A Rock and a Hard Place

John Walls' cat was dead. He knew this almost immediately after opening the door to his apartment and seeing little Scylla stretched out unnaturally along the small expanse of hardwood floor in front of the door. He could just tell. John knelt down in front of the tiny corpse and sighed. He put his hand on Scylla's side. Stone-cold.

"Well, little one. That's the end of you."

He stood up and walked to the closet. First, he removed and hung up his coat. Next, he stood up on the tips of his toes and peered at the boxes haphazardly thrown into the dark recesses of the top shelf. He was looking for one in particular, but was unable to locate it. Finally he closed the closet and walked to the door. With a quick, sad glance down to the dead cat he opened the door and walked out.

John walked to the elevator and reached for the button. Before he could press it, however, the door opened to reveal a small, almost sprightly woman of, perhaps, 40. Her peroxide blond hair was boyishly short. She wore a waist-length leather jacket overtop a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Under one arm was a plastic bag of groceries, and under the other a motorcycle helmet.

"Hi, John!" she said.

"Hello, Mona. How are you?" He didn't really want an answer.

"Oh, you know. Bored, climbing the walls. Waiting for things to happen."

"I see . . ." John replied with some gravity.

"How about you?"

The elevator door closed behind Mona.

"Well . . . I'm afraid I've had a little shock today."

"Good or bad?"

"It's bad. My cat has died while I was away at work."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "that's terrible! You must be feeling pretty bad."

"I-er-guess. I suppose I had grown rather fond of her."

"Yeh, that's the little tabby, right? Silly?"

"Um, Scylla. As in Scylla and Charybdis. You are correct, however, that she was a small tabby."

"That's just awful, John. I mean it. I bet you're going to miss her, huh? God, I'll miss my little kitty when he goes--not that I think that's going to happen soon, of course. I'm sure he'll live for a long time yet. It's just that you get so attached to those little . . . little people. That's what they are, you know. Just little people. We forget sometimes that they have feelings, too. I bet the place just won't be the same without her, huh? Her little bowl of food and the kitty box and the cuddles and attention. Just awful."

"Thank you for your concern, Mona, but I must get down to my storage locker for a box."

"Oh, of course, well, if you start to miss her too much, you can come over any time and play with Fuzzy."

"Thank you for the offer." He pressed the button to open the elevator door.

"You're welcome, John. I mean it, any time!"

The door opened and John walked into the elevator and pressed the button for the basement. `Fuzzy,' he thought, `what an absurd name for a cat. As if there weren't any fuzzy cats in the world!'

He walked out of the elevator and turned down the hallway leading past the laundry room to the storage lockers. As he walked, he sorted through his keys until he located the appropriate one for the door into the room. As a result, his head was down and didn't see the heavy-set man in the laundry room who was pulling bedsheets out of the dryer into a clothes-basket.

"John!" the man called out.

John turned and looked. "Oh, hello, Rob. How are you?"

Rob stopped what he was doing and strolled slowly over to John. He walked with a cane. "I'm good, good. You?"

"To be frank, I'm a little upset. My cat has died."

"Really! Sorry about that, pal. I know how attached you cat owners are. Real shame."

"Yes, well, it's not the end of the world. I will miss her, but I doubt I will lose sleep."

"Yeh. Know what you mean. Well, back on my head!"

John frowned and said, "I beg your pardon?"

"You know, back to work."

"I see."

As John opened the door to the storage room, he suddenly remembered a particularly disgusting (to him) joke about living in Hell and having to stand on one's head in a sea of excrement. He made a disapproving face and thought, `What does laundry have to do with tasteless jokes?'

At his own storage locker he retrieved the box he wanted, and started back to his apartment. At the elevator he met the manager.

John was particularly fond of Mr. Hugh Tyne. The manager was, to be polite, advanced in years. Aged, slow and arthritic as he was, however, he was also amazingly adept at repairing all but the most serious of plumbing, lighting and heating problems. And only his body was wizened; he had a sharp and agile mind. He wore a grey cardigan sweater, black dress pants, and loafers. What was left of his hair was completely grey, but John felt it gave him an air of respectability.

"Good evening, Mr. Walls," the manager said to John.

"Good evening, Mr. Tyne. How are you?"

"I am well this evening, my boy. Very well indeed. And how are you?"

"As well as I can be under the circumstances."

"Oh? And what circumstances might those be?"

"Well, regrettably, my cat is deceased."

"Oh, that is a terrible shame, my boy . . . a terrible shame. Please accept my condolences."

"Thank you very much."

"Good night, Mr. Walls."

"Good night Mr. Tyne."

John returned to his apartment and looked, once again, at Scylla.

