White Bars

by David Dagley

  Leslie pulled out two dollars and placed them on the counter. Leslie’s shirt moved.

  “Is that Rufus under your sweatshirt, Leslie?” asked Ms. Roberts.

  Leslie nodded, looked down at her sweatshirt and replied, “Yes, ma’am. Rufus likes body heat. That’s what my dad says.”

  Rufus’s head crept out from under Leslie’s sweatshirt at her side, and reached out towards the air holes at the back of the box. Rufus fanned his tongue in one of the air holes.

  “That’s true. Snakes are cold-blooded. Their body heat comes from the environment around them,” explained Ms. Roberts.

  Inside the box, something tickled the rats’ ear from behind. Grease giggled and swatted at it.

  From outside the back of the box a voice whispered, “M-m-m, lunch.”

  Grease froze. His eyes widened and he said timidly, “Excuse me, Ms. Roberts, did you say snake? Leslie?”

  Again Rufus’s tongue basted the back of the rat’s ear.

  Grease gave out a half-hearted pathetic laugh and didn’t move. “Ugh, wait. Are you joking? What’s up with that?” Grease spun around in time to see Rufus’ tongue retreat through the air hole. Grease stomped his foot and exclaimed, “Why couldn’t I have been born in China!?” Grease went to the far side of the box, grabbed the edges of the air holes and yelled out, “Are you aware that in China, they recognize the Year of the Rat!? They honor us!” Grease began shadow boxing against the swaying shadows through the air holes, chasing them as Leslie shifted. He punched the cardboard wall and yelled out again, “Yeah and they weigh us in kilos!”

  As Leslie walked through the pet shop, the other animals bid their farewells to Grease.

  “Don’t go down without a fight, Grease ball!”

  “Hey rat, don’t let ‘em snuggle because you’ll end up in a struggle!”

  “Good luck.”

  “Rufus, don’t eat that rat, you’ll get a stomachache!”

  His cell mates in the cage on the ground shouted back, “Hey, Grease, don’t eat that snake!”

  Grease stuck his arm out one of the air holes, waved good-bye and said, “Well, lads, I’m off to China. See you on the other side.”

  The two myna birds were busy counting sunflower seeds. “How many seeds do you have?”

  “Eighteen,” answered Soren. “How about you? How many do you have?”

  “I only have eleven, but I feel lucky. You have a lot of seeds.”

  “That’s because I don’t like them. They’re too hard to open and, to tell you the truth, I don’t like seeds that much. I’ve been trading for crickets and meal worms recently.” Soren picked up sunflower seeds in his beak and stuffed them under his wings.

  Ms. Roberts finished reading the newspaper and set it on her desk. She took a big gulp of tea and got up. She passed the two myna birds on her way to the front of the pet shop. Alone in the window, she gazed past the redwood island in the middle of the road. A white curb surrounded the island. It was broken and cracked under pressure of the roots from the redwood trees. Ms. Roberts looked through the trees and across the road into the town square. A young man and woman tossed a neon-green Frisbee back and forth, laughing and smiling at each other as they performed an assortment of trick throws and acrobatic catches. A group of people gathered in a loose circle to kick a hacky-sack. A man sat on a bench sipping a hot drink with a pen in his other hand and a pad of paper on his knee. He stared hypnotically through a battered empty guitar case. People sat at tables at an outside restaurant cradling novels; others sat with their heads cocked back, wearing sunglasses and absorbing the heat of the sun on their faces. Mountain bikers paraded through the square searching for familiar faces in the crowd. People contently watched people. A chess match had gathered some silent spectators. A mother pushing a stroller with her son at her side walked in front of the pet shop. The little boy stared at Ms. Roberts in the window. The mother smiled and nodded at Ms. Roberts. As they passed, the boys’ eyes remained fixed on Ms. Roberts. The mother noticed and teased her sons’ hand into her own, “It’s not nice to stare.”

