Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (i am reading a book TXT) 📕

July was gone, running to look around another corner. Then he crossed the street again and began knocking on doors. “Have you seen a black-and-orange cat? It disappeared just a couple of minutes ago, right out in front of your building.”

“No, sorry.”

He looked for over an hour, and stopped a patrol car—despite his fear of being arrested for something—and both men got out and helped him look, and let him listen while they called in Butch’s description to the department. They said they’d look for him from their car. A half-hour later they returned, drivingat a snail’s pace, and told him he might wait until the afternoon and go down to the city pound and see if Butch was brought in—and why wasn’t he in school? July thanked them and made up a lie about his parents having permission for him to be out until after the noon hour and went away as quickly as he could without running.

At one o’clock he was given directions to the city pound, got on a bus and went down. The sight of all the animals howling and looking through their wire cages in hopeless, doleful despair made him begin crying. But he stopped soon after, and resolved never to again. The manager talked to him and informed him that there were no more cats to be seen there today, and no, it was impossible that they might already have disposed of Butch—and wouldn’t. He could come back every day for the next year, if he wanted to, and check. Their policy was to keep any animal they brought in off the street for at least a week before they put it to sleep.

July went back to Pine again and resumed looking, having no real hope of finding him, but afraid to return to his room alone. A young boy stood in the middle of the block. July approached him; but before he could ask if maybe he hadn’t seen a black-and-orange cat, the boy said menacingly: “Hey, white boy, I’ve got somethin’ for ya.” And he pushed a folded sheet of paper, quite soiled and rumpled, into July’s hand and ran off down the street, twice throwing back the finger. The letter was put together the way magazines always showed threatening letters—words from a newspaper pasted together—the effect being quite impersonal and sinister:

If you want your cat back. Alive.

Come to locust parking lot, 23rd. St.

At 12 midnight unarmed and alone.

We know all about you

He read it over to himself several times. It didn’t seem to make any sense. It was as if bad luck or fate had written him a letter threatening him even further; that is, there was a knowledgesomewhere that couldn’t reasonably exist. He almost wouldn’t believe what it meant. He put it in his pocket and went home. For over an hour he sat on the bench above his room and watched the trolleys. He thought he heard his name called from down in the tunnels, but it was just the groan of the tracks and the howling of the wind. Then he slipped down under and into his room. Sitting in total darkness, holding his mother’s pistol, he thought: We know all about you.

His terror began to rise. He lit his lamp and set it in front of the door, letting the flames flicker in his mind. He became more afraid and the terror rose again. He became incapable of thought. Words refused to form, or when they did their meaning would be drained from them like madmen’s talking. Then the stranger inside him came very far up and he began watching himself from the inside being afraid, whipping the terror still further, looking at it like a spot of bright flickering light, getting brighter and brighter, flaring up and going down. And then ten minutes after he was sure he could take no more the specter came in.

July knew he was a specter because to enter he didn’t have to use the door; he came through it. His hair was as black as a raven. His hands and arms were like brass. His fathomless eyes glowed with compassion.

July’s terror subsided. The stranger inside him sank back down. A peacefulness overtook him. “I was so afraid,” he said. “They have my cat.”

He took the note out of his pocket and handed it to the specter, who took it and read it, then let it fall between his fingers as if it were of no importance at all.

“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” he said, and his voice was strong and gentle. “I wonder if you couldn’t put that gun down, or at least stop pointing it at me.”

July taped it under the table. “What am I going to do?” he asked.

“When the time comes you’ll simply do it,” said the visitor. “Have you put away your two dollars today?”

“No.”

“Well, why don’t you do that? Maybe even count your money?”

“OK,” said July. “But I don’t have any bills—no, wait, yes I do.” He uncovered the jar and added two dollars to it. Then carefully took out the whole wad, squared it up evenly and began counting it with pleasant, lingering deliberation.

“How much do you have there?”

“Wait, I’m not finished yet . . . one hundred . . . and twenty . . . four dollars. Wow! I didn’t think I had that much. I thought maybe a hundred fifteen, but one twenty-five, that’s almost one fifty!”

“Better put it back now,” said the specter.

July agreed and buried it, smoothed out the bed and sat back on his chair.

“What’ll we do now?” asked the specter.

“We could play cards. Do you know crazy eights?”

“Not really. But I don’t care to play. Why don’t you play and I’ll watch? I’d enjoy that.”

“I’ll play solitaire, three-at-a-time turn up.”

“Fine.”

July played three games. “Bad luck,” the comforting specter said each time. Sometimes he pointed out plays July’d overlooked, or commented on things like, “You’ve got to get