Call Me Alastair Page 8

  I continue my campaign until I feel the weight of the terry cloth thrown over me. The trap of Pete’s hands snaps shut. Blind now, in thick darkness, I manage by sense.

  I feel Pete ease me out of the cage.

  I hear the children cheer. I know soon attention will be turned to the other bird. To Aggie.

  Five seconds. Ten. Then a glimmer of light.

  The towel moves an inch off my head, giving me just enough sight and time. My beak finds its way to Pete’s hand for another go.

  “YAAAAAAAAAH!”

  In an instant, I’m thrown through the air, again, but this time I’m ready. My wings, untested in flight but flapping nonetheless, propel me through the shop. Clumsily, yes, painfully, yes, but I’m flying. Kind of.

  Maybe more like bumping off things.

  I strain my eyes to see where Aggie’s gone. People are running, ducking, covering their heads with purses and puppies; gerbils are squealing with glee at the mayhem.

  I make a second flight around the store, Pete on my tail feathers, yelling and sucking his bit finger. As I round the front of the store, I have just enough time to see Aggie’s red-feathered end waddle out on to the slushy sidewalk.

  Out! Free! I can barely keep myself from following her, but I stick to the plan. First, a diversion big enough for every person, animal and Pete in the store to forget about me, just as they’ve done with Aggie.

  In seconds I see it.

  I thrash towards a long lineup of small plastic aquariums on a top shelf, away from curious fingers. I take aim and come in for a landing, flinging myself headfirst down the line. The plastic boxes topple to the floor and crash, splitting open and emptying their contents.

  Twenty-four aquariums clatter. Twenty-four tarantulas scatter.

  The noise is deafening.

  Grown men are weeping.

  Women have climbed the shelving, leaving their children behind to fight off the hairy swarm alone, using broom, dustpan and the odd can of kitty food as a missile. Paralyzed, Pete takes in the sight of every last crawling escapee as the sky itself falls in on us.

  I look to the door.

  It’s open.

  I rocket off the shelf, tasting liberty at last.

  Ten metres.

  Six.

  I’m plummeting.

  Three.

  A figure steps into the door frame and begins to sweep the door shut as I’m a metre from freedom. I accelerate. Faster. Faster…

  Wham!

  I’m too late.

  I crash into the door and tumble to the floor.

  My head is spinning. My eyes are spinning. The room is spinning.

  When it stops, I look up to see a face looming over me. The face of my prison guard, defender of doorways, crusher of dreams.

  Cupped between his hands is my sister, still and serene.

  I should’ve known.

  It’s Fritz.

  Stopped by a Fritz on a Snowy Morning1

  He looks at me with eyes aglow,

  His lashes trimmed with fallen snow

  And smile rolled out from ear to ear;

  My heart knows all it needs to know.

  For Aggie, though, it isn’t clear

  She’ll be without her brother near.

  She didn’t think that Fritz would take

  Just one of us away from here.

  I watch them leave, and in their wake,

  The heavy-laden storm clouds quake

  And loose a bitter howl with me –

  To wait so long was my mistake.

  My heart’s a ruined cavity

  And what remains: the cold debris2

  Of plans I had that weren’t to be,

  Of plans I had that weren’t to be.

  1. A poem with hints of Frost – Robert Frost. Inspired by his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (minus the trees)

  2. debris (duh-bree): what’s left after something is smashed into a million pieces

  CHAPTER 14

  It was a Saturday. Fritz wasn’t supposed to be there. My plan should have worked. It almost worked. And yet.

  Just that morning he’d shovelled a driveway, giving him the last few dollars he needed to buy Aggie, bungle our escape, and take her away. Take her he did.

  Again.

  And the rest is history.

  “I’m not good at goodbyes either. Knew it would be hard.” Porky sniffs and wipes his nose with an apple peel. “Lentil and Bean, they were good boys, they were. But they’re in a better place.”

  Aggie isn’t the only one who’s left the shop this week. Porky’s twins Lentil and Bean were adopted, and when Bio-Scents boarded up shop, the resulting fresh air turned every day into a Saturday. Pete sold twelve hedgehogs just yesterday.

