The Great & the Small

by Andrea Torrey (A. T. ) Balsara

  Pinning the door closed with her body, she grabbed her phone and dialed her mom’s cell number.

  She hung up. She had promised Perrin that she could handle being home alone.

  Dad was at work, and his lab was too far away. Besides, what were they going to do? If whoever was in the basement came up after her, she’d be made into sausages before her folks had even gotten into their cars.

  The scraping started again.

  What about the police? She picked up the phone again, but her finger hovered over it. Whoever or whatever was down there was awfully noisy. Too noisy to be a murderer.

  She put down her phone and eased the door open. Patting along the wall, she found the light switch and flipped it on. She stepped slowly down the stairs and peered into the room. The light bulb cast harsh shadows across the concrete floor. “Hello?”

  Something moved. Ananda stifled a scream. A small lump quivered under the window, in a mess of metal, wood, and fur. Her dad’s trap had caught something.

  She moved closer. The creature’s eyes were half-closed. Soot-grey fur capped its head and ran down its back. White fluff trembled between wire and wood jaws. And then she saw its tail: naked and pale, stretched out like a bristly snake.

  A rat.

  Ananda jumped back. The thing twitched and its eyelids fluttered, but it sank back onto the floor, ribs heaving.

  She crept closer. Her shadow flickered across the creature.

  Its eyes popped open.

  It squealed, thrashing against the trap. Fresh blood seeped onto the concrete, adding to the dried pool already there. Ananda stepped back and the rat went still.

  Wearily it closed its eyes. Its head slumped down.

  What was she supposed to do now? Was it somebody’s pet? It looked like the rat from the market, but that was impossible.

  Ananda leaned forward to see how badly it was hurt. The rat went crazy again. It squealed shrilly, biting at its trapped leg to free itself.

  “Okay! Okay!” she said, and moved back. This was not someone’s pet. It was wild, no matter how it looked. And that meant it might have fleas. Fleas infected with plague bacilli.

  Backing up the basement stairs, Ananda turned and raced out the back door and to the shed. She hauled open the rickety door and scanned the shelves. There were thick gardening gloves. She put them on. A dusty cinder block sat on the shed floor. She picked it up, staggered back a step under its weight, and waddled into the house and back down the stairs.

  Standing over the rat, she gripped the cinder block with both hands. She’d try to make it painless.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “There will be fierce battles and much killing, biting hunger and death.”

  Brother John Clynn, 1349

  Fin couldn’t move. His hind leg felt bitten in two. Some evil thing had its teeth into him. Why didn’t it just kill him? What was it waiting for?

  The floor was cold. A chill crept through his fur, into his bones. The red curtain of pain shifted. He thought, drifting, It’s not so bad…

  The peaceful dark was shattered. Buzzing light split the gloom. Red pain bit into him again. He pressed his eyes closed, trembling.

  A shadow moved over him. Fin opened his eyes a crack and saw two boggle eyes staring down at him. He thrashed against the cold teeth. Bit at his leg to free it. “Help! Help! Papa!” he screamed.

  The bulbous eyes floated away. Panting, Fin stopped, listening. He couldn’t see it, but the thing was nearby. He could hear it breathing. Lifting his nose, he feebly scanned the air and froze. There it was, an odour rank and pungent: two-leg stench.

  The eyes hovered close again, its foul smell filling Fin’s nostrils. He shrieked, “Let me go! Let me go!” yanking at his pinned foot. Once again the ugly two-leg moved back. Was it toying with him? Like a cat toying with a mouse?

  Barely able to make out its blurry shape, Fin threw ultrasonic screams at it, calling it every insult he could think of, but his cries fell like stones, unheard. The thing was too brutish to understand him.

  He was grateful Papa couldn’t witness his shame. He was no Hero of the Tunnels now.

  When the two-leg stood over him one last time, Fin did not feel a thing. He had already fainted.

  Warm water cocoons him. He is suspended in warmth, but something grips Fin around his body, presses along his leg, probes the edges of jagged bone. Pulls it straight. Pain shoots him back into the darkness.

