by Jessie Haas
Suddenly he straightened, so quickly that the kitten had to scramble and grab hold. “Hey, where’s the other one?”
He looked in the woodpile, rattled the food in the pie dish, called. The only response he got was that the kitten on his shoulder jumped down and began another meal.
Phillip crossed the rotten kitchen floor and looked out the open door toward the brook. The slope was bare and brown. Nothing moved, and when he called, his voice seemed to travel out infinitely, unheard, into the empty woods.
No point in searching. If it was dead, it was dead, and probably eaten, too. If it was just sleeping somewhere, it would emerge and greet him casually and make him feel like an idiot. If it didn’t want to be found, he couldn’t possibly find it.
While he made these calculations, he walked down the slope to the brook and stood there, looking into the woods as far as he could. He called again, hating the flat, hopeless sound of his own voice.
The first kitten bounced down the slope after him. When he saw how little it was, how it had to struggle through tangles of dry grass and leap scrambling onto small rocks, Phillip’s heart sank. He had made a terrible mistake. This was no place for kittens. It would be hard enough for a grown cat to survive. He scooped the kitten up, laid his cheek on its soft fur for a second, and then let it settle on his shoulder, while he crossed the brook in long, hurried strides, shouting, “Hey! Kitten? Hey!” Every small stump or heap of leaves frightened and then disappointed him when he got close enough to see it was not a huddled body. “Hey! Cat!”
Finally he gave up. His toes were freezing inside his sneakers, and he couldn’t tell if the vibrations of the kitten on his shoulder were purrs or shivers. He turned back, looking for the first glimpse of the doorstep. If it were Thea, that was where she would be.
The step was empty.
“Oh, Jeesus, what a day!” He felt tears sting the backs of his eyes. After all the fuss, all the work, the leukemia shots and the lying, the damned kitten had to get killed! He might as well take this one back. The needle was an easier death, probably, than being ripped apart and eaten. He pushed open the front door.
Instantly he heard it—thump-thump—the unmistakable small sound of a kitten jumping down from somewhere. As Phillip watched in angry, convulsive relief, the kitten came around the corner of the room, tail high. “Brrt!” it said, and headed straight for the food dish.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Phillip dropped the one kitten and scooped up the other, so suddenly that it squeaked. He turned it to face him, holding tight as it struggled. “You little stinker!”
Mew! The kitten was slightly alarmed and wanted lunch.
Helplessly Phillip glared at it. He wanted to bawl it out, punish it—damn! He held it, squirming, to his chest. He felt as if a hole had been scooped out there, empty and aching.
“Eee!”
“Oh, all right!” He put the kitten on the floor and watched the two of them eat. The damned kitten was found! Why did he still feel like this?
“It’s not as if you love them yet.” Dr. Franklin’s voice, in memory. “Do you know how many kittens there are in the world? All alike.”
Could he lock them in? One look at the hanging back door, the holes in the floorboards, made clear the futility of that idea. It would be like trying to hold a handful of water, trying to hold life itself, keep everything still at one specific moment of his own choosing. Life leaked through the cracks—a car accident, a lung disease, a war, or just the steady march of time.… He sat down on the hearth, pressing his arms against his cramped stomach. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next morning Kris was in the normal seat, and a place was saved for him. Dan sat with Alice Knapp some distance away. Phillip sat down. Kris found a piece of paper in her notebook and gave it to him. It was yesterday’s history assignment. He sat staring at it.
“I wasn’t on the bus last night,” she said. “Were you?”
“Yes.”
“I would have called, but there isn’t that much. I didn’t think it was worth you coming over.”
“Oh.” Not worth walking two blocks? Not worth escaping for a few minutes from his house, where he spent the entire evening silent in his room, hearing only the television and his mother’s voice?
And anyway, what was going on here? Kris was reducing it to a system, and Phillip knew instinctively that it could not be a system. Any wrongdoing he’d ever gotten away with had been sporadic, occasional.
