Stuart Dybek

There was an old buzka on Luther Street known as the Cat Woman, not because she kept cats but because she disposed of the neighborhood’s excess kittens. Fathers would bring them in cardboard boxes at night after the children were asleep and she would drown them in her wash machine. The wash machine was in the basement, an ancient model with a galvanized-metal tub that stood on legs and had a wringer. A thick cord connected it to a socket that hung from the ceiling and when she turned it on the light bulb in the basement would flicker and water begin to pour.

The elephant was there, waiting in the overgrown lot where once long ago there had been a Victory garden, and after that a billboard, but now nothing but the rusting hulks of abandoned cars. The children grew silent as they gathered to inspect it: the crude overlapping parts, the bulky sides and lopsided rump, the thick squat legs that looked like five-gallon ice-cream drums, huge cardboard ears, everything painted a different shade of gray, and the trunk the accordion-ribbed hose from a vacuum cleaner. They stared back at Budhardin’s eyes looking at them through the black sockets above the trunk. The holes were set too close together for a real elephant and made it look cross-eyed and slightly evil.

Calvin held to the sides of his seat as he felt it begin to whirl. For a moment the seat seemed to pitch backward like a dentist’s chair. His body had flinched as the head appeared to roll into space. He struggled like a dreamer half awakened from a nightmare of falling to regain his equilibrium and breath. The earsplitting screaming made him weak and nauseated: he couldn’t understand how it could continue like a broken record. Where was the audience? Had the projectionist gone mad?

Calvin ducked his head between his knees and clapped his hands over his ears. He entered the world of the smell of the theater floor, the spearmint wrappers, the rancid popcorn oil, old urine, stale sweet wine. Above him it went on as if it would never end.