Episode 4:
Close Encounters Of The Furred Kind
Elizabeth liked the idea of sleeping late, but never could. Most kids her age struggled to get up in the morning. Elizabeth loved the way she’d wake up just before her alarm would go off, get dressed, eat and feel the weather on her face when she rode her bike to school, arriving early for Mr. Rawlings’ first period “American Lit.” It was her favorite class. She’d wanted to be a writer for as long as she’d known how to read. And write she did, a trunk-full of stories she hadn’t the nerve yet to show to anyone – although there was this one she’d been working on lately that Elizabeth thought had promise. Maybe this was the one she’d dare to give Mr. Rawlings for his professional opinion.
Her friend, Eleanor, on the other hand, lived to sleep. (She actually told me once that she preferred it to being awake, but I’m pretty sure she was just kidding.) This morning was no exception, particularly given that she and Elizabeth had been up late the night before watching the horror film festival on The Late Show. It was 11:08 in the morning. “Hmm,” she groaned, mumbling to herself as she opened one eye to look at her watch on the night table in our guest room. “Plenty of time to get ready.” There wasn’t and she knew it, but that’s what she said. “…Yuk.” She used the corner of her pillow to wipe away some slobber that fell out when she started talking.
“Get up,” she said out loud to motivate herself, “quick shower, get dressed, grab an apple to eat along the way and walk out the front door with Elizabeth who was no doubt already ready to go.” (Most of us would never talk that much to ourselves, but Eleanor was exceptional. Next to me, of course, she was, herself, her favorite person to hang out with. If you think about that for a minute or two, it’ll start to make sense.) Together they would walk at a brisk pace the thirty-two minutes it would take to get downtown, cutting through people’s yards, with their longstanding permission of course, and taking the runner’s trail through the woods. No sweat. Eleanor was a pro. “Got to hustle,” she threw off the covers and bounded out of bed on her way to the bathroom.
(Wait. I’m having a writer’s moment… “What do you think, Rollo? Should I be writing about Young Elizabeth in the third person…”
“Murrk?”
“..or first person? It is, after all, me that I’m talking about. Hm. ..I think I’ll go back to first person.” I looked over at Rollo who just stared back at me, absent any approval or disapproval of my literary decision. “What do you know?” I said, determined to get on with my writing without or without his support.)
“Hey!” Eleanor literally landed in our kitchen, having jumped the last few feet as if she was some superhero just arriving to save the day.
“Hey yourself,” I was glad to see her, greeting her from the open door of our refrigerator, holding the perfect apple I knew my best human friend would need. My backpack – an old canvas bag, the kind with a flap, like a saddle bag, that I’d picked up cheap at an Army-Navy surplus store – with Rollo peering over the edge, was already on my shoulders. “Here you go.” I tossed the apple across the room, lofting it perfectly, if I do say so myself, into Eleanor’s hand.
“Thanks. Let’s roll,” and we did. “You know,” Eleanor was walking behind me down the path on our way to the sidewalk, “everybody thinks it’s weird that you take your cat with you everywhere you go. It’s.. It’s not what ordinary people do.”
“Then it makes sense,” I answered without turning around, leaving it to Rollo to do the looking at Eleanor for me, “doesn’t it?” (Rollo’s no ordinary cat.)
“Mrrrrk.” Rollo flattened out his ears, said goodbye to Eleanor and slumped below the edge of the backpack’s flap, thinking he’d catch a quick nap on our way to the harbor.
It was warm that June day, almost at the beginning of the summer between middle school and high school. So far so good on what promised to be a near perfect day walking through the shops and open market downtown by the dock in the heart of the small, colonial town where our families had lived for decades, at the mouth of the river just off the bay. We’d buy lunch from one of the stands – maybe a grilled crab cake on a Kaiser roll, share some fries in a cup and definitely some ice cream made right there in front of us. My personal favorite was the vanilla with fresh pineapple made into a shake with half a banana. And it wouldn’t just be the two of us. Bobby and Middle Ralph would be there, too. Bobby, to be honest, no brag intended, because he wanted to see me. MR because he was Bobby’s friend.
I had talked to Bobby last night, an hour or so after my father had driven the boys home, pretending we were discussing what we would do at the fair when all we really wanted to do was hear each other’s voice. It wasn’t a date, not exactly, but it was something, and I liked the feeling of looking forward to it.
