Two cats, a fat old orange missing a left ear, and a young rail-thin short-haired gray, sat at a bar one late afternoon on a Friday where they drank beer and watched football on the flat screen. The short-haired gray said to the fat orange: “Well, there’s rumors of layoffs coming down at the plant. I can’t afford to lose this job cuz I got five kittens to feed and 24 years left on a 30-year mortgage. My mama’s been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I think my wife’s having an affair. Plus, every time I talk to my dad he asks for money. I think he’s back on the pipe. Sometimes I don’t know how this happened. I done everything right but it’s all just falling apart, you know?”
The fat orange belched, took his eyes off the game, looked directly at the morose gray sitting next to him and said: “Buddy, I wish you’d quit your bitchin’ and your moanin’. Ain’t nobody gives a good god-damn about your bullshit problems. Hell, I got the diabetes, my whore wife’s been cheating on me for 15 years with her nip dealer, and my kittens are a herd of ungrateful little shits, all 28 of ‘em. Keep your sob stories to yourself. Colts are playin’ and I got money on this game.”
The gray took it like a knife to the gut. From that day on he never spoke another word. He abandoned his life, became feral and died alone behind a Taco Bell dumpster, unbeknownst to those who cared for him, where his corpse was picked apart by buzzards. From time to time, his wife imagined him living in an endless mountain pasture teeming with field mice.
When Keer was a kit, his mother got drunk on nut wine one evening, stumbled back to the burrow and found him sleeping against the wall. The look of him resting peacefully enraged her, so she yanked her son up by the neck and snapped his lower jaw sideways. Then she grabbed him by the left hind foot and broke it backwards. The wounds healed wrong, and Keer walked with a limp and had trouble eating and drinking for the rest of his days.
The other kits in Keer’s colony teased him and bullied him, except Lo, who took pity on Keer, and they became friends. Lo, a strong, generous, trusting squirrel, defended Keer, and Keer recognized the good fortune of having him as a friend. More importantly, Lo was sober and conscientious, unlike the other squirrels in the colony, most of them despondent over the challenging conditions in which they lived, were nut wine drunks, and reckless. Keer loathed them. But Lo took pity on them. At first he tried to encourage them to quit drinking, but he soon realized that was a losing battle, so he provided nuts for them, too, in the hope that it would provide a salve for their despondency. Lo’s heart was filled with great tenderness and compassion.
Keer was always hungry. It didn’t matter how many nuts Lo brought him because much of the nut meat would fall from his mouth on account of his deformity. Keer knew from a young age that Lo sympathized with him, and he was determined to seek out any advantage he could to survive. He developed a patient, steady ability to endure privation while he worked a plan. Whenever Lo would bring him nuts to eat, he’d save some in his burrow, often enduring near-starvation. Over many months he lost considerable weight, but his nut surplus grew and grew.
Lo had two daughters he raised alone because their mother was torn apart by a fox. His youngest, Alla (who Lo affectionately called “Little Thing”) was, like Lo, a strong, trusting and generous squirrel. Moreover, Lo loved her the most because she possessed a powerful inclination towards innocence and wonder, even for a kit, which he hoped she’d carry with her all of her days, because he thought it would provide for her a rare strength in a colony bereft of those qualities. One day, Keer invited her to walk to the high bluff to gaze upon the meadow below and marvel at the browning grasses advancing in their autumn dormancy.
“Can’t go,” she said. “Papa says I ain’t allowed near the high bluff cuz it’s dangerous, he says. Could fall, he says.”
“I see,” said Keer. “I understand your apprehension, Alla. I do love the high bluff. It’s one of the few things in my wretched existence that offer me a sense of peace. It’s no matter, I guess, perhaps another time.” Keer began to limp away as his eyes studied the dirt.
“Can’t go by yourself?” She called. Keer turned to face her.
“Too afraid,” he said. “One squirrel alone is a target for the fox. Was your mother not alone when the fox grabbed her?”
“Yeah. I reckon she was. Poor mother. I’d hate for something like that to happen to you. Maybe I’ll go. Suppose if we’re papa will never find out.”
They made their way to the high bluff and sat upon its edge. Alla was elated to take in the view. She saw below a brown meadow with streams cutting through it like imperfections on a walnut. Her heart and soul swelled with the mystery of God’s creation, and felt a warmth inside her that impelled her to believe that, though times were hard, life offered endless possibilities. She looked to Keer sitting next to her. “I’m so happy I came. I had no idea the world was such a beautiful place. I wish papa…”
Keer pushed her off the bluff’s edge. She landed on her neck, killing her instantly. He watched as her legs twitched the residual life force leaving her tiny body. He sighed in relief. And as he began to limp back towards the colony, he grabbed his lower jaw and applied pressure in a manner that brought forth great pain and caused his eyes to well with tears.
When he arrived back at the colony he found Lo gathering nuts in the tree line, as the other squirrels lay in the sun drunk on nut wine. He walked up to Lo with tears in his eyes, and told him that he saw Alla fall from the high bluff, to which Lo responded with breathless incredulity, but nonetheless raced toward the bluff to discover his daughter’s body. Keer came limping behind Lo, as Lo held her and wept, sputtering, “’Little Thing’. My poor ‘Little Thing’.”
“I’m so sorry, brother,” Keer said. “A terrible accident.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lo, shocked with grief, “I warned her never to come to here.”
“You know how curious kits can be,” said Keer. “She takes after you. You never paid no mind to your folks, neither, and you weren’t afraid of nothing.”
“You’re right. This is my fault.”
“I’ll stay while you bury her.”
Lo completed the task, and they walked back to the colony. Lo told Keer that he intended to dig a tunnel between his burrow and Keer’s. He told Keer that should anything happen to him, he’d entrust him with his nut surplus and the care of his older daughter, El. Keer gratefully accepted, and made a solemn vow to care for El, and offered Lo a flask of nut wine.
“You know I don’t drink that stuff,” whimpered Lo.
“I don’t neither,” said Keer, “but it’ll dull the grief. Can’t hurt to have a draw or two.”
Many months passed and Lo’s grief wouldn’t subside. He became dependent on nut wine, and in a moment of tortured drunkenness, hanged himself from the branch of a walnut tree. Keer found him, cut him down, pushed some leaves over his body, trusting that the fox or the buzzard would take care of the rest. He told El that he saw her father torn apart and eaten by the fox, and that it was his father’s wish that she move out of the burrow and make her own life.
Keer shut himself in the joined burrows, and though he had more nuts than he’d ever need, he hardly touched them. He used the surplus to control the other squirrels in his colony who were too despondent to make their own way in life. After many seasons, he went mad and starved to death. Lo’s eldest daughter wouldn’t allow her grief to send her to the bottomless ocean of nut wine. But she chose another form of madness by retreating into herself. In her fantasies she created an endless forest of hickory, walnut, and acorn trees where she imagined her father, sister, and father’s best friend living in peace and plenty.