Abe and the Ferret

[Tobias]

I've grown fond of this story, probably because it doesn't have anything fanciful. It's just pleasant literature and a "slice of life." feel free to critique it. I love the criticism!

ABE AND THE FERRET
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Abe was a writer who lived in a small apartment across from the main road. He lived there for three years after he had a falling out with his family, which he did because he felt it was a general distraction…not to do with him throwing a small porcelain duck at his father.

Abe was the oldest in his family and his parents thought he was going to aspire as a big writer. Abe’s writing was always turned down though and when his family tried to pick up the pieces, he blamed everything on them. One day he threw a small porcelain duck at his father because he was asking Abe how his writing was coming out. Abe hadn’t been back since.

Yet Abe couldn’t write anything for the life of himself. He would stare at the blank screen for three or four minutes and start to swear in Spanish.

“COÑO TU MADRÉ!” Abe said as he slammed his fist against the table and shut the laptop with a thud. He slid his chair back and stood up, took a step away from his kitchen table, and stomped his feet.

“I’m never gonna write this crap.” Abe paced around his living room for a minute until he stopped at the mirror over the piano. He leaned forward and looked hard at himself, the stubble that had accrued on his face and the hair that draped down in a ponytail over his shoulder. He sniffled and his moustache gave a small jerk with his upper lip. His left eye twitched and pulled his left cheek. He slapped his face lightly with both hands and pulled out the piano bench, sitting down and resting his elbows on the cover, letting his face sink into his outstretched palms.

The twitching began to stop as he chanted different swears under his breath. He let out a deep breath and looked out from between his fingers at the top of his piano. Starting from the left was a candle, a picture of his mother and father with him and his brother in Florida, and a picture of him and his girlfriend on a sailing trip. Abe closed his eyes and looked up.

“What do you think I should do, little friend?” Up the stairs and down the hallway was a cage, and in that cage was a ferret. The ferret was sleeping soundly when he heard the voice from below. He slinked out from his hammock onto an elevated platform in the three-tier cage. After shaking himself off, he could hear Abe coming up the steps and walking down the hall, his feet heavy like lead.

Abe peeked his head around the doorframe and into the far end of his room, where the cage sat in front of the window. The small ferret jumped down onto the lower level of his cage and stood on his hind legs as he bit the lock mechanism.

“You think I should take you for a walk,” said Abe as he bent over and unlocked the cage door, “Only if you can open the door.” The lithe animal wrapped his mouth around the prongs of the cage door and bit hard, which sent the cage door down with a clang.

Abe welcomed him with a treat, which he took and ran off with to the corner closest to the closet. Abe sat down on his bed and watched the ferret curl up on the floor with the treat and play with it for a moment before leaving it with the rest of his treats in the corner. The ferret walked over to Abe’s feet and looked up, bending its body in a 90-degree angle to look straight up. Abe picked the ferret up and set it inside the cage

“Go to the bathroom. I’m going to get your leash.” The ferret started sniffing for its litter pan while Abe walked down the hallway to a closet by the steps. Hanging on the door was a leash with a miniature harness, which he took off and brought back to his room. By now, the ferret was out of the cage again and had climbed up onto Abe’s bed.

Abe locked the harness around the ferret’s body and picked him up, the leash still in his hand. He went outside and set the ferret down on the grass in front of his apartment. The ferret slid himself along the blades of grass then started to dig in the dirt. Abe gave a several short tugs on the leash until the ferret finally stopped digging and followed him.

Abe lived only a block away from a small park that had a pond where children would go fishing in the summer. Abe found a small bench and sat down while the ferret sniffed around his feet. Abe knew in about two minutes someone would see him with his ferret on a leash and would be curious to see what he was walking. No matter how many times he had walked his ferret, there was always someone new that had never seen a ferret, let alone a ferret on a leash.

Normally, Abe was able to spot these people too. He was always good at catching people who made eye contact. He could feel eyes touching the ferret, then going up the leash to his hands, then his face. They were always uncomfortable when you made eye contact with them since they never think he was watching them.

“Is that a ferret?” Abe was startled by a small voice behind him. Turning around he saw a young boy in short shorts and a stripped blue and white t-shirt.
“Yes. It’s a ferret,” said Abe.
“Can…can I touch it?” the boy said as he came closer to the animal and squatted down to get close. Abe nodded his head and the boy pet the ferret, which had fallen asleep in the grass around the bench. When it felt the hand on it’s back, it craned its head back and yawned, squinting at the boy who was smiling at the animal’s grogginess.

