by Jessie Haas
“It’s on my desk,” Kris said. “You can just go get it. I’ve got work here.”
“I could help …” Phillip said. He often came on the weekend, often helped, but he was never sure if he should be taking the work from Kris, and right now he wasn’t very sure of his welcome. The place was so attractive, though, with its neat garden beds, the cold frames, the berry bushes—so fruitful, so loved and utilized, unlike the featureless lawns of most nearby houses—that he had to try and stay.
Aunt Mil looked thoughtfully at him and then at the wheelbarrow. “Yes, you could help. You could fill this with leaf compost and dump it next to a rosebush—”
“And keep doing it till you drop!” said Kris with a sudden laugh, looking around the yard at the many unmulched bushes.
“And keep doing it as long as you wish to,” said Aunt Mil, giving her a quelling look.
The composted leaves were black and crumbly, pleasant to handle. And the atmosphere in the little brown yard was pleasant, too: not much talk now, but an easy feeling and no stares from Kris. Phillip hoped it was going to last.
The sky was stony gray above them, and the day seemed to grow colder as they worked. Phillip’s hands were red and his nose dripping before Aunt Mil decided it was enough.
In the living room, with a cat on his lap and his hands warming around a mug of cocoa, Phillip listened to the talk: dog training and Kris’s father.
“I don’t get it,” Kris said. “All of a sudden he’s really interested in Diana, but he won’t admit it. He talks about this stuff at supper like it was an abstract concept, but it’s always relating to something I did with her a few days before—and I don’t know how he knows. Do you think he’s spying on us?”
Aunt Mil shook her head. “He’s quick enough to pick it up from day-to-day observation.”
“But why is he interested?”
“Can’t help it,” said Aunt Mil. “He’s interested in nature, and he’s interested in you. You’re the favorite child, you know.”
Kris had just filled her mouth with a gingersnap, but she managed a profoundly incredulous sound.
“Oh, yes. You do things. Greg is all camouflage, and Amy is—who knows? But you and your father are very much alike.”
“We are not!”
“You wouldn’t see it, of course.” Aunt Mil turned to Phillip. “And what have you been up to?”
Caught off guard, Phillip could only stare blankly back at her. What had he been doing? He glanced at Kris.
“Don’t ask me,” she said lightly.
“Um—” Phillip groped. “Ah, my sister’s home for the weekend. With her new boyfriend.”
“And you’re here,” said Aunt Mil.
“Yes,” said Phillip, wondering if perhaps it was time to go. But it wasn’t time to get the kittens yet, and besides, here were two people who would thoroughly appreciate Derek. He began to explain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Phillip arrived at the clinic in the early afternoon, a little girl and her mother were leaving. Behind them Dr. Franklin held the door, beaming, ushering them on their way. The mother led a dachshund and wore a dazed, slightly dubious expression. The little girl carried a kitten.
It was one of his kittens. He could tell from the new, shining look in the girl’s eyes how she treasured the kitten against her chest. And he could tell by the guilt-stricken look on Dr. Franklin’s face when he glanced up and saw Phillip.
“Nice kitten,” he said to the girl. She didn’t hear him—on cloud nine, in love. Little girls could be so intense. Dr. Franklin heard, though, and flushed a deep red on the few inches of face visible above his beard. Then he stared hard at Phillip and saw he was being teased.
“You shit, Johnson!” he murmured under his breath, waving a hearty good-bye to the unresponsive pair.
“You could get in big trouble like that,” Phillip told him, going inside. “Giving away other people’s animals!”
“So look me dead in the eye and tell me you really wanted three kittens!” They passed through the empty waiting room, where Sharon was on the phone. She caught Dr. Franklin’s eye and scribbled a note on her pad. “Cassels canceled. Free 20 min!”
“Great, thanks,” said Dr. Franklin, swooping past the desk. “You want combination shots for these guys, Phil?”
“Um—”
“I’ll only charge you the cost of the serum,” Dr. Franklin assured him. “You’re on my free twenty minutes.”
“Can they have a rabies shot?”
