Pride - William Wharton

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be warm. I hear Mom walking around upstairs. I go out the cellar door, run down the alley, up Copely Road, then along Clover Lane and into our house from the front. I come in as if I’ve been playing outside in the street with the other kids. Mom’s busy cleaning house so she doesn’t notice me much. I run upstairs quietly and go into our bathroom. What I need is there. It’s the only place I can think to find one. I used to have one in my chemistry set but it got broken.

      I lift the Argyrol out of our medicine cabinet and unscrew the top. It has a rubber squeezer and an eye dropper that goes into the bottle. I put the Argyrol bottle back in the medicine cabinet and squeeze the rubber, washing the inside of the eye dropper, until it isn’t brown any more.

      When I’m sure it’s clean. I dash downstairs, out the front door, around, through the alley, and back in the cellar door. I’m afraid the kitten’ll be dead by the time I get there; but if I go right through the house, past Mom, she’s liable to ask me what I’m doing, where I’m going, and I don’t want to tell any lies. If there really is a devil in me, he’d just love to have me lying to my parents, especially about a cannibal cat. That’s the first time I begin to think that this cat might be a devil himself. I read one time in a book about Halloween how witches’ cats had the devil in them. It’d explain a lot of things about this cat, Mr Harding, and me.

      When I get there in the cellar, down on my knees, I pull Cannibal out from behind the bucket-a-day, half convinced he’ll be dead, but he’s still breathing. I hold him in my hand, fill the eye dropper with milk and start squeezing it into his mouth.

      First I try putting the point of the eye dropper right in the center under that slit in his nose, but the milk only comes flowing out and gets his chin all wet. Then I figure how to slip the point into the side corner of his mouth and squeeze it slowly. I begin to feel him swallowing and it all goes in if I do it very carefully. I sit there for a long time, slowly dripping in milk while he swallows. He still doesn’t open his eyes. I slide him under the paint cloth and push the cloth back behind the bucket-a-day again. I’ve used all the milk.

      I go upstairs directly this time. Mom is going shopping and tells me to watch Laurel till she gets back. Laurel’s jumping rope with some girls on the walk in front of our house. I tell Laurel to stay there till I come back.

      This time I warm the milk in a pan, then go back into the cellar. It was hard getting the milk just warm enough and not too hot. I put a few drops of it on my tongue and it felt fine. I’m hoping old Cannibal is still alive.

      When I slide him out, he opens his eyes at me but doesn’t try to get up. His eyes look almost as if they’ve been crying but it could be only all the milk I spilled on him. I try wiping him off, but it’s hard wiping off kitten fur, it’s so soft.

      I pick him up without any trouble and begin putting some of the warm milk in his mouth the same way. This time he begins sucking on the end of the eye dropper and it goes fast. He drinks down that whole second batch in about five minutes. I run back upstairs again. Mom still isn’t home. I look out the front door while the new milk is heating. Laurel’s fine, still jumping rope across the street. I dash back into the kitchen, the milk’s too hot so I add some cold milk till it’s just right. I’m using so much milk now Mom’s going to notice. If I add any more water it won’t taste like milk.

      I decide I’ll tell her I drank some. She’ll like that because she’s always trying to make me drink more milk to build strong bones and teeth, but I don’t like it much, unless it’s cold and with chocolate.

      I drink a quarter glass so I won’t be lying and leave it unwashed in the kitchen sink as proof. I wash out the pan I’ve been cooking in and put it back into the pot-storage part of the stove.

      In the cellar, when I reach in the back of the bucket-a-day for Cannibal, he takes a bite at my finger. I pull my hand away fast. He’s worked his way up onto his stomach, still not standing but staring out at me with his yellow-green eyes. He has his mouth open again. I put the milk down just in front of his nose and sit back to watch. It’s the same; he won’t drink while I’m there.

      I run upstairs to check Laurel and see if Mom’s come home from shopping yet. It’s all O.K. When I come back down Cannibal hasn’t touched the milk.

      I don’t know what to do. I try waving one hand in front of him and then reaching back to grab him with the other, but he’s too quick for that and I get another nip on the finger. He doesn’t reach out to scratch me, the way you’d expect; he takes quick snaps with those sharp teeth. Maybe Devil would be a better name than Cannibal. No, it’s like Dad said about me; there’s no devil in there. He only seems that way because there’s something I don’t understand.

      Then I get another idea.

      I go upstairs and pinch off a piece of hamburger again. Most of the meat we eat is hamburger, except on Sundays. Then we usually have chicken. I do the same thing, pinching off a few bits, packing it together again and closing the paper the way it was.

      I run down the cellar steps. I’m beginning to feel guilty about stealing milk and meat; our family needs it. I’ll need to tell this in confession. I’ll make sure not to go to Father Lanshee; he’d recognize me for sure. I’ll go to Father Stevens or Father O’Shea. Father O’Shea never pays much attention to what you say anyway; he sort of half sleeps in there with a book, then always gives the same penance: five Hail Marys, five Our Fathers and a good Act of Contrition. He almost always slides the door shut before you’re half finished with the Act of Contrition. I’ll go to him.

      There’s no problem with the meat. Soon as I put it on the cloth in front of Cannibal’s face, he starts gulping it down, chewing it back and forth the way a grown cat would do. He’s a Cannibal all right.

      By the time he’s finished, he’s up on his front feet. It’s amazing how fast cats seem able to recover from almost anything. Everybody in our neighborhood, the kids that is, believe cats have nine lives. I’ve had some of the alley cats pointed out to me that everybody swears were killed by a car or something and there they are, alive.

      I think it’s only because cats can live through almost anything that happens to them, then most people think a particular cat’s had another life.

      The other thing everybody around here believes is if a black cat crosses your path you’ll have bad luck. Once, I watched Joe Hennessy, who’s a big guy and can beat up almost anybody at school, and does, lots of times, walk all the way around to Clinton Road when a black cat crossed in front of him. I wonder if Cannibal could be thought of as a black cat. Actually he’s dark brown but somebody could easily make a mistake and see him as black.

      Now I have to figure where I can keep Cannibal. If he keeps improving the way he is, he’ll be wandering all over the cellar and he’s sure to start making cat noises, meowing or growling or yowling or maybe purring. He’ll also start making messes, the way cats always do. I still haven’t heard him make any noise except the hissing he made at me when he was dying on his feet; but he could start making noises if he gets better. My mom would die if she knew I had an alley cat in our cellar. I haven’t even thought about the flea part. I wonder if I already have fleas.

      I rig up a place for Cannibal behind the big furnace. It’s almost impossible to see back there and the furnace gets so hot you can’t touch the sides so nobody’s going to sneak back there. We just started the furnace last week when it began getting colder and we bank it down at night.

      Last year, Dad taught me how to bank down our furnace, getting it to burn slowly and not use up much coal. This was after I learned how to sieve out the clinkers. In the morning, it’s my job now, before school, to start up the furnace again. First, I shake down the ashes with a handle on the side, then I put in one shovelful of real coal. Over the top of that, I spread a half shovelful of my clinkers. That way it gets started fast and then slows down as it gets to the clinkers. Sometimes I think I might be sieving the same clinkers over and over, but there’s no way to know.

      One thing I do know is I’ve got to tell my parents about Cannibal. I want to keep him if he lives through everything, but I can’t do it if they won’t let me. When you’re ten years old

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