Peculiar Tales

by Ron Miller

  I took a deep breath, grasped the handrail and started down, trying to concentrate on each step and not think about the necessary return journey—which I would have to deal with soon enough. The cellar was a vast, dark, gloomy cavern and I didn’t like it at all. I felt something furry brush past my ankle and I nearly had a palpitation until I realized it was only Woody, who had followed me down the stairs. I couldn’t help but chastise him because he was sure to get his paws all sooty and his whiskers all tangled up with cobwebs. But when I saw his sweet little expression, I could only smile. What a little darling! He’d surely followed me to make certain I was safe!

  I looked around, realizing I had no idea where the old red trunk was. I was reluctant to start poking around in all of those dark corners when I suddenly realized that I wasn’t alone. Chester was rubbing against my leg and, dear me! there was Captain Wow, Wally and Skeeter as well. They weren’t rubbing against my legs, though—they were merely sitting in a half-circle around me, gazing at me quietly with the strangest expression on their sweet little faces. Well, I decided, whatever I might find in the cellar I certainly had little to fear from rats!

  I must’ve searched for an hour to no avail. Just about the only place left was the old coal room, which hadn’t been used since the house had been converted to oil heat in 1972.

  I unlatched the door and looked in. There was some light because the opening for the coal chute had been converted into a small window. It was tiny chamber, barely larger than a small closet. It was easy to see that the trunk wasn’t there, but I found myself staring nevertheless. It wasn’t much...in fact, at first I dismissed it as a pile of sticks and twigs and other trash...but there was something vaguely familiar about it. I kneeled and took a closer look. It looked something like those little voodoo dolls the heathens make, like the ones Reverend Snyder showed the church group after his missionary trip to Haiti. It was about a foot tall and made of all sorts of bits and pieces crudely twisted together into a human-like shape. There was a ball of frizzy grey stuff on the head and a tattered bit of faded calico wrapped around the body. It was stuck in a small mound of dirt so that it stood upright. There was something about the nasty little thing that inexplicably nagged at me. Then I realized what it was: it looked familiar. More than that, it looked like me.

  The ball of grey frizz was just like my hair and the bit of calico was exactly like one of my dresses...in fact, I was sure the fragment had been torn from an old dress I’d discarded some months ago. It was then I noticed what else lay on the floor at my feet. The weird figure was surrounded by a circle of dead mice. They were all arranged neatly, heads pointing toward the figure, tails away.

  I heard a faint, rustling sound and turned to look. All of my kitties were there in the doorway, staring silently, tails erect as flagpoles. A whole minute must have passed like that. And then I knew.

  I knew just how much my precious little kittens adored me. Why, they loved me so much, they’d built this adorable little—little shrine to me! And how difficult it must have been, too, with their little toes and having no thumbs. Such effort and all for me!

  The first time I found the...well, there really isn’t any other word for it...the first time I found the altar, I didn’t know what to do. And the darlings looked so expectant. But I had a sudden inspiration, remembering how I would sometimes find a mouse or mole on the kitchen porch. So I gathered up the furry little corpses, mustering the best smile I could so the kittens wouldn’t realize how disgusted I was. I carried the mice up to the kitchen and hurriedly ran them down the disposal before anyone could see what I had done with them.

  The next day there was another circle of dead mice around the stick figure and this time the cats were waiting for me, their eyes wide with expectation and adoration. And again I gathered up their offering and ran it down the disposal. Tears ran down my face the whole time. Not because I felt any sympathy for the mice, goodness knows, but because I had never before realized just how devoted my little pets were, nor how much they worshiped me. Don’t say anything...I felt blasphemous writing that word. Worshiped. Or at least shamelessly conceited. But it really is the truth, don’t you see? I could understand exactly how the kitties must have felt. For years I had brought them food and water and made warm, dry places to sleep and gave them scratches behind the ears and under the chins whenever they wanted them.

  The least I could do now was start buying them regular tinned tuna, salmon and chicken—not the stuff made for cats, which must be filled with all sorts of awful things, but the real stuff made for people. And I started serving them cream every other day and on Sundays I increased their ration of ground beef by half a pound.

