He woke, animal-like, with the sun and crawled from under the quilt. His mother had made it. He remembered that much. How long ago? Fifty, sixty years? Long enough that the patches were hanging from threads.
He rolled over so he could grab the sofa, his home to things he used to collect from Free Stuff boxes. Dishes and pots and CDs, a transistor radio, a desk lamp, a collection of Barbie dolls and GI Joes. Whatever he managed to move inside before the town sent a crew to clean up his yard. “Fire hazard” the notice said. $5000 the bill said. It was on the table, unpaid, beneath the mail he collected every day so his neighbors wouldn’t call the police to do a wellness check. He was well enough. All he wanted was to be left alone.
He could no longer unbend his spine to stand. “That’s okay,” he said to the bobblehead he slept with. Sylvester, but he called him Stewie. His mother bought it for him when he was eight. Back when she checked his bedroom every day to see that he’d dusted the bobblehead and made his bed.
He stopped at the table where he’d piled more treasures. Vases empty of flowers, a boy scout jackknife, a garden trowel, a ceramic Santa Claus and a clay statue of some long-ago president. He ran his finger along the table, making a long arch. Like his mother used to do. “We don’t mind a little dust, do we, Stewie? Mummy can’t see.”
His legs gave out, so he got onto his knees and crawled through the path of things he intended to fix. A broken bicycle. A dot-matrix printer. A guitar without strings. He remembered the music he played in his head so he could ignore his mother’s voice.
He got to the bathroom and the chamber pot he’d scavenged a long time ago. When he still had water. “You see,” he said to Stewie. “Nothing is junk. Everything has a use.” He pulled down his sweatpants and squatted. “Wonder where that cat got to,” he said when he finished and sprinkled what was left of the litter into the pot.
“Not you,” he growled at a creature staring at him. Gray hair covering its face so only two beady eyes showed. And a mouth. He searched for the word. Wolf? He punched and hit the mirror’s glass and the image of his own fist. He remembered. His name. Louis. He got to his knees and crawled back to his lair. “It’s just us, Stewie,” he said to the bobblehead. He nested into the quilt and fell asleep.
Memories intruded. Miss Burns telling him on Father’s Day that he could make a card for an uncle, a neighbor, any man he felt close to. He drew a picture of a cat and printed Stewie under it. He remembered his lunchbox and how he cleaned it after he ate. He remembered how he put his card in it and walked home, alone. Mummy would be making phone calls. He knew not to interrupt her. Phone calls were her job.
That was the day she gave him his present. “You can be my father,” he’d said to Stewie. He kissed his stuffed cat and carried him to his secret place. Mummy never looked at the treasures in the shoebox in his closet. A Matchbox car, a tennis ball, a broken harmonica. He picked up a cats-eye marble and rubbed it on the place Stewie’s eye used to be. “I’m sorry I didn’t put your eye in my treasure box before Mummy found it.” He put the marble and the card into the box and lined it up neatly before he closed the closet door. “Mummy’s coming.” He kissed Stewie and propped him on his pillow.
She came into the room holding a bobblehead of Sylvester the cat. “This is for you,” she said.
He beamed. His favorite cartoon. On Saturdays, he’d lie on the sofa and watch Tweety Bird outwit Sylvester. He’d hold Stewie and wrap himself in the quilt his mother had made.
“Trade,” she said as she handed him the bobblehead. She grabbed the cat his father had given him before he died from germs. “Now you have Sylvester. He won’t give you germs.” She left him crying and trying to cuddle Sylvester the way he’d cuddled Stewie.
He woke again when he heard a knock on the door. “Groceries here,” a voice called from outside. He went to the window, pulled aside the tattered curtain and watched until the delivery van drove away. He opened the door and dragged in the box before any neighbors could see him. They used to leave him a meal—leftover turkey at Thanksgiving or a plate of Christmas cookies. Now they just checked to make sure he brought in the deliveries. Make sure he was alive. All he wanted was peace.
Crawling, he pushed the box to the kitchen. Bread, peanut butter, bottled water. All he needed to survive. He stayed on the floor as he opened the bread and the jar of peanut butter. He dipped the bread into the jar and drank from the bottle of water. It was enough. He left the jar open and the bread unwrapped.
He crawled back to his lair and cradled the bobblehead in his arms. “It’s okay, Stewie,” he said. “We can feed the rats again. Mummy will never find out.”
The neighbors waited until they noticed the smell. The next week they watched a team wearing hazmat masks pile junk in front of the house. Kids prowled through the debris for treasures. An eight-year-old picked up a bobblehead. “What’s this?” he asked an older boy who wasn’t his friend.
“Don’t be stupid,” the older boy said. “It’s Sylvester the cat.”
He cradled the bobblehead and said, “I don’t like that name. I’ll call him Stewie.”
Sharon L. Dean grew up in in New England and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire. Although she has given up writing scholarly books that require footnotes, she incorporates much of her academic research as background in her mysteries. She is the author of three Susan Warner mysteries, three Deborah Strong mysteries, the companion novels Leaving Freedom and Finding Freedom, and a collection of stories called Six Old Women and Other Stories. Her tenth novel, Books Inn, is scheduled for publication in 2026.