It was already busy by the time we’d walked past my father’s office, down Main Street to the dock. All sorts, sizes and shapes of people meandered body to body along the narrow aisles that ran through the covered section of the market, and among the carts and stalls that sprawled out on the sidewalks of the streets that converged at the water. Locals and tourists were everywhere, spilling out into the streets, loitering around the carts, families with kids and old people stopping traffic in the circle when they were too slow to cross, unknowing visitors looking for parking they’d never find, the smell of the water competing for nose space with the flavors of barbeque and freshly baked pies. It was one of those days that made everything you did feel good, when nothing that didn’t go perfectly seemed to matter. The locals knew better and parked blocks away, reconciling themselves, with pleasure, to walking into town. Anyway, Eleanor and I were too young to drive. Besides, walking gave us a chance to talk about stuff and check out the stores along the way. We wouldn’t have driven even if we could.
I had grown up here and should have been used to it by now, but there was something about the sound of the place, of the collective voice of people on the streets, the smell of the air, the seagulls coming and going as if they lived here too, which they did, the way the old sidewalks and buildings had aged, how the houses and stores had been fixed up by everyone who had ever lived there. Something about the place made me feel good, surprised me whenever I took the time to think about it, that made me feel safe and strong. This place was my house. These people, their lives and business, the bricks and mortar it was made of.
“This is nice.” Stopping at one of the carts, I picked up a necklace made by one of the local craftsmen, a one-of-a-kind I thought might go with the tan I was planning to get as soon as I could. I was thinking Bobby would like the way a tan would highlight my sun-bleached short blonde hair. (“No sun block in those days.” It’s me, Elizabeth, the college student. Don’t you love it when I butt into my own stories?) Eleanor, on the other hand, a shoulder length brunette who claimed to be allergic to the sun, was fond of wide brimmed hats and long sleeved shirts, although she favored short short skirts thinking her legs were her best feature.
“Nice, but expensive,” Eleanor warned me, turning over the small tag dangling from the clasp. Time to move on.
“Hey, Mrs. Stallings,” I smiled, trying unsuccessfully to cover my clumsiness. Starting to walk away without looking where we were going, we’d turned too late and bumped into a stroller being pushed by the art teacher we had last semester, out with her husband and their not yet two-year-old son, Danny.
“Hi, girls. You know my husband, Jack.”
“Of course,” I responded politely, but just short of overdoing it. True or not, the last thing I needed around school was the reputation of being a suck up. “We met at homecoming when you were helping with the decorations.”
To which Jack responded by smiling back a short, but pleasant, “Hi.” He was nice, but preoccupied with the large cat staring at him from over my shoulder.
“Good to see you. Especially you, Eleanor. I’m going to need a baby sitter two days next week. Are you up for it?”
“Sure, Mrs. Stallings.” She didn’t like babysitting all that much, but Danny was a cute kid and went to bed really early, and she needed the money. “Just give me a call.”
“I will. …Danny, let go of Elizabeth’s shorts” which he’d grabbed while we were standing there. His mother reached to pull on Danny’s arm, and he let go reluctantly, giggling and saying “Later” in the process, an expression he’d learned from his father. He’d been wriggling impatiently in one failed attempt after another to escape from his stroller. There was so much everywhere he wanted to touch, my shorts being the one thing he could reach.
“Hi, Mrs. Stallings.” It was Bobby who had just walked up with MR.
“Hello, boys,” she responded, waving while she and her husband walked away down the aisle toward one of the crafts tables where, we found out later, she had some of her own water colors on display.
Naturally, I did my best to seem no more than casually interested, while Bobby tried to do the same. As it turns out, neither one of us was all that good an actor, but you could tell we both felt good knowing that we were faking it.
“Have you two eaten yet?” Ralph asked, not even wasting time to say, “Hey.” Bobby was there to see me. Eleanor was there to talk to me and for the shopping. And MR had come for the food. (Not to worry. Four years later and almost a foot taller, a much slimmer, better looking, dare I say sexier Ralph would go to Harvard. Oh, and his fingers were no longer pudgy.) He wasn’t fat, not really, but eating was his favorite thing to do. There wasn’t a day anyone could remember when he didn’t whip a Snickers out of his backpack before those big heavy school doors had time to close behind him on his way home.
“No. Not yet.” I was answering MR, but looking at Bobby, wondering if I could really like a boy who had better hair than I did, working hard to suppress the urge to just run my fingers through it. It was hair that always looked like it needed a trim, but was never too long. “How was that possible?” I thought to myself and then, out loud this time, “We’re going for crab cakes.”
