by Steve Vernon
The cat reared its paw back.
“Oh my God it just popped its claw,” Charlie comically yelled back to us, still giggling. “Look out guys. It’s going to kill me.”
Kids always say kill when they have no real idea of what death really is. I knew what death was, because of my Mom and Riley. I also knew there was no way a kid like Charlie or Jeremy would ever know what death really meant, until they had to live through it.
“Maybe he likes you,” Jeremy shouted. “Do you smell like cat food?”
Charlie looked back and grinned.
As he looked back we really could see the cat popping its claws out further, because we could see the claws, even from where we crouched in the hedges so far away. We could see the cat’s paw, suddenly as big as Mr. Thornton’s coal shovel; we could even see the shadow of the paw falling across Charlie’s cheekbone. I was reminded of my Dad’s fly swatter hand hanging suspended over a mindlessly hand washing fly.
I was about to scream when, before the breath was even in my lungs, the cat slammed its paw against the screen.
The screen made a sound like a big steel guitar being slammed by an open palm as the cat shot its claws out like the tentacles of a hydra plant, shooting out like that squirt of medicine old Doc Hawcomber used to shoot out of his hypodermic needle before giving it to you in the arm. Then the cat had hold of Charlie, catching hold of him and hauling him straight through the screen just as slick as April flood water sliding through the gullet of an iron sluice gate.
Then there was blood all over, blood that slowly soaked into the shakes and shutters and screening of the house. We watched it and thought how it should have made some sort of noisy sucking sound, like the sound that bath water makes when it runs down the drain, but it didn’t make any kind of sound at all. It was as silent as the sun drying paint, and maybe that made it all the more scarier, and then the cat began daintily lapping at what was left of Charlie.
Old Mr. Chizmar would have known what to call what was left of Charlie. He would have called it ground chuck, like a bad joke, only right now nobody was laughing.
Then that cat looked up in mid-lap and stared right across the barren front yard, out to where I was crouching with my friends in the wicked thorn hedge.
I heard a sound in my head and it was bigger than I bet you.
It was even bigger than chicken.
And then all at once I wanted to go up to that porch, to see just what had happened to Charlie, for no particular reason at all, just because I’d heard that sound somewhere back in my head.
And as I headed towards the porch I wondered how many of the other kids had also heard that sound. I wondered just how many of those kids behind me were following me up to the porch.
I had a feeling it was all of them.
Only something got in my way, like an invisible knee high push, shoving me back towards the safety of the hedge, and all those kids who were following me turned back as well.
I shook my head, like I’d fallen off my bike, and then I realized what I’d been about to do. I’d been about to walk right up on to that porch, right up to that screen window and let that cat grab hold of me and yank me straight through the screening, just like Charlie.
Then I heard something else.
We all heard it.
We heard barking.
All of sudden we heard barking, like it was coming from a long way off, from out of a cave, or a well hole, or a sewer pipe.
And I kept feeling that herding motion at my knees, like I was being shepherded to safety.
The cat just sat there in the window, glaring and hissing as the barking grew louder and I shuddered to think of what might have happened had I walked on up to that porch.
And then I realized who’d saved me.
“Get him Riley,” I shouted. “Get that damned old cat.”
Another time the other kids might have looked around nervously to see if any adults were listening to hear one of us swear, but this time when I swore it was like when Charlie talked about owl guts, and they all took up the chant like it was some kind of crazy skipping game.
“Get him Riley, get that damned old cat.”
All of us stood in the hedges like soldiers in a trench, shouting like our angry swearing words were hand grenades and bullets, but it was the barking that was doing all the damage.
The barking got so loud that it sounded like a big old timber truck barreling down on us, and then the cat’s eyes abruptly widened, and it screeched as if somebody had thrown a bucket of cold scrub water on its back, and then it just plain disappeared.
Jeremy swears he saw the cat jump down from the window sill in to the house, but I know better than that. I think Jeremy is only kidding himself, so that someday he’ll stop peeing the bed at night when he dreams about what happened to his best friend Charlie.
