The Man Who Watched the World End (23 page)

It was hunting me.

My eyes stayed on the bush it was hiding in. After a couple of more steps, a second cat appeared. This one was grey and white with a stripe of orange down its face. It trailed ten feet behind the first one. Another one, this one completely white, darted out of the bushes in front of the first. By the time I got to the next house there were four. Then five. I was closer to the Johnsons’ house by that point than I was to my own. I paused in the middle of the street to consider my options. It took me one look back at my house to determine I’d gone too far to turn back. A collection of eight cats was meowing and hissing to each other, trading tactics on how best to approach their prey. I shook the bat in their direction. They didn’t back away or seem threatened at all. Then there were nine of them. Then ten. An army of white, orange, grey, and black fur watched me from the edge of the Balmers’ former garage. They kept my pace so they were always the same distance, parallel with me on my journey. Unlike me, having to constantly look down to make sure I didn’t turn an ankle, they never took their eyes off the animal they were hunting. Every time they hissed in my direction or licked their lips, I shivered and gripped the bat tighter. I couldn’t imagine a worse way to die than being eaten alive in the middle of the overgrown street in Camelot. It wouldn’t be a quick death; those tiny little mouths and centimeter long claws would take a long time to kill me. I would be alive for a good part of the day while they snacked on my flesh.

Up to that point, the cats had taken my mind away from the growing stench I was trying to find. As soon as I attempted to calm myself by taking a deep breath, I gagged, almost throwing up all over my feet. The smell was overwhelming. It was amazing that the cats weren’t gagging along in unison. Trash shouldn’t smell that bad. Five years of dirty Block diapers shouldn’t smell that bad, not even if I was standing in a pile of them. Once the odor was in my nose it was all I could smell anymore; q2Gedo repositioning the bandana in front of my mouth did nothing to help.

I looked back at where the cats had previously assembled, then stumbled in shock when I realized they were now only ten feet away from me. Dispersing from a group and encircling me like I was already defeated and didn’t know it, they seemed to have sensed my weakness. I could have taken a swing at one of them with my bat, but thought better of it; if I did swing it might not scare them away as I intended, might only provoke them to start their attack even sooner. They circled and hissed, circled and hissed. It was difficult to keep track of the ones that went behind me; no matter where I looked they were all around. I was drowning in cats. One of them got too close and I swiped at it with the Louisville Slugger. The wood hit the edge of the cat’s butt, causing it to bounce off the road and skid back to the other waiting kitties. It righted itself and hissed at me so fiercely that I felt like I was pitted against ten mountain lions instead of ten tiny cats. It was a sad state of affairs that I was over-matched by little things that used to love scratching posts and licking cat-nip.

Another cat lunged at me. With the bat’s end I poked it in the face. It limped away for a moment,
then rejoined the pack. Another one sprang at me. Then another. One bounced off me by sheer chance without me intelligently defending myself. Another one was hanging from my shoulder by its front paws, swinging back and forth behind me as I tried to swat it off. They were all biting at my ankles now. I finally grabbed hold of the tail of the one on my back, its claws embedded in my skin. When I threw it in the air it had pieces of my flesh on its daggers, my blood in its fur. I was swinging my bat wildly now, not even aiming. The bat hit square across one of their faces. The little animal remained motionless in the middle of the street as its companions kept trying to bring me down. If I stumbled they would have jumped on me and I would never stand upright again.

Right then, as one of the cats reared up and hissed at me, ready to jump at my face, a roar came from my side. A pair of golden retrievers was there, only five feet away from me. I’m not sure why, but I laughed. It wasn’t a mild chuckle either, but a full burst of the loudest laughter I was capable of mustering at that moment. Part of me felt like they were my teammates in this mighty injustice and had finally come to be tagged into the match. I snapped out of this fantasy when one of them brushed against my leg. It had been focused on the cats until it touched me. Then it turned and growled, only two feet away, so that my heart stopped beating until its eyes focused back on the cats. One of the cats tried to dart away. It was in the mouth of one of the dogs, however, before it could go anywhere. The dog bit down. A loud crunch signaled the cat was dead. The dog dropped it on the road before swiping at another one. The second cat skidded sideways through the weeds. By the time this cat realized which way it wanted to run the dog’s teeth were around its face, throwing it back and forth through the air like a doll.

