Not more than two hours ago, traveling the stretch of
sidewalk from the Schwarber's place to Chrysalis House, I'd been
a shattered chunk of silence, darkness, and despair, a stray dog
slinking through someone else's territory, half praying to make
it through unscathed, half hoping for a quick death at the teeth
of those who truly belonged here.
But traveling the other way now? It was still dark and
silent, sure, the sun having set and none of those with me--Mr.
Schwarber, El Brujo or Serena--saying anything. But the lights
in the houses we passed, I didn't look at them and see them
mocking me, didn't feel the wall there anymore, the boundary
that said, "We're inside; you're outside."
I mean, the same houses, the same lights, the same cracks
in the sidewalk under my wheels, but--
Not the same. Not the same at all.
It bubbled inside me--hope, relief, maybe even joy--till I
couldn't keep it inside. Though I still knew better than to
speak out loud in human talk. "She asked him," I said in the
relative quiet of animal speech, "to come and get me, Bru. She
asked him!"
"Be cautious, August," the cat said in the swish of her
tail, the set of her whiskers. "As amusing as your histrionics
can be at times, I've had just about enough of them for one
evening."
"Ha!" Serena, settled on my right thigh and quivering,
probably with the effort it took not to go leaping about the way
any self-respecting squirrel should. "You will see when we
arrive, Miss Brujo! You will see the triumph of love and
devotion!"
El Brujo narrowed her eyes. "I will see only and exactly
what I will see, no more, Miss Serena, and no less. You do none
of us any favors speculating wildly ahead of the facts, and--"
"Ha!" This time, the syllable exploded from Serena, sent
her racing up the front of my jacket; leaping to grab the
lapels, she hung there chittering, "The happily-ever-afters will
spring up in a manner both fast and furious! Rainbows and
butterflies and that glorious chewy caramel that comes wrapped
in chocolate! All will be as well as a soft rain at the
beginning of spring! All!"
"Ummm," from Mr. Schwarber, walking alongside me. I turned
my head, met his bemused gaze. "Everything all right over
there?"
Concentrating on being as calm as a person with a squirrel
dangling from his jacket could be, I got my mouth to form the
words: "Serena always gets excited."
He nodded. "I can't even begin to imagine how you'd start
training a squirrel."
A little twinge twisted through me. I hate lying, and I'd
always told myself--ever since the animals had started talking
to me, I mean--I'd always vowed that I wouldn't pretend I was
training them. Just the thought of it conjured up pictures of
me in a red swallow-tailed coat with black top hat and boots, a
mustache and sneer as thin and curling as the whip I was
snapping at the animals and forcing them to do my bidding.
'Cause if there's one thing I think this little narrative
has shown, it's that I've got no more control over El Brujo and
Serena and Jefe and Traveler and the rest than I do over the
string cheese of my nervous system.
But more than that, see, I didn't want to control
them. I don't want to be leader of the pack--or even a member
of the pack when you get right down to it. That they've chosen
to hang out with me, that they've chosen to be friends with me,
that means so much more than anything I could--
Which is starting to sound like the moral at the end of
some pony episode. So I'll just say that to my way of thinking
a group of strays is not a pack. At least my group of
strays wasn't...
I realized that Mr. Schwarber was still looking at me.
"It, uhhh," I managed to say. "It only works if the squirrel
co-operates."
He chuckled, faced forward, and when I did the same, I saw
we'd worked out way through the neighborhood to their block, the
streetlights filtering shadows through the ficus leaves and all
over the sidewalk in the summer darkness ahead.
Serena had dug her claws in to the fabric of my coat, was
clinging to it like some weird corsage. "All will be well, Mr.
Augie," she whispered. "You must believe that to be the case."
I nodded, my throat going dry, Mr. Schwarber stepping
forward as we came to their front gate, the porch light hard and
too bright to look at. The curtains drawn across the front
windows glowed invitingly, though, and when Mr. Schwarber held
the front gate open and said, "C'mon in," I just nodded again
and spun myself through.
There's much more, you know! 40, for example, which, oddly enough, is the next installment!
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