  “Remember, Pip. You must remember,” says Nia. She holds him into her side and curls her tail around him. “You must see. When will you open your eyes and see?” She licks his foot, licks the blood from his leg, licks where bone meets broken bone, pulls him close.

  The two-leg comes into focus. Nestled in a soft towel, Fin peers at it with sleepy eyes. There are bars between him and the two-leg. He is in a cage? Fear clutches at him. But the sounds coming from the two-leg’s large pink mouth are strangely soothing. His eyelids droop. He sleeps.

  “Do you remember, Pip?” asks his mother.

  “Remember what?”

  Something strokes him. Gently. Behind his ear. Soft sounds. A piece of cooked egg is held under his nose. His leg aches, but it is a dull pain. A good pain. It itches.

  It is there again. It looks at him with its enormous eyes. But it has brought more egg.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin…Stalin is who I am in the newspapers and portraits.”

  Josef Stalin, speaking to his son Vasily

  Looking down at the helpless creature, Ananda had known she could not kill it.

  She lugged the cinderblock back out to the shed. “Now what?” she muttered. Rummaging through the shed, she looked for anything that could give her an idea.

  There was a box of dog supplies from Belle, their golden retriever who’d died when Ananda was twelve; no one had been able to give away her things. Inside there was a grooming brush, a folded leash, Belle’s dog collar. But tucked in the bottom of the box was an unopened bottle of flea shampoo.

  Armed with the shampoo, some rubber gloves, and a can of bug spray, Ananda ventured back into the basement.

  The rat hadn’t moved. She could tell it was alive by the feather movement of its ribcage. Dousing herself with the bug spray, Ananda pulled on the rubber gloves, then, crouching over the rat, she examined the trap. Never having used one before, she wasn’t sure how to open it—and how to keep it open.

  There was a wire bar on a spring that was embedded in the rat’s leg. Another long straight wire lay beside it—the pin that held the bar in place and loaded the trap. Carefully, she pried the bar up, trying to hold it open. But the spring was too strong, and the bar snapped back onto the rat’s leg causing fresh blood to flow. The creature was unconscious and didn’t move.

  Ananda looked around the basement until she saw an old pair of running shoes. Again she pried up the bar, but this time jammed the toe of the running shoe under it. It held.

  The rat’s leg, glued to the bar, was now raised off the floor. A cold sweat broke out on Ananda’s body. “You can do this,” she murmured to herself. Gently, she grasped the tiny leg—it was awkward in the rubber gloves—and pulled gently until the leg peeled off. Her breakfast lurched up in her throat. She swallowed several times, gulping air until her stomach settled.

  Gingerly, Ananda picked up the little creature and cupped it in her hand. It looked so forlorn.

  She filled the laundry sink with warm water and squirted the flea shampoo onto the rat’s fur. Using her gloved fingertips, she worked it into a lather. But as Ananda rinsed the soap from its injured leg, she noticed its paw. It was curled over, a thick white scar cresting the top, almost like it had been branded. “I bet you’ve got a story to tell, little guy. If only you could talk.”

  She set it on a towel laid out on the washing machine. Pressing lightly along
its leg, Ananda felt the raw edges of bone lying at sickening angles. She leaned on the sink’s edge with her elbows, her head below her hands, fighting back the wave of dizziness.

  “Just do it,” she said. After she had straightened its bone, she threw up in the sink.

  While the rat was unconscious, Ananda scrubbed out her old guinea pig cage. She pulled out the moving boxes that were still in the cupboard under the stairs then pushed the cage to the back. When she wasn’t there, the boxes would be staged at the front of the cupboard, so no one would see the cage, even if they looked in.

  Wrapping the animal in a small towel, Ananda placed it in the cage and then vacuumed the basement like her life depended on it. Putting the vacuum bag inside a garbage bag, she sprayed it again with bug spray and then ran it outside to the garbage, in case any fleas survived all that.