She was lying on her side, eyes open, staring (rather peacefully, John thought) into space. Her front paws were extended out in front of her as though she were reaching for something that was just slightly out of her grasp. Claws were still out. Her tail lay across the floor nearly straight with only a slight curve forward--as if she were being stroked. Her back paws were touching, one over the other and pushed out quite far, without giving the appearance of being uncomfortable. Scylla's striped short fur was unruffled and neat. If it were not for the fact that she were dead, she would have appeared luxuriously comfortable.

John sighed again and put the box down beside the cat. He walked to the living room and picked up a few sheets of newspaper. He stared at them for a moment, and then dropped them. He went into his bedroom and opened the closet there. After some fumbling, he removed several sheets of wrapping paper and closed the closet door. He returned to the hallway.

John knelt down and carefully placed the wrapping paper around the sides and bottom of the box, making sure that the bright colours of the paper were facing inside. He worked with an almost obsessive attention to detail, making sure that the wrapping was thick enough for adequate padding, and that there was the just right variety of colours that would be attractive to a cat. He thought very little as he worked, he only focused on making sure that the little coffin would be perfect for a cat.

When he was satisfied that the box was properly prepared for Scylla, he gently lifted her off the floor and placed her carefully into the soft paper inside the box.

He stood up and walked back into the living room and looked around the floor for a moment. Then he walked across to the window and looked behind the curtains. Then he knelt on the couch and looked down behind that. Next, he got on his hands and knees and searched the floor. Finally he discovered what he had been seeking: the tiny stuffed mouse with the little bell on its tail.

He arose and carried the jingling mouse back into the entrance hall, and placed it inside the box with Scylla. Lastly, he placed the lid onto the box. He picked the coffin up and took it into the living room, where he placed it onto his coffee table.

He sat down in his chair and stared at the box for a few minutes. He thought about Scylla as a kitten. He had taken her home from a friend of his now-ex-wife's. Both he and Carrie had cared for and fed the cat, but it was clear Scylla favoured John over Carrie. During the amiable (but somehow cold) divorce that ended their 12-year marriage they had agreed that John should keep Scylla. All three seemed happy with the decision, although Scylla initially missed Carrie as much as John himself did. As Scylla grew older, she and John became virtually inseparable. The daily routines of John coming home and feeding her, allowing her to sit on (and sometimes scratch) his lap as he watched TV or read, having his feet warmed at night as she lay on the bed--all were familiar and comfortable to both John and Scylla. Even as Scylla got old and slow, even as she became occasionally nasty and occasionally playful like a new kitten, even when she visited the vet more and more often, she and John grew closer.

And now she was dead. Just a cat, perhaps, but a friend, too. `Mona was right,' John decided. `Cats really are people. And this person is now gone.'

It was past his dinnertime, but John didn't feel like eating. Instead, he carried the coffin back out to the entrance hall and placed it gingerly on the side table there. He went to the closet and retrieved his coat. He put it on and picked up the box. He walked out of his apartment.

His first stop was the manager's apartment. He knocked on the door, and waited. There seemed to be nobody home, and he was just getting ready to turn and walk back to the elevator when he heard the latch turn and saw the door open. Inside was Mrs. Tyne, Hugh's near-invalid wife.

"Hello, Mr. Walls," she croaked.

John knew she was barely able to talk because most of her throat had been removed after the discovery of cancer there. She stood, just inside the door, in an old and worn brown bathrobe. From underneath the robe John could see a pair of very thin, pale, stick-like legs that ended in dirty torn slippers. Her white stringy hair was messy and it very nearly buried her thin face and hollow, bloodshot eyes. She stood very uncertainly, as though she would collapse at any moment.

"Good evening, Mrs. Tyne. I was wondering, could I please borrow the building's shovel?"

"Bury the cat?" she asked.

"Yes, but I was thinking down by the river, not anywhere around the building."

"Okay," she said and attempted a weak smile.

"Good night," John said to her.

She made no reply, she only closed the door.

John took the elevator back down to the basement, retrieved the shovel from the storage room, and went out into the dark winter night. In one hand he held the shovel and in the other Scylla in her box. He set out for the park, which was four blocks away.

The streets were virtually deserted, and the few people that were in them hurried to get home and out of the cold and dark. John paid little attention to them, however. All his thoughts were concentrated on the one task he had set out to do. It was all he could think about, which he did almost dispassionately.

It was because of this focus of thought that, as he entered the park, he nearly bowled over a pathetic figure of a man standing in the wet, nearly frosty grass. John stopped short, slightly startled. He peered into the man's face and discovered the man was probably homeless, definitely starving, and almost certainly dying.

