Well, that was logical. He was negotiating with reasonable raccoons. If he could only persuade them to relax.
“This is a clever hiding place. None of your scent reaches the outside, and if you go outside to forage, none of your scent returns with you, since it is lost when you put your body in the water.”
The female broke her silence. “That is most true. And moreover we are protected by a barricade of geese. The raccoons that have gone rogue dare not meddle with them, and if they do, we’ll hear of it and have sufficient time to be out of here.”
Clutch noted the modest pride in her choice of the sanctuary.
The brother added: “Nevertheless, we have been unwilling to venture out of this shelter. And we haven’t eaten.”
“For nights,” his sister said.
“And now we are too weak to go out or even dive down and sift the lake bottom beneath this housing.”
It was a dire situation when a male raccoon confessed his weakness to a stranger. “I pray you, come down and show yourselves so we can talk about food,” Clutch said.
First the brother, then the sister, left the rafters. They were covered in cobwebs, but they squatted proudly on the dock and made their introductions.
“I am Lightfinger of the Clan Family at Creek Town, and you ought to tell us the purpose of your travelling before we think of giving you refuge here.”
“I am Sleekfoot, her brother, of the selfsame family. What happened to yours?’
“We have left home to seek our own dens.”
“And have you found one?”
The question approached rudeness. No raccoon asks another about their den. Still, these were perilous times, and Clutch considered that the question was innocent. In nights to come, the Clan might have to bend etiquette and talk about sharing accommodations. “I have not begun to look,” he said.
“You won’t find a den if you run for three nights,” Lightfinger said. “There is a scarcity of homes in which to raise a family. They are all taken by fleeing raccoons. Who knows what’s left for us to live in? We may even have to live in a chimney.”
“How can there not be dens? There are cavities in trees, openings beneath porches, holes in attics, hollow logs in the forest. Not to mention the city across the River.”
“The rogue males track us down and nullify our hiding places one by one. That is why there is a shortage of homes.”
“And most of the places in the city are possessed by newcomers,” Sleekfoot said.
Clutch listened carefully because he felt some responsibility to the situation. It was a pitiful state of affairs. It meant that all the raccoons on the River would have to become migrants themselves. They’d have to travel for three nights or longer, then claw out a hunting ground from a foreign tribe. This was easy for people like his aunt’s in-laws to do. Raccoonopolitans had tight kinship bonds and were closely organized. The raccoons of Creek Town were uprooted and scattered. And what of his sister Touchwit? And Bandit, his brother? Where would they find homes? They might have to run beyond the horizon to find a home, and never come back. “Who are these rogue males?” he asked.
It was for Sleekfoot to explain the situation: “They are the alpha males from the once mighty Creek Town families. The Clan Fathers. They have put their trust in the Raccoon Without a Name. He gives them license to plunder while they guard the boundaries of his expanding territory. Normally, they would be restrained from this impulse by the bonds of kinship. But kinship is gone. So they behave like unleashed Droolers, roaming around in packs with one mind only, and that mind is without the power to reason.”
“Except to declare that everything is open for plunder,” Lightfinger said. “And plunder goes to the strongest. The weak and ordinary folk must scramble for a den, a hunting ground, and a future.”
“They will be lucky if they even find a companion,” Sleekfoot said.
“A hunting ground,” Clutch said. “Let us address this issue first. You are hungry, and there are chickens in the backyard of a house upwind from here.”
“We’re not going out there,” Sleekfoot said.
“The Lake is throwing itself at the door,” Lightfinger said.
“Consider,” Clutch said. “The street is nearby; it runs across the top of the lake, from the canal west to the River. The geese will guard our east flank. The weather may be our friend too, because it is changing. It feels like it may swing around to the north. That means we can’t be threatened from that direction and not know of it. Not even a rogue alpha male is fool enough to run down the wind. As for the west, that is my family’s territory and it is free of other raccoon traffic.”
“Have you ever done this before? Killed a chicken?”
“No.”
“Neither have we. We are fish-eaters from Creek Town.”
“I expect catching a chicken is not something one raccoon can do very well,” Clutch said. “I am told to be wary of the Rooster, if there is one present. He will die to protect his wives. Lucky, there are three of us. One can contain the Rooster.”
“What if there’s a Drooler to guard them?”
“Well, then, that is a different problem. We’ll have to improvise. We’re good at that. We’re Raccoons.”
“I don’t know …” Sleekfoot said.
“You figured out how to get under a closed door that sticks down underwater. You can do anything.”
That persuaded them. They resolved to carry out the raid the following night when the weather changed.
17
Nimble burst through the raccoon-shaped hole in the fly screen, trembling with excitement.
“Did you see them? Are they coming?” Goodpaws asked.
Nimble nodded her head, smiling shyly. Too much to say. It would tumble out of her all disorganized.
Sensibella, reclining on the middle of the floorboards, showed no interest whatsoever. Aunt Pawsense was brushing out her daughter’s tail for the occasion. To Bandit, the labour had the endlessness of ritual. In fact, each and every detail of the morning had been fussed over and commented on as if the day was made up of Significant Moments within a frame titled The Courtship: Their First Meeting. Was his cousin’s tail not already fluffed out to its utmost? It seemed to fill the room, as it would doubtless fill the eyes of her approaching suitor. But perhaps even this attention to a feature of his cousin’s beauty wasn’t directly related to her wooing. It was just another manufactured memory: The Preparation of the Tail.
