Would You Shut Up, Please by Lewis Nordan

Author:Lewis Nordan [Nordan, Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2014-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

WHEN I GOT back inside my house I couldn’t rest. I paced the floor. I looked out the front screen door and watched Mrs. Scott hose the blood off her driveway. I felt as though I was watching someone dispose of evidence. I called Annie’s office, though I knew I wouldn’t reach her; she was in session with clients all afternoon. When the voice mail answered, I hung up. Combat had finally lost it, that’s what I kept telling myself. He was already out of his mind, and had been since Korea, but now he was dangerous. He had shot a rifle in the neighborhood and put all our lives at risk. Something had to be done. I mean, didn’t it? Shouldn’t I do something?

I decided to call the cops. The 911 operator said, “State your emergency, please.” I explained as best I could, completely and succinctly, that my neighbor had shot a stray cat in our neighborhood. I said it was a small quiet neighborhood, with children. I was concerned, I said. Somebody could have been injured. I went through the chronology of the events. I said that Mr. Scott suffered from some kind of shell shock or combat fatigue or whatever it was called, post-traumatic stress maybe. I said he owned guns. I said I thought he had killed the cat and that she was protecting him.

The 911 operator said, “So somebody shot your cat?”

I said, “Well, not my cat. A cat. A stray cat.”

“The cat didn’t belong to you?”

“No.”

“Whose cat was it?”

“The cat was a stray cat. Forget the cat. The cat is not—”

“So you’re just reporting somebody shot a stray cat.”

I said, “The point is, somebody shot a rifle in this neighborhood. Somebody could have been killed.”

“Whoa! Somebody was killed?”

“Nobody was killed, for heaven’s sake. A cat was killed.”

“And this cat—”

“Forget the fucking cat. I don’t give a fuck about the fucking cat.”

“Are you canceling your emergency, sir?”

“How can you cancel an emergency? An emergency is an emergency. You can’t just cancel it. No, of course not. I’m saying the emergency is not the death of a cat. The emergency is that somebody shot a rifle in this neighborhood and—” I started to say, “And could have killed somebody,” but I didn’t want to get back into that discussion. I said, “Could you send an officer out right away, please.”

She said, “To check on this stray cat.”

I said, “Yes.”

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