  I had to start buying my bread from the day-old bin at the grocer’s, but it tasted just as good as the fresh, really.

  Elmira Mae has started bringing her grandniece with her on her weekly intrusions into my affairs. I have to admit that the girl—for all her unfortunate physical resemblance to her pudgy ancestor—is lucky enough not to share Elmira Mae’s personality. Indeed, I rather like the girl. She is eighteen years old. A short girl and pretty with the kind of wholesome, open good looks one associates with farm children. She has a shock of golden hair and bright blue eyes. Her name is Susie and she just adores my cats.

  That is something else that sets her apart from her grand-aunt, who I know loathes the very sight of my precious companions, and makes her weekly visits delightful. Susie coos over them all, stroking them just the way they liked to be stroked, seeming to automatically know each kitty-cat’s personal preference. You could see how they took a liking to her immediately.

  She learned all their names the first day and never makes a mistake when talking to them. After her second visit, she started bringing them little treats...toys, catnip balls and little foil bags of morsels made specially to please cats. Susie works as a waitress at a small restaurant in town and more often than not is able to bring a plastic container of left-over food from the kitchen. I remember her bringing fresh steak and lamb and veal and chicken and all sorts of fish. I am very pleased that she is able to do these things, since I would never have been able to afford such luxuries myself. I didn’t tell her this, of course. It would only get back to Elmira Mae.

  I always know when Susie is coming up my back walk .Long before I hear or see her myself, the cats begin crowding around the door, meowing plaintively, their tails quiveringly erect, like little soldiers carrying their rifles. They mob her as she comes through the door, but never rudely. They show her the same respect they have always shown me. It is obvious they love her.

  I made a terrible discovery in the cellar today. I had gone down to collect my daily tribute of mice and I can hardly tell you how shocked I was at what I saw. It was not that the mice had been replaced by birds, though that was surprising enough. It was the change in the little figure. The grey frizz on its head had been replaced by crudely unraveled yellow yarn and on its face were the bodies of two bright blue beetles. Like shining eyes.

  I looked at the cats who had joined me in the coal room. Usually all twelve were there, but now there were only half a dozen and they looked bored and indifferent.

  I felt hot tears well up in my eyes. How could they have done this to me? How could they have forgotten me so quickly and easily? Elmira Mae has lectured me for years about the fickle loyalties of cats, but I’d always dismissed them as groundless prejudices held by an ill-informed and ailurophobic old busybody. But could it possibly be true?

  I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have my darling kittens!

  I think it’s all over now and I am in a near-panic. What am I to do? What am I to do? I didn’t buy a jar of peanut butter for myself this month in order to save the few pennies I needed to purchase a pound of fresh mackerel at the grocery. It’d be worth it, I knew, to show my little friends how wrong-headed their infatuation was—for that is all it was, I knew, nothing more than an infatuation. They would come around, I told myself, just you see.
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br />   I divided the fish into twelve equal parts and placed them into twelve small, freshly washed bowls on the kitchen floor. No one came at the sound. I called their names, but still no one came. What could be wrong? I asked myself. Surely they couldn’t all be sick? How awful! What would I do then? What could I do?

  I opened the cellar door and called again. Still no reply. I was standing in the middle of the kitchen, wringing my hands, tears pouring down my face, when all of a sudden there was a wave of meowing animals rolling over the floor. “My darlings!” I cried. “Wherever have you been? Do you realize how frightened and worried I was?”

  But they didn’t rush to their bowls. They rushed to the back door as I heard Susie’s cheery “Hello!”

  She had brought them jumbo shrimp from the restaurant.

  I showed Susie the weird little figure in the coal cellar. She was so amazed by it she never saw me pick up the shovel and if she noticed anything before it slammed down onto her golden curls, well, I’ll never know about it now.

  She was, thankfully, not a very big girl, but I was still only a little old lady who had lived for years on little more than peanut butter and saltines, so taking her apart was not an easy job at all. Fortunately, there is a large drain in the floor.