“Hey, guys!” Eleanor thought she had seen something out of the corner of her eye. “Did you see that?! I think there’s some animal moving behind the deli counters.”
“Wait,” Elizabeth looked over her shoulder at the empty backpack. “Rollo’s gone.” Maybe paying a tad too much attention to Bobby, I hadn’t noticed Rollo had escaped. (I say “escaped,” but then it wasn’t as if he was a prisoner. It’s just that I worried about him and liked to keep him close.)
“What?!” Ralph spun his head around from trying to figure out where he was relative to The Little Tavern, home of the tiny, “buy ‘em by the bag” twenty five cent hamburger, to see what Eleanor was talking about. “Maybe it was a rat? ...a really, really huge rat?”
“No, no, much bigger. …There!” I pointed behind where Ralph was standing at what I thought I saw moving fast, in and out through the people milling around, but then lost it in the crowd. “It’s got to be Rollo.”
“Can he move that fast?” Even Eleanor was surprised and she’d known Rollo as long as Elizabeth.
“Where?” Ralph spun around again, but there was nothing.
“Probably nothing, just a shadow,” Elizabeth wasn’t too worried yet. “We need to find Rollo before he gets into trouble.”
“Hey,” Eleanor mumbled to herself, still looking around to see if she could find it again. “I know a shadow when I see one. It’s his gray, black and white fur. The faster he moves, the harder he is to see.”
“Sure,” Ralph pretended to be interested. “Let’s get some burgers.”
“Go ahead,” I encouraged him, taking advantage of the opportunity to push Bobby’s arm in the right direction, “before MR passes out and we have to drag him somewhere.”
“How ‘bout if we meet you at the tables by the water?”
I smiled my response back to him, forgetting momentarily and then remembering that I should actually say something. Bobby had that effect on me, but I was desperate that he not know how much. A little bit, that was okay, even good, but I didn’t want him to know how bad I had it for him, some days, like today, more than others. “Yeah. We’ll spit up… No,” I laughed softly, shaking my head. “We’ll split up, get some food, and I’ll pick a table with uneven legs if you don’t get there first to save me.” It was a reference to how we met, Bobby walking up, seeing that I was annoyed, to squish a folded napkin under the leg of the cafeteria table where I was eating, then just smiling and walking away. (“The best pickup lines,” I thought to myself, “are always the ones the guy never says.”)
“Right,” Bobby smiled back at me, “and we can spit up after we eat.”
“Yeah,” I was pretending to be serious, “that probably makes more sense,” but couldn’t help smiling when I said it.
“Com’on, Ralph.” Bobby grabbed MR by his arm, and starting towing him backward, away from whatever he was talking to Eleanor about. “Let’s get some food.”
“I still think it was rat!” MR shouted back at her. “Whoa, what was that?!” This time he saw it too, but now moving under the tables on the other side. (Rollo had only two speeds, flat out and sleeping.) It was there, then it wasn’t, little more than a shadow and then gone in just the second it took Eleanor to turn and look for herself – gone except for the telltale tuft of fur drifting to the pavement a few feet away.
“That’s familiar,” Eleanor recognized Rollo’s fur when she saw it, having picked enough of it off her clothes whenever she hung out with Elizabeth at her house. “Elizabeth! Over here.” Looking across from where they were standing, at a table covered by a cloth that didn’t go all the way to the ground, she could see just the paws of the two front feet of a cat sitting upright, the rest of its unusually large body hidden from view. “Rat feet?” she nodded in the direction of where Rollo was sitting. “I don’t think so.”
Meanwhile, at the dock that was adjacent to the market, three boys, a year or two older than my friends and me, got out of their small outboard runabout that they tied up to one of the sailboats parked alongside the concrete bulkheads that defined the harbor. No one was onboard the sailboat which was lucky for the three boys, because, had there been, they would have minded the way the boys jumped on their boat and cut across their deck, uninvited and unwanted guests, not caring where they stepped or what they touched. One of them popped open the built-in cooler under the bench seat in the back looking for beer, slamming it shut when he discovered there was none. Double parking your boat wasn’t uncommon on a crowded weekend, but helping yourself to someone else’s property wasn’t something you did without permission.
As hot as it was out, all three of the boys were wearing jeans and worn out Nikes. The Nikes I get, given they were coming off a boat, but jeans? And t-shirts. They were all three wearing t-shirts for older generation metal bands that had stopped performing before they were born. (Does anybody normal, our age, like metal? I don’t think so. You can tell a lot about someone by the t-shirt he or she wears, which is precisely why they’re so hard to pick out. When you meet someone, before you get to know them, everything counts, especially what they’re wearing.)
