Morton Hyde’s drugstore opened at eight o’clock every morning. By that time, the man from the bakery had delivered the daily supply of jelly doughnuts, English muffins, and Danish pastry, and Mr. Hyde had started the coffee in the Silex on the electric stove behind the counter. Since he was an old-fashioned man and thought that drugstores should sell only drugs and medicines, he hated this part of his day. But the boy who worked at the soda fountain didn’t come on until ten o’clock, and Mr. Hyde reluctantly filled in for him until then. Mr. Hyde also hated the cosmetics he had stocked to meet the competition of the chain drugstore two blocks down the street, and he still remembered with distaste the first dozen boxes of Djer-Kiss powder he had put on sale. He felt that the cosmetics stank up the store and drowned out the bitter, therapeutic smell of the ingredients that went into prescriptions.
One morning, at about five minutes of eight, there was a knock on the door. Turning around, he saw Ed Davis standing outside, his shoulders hunched and his felt hat pulled down over his eyes. Mr. Hyde switched the electric burner under the Silex to “Low” and went to let him in. “Morning, Ed,” he said as he opened the door. “Something wrong?”
Ed Davis went to the counter and sat down on a high stool, pushing his hat back on his head with a tired gesture. “I been up all night,” he said. “I don’t ever want to put in a night like last night again.”
Mr. Hyde switched on the neon lights, which flickered once or twice before they filled the store with a hard, uncompromising glare. “What happened?” he asked.
“God-damnedest night I ever had.” Ed fished in his pocket and brought out a piece of paper, which he put on the counter. “We almost lost Midge.”
“Midge?” Mr. Hyde repeated.
“Our cat,” Ed explained. He shoved the paper toward Mr. Hyde. “I got a prescription for her. She almost died. I’ve had her to the vet’s.”
Mr. Hyde picked up the prescription and read it. “You want to wait?” he asked.
“Do I want to wait?” Ed said. “After all I been through, waiting don’t seem nothing to me. I been waiting all night. That cat started in about nine o’clock—just when Milton Berle was signing off—and she kept it up until I got her to that vet in Middletown, about 6 A.M.”
“Kept what up?” Mr. Hyde asked.
“Throwing herself around,” Ed said. “I never saw nothing like it. The Missis couldn’t handle her, and neither could I. You wouldn’t think an old cat like Midge would have the strength to throw herself around like that. I think you’d better give me a cup of coffee. I ain’t had a bite of breakfast.”
Mr. Hyde went behind the counter and, setting a cup and saucer on the counter, filled the cup with coffee and pushed a pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar toward Ed. “Animals can be a great responsibility,” he said.
“Midge ain’t an animal, exactly,” Ed said, putting three heaping spoons of sugar in his coffee. “She’s more like a human. All the time she was throwing herself around, you could tell she was ashamed of herself. She’d fly around and then look at me like she was asking me to excuse her. But she couldn’t stop. It was pitiful. Do you know that vet over in Middletown?”
“No,” Mr. Hyde said. “Will you have something to eat?”
“My stomach’s still turning over,” Ed said. “You don’t know whether that vet’s a crook or not, then?”
“What makes you think he’s a crook?” Mr. Hyde asked.
“He charged me seven bucks. And do you know how much that crook Jenks socked me to drive to Middletown and back? Nine dollars each way! Eighteen dollars!”
“That’s a lot of money,” Mr. Hyde said. “Eighteen dollars plus seven and two dollars for this prescription comes to twenty-seven dollars. You could have bought a new cat.”
Ed Davis set his cup down in the saucer so hard that the coffee slopped over. “I could have what?” he asked.
“You could have bought a new cat,” Mr. Hyde repeated.
“That’s a hell of a thing to say.” Ed looked down at his hands; they were scrubbed clean but were callused from work. “A hell of a thing,” he said. “People ain’t got hearts. They got holes where their heart is supposed to be.”
“I’ve got a heart,” Mr. Hyde said, irritated. “But I see a lot of sickness in this business, and I can’t get het up over a cat.”
“People are skunks,” Ed said. “They got no feelings. They’re crooks and skunks.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Ed. That’s a pretty sweeping statement to make,” Mr. Hyde said. “You’ve got to admit an animal isn’t a human. I mean, when you first got this cat, what did you get her for?”
“By the way, I’ve ordered a cat.” (illustration credit 17.2)
“We got her when she was eight weeks old. She was as pretty as a picture on a calendar,” Ed said. “We had field mice in the cellar.”
“Exactly,” Mr. Hyde said. “You got her to kill field mice. You got her for a reason. And now she’s old. How old is she?”
“Eight,” Ed said.
“Eight,” Mr. Hyde repeated. “That’s old for a cat. She’s outlived her usefulness.”
“Like hell she has,” Ed said. “She acts like a kitten. And if you’d have seen her last night, you wouldn’t say she was old. Up the curtains and down again—around the sofa and back. All over the damned place.”
“Maybe,” Mr. Hyde said. “But does she still catch mice?”
“Mice don’t come into the picture no more,” Ed said. “I don’t give a damn if she never catches another mouse. Mice ain’t the point. She ain’t caught a mouse in years.”
“Then what do you keep her for?” Mr. Hyde asked.
Ed Davis banged his fist on the counter. “What do we keep her for?” he said loudly. “What do you keep that boy of yours for?”
“Rich is my son,” Mr. Hyde said.
“What does he do?” Ed asked. “Catch mice?” He laughed sarcastically. “No, he don’t even catch mice, and never did. He don’t do nothing—just fools around.”
“Look, Ed, Rich is a boy and your cat is a cat,” Mr. Hyde said. “You say she’s eight years old and having fits. Maybe it would be kinder to have her put out of the way.”
Ed Davis slumped on the stool and put his head down on his hands. “Now I’ve heard everything,” he said.
“I’m trying to tell you that you haven’t got the kind of money to throw away on a sick cat,” Mr. Hyde said. “Twenty-seven dollars doesn’t grow on trees.”
“Look,” Ed said wearily. “You don’t get the point. It ain’t the mice and it ain’t the money. It’s Midge. She’s our cat.”
Mr. Hyde walked toward the back of the store. “You want this prescription filled?” he asked.
“That’s what I come for,” Ed said. “The vet knocked her out, but I want this for when she comes to.”
“It’ll take about ten minutes,” Mr. Hyde said. “You can charge it if you want to. But if I were you—Well, there’s a new litter of kittens at Holbrooks’ place.”
“Don’t give me no more arguments,” Ed said. He pushed his coffee away. It had got cold. “Midge is our cat. Money don’t mean a thing.”
“O.K.,” Mr. Hyde said. “If that’s the way you feel. I told you you could charge it.”
Ed Davis rubbed the rough place on one of his hands. “No, thanks,” he said. “The way things stand, I’d rather pay cash.”
| 1955 |
