No matter how soundly Mukey slept, he was aware of the kittens, careful not to roll over them. He’d awaken to find them nestled into crannies of his body: the black one in the crook of his arm, the striped one between his legs, the white-with-orange-spots one on his face! Sometimes he’d be strangely cold, fingers and toes almost numb. He’d try to stay still so the kittens wouldn’t wake up, grateful for these tiny lumps of warmth.
He saw them open their eyes and see the world for the first time. When the mostly black one first opened her eyes she happened to be looking right at him. Mukey was amazed and honored to be the first thing in the world she took in. They stared at each other for minutes. From then on he felt as if he were as much her mother as Lou.
When the kittens were a month old, five weeks after Mukey got sick, his mother drew back the canopy bed curtains and tied them with dusky-rose sashes at the four bedposts. Mukey’s body became the kittens’ playground, full of possibilities for climbing up or sliding down or chasing off or crawling through. It was bewildering even to Lou. Mukey found himself laughing out loud at their kamikaze exploits, such as when the grey one—the adventurous one—climbed a curtain to the top of the canopy and jumped—kachoom!—onto his chest. The black one gave a startled look and scurried down a tunnel in the covers. It was the scaredy cat. They would have cracked Pukey up! Only once did one fall off the bed—Spira—and when Mukey scooped her up she was fine. The more he watched them, the more he remembered what it was like to be young and healthy and see the world as full of possibilities.
He gave lots of thought to their names. The grey one was Dirt. The mostly black one had a white and orange belly and paws, like the white and orange deep in the cracks of a lava flow. It was Lava. The striped one was Spira. The one with the orange patch on its eye was Patch. The one that looked just like it but with the patch on the other eye was Scratch.
“You realize that whoever takes the kittens will be allowed to name them whatever they want, right?” his mother told him one day.
Mukey stared in amazement.
“Can’t we keep them?”
“Six cats! Of course not.”
Mukey’s lip quivered. He averted his eyes from his mother and noticed Pukey walking down the road, toward Eddy and Bug house. It slowly dawned on Mukey that Pukey had been playing with them all summer. There was a convulsing in the pit of his stomach.
He was surprised how happy he was when his sister came in the room.
“Have you seen Dad? he asked.
Louise paused. “Dad’s not doing so well.”
“Have you been to his new place?”
“Yeah,” Louise said unenthusiastically.
“What’s it like?”
“The only thing in his fridge is beer.”
That night Mukey lay in bed listening to canned laughter from his mother’s television, unable to sleep. Everything seemed wrong, and he was powerless to do anything about it.
Seven weeks after Mukey got sick, he woke up to the astonishing realization that he was seeing with his inner eye, just like he had read about in Louise’s book. It was as if a blade of light running from his forehead to the back of his skull, and he was aware of the world in a whole new way. For the first time he could remember, his nose was clear, and he was hearing and smelling acutely. The window was open enough to feel a slight breeze. He could smell his mother’s lavender and hear a grating mechanical sound coming from the Okawee Metal Fabrication Company. He propelled himself from the bed like a rocket but his body couldn’t keep up with his mind, and he collapsed to the ground. Dizzily, he climbed back into bed.
He heard Louise’s voice: “He’s in my room.”
Then muffled voices. Familiar. It sounded like Pukey!
“Nice bed,” Eddy said.
Mukey was mortified; he couldn’t imagine a more embarrassing situation than being caught in a frilly pink canopy bed. He was facing away from them. He pretended to be asleep.
“We came for the kittens,” Bug said.
“There they are,” Eddy whispered.
“No!” Mukey bleated. Crazed cat eyes flashed through his mind. Without thinking, he flopped his upper body protectively in front of the kittens. For a second all he saw was a red blur, then Eddy’s outstretched hand right in front of Mukey’s nose.
Eddy retracted his hand. Mukey looked up. The twins’ tufted unibrows lifted in unison.
Pukey was bent over as if examining the floor. As he stood up, Mukey caught his gaze. Pukey’s eyes widened in surprise, and then he seemed to be staring at Mukey without really seeing him. It was as if they were looking through the gauzy canopy bed curtains, but the curtains were still tied back with sashes; there was nothing separating them but air. Mukey felt as if his eyes were trying to suck out some kind of connection with Pukey. Pukey turned away and put his hands in his pockets.
“The kittens are too young to leave their mother,” Louise called out from Mukey’s room. “Visiting hours are over.”
There was a drilling sound. The kittens fled. Then another drilling sound, and another, at regular intervals.
Pukey took a cell phone from his pocket and pushed a button. The drilling sounds stopped.
Pukey gave Mukey a defiant look, and fled. Eddy and Bug were already gone.
Mukey was still splayed at a strange angle across his bed. His body recoiled. It blew his mind that Pukey had a cell phone. First, his family was poor. Second, why should he need one given his best friend lived right next door? Were they still best friends?
Dizzily, he pulled himself back under the covers. The kittens clamored over to him. All but Spira.
