Playing Fair and Being Kind

TIMOTHY

Timothy held out the spoon to the large feline sitting on the arm of his chair. The cat briefly turned its head away and then, with an attitude of superiority, leaned ever so slightly toward the offering and took the tiniest nibble. Timothy pulled his hand back and the cat looked annoyed but only gave the slightest side-eye glance. The man took the spoon into his own mouth and in one exaggerated lick removed the remaining cat food. The cat feigned disinterest. Timothy wheezed a noise that passed for a laugh. He loaded the spoon up with more of the smelly contents from the tin he held in his lap. His other hand was resting on the cat’s lower spine above the tail. He was gently stroking and kneading the cat’s fur. The man repeated the gesture including the wheezy laugh at the end. The cat stayed seated on the arm of the chair mostly for the soothing rub he was enjoying. As long as the hand was in motion the cat remained.

The cat was named for a road sign; “Detour”. Detour had been found while Timothy was wandering the woods on the island. He had been left behind by campers probably. No telling. The cat fit into life in the shack easily and all became good.

Detour came into Timothy’s life nearly a month before the lady of the house departed. She was the fifth wife of Timothy and by extension she was his fifth divorce. Timothy was as disappointed as anyone. He wanted a partner and he wanted to love someone, to be married and devoted to their comfort and well-being. Yet he suffered five failed marriages trying to be happy. After all these failed attempts Timothy privately confessed that he was incapable of being a husband. He admitted being unfit for marriage. He concluded that of the many types of people, he was the kind that preferred to work, live, play, and travel alone. Timothy was fiercely independent. He liked people but he wanted to do things solo. On top of that, he also enjoyed privacy. His way of life did not encourage life companionship.

Another thing, Timothy lived in a region where there were few mating opportunities. Some of the local issues that shaped the choices for Timothy were poverty, mill closings, short growing season, long winters, sparse population of women, even the price of beer and cigarettes to be honest. Add to that the statistics of divorce, crime, and murder and you have an idea where Timothy stood on the altar of availability in the mating game. One statistic stood out; the number of marriages in which there were no instances of mental, emotional, or physical abuse. Zero. He knew of nobody in town who was married without at least two of these three defects. Timothy was not inclined to be abusive. He just wanted to live and let live. Again, companionship didn’t fit his life style.

Timothy’s most recent wife had left him while he was up at deer camp in November. She’d had enough of whatever it was that she’d had enough of. He didn’t know for sure. He just knew that she grew quiet about six months into their marriage. He asked her to go to couples counseling because he’d assumed that, after four other marriages, it was probably a very simple miscommunication that could be addressed in time. She told him she’d think about it. Timothy left for deer camp and when he returned in late November she had left. No word, no note, nothing to indicate where she’d gone. He called around to her friends but they were all mum. They were secretive and polite for a while. Afterward they just stopped answering the telephone. He had no idea what was going on. Regrets and resentments were all he had to hold him on this plane. Not much but it was all he had.

The only thing she left behind was his recliner, in which he was presently sitting with Detour, and the vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner gave him a way to make light of the situation. He told his friends she left it behind because she didn’t know what it was. After about the first dozen times he told that story it got stale and it didn’t make him laugh anymore. He was sad but not angry. That is until he discovered that she had taken his box of medals from his military service. The box held more than the medals. Also gone were the photographs of Timothy and his Navy buddies. The photographs were his only contact with the days when he was happy.

After he returned to the County he worked for a while at the regional airport that used to be an Air Force Base. He took a low-level maintenance job while he waited for something at the mill to open. Nothing ever did. The mill closed like many others before. He took day jobs with other carpenters and a little plumbing when he was needed. He got by because he knew everyone and because he was a reliable worker. Timothy lived close to the bone. He went through four marriages in ten years. Two of his ex’s were working at a bar in Presque Isle that was euphemistically called a men’s club on specific nights of the week; Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, holidays or not. Timothy’s life passed before his eyes without him noticing. After ten years he figured that if he stayed here in the County, he’d end up rotting away alone, slowly growing more insane. He had cable and internet which saved him a lot of grief and loneliness. He had money for beer and cigarettes and potatoes were cheap enough. Deer meat was plentiful year ’round. He was lucky to still have his hunting gear.

