Pride

by William Wharton

  Every two hours throughout that day and through most of the night, Cap checks back at headquarters but there’s nothing. Murph’s replacement at the sergeant’s desk isn’t sympathetic and makes it clear he thinks the whole business is Cap’s fault. There’ve been more call-ins about sightings but each proved to be nothing when checked out.

  Finally, at about three in the morning, Cap drives back to the pit. He needs sleep. He’ll wake at dawn and start hunting again. From what he’s read, lions tend to hunt at first light and at twilight, but he isn’t sure. They might also hunt in the night but he can’t go any longer. He needs sleep desperately. He falls asleep spread-eagled on the floor of the pit.

  Just as Cap’s falling asleep, Tuffy rouses himself. He uses his strong side teeth to rip off some of the last meat from Jimmy’s arm. He still isn’t particularly hungry. He moves softly across the rafters and out onto the catwalk.

  He walks slowly down the stairs and jumps lightly into his cage. The door is still open. He sits in the cage for several minutes, then paces slowly back and forth.

  Then he jumps lightly down from the cage and goes up the wide stairs to the platform of Sammy’s pool. Sammy’s asleep in his apartment, the door locked and barred. He doesn’t hear anything as Tuffy leans far over and laps up water from his pool for the five to ten minutes it takes a large cat to drink. After he drinks, Tuffy, who can smell Cap inside the pit, rubs against the door, but doesn’t grunt, growl, or roar.

  He pads softly up the stairs to the catwalk and across the rafters to his lair. He circles twice then settles back to sleep.

  PART 13

  We ate that fish I caught for lunch. There was more than I thought there would be and it was delicious. Mom cooked it up in a little pot with some milk and butter. We dipped bread into the juice and that was delicious, too.

  It was a good feeling to know I’d caught food for our lunch. Dad gave a description of me catching that fish so it sounded as if I was the one catching the stingray, too. While he was telling it, he winked at me again. I’ll never get used to my father winking.

  I saved some little parts without any bone and gave them to Cannibal. She really liked it and for the first time meowed to get some more. It’s the only sound she’s made except for growling and that one try at a purr under the bed. I forgot; she also hisses like a snake when she growls.

  Mom isn’t too happy about the idea of going to the beach. She’s still afraid of the lion. Dad puts his arm around her shoulder and kisses the side of her neck so she bends her head away as if she’s being tickled. Dad hasn’t shaved since we left Stonehurst Hills, so in some ways he looks like one of the bums hanging around down at the dump, and in other ways he looks tough. I guess that’s why Mom ducked away; those bristles can be like sandpaper.

  One of the favorite things my grandfather likes to do is rub his bristles against my cheek when I give him a kiss. He only shaves once a week, for church, on Sundays. Most days we go visit him it’s Sunday so I’m safe, but any other day I get “the rub” and it really hurts. He doesn’t do it to Laurel, only to boys. I have five boy first cousins about my age, two Billys, Georgie, Johnny, and Albert. We all hate getting the rub. Afterward your face stings and is red a few minutes. At the same time, there’s something nice about it, because Granddad likes to do it so much and is laughing and giving you a kiss.

  “Listen, Laura, I’m telling you, that lion’s got to be miles from here by now. And once we get to the beach we can always run out into the ocean. No lion is going to chase us into the water; cats hate water.”

  “You know I can’t swim, Dick. I think I’d rather be eaten by a lion than drowned, anyway.”

  “You won’t drown, I’ll carry you. Don’t worry about it, honey. We’re lucky to have this warm weather so late in the season; let’s take advantage of it. Who knows when I’ll have another vacation.”

  Mom smiles at Dad, runs her hands up and down over his bristles, kisses him lightly on his lips. “O.K., it’ll be worth it just to have you carry me into the ocean. You haven’t carried me since you carried me across the threshold when we got married. Remember going in that half of a row house we rented on Dewey Street with your brother Ed and Emma?”

  “You want to be carried, huh? O.K., here we go.”

