Every Living Thing

by Cynthia Rylant

  When Harry entered junior high school, though, he didn’t come by the candy and nut shop as often. Nor did his friends. They were older and they had more spending money. They went to a burger place. They played video games. They shopped for records. None of them were much interested in candy and nuts anymore.

  A new group of children came to Mr. Tillian’s shop now. But not Harry Tillian and his friends.

  The year Harry turned twelve was also the year Mr. Tillian got a parrot. He went to a pet store one day and bought one for more money than he could really afford. He brought the parrot to his shop, set its cage near the sign for maple clusters and named it Rocky.

  Harry thought this was the strangest thing his father had ever done, and he told him so, but Mr. Tillian just ignored him.

  Rocky was good company for Mr. Tillian. When business was slow, Mr. Tillian would turn on a small color television he had sitting in a corner, and he and Rocky would watch the soap operas. Rocky liked to scream when the romantic music came on, and Mr. Tillian would yell at him to shut up, but they seemed to enjoy themselves.

  The more Mr. Tillian grew to like his parrot, and the more he talked to it instead of to people, the more embarrassed Harry became. Harry would stroll past the shop, on his way somewhere else, and he’d take a quick look inside to see what his dad was doing. Mr. Tillian was always talking to the bird. So Harry kept walking.

  At home things were different. Harry and his father joked with each other at the dinner table as they always had—Mr. Tillian teasing Harry about his smelly socks; Harry teasing Mr. Tillian about his blubbery stomach. At home things seemed all right.

  But one day, Mr. Tillian became ill. He had been at work, unpacking boxes of caramels, when he had grabbed his chest and fallen over on top of the candy. A customer had found him, and he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

  Mr. Tillian couldn’t leave the hospital. He lay in bed, tubes in his arms, and he worried about his shop. New shipments of candy and nuts would be arriving. Rocky would be hungry. Who would take care of things?

  Harry said he would. Harry told his father that he would go to the store every day after school and unpack boxes. He would sort out all the candy and nuts. He would even feed Rocky.

  So, the next morning, while Mr. Tillian lay in his hospital bed, Harry took the shop key to school with him. After school he left his friends and walked to the empty shop alone. In all the days of his life, Harry had never seen the shop closed after school. Harry didn’t even remember what the CLOSED sign looked like. The key stuck in the lock three times, and inside he had to search all the walls for the light switch.

  The shop was as his father had left it. Even the caramels were still spilled on the floor. Harry bent down and picked them up one by one, dropping them back in the boxes. The bird in its cage watched him silently.

  Harry opened the new boxes his father hadn’t gotten to. Peppermints. Jawbreakers. Toffee creams. Strawberry kisses. Harry traveled from bin to bin, putting the candies where they belonged.

  “Hello!”

  Harry jumped, spilling a box of jawbreakers.

  “Hello, Rocky!”

  Harry stared at the parrot. He had forgotten it was there. The bird had been so quiet, and Harry had been thinking only of the candy.

  “Hello,” Harry said.

  “Hello, Rocky!” answered the parrot.

  Harry walked slowly over to the cage. The parrot’s food cup was empty. Its water was dirty. The bottom of the cage was a mess.

  Harry carried the cage into the back room.

  “Hello, Rocky!”

  “Is that all you can say, you dumb bird?” Harry mumbled. The bird said nothing else.

  Harry cleaned the bottom of the cage, refilled the food and water cups, then put the cage back in its place and resumed sorting the candy.

  “Where’s Harry?”

  Harry looked up.

  “Where’s Harry?”

  Harry stared at the parrot.

  “Where’s Harry?”

  Chills ran down Harry’s back. What could the bird mean? It was like something from “The Twilight Zone.”

  “Where’s Harry?”

  Harry swallowed and said, “I’m here. I’m here, you stupid bird.”

  “You stupid bird!” said the parrot.

  Well, at least he’s got one thing straight, thought Harry.