“Too young.” Dr. Franklin scooped out the two remaining kittens. They burst into purr, like far-off motorcycle engines.
Phillip glanced into the cage of Mrs. Farley’s cat. It was empty.
“Where—”
“Dead,” said Dr. Franklin.
“Oh. Um … when?”
“This morning.” Dr. Franklin plunked the kittens down on the polished table. “Hold these guys, will you, Phil? Don’t just stand there with your hands hanging down!”
Phillip corralled the kittens and stood looking down at them. Their eyes were changing color. Earlier they had been grayish buff, like the inside of a blueberry. Now they were clearing and becoming yellow, losing that perpetually astonished look. Tigers; all the stripes they would ever have were crowded onto their fat little bodies.…
“Leukemia shots, too,” he said, when Dr. Franklin came back.
“You want them tested?”
“No, just shots.” What was he going to do if they had leukemia—kill them? They could have three years of good life. “Has Mrs. Farley come yet?”
“Mm-hmm.” Shot for one kitten, shot for the other; Dr. Franklin’s hands were steady, his face perfectly concealed behind the beard. He turned away now to get the leukemia shots.
“Are you going to be in trouble?” Phillip asked.
Dr. Franklin didn’t pretend not to understand. He stopped moving, with his back to Phillip. After a minute he sighed, and his shoulders dropped. “No,” he said. “She didn’t suspect.” He turned around. “Let me test them, okay? Let’s not spread this disease any further.”
“They won’t be with other cats—”
“You can’t know that. No charge.”
“It’s not the money—”
“Oh—so you just don’t want to know! Can you live like that, Phil?”
Hell, yes! thought Phillip, looking away. Everybody lives like that! Ignorance is bliss, remember? He could feel Dr. Franklin’s gaze upon him. The guy never gave up.
“Oh, go ahead!” he said.
“Good!” Dr. Franklin turned back to his table for a syringe. “I wouldn’t worry, by the way. The rest of the litter have all been negative. And anyway, it’s not like you love them yet.”
“True,” said Phillip, letting one kitten go free for a moment and holding the other, so Dr. Franklin could draw blood.
But it wasn’t true, really. He loved kittens immediately, without needing to become acquainted. To a kitten, everything was fresh, everything amazing. And everything was potentially fun—a toy, very likely, a wonderful game.
“I like them pretty well, actually.”
Dr. Franklin looked up and made a face. “Do you know how many kittens there are in the world?” he asked. “All alike.”
“So?”
“So—so I don’t know. What’s one kitten, more or less?”
“I don’t know. Why did you take one home?”
“I cooked it and ate it for supper, Johnson! Don’t be a wise-ass!”
Phillip collected the second kitten, which was exploring a nearby cabinet. He was reminded, suddenly, of his father finding a nest of kittens in the barn. Generation after cat generation this occurred, season after season. He remembered the smile on his father’s hard, tanned outdoor face, the jaw glittering with stubble. It was as if he had just discovered something that proved once and for all the goodness of life.
“There,” said Dr. Franklin. “We’ll dock your pay next week for this. You got a carrier?”
“No, I’ll take them in my bike basket.”
Sharon poked her head through the door. “Hugh, Mike Andrews is here with his dog.”
“Okay.” Dr. Franklin scooped up a kitten and led the way through the waiting room. “Be right with you, Mike.” He treasured the kitten against his chest, exactly as the little girl had, except that his expression was one of loving cynicism. Phillip had seen exactly that look in the eyes of a mother cat when her kittens were no longer new.
“They gonna be warm enough?” Dr. Franklin glanced at the goose bumps on his arm, then at the milky November sky. “Wait a minute, I’ll give you an old shirt.”
The flannel shirt he brought from his station wagon didn’t look all that old. He helped Phillip tuck it around the kittens. One sat squarely in a pot-pie tin, and the other had started to tear into the plastic bag of cat food. Phillip took the bag away and tucked it into his pocket.