  The trap was still bloody and needed to be cleaned. Manoeuvring the shoe out, she scrubbed at the blood and the peanut butter her dad had daubed onto the trigger. Next she placed it back under the window. With its trap sprung and all traces of bait gone, it was perfect: an enigma for her scientist father to work out.

  When her parents came home, Ananda said nothing about what had happened. After dinner, Tom went to check the trap. He was frowning when he came back up, wiping his glasses. “I don’t get it. There’s a gnawed hole in the window frame, the trap is sprung, but there’s no rat. Am I missing something? And what’s that funny smell in the basement?”

  Ananda shrugged and said, “Sorry, Dad,” before leaving the kitchen.

  Over the next few days, scraps of dinner—cheese, broccoli, egg, toast—made their way to the basement without Ananda’s parents finding out about the visitor beneath the stairs.

  The little rat began to look more bright-eyed. And although it didn’t go crazy when she approached like it had before, it had ripped off its gauze bandage and would sit, licking its wound, eyeing her suspiciously.

  In honour of having survived her father’s trap, Ananda named the rat Tom Little.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “Let your house be aired out and filled with the smell of herbs.”

  Bengt Knutsson, mid-fifteenth century, on prevention of plague

  Life in the cage was strangely pleasant. Fin’s injured leg knit itself back together, and he’d never eaten so well in his life. The bulbous eyes of the little two-leg became familiar to him. With those eyes came a mouth that made soft sounds and hands that brought bits of cheese, apple, and raisins.

  As he grew stronger, when he heard the two-leg coming he would poke his head out of his nest to see what it had brought him. Sometimes funny snorting sounds would come from its lips and it would bare its teeth. The first time it happened, Fin dived under the towels. But when it happened again and again, he realized the funny sounds, and even the bared teeth, meant the two-leg was happy. What surprised him was that it made him happy too.

  When he felt really silly, he would dart around the cage. Stopping abruptly, he’d bob his head up and down, then zoom to the other side. He’d do that over and over, until the two-leg snorted with laughter. Sometimes he would even laugh, which surprised him even more. Those were good days. But every so often, the little two-leg tried to pick him up, and he’d squeak at its pale claws until they retreated.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?”

  Josef Stalin

  The news was always on at Ananda’s house. She was sick of it. They only reported bad news: “Over forty-three hundred confirmed deaths worldwide, with hundreds of suspected cases being investigated daily…Global hysteria…” Blah, blah, blah.

  She wanted to tell her parents that there was good news, too. That Tommy’s leg was getting better. That the little guy wasn’t so afraid of her anymore and that he’d put on some weight. But she didn’t. They wouldn’t understand. Ananda wasn’t sure she understood. The plague was killing people, and she was nursing a wild rat back to health? It made no sense. But, all the same, it felt right.

  For hours, she sat under the stairs, on the pretext of doing laundry. While the clothes were washing and drying, she sketched him: Tommy eating; Tommy washing his ears; Tommy sleeping. She kept the sketches hidden in her book so her parents wouldn’t see them. And her parents were delighted that Ananda had finally “taken responsibility for some of the housework.” A win-win.

  One day Ananda dangled her fingers in Tom Little’s cage. Usually he ran for cover, but this time he didn’t. His eyes not leaving her hand, Tommy nibbled a cracker. He began to wash himself. Licking his paws, he pulled them down over his ears.

  She moved her fingers a little closer.

  He paused, watching her with alert eyes.

  With the tip of her finger, she brushed against his ear. Tommy trembled for a moment but didn’t run. Gently, so gently, she stroked his head.

  Suddenly Tommy zipped to the other side of the cage, where he stopped and bobbed his head up and down. Zooming to the other end, Tommy stopped and bobbed his head again. Up, down, up, down, like a dance. He streaked the other way, this time running under her fingers like a car going through a car wash. What was he doing? And then Ananda realized: Tom Little was playing.

  She began to laugh.