  Abruptly, as if awakened, Ms. Roberts spun around and walked past her desk, picking up the paper and continuing to the very back of the pet shop and into a white storage room. She reached for a gallon jug of distilled spring water with both hands, took a deep draw from the lip of the jug and then put it down. Against the wall were four large Plexiglas breeding boxes. Inside the boxes, a mass of crickets sang, mealworms wiggled, minnows and little goldfish swam about in their various environments. As Ms. Roberts gathered small plastic bags of each, six crickets snuck out of their box and jumped silently into hiding. She began walking through the pet shop, dropping crickets into terrariums and goldfish into pools for the snakes, lizards and big turtles. She took a moment to scoop a dead angelfish out of an aquarium with a little green fishnet. She flipped the fish over in her hand and looked at it carefully for mites or any type of infection. She found none, so she walked over to the Jack Dempsey aquarium and dropped the angel fish in the tank. The Jack Dempsey went for it in a lightning strike, and the angelfish disappeared. Ms. Roberts bent down and watched and listened to the Jack Dempsey for a moment, hearing a faint jingle when the fish suddenly turned. Perplexed, she moved away, wondering what to think of her jingling fish. She returned to the storage room and retrieved a gallon jug of water to fill water bottles and pools. First stop was Paris the toad’s mud bath. Ms. Roberts poured and splashed water all over the terrarium, drenching Paris.

  “Baugh-gh! You’re a cold-hearted woman!” announced Paris, with his eyes wide open. He scrambled towards his heat lamp.

  “Good morning, Paris,” greeted Ms. Roberts. She continued walking and glanced into Fife’s cage, seeing the destruction that had taken place.

  “My, did we have a good time last night?” she joked. She continued thinking out loud and talking to the myna bird. “Then again, it was only your second night in a cage in a while. You’ll get used to it.”

  Fife sat very still and loudly replied in mimicked English, “No, I won’t!”

  Ms. Roberts heard him clearly, and blurted out a startled chirp. She watched Fife suspiciously while sliding the paper tray out from under his cage. Ms. Roberts turned and walked to the garbage can where she tilted the tray so the old paper would slide off and returned with the tray lined with new paper, a new beak board, and a shiny new bell. Ms. Roberts replaced the tray under Fife’s cage. She focused her eyes on Fife as she slowly moved her hands to the latch of the cage. Her nimble fingers pried the clasp open.

  Fife moved to the far side of his cage.

  Ms. Roberts put the new beak board in the cage fastening it firmly to the bars, then reset the perch pole, and closed the cage door with a snap. For the bell, she hooked one of the two wires so she could secure it to the top of the cage from the outside and stuff the bell through the bars.

  Soren watched his tray, covered in discarded seeds, slide out from under his cage. Ms. Roberts returned with a clean tray and replaced it under Soren’s cage. “Looks like you two birds had a food fight,” she commented. She grabbed a brown bag of bird seed from one of the shelves in the storage room and filled both feeders. She put the birdseed back on its shelf and moved to an ominously empty terrarium. Ms. Roberts looked in and saw foot prints and a tail trail. The water was clean and the plants were healthy. Nothing was out of place, except Ms. Roberts couldn’t find the creature that lived in the cage. She looked under the cage and on the shelves all around the pet shop, even back in the storage room and around the breeding boxes. Ms. Roberts moved her desk and looked behind it. She noticed that the heater vent was closed. She gave up and looked back in the cage just to make sure. There were no new signs of life.

  V

  DIM SUNLIGHT REFLECTED off a brick wall into the pack rat’s den. The pack rat, admiring some of his prized possessions, heard a knock at his storm drain entrance.

  “Come in. Ah, Tye. All set for tonight?” the pack rat asked as he placed an ivory
button back on a piece of pipe wire sticking out of the mortar between two bricks in his wall.

  Tye walked through the pack rat’s cluttered living quarters. “Same as usual. You wanted to see me about something?” Tye looked at piles of coins, some foreign, stacked into a throne and held together with beeswax.

  “Yes. Tell me, Tye, have you ever seen either of the two myna birds before?” The pack rat picked up an encased bearing for a skateboard wheel and spun it silently.

  Looking through the odds and ends, Tye said, “The young myna bird has been there a long time, four moons or so, and the older one just got there a couple days ago, but,” Tye stopped and looked at the pack rat, “the older one sure reminds me of a crow I know. They sound the same, like Reo.”

