“Daddy! Mommy!”
Two young male trebles, high-pitched and full of terror.
A single, drawn-out shriek from a small girl.
“Yaaaap!” That was Sams’s voice, breaking into tears.
Catherine sat bolt upright in bed.
Daylight struck her eyes. As she always did now, she reflexively glanced to the far corner of the room, where the patching plaster had been inexorably drawing away from the popcorn-textured ceiling. It was a dry year. The soil was compacting. She caught a glimpse of sunlight through the small slit that had formed.
Then she was on her feet and grabbing for her robe.
Willard threw himself onto his side, facing the far wall, and grunted angrily, “Damn those kids…” Then he, too was on his feet and racing around the end of the bed. He was out the door before Catherine. She heard his bare feet slapping against the hall floor.
A door opened, slamming against the wall.
A beat.
“Catherine! Get in here!”
She ran down the hall.
What now?
When she shot through the open doorway, Willard was standing by the low table beneath the window. All four kids were huddled together by the closet, tears either streaking their cheeks or still streaming from their eyes. None of them was speaking, although Sams-pressed against Will, Jr., whose hand curled protectively around his little brother’s shoulder-was whimpering softly.
“Look!” Willard stabbed one finger toward the table top.
Toward the cage where, now solitary, the single remaining hamster lay crushed against the side. The wire door hung open along the front. A few cedar chips lay strewn on the table top, looking in their roughly rectangular shapes like tiny, toppled tombstones.
Catherine crossed the room.
“Willard, why are you yelling at me?” she started to whisper. After all, they had just gone through this a short while ago with Yip-another small, dead hamster, one of the expected traumas of childhood, given the average lifespan of the little creatures. This shouldn’t be that unexpected. She felt her blood pressure rise. Willard had been angry before-now she was too.
Until she drew close enough to see clearly into the cage.
The little thing was, indeed, dead. Anyone could see that.
Including, unfortunately, the children.
Its fur, rather than being fluffy and full, even in death as Yip’s had been, clumped matted against its body, stiff and crusted with russet brown that could only be dried blood. Blood had spattered all over the cedar chips lining the floor of the cage, all over the plastic exercise wheel now silent and still at the back, all over the thin wire of the cage itself.
It was even spattered on the desk top for several inches beyond the cage.
Catherine stared at the cage, then at Willard. His eyes were already fixed on her, dark with anger and fear.
“What happened?” Catherine’s voice emerged thin and shaky.
“He was like that when we woke up,” Will, Jr., answered from behind her. “We all saw him like that, then Sams started crying and Suze yelled and…”
“Shut up!” Willard roared, not even bothering to turn to look at his children. “Not another word!”
He grabbed the cage, twisted the wire door closed, and lifted the whole thing. Below, a clean square showed where it had been sitting-all around the square was a rough circle of dark brown splotches.
“Clean that up,” he ordered as he passed Catherine.
The door slammed behind him.
“Okay, kids,” she said, as calmly as she could. “I want you all to sit right here on Burt’s bed”-she noticed that the blanket tent-wall had been pulled down-“until I get back.”
She ran to the bathroom, drenched an old wash cloth with a spurt from the faucet and, water dripping from her hands, returned to the bedroom.
White-faced and frightened, the children were sitting on the bunk, arranged in age and size from Will at the farther end to Sams at the nearer. Catherine crossed in front of them, and with a few judicious swipes of her hand scraped the brown crust from the table top. She wadded the cloth and dropped it in the waste basket by the table.
“Mom,” Will began. Suze and Burt had opened their mouths to speak, as well. Sams sat stonily on the edge of the bunk, his blanket jammed against his cheek.
“I…I don’t think we should say anything until Daddy gets back. He…I… Let’s just wait for him.”
The next few minutes passed in painful, devastating silence.