He’d decided to vary his pattern today, attend history as well as English, and eat lunch with Kris. But she had made an appointment with a teacher. As he was heading to the cafeteria alone, someone said, “Hi, Phillip.” He turned to see a man catching up with him, a familiar face, but only that.
“How’s it going?” asked the man.
“Fine,” said Phillip, warily.
“How do you like our school now that you’ve been here a few weeks?”
“It’s okay.”
The man gave a shallow chuckle. “Only okay—I wish we rated better than that! Look, I like to meet with transfer students, just to get acquainted. How about we make an appointment for sometime tomorrow. Say, one-thirty?”
“I have—”
“You have study hall then. I checked.” The man smiled, narrowing his eyes in a friendly, jokey way that embarrassed Phillip into smiling back. “So—see ya then.” He accelerated down the hall ahead of Phillip, and somebody said, “Hi, Mr. Peabody!” Mr. Peabody, the guidance counselor.
Phillip stood through the slow line to buy a milk and sat down at the last empty table, but his stomach was too twisted for eating. Yesterday Pilewski, today Peabody. Were they closing in on him?
“Mind if we sit here?” Four math team computer geniuses dropped into the chairs around him and continued their conversation. Phillip felt sick. He looked out the sliding door beside him.
The sky was gray, and the sun gleamed palely through the clouds, like a pearl. A wind rattled the stiff brown oak leaves.
“Excuse me,” he said, standing up. None of the computer geeks appeared to notice. He went to the coatrack for his jacket and slipped out the door near the teachers’ smoking area, currently uninhabited. He was blowing off French again, but he couldn’t imagine sitting through it. Besides, he was fucked already. F for fucked.
He crossed the wide lawn and slipped into the trees, still in plain sight. A path was worn there, and Phillip started jogging. With luck, he’d pass for some ski team fanatic, getting a head start on conditioning.… In fact, two ski team fanatics went by him, running easily, their breaths making rhythmic white puffs on the cold air. “Hi,” each said, in passing, and Phillip said, “Hi.”
The trail they followed led straight up the ridge. The two runners scaled it easily, with no visible break in their rhythm. Far to the rear Phillip scrambled up, followed. He stayed near enough to see when they reached the dirt road and turned downhill, like good boys, taking the trail back to school. Phillip paused at the road, fighting the cold air as it seared his lungs. Then he turned uphill.
Still his breath hurt him, but he walked rapidly. Did his father’s breath hurt? He didn’t know—only that it didn’t enrich the blood with oxygen as it should. How would that feel? Like breathing under a blanket, breathing inside a plastic bag … He passed the overlook to the farm and started uphill, his eyes down on the leaves.
Suddenly there were two rhythmic trampings in the woods: his own feet and someone else’s. A fierce jolt of adrenaline rocked his body.
Straight ahead a short, wide man dressed like a soldier, in camouflage and high-laced boots, walked down the road toward him. The man carried a bow, and over his shoulder bristled the feathered ends of arrows. Larger and larger he loomed, as he and Phillip kept walking. Phillip’s eyes were riveted on the black boots, the flashing brass grommets. Closer, closer—he glanced up at the face. Thick glasses, bristling red beard. A second later it registered on his mind that his eyes had just pas
sed over a knife. The knife was short and wide like the man, strong and sharp and short.
“Hi,” said the man, passing.
“Hi,” said Phillip, a little late. They both kept walking, but in a moment, when Phillip paused and looked back, he caught the man turning away.
Quickly he walked on. He saw the wet leaves the man had scuffed up and realized how completely alone he’d always been up here.
He remembered now what he’d been seeing in school for weeks, without giving it a thought: the orange knit caps and orange vinyl vests of deer-hunting season. Bow season came first, and then regular season.