  “Thank you, Tye. I feel the same,” agreed the pack rat. “I would like you to watch them closely tonight, if you would. When trading is over, I want you to come back here and tell me everything you saw and heard. I will pay you for your eyes and ears tonight. Now go, we wouldn’t want you to be late for the opening.”

  Tye went to the entrance, and cautiously looked to the sky and surveyed the ground below before he climbed down the third vine in the El Paseo, a vine jungle clinging to the walls of a south-of-the-border-style narrow passageway with archways and courtyards further down the shadowed corridor. He waited at the corner, and looked both ways and up into the sky again before crossing the sidewalk. Tye ran as fast as he could across the sidewalk and dove through the bars of a drainage grate to cross beneath the road in a drainpipe ending at the creek below the pet shop. The other mice were already on a slippery wet ledge forested with patches of moss and small ferns. In the shade of mixed bay trees and redwoods, the creek clicked and popped below the ledge.

  Dram looked up to see Tye scurrying along from a different direction than usual. Dram coaxed his crew. “Let’s get moving.” He began to echo as he entered the red clay pipe leading the field mice to the back wall of the pet shop, but for them it was a trading floor. “Remember to listen to me at the other end of the pipe, and I’ll tell you all when to push.”

  The mice entered the pet shop in the usual fashion.

  As Tye appeared bounding through the crack, Dram stopped him and asked, “Hey, Tye, where were you coming from this afternoon?”

  “The pack rat asked to see me about something.”

  “The pack rat! What did he want to see you about? Do you want to talk about it? I do.” Dram blinked his chubby eyes and smiled.

  “I don’t know if I should,” Tye sighed, and continued, “The pack rat just asked me to keep an eye on the two myna birds tonight.” Tye shrugged his shoulders and walked off towards his section of the pet shop.

  “That’s it? To watch the two myna birds?” Dram muttered suspiciously. “That can’t be it. That’s not all. I wonder why?” Dram looked at the two myna birds, who were thrashing about their feeders emptying out all the seeds. Frustrated, Dram yelled, “Stations, everyone! Tye, you be careful with whom you keep company!”

  Soren was thrilled and asked, “How any seeds do you have now?”

  “I’m not enjoying my counting as much as you seem to be. I have twenty-one. And you?”

  “I have thirty-two. I’m almost out of here,” exclaimed Soren.

  Six bells rang.

  Soren was full of excitement and explained, “We have to listen very carefully for our trades or else we’ll miss out. Remember what I told you about trading, the language and the figuring out the ratios and stuff.”

  “Buying corn kernels!” squealed a guinea pig.

  “Sold! Sold!” squawked a parrot.

  Soren looked at his stock of corn kernels, counted out five and yelled, “Cross sunflower seeds with corn kernels, two to one, five times!”

  “Done. You’re filled,” shouted the guinea pig.

  Soren figured out loud, “Ten more sunflower seeds. That’s forty-two!”

  Fife panicked immediately, watching sunflower seeds going to Soren’s cage. Fife raised his wings and yelled, “Trading seeds with sunflower seeds!”

  “Sold!” chorused the caged white mice.

  “Sold!” sang the crickets from the breeding box in the storage room.

  The Cockatiel Conglomerate sat four in a row on a perch pole and sang like a barbershop quartet, getting a higher pitch with each word and then a group-shout at the end: “Sold, sold, sold, sold, SOLD!”

  Mice ran to and from the myna bird cages. Cedar chips were being scratched up and delivered to Dram. Sunflower seeds were being taken to the myna bird’s cages.

  Dram couldn’t take it anymore. “Tye, come here, please.”

  Tye tip-toed across the sills and came to Dram’s call. “Yeah, Dram, what’s up?”

  “I know something else is going on here. It could be very bad for business if the pack rat and these two myna birds are involved in some kind of contract. We can’t have these two birds mucking up our livelihood. This is how I feed my family, and this is how you help with your family. Don’t mess it up.” Dram looked at the two myna birds accepting sunflower seeds. “I see they’re buying sunflower seeds, and the rest of the pet shop is selling them. If they hold those seeds or give them to the pack rat for a bigger trade, there is no telling what they are planning. Please, Tye, be very careful. The pack rat is the most dangerous creature you will ever meet. He’s ruthless. So, that been said, I would like you to tell me what you know and what is going on here.”

