Here is a story published on my previous blog. I'm posting it here because it was well received--and I like it.
I’m still a little bothered by last night. A pleasantly cool evening for January, and the sky being so clear the stars resembled salt spilt on a dark tablecloth, I sat in one of the lounge chairs on the back porch to enjoy a rare occasion of quiet and solitude. I don’t often take the time to sit out and gaze up at the stars, and when I settled into my seat, a hot mug in my cupped hands, I made a mental note to allow more room for such moments. Everyone makes those notes, I told myself then, but I was different—converted. Everyone swoons with sentimentality at such times, I tell myself now.
I’d just taken the first sip of my Earl Grey when a possum waddled up onto the porch. Now understand this, my porch isn’t exactly big, so when what I consider a wild animal decides to share its company with me upon it, a certain amount of anxiety will likely be experienced. We regarded one another. At first, I could have sworn I saw a slight smirk curl on the possum’s face. It was inevitable that I recalled that silly saying: smiling like a possum with a mouthful of grits…or oats, or whatever. We continued to study each other with suspicion. Then, to make matters more tense, the possum hopped into the chair beside me. Perhaps to break the awkwardness of the persistent staring, the possum made itself comfortable and turned its attention to the sky.
“How nice. It’s good for the mind to survey the heavenly bodies on such an agreeable evening.”
He said this in a manner so calm I was beside myself. Then, realizing again that it was a possum sitting beside me, I was doubly beside myself.
“Am I in some sort of fable?” I exclaimed.
“Why would you think that? Do you have no sense of reality?”
“Come on, a talking possum! What’s the moral of this?”
“You really must have no grasp of reality to think in such pre-modern terms. There are no longer any morals. Being supersedes meaning.”
Having said this, the possum reclined and withdrew a single cigarette from its pouch.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Please don’t. Cigarettes are nasty,” I replied.
“Yes, I understand. My colleagues chide me for indulging in such a trashy habit—whitetrash, the call it.”
Returning the cigarette to his pouch, the possum produced two cigars.
“Would you care for one?”
“Cigars are so Bobo,” I replied. “I assume you play golf as well?”
“No, actually. Now, wasn’t it Hemingway that said sometimes a cigar is just cigar? I think so, but I like to say ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…but not always.” Having finished this petite discourse, the possum put away the cigars and began packing a pipe.
“Now you’re posing as an intellectual.” I commented.
The possum, apparently frustrated by all my attempts to discourage his efforts to smoke, turned his attention from the pipe and rebutted me.
“You really should refrain from such prejudices and preconceived notions. Quite outdated!”
“Excuse me for being a slightly uncomfortable with a talking possum.”
“Those are your own prejudices. It’s not my fault if it disturbs you to converse with me,” he replied. “And further more, excuse me, but I am an Opossum. As you may notice, I’m set apart from a common possum by the prefix O and the indefinite article an—not to mention intelligence.”
“I don’t believe O is a prefix,” I promptly corrected him.
“Its being supersedes your believing.”
The awkwardness of conducting a conversation with an opossum was suddenly replaced by the returned awkwardness of silence. I concluded that if we were to share this evening—and my back porch—we should at least be cordial.
“And where do you come from, Mr. Opossum?” I asked in as kind a voice I could construct.
“Possum Kingdom, of course,” he answered, adding a wink. This opossum was turning out to be quite the smart aleck.
“And I’m sure you didn’t notice,” he continued, “or perhaps felt it ‘improper’ to have a look-see, but I’m a female. You might have checked, since you obviously didn’t pick up on the whole pouch thing. Didn’t exactly excel in biology, did we now?”
“I did well enough to know possum can’t talk.”
“Right you are.”
I had grown weary of this chatty opossum and her condescending tendencies, so I decided to tell her of a previous encounter I had had with one of her kind.
“I remember when I was eight or so,” I began, “we had a possum get into our shed. My mother tried to shoo it away, but the dumb varmint just hissed and growled. She ended up calling our neighbor over. He hit the thing upside the head with a baseball bat a few times, but the ignorant beast held its ground, spitting and hissing. Finally, he knocked it senseless enough he was able to lay the bat across the back of its neck, and he stood on both ends and hopped till the possum’s neck snapped.”
The possum was still holding her unlit pipe, and, contemplating the packed bowl, she responded.
“Did you ask the possum to leave?”
“Like I said, my mom told it to get.”
“And it merely hissed and growled?”
“Yeah…what are you going with this?” I answered, wondering why she had so many questions.
“Well, let me tell you a story,” she said. “A few streets over there’s an elderly lady with a shed and all kinds of junk, bicycles, scrap wood, lawnmowers and such in her backyard. One evening last spring, after several days of rain, I watched a certain not-so-bright possum go traipsing across a pile of firewood. When he reached the end, he got the idea to leap onto the trashcan that was standing there; and so he did. The problem, you see, was that it was one of those commercial type cans with a revolving top. Who knows why she had it there. Needless to say, the unfortunate possum plunged into the can as if it landed on a trap door. Of course, the can was half full of water due to the rain. The possum carried on for the better part of an hour, whimpering and whining, before he finally gave it up and drowned. A whole week went by until the woman began to smell it. It took all she could not to puke when she poured the bloated carcass out and rolled it with a shovel into the hole she had spent all morning digging to bury it. You should have been there—quite entertaining.”
When she finished telling her story, I knew she had outdone me. However, I wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at, but she soon explained.
“You see, it’s hard to sympathize with someone who doesn’t speak your language. Don’t distress—your intentions to offend me are duly noted. But remember this: Insult is the highest form of flattery.”
Now I was truly confused. If insult is flattery, then what am I to make of the stabs she took at me? I know it’s common when a boy is enamored with a girl for him to tease her, but isn’t there insult for the sake of insult? What of insult for the sake of vengeance?
As if to ease the friction, the opossum said, “You want to see a trick?” and rolled to her side in the chair so her back faced me.
She became still, intolerably still; her breathing ceased, and only a breeze—the first breeze I’d perceived that evening—showed any trace of movement in her silver fur. I anticipated that at any second she might suddenly bolt upright and scare the hell out of me. I could tell she was the type to pull that sort of stunt. I stood up. My tea was cold, so I tossed it into the grass. Watching her seemingly lifeless body, it was hard to resist the temptation to reach over and touch her, to shake her, to feel her chest and satisfy my desire to know if her heart still beat or it she had grown cold and stiff. My hand was suspended above her when I came to my senses. I hurried into the house and locked the doors. I’ve always locked my doors at night.