  I divided her as best I could into twelve portions, placed them around the golden-haired figure—which I admit to my chagrin I had crushed under my foot in an uncharacteristic fit of pique. I am always ashamed when I lose my temper.

  I then used old rags to plug the the broken window the cats had been using for their ingress and egress. I was sure there was no other way in or out of the cellar.

  I called the cats, each one by name, and they all came flying—no doubt because they expected to find some new treat brought by their precious Susie. Well, they did get one in a way, I suppose. At least they gave every impression of finding her delicious.

  While they were distracted, I closed the door of the coal room and latched it. I noticed there were gaps all around the door and I carefully caulked those with old rags as well.

  There was an old gasoline-powered generator that my father had used whenever a storm took out our electricity. It had sat unused in a corner of the cellar for I don’t know how many years. I found an old garden hose and cut the ends off. One of these I squeezed into the exhaust pipe of the generator. The other I shoved through a knot hole in the side of the coal room. I made sure there was plenty of gas in the tank and started it. This was hard work, too. I nearly dislocated my shoulder pulling on the rope. But I finally got the thing chugging away.

  Then I went back upstairs and none too soon, either, I can tell you. The fumes from the motor were nauseating and making me quite dizzy. I didn’t know how long it would take until the gasoline ran out, so I waited two whole days, just to make sure.

  Did I mention yet that I’m slightly hard of hearing? Well, I am, and I think I’m probably lucky for it.

  It’s been a couple of months now and I don’t have my cats any longer and there’s no Susie to come by and I since stopped answering the door even Elmira Mae has given up trying to visit. But I’ve not lacked for company. A few weeks ago I saw an ant farm advertised in a catalog. I sent away for it and, although it has been sitting in the middle of my kitchen table for only a very short time, already the little darlings seem excited to see me.

  THE DANCE

  Excerpt from the diary of Anemone Wintergreen

  of Pecan Grove, Mississippi...

  April 12, 1942

  Dear Diary,

  I havent written to you for many days because I was too very much upset to write before and wanted to write when I had everything strait and wasnt upset no more, althuogh as things turned out after I thuoght about them there wasnt really anything to get so very upset about after all.

  It all began at the beginning when Daddy said I cuold have a Sweet Sixteen party for my 16th birthday. Daddy owns the drugstore and is a very important man everyone calls him the piller of the community. He said I cuold have my Sweet Sixteen party at the meeting hall where the Rotary meets so I cuold invite everyone not just my dearest and closest friends but even people like Becky Lou Finch who thuoght her birthday party last month was so wonderful. Daddy said I cuold bring my record player too because theres a big floor and everyone cuold dance it wuold be just like the elegant parties in the movies. It wuold not be just a Sweet Sixteen Party it wuold be a Sweet Sixteen Dance! Why it wuold almost be like having a real ball just like in the movies!

  I decided to invite only my friends from the 11th grade because no one wants a lot of little kids aruond an elegant party that is practically grown-up and all. I decided also to invite many I did not know so well because it wuold be a swell chance to show what a swell person my Daddy is and how important, being able to throw his only daughter such a swell party for her Sweet Sixteen. Which wuold give Becky Lou something to think about I was sure.

  It is very mature of me to invite people like Becky Lou which is why I also decided to invite Rhonda Swale even if I had to also invite her brother Alan because Alan is a creep. Rhonda is a creep too I think but I decided that if I invited both of them it wuold show what a truly mature person I am. But they really are creeps at least they give me the creeps and its what everyone else says too so I’m sure I’m right about them being creepy. I mean you’d think they were dating or something the way theyr’e always pawing at each other all the time. Its really quite inelegant and not at all in the very best taste I mean the way he’s always petting her and the just awful goo-goo eyes she makes back at him. Lulu Jean says she saw them in the cloakroom once actually kissing!!! so goodness knows what else they might be up to. I mean one might understand if they were dating because in spite of being a creep Rhonda is very good-looking with long thick black hair and very blue eyes and a figure like you see on movie stars bust and everything and Alan is quite good-looking too with wavy hair and dreamy eyes and quite a lot of muscles and looks a little like Van Johnson. But he keeps petting her and she keeps looking at him with goo-goo eyes so it is all quite disgusting and inelegant.

