Fear Nothing

Orson pulled back in his chair, as if afraid the cat was going to launch itself at him.

“Then Gloria tells me a few other things bothering Sloopy, one of which was this Ford pickup I’d bought. His arthritis was mild, but the poor dog couldn’t get in and out of the truck as easy as he could a car, and he was scared of breaking a bone.”

Still baring his fangs, the cat hissed.

Orson flinched, and a brief keening sound of anxiety escaped him, like a burst of steam whistling out of a teakettle.

Evidently oblivious to this feline-canine drama, Roosevelt said, “Gloria and I had lunch and spent the whole afternoon talking about her work as an animal communicator. She told me she didn’t have any special talent, that it wasn’t any paranormal psychic nonsense, just a sensitivity to other species that we all have but that we’ve repressed. She said anyone could do it, that I could do it myself if I learned the techniques and spent enough time at it, which sounded preposterous to me.”

Mungojerrie hissed again, somewhat more ferociously, and again Orson flinched, and then I swear the cat smiled or came as close to smiling as any cat can.

Stranger yet, Orson appeared to break into a wide grin — which requires no imagination to picture because all dogs are able to grin. He was panting happily, grinning at the smiling cat, as though their confrontation had been an amusing joke.

“I ask you, son, who wouldn’t want to learn such a thing?” said Roosevelt.

“Who indeed?” I replied numbly.

“So Gloria taught me, and it took a frustratingly long time, months and months, but I eventually got as good at it as she was. The first big hurdle is believing you can actually do it. Putting aside your doubt, your cynicism, all your preconceived notions about what’s possible and what isn’t. Most of all, hardest of all, you have to stop worrying about looking foolish, ’cause fear of being humiliated really limits you. Lots of folks could never get past all that, and I’m sort of surprised that I got past it myself.”

Shifting forward in his chair, Orson leaned over the table and bared his teeth at Mungojerrie.

The cat’s eyes widened with fear.

Silently but threateningly, Orson gnashed his teeth.

Wistfulness filled Roosevelt’s deep voice: “Sloopy died three years later. God, how I grieved for him. But what a fascinating and wonderful three years they were, being so in tune with him.”

Teeth still bared, Orson growled softly at Mungojerrie, and the cat whimpered. Orson growled again, the cat bawled a pitiful meow of purest fear — and then both grinned.

“What the hell is going on here?” I wondered.

Orson and Mungojerrie seemed to be perplexed by the nervous tremor in my voice.

“They’re just having fun,” Roosevelt said.

I blinked at him.

In the candlelight, his face shone like darkly stained and highly polished teak.

“Having fun mocking their stereotypes,” he explained.

I couldn’t believe I was hearing him correctly. Considering how completely I must be misperceiving his words, I was going to need a high-pressure hose and a plumber’s drain snake to clean out my ears. “Mocking their stereotypes?”

“Yes, that’s right.” He bobbed his head in confirmation. “Of course they wouldn’t put it in those terms, but that’s what they’re doing. Dogs and cats are supposed to be mindlessly hostile. These guys are having fun mocking that expectation.”

Now Roosevelt was grinning at me as stupidly as the dog and the cat were grinning at me. His lips were so dark red that they were virtually black, and his teeth were as big and white as sugar cubes.

“Sir,” I told him, “I take back what I said earlier. After careful reconsideration, I’ve decided you’re totally awesomely crazy, whacked-out to the max.”

He bobbed his head again, continuing to grin at me. Suddenly, like the darkling beams of a black moon, lunacy rose in his face. He said, “You wouldn’t have any damn trouble believing me if I were white,” and as he snarled the final word, he slammed one massive fist into the table so hard that our coffee cups rattled in their saucers and nearly tipped over.

If I could have reeled backward while in a chair, I would have done so, because his accusation stunned me. I had never heard either of my parents use an ethnic slur or make a racist statement; I’d been raised without prejudice. Indeed, if there was an ultimate outcast in this world, it was me. I was a minority all to myself, a minority of one: the Nightcrawler, as certain bullies had called me when I was a little kid, before I’d ever met Bobby and had someone who would stand beside me. Though not an albino, though my skin was pigmented, I was stranger, in many people’s eyes, than Bo Bo the DogFaced Boy. To some I was merely unclean, tainted, as if my genetic vulnerability to ultraviolet light could be passed to others with a sneeze, but some people feared and despised me more than they would fear or despise a three-eyed Toad Man in any carnival freak show from sea to shining sea, if only because I lived next door.

Half rising out of his chair, leaning across the table, shaking a fist as big as a cantaloupe, Roosevelt Frost spoke with a hatred that astonished and sickened me: “Racist! You mealy racist bastard!”

I could barely find my voice. “W-when did race ever matter to me? How could it ever matter to me?”

He looked as if he would reach across the table, tear me out of my chair, and strangle me until my tongue unraveled to my shoes. He bared his teeth and growled at me, growled like a dog, very much like a dog, suspiciously like a dog.

“What the hell is going on here?” I asked again, but this time I found myself asking the dog and cat.

Roosevelt growled at me again, and when I only gaped stupidly at him, he said, “Come on, son, if you can’t call me a name, at least give me a little growl. Give me a little growl. Come on, son, you can do it.”

Orson and Mungojerrie watched me expectantly.

Roosevelt growled once more, giving his snarl an interrogatory inflection at the end, and finally I growled back at him. He growled louder than before, and I growled louder, too.

Smiling broadly, he said, “Hostility. Dog and cat. Black and white. Just having a little fun mocking stereotypes.”

As Roosevelt settled into his chair again, my bewilderment began to give way to a tremulous sense of the miraculous. I was aware of a looming revelation that would rock my life forever, expose dimensions of the world that I could not now imagine; but although I strained to grasp it, this understanding remained elusive, tantalizingly just beyond the limits of my reach.

I looked at Orson. Those inky, liquid eyes.

I looked at Mungojerrie.

The cat bared his teeth at me.

Orson bared his, too.

A faint cold fear thrilled through my veins, as the Bard of Avon would put it, not because I thought the dog and cat might bite me but because of what this amused baring of teeth implied. Not just fear shivered through me, either, but also a delicious chill of wonder and giddy excitement.

Although such an act would have been out of character for him, I actually wondered if Roosevelt Frost had spiked the coffee. Not with brandy. With hallucinogenics. I was simultaneously disoriented and clearer of mind than I’d ever been, as if I were in a heightened state of consciousness.

The cat hissed at me, and I hissed at the cat.

Orson growled at me, and I growled at him.

In the most astonishing moment of my life to this point, we sat around the dinette table, grinning men and beasts, and I was reminded of those cute but corny paintings that were popular for a few years: scenes of dogs playing poker. Only one of us was a dog, of course, and none of us had cards, so the painting in my mind’s eye didn’t seem to apply to this situation, and yet the longer I dwelled on it, the closer I came to revelation, to epiphany, to understanding all of the ramifications of what had happened at this table in the past few minutes—

— and then my train of thought was derailed by a beeping that arose from the electronic security equipment in the hutch beside the table.