Canada Moose's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Canada Moose came down from the rise and tried to walk off the morning. He took the long way back through the pines. He told himself the porcupine would tire of watching and find something else to do. Then he passed a clearing and heard his own name. A squirrel was telling a rabbit about the kneeling. The rabbit was telling a fox. The fox already knew. The story had left the porcupine and was moving on its own. He followed the talk to a worn path he did not remember being so busy. Hoofprints and pawprints crossed each other in the dirt. A weasel ran past him with its ears up. A pair of jays cut overhead, calling the same word twice. The path led to a wooden bench at the edge of a small clearing, the kind hikers leave behind. Animals were crowded around it three deep. On the back of the bench sat the porcupine, quills high, holding a slim white book in his front paws. The cover read I DO GOSSIP in fat black letters. He tapped it when he spoke, like a judge with a gavel. "And then," the porcupine said, "he knelt. Front legs folded. Head to the dirt." The animals leaned in. A chipmunk wrote something on a weathered message board nailed to a nearby trunk. The board was already covered with scratched signs and paw marks. A fresh symbol sat near the top: two antlers, bent down. Canada Moose pushed through the crowd. His size made a path whether he wanted one or not. He stopped in front of the bench. The porcupine did not flinch. He held the book up like a shield and smiled. The cougar lay under the bench, tail flicking once. Canada Moose had planned, on the walk over, to deny it. To say the porcupine was lying. He opened his mouth and saw thirty faces waiting for the lie. He saw the chipmunk's pencil ready at the board. "I knelt," Canada Moose said. "My antlers were stuck. I knelt to get them out. Then I stood up and walked home." He looked at the porcupine. "That is the whole story. You can stop selling it now." The porcupine blinked. The crowd waited for more. Canada Moose did not give them more. He turned and walked back down the path the way he had come. No one laughed. No one followed. Behind him, he heard the porcupine start the story again anyway, louder, as if volume could buy back the room. He reached his meadow and pulled out the checklist. He crossed off task three. Under it he wrote: 4. The story is theirs now. Mine has to be bigger. He folded the board and tucked it against his ribs. The grizzly was still crashing through the creek to the north. Canada Moose started walking that way.