  The day’s chaos has dulled and died. Street lamps spill into the shop. Light glances over shelves and cages, bouncing off the glass aquariums and throwing ripples on the ceiling. Outside, the empty moon has poured its light somewhere else, and the snow, tracing dusty fingers over parked cars left abandoned, lifts and swirls out into the dark. The street is lonely tonight.

  Porky lies on his back, staring at the bright waves above him. “We keep on keepin’ on! That’s the thing to do, Alastair,” he says.

  Fritz took our massive old cage with him. Inside my new, tighter quarters, I turn my back to Porky’s case, hoping he’ll get the hint. He doesn’t.

  “We need to celebrate their good fortune! I’ll bet my boys are living on a farm as we speak! With our pig relations! We remember – we always remember – but we can’t live in the past, old buddy. We keep on keepin’ on! Maybe take up a hobby.”

  Nonsense. All of it. I feel Aggie’s absence in every inch of my body, every feather.

  Behind the register, Pete’s Key West poster glows under the street lamps, and the shadows of a thousand tiny snowflakes float there, over the blue of the sky, the sea. I find myself imagining they’re slips of poetry I’ve shredded. I pick out the tallest palm and try to picture Aggie on the furthermost leaf, chewing blocks and decorating a frond here and there with her finished artwork. We could’ve rented out a few branches to escaped cockatiels and disgruntled carrier pigeons if we needed. We’d have met future spouses maybe. Had fledglings of our own.

  How often had customers complained about the manure smell, and Pete would point to that poster and say, “Welcome to paradise”?

  It seems possible, this paradise.

  I snort bitterly.

  It wasn’t to be.

  Porky’s still droning on. “Maybe we should start working out. That’s a hobby. The hamsters seem to enjoy it.” I see him poke a finger into the bulge of his belly. “But if you ask me, I think some extra weight’s a good thing for a pig.”

  The only hobby I’d like to take up is reaching over and biting all the trite words right out of him. Since I can’t, I begin my nightly preening but find myself tugging harder than usual at the feathers. One comes out in my beak. I quickly let it fall from the cage.

  No need to worry…

  It’s not like that was on purpose…

  No feather pickers here!

  Across the room, two gerbils get in a fistfight over a sprig of parsley.

  “Idiots,” grumbles Porky. He shouts over the side of his aquarium. “Knock it off, you vermin! The rabbits need their beauty sleep!” He snorts.

  “We were getting it, until you piped up,” growls a sleepy Babs.

  “Aw, come on, Babs. We’re friends, ain’t we?” His nose twitches; he looks happy with himself.

  “So?” he says to me. “Whadya say? A nightly game of poker sound good? Hamsters are escape artists – they’ll come over as long as we got snacks. We’ll just hold your cards up to the glass. We can play for veggies.”

  “Whatever,” I say just to shut him up.

  “Great! All those poker tournaments Pete keeps on the television will come in handy! I’ll get Boris over there to join in – guy turns up everywhere. I hear he’s part blind, you kn
ow. We could make a killing!”

  Porky retreats to his sleeping corner, turns a few times, and flops down with a huff. “G’night there, Alastair.”

  I ignore him and retreat to my feather fluffing, but Porky pipes up again.

  “It really is going to be all right there, buddy. Pig’s honour!”

  I’ve had it.

  “You’re not a pig!” I snap, and Porky’s eyes get big. “Haven’t you listened to Fritz’s stupid Latin lessons? Cavia porcellus. That’s what you are. No relation to potbellied pigs, boars or any other swine!”

  Porky blinks, a little stunned.

  “You’re a rodent.”

  I try to ignore the fact that I’ve used a loose Latin interpretation with my own genus and species as Porky’s big round eyes continue to blink at me in bewilderment. I ignore those, too.

  I go back to the spot near my shoulder where I left off preening and find a bald patch. I look to the floor.

  Five more feathers litter the linoleum.

