The Cat Came Back

[masontrc]

Here is the third story I've written for my novel of short stories. I wrote this one back in December. I tried to play to a historical metaphor for this story and toyed a little with Science fiction.

The Cat Came Back
By Tristan Mason

My father took me to a faraway city when I was 10-years-old. He said Tuskegee was not a safe place for “our people.” He always spoke in terms of “our people” and “the others” when he was angry. Our old neighborhood made him so angry that he broke an object every night when he came home from work. He threw dishes out the window when “the others” tried to shut down his coffee shop. He snapped paintings on his knee when “our people” could not vote at the school across the street. The new neighborhood-calmed him.

“You going to finish unpacking, champ?” my father asked on a gusty day in early August. He leaned over the pine railing of our balcony and gripped the brim of his fedora. “This looks nothing like our old neighborhood. People ride bikes on checkerboard streets. You can buy food without worrying about which stores you’re allowed to go to. No one stares at you funny. And best of all, beautiful women live in that house across the street from us. And the Gov. calls this place dangerous? Ha!”

I nodded and flipped to the last page of my comic book. I missed playing stickball with my best friends, Johnny and Bobby. I missed Grandma Rose’s ham hock and hush puppies and building model airplanes with Grandpa Joe. I even missed old Ms. Junebug and her screechy chalkboard. The people I cared about lived thousands of miles away. I felt like I was trapped on a faraway planet inhabited by pale skinned Martians who spoke a tricky language.

“You hungry, champ?” He posed this question while feasting his eyes on the fish market next to our apartment building. He reached into the pocket of his pinstriped jacket for a fistful of bronze coins. “Why don’t you run down to that fish place next door, champ. They’ll know what you want as long as you point to it and hand them the money. Find the crate of snapper and get us two of those. You know, the silver ones. I think they call them uh…goo gee.”

He swung his right hand behind his back and waved to the woman across the street with his left. I did not ask him how he planned to cook the snappers when our one room apartment lacked a stove. I did not ask about the women in colorful dresses who wore their hair in pointed buns and ghostly white makeup. I folded my comic into the back pocket of my jeans, grabbed the gold coins and walked down the pinewood staircase to the road.

The peach tinted sky illuminated the street like a Hollywood studio lamp kindles a movie set. I felt as if I was watching a movie. Men rode bikes with woven baskets full of food. They pedaled past me with neither eye contact nor expressions on their faces. Women strolled the cobbled sidewalks with their hands folded and their heads cast down. I walked by buildings with gently curved roofs and tents with large wooden crates stacked underneath. The fish store was located under a red tent painted in yellow symbols on its fabric.

“Guji?” I said to the merchant standing behind a metal table. I held up my index and middle finger. His gray robe fluttered like he lacked a body underneath it. He bowed, flashed a brown toothed smile and reached into a crate for two ruler-sized snappers. “Are-E-gato.”

The merchant widened his eyes, jumped back and yelled. A white cat with orange and black patches of fur popped out of the crate and knocked it onto the pavement. The cat tried to bite the fish to no avail. I let out a high pitched laugh. This cat reminded me of my grandma’s cat, Whiskers. The merchant grabbed a broom and swung it at the cat. The cat sped off and for some reason, I followed. I chased that cat through a sea of bikers and into a shadow dipped alley.

“Konnichi…erm…I’m Clement.” I leaned against a sooty brick wall and bent over to catch my breath. The cat stopped in front of a tin trash pail and twitched his tail. He surveyed me with inquiring amber eyes, as if he were trying to sort me into a predator or prey category. “You kind of look like my grandma’s kitty. I think you two would get along. I’ll call you…Fatman?”

I paused. The cat tilted his head sideward. I had no clue why that name popped into my head. Fatman looked skinny despite his heavy coat of fur. Fatman also lacked the height of man. Maybe Bobby or Johnny had told me about a new superhero named Fathead before I left. I couldn’t remember. My memories were burning to oblivion.

“Do you want to come home with me? I don’t have any friends here. My daddy said there aren’t any kids in this neighborhood and even if there were, I wouldn’t be able to understand them.”

Fatman trotted toward me. His striped tale swished in the air. I scratched his orange cheeks. My fingers felt numb. They dangled like the skeleton Ms. Junebug kept in the corner of her classroom. She told the class we’d look that way many years from now. I made a puckering sound with my lips. Fatman opened his tiny mouth but no sound came out. I took a few steps forward. He twitched his tail and followed.