  And right there in front of our eyes, in that little room, before any of us even know what’s happening, he’s scooped up Mom in his arms and is walking around the room with her and then sort of dancing, the way they dance in the movies with black suits and white shirts on, only they don’t carry the lady when they dance in the movies.

  Mom’s scared at first then starts laughing and holding her arms around Dad’s neck.

  “Put me down, you goof. What’ll the kids think? Put me down before you strain yourself.”

  Dad keeps dancing round in circles between the beds. He’s never acted crazy like this before. He and Mom have always just been ordinary people, doing the things they have to do, like work and wash and clean up and fix things. There’s been more kissing and stuff going on down here in Wildwood than there ever was in Stonehurst Hills. I look over at Laurel and she’s laughing. It is funny and I know right then I like to see them being silly. It makes life look like so much fun. Up till now I’ve always been a little bit afraid about growing up, being a grownup.

  “So you want to be put down? O.K., here we go.”

  With that, Dad goes next to their bed and drops Mom right in the center of the bed; her skirt comes up her leg and she reaches to pull it down.

  “Dick, I think you’ve gone crazy. What in heaven’s name’s gotten into you, anyway?”

  “Maybe I’m an escaped lion.”

  Dad leans down over Mom and goes “Grrrr!!” He holds his paws up the way Cannibal does when she’s fighting anything. Mom laughs and pushes him away. Dad takes her by the hands and pulls her up from the bed.

  “O.K., everybody who isn’t afraid of an old lion, let’s get dressed and go to the beach. That sun out there is just waiting for us.”

  So we all get dressed in a jim-dandy hurry, and we’re down on the beach in about fifteen minutes. The sky is blue and the sun is hot. Laurel and I get another swimming lesson, and Dad teaches me how to hold my breath and open my eyes under water. At first I think my eyes are going to hurt having water against them, like it does when you wash your face sometimes, but there’s no soap in the ocean and I don’t feel anything. It’s like looking through a magnifying glass. My hands look at least twice as big as they really are; also I can see shells and things at the bottom of the water. At first I can only go a little ways and I get scared, but after a while I can go for almost a minute, swimming along, looking down at the bottom of the ocean. I even see some little crabs walking around down there. I get to thinking what it’d be like if I saw a big fish like a shark or a stingray. So, I decide to come out. Dad’s got Laurel so she can float and strike out with a few strokes of her own.

  “You all tuckered out, there, Dickie?”

  “No, I’m cold so I’m going to rest for a while.”

  That’s not a lie. I am cold and a little bit tired.

  “Look at Laurie here, she’s practically swimming all by herself.”

  I stand by the edge of the water with my arms wrapped across my chest, shivering, and watch as Laurel swims at least five strokes before she puts her feet down. She holds her head way out of the water and Mom has her hair in straight-up pigtails so it won’t get wet.

  “Hey, that’s good, Laurel. Soon we can go out swimming together.”

  I run up the beach to Mom. She has Cannibal out of her box and she’s on her lap upside down. I guess Mom’s gotten over being afraid of fleas. She has one of Laurel’s hair ribbons and is dangling it in front of Cannibal’s face, and Cannibal’s trying to catch it with her paws. But she isn’t really trying because she keeps her claws in and I’ve never seen her stretched out on her back like that except the day when the lion licked her. I try to put that lion out of my mind, but I can’t h
elp looking up and down the beach. I take the towel from beside Mom to dry myself.

  “You’re all goose bumps, Dickie. Be sure to dry yourself really dry, then stretch out beside me and let the sun warm you up.”

  She keeps playing with Cannibal, calling her “you little devil” when Cannibal manages to catch the ribbon. I spread out the towel beside her and think about Cannibal being a devil or having a devil in her. I wonder if Father Lanshee would exercise a devil out of her if I ask. I don’t think so. Besides I like the devil in Cannibal. I think I’m even beginning to like the devil inside me, if there is one.

