Holes Aren't Holy and Cats Don't Need Singing

Shuck, shuck, shuck went the dirt—shuck, shuck, shuck—like a hymn, and Arlene’s shovel the conductor.

The dirt clung to the rib of her socks and fell down against her ankles; the soft granules might have tickled, if she’d had any feeling. Arlene rolled backwards, her wheels resisting in the grass for only a moment. She shivered, wiping chilly sweat from her hairline, and rested the shovel against the wheelchair’s side. It wasn’t deep but it’d have to do. Any deeper she might hit lake water and the last thing she wanted was Bramble buried in mud. He never did much like being wet.

Her gaze drifted from the hole to Greenfield Lake. Its still surface expanded backwards and vanished into the morning fog, suspended in the space between liquid and air. Children’s laughter coasted across the water and Arlene could just make out their scampering silhouettes along the tree line. Every Sunday from here onward she would come to this place, Arlene decided. She would come and Bramble’s grave would keep her company against the noisy children and the fog. Her gaze buckled from the water to her wrinkly, speckled hands. Liver spots, they were called. Organs on the skin, like God is turning you inside out, trying to undo the work of the womb.

She decided it: on Sundays she would come here, come to this consecrated grave. Maybe on those pious mornings she would hum Bramble a song, pretend to pray. Bramble’s absence would be less felt here than in the house, with him in the ground. And then, maybe—

“Arlene!”

Arlene turned from the lake to the stooped figure approaching on her right. Frank’s saggy arm waved. As he got nearer, she could see how his Adam’s apple hung droopy and rotten.

He was yelling. He couldn’t hear worth shit. “Now what’s this business with the shovel?” He looked at the size of the hole and the cardboard box on the ground.

“Hi, Frank.”

“Lemme help you. Here.” He grabbed the shovel and poked into the ground, leaned in with his foot. The dirt gave way beneath the iron and the hole opened up. “Oh, now Maisie told me what happened with poor old Bramble—”

“Frank, I can do it. I can—”

“—and I think it’s real awful the way he went but we was talking it over and you know, it’s not your fault. Hell, Arlene, I forget to turn things off all the—”

“Frank, dammit. Give me the shovel!”

He stopped shoveling. “What?”

“I said I can do it myself.” Arlene stuck out her hand and reached for the handle, but Frank was too far away.

He took a step back and Arlene’s hand fell back, gripping the ring of her wheel.

“Now, I’m just trying to help you, Arlene.”

“Well, I don’t need it.”

“Sorry?” Frank leaned in, cupping his ear. He ought to get hearing aids. She ought to find him pamphlets. She ought to grab the shovel and soften his temple with it so his brains slipped out like vomit from his ears; she ought to invite him over for tea and leave the water unboiled and blow out the stovetop’s blue flames, shut the doors and windows and leave him there, like Bramble, to asphyxiate. “

I said I don’t need your help.”

“Well, all right Arlene but, uh, don’t be so hard on yourself, you hear me? Maisie and I was thinking about stopping by soon and giving you a card—she’s so nice with them crafts, you know—or maybe…” Frank mumbled some more and handed back the shovel. He tipped his hat. “Anyway goodbye, Arlene.” “

Yeah, Frank.”

Arlene had never wanted the cat. They were useless pets—didn’t do a damned thing except sit there. Before the car accident, she had always imagined having a dog, that is, once she had moved out of her mother’s, who had never been very agreeable towards the idea. She would imagine running beside a lean-muscled hound, chasing after nothing, through the tall, yellow grasses of a prairie. She would imagine herself submerged in the murky waters of Greenfield Lake with the slimy dog paddling nearby. And she would surface, and as she rose the water would slide down her body. She would climb up the bank and lay in the damp grass and the hound would sniff the ground before settling into the shape of a fuzzy spud.

Really the accident hadn’t deterred her from the dog; it was everybody else. There was this one time at Langford Grocers—she was twenty-three and it’d only been four months since the accident—that Frank and Mr. Langford spoiled the whole idea of the hound. She’d grown up with Frank, like she’d grown up with everybody in this small town, and he always took it so upon himself to be gentlemanly, to help out. So they went together in the afternoon. He pushed her chair from behind while she held the shopping basket in her lap. He handed her goods from the shelves and she set them neatly in.

“What’s next, Arly Mae?” Frank drummed on the wheelchair handles. “Beef? Bacon?”

“Eggs.” She twisted around. “You don’t put bacon in strawberry pie.”

“You could, you know. Might not taste so good, but you could do it.”

“Take me to the eggs, will you?” H

e rolled her up to the egg cartons. Rows, horizontal and vertical. Arlene lifted the nearest carton’s lid. Smooth, hard, white, and round. She liked eggs. She liked that you could break them.

When she was three or four, her Papa used to wake her up before Momma and they’d walk to the kitchen together—all on tiptoe—and they’d play humpty dumpty. He’d hold the egg on the edge of the counter. “Humpty Dumpty!” Arlene would squeal. Then Papa would let go of the egg and she’d watch it plummet towards the linoleum, swiveling and turning in the air, and he always caught it right at the last second, when she thought he never could—not this time—not so close to the hard, hard floor. She laughed and laughed, and Papa’d pinch her cheek.

