Dobro shook his head at the underhanded, convoluted dealings of the civilizers. “That ain’t the feechie way,” he said. “If I want your nose busted, I ball up my fist and I bust it; then I take whatever might be coming to me. I don’t tell you to walk into a tree and hope you bust it yourself.”
“That makes for a lot of nose busting, doesn’t it?” asked Aidan.
“Maybe so,” answered Dobro. “But you bust a feller’s nose, he busts yours, and the whole thing’s over. Things don’t boil and bubble till you decide you want to kill a feller instead of just busting his nose.” He swished a stick in the water, watching the trail of tan bubbles swirl on the black surface. “I’ve got my nose busted many times, but I ain’t never had nobody try to kill me.” A joree bird trilled in the bushes: “Tow-heeeeee! Tow-heeeee!” Aidan pondered whether Dobro was exceptionally wise or just a regular feechie scrapper.
“Pantherbane,” said Dobro slowly, as if trying the name out. “If it’s all right with you, I’m just going to call you Aidan of the Tam. That’s who you were when I met you.”
“That’s who I still am,” protested Aidan.
“‘Aidan of the Tam I am,’” began Dobro, repeating the song Aidan sang in the bottom pasture the first day they met. “‘A liege man true of Darrow.’”
Aidan finished the stanza: The kingdom’s foes I will oppose With sword and spear and arrow.
“You a liege man true, all right,” said Dobro. “Ain’t no doubt about that. But I got a question. What if the kingdom’s foe turns out to be the king hisself? Who you gonna oppose then?”
Aidan didn’t answer. “I’m just saying,” continued Dobro, “a king sends the kingdom’s best men out to die for no good reason, maybe he ain’t much a friend to his own kingdom.”
“I’ll never oppose my king,” Aidan said firmly, in a tone that made it clear he wasn’t going to discuss the matter any further.
“That’s fine,” answered Dobro. “But it looks to me like your king is opposing you. Ain’t no cause to get angrified at me.”
Aidan’s anger subsided. It had been his choice to come to Feechiefen. He had no illusions about King Darrow. Sure, the king believed he was sending Aidan to his death. But it was the king’s melancholy, not the true king, that made that decision. Things would be different when he returned to Tambluff Castle with the frog orchid. The king’s melancholy would melt away, and things would be as they should be.
Aidan changed the subject. “I’ve heard stories about he-feechies leaving their family bands to join Chief Larbo’s band at Bearhouse. Has anybody from Gergo’s band gone over?”
Dobro nodded slowly, his eyes cast down. “Yeah,” he said. “Remember Benno Frogger?”
“Yeah,” answered Aidan. “Sort of a show-off, if I remember right.”
“That’s the one,” said Dobro. “He picked up and left one day. Said folks in Gergo’s band didn’t ’preciate him. Since when I was supposed to ’preciate tomfoolery and show-offiness, I don’t know, but that’s what he said. Said he was going to Bearhouse where a man’s free spirit was ’preciated.
“I don’t believe poor Benno knew what he was flapping his jaws about. Some strange feechies had been showing up around Bug Neck. I believe he got all that palaver about free spirits and ’preciation from them strangers.
“Benno’s mama asked me to run him down, to tell him he was a thick-headed jaybird and drag him home if I had to. I caught up with him and tried to talk sense to him. He just looked at me kind of blank, the way a possum does.
“Then he pulled a knife on me. Not a stone feechie knife, neither, but a cold-shiny knife. I asked him where he got such a thing, and the answer he gave me was mighty peculiar. He said it was a present from the Wilderking.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was well past nightfall when the swamp council convened. A large group of the participants had gone fishing and didn’t come back until it was too dark to see what they were doing. Others had spent the late afternoon napping in the island’s big oak trees and had to be rousted out.
A cold but satisfying supper of duckweed and duck potatoes was served, and the seventy or so swamp councilors lolled around the smoking village fire for awhile, not saying much. Aidan wondered when they would get down to business.
Hyko stood at last. “We got a lot to talk about tonight,” he said, “so I reckon we ought to get this here swamp council started.”
“Awww,” complained a voice in the crowd. “We just got here!”
“We ain’t even had no entertainment yet.”
“I just figured,” said Hyko, “that we might skip the entertainment tonight and get straight to the confabulation.”
A loud and growing grumble arose, and Hyko could see he would have an uprising on his hands if he didn’t give in. “All right, all right, all right!” he shouted. “What do you want to do? Fistfights? Contests?”
“How ’bout a feechiesing?” came the voice of Orlo.
A chant rose up from the crowd: “Fee-chie-sing! Fee-chie-sing! Fee-chie-sing!” They stomped in time with the chant. Three sweet gum logs were dragged in and laid side by side to form a small stage called a singstump. Chief Gergo’s band, the Bug Neck boys, had a reputation throughout the swamp for putting on the best feechiesings, and the other feechies urged them toward the front.
Branko was the first to mount the singstump. “If it don’t make you boys too lonesome for your sweethearts,” he began, “I thought I’d sing a little love song.” With nods and hoots the audience encouraged him to proceed.
“Sing on,” called one of the Coonhouse feechies. “If I can’t have my little love-turtle by my side, a love song is the next best thing.”
“Sing on!” echoed the rest of the assembly.
Branko clasped his hands over his heart and sang the lilting tones of a feechie love song: My sweet feechie girl is the swamp’s finest pearl- A treasure, and man, don’t I know it. And I really do think that she loves me, too, Though she don’t always know how to show it.
Her brown eyes are dark like a loblolly’s bark.
Her skin is as smooth as a gator.
The one time I kissed her, she knocked me cold, mister.
But nothing could cause me to trade her.
She smells just as sweet as a mud turtle’s feet. Her hair is as soft as a possum. Once I walked by her side, but she knocked me cross-eyed. It took me a week to uncross ’em.
Her voice is as pleasin’ as swamp lily season She talks kind of froggy and crickety. Once I give her a rose, and she busted my nose. My sweetie can be right persnickety.
I’ll give you this warning: You mess with my darling, I’ll whop you a right, then a left. And if that ain’t enough, or if you’re extra tough, I might let her whup you herself.
Cheers and applause echoed in the trees. “That was beautiful,” called Jerdo. “Gets better every time I hear it.”
“If that song don’t describe my little Hudu all over…” began a member of the Scoggin Mound delegation, but he broke off and dabbed at one eye and then the other with the back of a fist.
“Quick, somebody,” called Orlo, “sing something merry, like a hunting song. This feller’s done got lonesome for his sweetheart.”
“Where’s Doyno?” somebody asked. “Doyno, sing the one about your cousin Mungo.”
“Yeah, ‘Mungo and the Bear,’” shouted another feechie voice. “We ain’t heard that one since day before yesterday!”
Doyno, happy to oblige, climbed onto the makeshift singstump and without further ceremony launched into his signature song, a ballad about his relative’s epic struggle with a great black bear. Every feechie in the camp knew all the words by heart, but they joined in only on the refrain: The scrape was fresh upon the tree,