Fatman followed me to the apartment staircase. He tiptoed through the dirt road without leaving a single footprint behind. My father stood at the top of the balcony with a beer bottle in one hand and his black leather belt in the other. He loved to drink during sunset. He drank when my mother left him for the schoolteacher in the neighboring town. He drank when the police arrested him for sitting in a ‘white-only’ diner. He tried to drink the afternoon we left Tuskegee but the refrigerator was empty.

“Where’s my snapper?” He cracked his belt like a whip. I stood motionless. Fatman raised his tail in the air and flexed his pointy white claws. I whispered “no, don’t” as my father tilted his fedora and flung his belt a second time.

“Who are you talking to? It better be my goddamn snapper.”

“I found him near the market, dad,” I said, shivering and shuffling my feet. “He followed me here. Doesn’t he look like grandma’s cat?”

“I don’t see a cat. I want my goddamn snapper.” His jacket fluttered with the wind like he lacked a body underneath. He bit his lip and glared. “Come here, champ.”

I started to walk up the stairs with my head cast down. I could hear Fatman hiss. The sound reminded me of the kingsnakes that lurked in the tall grass of our old backyard. My father never cut the grass. He never so much as looked at the grass. He stuffed cotton balls in his ears at night and closed the blinds. As Fatman hissed, he looked around, grasping the belt tight beneath his fingers. I looked back at the cat. He stood with his back arched. His amber eyes bubbled with rage.

“I told you to come here, champ.” My father’s eyes averted mine. They drifted off into the distance, perhaps to our old backyard. He could not see Fatman at the bottom of the stairs. His hands trembled as he drew back his belt to strike me. I shut my eyes so tight that they began to water. “Stand still, champ. You’re going to learn a lesson in responsibility.”

I waited for the impact.

My father screamed.

Fatman clung to his jacket with razor claws and swatted at his face. Twisting and turning, my father hollered and stumbled backward onto the pine railing. With each curse, Fatman dug his claws deeper into his chest. For a moment, I imagined his clothes and skin dissolving to a shiny white skeleton. I imagined his jawbone expanding so wide that it would almost snap.

“That’s enough, Fatman!” I shouted. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Fatman turned to me and blinked. He retracted his claws and leaped over the railing. He landed in front of a girl who wore a white sundress. She laughed and chased him down the street. He had no shadow.

“I’m…going to bed,” my father said, wiping the blood from underneath his eyes. He took off his fedora and scratched his shiny bald head. He stared at the fallen belt and sighed. “I should have known there were snakes in Nagasaki. That bastard struck me before I even got a good look at him. You…go inside soon. It’s not safe out here.”

He walked into the apartment and closed the blinds.
I leaned over the railing and waited till the blood red moon eclipsed the sky.
---
The cat came back the very next day. Fatman sat at the bottom of the staircase with a snapper pinched between his teeth. I grinned and ran down to see him. He dropped the fish in front of me and purred. Suddenly, I saw the girl in the white sundress, her pale face and silky, shoulder-length hair glowing in the morning sun.

“You didn’t tell me you had an owner, Mr. Wigglepuss!” She spoke English, and loudly. The girl smiled with her eyes, squinted and extended a hand. “You must be Mr. Wigglepuss’s owner. My name is Lisa Kato. Are you from America?”

“Hi…Lisa, I’m Clement.” I shook hers. Fatman rubbed against our legs, purring louder. “Yeah, I’m from America. I moved here a couple days ago from Tuskegee. My dad said we were safer here. And I’m not his owner. I found him yesterday by the fish market.”

“What a coincidence!” Lisa jumped, still holding my hand tight. “I found Mr. Wigglepuss yesterday too! And my father said the same thing. He said it’s not safe for us in Anaheim. He said they’re forcing “our people” into camps and they’re not the good kind of camps you go to during the summer time.”

“Oh, really?” I pulled my hand away from hers. Lisa nodded, still smiling widely. My entire body itched and burned. I started scratching my cheeks. Fathead purred louder. “Well at least we’re safe here. My dad said people don’t care what you look like in Nagasaki.”

“I don’t know if that’s true and I don’t know if we’re safe, Clement. I heard on the radio that Hiroshima was bombed a few days ago. Hey Clement, why is your skin coming off your face?”

Fatman purred louder.

My face felt like the skeleton I touched in Ms. Junebug’s class.

