Title.

Small Victories 


      Mr. Winthrop knows that I had a soft spot for animals, any animal, but baby animals especially. He saw me in the feed store with my father, picking up grain for the horses, and sidled up to me to tell me with all the seriousness and secrecy of highly classified information that his barn cat Sassy had a litter of kittens. He made much of it, like each kitten was made of gold and precious gems. Kittens, Alexander, kittens.

      Mr. Winthrop’s farm is next to ours. He sometimes pays me some pocket money to muck out his stalls. It’s not that he needs the help, really, he’s just giving me an excuse to get away from my house. Pop says that Mr. Winthrop doesn’t need his farm to support himself; he just uses his horses to keep himself busy in his retirement. I can’t see how that could be true, because no one in their right mind would be a farmer if they didn’t have to be. I wondered what I would do if I didn’t have to farm.

      I’d probably move into the library and never come out.

      “You can have the pick of the litter,” he tells me. He seems to think that I should view this as a prestigious prize. It’s definitely not. People are always offering me the pick of the litter. Sometimes I wish they wouldn’t. It’s heartbreaking to have to turn most of them down.

      I snuck a look at my father, out of earshot, but not out of mind. He wouldn’t be pleased with another animal, even a barn cat that he would probably never see. We had two already, and they were both boys. I tried to get boy animals whenever I could. I hated to see Pop drown litters. Pop had no use for small animals or small children – assuming he was aware there was a difference between the two.

      “P-pop won’t l-let me,” I whisper back. I feel heat creep over my face with little needle pricks at my halting speech, just like always. Like always, this makes me more conscious of it, which makes me blush more. It’s a vicious cycle.

      Mr. Winthrop just smiles a small conspirator’s smile. “That’s what mothers are for, my boy. That’s what mothers are for.” He claps me on the back cheerily. Mr. Winthrop’s pretty odd, odd enough that I think maybe he knows something about how useful a mother’s support can be. He ruffles my hair and meanders off, nodding to my father as he goes. Pop nods back, a bit stiffly.

      Mr. Winthrop’s never looked pitying or impatient when I talk, so he’s pretty much my favorite person ever. Mr. Winthrop was a nice man, Pop often said, but a bad farmer. Too soft, he would say, and make sure that he was looking right at me as he said it. Animals on farms aren’t pets. They’re food and money, and you’re not supposed to get attached to them. That’s what Pop says, but what he means is that I am not supposed to get attached to them. Pop finds cats especially useless. He must find something redeeming in their keeping rats away from his grain, or we wouldn’t have any at all, but he doesn’t see any value in keeping them for company.

      Pop’s a solitary man. Solitary enough that he probably never should have gotten married, and he definitely shouldn’t have had kids. That he had a son as shy and stuttering as me was probably the biggest disappointment of his life. It might only be the second biggest, though, considering that he and my mother can’t have more and breed a more suitable replacement son.

      I’m always second best, even in that, I guess.

      Anyway, barn cats are pretty safe. They serve a purpose, and unlike chickens, foals, and calves, they’re in little danger of being sold or served up for dinner.

      I join my father up by the counter, prepared to start hauling things out to the truck.

      “What a nice looking boy you have,” the counter girl tells my father. Pop looks at me as heat creeps up my face.

      “Th-thank you, m-ma’am.”

      And in that second, I see it on her face, before she can go back to her friendly smile. I know what she’s thinking, I can always tell. They’re thinking, “Too bad he had to open his mouth and ruin it.”

      I close my eyes, and close my mouth, and imagine myself far, far away.

                                                           ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      My mother often says that being a farmer’s wife is enough of a job as it is, and she only work’s part time as a librarian to fill the gaps. When she says this to Pop, he thinks it means the financial gaps. It makes me wonder if he ever sees Ma’s paycheck.

      To me, she often says she only took the job because she’s there so much anyway, she might as well get paid for it. I don’t care why she does it, as long as I get to go there often, and take out as many books as I want at a time.

      We don’t have the money for books of my own, not new ones, anyway. I’m very clever, Ma says, at sniffing out bargains at flea markets and garage sales, but the selection is never prime at those things. Besides, there’s something about being surrounded by thousands of books at once that can’t be duplicated by the bookshelf in my room, bulging though it is. Perhaps it’s because I have so much trouble with words myself that I find them so fascinating.

      I like old writers. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Shelley, Milton. The words feel old, and even though my father would berate me for being empty-headed, I can sometimes feel the weight of an older, heavier paper, smell the ink as though it has just dried, from a quill or a pen or a typewriter. I hear the scratch of a pen as I imagine great men and women agonizing over every word and phrase.