I backed away from the fight. The Johnsons’ house was only one driveway away. I wasn’t interested in it any longer, though. Thoughts of Andrew flooded into my head—my brother sitting by himself in ourqun. other house. The urge came over me to go back and make sure he was okay. The dogs had four of the cats dead on the ground with the other cats retreating to the forest. If I would have turned and run toward my home the dogs would have chased me down too. Instead, I walked slowly, keeping my eyes on them except when I needed to check the uneven ground under my feet. The pair of golden retrievers stuck with the food they already had. One of them growled at me when I kept my eyes on it. It only did so because I was making it nervous and it wasn’t used to the feeling.

Back on my porch, I turned and looked at the battlefield one more time. The Johnsons’ house looked like it was on the other side of the country even though it was only a hundred yards down the road. In my childhood I could have sprinted there and back without breathing heavy. Hell, I could have carried Andrew on my back and not broken a sweat. Now, my clothes were soaked, my knees were shaking. And I was lightheaded. Worst of all, a pack of house cats had almost gotten me! The neighborhood was already overgrown, barren, and worn down, but at that moment I realized I wasn’t any better off than the neglected golf course or the broken road. The only difference
between me and the rest of the neighborhood was that Andrew was sitting inside waiting for me to take care of him while the rest of Camelot had no one to watch over it and keep it maintained. Other than that, Camelot had as much to envy as I did.

I was getting ready to close the front door when I heard another roar, a different kind of roar, from down the street. This one was deeper and more measured than the one given by the dogs. The golden retrievers stopped eating. Their heads were directed at a giant brown bear lumbering down the road. The hair on the back of the dogs’ necks stood straight up as they snarled in anger. Deciding that another fight wasn’t a good idea, each dog took a cat in its mouth and jogged back to the edge of the woods to eat in peace. Two dead cats were left for the bear. The giant brown animal took one of the furry, little bodies in its big paws and then the cat disappeared into its mouth. Happy, the bear rolled on its back and scratched itself against the warm, rough ground. Eventually it got up and dusted itself off, then grabbed the other cat in its paws and shoveled that one into its mouth too. The army of cats, just like that, was reduced to half its number. And I had a pair of dogs to thank for being alive.

As soon as I got to my kitchen I filled a glass with water. The bat and bandana were sitting in the middle of the floor. With my breath back, no longer shaking, I sat on the sofa and repeated the entire story to Andrew. I’m sure he wouldn’t have believed a single word of the amazing turn of events unless he saw it with his own two eyes.

He probably would have listened with a straight face until I was finished, then said, “A pair of dogs saved you from a pack of cats? And then a bear challenged the dogs? Yeah, right.”

I haven’t given up on going down to the Johnsons’ house, but it can wait for another day. It will take at least that long for my nerves to return. The next time I head down there I’ll qun. other take a better mask to block out the smell. And I’ll take a hammer and gun to fend off the animals. The bulky bat was too heavy to be effective. The cats must have known I would be an easy target.

A pack of wolves roamed the neighborhood today. Instead of getting down the street, I watched the animals attack anything they could find.

The dog still comes to the edge of my patio. I make sure it has a full bowl of water every day, even though it arrives inconsistently. He goes for a stretch of days without appearing, then the next week he’s at my patio door every afternoon. I leave water every day because it wouldn’t be fair to suddenly stop providing for it after it has come to rely on me. Somehow, even though I have my hands full with Andrew and with keeping up our house, I found a way to add even more responsibility to my plate. When everyone else is looking for a way to do something as simple as ensure their own livelihood, I’m the only person stupid enough to add another living thing to my list of obligations.

As the list of luxuries I’m able to provide Andrew is reduced (simple trips to the bathroom, a good night’s rest in his own bed), I should spend more time ensuring he has the other types of care I can still offer. If I can’t carry him to the bathroom for a proper bath, the least I should be able to do is sit by his side and keep him company instead of talking to some mangy animal from the forest.

I try to feel like I’m doing both things—taking care of my brother and providing for the dog—by including Andrew in the conversations I have from the sofa.