Two of the three of them looked enough alike to be brothers, maybe a year apart, two at most. They were the ones wearing Led Zeppelin and Motörhead shirts, like they were huge fans. The third kid, their leader judging from the way they deferred to him, was wearing a Kiss shirt with the guy whose tongue is always sticking out. (Yuk.) For the sake of keeping track of these three, we’ll call the younger one of the maybe-brothers “Pink.” He was fair-skinned and had a touch of sunburn on his face and arms. And the other, apparently older one? We’ll call him “Floyd,” like the two of them together were the band. As for their leader, how about “Gene”? Just “Gene” as in “Gene Simmons” (aka, “The Demon”) whose on-stage Kiss persona he, the head kid, seemed hell-bent on living for real. Gene’s an ordinary name that I’m pic
king so you don’t think there was anything exceptional, larger than life about this boy, other than his being a colossal jerk.
By now, Rollo back inside my backpack, Eleanor and I had made it to the front of the line at the grill selling crab cakes. At this time of day, lunch was on everyone’s mind, and there were rows of crab cakes already cooked on both sides and ready to sell. “Don’t worry,” I said to Rollo, reaching back without looking to rub his head. “I’ll get you something. ...Rollo?” Nuts. He’d slipped out again when I wasn’t paying attention. (Geez, he was good at that.)
“What?!” the man behind the counter snapped at us. Mr. Zeller, who owned the concession, was never known for his light touch with his customers. Big and overweight, a well-stained butcher’s apron, his tendency to wipe the back of his right hand across his nose and the short, but snarly black and white beard that framed his large and uneven mouth did nothing to make him seem more friendly, but his “Cakes” and fries were delicious. (The “Crab” portion of his old-style neon sign had flickered out at least two summers ago, but it didn’t affect his business, and he wasn’t fixing it until it did.)
“We’ll have two, please, separate plates, and a large cup of fries, no salt.” Eleanor respected Mr. Zeller’s style and spoke up assertively. And then I elbowed her. “Plus three of those mini-crab cakes on the toothpicks for our furry friend. Those you should put in a bag, please.” The kid that worked for Mr. Zeller slipped his spatula under two that were done, placed them off center on two open Kaiser rolls already on the plastic plates he would hand us. (“A little precision wouldn’t hurt,” I mumbled, my borderline obsessive compulsive disorder kicking in.) Eleanor took the sandwiches, and two little cups of tarter sauce. I paid and took the large cup of fries and the bag of mini-cakes for Rollo, who I fully expected to show up as soon as he realized the smell of me and the mini-crab cakes where coming from one in the same place.
Walking away, we passed the stand that sold those great kosher hot dogs, wrapped in grilled bologna, on the poppy seed rolls that were soooo good with mustard and onions. Both of us paused for a moment, looking and smelling the dogs cooking on the racks, turned to each other and said to ourselves, telepathically the way close friends do, “Maybe next time? Yes, definitely next time.”
Down the aisle a bit, we turned left on our way to the tables where Bobby and MR would be meeting us. “Keep an eye for Rollo, will you?” I asked Eleanor for her help. “I should have kept in him in my backp…”
“What?” Eleanor knew something was up when I stopped suddenly and knocked on her shoulder twice with the back of my hand.
“Take a look at that.” My eyes, and now hers, were on Mrs. Stallings stroller. Our teacher, one hand still on the stroller’s handle, was on automatic, pushing it back and forth a couple of inches, while she and her husband were caught up in the conversation they were having with another teacher we recognized – but that wasn’t what caught our attention. In the midst of all the distractions around them – including some pretty good live music by two women with acoustic guitars – the Stalling’s son, Danny, had just managed, right as they watched, to slip out of his seatbelt and start toddling toward the street, just a few feet away.
“Mrs. Stallings!!” I shouted, but they were too far away, and there was too much noise for her or her husband, Jack, to hear. Dropping my fries and mini-cakes on the nearest table, I was off, dodging stands and displays as quickly as possible, my arms out front pushing through the people moving in front of me.
“Nuts.” Reluctantly, Eleanor turned to the lady selling jewelry on the table next to her. “Here,” she said hurriedly. “You eat these. My treat,” and started running to catch up with me.
“Mrs. Stallings!” I shouted again. Still nothing, and they had to be pretty much the only people in the vicinity that didn’t hear me. Everyone was turning around, but looking at me, not Danny.
