Morte (42 page)

“Is that true, you think?” the nurse asked.

“We have to live like it is,” Mort(e) said.

He approached Michael and reached out his hand. He stopped suddenly, expecting the nurse to grab it once again. But she was transfixed on the boy. Mort(e) put his palm on Michael’s shoulder, whispered goodbye, and walked away. When Sheba lingered, he called her, and she followed.

THEY RETURNED TO
the hill and ate some of the food that Mort(e) had collected. When Sheba was finished, she rested her head on Mort(e)’s thigh. He scratched behind her ears. The sun went down, turning the great bonfire into the main source of light. The flames were reflected in her tired eyes like two wobbling orange jewels. Sheba seemed happy. He had once told her that he was the strong one, but perhaps he had it all wrong then, and always would have, were it not for her. His strength began as bravery, then quickly calcified into an impenetrable shell. An exoskeleton. Her strength was love, always love, nothing but love. He was not strong enough to live that way, but he wanted to be. He would try. He owed it to both her and himself. Anything short of that would be unworthy of all the suffering he had endured. The sadness had no point unless he gave it one.

Mort(e) reached into his bag and fished around for the pill. It was still there, hard and cold and small in his palm. He held it toward the fire. Sheba sniffed and apparently liked the scent enough to begin licking it. Mort(e) closed his fist. Sheba stared at him in confusion, her eyes asking,
Where’d it go?
Mort(e)
wondered what she would be like. Perhaps she would not love him. Perhaps she would have EMSAH. He promised that he would still be there for her, no matter what. After all, he had carried Sheba with him for so many years. They would both be dead were it not for the other.

He opened his palm again. Delighted, Sheba gobbled up the pill. She seemed to expect another, but Mort(e) held out both hands to show that this was all he had. Sheba responded by licking his fingers. He rubbed her neck and ears.

“Sheba is alive,” he whispered. It would take at least a day until the hormone began to take effect. Mort(e) was not afraid.
What more do I need?
he wondered as she nuzzled against him. Why did anyone think that they needed anything else?

He dozed off, the stars spinning above him. Sheba snorted once before falling asleep.

LATER, SHEBA WOKE
Mort(e) by slobbering on his face. The sky grew brighter as it approached sunrise. The stars dimmed. Mort(e) sat up to find a more formal ceremony taking place. All the soldiers gathered near the dying fire while Elder Gregory gave a sermon and then read from his thick book. The words made as much sense to Mort(e) as his words did to Sheba.

Figuring that he was as rested as he was going to be, Mort(e) stood up and led Sheba down to the gathering. They had to walk through it in order to get to his newly acquired boat. That was okay—the EMSAH crowd had apparently been instructed to leave him alone now that he had fulfilled his role as messiah.

“And let us now sing the Prayer of St. Francis,” Elder Gregory said, “the patron saint of animals.” Many of the congregants turned to one another and smiled upon hearing this. “We sing this to honor this new friendship that God has ordained,” Gregory added.

Sheba barked when the people broke into song. The noise prompted several people to swing their heads in her direction. They continued with the hymn.

Make me a channel of your peace
.

Where there is hatred, let me bring your love;

Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord;

And where there’s doubt, true faith in you
.

A woman sang the line about bringing love while the top half of an ant’s head was slung over her shoulder, presumably to be used as a helmet. Mort(e) tiptoed along the perimeter of the gathering until he was beside the charred, ashy rim of the bonfire.

The fire lit up the faces in the crowd. Their open mouths glistened as they belted out the lyrics about bringing light to darkness.

O Master, grant that I may never seek

So much to be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love with all my soul
.

The way the singers dragged out the word
soul
elicited a howl from Sheba. Mort(e) patted her side to calm her down. That was when he spotted Wawa in the second row. The St. Jude medal caught his attention. Reflecting the firelight, the medallion was a tiny yellow sun on her chest. Mort(e) kept his gaze on her until her eyes met his. She looked at the ground—not out of shame, it seemed, but out of resignation. He was another part of her past that she did not want to think about right now. She could not help him, just like she
couldn’t help Culdesac. She was letting go, as he had wanted her to do all along.

