The Old Man and Mr. Whiskers

The Old Man settled into his rocking chair on the front porch of his old frame house outside of Blossom, Texas near the Red River. He covered his legs with the quilt Lilly had knitted for him many years ago. 

He had been raised by his single mom and his grandparents in that old frame house. Nobody ever said anything about his daddy, and he didn’t care anyway. Mama and Grandma loved him, fed him well, took him to church, and raised him proper. Grampa taught him how to fish and hunt and whittle little squirrels out of old sticks. 

An old International Harvester Tractor rusted away in a shed by the house. As a young man, he had plowed the nearby fields for the annual cotton crop. In the evenings, the family gathered on the front porch, listened to crickets, and had sporadic conversations about market reports.  They gossiped about the scandalous recently divorced young woman in town who was carrying on with the mayor, his secretary no less. The lady file clerks made sure everyone knew about that. 

 He married Lilly, one of the clerks who had helped him with his car registration paperwork. He hated paperwork, so he married her thinking she could do all the damn paperwork that would come their way. She filled out and submitted all the marriage documents. She had an alteration business in the small room at the back of the house and bore him five children. After graduating from high school, they all scattered out into the big wide world. Every Thanksgiving, they would all converge on the house they grew up in, grandchildren scampering everywhere.  

His grandparents died, then his mom, then Lilly, and he came into a modest inheritance including the house. He grew potatoes and tomatoes, milked Ol’ Bessie, and slaughtered and dressed a pig now and then to keep him in sausages and chops. 

The Methodist church ladies tried to fix him up with a newly widdered woman, but he could never think of anything to say to her. She was top heavy and when he saw her, he invariably thought about Ol’ Bessie and how she probably needed milking.  

Women made him nervous, what with all their chattering and fluttering and fussing about and potluck dinners. One day he just up and quit going to church.  

A couple of days a week he would go to the back room of the little grocery store in Blossom with its few rows of faintly lit canned goods and powdered milk. In that dark room, he and lifelong friends Leon, Leroy, Lucky, and Lardo played a never-ending game of dominoes. After an hour or two, they would call it quits, leave the dominoes as they were from the last play, and come back and resume the game next time. They had long since quit keeping score because Lardo would win every time and it got to be depressing so they just played and grunted and talk about market reports and how they wouldn’t mind having summa that mayor’s secretary. 

The rest of the week he rocked back and forth in his beloved old creaky rocking chair on the porch with it peeling gray paint and rickety railings and wondered what it all meant and ask Mr. Whiskers about the meaning of life and such. 

The Old Man had always had grey tabby cats with green eyes lurking around the premises, doing cat things. As his memory dimmed, he came to think of the latest tabby as having always been with him from the beginning. Every day about the same time in the early dusk, he’d lay out some milk. After lapping up all the milk, Mr. Whiskers jumped up on a rail and perched against a post.  

“Wall-l-l-l. Mr. Whiskers, we knowed each other a long time now, growed up together, ain’t that right?” 

Mr. Whiskers stared at him. 

“We don’t got much longer, do we?” 

Mr. Whiskers spiraled one of his ears, like he heard something. 

“I reckon it’s about time for a reckoning, ya think?” 

Mr. Whiskers scratched the post. 

“I think I done alright, overall. Fought many a good man, lay with many a good woman ’til Lilly come along. Laid with her too, ’til she just plumb give out. Ate lots of fried chicken, raised taters and maters, helped out folks from time to time, tried to be a good neighbor, but out here ain’t too many of ’em, neighbors, that is.” 

Mr. Whiskers licked his paws. 

“Mr. Whiskers, do you think there’s a God?” 

Mr. Whiskers twitched his whiskers. 

“Think I’ll get into heaven? I mean, there is a heaven, isn’t there?” 

Mr. Whiskers yawned. 

“If they ain’t no heaven, then what’s it all about?” 

Mr. Whiskers’ pupils widened, then narrowed down to slits. 

“This old earth just go round and round, hot, cold, sun come up, sun go down, like a circle, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.” 

Mr. Whiskers’ ears lay flat. 

All of sudden, The Old Man sat bolt upright, yelled out Lilly’s name, then slumped down and died right there in his beloved old rocking chair. 

Mr. Whiskers went to sleep.