This week's prompt? "A battlefield."
Between the two of them, Deena and Mr. Schwarber managed to
lift my chair down the step into the living room. "I'll get
some plywood or something and put a ramp in," Mr. Schwarber
said, straightening with a grunt.
They both took seats, then, Deena on the couch again with
Heather, the little dog's tail a happy blur, and her father in a
brownish-yellowish recliner that I'm guessing didn't recline
anymore, the way it had a couple chunks of two-by-four shoved in
along the back edge. I rolled across the carpet, its shag thick
enough to pull at my wheels like damp grass, and fetched up on
the other side of the coffee table from Deena, her smile making
me feel--
Well, making me feel, I guess, something I hadn't
done among humans in a long, long time. With animals, see, it's
always a flood of emotion, like Heather with her boundless
enthusiasm or El Brujo's layer of feline disdain over the depths
of her love and devotion. Humans, though--and I'll be the first
to admit my experiences in this area aren't exactly average--
humans make everything much more a battlefield.
Not that an animal's life is some sort of idyll: "It's
nothing but a constant, horrible parade of stalking and being
stalked, eating and being eaten, mating and being mated," is how
El Brujo puts it when I start complaining about my fellow
homo sapiens. "And may I remind you, August, that the
only animal hospitals you'll find in this world are built by
human beings."
Which are completely valid points, sure, and ones I really
ought to appreciate considering my position. And yet...
The daily battlefield of animal life just seems so much
more honest than the snide and muddy trenches I've slogged
through pretty much my entire twenty years. Maybe it's just
that humans have evolved to the point where you can do OK in the
fight as long as you can talk. But I probably said five words
in the five years before El Brujo came along, so not only
couldn't I survive in the animal world, I was all outta luck in
the human world, too.
Sitting in the Schwarbers' living room, though--and I
couldn't even remember the last time I'd sat anywhere in
that wasn't a group home or a medical facility of some sort--
sitting there with people who I wanted to be with and who seemed
to want me there, it was--
Intoxicating? Overwhelming? Or maybe more like the first
time El Brujo had stood on my thighs and patted her front paws
against my neck while telling me to picture my throat as a
clenched fist with sand piled on top of it: "Rather than trying
to smash the sand down over and over in the hopes that some will
be forced out the other side," she'd said, "imagine the fingers
and thumb of your throat loosening just enough for those sandy
words to trickle through."
Sure, it makes me sound more like a bullfrog than anything
else, but with practice, I'd gotten so I could string ten or
twelve words together at a time. And ever since then--
Hopeful! That's the word! Sitting there with Deena and
her dad and knowing that reality was a much stranger place than
most people realize, a cat on my lap who was the best physical
therapist I'd ever met and a squirrel on my wrist who had
appointed herself my relationship coach, I could feel this odd
hopefulness seeping cool and sweet through me like a swallow of
milk on an empty stomach.
And better still, I could see it in Deena's eyes, in her
smile, in the way she stroked Heather and asked, "You're OK,
then, Gus?"
I nodded. "Things get confusing sometimes," I told her.
"But I stop and let 'em roll past." I brought a hand up, mimed
shading my eyes and peering into the distance. "Gives me a
better view of 'em."
El Brujo flicked her ears in a laugh, but Mr. Schwarber
sighed. "That's another hard thing to learn. Stopping
not so much to smell the roses but to get out of the way before
the avalanche you're running along with smashes you into paste."
"Been there," Deena said quietly. "And done that."
"But no more." I tapped the arm of my chair. "We're out
of the rat race now."
"Rats?" Serena had been swiveling her head, looking at
each of us in turn as we spoke, her tail twitching over her
head. But now she dug her claws into the sleeve of my jacket
and huddled down against my arm. "Of the few human words I
know, I find that one to be the most unpleasant!"
"It's OK." I touched a finger to the fur between her ears,
went on in animal speech: "We're talking about humans who act
like the stereotypical rat."
Serena's eyes widened. "Are these human rats coming here??
Because I would not care to meet them!"
"Ha!" Heather's tongue lolled out. "If rats or humans or
anything in between seek to cause harm here, I shall run at them
barking until they go away!"
"Fear not." El Brujo gave a slow blink. "As entertaining
as that would be to watch, I'm fairly certain no one of that
description can be found within several blocks of this place."
She turned a smug look back at me. "One might even begin to
think we were creating a haven from such things in this little
corner of the world."
"I like that," Deena said, and I had a moment of vertigo.
Had she heard--?? "So how 'bout we race squirrels instead?"
I blinked, recalled the last thing I'd said in human
speech, started to form words about having to check with Serena
first, but before I could squeeze anything out, Serena scrambled
squeaking up my sleeve. "Squirrel! I heard Miss Deena say it!"
Reaching my shoulder, she chittered a little dance. "She's
talking about me!"
Heather jumped to her paws in Deena's lap. "Yes! We're
all taking part in the conversation!"
Deena's wide eyes were moving between Serena and Heather,
and I felt the need to provide some explanation. "Serena knows
a few words," I managed to get out. "And she tends to react to
them."
"Wow." Deena patted Heather's head, the little dog's tail
spinning like a helicopter rotor. "Just how hard is it to train
a squirrel, anyway? I mean, are they smarter than dogs?"
El Brujo turned as big a feline grin at me then as I'd ever
seen from her. "Uhh," I said. "I'm gonna take the fifth on
that one..."
After this, then, we shimmy on down to 43.
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