When? This weekend, he thought. The lonely woods would stir with men and boys and gunshots. The abandoned roads and the deer paths would be walked again, for two weeks, and it would not be safe to be out. He’d have to get himself an orange hat … but in case of accident, in case of a shooting by a careless, panicked boy who would run and never tell such a tale on himself, who would ever know where to find him? Another hunter might come upon him later, or perhaps not. Just last month a skeleton had been found in the woods, the remains of a man twenty years gone. He hurried to the gray house. Both kittens greeted him on the doorstep, mewing loudly for their dinner. Orange hats for them, too?
He hitchhiked to the clinic, where Dr. Rossi was tearing up Sharon’s resignation, where Dr. Franklin and Sharon were organizing a greyhound adoption service, where things were for the most part remarkably easier than anyplace else in his life. People told him what to do, and nobody gave him time to think.
At home the sameness of the evening routine, the murmuring television, the hot, stuffy air, swallowed him up. It felt impossible to speak, and anyway, he had nothing to say. Neither did anyone else.
Thea came in late, when Phillip had given up hoping that Kris would call him about the French assignment and was consoling himself with a snack of cold pot roast. Thea rubbed against him briefly and then sat up, hooking her claws firmly into his jeans as she sniffed—reading him like a newspaper. Thoughtful, wide-eyed, she sank back to the floor and brooded. She was the only one around who had a clue about the kittens.
What else did she know about? Phillip wondered. Did Dr. Rossi’s perfume linger? Did he smell less like school or Kris than usual?
Thea sank down, ears back, eyes glaring thoughtfully. Did a picture come into her mind of the kindling he had gathered and the wood he had chopped, of his frantic search through the woods yesterday? Did she have any notion, as she sat there brooding like a gypsy fortune-teller, of the complicated trap he’d set for himself, and when it might be sprung? Could she smell Peabody and Pilewski?
He scooped her up and cuddled her for a moment, against her will. She smelled of fresh air. Her fur trapped it and brought it indoors.…
She squirmed. “Oh, all right!” Phillip put her down. Immediately she rubbed against his leg. No hard feelings.
He shared the pot roast with her, allowing her to crouch on the table beside his plate. They were civilized together. When Thea finished a piece, she would stretch out her paw and stop his hand, halfway to his mouth with the sandwich. He’d pull off another shred of meat and lay it before her, and she would sniff daintily and begin, with a short, eager purr. Thank you. “You’re welcome, Thea.” He kept his voice to a murmur, no louder than the television.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
That night he awoke in the dark, eyes popping open, mind instantly alert, sat up, and turned on the bedside lamp.
Three-thirty in the morning.
Now what? Waking in the middle of the night was a sign of depression, but he didn’t feel depressed now. He felt pissed off, and restless, and trapped.
Get up! That’s what people say they’re going to do when they can’t sleep, but they never do.
As quickly, as precisely as if it were morning, he got out of bed and put on a shirt and jeans.
Real clothes made his waking state more real. He felt like going outside now, and he wondered how quickly he could bike to the gray house. There and back in three hours? He put on socks and padded down the hall to the kitchen.
“Phillip? Where are you going?”
Phillip’s heart almost jumped through the top of his head. He turned to look through the living-room doorway. Wrapped in her bathrobe, his mother sat there at the far end of the sofa. She had the small light on and her needlework in her lap.
“How can you see?” Phillip asked irritably. He flipped on the rest of the lights.
“Where were you going?”
“Fresh air. Can’t sleep. How long have you been up?”
“Oh, a while.” She looked down at her work and carefully set another stitch in another damned duck.
“Why don’t you get some real ducks?”
“I don’t think the neighbors would appreciate—”
“Screw the neighbors!”
“Phillip!”
Phillip made a growl that was meant to sound slightly apologetic and went to the refrigerator. Now he felt tired. Gray spots danced before his eyes.
“Want some hot milk?” he asked. “Make you sleep?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” He closed the refrigerator door and passed the living-room doorway again. “Guess I’ll try to sleep some more.” His mother took another stitch. He had the impression that it was the first she’d taken since he passed out of sight into the kitchen. “Why don’t you go back to bed, too?”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “I can always nap during the day.”
