by Jessie Haas
A man whose lungs were gone, a family uprooted, four whole lives changed forever, and all they could think to do was go to the mall!
He went out on the cement front steps, to look bitterly at the houses on either side and across the street. Each had a picture window. Through each picture window he saw the pale flicker of a television. Everybody’s garbage can was set out by the mailbox. Everybody’s driveway held a nice newish, middling-expensive car. Phillip’s stomach convulsed with hatred.
He turned around quickly and went inside, thinking, Thoreau complained about Concord, but he never saw this! Everything conventional, mass-produced, and ugly. Every house on this street was made to the same plan. The only thing allowed to differ was the shade of paint.
Get hold of yourself, rebel! The farm wasn’t heaven.
No, the farm was hell. The hog pens were built over manure pits. The barn kept the fumes inside until they reached toxic levels, but that never affected the hogs, for they didn’t live long enough to get sick. They were farrowed and fattened and slaughtered, the span of their lives measured in weeks. His father, with a longer exposure to the fumes and to pesticides, herbicides, antibiotic dusts, and tobacco smoke, was the one who’d gotten sick; he and the barn cats, who were always dying mysterious early deaths.
The farm was ugly and it stank, but at least it had some texture. At least people worked there, did real and necessary things. You could walk to someplace beautiful—the creek where wild plums grew, the cottonwood bluff. He would rather live there than here, where everything was packaged just the same. The only thing that marked his family as different from any other was the chicken yard, which was probably illegal.
Then he remembered the girl and her old aunt, and he remembered his plan.
Still, he almost didn’t. He went toward his room, thrashing in his angry thoughts like a man in quicksand and only sinking deeper. Of course we rebel, he was thinking. We’re smart enough to want something better, and not old enough to get it. There’s nowhere for me, no place where …
Thea met him, curving herself around the corner of his door with a thin cry. Thea, the last barn cat.
Phillip watched as she strolled down the short hall to her food dish, gave it a passing glance, and leapt onto the sink to look out the window. There were birds in the yard. Her tail began to twitch, like an extension of her calculating brain. She looked the embodiment of evil, crouching there, intent on the kill. Could an animal be evil? Anyway, he was glad to be larger than Thea, and hence her friend. He remembered the old lady: “Chickens are disgusting things!”
All right.
He scooped Thea up, closing one hand firmly across her breast to prevent sudden leaps, and went out the door. He thought he should be locking up but didn’t bother. He walked down the dusky street, silent in his sneakers; past the mailboxes and the mid-size cars, past the picture windows and the leaping blue light. He turned the corner, walked three streets up, and turned again.
“Okay, Thea, go right where you went before, remember? Remember that girl?”
Thea wasn’t listening. She sat bolt upright in Phillip’s arms, her clear eyes huge and glowing. She was beautiful; the only beautiful thing in his life, Phillip thought.
They were nearing the house with the red mailbox. Phillip’s heart began to thump a little. He was glad of the hedge. He would stop at the end of it, put Thea down in the driveway—
A black-and-tan terrier lunged out of the yard he was passing, with a belligerent whoof. Thea shot out of his arms, landed ten feet away on the pavement, and raced across the opposite lawn, her tail as big around as her body, and the terrier in yapping pursuit. They disappeared.
For a second Phillip stood blank. Then he sprinted after them, under a TV-lit picture window, across a neat clipped lawn, along a picket fence, always guided by the barks. “Dog!” he yelled. “Dog! Quit it! Thea!”
Yard lights snapped on. A man’s voice shouted aggressively, “What’s going on out there?”
“I lost my cat!” Phillip shouted back. He didn’t want the guy calling the cops. “Dog! Quit that!”
The dog and Thea were at least two backyards away, receding. How could they go so fast when neither of them came as high as his knee? He vaulted over someone’s low hedge and landed on someone’s little red wagon. It flipped, catching him behind the knees, and he nearly went down. “The-a!” Now they were three more yards away, and across the street. He hurdled the hedge at the other side of the lawn as a yard light came on behind him and a voice shouted, “Hey!”
