The Clay Head Benediction

by Marty Rafter

asks, not looking at me

  “How about your new backpack... That is something to celebrate”

  “Drug store opens before the liquor store” he says

  “Well, then use the backpack to carry the bottles of mouthwash from the drug store”

  “If I walk into the drug store with a backpack, they will think I’m gonna steal something”

  “I’m surprised they would think that about a person with such great dental hygiene” I say

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It was a bad joke. Anyway, enjoy the backpack. Please tell Ben that someone came by looking for him ok?”

  “I told you. No.” The man says

  Then, I tell him goodbye, but he doesn’t say anything, so I leave and start walking home. On the way, a sad looking prostitute wearing shorts and a thick winter coat tries to make a joke about the box with Ben’s clay head in it, and it somehow being an engagement ring for her. I laugh but try to walk by her as quickly as possible. She probably doesn’t remember, but last year, I tried to give her ten dollars when she propositioned me on the street. When she finally understood that I was just offering the money without an expectation of any services, she got in a really animated argument with me where she claimed I was a cop, and nothing I said could persuade her that randomly giving money to a prostitute would be an extraordinary misuse of police funds. In the end, she crumpled the ten dollar bill into a ball and threw it at me, but I walked away without picking it up.

  When I get back to my apartment, I am met with a horrible smell like maybe a mouse died behind one of the walls. The maintenance guys have been using poison again, so it would stand to reason that that is the likely culprit. Either way, I am too tired to check and I fall into bed, and in a few minutes am totally asleep. At midnight, I am woken from an incredibly bizarre dream where I am in some sort of large animal pen, and my job is to occupy the lions while Coats is in a business meeting. I try to fall back to sleep, but I can’t. So, I decide to try to look around for the source of the horrible smell. I check behind the radiator, but there is nothing there but a clump of dust. Then, I look behind the refrigerator and stove, and in all of the cabinets. I end up cleaning quite bit in the process, but I still don’t find the mouse. So I take everything out of all of my drawers, and everything out of my closet, but there is no mouse. So then I move the bed. Underneath my bed, is a huge cache of magazines that I had picked up from outside of the used bookstore. They were throwing them away, so I took all of them. It was six boxes, and it took me that many trips to get them home since I had already sold my car. But I have never taken the opportunity to read any of them, so I decide to throw them all away. I take each box out to the dumpster, but when I get back from the last trip, I can still smell the decay. So I throw more things away, but still the smell persists.

  Then, as I am emptying my normal trash can, I find the source of the smell. Underneath the can liner, there is the body of a tiny dead mouse. Somehow, it had managed to get itself between the bag and the can, and had died at the bottom. For some reason, the dead mouse made me incredibly depressed. It had probably died of dehydration, or starvation, or fear, but whatever the case, it was a horrible way to die: In the bottom of an inescapable can. Looking at its tiny body, and its soft grey fur, I feel bad about throwing it into the dumpsters. I consider finding a place for a proper burial, but the only peaceful patches of grass are in the park, and at this time of night, I would probably be arrested as a weirdo if I was caught burying a mouse. Then, I remember the cats that the old lady was feeding behind the noodle shop. One of the cats would probably like to eat the mouse, so I wrap it in a paper towel and put it into the refrigerator.

  Then, I try to sleep for a while, but I can’t. At 5:30 I get up, and have another glass of milk and an apple and take a shower. Then I take a long time shaving. William Burroughs said that shaving was one of the things that kept him sane, and I am inclined to agree. Feeling tired but fresh, I collect my things, the head for Ben, and the little mouse in the paper towel, into one of those cloth grocery bags and start walking towards the noodle shop. When I get there, the paper plates from yesterday are empty of their cat food, and the woman has not been there to replenish it yet. I crouch down a little and try to make a noise to call the cats. I had a dog when I was a kid, not a cat, so I don’t really have a good idea of what it takes to call a cat, but I make that little hissing noise that people sometimes do. No cats come. About twenty minutes later, the back door of the noodle shop opens and the old woman starts to come out, but when she sees me, she stops right away.