They hadn’t been all that far away, but by now Danny was almost at the curb. Unbelievably, no one else was paying attention or seemed to care that there was a little kid, no parents in sight, heading out into the street – at least nobody human, as they were about to realize.
“Mrs. Stallings!!” This time was different. I was only twenty feet away now, pointing frantically toward the curb, locals and tourists still in my way, and Danny’s parents were finally paying attention. Realizing immediately what had happened, they started running too, while I took a shortcut between two tables, almost knocking over an old lady in a chair sewing a needlework she planned to sell later that day. Eleanor, less polite and now only a step behind, nearly finished the job.
Now well on his way across the sidewalk, Danny giggled to himself, oblivious to the cars, so many cars coming around the corner of the market off the circle at the bottom of Main Street. There were cars everywhere, and people crossing the street between them and walking past him on the sidewalk. And still nobody was paying attention when the little kid stumbled over the curb and into the street, nobody except our hero, the one with fur.
This time, no one noticed the blur of a creature flying low, in leaps and bounds, careening off tables and counter tops, swerving at flash speeds between the legs of the people milling about. Out of nowhere, and in the nick of time, a huge cat – Who could that be? – landed in front of Danny, between him and oncoming traffic – skidding as his rear claws took hold in the old, rough brick pavement.
“Mearrrkkk!! Mearrkk!!!” Literally flying into the street and risking being run over, Rollo was barking in his own way, not at Danny who was behind him, but at the cars coming around the corner, rubbernecking the fair, not expecting a little kid, playing with his fingers, squatting down to pick up something shiny he saw on the street. Luckily for Danny, the spectacle of a large barking cat got their attention. The “errrrpp!!” of two cars stopping, slamming on their brakes just a few feet away, while a third almost hit one of the two from behind, confirmed how close a call it had been.
“Hi hi, cat.” Danny, for one, was having a ball, reaching over to pet the huge cat’s tail that was swishing slowly back and forth in front of him.
Turning quickly, Rollo grabbed the cuff of Danny’s little shorts in his mouth, and began dragging the kid back toward the curb.
Panic-stricken, the Stallings shouted at their son, “Danny!! Danny!!!” as they finally made it to the sidewalk, two steps behind me and then Eleanor, with Bobby and MR, who came running when they heard me screaming, just a few feet back.
Into the street, just by the curb, I knelt down to be closer to eye level with Danny, “Danny!” and then, calming down so as not to frighten the little boy, putting my hands on his shoulders to make sure he didn’t go anywhere, I tried again. “Hey, Danny.” This time he smiled back. “You okay?” I asked, catching my breath.
“For sure,” the little kid responded, still unbelievably cute despite the circumstances.
Turning to my left, I made eye contact with Rollo who was looking up at me. I smiled and then picked him up, holding him to my chest. “You okay, babe?” I asked Rollo, squeezing him tight while I turned back to watch Mr. Stallings bending over to pick up his son.
“Wow,” Bobby knelt down on one knee where I was sitting on the curb, Rollo butt down on the street between my feet. The Stallings, having thanked me – should have been Rollo, but then he’s always underappreciated – more times than I could count, had left to take Danny home. “That was close.” Bobby’s voice was calm and comforting.
“Yeah. ..So are you going to help me up?” I didn’t need it, but jumped at any chance to hold his hand. Reaching back with my left arm, I pulled open the flap of my backpack. “Rollo, get up here.” Rising quickly, Rollo climbed up my arm, then onto my shoulder and into my backpack, headfirst, rolling around inside until he was head up in the bag so he could see out the top.
“Sure,” Bobby stood up, reaching down to grab my hand, neither of us wanting to let go after I got up, but unable to
think of an excuse why we shouldn’t.
Together, Bobby, Eleanor, Rollo and I headed off to the homemade ice cream stand, while Ralph took a detour to the nearest men’s room.
To be continued…
“Wait.”
“Mur?”
“I know, we’re not done yet. Tinkle-time.” I rolled back from my desk, in a hurry not to lose my train of thought and blow the storyline. “ I shouldn’t have chugged that last bottle of water.”
“Meekk.”
“Save it. You know I don’t get to go in a box like you, except in an emergency of course.”
“MurrrkK!”
“Don’t panic. I was just kidding. Right back.” And I hustled off, out of my room and up one half flight to use whichever one of our two bathrooms was available.
Three minutes and change later, “I’m back.”
* * *