Across the street, the dog stopped barking.
Phillip ran as straight as he could remember, toward where he’d last heard the noise. His breath seared down his chest. He was out of shape from lying too much on his bed and hating.
Why did the dog stop barking? Did he catch Thea and shake her? Was she dead?
His feet made two sharp slaps on the pavement, and then he was across the street in someone else’s yard. There he stopped, trying to gulp down each breath as it came whistling out; trying to listen.
At first all he heard were voices from a television set, in the small, unsuspecting house near which he stood. When he managed to filter that out of his consciousness, he became aware of a whoofling, sniffing noise, coming from the next-door backyard. He pushed through the hedge.
The dog ran in widening circles with its nose to the close-shaved lawn, obviously trying to pick up a trail. Thea was nowhere in sight.
“Phew!” The dog gave him a passing glance as it continued casting about for a scent. Phillip considered kicking it.
Now, where was Thea?
A voice down the street called, “Alex! Here, Alex!” The dog pricked its ears, listening, then shot away, around the corner of the house and down the street. Phillip heard the scratch of its claws on the blacktop, and the jangle of tags. Alex! Obnoxious name for an obnoxious little cur!
“Thea,” he called very softly. “Thea.”
A fresh fear roosted on his heart. Thea didn’t know this place. They’d been keeping her in the house; to acclimate her, to keep her safe from cars and neighborhood dogs. What if she got lost? With all this pavement and mowed-off lawns, and nothing to distinguish one house from another, how could she ever find them again?
“Thea?” he called. The louder cry released more desperation in him. Next time he yelled. “Thea!”
A woman’s round face looked out the window, showing consternation. She seemed unable to see him.
“I’m looking for my cat,” he called to her. All this shouting was doing him no good. It was shaking things loose inside. Now, not so deep down, he felt himself crying. It was only a matter of time before that worked to the surface. He turned away from the house, whispering, “Thea!”
A screen door fell shut on the other side of the house—someone coming out. Go away, Phillip thought. Just go away!
“Hello. Can I help you find her?”
It was the girl. In the grid of light from the kitchen window, she looked tall and straight and strong. She looked good to him. He hated her.
It’s not worth it. If I’ve got to lose Thea, it isn’t worth it.
“There was a dog,” he said. “I caught up to it here, sniffing around …”
“Then she’s probably close. Up a tree, I bet. I’ll get a flashlight.”
This side of the lot was bordered by tall white pines, ten or twelve all in a row. Perhaps they had been planted in ignorance, by someone who thought they would make a hedge. Now they stood up strong against the sky, bigger and wilder than anything in the neighborhood. Beneath them, a thick carpet of fallen needles had conquered the lawn. Phillip walked softly up and down, listening. It made sense that Thea would have climbed a tree. He hoped it was true, and not a time-wasting diversion.
The girl came back with two flashlights. She gave him one and walked away to the other end of the row. Phillip was glad she wasted no time in talk.
The flashlight beam would not penetrate far into the soft green m
asses above. By raising his arm straight in the air, like the Statue of Liberty with her torch, Phillip could make it go farther, but not more than halfway. How high would Thea climb? He walked all around the first tree, all around the second.
“Should you call?” asked the girl.
Yes, he should, and perhaps he could, now that he’d had a few quiet minutes to himself. “Thea! Thea?”
“Did you hear that?” the girl asked quickly.
“I think it was just a branch. Thea?”
Again a small squeak penetrated the black silence. It seemed to come from the center of the row of trees. Phillip hurried toward the spot, flashlight high. “Thea?”
“Mee!”
The beam flashed across something. Phillip brought it back swiftly, to strike squarely on Thea’s broad white tuxedo front.