Fatman meowed.

Lisa was a shiny white skeleton. Her bones were spilling on the dirt road and dissolving into ashes.

Fatman hollered.

I could see his shadow. It grew tall enough to scrape the smoke filled sky.
Before I could scream, a blinding light filled my eyes.

The light splashed through my skin, into my blood stream and ignited my bones.

When I heard a voice, the light stopped.

I saw my father.

“You going to finish unpacking, champ?” my father asked on a gusty day in early August. He leaned over the pine railing of our balcony and gripped the brim of his fedora.

[masontrc]

I guess maybe the twist is the thing that troubles me the most in this. Is there any way to work around the obvious historical inaccuracy or should I leave this as a metaphor for America's treatment of the two ethnic groups?

[Metry Road]

masontrc - Well done, I enjoyed this story immensely. You have a great gift for writing and you handled this difficult subject with compassion and understanding.

However (as you yourself indicated in you follow-up post), there are a couple of confusing plot 'holes' that need to be dealt with. For example, what were Clement and his Father doing in Nagasaki in 1945?

I seriously doubt that the Japanese authorities would welcome citizens from an enemy nation (regardless of what 'ethnic' group they belong to) during a time of war. You'll have to find some way to justify this without changing the final pay-off {which was quite amazing I might add).

There are a few technical issues with the writing, 'the blood red moon eclipsed the sky.' but it's all minor stuff, the more you write, the better you'll become (trust me on this), so keep on writing to sharpen your skills.

Best wishes
Keep on writing
Metairie Road

[masontrc]

Thanks for your feedback! See, I thought about revising this story to make Clement and his father residents of a Japanese neighborhood in Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor attack. There were many citizens who died in Hawaii during that time. My question is-would this lose the impact? I would have to change Fatman's name too with Fatman being the name of the atomic bomb that hit Nagasaki.

Also, forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what's grammatically wrong with the blood red moon eclipsed the sky? I thought the word "eclipsed" worked as a verb?

In any case, thank you for your reply =)

[Metry Road]

Grammatically, there's nothing wrong with 'the blood red moon eclipsed the sky.' I just think 'eclipsed' is the wrong word for this scene. Eclipse means to cover or to obscure. I can see the clouds eclipsing the moon, but not the moon eclipsing the sky. Sorry to nit-pick about a single word but I'm borderline OCD.

Calling the cat 'Fatman', I missed that reference completely. Nice one.

I can see your problem deciding upon a location, Hawaii or Japan? I think Japan works better, it allows for a more powerful ending.

Metairie Road

[masontrc]

It's okay =) I was just confused. I think Japan allows for a more powerful ending too. This means that Clement would have had to move there before WW2 and be much more fluent in Japanese. This is the only way I see him getting there.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

I think it's very skilful, the way you gradually make us aware that these are American Japanese, who have moved back to Japan because they feel native Americans are now inimical to them-and the irony implicit in the fact that they have moved back to Nagasaki, just before the bombings. The ending was very powerful, as the full truth sinks in as to what was happening. The very last bit was a bit confusing, though. Are you saying the boy had some strange premonition about what was to happen, with the two atom bombs?

[masontrc]

Originally Posted by Phoenix Lazarus

I think it's very skilful, the way you gradually make us aware that these are American Japanese, who have moved back to Japan because they feel native Americans are now inimical to them-and the irony implicit in the fact that they have moved back to Nagasaki, just before the bombings. The ending was very powerful, as the full truth sinks in as to what was happening. The very last bit was a bit confusing, though. Are you saying the boy had some strange premonition about what was to happen, with the two atom bombs?

Thanks for your feedback! Clement essentially relives the same day over and over again (as a ghost) and has some recollection of it.

[Rooster Smith]

The ghost thing I wouldn't have got unless you told me.

But it was well written and entertaining.

[masontrc]

Thanks Rooster! Question-where in the story can I best hint that they're already day and reliving each day?

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Originally Posted by masontrc

where in the story can I best hint that they're already day and reliving each day?

Shouldn't that be 'dead,' and reliving each day?

[masontrc]

Yes. Thank you for the correction.

[Ephemera]

Very good! I love stories like this. I often write twist endings myself. It could use some tweaking, especially the end which was a tiny bit confusing.

[masontrc]

I see that it confused some people. Any idea on how I can clarify the twist...or the illogical aspect of an African American family in Japan during WW2?