Silversides stared at the house. Her bitterness was as deep as it was intense. She looked about. It was early morning. A slight breeze was blowing from the west. She lifted her nose and sniffed deeply. Amid the countless smells she could just detect Blinker’s scent. She tried to untangle his odor from the others. When it came it was like one thread pulled from a knotted ball of twine.
It was enough. She would be able to follow the white mouse’s trail and find him. When she caught up with him she would kill him and bring his mangled body back just as the girl had asked her to. Then she’d search out that golden mouse and the green-headed one and deal with them, too.
Nose to the ground, Silversides began to follow Blinker’s faint but unmistakable trail.
CHAPTER 13
Ragweed Wanders
THOUGH RAGWEED WOKE UP in the old bus quite early, Windshield was already working hard on his painting. The stout mouse, lost in thought, spent long periods of time staring at his work. During these times he hardly moved except to glance at his caps of paint, then back at his work. It was as if he were painting the picture in his mind. Then he would burst into a fury of activity, dipping his tail into first one bottle cap, then another, all but throwing the paint onto the picture with wild abandon.
Not too long afterward, Dipstick and Lugnut appeared. Clutch was roused from her sleep to greet them.
The three members of the Be-Flat Tires embraced warmly. “Hey, dudes,” Clutch cried. “You made it. Far out. Cool. Killer cool.”
“I’m glad to be alive,” Dipstick said. “I mean, those cats turned off, like, twenty dudes.”
“Oh, mouse,” Clutch cried. “Totally nasty.”
“And the club’s wasted. Knocked out of town. What was ain’t no more.”
“Lost my bass,” Lugnut added in his sleepy way. “Dipstick lost his drums. What about your guitar?”
“Blew apart on Silversides’s nose,” Clutch said. “My deck, too.” She told her friends how Ragweed used her skateboard to save her.
“Awesome, dude,” they both murmured. Considering Ragweed with new respect, both put up their paws to slap. Ragweed was pleased.
“But, bummer, dudes,” Dipstick said, “now we’ve got no place to play.”
The band members looked at one another and nodded sadly. “Awesome ugly,” Lugnut said.
“Way down,” Dipstick agreed.
There was a moment of silence. Then Clutch brightened. “Hey, dudes, how about some chow?”
“Yo, mouse,” Lugnut agreed. “I could eat a cat.” The three mice went looking for food. Ragweed held back. He had the feeling he was intruding, that the three band members needed to be together without him.
He was still hesitating when Windshield came up to his side. “Wonderful how the band stays together, isn’t it?” the artist said enthusiastically, nodding in the direction of the trio. “As I see it, young mouse,” he went on, “it represents a whole new trend! Mice sticking together in the face of . . . That reminds me . . .” He rushed back to his painting.
Ragweed wandered about the dilapidated bus. When he came upon Clutch’s mother, Foglight appeared not to have moved since he first had seen her. She was still hunched over her work, her writing stick chewed to a nub.
She looked up at Ragweed, puzzlement in her eyes. “Are you a friend of Clutch’s?” she asked.
“Well, like, actually, yes,” Ragweed replied. “I came yesterday and . . . you and I were introduced.”
“Clutch has so many friends,” Foglight said, though there was no recognition in her eyes. “Do you know a good word for brave?”
“Fearless?” Ragweed said gravely.
“That’ll be the day,” Foglight murmured and went back to pondering her writing.
Feeling completely at sixes and sevens, Ragweed returned to where the three mice were eating and talking. “Hey, dudes, I think I’ll go.”
“Catch you at my pad,” Clutch called after him.
Ragweed, who gladly would have changed his plans if his new friend had asked him to join the threesome, gave a casual wave and made his way out of the nest.
Once outside, he squinted at the bright sun. He had almost forgotten about daylight. The thought brought an unexpected wave of homesickness. At the Brook, one was always aware of the time of day. In the city, apparently, daylight came as a surprise. “It is different here,” Ragweed murmured to himself without much enthusiasm.
With no particular desire to return to Clutch’s place without her, he crept along the sidewalks, keeping close to the bases of walls and old human nests. From time to time he would dart forward, pause, and sit up to look about, mainly checking for cats. Seeing none, he continued on, heading no place in particular, just wandering aimlessly.
The size of the human nests awed him. They appeared to him almost as big as the sky. When cars tore by, emitting smoke, fumes, and noise, he was terribly frightened. Clearly, such contraptions were to be avoided at all costs. But there were so many of them.
From time to time Ragweed saw humans, too. Though also huge, they generally paid no attention to him. There were moments when Ragweed wondered if they even saw him. But when a human finally did notice him, the person stopped, uttered something like a gasp, and moved around Ragweed in a wide circle.
“This city certainly doesn’t like mice,” Ragweed murmured to himself.
Still, what did impress him about the city was the endless variety of things to be seen. The range of color was extraordinary, rather like one of Windshield’s paintings—shapes and colors that were endlessly fascinating. Equally engrossing to him was the angularity of everything. In the country, one rarely saw a straight line. Even the tallest, straightest tree had some curve to it. In the city, you had to search for a curve, though you could of course find them.
As for the smells, they were infinitely varied. Some were pleasing, others not. Most simply hung in the air. Ragweed suspected it would take a lifetime to sort through them all.
It was also hard to determine