Dr. Franklin glanced curiously at these arrangements and then off at the sky. “Good luck, Phil,” he said. “If you need anything … you know …”
“Thanks,” said Phillip, and mounted his bike. He pushed off amid the loud, excited mewing of kittens calling for help.
They cried the whole long climb from the clinic to the high school driveway and beyond, along a road that became smaller and emptier and wilder and was completely unfamiliar to Phillip. He had never gone past the high school, even once.
It was a very different world from the one below. There were few houses, only thick woods on either side or weedy pastures. The farm was near the school, Phillip knew, but the road seemed to be carrying him miles out into the countryside. He was about to turn back when he came to a crossroad.
He stopped and looked all three ways. The roads seemed empty and devoid of meaning. He saw no sprinkling of manure, such as a spreader trails behind, and though a fresh, cold breeze was beginning to blow, it carried no cow or silage scent.
Almost at random he chose a road and pushed along it. It wound uphill and at last curved into a very small village—four houses and a little store with a gas pump out front. Phillip turned back.
Now he heard screeching tires and a loud, unmuffled engine, a long way off. It panicked him. Ever since he’d turned off the main thoroughfare, the roads had been empty. He pedaled madly for a hemlock up ahead and slipped behind its heavy boughs just as a sports car squealed around the corner. It ripped past him without pause.
He rested there awhile, listening to the jays and to the kittens, watching the vast, empty sky. Tiny white clouds made delicate patterns across the gray. After a while he heard another car and waited for it to pass before coming out.
At the junction again he tried another road, not very hopefully. How different this was from his aimless walk of last week, which had brought him to precisely the right spot in the world, as in a dream.… As in a dream.
He had dreamed that house once before. Perhaps he was going mad and had simply walked out of school into a dreamworld. Now awake, cycling down empty roads under a cold white sky, he was looking for something that did not exist, losing himself. His mind was going empty as the roads, cold as the sky.…
He felt the blood drain from his face. A bar of black started to rise from just below his vision, his head tilted helplessly—
Schplock!
As if at the flip of a switch, the light came back on inside his head. He looked around in confusion, braking slightly.
Schplock! Now the tire was streaking greenish brown before his eyes, and a familiar smell rose. He had entered a valley. A wooded bluff rose on his right, out across a dreary, stubbled cornfield, and ahead, peeking above a grassy knoll, was the top story of an old red barn. What he had just ridden through was cow manure.
Suddenly he was in the middle of the familiar scene. The barn lights were on now, the radio playing and the milking machines at work. Bony black and white backs of cows showed through the row of small square windows. The collie raced toward him with its silly, high-pitched woof.
“Chipper!” a woman yelled from the barn doorway. The dog, still expressing its doubts, circled back toward her. Phillip lifted a hand in greeting and thanks and swooped around the bend, along the rutted road that led out through the cornfield. Now that the dog was quiet, he could hear the kittens hissing.
“Sorry, guys,” he said. “Not long now!”
The bike bumped slowly over the wet ruts and ridges. There was frost inside those ruts. He could feel it crunch and give, with a texture like chocolate-oatmeal no-bake cookies.
“I’m hungry!”
“Mewp! Mewp!”
And you’re whacked, Johnson! That wasn’t the kind of thing he’d say aloud, even to himself. But to be cycling cheerfully along now, over the ruts and puddles of this ugly farm road, when minutes ago he had nearly fainted from thinking he was crazy—yes, whacked. Not too extreme to say that.
At last he reached the house, knelt at the cold hearth, and opened the bike basket. The kittens looked up, eyes huge and silky whiskers curved forward. One cried. Phillip saw into its perfect little mouth: white, sharp teeth and rosy tongue. He lifted them out onto the floor.
They skulked around the bike basket, tails fluffed, ears flattened, met each other at the corner of the basket, and hissed.
Now they made wider circles, gradually growing taller and sleeker. Then a mouse rustled in the leaves beneath the kindling pile. Both kittens were there instantly, looking and listening so hard that their ears quivered, their whiskers quivered. Misfortune was forgotten. Phillip had to smile.