  Tye held his paws out and exclaimed, “What? I know nothing. The pack rat asked me to see him. I went to his den and he asked me to watch the two myna birds tonight. When our work is done here, I’m supposed to go back and tell him what I heard and saw this evening. That’s it. Oh, and he asked me if I had seen either of the two myna birds before. I told him the young one has been here his whole life, and that the older one reminds me of a crow I know.”

  Both Tye and Dram said at the same time, “Reo.”

  “Yeah, Reo. And Dram, I’m being paid extra to watch the birds. As far as I can tell, it’s harmless.”

  A voice from across the pet shop yelled out, “Hey, Tye, did I get filled on my trade!?”

  Tye shouted back, “You were buying, right?”

  “No! Selling! Get over here.”

  “Dram, I’ve got to go fix this. Are we good here?”

  “We’re good. Go.”

  The Jack Dempsey fish swam beside a broker mouse as it walked in front of his aquarium. The mouse was carrying two squirming crickets, one under each arm. The broker noticed the big fish and stopped briefly to explain, “You want these? You have to trade for them.” The crickets began kicking furiously, as the broker began walking towards the edge of the shelf above the scorpion terrarium. The mouse leaned over the edge, dropped the crickets in and watched for a moment. He portrayed the battle taking place below; he pretended his claws were pinchers and bent over at the waist with his tail curved up over his head. He grabbed at a make-believe cricket, then grabbed his own neck, in play, and tapped himself on the head with his tail. He fell to the ground twitching pretending to wrestle death itself. He used one arm and pulled his body across the shelf a few times before he kicked violently and played dead.

  The mouse peeked out and around and sprang to his feet, dusted himself off and quickly bowed in three directions to no one. He began to walk back past the Jack Dempsey tank, and again the fish watched intently as the mouse walked the length of the aquarium. The mouse got nervous and looked over his shoulder at the fish staring at him. The Jack Dempsey backed up and charged the mouse. The big fish hit the glass, sending a wave of water over the top of the tank in a waterfall. The mouse was swept over the edge of the shelf, screaming in terror.

  An excited green chameleon, happy with his trade for outside spiders, was counting push-ups, “Ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen …,” as two mice struggled with some small spiders and the webs they were making in defense. The mice tried to drop the small spiders in the chameleon tank, but one mouse got webs all
over his paws and turned to walk away, only to trip on a spider web stuck to his foot. He put his hands out to protect himself and bumped into the other mouse. They fell stuck together dangling upside down in mid-air, swinging back and forth.

  The tarantulas tapped on their glass for attention, in a panic to save their little cousins from the chameleons.

  Two little green turtles squared off in the pool in front of the little plastic beach display. They eyed each other aggressively. One turtle put up a foot and the other turtle matched it, then the other side. They stood up together and backed away. Both turtles lifted one leg and slammed their foot into the water, splashing each other. They raised the other foot in true sumo fashion, and again splashed it down in the water. They bowed their heads and moved towards each other very slowly, clashing shells. Front feet pushing on each other, they locked together, splashing as they turned and pushed, trying to knock the other out of the pool and onto the floor.

  The new recruit broker, Wayne, stood on the sill of a snake cage wearing half a walnut shell on his head and carrying a plastic badge as a shield. The snakes below focused on him. Three mice were running along the shelf above with cedar chips, heading for Dram. A yellow-and-brown baby monitor lizard, out of his cage, hissed at the three mice from behind a stack of bagged multi-colored aquarium gravel. The three mice froze in fright. Looking at each other, they screamed and jumped straight off the shelf, startling Wayne on their way down. Wayne jumped backwards onto the screen roof of one of the snake cages. The snake coiled and sprang to the roof of his cage launching Wayne into the shelf above and cracking his walnut-shell helmet into little pieces. Wayne dropped his shield and darted for the safety of the sill, yelling, “Trading places! Trading places!”

  The two myna birds turned and shouted, “Sold!”

  Dram screamed out, “No trade! Bust trade! No deal!” Dram looked at Wayne, who was trying to get off his shelf. “You stay there and get back to work. You’re alive, so relax.” Dram watched Wayne out of the corner of his eye for awhile, continuing to match trades.