Clutch was glad to see the boathouse the silly Mouse had pointed him to. He needed the company of his own kind. What had the Mouse said? You are going to squeeze through a tight space into your future. You have kinsfolk hiding in a boathouse and they haven’t eaten for nights and they are hungry. You will become a responsible Raccoon. The prophesy sounded heavy with fate but he discarded it. The Mouse was trying to sound significant so it could escape its own fate. Of course he was going to meet some kinsfolk! He was in the proximity of the largest raccoon colony in the city. By telling him about the hideaways in the boathouse, the rodent had made the prediction come true, since no self-respecting elder brother and acting family head hearing this information would fail to help clan members in distress. If not for the mention of kin in a boathouse, he wouldn’t be here, wondering how to break in without alarming its occupants.
Clutch stood on the boards of a dock still warm from the afternoon sun. He understood the building and its function, though he’d never seen one before. It was exactly what the Mouse had said: a boathouse, a den for boats.
The slap and gurgle of waves under the dock echoed inside the boathouse. There was water inside for the boat to float on. But how to get in? The door had a lock that required a key. The fly screen covered a closed glass window. He sniffed the sides of the structure for the scent of raccoons to determine how they entered and exited. Nothing. Not even a strand of fur.
He’d been tricked! The Mouse had contrived a situation that didn’t exist just to obtain its freedom.
Clutch sat in the lee of the wind in a temper, listening to lakewater splash against a closed boathouse door. The south-easterly breeze had shifted around to a stiff west wind making the lake raise its hackles. Water hitting the door the boathouse! Yes! Why not go in the same way the water got in?
Clutch dug his foreclaws into the wood door, swung over, and slowly descended tail first into the lake. This was scary. It was like the time he was suspended between the eavestrough and the cedar tree, kicking at nothing and having a panic attack. In its fear, his body had forgotten how to breathe. Well, he was going to have to forget how to breathe now while he scrambled underwater around the bottom of the door.
He took a deep breath, reached underwater with his foreleg, grasped the bottom of the door, swung himself around under it, and popped up beside a boat. There! That was easy. No existential crisis. On the contrary, he was quite proud of his ingenuity. He clambered onto an inside dock and sniffed the darkness. Fresh pine-wood. Varnish. An empty container for fish. Canvas. Gasoline.
“If you’re an Otter or a Weasel, we’ll rip your ears off!”
The voice came from overhead. Two arched shapes. They were hiding in the rafters.
“I am not an otter nor a weasel. I am Elder Brother of the Island Family of the River Clan, and I have come to help you.”
“Go away. Find your own hiding place, which is the Custom.”
Scents of a young male, a season older than himself, with a female, not fertile, probably his sister. They were hiding just as the Mouse had said. Who were they hiding from? The Creek Town raccoons had all fled and were taking refuge in holes everywhere. The Gander was right – but why? There could only be one threat they were hiding from. His father.
“I am a Raccoon who is unwilling to fight on principle. That should assure you that I can do you no harm.”
“You can do us no good either. If you’re unwilling to fight, you’re unable to help us.”
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.