He took out the two dishes and filled one with cat food. The kittens’ ears twitched toward the sound. They glanced partway, divided between the certainty of cat food and the mysterious lure of mouse. Then the smell reached them, mouse was forgotten, and they were crunching.
Phillip went to the stream and filled the other pie dish with water, got it back to the house without spilling more than half. The bike basket could be their bed. Phillip fluffed up Dr. Franklin’s shirt and, when that still seemed meager, reluctantly added his own sweater to the nest.
Instantly he felt cold. Only a turtleneck for the long ride home … He almost took the sweater back but looked at the kittens, exploring in a corner with their pencil-point tails at half-mast, made a disgusted face, and didn’t.
“See you tomorrow,” he said. “Stay in here, okay?” He picked them up and felt the purrs vibrate through their round, sturdy bodies, kissed them, and put them in the box. Surprise! Oh, wonder! said their wide eyes, and they kneaded the wool for a few seconds. But then adventure called, and they jumped out again.
“Okay, but that’s your bed!” Phillip told them. “Bye!” He closed the door tight behind him and remembered the back door, standing open. He said in a scolding voice, “You guys need names!”
CHAPTER NINE
He walked swiftly down the hill. Gravity alone moved his legs. He was loose-jointed and passive.
And invisible. He could see the black bulk of tree trunks and lighter spaces in between, and he could see mysterious shapes, like lurking bears, which turned out to be rocks or stumps. But it was mainly, suddenly, dark, and all he could see of himself was the white flash of sneakers, far below. Between his head and his feet stretched a long, dark, empty space.
Very empty, said his stomach, turning around and looking within itself for something to digest.
At the farm they were still milking. Phillip paused in a square of light from a window and flipped the tiny generator that powered his headlight into position against the back tire. When he pushed off, it cast a thin beam ahead of him, like a flashlight, wavering with the strength of his stroke.
Beyond the crossroad a few cars began to pass him, some roaring by, others creeping uncertainly, bewildered by the wobbling light. A man yelled, “Think anybody can see you, asshole?”
Ahead the sky glowed, unwholesome grayish orange, and soon he could see the swift car lights, white and red. Almost home.
They were al
l at the kitchen table, looking at him. Even his father was looking.
“Phillip, where have you been?” cried his mother.
Phillip glanced at the clock on the wall. Six-thirty.
“I … got lost,” he said, to the front of eyes. Carrie’s narrowed. Better than anybody else, she knew when he was lying.
“You’re not even wearing a sweater! Do you want to catch your death of cold? You’re old enough to know better, Phillip!” Angrily his mother got up from the table. “Get in the shower and then put a sweater on. Honestly!”
Phillip slid out of the room, away from the eyes. His mother’s were only angry, but Carrie’s were like weapons, and Derek’s laughed in a nasty, teasing secret way.
His father’s eyes, too, tired but a little curious. Least of all could he bear his father’s eyes upon him.
He knew what would happen after supper and postponed it as long as possible. First, he helped wash the dishes. Then he settled down in the living room, face turned toward the murmuring TV, and listened to Derek talk about himself. But his head was swimming with exhaustion. Carrie went out to the kitchen to get a snack for Derek, and Phillip slipped off to bed.
By the time she walked in he was under the covers. She closed the door behind her.
“You little creep, Phillip!”
“G’night, Care!”
“No, you listen to me!” She leaned over the bed. Phillip remembered what it was like when she was his big sister and could frighten him. “Why do you have to be such a little jerk? Don’t you think Mom’s got enough to deal with right now?”
Here we go again. Shelter Carrie. Shelter Mom. For God’s sake, shelter Dr. Franklin, and Dr. Rossi! “It was six-thirty, Care!”
“It was dark!”
“So? There aren’t any bears out there!”
“You know what I’m talking about, you little crud-ball!” She was getting more furious by the second, as none of her angry words killed him. In the old days she’d have jumped on him any second now, pinched him hard, or given him a knuckle punch. Now she wouldn’t do that, but she’d do something, and as Phillip lay there, smiling his most irritating smile, he wished he knew what. Maybe he should just give up before she hurt him.