“How do you think he would have gotten along with Oscar?” I ask my brother. When I don’t get a response, I add in, “They would compete for who got to snuggle up with you on the sofa each night.”

Outside, the dog stares at me as if it too is pondering the question while also considering who this mysterious Oscar might be that I always mention.

“You could have protected Oscar from the other animals out there,” I say to the dog. “You could be his big brother and watch over him.”

The dog yawns,
then rests its head on the deck again. Andrew blinks. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” I say to him. “Everyone deserves to have someone there to watch over and protect them.”Xs spspjo

The dog also appears in my sleep each night. In my dreams, it talks to me telepathically, telling me what it’s like to live in the forest where every animal is trying to outsmart and outlast everything else. I sit there, fascinated, while it breaks from its stories just long enough to lap up more water. The dog and a pack of its friends, it says, have faced off against a pack of wolves. The dog tells me the story as though it’s the forest’s version of gang warfare. It also tells me of fights between bears and wolves. It swears an adult bear will never lose a fight against two wolves, but will never win against three. I don’t know if this is true; I take the dog’s word for it since it’s from the forest and I’m not.

In these dreams, I find myself fantasizing about the dog eating me. It wouldn’t be anything violent where I struggle while it growls and fights against me. The feast has nothing to do with it holding me down as I gag on my own blood. I would simply be living one minute and the next minute the dog would have me as the source of food it needs to continue its daily struggle. The entire episode is very peaceful. In the dream, the dog senses what I’m thinking and laughs at how silly I am.

“Don’t think such foolish thoughts. I’m your friend.” It says this in a whining howl that I trust.

I want to tell the dog what it’s like to be alone now that the Johnsons are gone, but even in my dreams I can’t bring myself to give up hope that someone else might come by and save us. Each time I open my mouth nothing comes out. The rest of the dream is spent with the dog waiting patiently for me to continue. I’m left to tell stories I don’t feel like telling because I can’t get the words out to describe what really bothers me the most.

I ask the dog if it was watching as the cats attacked me in the street. I get an affirmative nod. “Why didn’t you come help me out?” Its only response is a shrug of the shoulders. It can see I want to talk about something else.

The old pains come back as soon as I wake up. Old injuries are flaring up again as though they never fully healed. I broke my right arm in middle school during a game of neighborhood football. It was in a cast for a few weeks, but when the cast was taken off my arm was as good as new. It was fine for another seventy years before it started bothering me again recently. At various other times in my life, and for various other reasons, I broke my left foot, my left collar bone, and my nose. None of the injuries seemed important at the time except for earning me sympathy from girls. In contrast, Andrew has never broken a single bone or sprained an ankle. He has only ever had the bruise on his hip from when I accidently dropped him.

My entire body might ache, but I only recognize the pain in places that have shown me pain before. When it’s cloudy out, ready to rain, I swear my forearm warns me of the on a giant brown bear lumbertedo coming
thunderstorm. Or I’ll wake up and my ankle will be sensitive when I put weight on it, and I know the temperature will be slightly chillier than normal.

If he could talk, Andrew’s response would be predictable: “Yeah, and every time there’s going to be a thunderstorm my butt hurts from where you dropped me, you jackass.”

What would our founding fathers have done if they knew the world would turn out this way? Would they have bothered fighting for freedom, would they have bothered with a Constitution, would they have bothered with any of it if they knew it was going to turn out like this? If they knew there would only be a United States for three hundred years, would they have done what they did, or would they have put up with tyranny for themselves, their children, their grandchildren’s children, until the end of man played out? Would tea have been thrown in the harbor? Would armies have gone to war? Maybe they would have calculated that years of war and death weren’t worth freedom if it was only going to last a couple centuries, but I think they would have done everything just as they did. That’s what made them so great: they weren’t concerned about themselves, they were concerned with ideas that were worth fighting for, regardless of how long they lasted. There’s no chance Jefferson or Washington would have said, “Well, it will only be a great country for a while, the struggle isn’t worth it.” No, they would have assembled their friends and said, “It may only last for three hundred years, but for those years, it can be the greatest country we’ve ever known.”