She sat complacently on a large limb, nearly out of flashlight range, white paws neatly tucked together. When the beam shone on her, she uttered another thin, high-pitched comment, narrowing her eyes against the light. She sounded as if she were in her own house, inquiring about supper. But when Phillip lowered the beam a little, it showed a huge, fluffed-out tail hanging off the other side of the branch. The very tip of the tail crooked back and forth, back and forth.
“Come down!” Phillip called. “It’s safe now. He’s gone.”
Thea uttered a long, thin comment that sounded like, “Naah!” She was doing fine just where she was.
“She won’t come down for at least half an hour,” the girl said confidently.
How do you know so much? Phillip wondered. He folded himself cross-legged onto the bed of pine needles.
“I’ll just sit here and wait,” he said. “Uh—thanks for the help.”
“Oh, no problem. You keep the flashlight till tomorrow. I’ll come over and get it.”
“Oh.” Phillip had forgotten the flashlight. “Hey!” he called as the girl started around the corner of the garage. “Thanks a lot! I really mean it—I might never have found her without your help.”
“She’d have been all right,” the girl said, twirling, but not stopping or slowing down. “Thea’s cool.”
Phillip heard the screen door bang, and a woman’s voice anxiously start asking questions. Not the old lady—what was her name? Aunt Mil.
He flicked the flashlight on for a second, to shine on the two white semicircles of toes on the limb above. “Hey, you! Come on down now!” He got another negative comment.
Funny, he thought, turning off the flashlight; funny that they each knew something they weren’t telling. She knew where he lived. He knew she’d come over that day. She knew Thea’s name. He knew her aunt’s. He liked it that way. That was fine.
He relaxed there in the quiet. The residue of his panic seemed to run out of him and sink into the earth. He liked being a stranger in this neighborhood; the only person outdoors, the only person sitting quietly, not watching a television. No one knew he was here but the girl and Thea.
Thea spoke to him from her branch, several times. When at last he got tired and stopped answering, she began to move around. He pointed the flashlight and watched her delicate maneuverings. How precisely she dropped from one limb to another! Her paws landed just where they should, never slipping. Then she hesitated and looked carefully, chose the next limb, and figured out how to get to it. She was small, serious, and absorbed, for the moment paying him no attention.
When she reached the last limb, she paused. Then she uttered a small worried cry—talking to herself, not Phillip—and swung out onto the trunk, grappling with her claws. Her ears were laid back in concentration, yet she lowered herself with the confidence and skill of a steeplejack.
Phillip stood and, as she came within his reach, took hold of her. She stiffened against him, clinging to the bark, until he stroked her. Then her purr started, very loud in the quiet night, and she slashed him nearly to ribbons, twisting in his hands and clawing up onto his shoulder. The purr was thunderous in his ears, such a mighty purr that she choked from time to time and had to swallow and begin again.
He took a firm hold on her tail, in case she jumped again, and he walked around the garage and onto the street, saying goodbye silently to the picture window leaping with blue television light. He walked home. The dog did not jump out again, and the house had not been burglarized, in all this time that it had been left unlocked. His family was not yet home from the mall.
He awoke late the next morning. Thea was gone from his pillow, but he could see the round indentation where she had slept all night, close to his head. He glanced at his alarm clock, got up, and dressed quickly. What time would the girl come over for her flashlight? If she liked him, she might come early.
He stepped out into the hall and heard his mother crying in the kitchen. His stomach clutched in a hard knot, and he looked into his parents’ bedroom. There lay his father, in his striped pajamas, snoring as loudly as if his lungs were whole. Phillip knew himself to be relieved, but his stomach stayed knotted as he went out to the kitchen.
His mother sat at the table with a box of tissues beside her. Methodical and tidy in everything, she had settled down for a good cry. Phillip could have smiled, except that her shoulders shook so hard; and her face, when she looked up at him, was so pale and slack. He stayed across the table, not wanting to get mired in her trouble, but he had to ask, “What’s up?”
“The chicks!” his mother said. “Every … single … one.”