  “Miss him! Miss him! Where’s Harry? You stupid bird!”

  Harry stood with a handful of peppermints.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Where’s Harry?” said the parrot.

  “I’m here, you stupid bird! I’m here!” Harry yelled. He threw the peppermints at the cage, and the bird screamed and clung to its perch.

  Harry sobbed, “I’m here.” The tears were coming.

  Harry leaned over the glass counter.

  “Papa.” Harry buried his face in his arms.

  “Where’s Harry?” repeated the bird.

  Harry sighed and wiped his face on his sleeve. He watched the parrot. He understood now: someone had been saying, for a long time, “Where’s Harry? Miss him.”

  Harry finished his unpacking, then swept the floor of the shop. He checked the furnace so the bird wouldn’t get cold. Then he left to go visit his papa.

  A Pet

  The year she was ten, Emmanuella—Emma for short—begged so hard for a Christmas pet that her parents finally relented and gave her the next best thing: a goldfish. Her father, who was a lawyer, had argued for years that money could buy better things than flea collars, that Emma did not need a pet, that Emma had seen too many Walt Disney movies. Her mother, also a lawyer, argued that Emma should spend time with her viola, not with an animal. But that December, her parents decided to end the debate. They bought a goldfish and an aquarium from a young man who was moving out of town. They got the goldfish cheap because used goldfish are hard to unload onto someone else, but mainly because this particular goldfish was old and blind.

  Even Emma’s parents couldn’t stoop to giving her a used aquarium with a used fish in it on Christmas morning, so, instead, on the tenth day of December they put the tank in her room, where she found it after school.

  When Emma dropped her books on her bed, she took one look toward the corner and said, “What on earth?” At first she couldn’t even imagine why an aquarium would be in her room. The word “fish” was so far away from the word “pet.” But her parents explained cheerfully that indeed the fish was the pet she had asked for, and Emma understood ruefully that it would be a fish or nothing.

  The fish came already named by its former owner, who had called it Joshua. Emma didn’t mind the name. In fact, for a wrinkled, sightless, overgrown goldfish, most names just wouldn’t have seemed right. Joshua, at least, was a natural name—old and natural.

  In time, Emma came to like the fish after all. At night, with the water glowing blue and Joshua moving serenely—reflections of yellow and gold and orange—above the pink gravel, it seemed to Emma she had never seen anything so pretty. She watched her aquarium the way astronomers watch stars.

  And Emma couldn’t help becoming fond of Joshua. The white, creamy film covering his eyes made him look always confused and at loose ends. He sometimes made bold dashes around the tank as if he had some purpose in life, a job to do. On other days, he lolled about lazily, barely moving his fins, depending more on the water than on himself to keep his body afloat. Those lazy days, he had a habit of bumping his head into a plastic plant or colliding with his castle.

  Emma watched him and felt she knew him. When she raised the squeaky lid of the aquarium to shake some shrimp flakes onto the water, Joshua jumped up and came to the top, just as cats and dogs will come running when their food dishes are being filled. Joshua had to guess where the flakes were as they lay on the surface, and he took several gulps of water when he missed. Emma laughed at him.

  Joshua had lived with Emma nearly five months when one day in April she noticed Joshua’s tail fin look
ed shabby, like a hair comb that was missing some teeth.

  The next day his tail fin looked worse, and he wobbled when he swam, as if he needed a cane.

  Emma was growing worried.

  Then, the third day, there were white spots on Joshua’s scales. He leaned his body against the side of the tank and rested. He did not dash and he did not loll. He leaned and rested.

  Emma rushed to the pet store after school and brought home a box of medicine. In the aquarium Joshua lay on his side. Sometimes he tried to move to a different part of the tank, but he couldn’t swim and he just fell over again.

  Emma dropped two pills into the water.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Late into the night, Emma watched as Joshua lay ill. Sometimes she cried. Once she sprinkled some shrimp flakes into the tank, but they just floated down to the bottom, settling on the gravel around Joshua.