  Cannibal turns herself over onto her feet and drops off Mom’s lap, tumbling into the sand right near my face. She comes toward me sideways, the way she does when she’s sneaking up on something. With my head down on the sand she looks big. I try staring her in the eyes. She stares right back at mine and slows down, then stops when she’s about six inches from my face. I wonder if I should shut my eyes; she really could scratch an eye out if she wanted to. I keep looking at her. She’s certainly a beautiful cat. She’s getting darker brown all the time, and the marks around her eyes are almost pure black now, so she looks even more as if she’s wearing a mask, like a bandit. Her eyes in the bright sun are just the thin slits up and down so it almost looks as if she can’t see at all, especially with the sun behind me.

  Then she ducks her head, comes close to me, and pushes her face against mine, especially against my nose, then against my ear, and she’s definitely purring. She turns herself to one side and then the other, rubbing against me. I bring up my hand and rub her under the chin, and she purrs even louder. Then she goes around in a circle and settles with her face and her whole body right against my neck, still purring, as if she’s purred all her life.

  “My goodness, Dickie, that cat really loves you. I can see why you wanted her so much. She’s the nicest, craziest cat I ever saw.”

  Just then Dad and Laurel come running up the beach. Dad drops onto his knees beside me, between me and Mom and right near Cannibal. Cannibal jumps a little but then cuddles closer into my neck.

  “Hey, everybody, look what I found. Are we ever going to have fun with this!”

  Dad holds out an old tennis ball with the fuzz practically worn off.

  I’m afraid he’s going to want to play catch. Dad keeps trying to teach me how to play baseball but there’s something wrong with me. I’m never going to catch a ball right, especially a hard ball, not well enough to get on any baseball team any-way. It’s one of those things I can’t do. I like listening to baseball games on the radio but I’m probably the worst baseball player my age on Clover Lane. I’m always the last one chosen to play, if I even get chosen at all. Mostly, I’m afraid of the ball.

  But I get up and hand Cannibal to Mom. She can play with her or put her in her little cage. Laurel is jumping up and down the way she does when she’s excited, with her arms up and flopping at the wrists. She’s been doing that as long as I can remember, even from before she could walk. She’d sit on the floor, laugh and smile and flap those wrists. It’s sort of like the way a puppy wags its tail.

  Dad turns around and heads down to the edge of the water, maybe ten feet from where the water comes up. I try to act as if I want to play ball. I keep expecting him to toss it to me. I’m afraid of being hit in the face by a ball even though it’s only a little light tennis ball. I don’t know what Laurel’s so excited about; she still can’t catch a ball unless I bounce it to her, and on a beach you can’t bounce a beat-up old tennis ball like this.

  Dad gets down on his hands and knees and starts digging in the sand. At first I think he’s going to make some kind of a base and we’ll be throwing the ball and running back and forth. He looks over at me.

  “Give me a hand with this, Dickie. First we have to build up a regular mountain of sand, high as we can get it, and pack the sand tight as we go.”

  Dad’s scooping big handfuls and piling them up, packing them down.

  “What’re we making, Dad, another sand castle?”

  “Something even better than that, you’ll see. This’ll be something you’ve never even seen before.”

  After we’ve piled up a regular pyramid of sand, Dad pushes the ball onto the top of the hill, then slowly circles it around the hill, rolling the ball and at the same time pushing down and packing a path about halfway around the hill.

  Laurel’s jumping up and down. Dad rolls the ball from the top, along his path to where he stopped.

  “Now look, Dickie. We’re going to make a tunnel through our mountain from right here.”

  He gouges out a little hole where he finished with his ball path. He runs around to my side of the mountain. He looks over to where he made his gouge and measures with his eye.

  “To over here.”

  He makes another gouge on that side, but down lower.

  “Now you dig very carefully through the mountain from here, making it go uphill a little bit, and we’ll try to meet in the middle.”

  I nod my head.

  “Boy, this is going to be neat, Dad.”

  “Laurel, I want you to dig a small tunnel right near our mountain here on the ocean side. Dig carefully so everything won’t cave in.”

