out through the log. But as he was about to head into the reeds, he felt something under one of his paws. There, in the sand, was the invitation to the Tantails’ tea dance.

  He felt discouraged. He’d completely forgotten about Wendy Blackish. Here he’d met a pretty, spirited young weasel, one who seemed to like him, and all he’d been thinking of for the last hour was a fish!

  “You’re a sick weasel, Bagley Brown,” he muttered, picking the invitation up.

  FIVE AGAINST ONE

  When Bagley felt the sandy shoulder of the road under his paws, his heart started pounding against his rib cage. He tried to calm himself, but it was no use. There weren’t any headlights coming down the road. The only source of light was a smattering of stars in the moonless sky.

  After examining the sky for a long time, he put the invitation in his mouth and darted across to the telephone pole. Once he was under the hedge, the pounding in his chest stopped. But as soon as he got to the other end of the hedge, his heartbeat took off again. It was almost impossible to tell what was up above, the stars shed so little light.

  As he was about to sprint across the open space to the woods, he heard a whooshing sound and froze. He didn’t budge till the moon rose. Then, with visibility improved, he realized the whooshing was only the wind in the hedge. He swallowed hard and bolted for the trees.

  “What’s wrong, Bag
ley?” someone said as he came hurtling into the woods.

  Bagley stopped by the trunk of an oak and looked around. There in the glimmering moonlight were the five Whitebelly brothers.

  “Skyscared?” asked the biggest of them, grinning.

  Bagley took the invitation out of his mouth to speak but didn’t deny the accusation. He just said, “Good evening, Zeke.”

  “What’s that?” Zeke demanded.

  “This? An invitation to a tea dance at the Tantails’. Why?”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “What business is that of yours?” Bagley asked, leaning back against the oak. He wasn’t used to being grilled.

  “Just a friendly question.”

  “Hm. Well, I got it from the Blackishes’ niece, Wendy.”

  “That right?” Zeke said, stepping closer.

  In spite of what he’d said about Bagley’s dancing, Zeke had as much respect for the name Bagley Brown as any other weasel. Not that Zeke was any good at bowing and scraping; but normally, when he ran into Bagley, he was extra polite. This time was different, though. He was steamed. By all rights, that invitation was his.

  “You wanted to see my new leftright combination, didn’t you, Benny boy?” he said. “Well, get a load of this.”

  Zeke outweighed Bagley by several ounces, but when Zeke swaggered up to him, Bagley stood his ground, his heartbeat hardly quickening at all. And just as Zeke tried to demonstrate his leftright combination, Bagley ducked—so instead of Bagley’s jaw, Zeke hit the rockhard bark of the oak tree.

  Zeke doubled over in pain. But his brother Ben instantly took his place. Ben was just Bagley’s size. Backpedaling away from the tree, Bagley dodged Ben’s punches. Ben got frustrated and made a dive for him. Bagley sidestepped, and Ben landed on his face, skinning his snout on a rock.

  While Ben lay there whimpering, up stepped Bill. Bill wasn’t the brightest of the Whitebelly bunch, and he was a bit smaller than Bagley, but he was eager to prove himself and actually made Bagley gasp with a paw to the gut. Not a violent weasel by nature, Bagley couldn’t help cuffing Bill hard across his left ear.