  In the morning, Joshua was dead. Emma found him floating on top of the water when she woke up. When she lifted him out of the water in the net, it surprised her how heavy he was. He was as large as her hand, and it surprised her because she had never held him.

  For a few moments, she petted him, as she had not ever been able to do. Then she buried him in the backyard, along with his castle. Her parents watched her from a window, inside the house.

  Spaghetti

  It was evening, and people sat outside, talking quietly among themselves. On the stoop of a tall building of crumbling bricks and rotting wood sat a boy. His name was Gabriel and he wished for some company.

  Gabriel was thinking about things. He remembered being the only boy in class with the right answer that day, and he remembered the butter sandwich he had had for lunch. Gabriel was thinking that he would like to live outside all the time. He imagined himself carrying a pack of food and a few tools and a heavy cloth to erect a hasty tent. Gabriel saw himself sleeping among coyotes. But next he saw himself sleeping beneath the glittering lights of a movie theater, near the bus stop.

  Gabriel was a boy who thought about things so seriously, so fully, that on this evening he nearly missed hearing a cry from the street. The cry was so weak and faraway in his mind that, for him, it could have been the slow lifting of a stubborn window. It could have been the creak of an old man’s legs. It could have been the wind.

  But it was not the wind, and it came to Gabriel slowly that he did, indeed, hear something, and that it did, indeed, sound like a cry from the street.

  Gabriel picked himself up from the stoop and began to walk carefully along the edge of the street, peering into the gloom and the dusk. The cry came again and Gabriel’s ears tingled and he walked faster.

  He stared into the street, up and down it, knowing something was there. The street was so gray that he could not see. … But not only the street was gray.

  There, sitting on skinny stick-legs, wobbling to and fro, was a tiny gray kitten. No cars had passed to frighten it, and so it just sat in the street and cried its windy, creaky cry and waited.

  Gabriel was amazed. He had never imagined he would be lucky enough one day to find a kitten. He walked into the street and lifted the kitten into his hands.

  Gabriel sat on the sidewalk with the kitten next to his cheek and thought. The kitten smelled of pasta noodles, and he wondered if it belonged to a friendly Italian man somewhere in the city. Gabriel called the kitten Spaghetti.

  Gabriel and Spaghetti returned to the stoop. It occurred to Gabriel to walk the neighborhood and look for the Italian man, but the purring was so loud, so near his ear, that he could not think as seriously, as fully, as before.

  Gabriel no longer wanted to live outside. He knew he had a room and a bed of his own in the tall building. So he stood up, with Spaghetti under his chin, and went inside to show his kitten where they would live together.

  Drying Out

  Jack Mitchell had fought in a war, run a gas station, preached the gospel on the side and raised two boys. Then his wife left him because she said she wanted to find herself. She went to live on a college campus and told him not to bother her anymore.

  Jack no longer had a war, a gas station, the gospel, the boys or now even a wife.

  He started drinking, spending all his money on whiskey. He’d load up in a bar, then pass out somewhere on the way home. In the morning he’d find himself huddled behind some bushes next to the library or stretched out on the porch of a church. In stinking clothes, he’d drag home, full of shame.

  Jack would then clean himself up, go to church the next Sunday and swear he’d never take another drink.

  But in a week or two, he’d do it all again.

  One night Jack was arrested. A policeman found him lying in a sandbox in the park. Jack had to pay a fine and was ordered by the judge to go to the Veterans Hospital to “dry out.”

  Jack checked himself in the next week.

  The Veterans Hospital was on the edge of town, surrounded by green lawns and bordering a forest. The yellow brick building was old, and inside, on its. walls, were framed mementos of all the wars that had made its patients veterans: pictures of generals and troops, plaques remembering some who had died, framed newspaper articles describing victory in battle, American flags. It was a hospital filled mostly with men; and these men had been lucky enough to survive their wars, but not lucky enough to leave them behind. Many of the patients had missing arms or legs; many suffered with diseases they had caught as young soldiers in foreign countries. And many, like Jack, suffered because they could not stop drinking.