The cat just up and disappeared, like it was some kind of a ghost, or maybe even worse.
There was a bit more barking after that, and then from out of nowhere, directly in front of the front porch window, a high arc of yellow fluid sprinkled out from midair, landing with a satisfying sizzle-hiss on the front porch floor boards, like spit hitting a hot fry pan.
And I saw those porch floorboards trying to soak that yellow fluid up. Only they couldn’t. I saw those floorboards hacking the pee back on out, like a cat might hack a fur ball, only it couldn’t lose the tattletale stain.
Riley’s territory had been firmly staked out.
“Piss on you,” I hissed. “Piss on you in pussycat hell.”
I told my Dad this story last week, just before he took his long walk up the side of Carpenter’s Hill with his bouquet of quiet red roses.
It had taken me more than two months to finally work up the nerve to tell him.
By then the whole town had finished searching for little Charlie Roundbert, and had decided that he’d probably wandered off somewhere and was eaten by a wild creature, or maybe way laid by a wandering tramp.
I told my Dad, knowing full well that he likely wouldn’t believe a word of it, but he only listened quietly and repeated his warning about the swamp behind the school.
I guess he didn’t figure I needed any warning about the Funnel House.
Then he stepped outside and closed the door and walked up the hill to where my mom slept, and after that I found out that he’d walked the rest of the way up Carpenter’s Hill to where the old Funnel House stood.
He brought his camera, and while he was up there he emptied a whole roll of film.
Two weeks later, after the film came back to Lalonde’s Drugstore, my dad showed it to me.
The cat was in the window, like I’d expected it to be, but sitting on the porch, right where someone or something would be able to keep careful watch on the cat was a well chewed rubber ball, and a single sun dried blood red rose.
ALL WOOD DREAMS OF THE SUN
It was late August, the time of the summer burn.
Sawyers and lumbermen jumped like guilty cats when the heat lightning scrawled designs on the distant hills. You could slice the stink of the pulp mill with a log peeling knife. It was the kind of hot stale weather that made Timmy want to lie like a lizard on a rock, feeling the sweat cocoon and crawl across his skin; thinking of sweat lodged Indians and last stand Foreign Legionnaires.
Timmy lay in the shade beneath Granny Jill’s lilac grotto, getting drunk on that sweet purple stink that never quite left the bush. The scent lingered in the bark like mildew in a basement. He liked to get down close to the roots. He smelled the memory and promise of spring like it was yesterday, forgetting about how few short weeks were left before the clamor of a ringing school bell hollered him from his dreams.
Timmy’s Granddad had planted the grotto, the year Granny Jill first wore his ring. Just a few bushes he’d traded a day’s work in the field for, but they spread like a beautiful cancer, until now, nearly fifty years since they’d first been planted the lilac grotto was dense enough for a thirteen year old boy to crawl into and
hide.
There was a heart carved on the central trunk. No initials, just a heart. Could have been carved by anyone, but Timmy imagined it had been set there by his Granddad.
Timmy liked to sit in the shade of the lilac grotto, the branches twisting around him like friendly old arms, only scary at night when the wind whispered secrets to the moon, and the leaves dreamed of flames licking high.
“All wood dreams of the sun,” Granny Jill told him once. “Which is the reason why sparks dance in the chimney, why smoke rises to the moon. Dreams born in the heavens a thousand million miles from here have etched their memory into the bark of every branch. When you throw it on the fire you’re just setting it free to rise to heaven and beyond. Remember that, long as you draw breath and can stare at the fire.”
Memories like that lived a long time, like the gray tobacco aroma that tarred Granny Jill’s breath and skin. Made her fingernails yellow to brown like old elm leaves, her breath heavy and slow like a porch swing easing back and forth. Made the wind that whispered behind her tidy movements prickle Timmy’s nostrils in a funny smile way.
It was here, sitting in the shade of granny Jill’s lilac grotto, that Timmy first saw the tumblebug man.