      In my head the words shape and spike, flow and round, ballooning in my mouth until I burst to hear them out loud. Sometimes I forget, and then my voice, shaky, stuttering, shatters the illusion. My mother is good for this. She never minds reading out loud to me. She thinks it’s good bonding time. She has a smooth voice, gentle and calming. But she always reads like she’s reading me to sleep. Chilling horror never comes across, or anticipant dread. Edgar Allan Poe was never as soothing as when my mother read him out loud.

      My father would be good for that. I certainly feel enough dread whenever he talks to me.

      Not that I would ever ask him to read to me, of course. I’m not stupid, whatever I sound like.

                                                         ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      When my mother is in the library and immersed in a good book, it is a good time to ask her for things. It’s also a good time for me to ask things, because alone with my mother in the library is the time when I’m the most calm, and I stutter less.

      One of my teachers told my parents that my stutter is a psychological product of low self esteem and that I’d probably grow out of it.

      Learning that there wasn’t anything physically wrong with my vocal chords only cemented the idea that my speech impediment was my own fault and thus my own problem, at least in my father’s mind. He refused to discuss the idea of a speech therapist with my mother or my teachers.

      Not like we could afford one anyway.

      “Mr. W-Winthrop said I c-could have one of Sassy’s kittens,” I told my mother. She was immersed in a poetry book. I wasn’t much for poetry, mostly because my father said boys weren’t much for poetry, but it always made my mother dreamy-eyed.

      “Forget Mr. Winthrop for a moment, Alexander. Come here, by me.” She took my hand and placed it on the spine of the book. “Heaney, Alex. That’s who you should listen to. Come, I’ve marked a poem for you.” My mother likes to feed me little bits of poetry at a time, hoping I’ll fall in love with it. Obediently, I come beside her to touch the book. My mother is big on touching things, absorbing them. At her direction I sleep with a different book under my pillow every night, as though to soak it in by osmosis. It makes for uncomfortable sleeping sometimes, but I would do anything for my mother.

      I stroked the spine absently, imagining the weight of words I had yet to read. How would they taste in my mouth, I wondered. What would they do to my heart and my mind? The power of words unread. I flip to the page she marked for me. The poem’s about farming, but it’s much more palatable as words on a page. Communion with the earth is so much more romantic in books than it is in actuality.

      I hold the book gently, read slowly, allowing the words to sink in, savoring them the way my mother taught me. She’s pleased with my reverence, I can tell. “My boy,” she sighed. “How I wish you had been born in the city. You were made for museums and libraries.”

      My mother is from the city originally. She wandered down to farm country – I doubt even she remembers why anymore – met my father, and simply never left. I’ve asked her why. She just says she saw something in him that made her know that he was worth it.

      “We c-could move,” I pointed out to her.

      “Ah, but your father does so love that clean rasping sound…”

      “Wh-when the sp-spade s-sinks into gravelly ground,” I acknowledged grudgingly.

      She smiled, pleased at my recall. It means I read the poem correctly, meaning slowly and carefully. “And I love your father. So here we are, Alexander. Don’t worry. You’re like Mr. Heaney. You’ll find poetry in the dirt and bogs of the world.”

      Despite the aside, I know she hasn’t forgotten my original statement. She never does. She doesn’t make me ask again, because she’s not that cruel. “I’ll talk to your father. There are mice in my kitchen, I know there are. It’s about time we had a housecat. Go find us a nice kitten, Alexander.” She reaches up to finger my straw-colored hair. She always leaves it too long. She says it’s because it covers many sins that she commits with the scissors. Pop hates it of course, but he never says anything, because he knows perfectly well if he complains, she’ll make him do it.

      Cutting hair, is of course, not something men do.

      She then lets it grow too long, she says because she doesn’t have time to cut it every time she turns around. Really she just wants me to look like an artist.

      I’ve tried to tell her that making me look like an artist does not magically endow me with artistic talent, but no one listens to a boy with a stutter.

                                                              ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      Mr. Winthrop keeps horses. That’s his business, mostly. Pop says he’s bad at it, because he always seems to get attached – that dirty word, attached – to the best foals, and can’t bring himself to sell them half the time. It means that Mr. Winthrop has some beautiful horses, but loses more money than he makes.

      It’s only spring, yet, but it’s still hotter than blazes in Mr. Winthrop’s loft. Heat-shimmer hot is what Pop calls it. My mother never complains, but she’d probably say something more erudite.

      There’s still quite a bit of hay left over from the winter, which had a pretty late start and has been pretty mild. Hay makes everything dusty. I can see the swirls of dust patterns in the air, without even the aid of a shaft of sunlight. Hay has a peculiar kind of smell. My father likes it, but to me it smells kind of moldy. Sassy’s nowhere in sight, probably hidden behind some of the hay bales. I have to do some searching before I find Sassy and her kittens.

      She had them way off to the side, where there is still a pretty high stack of hay I have to climb over. Between the bales and the wall, and the rising heat from the animals, it’s a little stifling. Sassy blinks sleepily at me, stretched out to accommodate two snuggling kittens. There are five in all, and I take a moment to gloat in the fact that I have pick of the litter.