  But it wuold be quite inelegant of me not to invite them. After all one has to be big about these things. Noblesse oblige as Miss Frinkle the French teacher taught us last term.

  Daddy gave me ten dollars to get all the latest records for my party! So I went to Krankheimer’s and got all the latest by Kay Kyser and Harry James and Dinah Shore and Johnny Mercer and Sammy Kaye and Freddie Slack and that dreamboat Frank Sinatra thuogh I am much too elegant to act the way the other girls do whenever his name is mentioned which is very unladylike indeed.

  Not that the new records did anyone any good because I never had a chance to even play one of them (not then naturally because of what happened but they have been played plenty since I can tell you!) because of what happened. My Sweet Sixteen guests had only just begun to arrive and I was opening the record player and opening the first record I planned to play (Tangerine by Jimmy Dorsey in case you were wondering) when there was suddenly out of the blue this just awful scream! like something out of some awful movie or something. Well everyone didn’t know what to say but before they could say anything there was another scream which was just as awful as the first one. Then Ralph Plimsoll came in and said that something had just happened to Rhonda and everyone ran out to see what might have happened to Rhonda.

  It was dark outside the Hall but the street lamps were on so it wasnt really so dark and there were a bunch of boys and girls all in their party clothes all gathered together and talking in quiet voices and when I went to see what was going on I saw that they were gathered around Rhonda who was sitting on the ground crying her eyes out.

  Her dress was all torn which was a shame because it was a very pretty dress indeed which even I had to admit even thuogh I dont like Rhonda all that much for being such a creep. Anyway the dress was all torn in the front and you could even see her brazier where it was torn so I am sure she was very embarased but there was also blood on her dr
ess which was easy to see since her dress was white. It was all over the front of the skirt but I couldnt figure where the blood had come from because she didnt look like she was hurt anywhere.

  No one wuold tell me what happened which I considered very rude because after all I was the Hostess! The kids kept saying “rape” which I didnt know what they meant but Ive looked it up since and now know is a pretty awful thing indeed. So someone must have called the police (I think it was Donnie Spilman) and soon enuogh a patrol car drives up and a bunch of policemen come out and break up the crowd around Rhonda and I can hear them ask her “who done that rape to you?” and Alan spoke up and said that Lightning had done the rape to her. I guess that must have been true because when he said it Rhonda started crying harder than ever.

  I am sure you dont know who Lightning is, Dear Diary, since I am not in the habit of mentioning Negroes but Lightning is a Negro who can be found most of the time down at the depot. I know that his real name is Toby but everyone calls him Lightning because he is kind of slow. I dont mean that he moves real slow which he does but that he is also pretty slow in the head. Anyway Lightning hangs around the depot waiting for the trains to come in so he can make some tips carrying peoples bags and trunks and things off and on the trains. I dont know where he lives or anything because it is too inelegant to care about such things as what Negroes do.

  Well of cuorse except for when a Negro does something awful to a regular person like the rape that Lightning did to Rhonda and even thuogh I always thuoght Rhonda was a creep a rape by a Negro is an awful thing to have happen to any person.

  Well everyone was very upset by this news and all ready by then there were plenty of grown ups around and lots of them were yelling and shouting and the policemen were yelling and shouting almost as loud as everyone else and Alan was yelling louder than anyone so I figured Lightning was in an awful lot of trouble for the rape he did to Rhonda. I myself had very good reason to be mad at Lightning too because the rape he did to Rhonda completely ruined my Sweet Sixteen Dance which looked like there wuold be no hope of happening now. I had never had a dance in my honor before and one can only have one Sweet Sixteen Dance after all so mine was totally ruined. Rhonda had a rape done by a Negro but my Sweet Sixteen Dance was ruined forever by a Negro so I thuoght people should have been a little more considerate of my feelings too after all.