“He loves taking a nap in the springtime,” said Abe, who was smiling at the boy as he reached down and bumped his finger on the ferret’s head. Abe loved watching things happen, whether it was the young boy playing with the ferret on the ground, or the cars in traffic on the highway. He had become accustomed to observing everything – it was his escape from his writing, yet his muse.

What Abe forgot to observe was the ferret wrapping its small mouth around his finger. Abe reeled back and shook his finger off, fighting every urge to start swearing and kick the bench over. The boy laughed while the ferret sprung up onto its feet and faced Abe, its mouth open a little and his back sticking up in the air.

“You think you’re funny, you little bandido. I’m gonna skin ya one of these days and cook you like mother’s Pernil!” Abe dove forward and scooped the ferret up, while the boy continued to laugh.

“What’s a Pernil,” he asked Abe.
“Oh…it’s a Pork Shoulder. My mother used to cook it once a month.” Abe plopped the ferret on his shoulder and started to turn around. The boy walked with him.

“So what is his name?” The boy stared at the ferret on Abe’s shoulder.
“Gerard,” Abe said, “He’s named after my grandfather, who also kept a pet ferret.”

“What was his ferret’s name?” said the boy.
“His ferret’s name? Hell should I know? He always called it ‘El Conquistador.’” Abe could recall his grandfather holding a snow-white ferret that had blood red eyes. He hated the red eyes, which he thought looked evil when he was a kid.

“I think I want a ferret too,” said the boy. Abe smiled as he scratched Gerard’s chin
“What’s your name kid?”
“Tom.”
“Well Tom,” said Abe, “I’ve got to get back home. I’ll be back tomorrow, at the same time. I’ll tell you all you need to know about ferrets.” Tom smiled and ran off. Abe looked at his finger, which still throbbed a little.

“And YOU…we need to work on that biting of yours. Pendejo.” Abe grabbed Gerard’s face and held the mouth shut. The ferret wiggled his face out from his hand and started to crawl into the back of Abe’s shirt.

Abe got back to the apartment as he saw the mailman depositing mail in the apartment boxes. The mailman stared as Abe walked past him with a bulge coming from the front of his shirt. Abe waved and tugged on his leash until the ferret came out of his collar. He placed the ferret on his shoulder again.

“Nice day.” Said Abe. The mailman nodded with a strange smile, keeping his eye on the ferret on Abe’s shoulder. He handed him his mail and crept away.

“I guess somebody doesn’t like you,” Abe said to Gerard, who was looking up at the lights on the ceiling. Abe entered his apartment and tossed each letter on the piano, mumbling the names of each letter silently as Gerard kept going from shoulder to shoulder. Abe froze when he got about half way through the letters.

Abe set the ferret down and undid his harness, then sat down at the piano. He put the rest of the mail except a lavender envelope on the piano. The letter had his name on it, Abraham Castillo. The return address was his old address. He didn’t need to see the name to know that his mother had written the letter: her penmanship was impeccable, compared to his chicken-scratch writing. He could recall all of the times that his mother yelled at him for not learning how to write neatly and for getting horrible marks in school because a teacher couldn’t read his answers.

Abe opened the envelope and started to read. He threw the letter aside and picked up the phone, punching in the numbers he remembered calling when he was sick at school or needed a ride home. A thick, deep voice answered on the other end.
“Hello?”

Abe took a deep breath. It had been three years since he had talked to anyone in his family. All he got was a random letter once in a while.

“Hey pop. Is Mom around?” The phone was silent on the other end. He hoped that his father had started to look for his mother and wasn’t just in awe at hearing his son speak.

“Is that you Abraham?”
“Yea papi. It’s me. I got a letter from mom.” Abe sat down and watched as he saw Gerard whip across the floor with an old sock in his mouth.

“Hold on son. Let me get her.” Abe could hear his father, Marinel, yelling in the distance for his wife. He could hear them going on over the phone that he had called. Abe was about ready to hang up.

“Abe? Is that you?” a woman’s voice said.
“Hey mom. It’s me.” Abe wished he had hung up. He felt like he wasn’t welcome. He had thrown something at his father and stormed out, and despite their calls, he never returned them.

“I guess you got my letter then,” said his mother.
“I had forgotten that your name was Eva,” Abe said as he looked at the return address. The name on the letter was Eva Castillo.