  Jack knew when he checked in that he would not be leaving the hospital for weeks. He would stay until the doctors were satisfied he wouldn’t drink anymore. More than anything, it was giving up his freedom that he hated. Giving up the whiskey would be hard—but feeling trapped inside that hospital meant pure misery.

  When the squirrels came, Jack had been in the hospital about a week and was having an awful time of it. He wanted some whiskey so bad he thought he might go crazy with longing for it. He missed his house and his street and the dark, noisy bars that made him feel safe. He hated himself, hated the other patients, hated the doctors and, especially, hated the hospital ward where he slept. His bed was one of a row of beds filled with men just like him—drunks. He hated his thin, narrow bed, the whole row of thin, narrow beds, and inside his mind he screamed, “Out! Out! Get me out!’“

  At the end of that first week, Jack awoke at dawn. The other men around him lay snoring and sighing in their sleep, and only Jack lay awake. He looked out at the smoky blue morning light and decided he had to escape. He would escape. What could they do to him? Throw him in jail? So what. He felt like a prisoner, anyway.

  Jack lay in his bed, watching the morning come, and thought about the things he had lost in his life. Too much, he thought. Too much.

  Then, as he stared at the window in sadness, he saw something move, just at the edge of the sill.

  He sat up quickly. Some kind of animal. A cat? He reached for his glasses and his pants.

  Jack tiptoed over to the window and looked out to the far edge of the sill. Not a cat—it was a squirrel. A black squirrel. The animal sat on its haunches and looked right back at him.

  Jack leaned against the radiator, barely breathing. Then, while he and the squirrel looked each other over, two more black squirrels jumped from a nearby tree onto the sill. All three animals sat up on their haunches and looked at Jack through the window.

  “Well,” Jack whispered. “Well.”

  The staring among them went on for several minutes, until Jack’s legs got tired and he went back to bed. He fell asleep and when he woke, the three squirrels were gone.

  He felt better, though, and decided to stick it out in the hospital another day. So he talked to the doctors, cried some, ate terrible meatloaf for dinner and in the evening went to bed early, expecting to get up the next morning and just walk out of the place.

  He woke up at dawn again. As soon as his eyes opened, he couldn’t help looking
over at the window before he pulled on his pants and packed his few things.

  All three squirrels again sat on the sill. One had a nut and was gnawing at it furiously, while the other two sniffed around the windowpane.

  Jack put on his glasses and tiptoed over.

  “Well,” he said.

  The squirrels raised up on their haunches when he stood at the window, intently watching him. At first Jack couldn’t figure what to do. Then he decided to feed them.

  He opened the drawer of his bedside table and pulled out a couple of packs of Saltines. When he slid open the window, the squirrels didn’t run away, and when he held out the crackers, each squirrel grabbed one and sat back to enjoy a free breakfast.

  Jack chuckled to himself.

  That day, too, he changed his mind about leaving the hospital. He was a little friendlier to the doctors, and he played a game of cards with another man, a Korean War veteran (Jack’s war was World War II). He also hid some corncobs from dinner inside his pillowcase.

  Jack woke up the next morning and fed the squirrels. They hopped right up to him and reached for the cobs. Two of them ate the food, but the third jumped down into the yard and buried his.

  You’ll never find it again, Jack silently told the squirrel. Boy, are you going to look foolish. He grinned and went back to bed.

  Day after day Jack fed those squirrels. One morning the smallest of the three had a bloody scrape on its back and Jack fed it an extra cracker, then worried about it all day.

  Jack grew stronger with each new morning. After about two weeks, he gave up altogether his plans for escaping. He wanted to stay. His body didn’t torture him for whiskey, he was growing to like the doctors, a few of the men had become important friends to him (he found he enjoyed talking with them far better than he had with his wife) and, most important, he had three squirrels to greet every morning.