  Tickling his back as Tommy zipped around, Ananda laughed harder and harder until she burst into an earsplitting coughing fit. With a single leap, Tommy jumped under his towel and hid.

  Ananda cleared her throat, and waited.

  It didn’t take long. The little guy was so curious. He stuck his head out, peeping from under his towel. Ananda tried not to laugh—she really did!—but the towel draped across his forehead made him look like a tiny nun.

  She erupted into another fit of laughter and coughing. Tommy pulled back his head abruptly and the towel flapped shut.

  “I’m s-sorry, Tommy,” she wheezed.

  ***

  One afternoon, Ananda was reading, propped comfortably up in bed, snacks surrounding her like a junk-food buffet. Her mother was out, and the house was beautifully quiet, for once.

  A flash of movement outside her window caught her eye. It was unusual for anyone to be out nowadays, so she craned her neck to see who it was.

  It was George. Ananda tore out of bed and cranked open her window.

  “George!” She waved. George looked over and walked up the driveway.

  Ananda ran to the door and opened it. She suppressed a gasp. George, usually perfect, looked terrible. Her hair looked uncombed, pulled into a messy ponytail. Dark circles framed her eyes.

  “Hi…how are you?” Ananda asked.

  George raised one side of her mouth in a half-smile, as if raising both sides was too tiring. “Hi,” she said.

  “Do you want to come in?” said Ananda, holding open the door, adding, “I have junk food.” She smiled. George shrugged and came inside. She followed Ananda to her room and stood, looking around in silence.

  Ananda suddenly felt awkward. She grabbed a chip bag and said, “Want some?”

  George frowned at the proffered bag, blinked, and shook her head.

  More silence.

  Ananda took a chip and chewed it, its loud crunching reverberating in the tomb-like silence. She swallowed, but swallowed wrong and began furiously hacking. George raised her eyebrows as Ananda waved and choked, “I’m fine…really.” Her face felt hot, and her eyes watered. Still coughing, she sat on the edge of her bed.

  Again, silence loomed.

  Ananda cleared her throat. “So, how are you?”

  George slowly swivelled her head to stare at her. “How am I?” She laughed so unexpectedly that Ananda jumped. The sound was bitter, grating. Like screeching metal.

  Ananda recoiled, but George leaned in, her eyes round.

  “How am I? People are dying, Ananda, tha
t’s how I am. They’re all dying.” Without blinking once, George’s eyes glazed over with tears. Then, like someone had pulled a string that connected her features, her whole face tightened into a knot. She hunched forward, still standing in the middle of the room, holding her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs.

  Guilt flooded Ananda. After the initial shock over Chris Litko, the problems of the world had been firmly locked outside her door. She’d not only locked them out, she’d felt relief that she didn’t have to go to school. Her whole focus had been on Tommy.

  People were dying.

  Tears stung her eyes, but whether from grief or from guilt she couldn’t say. She stood and patted George’s back. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” Her hand felt like a piece of ham, like it didn’t belong to her, as she patted this stranger’s back.

  She kept patting for a minute, but George showed no signs of slowing down.

  “Hey,” said Ananda, “I’ll show you something that’ll cheer you up! Come with me.” She gingerly took George’s hand and led her to the basement door. “You can’t tell anyone. Promise?”

  George said nothing, tears streaming down her face. They walked down to the basement where Ananda positioned her in front of the cupboard, and opened the door.

  She hauled out the boxes and pulled the cord for the light bulb that hung from the low ceiling.

  Tommy raised his head from the towel he was snuggled in, blinking in the sudden light.

  “Look!” Ananda said to the motionless girl. “George, look!”

  George focused on her for a moment, then stooped and looked in. Her eyes went wide. A vein pulsed on her temple.

  Ananda knew right then that she’d made a big mistake. She began to jabber, as the blood rushed to her head. “Ha, ha! I know, he’s cute, and he’s harmless, totally, and his name is Tom Little because I rescued him from my dad’s trap, but he’s not really wild, he’s such a sweetheart, but I named him Tom Little because my dad’s name is Tom and…”