Make me a channel of your peace
,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

In giving to all men that we receive;

And in dying that we are born to eternal life
.

But then he noticed Wawa lifting her eyes again, staring at Sheba, the dog who was both a relic and a ghost. The dog who, within hours, would be like her—more than an animal, better than a human. Mort(e) followed Wawa’s gaze to find Sheba sniffing around the stones marking the edge of the fire pit. Then, oblivious to everything around her, Sheba squatted and urinated, sending up a small plume of ash and smoke. She did not even blink. Her eyes suggested that this course of action made perfect sense to her. The people kept singing. Nothing would take this moment away from them.

Mort(e) made his way to the boat. Sheba trotted beside him.

There are so many people to thank, in so few pages, and this is so many years in the making. Please bear with me.

First, I have to express my gratitude to the wonderful staff at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, starting with Laura Biagi. An assistant at the time, Laura fished my manuscript out of the slush and convinced her colleagues to read a book that, in her words, was about “cats, and dogs … and, uh, ants.” Jennifer Weltz has been my tireless advocate since 2012, transforming this story from a quirky idea into a real novel. At this point, I would probably take a bullet for Jennifer. Please don’t test that. I am quite serious.

Second, I must profusely thank the team at Soho Press, starting of course with Mark Doten, who took a chance on my book, and continued the long slog of reworking the story over many months. This project—and my education as a writer—owe so much to Mark’s patience, experience, and optimism. I would also like to thank Bronwen Hruska, who agreed to publish a book with talking cats, along with publicity manager Meredith Barnes and the entire staff at the press.

It was around 2002—when I returned to the United States after living abroad—that I finally began admitting to people that I had been writing on the side for several years. Since then, numerous people have agreed to read my work and offer comments. I cringe at the stuff I made them read, and I owe each of them a special thanks for their kindness: Tom Lydon, Juliette Reiss, Sarah Kitzman, Hanh Le, Susan Calvert, Charlie Boehm, Amanda Dykstra, Ron Pacchione, Carolyn Morrisroe, Mike Paylor, Daniel Asa Rose, Luke Crisafulli, Tony Schaffer, Troy Dandro, Cam Terwilliger,
Mike McKee, Dan Fitzpatrick, Robin Fitzpatrick, Uppinder Mehan, Juan Carlos Pagan, Kelly Klein, Freddy Lopez, Dayne Poshusta, Sara Faye Lieber, Allison Trzop, Mike Sammaciccia, Grace Labatt, and Sam Trott. (I really tried to get everyone. If I missed your name, you never have to pay for a drink in my presence ever again.)

My MFA program at Emerson College saved me from spending years working on a dead-end autobiographical novel. For that, and many other things, I am very grateful. In particular, I have to thank other members of the Emerson Diaspora, especially Brian Hurley (who offered advice on this book in its larval stage), Jane Berentson, Ashley Wells, and Michael Hennessey, who have been such enthusiastic fellow travelers, and whose own work has inspired me for many years now. I also have to thank Aditi Rao, who had the misfortune of being assigned that autobiographical novel as a semester-long(!) book-editing project. And she was nice enough to edit
another
manuscript after that! I’m sorry—and yet not that sorry—to say that I got way more out of that experience than she did.

I am incredibly lucky to have such a supportive, open-minded, strange, and hilarious family, consisting of my brother, Nick; my father, Big Nick; and my mom, Loretta (Lori). When I told each of them that I had finally gotten a book deal, and that the protagonist was a cat, they all said the same thing: “Sebastian?” And when I said that the cat had a friend who was a dog, they each said, “
Sheba
?” It’s hard to thank the people to whom you owe everything. So to them, and to my extended family—including Sheba’s owners, the Snyders, as well as my adopted families in Grenada, Boston, and New York—I’ll say this: please know how grateful I am for all the love and humor and support you’ve shown me over the years. And if I act otherwise, remind me for the millionth time that life is too short. That usually puts things in perspective.

ROBERT REPINO GREW
up in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. After serving in the Peace Corps, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. His fiction has has appeared in
The Literary Review
,
Night Train
,
Hobart
,
The Coachella Review
, and more. He lives in New York and works as an editor for Oxford University Press.