      It’s not a great prize. They are just barn cats, a dime a dozen in farm country, really.  I tend to take what I can get.

      Sassy’s pretty mild-mannered, and this isn’t her first litter, so she doesn’t do much more than give me a questioning little chirrup and look up anxiously when I squat down amongst her babies. Mr. Winthrop has laid down some towels and rags on top of Sassy’s hay bale to make a softer bed for her delicate babies. I let her sniff my hand and rub her head. She purrs ecstatically at the attention, standing up, leaving the snuggling babies squeaking to rub up against me for more pats. I pet her absently as I assess her kittens. They’re rolling and pouncing, and picking up a gray and white one, I note that its eyes are green. That, along with a low saucer of kitten chow tells me that they’re probably ready to leave their mother, although I’ll check with Mr. Winthrop just to make sure.

      I pick up a sleepy looking calico and gently rub my nose against the soft baby down. The kitten yawns, displaying tiny milk teeth. This one has potential, if sleepy isn’t its perpetual state. It’s the smallest of the kittens. The runt of the litter. I’m an absolute sucker for the runt of the litter.

                                                           ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      My father doesn’t like the idea of a kitten, just like I knew he wouldn’t, but he despises the reality even more. My mother was on my side, though, and when my mother sets her mind on something, she is the ultimate immovable force.

      My father would prefer that I was soft on dogs. Dogs are more masculine, I guess.

      My father restricted his disapproval to the dinner table, when the kitten was attacking the shoelaces on my sneakers. I chose the calico after all. “We don’t need another cat around here,” he said stubbornly. He doesn’t look at me as he says it, but he never looks at me if he can help it, so it’s not that big of a deal.

      “You hush,” my mother says. “Every boy needs someone to talk to.” Pop looks offended that she would even suggest that an animal could equate to a human. Or maybe at the idea of me talking. That always makes him uncomfortable. He looked like he might protest, but Ma gave him a look, and he crumbled like a wet napkin. He still had traces of mulish stubbornness lingering around his eyes and mouth, but my mother reached over and covered his hand with hers, and even that faded, so he could smile at her. My father never looks at my mother with anything but absolute tenderness.

      Ma smiled back, still looking a little dreamy. She’s probably still caught up in Heaney’s spell. It’s probably more to do with not disturbing her Zen than defense of me, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

                                                         ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      I take little victories, because they’re all I’m likely to be awarded. The fact that I never stumble over a word long enough for someone to try to complete my sentences for me is a little victory.

      Every time Pop looks at me for more than a second at a time is a victory.

      I don’t sleep much. I’m a night owl like my mother naturally, and an early riser like my father by force. Fridays and Saturdays are my nights to stay up as late as I like, by decree of my mother. My father has no idea about this arrangement, of which he would no doubt disapprove. He goes to bed early enough that he never has to know.

      I usually spend it reading, sometimes in my room, sometimes in the kitchen. The kitchen has more character. I settled with a novel, something contemporary, because you never know what you’re missing when you don’t read everything. The kitten was asleep on the table, within easy reach of my fingers.

      I heard Pop – I know it’s Pop, too heavy to be Ma – coming down the stairs. I checked the clock. Well after two in the morning. Midnight snack, maybe. I didn’t panic, not any more than I usually do when forced to be alone in a room with my father, because he doesn’t know me well enough to know that this is a twice weekly occurrence.

      He’s confused to see me in the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway, his foot hovering over the last step to ground level. He panics a little when we’re alone, too.

      I made it easy for him, absorbed in my book, like I don’t know he’s there.

      He fought going back upstairs for a moment, I could see it, before meandering over to the fridge like the thought never entered his mind. He poured himself a glass of milk and unwrapped himself a piece of leftover pie. He unwrapped me a piece too, and slid it across from me as he sat heavily at the table. I never eat after dinner, but I recognize a peace offering when I see it, and dutifully took my fork to it, my eyes never leaving my book.

      I make it easy for him to ignore me.

      “Good book?” he asked awkwardly. The proper question would be, “Bad dreams?” or “Can’t sleep?”

      “There’s n-no such th-thing as a b-bad b-book.” My stutter always gets worse around him.

      He grimaced. “Sounds like something your mother would say.”

      “It w-was.”

      Silence. Eating pie in the kitchen with my father. My book was my shield, and I was grateful for it, even though he must have noticed I hadn’t turned the page since he entered the room.

      There was a steady clink of silverware. I ate slowly, so I’d have an excuse to stay in the kitchen when he’s done. He rose to put his dishes in the sink and headed for the stairs, relieved the awkwardness was over.

      Before he went, he cleared his throat. “Cute cat.”

      I nod, not subjecting him to my voice. I take my victories as they come.