“Louise,” he called. “Where is Spira?”
“She’s not there? Yikes! What did they do to you?”
“Nothing,” Mukey said. “It’s the kittens they wanted.”
He noticed deep red stains on the bed. He put his hand to his face and realized blood was gushing out of his head.
“Where’s mom?” he asked.
“Mom’s not here.” Louise got a facecloth, washed his face carefully, and wrapped gauze around his head. “One of the cats clawed you good.”
They peered in the cracks and crannies of the bed, and around the bed, but no Spira. Louise searched under the bed, in the closet, and throughout the room, but no Spira. She looked all over the house, but no Spira.
Louise went next door to ask Pukey if they’d taken her.
“Was Pukey there?” Mukey asked when she returned.
“Yes. But he said they didn’t take any kittens.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I’m sure she’s somewhere,” Louise said.
Mukey felt nauseous. His heart was beating fast. He couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing Spira again. Just this morning he’d heard a little cry and found her under the covers way down near the foot of his bed. When he rescued her she’d looked up at him contemplatively, and he’d noticed how interesting her pattern of orange and grey stripes was getting as she grew. Four kittens instead of five—it felt so wrong. He was in a sweat, his heart racing.
The pain in his third eye region pulsed back through his head in branching paths; he could almost hear his brain sizzle as new understandings dawned on him. He became aware of a place in the pit of his brain that was strong and stable, an anchor. The pranks he’d spent his life thus far scheming about seemed far away from this essential core of him. He wasn’t quite sure what this essential core was, but he could feel it there, waiting in hiding to orient him and express itself. It was deeper than his bond with Pukey, deeper than the bond he shared with anyone.
Two tiny paws pressed against his leg; one of the kittens was stretching in its sleep.
Almost two months after Mukey got sick, he was better. He put on his clothes (after months of pajamas!) and moved back to his own bedroom. Timidly, the kittens followed, and once they had glimpsed the vastness of the world, their curiosity was piqued. The whole house was their circus yard. People came to see them. Then the sad day came.
“I’ll take that one,” the lady said.
Dirt was innocently chasing his own tail with no idea what was befalling him. When the lady carried him out, Mukey felt a pain in his heart greater than anything he’d ever experienced. He couldn’t stop replaying over and over Dirt’s birth, his unique chirpy meow, his crazy antics.
That night, Mukey cried. He hated himself for it. He was even more upset than Lou, Dirt’s mother. And everything in his room had been moved around. He tried distractedly to put things back the way they were supposed to be, but some things seemed to be missing, most notably his tackle box.
“Louise, where is my tackle box?”
“You should be grateful I cleaned your pigsty room.”
“Louise! Tell me you didn’t throw it out.” Mukey’s lower lip quivered.
Then he realized he didn’t know where the dragonfly lure was either. He searched everywhere but couldn’t find it. He’d never had such a painful feeling of loss over an object. And he missed his dad so much. It had been forever since he’d seen him.
When his mother tucked him into bed that night she winced as he wiped his nose on the arm of his pajamas. But when Mukey looked up at her with teary eyes, her face softened, and she told him he could keep one of the kittens.
“Which one?” Mukey asked between sniffles.
“You choose.”
“Patch and Scratch have to be together.”
“The other one then.”
Lava. They’d always had a special connection. She often stared into his eyes and she slept on his chest. And, unless one of her siblings was sailing through the air and kerplonking right next to her, she wasn’t such a scaredy cat after all.
“Mukey!” Louise called from the front door, “Dad’s on the phone!”
He talked to his dad longer than they’d ever talked before. Turned out he’d been sick too.
Mukey was sitting on the front porch waiting for his dad to pick him up, when he saw a tiny bedraggled bundle of bones and fur behind the lavender bush below Louise’s bedroom window.
His eyes lit up. “Spira,” he said softly.
He stared at Spira’s corpse for a long time. He wondered how close he’d come when he was sick to joining Spira in Heaven. Or wherever she was.
Then he noticed Pukey in his front yard staring at him. Pukey waved tentatively.
Mukey averted his gaze. He looked at Spira’s corpse and wiped his clammy hands on his pants.
It occurred to him that it would have been difficult for Pukey to have had no one at all to play with all summer. He lumbered toward Pukey, head down. The dandelions were plentiful and pretty. Pukey’s front door slammed shut. Looking up, Mukey noticed that Pukey had gone inside. He froze to the spot, feeling doubly betrayed. But then Pukey returned, hand clenched.
“Hi Mucus.”
“Hi.” Mukey said.
“I picked something up off the floor in your house a long time ago.”
“It wasn’t… a dragonfly lure?”
Pukey looked surprised. “Yes, actually. Here,” he said, holding it out to Mukey.
Mukey took the lure in both hands and stared at it. “Wow, thanks!” he said. His hands were trembling slightly.
He looked up, suddenly aware that Pukey was looking at him. He had forgotten how Pukey’s deep-socketed eyes made him look morose, even when he smiled.