  Beside our mountain and downhill from it, he scoops up sand and builds a smaller hill. He starts two small scoops so she’ll know where to dig. Then he starts digging on his side of the big hill and I begin pulling out sand from my side.

  “This is going to take some engineering, Dickie. Keep in mind just how high my hole is compared to yours and see if we can make a straight tunnel between us. We’ve got to be careful we don’t dig at a wrong angle and miss each other completely.”

  I’m pulling sand out. I’m already in past my elbow when I feel something moving in there and it scares me at first until I realize it’s Dad’s fingers. He’s smiling at me over the top, around the mountain, and he grabs hold of one of my fingers inside the hill.

  “We got it just right there, Buster. You’ll make a great engineer someday. Now let me clear out some sand so the tunnel’s big enough.”

  He looks over at Laurel. “How’s it coming down there?”

  Laurel’s on her stomach pulling sand out of her tunnel; she’s in deeper than her elbow but she hasn’t started the other side.

  “That’s enough on that side, honey.”

  He gets down on his knees and starts the second hole for Laurel.

  She comes around and kneels beside him.

  “Gee, Daddy, I want to work on the big mountain, this is only a little hill and isn’t so much fun.”

  Dad pulls her to him and gives her a soft hug. For one minute there I’m almost afraid he’s going to give her a “rub,” but he just kisses her on the forehead.

  “It’s all part of the same thing, Laurel. Your tunnel is just as important as any part of this whole project.

  “Watch.”

  He takes our ball and puts it in the little dent and gives it a push. It starts down his path and goes round then into the tunnel and out my side. I run to catch it before it gets wet.

  “Gee, that’s neat, Dad. Do it again.”

  The next time I wait at my end of the tunnel and catch it as it comes out.

  “O.K., now for the hard part.”

  Dad starts making another path, or ramp, building up high sides on the outside. He goes almost halfway around our mountain of sand again. He keeps checking to see the angles, goes along, then, when he’s just on the other side of the mountain from Laurel’s tunnel, he stops and digs a few handfuls out of the hill. He runs around to the other side.

  “Now, Dickie, you hold your hand up just over from where that hole goes in.”

  I line my hand up with the hole and Dad checks, then drops down, digging his hole near the bottom of the hill. Laurel runs up to him.

  “Daddy, I got through. I came through to my other hole. I have a real tunnel, come look.”

  Dad goes over to Laurel’s tunnel. He pulls out
a few handfuls of sand and rolls the ball into her tunnel and it gets stuck inside. He pulls the ball out, then scoops out more sand. On the downhill side, near the ocean, he starts cutting a path in the sand with his hands.

  “Now, Laurel, cut a path deep enough so when the ball rolls into your tunnel it can come out on this side and roll down the beach.”

  Laurel begins digging sand out of the trench. We’re close enough to the water so that each mark of each finger shows like a claw mark. Dad looks up at Mom and waves his arms. She waves back. I wave, too. Dad looks quickly up and down the whole empty beach and along the boardwalk. I know what he’s doing, watching out for that lion.

  “O.K., Dickie. This time you dig from the high side there and I’ll dig up from the low side. Dig at just about the same angle down as you dug up last time, and we’ll try to keep in line.”

  I dig until I’m dug all the way up to the top of my arm. The only way I can get my arm in any farther is to tilt myself and lift one leg up in the air. I look over and Dad’s got his long arm all the way in as deep as he can go, too, with his leg up in the air. He pulls out and slides sand out of the hole. He smiles at me.

  “Maybe we bit off more than we can chew here, Dickie. Let me take another try at this.”

  He comes over to my side and puts his arm in the hole. He digs out until he’s run out of arm again.

  “Well, either we’ve missed each other entirely, up and down or sidewise, maybe both; or this tunnel is longer than twice the length of my arm.”

  I watch his eyes: they look up and down the beach again once more, scanning the boardwalk. Laurel runs between us.

  “Watch, Daddy. It works. Look.”

  Laurel gives the ball a push into her tunnel, it goes down then comes up with just barely enough speed to start in her track and go along almost down to the water.