True, thought Phillip, going into his own room. And no wonder she couldn’t sleep! What did she do all day, but sit and stitch, and clean the clean little house? It was nothing for a person like her. He remembered her canning tomatoes, plucking chickens, making enormous suppers for the crew at corn-chopping time, staying up late working on accounts. She should go to nursing school, like Carrie, or marry another farmer.…
In the morning he wondered if it had been the change of weather that awakened him. The sky was clear, the air warmer, and a fresh breeze blew.
On the bus, Dan Morgan and Alice Knapp were sitting together again, talking softly, and he had the greyhound adoption plan to tell Kris about.
It was like setting flame to dry grass. Within minutes she was sketching battle plans. The greyhounds would need temporary foster homes until permanent places were found for them. Kris had every intention of providing one of these homes.
“It’s an ideal situation. Diana can help socialize them, and there are no other pets for them to bother. But that means I can’t—” She stopped.
“Can’t what?” asked Phillip.
“Can’t get a cat,” she answered, after a moment.
“Were you planning to?”
“Oh, you never know!”
He had mostly forgotten his appointment with Mr. Peabody, but there was a note in homeroom to remind him.
He worried a little through English class, but today was the last day of soccer—last day, and a deep blue sky above, golden air that felt more like early October stirring up the leaves. While he stood waiting to be chosen and while he put on his vest, Phillip managed to keep thinking about Mr. Peabody but after that it was perfect.
Again he was opposing Greg, and that was good because Greg forced him to be brilliant. Today it was nothing personal. Greg couldn’t be sure of winning and would rather stay cool. He butted up against Phillip’s position occasionally, as if testing it for softness, but all his goals were made on the other side of the field, and after the game, passing, he said, “You should go out for soccer next year, Johnson.” Phillip startled himself by seriously considering it, as he stood beside the bench zipping his sweatshirt.
“Nice game today, Johnson,” said the coach, also passing. “Hey, Zebrisky, cut that out! Just because we all know you’re an idiot, you don’t have to act like one! Get me?”
Slowly Phillip followed the slowest person. He lagged until the gym doors shut behind everyone else. The coach’s eye was on the usual troublem
akers, and he did not check behind him for stragglers. Phillip pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, put one hand on the bag of cat food in his pocket to keep it from bouncing, and jogged away.
He was more fit than ever in his life, like the boys in survival novels, hardened by their experiences. He admired himself as he climbed the bluff without a pause; maybe not as fast as those ski team runners, but just as steady.
Reaching the dirt road, he did have to stop and catch his breath. Then he walked on, striding rapidly. That was the day, breathing him along so lightly. It was his bare legs, the light breeze, the blue sky. He tried to worry, and indeed, deep in his heart was a worm of unease. But the day wouldn’t let him stop.
“I have an appointment with doom,” he said aloud, and skipped and kicked a stone.
He stopped at the farm overlook. Out across the broad flat expanse, the mud in the fields glistened, and in the barnyard the cattle, stimulated by the mild breeze, bucked clumsily and engaged in ponderous mock battle. The collie barked up at the cat, which washed its whiskers nonchalantly on top of a fence post. With the thaw the smell of manure rose very strongly.
On the road, just as the roof of the gray house came into sight, something stopped Phillip. He almost knew what it was; at least, he knew to turn back a few steps and look at the ground.
The sun symbol, drawn in the soft sand at the side of the road. Phillip stared at it, feeling again the strange thrill. It was like a sign from beyond the veil of the ordinary—order and beauty reaching through the mixed-up particulars of existence to tap him on the shoulder.
It’s cat pee!
He felt the crazy grin on his face, the grin from the old days, when for a couple of people, for a little while, he’d been a ringleader and a total loon. He walked on to the house, remembering those times, then fed his kittens.
“This isn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever done, you know,” he told them. They were busy eating.