  “Don’t be afraid” I say. “I’m just here to feed the cats”

  She looks at me suspiciously for a moment, and sort of holds the door in front of her body. So, I smile, and try my best to look totally non-threatening. I must have convinced her because then, she steps out from inside the shop with a bag of cat food in her hand. She fills the plates without looking at me, so I say, “How do you get the cats to come out?”

  “You don’t. Cats come and go when they want to” she says

  “Sounds like a nice life” I say

  “Don’t I know it. What do you have there?” She asks, gesturing to the paper towel in my hand.

  “A mouse. It died in my apartment” I hold the mouse out to her, but she doesn’t look at it very closely

  “Oh, honey, I don’t think they are going to eat that mouse”

  “Why not? I thought cats eat mice”

  “Live mice normally. “ She says

  “I just felt so bad. The poor thing got trapped in the bottom of my trash can…I couldn’t get out. It was dead when I found it. If it was alive, I would have just let it go”

  She gently reaches out and takes the mouse from my hand. Then, she takes a couple of steps towards the dumpster, lifts the lid, and drops the mouse inside.

  “There.” She says

  “Dust to dust”

  “That’s right. Dust to dust. You can help me put some food on these plates if you want” She says, and so I do. It only takes a few minutes, and then we are done. After that, I stand there for a minute trying to think of something to say, but she speaks first,

  “I take care of feeding all of the cats back here. I don’t really need a lot of help, but I bet there are some stray cats near where you live that you can feed”

  “I haven’t seen any. “ I say

  “I’m sure there are some”

  “I saw you putting out food here yesterday”

  “Yep, and I do it every day. I never miss a day, even Christmas. You don’t have to worry about these cats” she says

  “Are you saying I need to find my own cats?”

  “If you want to feed some cats, yes. I feed these cats. And if you are going to feed some cats, you should buy some regular cat food because most cats don’t eat dead mice”

  “I don’t know a lot about cats” I say

  “Well, now you know that they don’t eat a lot of dead mice, and you also know that I feed the cats that eat here, and these cats aren’t hungry, so you don’t have to worry about these cats anymore. Do you understand?” She says

  “Ok. I understand. I will look for my own cats. “I say

  “Good idea, because I don’t really need any help with these ones”

  “Thank you for letting me help you.” I say

  “Ok” she says. “But I don’t need any more help, ok? My husband and son live right upstairs, they help me carry the cat food, and they will look after the cats if I can’t, ok?”

  “Ok. Well, thank you for today, at least” I say, and I start walking off towards the library. It was nice of her to let me feed the cats, but I understand, she was afraid of me. That is how people have to be, afraid. A bartender. … I was that once. For a bunch of years actually, and it was mostly good because people are mostly good. The ones who came in the afternoons were the best, honest people without a lot of other hobbies
who liked something that made their bellies warm and a little bit of companionship. Then there were the kids, who are always accidentally cruel and vain, and some of them will grow out of it and some of them won’t, but there was one young guy: A nice kid, handsome, polite, but a little bit slow. I think he lived with his parents somewhere else past Kittanning.

  He would come into town of Friday nights and hang around the bar. He used to challenge me to arm wrestling matches and tell me about his dad and sister, and you could tell that somebody loved him and took good care of him and probably worried that he wanted to come into town on the weekends, but they trusted him. But he was sweet and kind and trusting, and his family probably figured because they were blessed enough to share life with someone who was that way by nature, that other people were that way too. So he came into town, and made friends with people who weren’t that way. People who needed him to pay for every tab, who secretly laughed at him, who could teach him about the ugly way that it is sometimes with friendship, and that is why I have to find my own cats, because as bad things go, the kid at the bar doesn’t even rank.

  So, I walk up to the library. It is closed, and the picnic benches are empty. I look around cautiously for Coats, but he is nowhere to be seen. So, I sit for a while and think. I still can’t get past the mouse for some reason, I keep imagining the terror it must have felt