The fifth wife showed up out of the blue. How else? Timothy had taken his new cat to the vet to make sure he was up to date on rabies shots. A smallish woman was delivering her ancient peek-a-poo to be euthanized. The poor thing was blind and deaf. The dog, that is. She had it on a leash and it was lying by her feet in the waiting room. Timothy sat three chairs away with the cat on his lap. Detour took up all of the space. He weighed twenty-five pounds and was as large as a small Labrador retriever. The woman sitting near him was small and trim and cute as a button and talking almost non-stop to the peek-a-poo. Baby talk. That affected speech that made Timothy’s skin crawl. The little dog caught the scent of Detour and it stood up and walked right over toward Timothy’s chair. It had no idea what was coming. Nobody did. Detour saw the little dog approach and slowly shifted his weight off of his left elbow, the one closest to the dog. The dog sniffed the air and homed in on Detour’s perch up on Timothy’s lap. The peek-a-poo feebly stood on its hind legs and pushed its nose up into where it thought Detour was. It guessed right. With a motion as quick as a flash Detour swiped the little dog’s face with his left. A fist full of claws raked the pup’s nose. It let out a yipe.

The woman came unglued. That was the end of the baby talk. She’d had the dog for fifteen years. It was her life, to hear it from her, and what was Timothy doing with a wild, possibly feral, cat outside of its cage where it could attack, maim, disfigure other people’s pets? He should be talked to by the police and have the cat taken away and put down. Timothy tried to tell her that it was her dog who’d made contact. She wouldn’t hear any of it.

Slowly, with great care and deliberation he got up and went into one of the examining rooms leaving her and her little dog howling in the waiting room. Detour was calm but alert. The encounter with the ancient peek-a-poo had made his day and he was still in a mood to inflict damage. The veterinarian technician entered by another door. She was wearing jeans, Birkenstocks, her hair pulled back into a pony-tail, no makeup. Under her lab coat she wore a t-shirt with “Peace” printed in Arabic, Hebrew, and English top to bottom. Timothy recognized it. He had an identical shirt at home he’d gotten from a concert. The musical group, “Emma’s Revolution”, were two women who played guitar and sang political songs. He liked the veterinarian technician immediately. This was wife number five. We know what happened there. After a brief period of courtship which included pool playing and dancing at the local sports bar which featured the trendy “Road Kill” menu, Timothy and Kitty tied the knot at the town hall. Both had been married multiple times and neither was interested in inviting a bunch of friends to witness the beginning of another episode of smiling through tears. So, it was when she was gone and Timothy resumed his life with the cat.

Detour was tired of Timothy’s game involving the spoon and cat food. He leaped from his lap to the floor and sat for a while washing his face. It took him a few minutes and then he stalked across the floor of the cabin to his box and took a noisy shit. He covered it in the manner of an excavator. Detour was the most ineffectual shit covering cat on the planet in Timothy’s estimation. For all the noise and racket and scratching and back-filling he made in his box the scat remained uncovered and mostly spread about. Timothy always took over and removed the mess before the house incorporated the smell. They made this into a routine. Detour would approach his box and Timothy would patiently wait until the chaos subsided before going for the plastic scoop. Timothy was grateful for the cat just the same. His cabin was rodent free.

The two were suited for each other in this respect. Neither could abandon their personal preferences for independence, nor could they relinquish any of their privacy needs. Detour would disappear for a few days and return satisfied with his experiences. Timothy could leave the cabin for a week at a time. As long as he left out food and water Detour never complained. The cat box would be a mess but so what? Small price to pay for the convenience of their habits. All was good and both creatures cohabited thus. Both were able to mindfully torment each other with their proclivities and that was good. Their world turned on a simple thread and left room for plenty of other gestures of love and good will.

G. M. Goodwin

10 September 2016