  One

  (an original Alastair creation)

  Lonesome, lonely,

  Me here only,

  Single – wholly –

  Left here. Solely.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Christmas season over, the shop is quiet again. Pete is back to his ornery self, grumbling about the price of dog food or complaining about fickle children who one day adore newts! newts! newts! and the next day want painted turtles, so he’s stuck with forty-two newts that he can’t even sell at half off. On top of things, every kid who got a hedgehog for Christmas is trying to return it. No one wants a pet that stays curled in a ball, growls, and tries to impale you.

  “Sale on newts and hedgehogs! Half off!” he shouts to every customer walking into the store.

  The days pass in a hazy fog. The store opens, things are sold, and the shop closes, a page ripped from the calendar, ready to repeat it all tomorrow. Fritz continues to work his three-day-a-week shift.

  His presence is insufferable.

  He seems to avoid me whenever possible, except for his gloating greeting soon as he arrives: “Hey there, Alastair! How’s it going? Aggie’s getting stronger every day! Don’t you worry!”

  I’ll believe it if I see her.

  When I see her.

  It’s been eighteen days, three hours, twenty-two minutes and fifty-six seconds since I last did.

  I spend the days counting the minutes, throwing food on the floor, frightening unsuspecting customers with ear-shredding squawks, and preening (barely fussing with) my feathers. The time I have left I spend trying to bend the cage bars with the power of my mind or hiding under my good wing and hating every scaled, furred and feathered thing that comes my way.

  “Gather round, boys! Courgette up for grabs tonight!” Porky shouts. Boris whistles, and a few of the hamsters take turns chest bumping and high-fiving.

  Ever since Porky’s started his veggie poker game, mouths on every side yammer the night away: several hamsters, Boris (no one really knows what kind of animal he is, but I heard some of the rabbits say he climbed out of a storm drain and into a cage because it was easy-eating here in the shop), and Vinny, the lone gerbil in the bedding-free box next door. Vinny’s been kicked out of the family for being a pacifist. (He’s also allergic to cedar shavings.)

  “You in, Alastair?” a hesitant Porky asks. “Looks like you got a piece of cucumber there with my name on it.” He’s kindly been trying to gloss over my outburst these last few weeks.

  “I’m in, fellassssss,” interjects a voice from the other end of the shop. “Come on over. I’ll sssssserve ssssssupper.”

  “Aw, shut it, Lucifer,” shouts Porky.

  “Yeah, beat it!” says one of the hamsters.

  Vinny shudders. “It’s so terribly disturbing. Boa constrictors are just so, so – violent.”

  “Not in the mood,” I manage to grumble between rummaging through my chest feathers. There’s rearranging that needs to be done. My plumage lately, is, well, a mess.

  “Yeah, sure. No problem,” Porky says. Then he grins.

  “Your loss!” he shouts, and begins passing out the cards the hamsters managed to pinch from the front counter.

  I watch them. These animals with their late-night poker games, a rabbit beauty shop complete with pet shop gossip, last week’s Hamster Olympics (which was really just the hamsters taking turns on their wheel and timing one another until they passed out or got off to get a snack). Everyone’s too comfortable, too happy here.

  “This is the life, ain’t it, boys?” asks Porky after they’ve gone a few rounds. He’s won a few hands, and he’s knee-high in courgette, which isn’t saying much since his knees are about a centimetre off the ground.

  “Sure is, Porky!”

  “You said it!”

  “A night out with the boys and good eats – I never had it so good!” sings Boris. “You shoulda seen the garbage I had to eat afore this! Real-life garbage, I tell yeh! If I died today, I’d be a happy ra – chap!”

  Porky eyes him up and down. “Where’d you come from again?”

  Boris squints harder at his cards. “Oh, no place special,” he says. “But this – this is paradise.”

  I couldn’t agree less.

  Later that night, after the poker players have drifted off to sleep, the moon creeps into that tiny patch of sky, a giant glowing fishbowl. The poker game ended hours ago when Porky lost all his courgette to Boris, who moonlights as a card shark. Turns out he’s a rat.

  You should never underestimate the new guy.