Then he scrambled Humpty Dumpty and at breakfast, they ate him. Momma almost never knew because it was their secret.

Once Arlene snuck out of bed to play humpty dumpty on her own. Papa was dead then and Arlene dropped the eggs on the floor and watched the yolks slide from their shattered shells across the kitchen. She squished them under her toes. Humpty Dumpty, Humpty Dumpty. Again and again until a dozen eggs lay splattered at her feet. He was always meant to fall. Momma came in wearing her robe and hollered.

Frank stopped in front of the jam jars. “You want some peach preserves?” He reached for the top shelf. Arlene shook her head.

“I’m alright, Frank.” “One for me, then.” He set a jar on top of the egg carton.

From behind the counter Mr. Langford smiled. “Frank,” he nodded. “And Miss Arlene,” he said, looking down. She lifted the basket on the counter. “Any trouble?”

“No, sir,” she said.

Mr. Langford pulled on his beard with one hand as he punched the register buttons with the other. He bagged the flour, the berries, the eggs.

“By the way, y’all know Ms. Martha? Cat had a litter yesterday.” He handed the bag to Arlene. “Three dollars, twenty-five. Anyway, she come in this morning and told me to spread the word.” Arlene counted change in her palm. “She’s got no need for four mouse-catchers. Looking to find any takers, else they’ll probably be left on their own outside.”

“How about that, Arlene?” said Frank. “Ain’t you said you wanted a cat?”

“I said I wanted a dog,” Arlene reached out. “Here you go, Mr. Langford. No change.”

He counted the coins. Arlene counted with him. Again.

“Well dogs need lots of work, Miss Arlene. Lots of exercise too. And they’ll tear up a house if they ain’t trained properly.”

He pressed a hand on the counter, leaning forward. “A cat’s better suited, especially for somebody in your condition.” Arlene nodded.

“Yes, sir. I reckon they are.”

“We’ll pass on the news, Mr. Langford.”

The door jingled behind them as Frank rolled Arlene back down the sidewalk.

“He is right, you know, Arly. I guess you’ll have to make some adjustments here and there, sorry to say. It ain’t fair, now, I’m not saying that it is. There’s probably a bright side to all this, if you just look for it.” His hand rested on her left shoulder, a light pressure like all those doctors checking her pulse, and then it was gone.

***

Arlene looked into the hole. She held the cardboard box in her arms and opened it, took out the limp bundle, dropped the box to the side, held the bundle against her chest like a baby, like she ought to sing a lullaby but didn’t know any. Bramble used to stretch in her lap, tail swishing and kissing her chin while he kneaded into her unfeeling thighs. He used to jump on the windowsill and take in the sun like a morning glory.

That day in Langford’s she had sworn she’d never get a cat. But then when she was fifty and still alone, every house visitor always peered about her empty house and then back at Arlene as if to confirm the suffocating loneliness of her situation. Arlene couldn’t bear it anymore: their whispers and their looks and their little visits. She had to appease them. She caved. Caved for Bramble the cat.

She looked at Frank’s pile of dirt beside the hole, the hole she had started and he finished. Then Arlene yelled. It was shrill and embarrassing, an undesirable sound coming from deep within her sagging chest. She was breathing hard. When she looked up, she noticed the children across the lake had stopped playing. They were staring at her and then they turned away.

With Bramble’s limp body in in her lap, Arlene reached for the shovel. Gripping its wooden handle like the staff of some prophet, she raised the shovel in the air and threw it away from her body into the grass. Her eyes welled up and she cursed, burying her nose in Bramble’s smelly fur. He probably would have had five more years left in him. If she hadn’t always kept the windows tightly shut, if she hadn’t forgotten the eggs at the store that day and left the gas burner on and then gone for a long strolling roll around the neighborhood before heading to the store for more eggs, if she hasn’t taken so long, if she hadn’t resented him, if she hadn’t been in her situation, if everyone in this goddamn town wasn’t so full of shit, so deaf like Frank, then maybe, maybe, Bramble would have had five more years left in him. But as it so happened.

Arlene’s breath slowed. The shovel had landed about ten feet away. Arlene considered it. She considered retrieving it. She leaned down towards the dirt and pressed her hands into the soil. She could crawl to it, drag herself to the handle and finish what she had begun before Frank had come along. She could do it. She could cover it up, keep it hidden and tucked away all neat and orthodox where nobody’d have to confront it, or look at it straight on, though obscured, its body darkened and damp and limp and broken in the dirt.

But maybe it needed to be left open. Reckoned with, accounted for, admired. Not shut up in the ground with no air, like the windows tightly shut and bottling up fumes. Open the window, air out the house. Let Bramble breathe.

Arlene rolled back onto the sidewalk. In the park she left a broken patch of uncovered ground. Down in the patch there was a wrapped bundle and later, a hungry crow.

A Place to Build Your Nest

Rachel Beer