THE CAT'S MAW

CHAPTER IV (Part 2)

The boxy green tractor bumped and bounced and sputtered up the dry dirt road.

Billy sat in a wooden trailer pulled behind it, gripping its raised edge with one hand and cradling the cat against his chest with the other. The cat’s head bobbed along with the trailer’s motion, its gaze transfixed by Billy’s crutches clattering back and forth beside his outstretched legs.

His father was driving, and would look over his shoulder every few meters to check on Billy, though he didn’t speak. His mother had already walked up to the garden, straw baskets in hand, still tense from the morning’s argument.

Billy had washed and dressed himself early, and keenly declared his intentions for the day. That’s when everything went sour.

 “You’re not going there today,” his mother had said, snatching the cereal bowls from the table. “Your father has been slaving on something for you, so that’s where you’re going.”

“That’s not fair,” Billy had said, adding some edge to his whine. “It’s my first day really outside, and we’re heading back there anyway. I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

“No back-talk. That’s final,” his mother had said, folding the dishtowels for the third time that morning.

“Just a little while,” Billy had pleaded. “I just want to take him there to play…”

“That’s enough. If you keep this up, you can forget any talk of ‘playing’ this summer, or certainly of having a pet. In fact, I think you’re getting far too attached to something we haven’t said you could keep.”

Billy lowered his head then, and his hands had curled into fists. He wasn’t going to lash out, even if a part of him desperately wanted to. Instead, he was digging his nails into his palms.

He was trying his hardest not to cry.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” his mother had tossed some paper towels on the table in front of him.

Billy swallowed hard, took the squares of paper in his trembling hands, and tore them up instead.

“How dare you waste those,” she had said, hurling the scraps into the bin. “You have no respect for the value of things, young man, or of people’s time and effort. No respect at all.”

He gulped at the air then, the first few tears striking the formica tabletop in muted splatters. His next instinct was to bury his face in his armpit, his body convulsing with each muffled sob.

“It’s not a big deal, Liz’,” his father had said, quiet at the table until that moment. He drummed his calloused fingers on the table’s edge, and spun his teacup in clockwise circles by the handle.

“A united front, Stanley,” his mother had said, her face matching the shade of the cherry dishtowels. “We have to be a united front. That’s what all the books say. Otherwise, they never learn who’s in charge.”

Billy pushed back from the table then, and hopped to the living room without his crutches. He collapsed face-first into his pillow, clamping it around his head. The cat had been sleeping on the bed, and leapt back with the impact, wide-eyed and confused.

Billy couldn’t hear much with the pillow against both ears but he knew his parents were fighting. It frightened him when they fought, and made him worry for the future. But, in the boy’s heart, he also knew that today the risks were justified.

It was the only way, Billy thought, as the shouting grew and his pillowcase went damp.

It was the only way to get what I wanted.