Tumblebugs are those little crawly beetle-wrigglers that you find under rocks and logs and old tar paper. They like the darkness, and are happy to crawl through the muckiest slime and if you try and catch them they’ll tumble themselves up tight into a ball, figuring to blend with the slow white rocks.
They were bugs, and easy to kill. They were fun to stake out with toothpicks. They didn’t burn as neat as ants, and when you squashed them you felt like you had to wipe your sneaker. And they always came back. No matter how many you killed, the tumblebugs always came back.
They didn’t bite anything, but Timmy didn’t like to see them too close to the house. Kind of gave him the feeling they were tasting it, when they crawled in the shadows of Granny Jill’s white washed foundation.
“Got any bread?” a voice spoke, wet and burning like a drink of ash soap.
The voice seemed so close Timmy almost jumped from the grotto. He looked out from the concealment of the shadows to see a dank and heavy man standing at Granny Jill’s doorway. Looked like a pile of rags soaked in a swamp. Stood there, sort of leaning, like he was sucking something out of the door frame.
Timmy didn’t know it then and there, but he was staring at the tumblebug man.
“You wait right here.” Granny Jill said.
Granny Jill went and she got the tumblebug man the bread, without even bothering to lock the door. It was something she always liked to do. Feeding the wandering men. Granddad always warned her about it, back when he was alive, but the cancer crawled into Granddad’s lungs three short years ago. He lay down in a hospital bed that stank of pine oil and sawdust, and before the summer passed he’d soaked into the sheets and vanished like rain into a scrawl of moss.
Timmy missed his granddad. He missed his Mom and his Dad, both dead in a car fire long before he could remember.
Granny Jill was all he had left.
Timmy sat and watched. Granny Jill knew he liked to hide in the grotto, but she never knew when. Besides, Timmy was so good at fading into the shadows and staying Indian quiet that she often forgot to look. Even if she’d known, she wouldn’t have worried. Granny Jill was good that way. Never gawked at Timmy the way some adults did, all slow and wary, like you were some kind of germ on legs. Something that ought to be sterilized and burned. No sir. Granny Jill treated Timmy like he was real and grown up, all in one breath. There weren’t many others ever did the same.
The tumblebug man looked Timmy’s way, squinting like he could smell something hiding in the bushes. Timmy knew he was too far away to see, but he slid back an inch or two into the shadows, just to feel safe.
“There’s some bread, a dollar for the road, and my blessing for luck,” Granny Jill said.
The tumblebug man stared at the bread. Then he muttered something too low to be heard and spat on Granny Jill’s pine oiled porch. Timmy heard it hit, hard like a bullet, and just for a moment he thought he heard it sizzle.
Right then was when Granny Jill should have slammed the door, but she just smiled. Timmy could see the sun making shineholes out of her glasses, and for a moment she looked like a stranger. Like someone seen far away, stepping onto the road in the path of oncoming truck. You saw her danger, but were too far away to help.
That was the thing about being young. Timmy always had the feeling when the mailman brought those long white envelopes that granny Jill always said were Bill’s, even though Timmy never remembered meeting anyone named Bill. Times when Timmy knew Granny Jill was struggling, trying to lift up something too big and too heavy for any one body to lift. Times like that he’d lean out to her, wanting to help, but not knowing how. Times like that he felt too goddamn young.
An hour later, the tumblebug man stepped from Granny Jill’s front door. He walked down the long stone path, grinding his heels and swiping them across the green painted stone walkway, like he was trying to dirty the rocks. He paused by the lilac grotto. Timmy hunkered back, praying he couldn’t be seen. The tumblebug man reached into his pocket and dragged out the handful of fresh baked bread. Timmy could smell it, fresh and full of yeast. Granny Jill baked it every morning, sold some to the market, but always kept a loaf for home use.
The bread grew green gray moldy in the tumblebug man’s hand. Like it was setting under a wet rock, mould and white fuzzed sprouts like dandilion seed, and the tumblebug man pushed his face into the handful of moldy bread and sucked it up with a wet suckling sound. Kind of sound a straw makes at the bottom of a milkshake glass. He wiped his hands across his lips like he was tasting them.