Oh, dear, thought Phillip. Yet it had happened many times before, no matter how tightly they wired the chicken pen. Every year one or two were lost. About one year in three, there was a major slaughter. His mother shouldn’t be so upset.
“Coon or weasel?” he asked.
“A weasel wouldn’t live here! It was a coon.”
“Huh!” He was surprised that even a coon would venture so far into this imitation suburbia. He glanced out the window, seeing for the first time how close the line of trees really was; only four or five streets down, after all.
“Well, never mind,” he said. “I’ll fix the pen and we’ll get some more.”
“Oh, Phillip, I don’t know, I don’t know.” She had stopped sobbing, but she gazed down at the tabletop as if in the deepest despair.
What’s wrong? Phillip asked mentally, not wanting to ask aloud. Actually, he knew. The chickens were a way of still being country people, even in these surroundings. They were the measure of difference between this yard and every other. They were self-sufficiency, and they were a way of saying that not everything had changed.
He got up and went outdoors, knowing he had nothing to say that could help her. Tomorrow or the next day she would buy more chicks and begin again. Meanwhile he would get things cleaned up.
Thea called him. She was hitched by her leash to the clothes pole. She hated her harness; tried to back out of it or walked around with her body scrunched low to the ground and her head high, making a long, Nefertiti neck. Phillip hated the harness too. It seemed emblematic of everything that was wrong with this place.
He took the harness off and lifted Thea to his shoulders. She wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to be there. The purr sounded thin; the four paws teetered, uncommitted.
“All right, you can get down, but stick around, okay?” It was time for Thea to begin stepping out on her own. Ridiculous for them to guard so closely, she who had survived kittenhood on a hog farm.
Yet as she stalked away toward the fence he thought of losing her. How much pain he would feel—they would all feel—if Thea went off exploring and never came back! He thought of his mother crying at the table, and everything that had shaken loose last night in his desperation started to shift again.
“Here, Thea!” He bent and snapped his fingers. Thea felt insecure, so she came to him, rubbing briefly around his legs. She paused, still leaning on him, but looking intently away at a bush. Her yellow eyes glowed.
Abruptly she left him. She ran a little way, crouched, and pounced on a cricket. The cr
icket squirmed away. She pounced again, all her weight pointed into her front paws. If she came down that way on a mouse or chipmunk, she would probably break its back. The cricket, cushioned somehow in the deep grass, survived, to be sprung after again. Thea’s face was full of play.
Phillip didn’t rescue the cricket. He restrained himself, too, from capturing Thea and putting her back on the leash. With an effort he turned away and looked into the chicken coop he and his father had built.
He saw the place where they had perhaps used one staple too few. A small hole had been wrenched wider. A few long, soft raccoon hairs fluttered on the wire.
Inside were the silent chicks—some scattered around, half eaten, the rest in a downy yellow heap, streaked thinly with blood. They were too small to make a ghastly sight. They only looked pitiful.
So. Can an animal be evil?
Thea glided past his legs and stepped warily, delicately, across to the heap of dead chicks. She sniffed them, mouth slightly open. With her white, pointed fangs and broad tongue panting back and forth, she looked like a miniature panther. He wondered what she gleaned, all turned inward on her sense of smell. Could she understand, just from smelling, what a raccoon was? Could she understand death?
“Did Thea do that?” asked a voice behind him. The girl!
“No,” he said. “Coon.”
“Oh!” She looked around at the ranch-style houses; trim, uniform, pastels and reds and blues; at the hedges and fences and mowed lawns and the ornamental cherry trees. “Oh!” she said, in a voice of pleased surprise.
Phillip looked down. “Yeah, well … pretty hard on the chicks.”
The girl squatted to look in at them. Her face was serious and intent but cool. “A lot of people say that humans are the only animals that massacre like this,” she remarked.
Phillip had heard that. “They only kill what they can eat,” he said, quoting another bit of folk wisdom.