written on it, and what was before to me just an old hulk of an abandoned theater now seemed so much grander. I wished I could have gone in and seen that wall. Maybe I’d come back and try sometime.
I went to the Arcade and got Mabel’s smokes, but as I was getting ready to head on over to Fifth and Main I realized just where I was and what I had a chance to do.
On Downtown Sunday my dad went to the movies (either the Midland or the Old Soldiers and Sailors Building, they were right across the street from one another); then he’d get some candy or comic books afterward (the Arcade News Stand had been in the same place for fifty years); and then the old men sitting on the steps of the building on the corner.
Which meant the site of the old Farmer’s Building and Loan.
Less than two blocks away.
Without realizing it, I had already walked two-thirds of the same route my dad had covered every Downtown Sunday when he was a child.
It wasn’t exactly like following in his footsteps, and it wasn’t as if he’d known I’d overheard him that night or would ever know now what I was about to do, but I’d just been given the chance to honor his memory by retracing his steps through one of his best memories.
How could I not walk over there?
It would be nice to say that I saw the square in a completely different light, much as I had the Old Soldiers and Sailors Building, but the truth was this area of Cedar Hill looked and felt just the same to me as it had any of the hundreds of times I’d walked these streets; tired-looking though dependable brick- and wood-fronted buildings, some with shingled roofs, some with aluminum, others-old war-horses who’d stood the test of time and the seasons and were damned proud of it so why change now-still sporting thick layers of tar paper over two-by-fours: the sturdy, inoffensive banality of a small Midwestern downtown. Nothing about its current state, nor the way it existed in my own childhood memories, made it special.
What did make it special was knowing that, back there, just over that way, fifty or sixty years ago, the child who would grow up to become my dad had come along this exact path, walked past many of these same storefronts, and had probably used the same crosswalk I was approaching.
Maybe this could serve as some small gesture of thanks.
I passed the Hallmark store, the shoe store beside it, and was moving toward the crosswalk when a man in his thirties who’d been walking ahead of me suddenly veered to the right and kicked a small cat that had been pacing him for a few yards. The cat wasn’t being pushy or annoying, wasn’t running figure-eights between his feet as he tried to move along, it was just walking beside him, minding whatever passed for its own fuzzy business, when this jerk, for no apparent reason, decided to swing around and drop-kick it into a doorway.
The cat reeled ass-over-teakettle, spitting out one of those uncanny, almost macabre screech-yowls of pain and fear that you can feel all the way in the back of your teeth, then hit the doorway with a solid whump! before spin-rolling back onto its stomach, legs splayed. It scrabbled its claws against the concrete but quickly found enough purchase to stand and shake some of the What-the-hell-was -that- about? from its stunned and wide-eyed face. It narrowed its eyes, licked a corner of its mouth, gave the tiniest of shudders, and then released a thin, dinky meep noise so full of confusion and physical hurt that I was ashamed to be a member of the human race in its presence. It looked up at me and blinked as if to ask: Did I offend? Please don’t hurt me. I’ll give you rubbies.
I walked toward it, slowly, then knelt down and held out my hand. The cat gave my fingers a perfunctory sniff, then-in obvious pain-leaned forward to rub itself against my hand, the metal tag on its collar clicking against my watch band.
“Bad day?” I whispered to it.
Before the cat had a chance to answer I glanced up to see where Drop-Kick had disappeared to: he was turning down an alley between two buildings near the corner of the crosswalk. He’d never given the cat a second thought, just kicked the shit out of it to break up the dreary routine of his day and then kept going without so much as a backward glance.
It’s good to be exposed to such naked, unself-conscious displays of compassion; it enriches one.
I never stopped to consider that something might go wrong (whatever part of my mind that governed rationality was still wandering around back at the cemetery); I just rose to my feet and followed him double-time into the alley.
He sauntered along, then stopped for a moment, stretched his back, and knelt down to re-tie one of his shoelaces.
That’s when I took him.
I ran forward, pulled back my right leg at the last moment, did a half-pirouette, and threw everything I had into the kick; my foot connected solidly- wham-o! -with his ribs, knocking him back and down in a fast blur of flailing hands and other equally befuddled body parts. The side of his skull smacked against the alley floor and for a moment I thought he might have been knocked unconscious, but then he shook head, winced, and pressed both hands against his ribs, groaning.
I glowered over him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that hurts? ”
“Oh, man… ow!-what the fuck’re you… oh, man…”
I thought I heard the soft crackle of chipped bone scraping against chipped bone; I know that wasn’t the case, but for that moment imagining that I did hear his damaged ribs whimpering under his skin filled me with a gleeful, nasty sort of satisfaction every person should feel once during their life, if only to know they never want to experience it again.
His face reddened under a fresh wave of pain, then he pulled in a deep breath and looked at me. “I’m gonna fuck you up, asshole.” And he began to stagger to his feet.
The smart thing to do was run.
So, naturally, I just stood there.
He slipped, his back pressed against the wall, then he caught his balance and shoved forward with one of his hands; as he did this he looked quickly up and down the alley to make sure there weren’t going to be any witnesses to the plague of biblical proportions he was about to unleash on my face; left, right… and then a slow double-take: Huh? What the-?
At both ends of the alley, sitting almost unnaturally still but with oh-so-attentive eyes, a group composed equally of dogs and cats of various sizes watched us with stark, unblinking interest. There must have been over a dozen animals in all.
Drop-Kick had almost fully pushed himself away from the wall when I shot out a foot and kicked his leg from underneath his bulk, sending him crashing ass-first to the ground one more time.
I stared at him, parted my hands before me- Well? -then turned and walked out toward the crosswalk.
The animals at this end of the alley moved so I could pass, but none of them seemed in any hurry to leave.
At the corner, the injured cat-now moving a bit more steadily-came up to me and rubbed its face against my leg. I smiled at it, thought about just picking it up and taking it home with me, then looked up when I heard the signal click over to “Walk.”
I stopped with one foot off the curb.
Across the street at the Farmer’s Building and Loan, an old hound dog sat on the top concrete step staring directly at me.
I knew this wasn’t the same hound dog from my dad’s childhood, I did, really, but there was an odd moment between seeing it and allowing its presence to fully register when I thought, Maybe…?
I shook it off but didn’t move to cross the street.
I looked down at the cat by my leg. It blinked at me, seemed to outwardly sigh, then turned its head in the dog’s direction.
From the top of the steps, the dog looked from me to the cat, and for the next few moments I just kept moving my gaze between them; the dog, the cat, the dog, moron with his leg cocked up in the air.
I pulled my foot back onto the curb just as the dog released a short, sharp bark. The cat, in response, moved its head up and down. They looked at each other once again, the dog licked its nose, and the cat blinked one eye.
Winked, rather.
The cat winked at the dog:
