A stable isn't a quiet place at night. If you lie in one, in secret, hiding, the way my sister Lisbeth and I did last year, you'll find out a stable at night is the noisiest place. The animals all huff and puff in their sleep - folks aren't the only ones who snore - and they dream, too, you can tell just by listening. And hens talk in their sleep - our henhouse is connected to the barn, and the rooster perches at the door to guard. Only he sleeps real sound, which is not a good quality in a rooster. There's all kinds of little animals in a stable, too, all the cats who live around the farm - seven last count, including one Tom who just visits regular. And mice - or rats, I guess, which is kind of a bad thought when you figure they were rustling in the same straw that Lisbeth and I were hiding in. I don't mind a mouse, but I don't much like the idea of a rat as a bedmate - well, strawmate - especially at midnight.

And then there's the wind, and the weather in general, since this was Christmas Eve and the farm's on the river. Barns have creaks and whistles and buzzings and a whole marching band of sounds they make at night, till you think every nails loose and all those boards are going to come down on your head and they probably won't find you for a week, and then they'll say it was your own fault. On account of sneaking out at midnight, on Christmas Eve. Which would have been a cheating thing to do, and I realized that, except we had a good reason, Lisbeth and me. And I wasn't scared, not really. I mean, I wouldn't be scared now if I did it, because now I'm eleven. But then I was ten, so maybe a little bit, but only on account of the rats. Lisbeth said she wasn't scared at all, and she was eight, but she always says just the opposite of me, and she lies a lot, too, just to get me in trouble, and I wouldn't have brought her except she caught me sneaking out the back door, and she said she'd tell if she couldn't come. You do what you have to in this life, so I brought her along.

It all started with Bobby McEndridge who told me his brother'd told him that he had it for certain from Mr. Anderson, down at Parson's store, who is a knowledgeable man, my daddy says, that on Christmas eve, right at midnight, the cows get down on their knees to pray for the baby Jesus, and the rooster crows just like it's sunrise. Only our rooster's real lazy, and sometimes he waits a while, and we live with it. So I said he was just making a fool out of me, what did he take me for, but Bobby, he said his brother swore it on his grandmother's name, which is more powerful than swearing on your momma's name, and crossed his heart and no fingers crossed, he checked. So we made an agreement, Bobby and me, that each of us would sneak out at midnight and go to the stable and see if it was true. Only I ended up with Lisbeth tagging along, which shows you make a good plan and then things happen.

Now I had a real pocket watch, which my granddaddy gave me for my tenth birthday, and I could just barely see the time, there in the dark, but it looked to me like we had about ten minutes to go, and the rooster was asleep and the cows too. So I began to think about this, pretty fast too. It seemed to me the cows couldn't kneel down to pray, if they were already kneeled down sleeping. And the rooster - being unusually lazy - maybe wouldn't wake up at all, even when any normal rooster would have been up and at 'em, getting ready to crow. Now I think that when you've thought something through, best you can, you have to be a man of action, and not just sit around in a sea of doubt. So I told Lisbeth to go poke the cows and get them on their feet, so they could kneel down again, and I went to take care of the rooster at the door to the henhouse.

Lisbeth did her best, pulling at one of the cows, and pushing her this way and that, till it tried to kick her, and mooed at her to go away. And I went over to that rooster, who was kind of wavering on his perch, and pulled a tailfeather just as hard as I could. And that rooster just fell right off that perch, any normal rooster would have stayed upright but not him, and he hit the stable floor and woke up real mad. So he began squawking and flew up at me, which made me yell - not loud, but sort of a whisper yell - and then the cows got nervous, and began mooing, and the hens picked it up in the henhouse, which naturally set off all three of the dogs, on account of them being good dogs and alert to strange noises. Which we were making, although that had not been our intention.

I think it was around then that we heard the front door slam, and we both sort of dove back into the straw, and tried to burrow under, but Daddy can make it from house to barn in 20 seconds flat when he has a reason, and he was at the barn door before we were half-way hidden, and he lit a lantern. So I stood up, cause I felt stupid there, half covered in straw, and Lisbeth stood up too. And right away she says she tried to stop me, which of course was a lie and that is typical of her, more even now that she is nine. But I didn't say anything, because I was getting ready to give an explanation, so I was thinking pretty fast. The rooster'd gone back to his perch, but he was grumbling a lot, and he kept giving me stares that would've killed me except he was just a rooster.

Well, my mind kept coming up just blank on me, so I ended up telling Daddy - and Momma, who'd arrived too - the exact truth as it happened, about Bobby and his brother and Mr. Anderson, and how I decided to help the cows and roosters do the right thing, them being so sleepy and all. And Daddy looked like he was going to laugh, which I thought was a good sign, only he wasn't sure he should, but Momma was definitely angry. She has strong feelings about folks staying in their beds once they're put there, which is okay but we had a good reason, only maybe not good enough for her, I figured, so then I just shut up. The cows were all standing then, too, like maybe they thought we were going to put them out to pasture at nighttime, just for a change.

So no one said anything for a while, except the chickens, who were still making a ruckus.

Then Daddy began to talk. He said that maybe the legends were true. That when he was a boy, he'd tried to find out as well. But he'd fallen asleep, and granddaddy had found him the next day, and he'd had a cold for two weeks after. But he said a legend is a lot like a beehive - there's sweetness within, but if you try to pick it apart with your bare hands, the way I'd done, it'll rear back and sting you. Which it had, so there was some sense in that. Maybe they kneel down, he said, and maybe they don't - but there's things folks aren't meant to see that animals do, and this is one of them. That sometimes, the wise thing to do is not to watch, but just to let the legend happen if it's going to, all on its own.

And then he told us to go to bed, without even yelling at us, only Lisbeth hit me on the way to the house, so naturally I hit her back, and we got yelled at for that, which is purely routine for everyone involved in the matter.

But as we reached the front door, the midnight chimes from the church sounded, the wind being just right. And that rooster began crowing like a crazy bird, which got the hens going again, and the dogs, and even momma had to laugh at it. And maybe, in the barn with no folks around, the cows were kneeling down. Which proves that Bobby's older brother is a reliable person, and I will go to him with other questions about life.