The Last House on Needless Street Catriona Ward (classic book list .txt) 📖

only takes a few tries with the solvent to see that I’m making it worse. The birds close their eyes and pant in the fumes. I don’t know what to do now. This kind of stuck is for ever. The birds can’t live but they’re not dead. I think about drowning them and then hitting them on the head with a hammer. Each idea makes me feel weirder. I think about unlocking the laptop cupboard. Maybe the internet has an idea. But I can’t figure out where to put the birds down. They stick to everything they touch.

Then I remember the thing I saw on TV. It is worth a try, and we have vinegar. Working with one hand, I cut a length of hose. I fetch a big Tupperware box, baking soda and the white vinegar from under the sink. I put the birds carefully in the box, seal it and pass the length of hose through the hole I pierce in the plastic lid. I mix the baking soda and vinegar in the bag and fasten it to the hose with a rubber band. Now it is a gas chamber. The air in the box begins to change, and the feathered twitching slows. I watch the whole thing, because death deserves a witness. Even a bird should have that. It doesn’t take long. They had half given up already, from the heat and the fear. A pigeon is the last to die; the rise and fall of its plump chest grows shallow, and then it falls still.

The Murderer has made me into a murderer too.

I put the corpses in the trash out back. Limp, still-warm bodies, soft to the touch. A lawnmower starts somewhere on the block. The scent of cut grass crawls through the air. People are waking up.

‘You OK, Ted?’ It is the man with hair the colour of orange juice. He takes his big dog to the woods each day.

I say, ‘Oh sure, fine.’ The man is looking at my feet. I realise that I am not wearing shoes or socks. My feet are white and hairy. I cover one foot with the other but it doesn’t make me feel any better. The dog pants and grins at me. Pets are better than their owners in general. I feel bad for all those dogs and cats and rabbits and mice. They have to live with people but, worse, they have to love them. Now, Olivia is not a pet. She’s so much more than that. (I expect everyone feels this about their cat.)

When I think about a Murderer creeping around my house in the cold dark, laying traps in my yard – maybe even peering in, watching me, Lauren and Olivia with their dead beetle eyes – my heart stutters.

I come back. The Chihuahua lady is standing right up close. Her hand is on my shoulder. That’s unusual. People don’t like to touch me, as a rule. The dog under her arm trembles, stares about with bulging eyes.

I am standing in front of the Chihuahua lady’s house, which is yellow with green trim. I feel I have just forgotten something, or am just about to know it. Sharpen up, I tell myself. Don’t be weird. People notice weird. They remember.

‘… your poor foot,’ the woman is saying. ‘Where are your shoes?’ I know the tone. Small women want to take care of big men. It is a mystery. ‘You got to look after yourself, Ted,’ she says. ‘Your mother would be worried sick about you.’

I see that my foot is leaking – a dark red trickle across the concrete. I must have stepped on something. ‘I’m chasing that stray,’ I say. ‘I mean, I was chasing her. I don’t want her to get the birds in my yard.’ (I don’t always get tenses right. Everything always feels like it’s happening now and sometimes I forget it actually happened then.)

‘It’s a real shame, that cat,’ she says. Interest lights up her eyes. I have given her something else to feel. ‘The thing is a pest. The city should deal with stray cats like they do the other vermin.’

‘Oh, I agree,’ I say. ‘Sure.’

(I don’t recall names but I have my ways of judging and remembering people. The first one is: would they be kind to my cat? I would not let this woman near Olivia.)

‘Anyway, thanks,’ I say. ‘I feel better now.’

‘You bet,’ she says. ‘Come and have iced tea tomorrow. I’ll make cookies.’

‘I can’t tomorrow.’

‘Well, any time. We’re neighbours. We have to look out for each other.’

‘That’s what I always say.’ I am polite.

‘You’ve got a nice smile, Ted, you know? You should use it more often.’

I wave and grin and limp away, miming pain I don’t feel, favouring the bleeding foot until I am sure she has rounded the corner.

The Chihuahua lady didn’t notice that I was gone, which is good. I lost time but not too much, I think. The sidewalk is still warm underfoot, not hot. The lawnmower still buzzes somewhere on the block, the scent of cut grass is sticky and green on the air. Maybe a couple of minutes. But it should not have happened in the street. And I should have put shoes on before I left the house. That was a mistake.

I clean my cut foot with disinfectant from a green plastic bottle. I think it was meant for floors or countertops, not for skin. The foot looks much worse after; the skin is red and raw. Looks like it would really hurt if I could feel it. But at least the cut is clean now. I wrap my foot in gauze. I have a lot of gauze and bandages about the place. Accidents happen in our house.

My hands are still sticky after, as if something clings to them, like gum or death. I recall reading something somewhere that birds have lice. Or maybe that’s fish. I clean my hands with the floor stuff too. I am shaky.