999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [46]
Thomas M. Disch
THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT
I’ve known Tom Disch for twenty-five years; I met him when I was student and he was teacher at the Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop at Michigan State University in 1974. I’ve been proud to consider him a mentor ever since; his novel Camp Concentration should he on the shelf of every intelligent reader of imaginative fiction.
Though never abandoning the science fiction field, he eventually found his way into the horror field with two highly regarded novels, The M.D.: A Horror Story and The Businessman: A Tale of Terror. He is also well known as the author of the children’s books The Brave Little Toaster and The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, as well as the recent critical (and critically acclaimed) study of the sf field, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of. He is also a poet and playwright.
When student humbly asked teacher for a story for this book, student gratefully received this gem.
So when Christopher Robin goes to the Zoo, he goes to where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something to the third keeper from the left, and doors are unlocked, and we wander through dark passages and up steep stairs, until at last we come to the special cage, and the cage is opened, and out trots something brown and furry, and with a happy cry of “Oh, Bear!” Christopher Robin rushes into its arms.
They liked the mornings best, when Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield were asleep upstairs and the house was quiet and they could snuggle together on the love seat and wait for the train to come rumbling by on the other side of the river. There were other trains at other times of day, but things could get so hectic later on that you might not even realize a train was going by until the windows were rattling.
Those windows should have been fixed years ago, especially the combinations on either side of the TV set. Dampy became anxious whenever there was a storm alert, certain that sooner or later a gusting wind would just suck those old windows out of their aluminum frames. The upstairs windows were more solid, because they were made the old-fashioned way and would probably outlast the roof. Though that wasn’t saying much. The roof was in sorry shape, too. One of these days, when he had the cash, Mr. Fairfield was going to fix the roof, but that wouldn’t be any day soon, since trying to find a full-time job kept him out of the house so much of the time.
After the train went by, and it started to get brighter, the alarm clock in the upstairs bedroom would go off, and then there’d be noises in the bathroom, and after that from the kitchen the smells of breakfast. Breakfast was their favorite meal of the day, because it was always the same. A little glass of apple juice, and then either puffed rice or cornflakes with milk and sugar and then a crisp piece of toast with butter and jam. They would bow their heads along with Mrs. Fairfield, and Mr. Fairfield too if he were up that early, and thank the Lord for his blessings.
Some Sundays there were even pancakes. Dampy had lived at Grand Junction Day Care before he moved in with the Fairfields (at the time of the first Mrs. Fairfield), and once a month there had been a special Pancake Breakfast Benefit in the lunchroom of the day care. The first Mrs. Fairfield had helped make the pancakes on the gas grill, as many as twenty at a time. Wonderful pancakes, sometimes with blueberries in them, sometimes with shredded coconut, and you could have all you could eat for just $2 if you were under the age of six. Later on, the benefits were not so well attended, and only the children came, as though it were just another school day, except with pancakes, and that’s when Dampy had the accident that got him called Dampy. The children had a food fight, using the paper plates as Frisbees, even though there was syrup on the plates and Miss Washington said not to. No one paid any attention, they never did with Miss Washington, and one plate