  I’ve been up the whole time. Without Aggie’s snores to drown things out, I’ve heard the puppies dare one another to sniff and lick some unknown substance they’ve found in their pen, the gerbils planning a coup, and Lucifer singing in his sleep: “Ssssssuch delicioussssss little titbitssssss – hamsterssssss – ooh! – gerbilssssss – ah! – mousessssss – mmm. Fat guinea pigssssss and froggiessssss, too. Ratsessssss, oh my, my, my.”

  The rabbits are up feeding their brood for the fifth time tonight.

  “You say I got a chance, but I don’t think so,” says Harriet, a tawny rabbit with long ears. “I lost another patch of fur over on my rump. I’m looking especially unsightly these days. These kids are gonna be the death of me!” She kicks at a pair of bunnies who’ve started a wrestling match mid-meal. Once they’ve settled, she needles her bald patch with the tip of her claw. “Think anybody’s got a tonic to put on it or somethin’?”

  Babs looks up from licking her paws. “I think Rita’s got something – remember how she lost all that fur last year? She put something on it, and it came back all curly.”

  “Oh yeeeeeah!” says Harriet. “Oh, but Rita’s got some beef with me these days. I think she’s trying to turn a few of the other girls against me.”

  “Well, you did nip her ear the last time a human was looking to buy.”

  “But she was acting all cute and sweet! You know Rita ain’t cute and sweet. Besides, it was a nice little girl with braids that was looking, and I always said I’d like to go home with a nice little girl with braids.”

  “You never said that!” says one of the other rabbits, butting in.

  “Well, maybe not – but that doesn’t mean it ain’t true!” Harriet yells back.

  Vi, the quietest one of the bunch, the one with crossed eyes that always seem to turn off potential buyers, sighs. “I’d take just about anybody.”

  Babs reaches over and gives her a reassuring pat. “We know, Vi. Don’t you worry, hon. You’re far from the last one in this shop that’ll get adopted. Look at that parrot over there. The day he gets adopted is the day Old Nell keels over.”

  Old Nell: the shop’s oldest living resident and Pete’s first pet. “A forty-year-old tortoise in the prime of her life!” Pete loves to tell inquiring customers. It’s common knowledge that Pete keeps her here to remind all the wallets and pocketbooks walking into the store what a sound investment they’d be making in buying a pet. He convenien
tly neglects to mention that most of us have the longevity of a pair of socks. Old Nell, however – the rabbits think she’ll live for ever.

  The girls giggle. “Oh, Babs,” says Harriet. “You’re so bad!”

  “What?” says Babs. “It’s true.”

  “’Course it’s true,” says Harriet, still giggling. “But that’s just mean!”

  “See if I care,” says Babs. “Been hoity-toity from the beginning. Don’t you see the way he’s always primping—”

  “But we primp, Babs!”

  Babs rolls her eyes. “Sure, we primp, Harriet. But he primps so much lately he’s torn out his feathers! Look! He’ll be as naked as a newt soon! With a beak!”

  They break out in a fresh rash of giggles. My face is in shadow. They can’t see that I’m awake and listening to their every word.

  “It’s not even that,” Babs continues. “Listen, Porky McPorkster and all his fuzzball friends may drive us crazy, but at least they got the decency to talk to us. That parrot thinks he’s too good. Only ever wanted to talk to his own kind – that sister of his. He’s always brushing Porky off. Barely said boo to me all them times I was in the Infirmary.” She sniffs and raises her nose into the air. “Thinks he’s la-di-da, that one.”

  “He does cost a thousand dollars,” Vi whispers to Harriet. “We cost twenty bucks.”

  Babs gives her a dirty look. “That may be,” she says. “But five dollars would be too much to spend on a bird like that. He’s a snob. He’s always trying to bite anything that walks by. He’s … he’s a feather picker!”

  I wince.

  This time they cackle so loudly they wake the puppies, and soon the whole store strikes up its orchestra of hisses, screeches, squawks and thumps. Through the noise I make out one last comment from Babs.

  “I don’t even know what that sister of his ever saw in him.”

  It’s hard to argue with her.

  She sort of has a point.

  These days – the morning, noon and evening bustle; the grating noise; the loneliness in a place quivering with humans and animals alike – these things take a lot out of a guy, but the nights…