The light shifts evening blue through the blinds, striping Daddy’s figure. For once, the TV is off. The one-eyed cat I had thrown into the river is in his lap and he pets it softly. I go over to them and crouch, the cat’s lips curled back. His gums are anemic, pale pink. His bulging, blind eye is crusted around the edges, like it’s the only thing holding it in place.
Fuck, I say. How did you find him?
He was yowling in the bush by the house, Daddy says. You have to take care of this. He gently strokes the cat’s flank, full of hairy knots as thick as knuckles.
What?
You didn’t throw him in the way I told you to, and now he’s suffering.
Shock poles through my spine. I don’t feel remorse for doing what Daddy asked of me, but no sense of responsibility comes to me, either. All I feel is the inescapable pull of Daddy’s power mixed with my fear. The sense that, if I don’t do what he says, I might lose him, or lose my life. I cower as one might prostrate before a god. I’d fucked it up, fucked up my penance to him. He strokes the cat’s cheek and spit-foam spills from its mouth. I look back at Daddy. His eyes contain no answers.
Why do I have to do it? I ask. I don’t know why I ask, but it comes out like a whine and it will agitate him.
You wanted this animal, Daddy says. So handle it.
I search around the apartment for a blanket or a box, something I’m willing to throw away. Already the fear of disease settles in me—where had the cat been, and why had no one seen him in weeks, and why today of all days, when I am rattled and full of wanting and etched raw. This seems like a cruel joke, or a test from Daddy. He might do that—see how far I’m willing to go to do the things he tells me. I wonder if I’ll always be too afraid to act on my own behalf.
By the window, the large potted fern sits, dried out from neglect, with a few still-green strands. I grab the pot and bring it into the kitchen. Daddy brings the cat to me like a baby. I press my hand against its forehead and pull the skin back, separating the crusted lid from the bulging eye. The cat is silent, but his breathing quickens. I sit on the floor, Daddy looming above me, and he places the cat in my arms. His hands are shaking.
Do it quick, he says. Grab the base of the head with one hand and then grab above the shoulders. Just pull as hard as you can and snap back.
This isn’t like the chickens, I say.
It’ll be easy, he says. I promise you.
I don’t want to be responsible.
Daisy, he says, you are already responsible.
I pull the cat in closer to my chest, cradling his skull and he curls against the warmth of my body.
You’ll see, Daddy says. Most of the time, when you kill something, you don’t feel nothing. TV depicts people feeling guilty for killing—murder, whatever. But when you do it, when you finally pull the trigger, killing ain’t shit. That’s what tears people up inside. That they should be sorry, but they ain’t.
I don’t know how to react, so I push my fingers through the cat’s mossy fur, deeper now, massaging his bony ribs. I imagine bleeding him out like the hens from the abattoir, hanging him by his feet in the tub, slashing open the throat. To do that we’d have to stun the thing first. Daddy doesn’t know, but I understand what he means when he describes the nothing-feel of killing. Humans don’t care. We’ve been killing for thousands of years. And Daddy talks to me as if I’m dumb. He’s so distant from the life I’ve lived, concerned with only what I can do for him, rather than what I am.
Daddy sets a hammer next to my feet.
Jesus, I say.
He walks away, toward the bedroom. I do wonder if, in his experience, he’s only killed animals before or if he’s done worse. In Missouri, almost every man has at least killed a deer or put down a rabid dog. But his fascination with death leads me to think: what else? I place my other hand on the base of One-Eye’s neck and ready myself. My mind creeps up against a block, some resistance, and my nerves fray. I stare at the cat, at his cloudy, bulbous eye rolling, and steady my hands.
I decide to try the chicken method—take a deep breath, pull the neck, and snap back quickly—and nothing happens. He doesn’t even wince. I can’t determine if he’s in pain but unable to express it. My chest gets tight—I’m fucking this up—and I close my trembling hands over his neck and squeeze. I wring, and wring, but my hands are reluctant to tighten. I have to will my mind to go over the wall—kill! Kill him! I think—and suddenly a pressure releases, like water over a dike. The cat’s neck goes rubbery as small bones pop and break loose. His good eye rolls back, but he is still, after all that violence, alive. I twist harder, grind my teeth, push through any remaining reluctance and finally, finally, the cat’s body jerks and twitches, and I hold the dead thing close as the last throes rumble through him. When I lay his limp body onto the linoleum floor, a rusty stain colors my palms. I’ve torn his skin open—it’s blood. The stain is the same temperature as my skin and hadn’t felt like liquid at all as it seeped into the prints of my hands, a red-burnt orange. The bright red dries to matte in seconds.
Daddy says nothing while I wash my hands. He fills his glass with ice and pours a round for himself. I never told Daddy about the times I’d cleaned hogs with my father, filled buckets with crimson organs and meat covered in bone-colored fat. I’m drawn to him because of this lingering ferocity I see in men—the possibility of violence. The kind of man I prayed for all those years ago, I didn’t consider the other side of it. What the roots of loving someone like that would be, what it would grow into. And now, that possibility has snarled itself so thick into my life I am suspended within it.
You did a good job, he says, the ice clinking as he brings the glass to his lips.
I dig the fern carefully out of the pot. The leaves crackle and break into a fine dust on the tiles. I take One-Eye’s body, curled in on itself like the neck of a fiddle and place him inside the pot. I set the root ball on top of One-Eye and scoop the remaining dirt with both hands around the fern, patting the topsoil.
The adrenaline is gone, but my stomach burns. The animal is still with me. How to describe this to you—a weight is on my hands, like a pair of gloves. I never experienced this at the abattoir, or maybe I was always too distracted by the shit and my aching muscles and the clucking to notice. Serial killers and soldiers must endure their victims like this, too. The lives they take must shroud around them. Daddy pushed me to experience this to understand him better, I tell myself. He puts his hands over mine as I tamp the pot, then he sweeps the remaining soil, and together we put the pot back in front of the window. Just for now, he says, until we can dump him. The whole thing only takes a few minutes. I brush my hands against my pants, but the gloves stay. I walk into the kitchen, pour water into a pitcher, and water the fern until it bleeds through the holes in the bottom, making small pats onto the carpet.
Daddy was right. There was no guilt or sadness or mourning. Only the silky cloy of the cat’s end against my palms, the same filter of death clouding everything I touched.