Then he unbuckled his trousers. Pissed a long hot puddle into the roots of the grotto, not even looking where he was relieving himself, just leaning back and staring at the sun like he was thinking about throwing a rock at it. His penis was long and dirty, kind of twisted like a root. He moved and twisted like he was writing something in the dirt. The piss steamed as it hit the ground spattering out a running cascade of dozens of hundreds of tumble bugs, low and scuttering little things that ran towards Timmy.
“Like that?” The tumble bug man said.
Timmy pushed back against the central trunk in the lilac grotto, feeling it quiver like there was something out there that could even scare a tree.
Timmy got ready to run. He was certain the tumblebug man would reach in under the grotto and drag him out, maybe suck him out like a skinny kicking strand of spaghetti.
“Not yet,” the tumblebug man said. “Maybe later.”
Then he dragged a large pocket knife from his hip pocket. He snapped it open. It was the rustiest dirtiest knife Timmy ever saw. If someone ever was cut with such a knife they’d surely die from leprosy, lockjaw and a hundred forms of plague. They would die slow and screaming. Their limbs would fall off one by one, making a stink that all the sulfur in Egypt couldn’t burn off.
He used the knife to carve something into the wood. Timmy had seen this sort of thing before. Devil’s scripture, Granny Jill called it. Hobo marks. Signs that might mean “this lady is nice”, or “keep moving”, or “will trade work for food”. Timmy could hear the knife working slow into the wood, like listening to a rat chewing in the walls, all low and steady.
When he was done the tumblebug man stared one last time into the lilac grotto. Timmy could see his eyes, all watered and yellow, like bad lemonade, like his Granddad’s bed sheets before the cancer finished with him.
And then he sort of walked away, only halfway down the street Timmy finally blinked, and when he finished his blink the tumblebug man had vanished.
The mark on the gatepost was twisted and deep. It looked like writing made from meathooks and cleavers, all looped and jagged edged. Just looking at it made Timmy want to run, and lean and grab it at the same time.
Timmy touched the mark, and it seemed to bite him, wit
h a thousand tiny wood slivered teeth. Was like sticking his hand into a rattlesnake that had swallowed a beehive, all hot and tingly and hungry all at once.
Timmy had been bit by a perch once, and it felt worse than that. Like the wood was biting him into itself, sucking him clear out of his sneakers.
Whatever the sign said, it was real bad writing. Timmy grabbed a rock and hacked at the gatepost, trying to smash the writing flat. Only the fencepost – or maybe even the writing itself - dodged his swing. He wasn’t sure how it did it. Was just like it was there, and then it wasn’t.
He hit at it again, only this time he smashed his fingers. He danced and swung, cursing loudly, shaking the finger so the air would cool the pain. The blood from his hand painted the wood like a thirsty shingle, and then soaked slowly and thirstily into the knife scarred wood.
Timmy stared at the fencepost. The last of Timmy’s blood vanished while he was watching.
The mark puckered and smacked, like it was licking its lips.
“What you doing to that gatepost?” Granny Jill yelled.
Timmy dropped the rock.
“Just smashing a bug,” he said, and ran guiltily inside.
Granny Jill didn’t yell at Timmy for banging the rock on the gatepost. She never was much for yelling, yet she never let him get away with mischief without hearing some kind of scold. But not today. Today she looked tired, like she hadn’t slept. There were shadows, hung like nooses beneath her eyes, like she’d been up all night worrying.
She looked at his finger, making that tch-tch sound in the back of her mouth.
“That’s going to leave a mark,” she said.
Then Timmy had to ask.
“What’d that man do to you, Granny Jill?”
Granny Jill stared at Timmy like he was speaking in tongues.
“What man, Timmy?”
And that was all she’d say.
That night Timmy tossed and turned. He dreamed that he saw a big fat old tumblebug scuttling under his bed only he didn’t dare set foot from under his covers for fear of the shadows.