John studied him more carefully. He wore a long black overcoat that would have covered all but the bottoms of his filthy ragged worker's pants had it not been for the numerous tears and spots where the coat had worn through. He wore socks on his hands with cut-outs for his fingers, and his feet were practically bursting out of his ancient shoes. His face was grimy and lined with the many wrinkles of time and effort. Underneath the dirt, the skin of the man's empty face and gnarled hands was deathly white and appeared to be tinged yellow. An odour of faeces, sweat, alcohol and death hung over the man. The man returned John's stare with his vacuous, weary eyes for a moment.

Then the man spoke: "I'm cold. Spare a buck?"

John thought for second. "I have no money with me, sorry."

"What's in the box?"

"Um, er, a dead cat."

The man looked intently at John for another moment. John felt as if he were naked, and to his surprise, the man's eyes grew even sadder. The man pulled his torn scraps of clothing tighter around himself and finally said, "Nothin' worse'n losin' somebody ya love. I know. Nothin' at all--even dyin' without a home."

"Yes, well, I will miss her. Excuse me." John moved as if to walk around the man, but the man stepped back into his way.

"Gonna toss her into the water?"

"No," John said with some impatience, "I am going to bury her by the water."

The man grunted. It sounded almost like an approval. Then he said, "Nice place to be. Like it there."

"I figured that it would be a good place for her." `Why should I tell this man anything about Scylla?'

"You know about water?" the man asked.

"What?"

"It just goes on'n on. Not like life--a cat's or person's. Water just goes'n goes. Like that." He stretched out his right arm to his side and looked along it into infinity.

John considered slowly backing away from the man. It wasn't because John was frightened of him physically, he was sure the man could cause him no harm. There was, instead, something that troubled John about the man on a purely emotional level, something that made a terrible feeling stir in his mind. There was a sleeping giant that John very much wanted to keep undisturbed.

John opened his mouth and spoke very slowly and deliberately. "I want to go to the river and bury my cat."

The man smiled, but his eyes remained sorrowful. "Ya mind if I watch? Ain't somethin' I see every day!"

"No. Just leave me alone."

John walked past the man and down to the river. The man followed behind, but not closely. Just before they reached the water, the man spoke again. "Okay. Won't bug ya. This is sacred, right? Somethin' ya gotta do on yer own, right?"

John made no reply.

They reached the river. As John hunted in the moonlight for an appropriate spot, the man sat down on the wet grass and let out a phlegmatic sigh. John soon located a site underneath a tree, yet close to the water, and carefully placed the box on the ground.

He plunged the shovel into the sod, and began to create the final resting place for his cat. He drove deep into the earth, turning dirt over and increasing the size of the grave. A few feet away Scylla lay in her box, and a few more feet beyond her the man sat shivering and watching John dig. John continued digging a larger and larger hole, removing the dirt and piling it up to the side. He thought of nothing except digging the grave.

It wasn't until he realised that the hole was larger and deeper than it needed to be that he stopped and discovered that, despite the cold, he was overheated and sweating profusely. He laid the shovel down. John stood for a moment looking at his work.

Then it was time. He reached down and picked up Scylla's coffin. He held it silently for at least a full minute, gazing first at the box and then at the hole. He heard the homeless man stand up and walk over to a position beside John. To John's surprise, the man's presence was not unwelcome.

John crouched down and hesitantly placed the box into the hole in the ground. As the box was set down there was a slight jingle from the toy mouse inside.

John reached for the shovel and stood up with it. He moved to the other side of the grave and put it into the pile of freshly-dug dirt. Just as he was lifting up the first shovel-full, he saw the other man drop a handful of leaves and grass onto the box. Then John began filling the hole again with dirt.

Once the grave was completely filled up again, he used the back of the shovel to tamp the dirt down into a hard pack. He turned and walked toward home. The man followed John, more closely this time. Once John reached the edge of the park, he stopped and turned. The man was right there, looking quizzically at John.

John said, "I have no money, as I've already told you. But I have this coat. It's warm and almost new. It's yours if you want it."

The man half-smiled. "I'll take it, fer sure. But ain't you gonna be cold?"

John pulled his keys out of his pocket, took his coat off and said, "It's only a short trip home for me." He held out the coat.

The man took it and said, "Me too . . ." He removed his useless overcoat and put John's coat on. It was too big, but he clearly didn't mind.

John began to shiver almost immediately. He turned to walk away, but the man called out.

"Wait a sec!"

John turned back. "Yes?"

"What was yer cat's name?"

"Scylla."

"Ha! Scylla and Charybdis. A rock'n a hard place. Ha!"

John stepped out onto the road towards his home, shuddering in the cold. He had gone a full block when he heard the man behind him call out.

"Don't think too much, eh? Ya won't like what ya find!"


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