“Well, Johan was looking for you. He wanted to tell you his good news.”
“So he’s getting married,” Abe said, “I didn’t think my younger brother would get married before me.” He could hear the voice on the other end of the phone starting to wheeze and sob. He wanted to click the receiver off and be finished with the conversation.

“Honey, we want you to come back home. Just once! Johan wants to see you – he wants you to be his best man.” Abe looked around for something to interrupt the tension. He couldn’t stop listening now. He would need something drastic to get him off of the phone. He could see the small porcelain duck flying through the air at his father, missing his head by only a few inches as it shattered on the wall.

“Abe? Are you still there?” His mother’s voice made him remember walking out of the apartment, yelling out for him to come back, and his father’s voice telling him to never come back. His brother Johan stood in front of the elevator, preventing him from going in and leaving the old apartment.

“Abe? Abe? Coño chico, where the hell are you?” Abe felt his foot explode in pain as he looked down and saw Gerard’s teeth locked on his big toe.

“Sorry mom. Gerard is giving me trouble.” Abe scooped up Gerard and placed the ferret next to him on the piano bench, “Tell Johan to call me. I’d like him to visit me.”

“He wants you to come back home.”
“Why?” Abe picked Gerard back up and went up the stairs, down the hallway and into his room. He placed the ferret back in the cage, closing the door and locking the mechanism. He dropped a treat into the ferret’s food dish.

“Well, if you want to, we’re getting together tomorrow for dinner. We would like you to come.”

“I’ll think about it,” Abe said. He hung up the phone before his mother could say anything else, or before he could say “I love you,” which he wanted to say. Abe sprawled out on his bed and let out a deep breath when he started to feel his eye twitch. He placed his hands on his face and rubbed his eyes. He stopped to look at Gerard, who was sitting on the shelf in his cage, watching Abe.

“You want me to go. You think it’s good for me.” Abe sat up and leaned closer to the cage, pressing his head against the metal bars.

“I don’t feel like I should go back yet. Not after what I did.” Gerard sniffed Abe’s forehead and started to lick it. Abe giggled a little and sat back from the cage.

“Well, you’ve got a meeting with a little boy tomorrow. I’ll decide then if I’ll go back home.” Abe looked in his mirror and noticed that he had a few tears on his face. He grabbed an old shirt from off of his floor and wiped his face off, then fell back onto his bed. After a moment, he slapped a hand on his forehead.

“Aye, comé mierda…escribí nada hoy.” Abe got up and went back down the hallway and down the stairs. He sat back in front of the computer at his table and stared at the blank white screen again.

* * *

“So you see, you need to play with these guys ALL the time, or else they get bored and unhappy.” Abe said to the little boy, Tom. Tom had shown up to the park an hour earlier with a pen and paper so he could make sure he met Abe and wrote down everything about owning a ferret.

“So I have to always play with him?” Tom said. Abe nodded and scratched Gerard on the head. Gerard’s eyes were half closed as a spring breeze kicked up.

“So I’ll talk to you again some time Tom. Tell your mother that ferrets are great animals, and they aren’t rats…right Gerard?” The ferret was finally asleep in his lap when he shook him awake. Abe picked him up and set him on his shoulder. He waved goodbye to Tom and started to walk away when he noticed that Tom had followed him.

“I’m sorry Abe. I just wanted to ask, since you said that you hadn’t decided on going home yet. Are you?”

Abe sat back down and let Gerard wander in the grass.
“Tom. You know that there are three different people in this world?” Tom shook his head, “Well Tom, there’s people who do the same thing every day. They are the people that ride on the trains and go to work and come home and not change.

“Then there are the people who bother things. They go around and interrupt people for the sake of changing something. Then, there’s the people who observe, who doesn’t change anything…they just watch.” Tom looked up at Abe, who watched Gerard.

“I spent so much time away from home because I thought I was going to become another everyday person. I wanted to make change,” Abe said. He got up and picked up Gerard, “instead, I found that I learned how to observe. It is what has taught me to write. The real time to change things is now. If I wait any longer, who knows what could happen.” Abe put Gerard on his shoulder again and started to walk away.

“Now head on home before your mom starts to worry.” Tom nodded and ran off in the opposite direction. Abe got into his car and placed Gerard in a small carrier on his seat. He started the car and put it into gear, but before he left, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the small lavender envelope and placed in on the passenger side seat.