"Captain Rick's Eye" - a reading (on YouTube)
I saw the fight outside my window the night Captain Rick
lost an eye. It didn’t last long, just some yelling then a crack that sent him
sprawling before the shadows disappeared. His eye flew across the alley like
he’d spit out a jawbreaker.
Captain Rick knocked over trashcans looking for it until
Crash threw a beer bottle at him. When Captain Rick began to sob Crash burst outside
and kicked him like a dog. “I’ll give you something to whine about.”
When I heard Crash stumble down the hall, I crawled back
into bed and pretended to sleep. He stood swaying in my doorway, watching his
little cat he always told Darlene. Then their bedroom door slammed shut and I
knew I could sleep.
I heard Captain Rick back in the alley the next morning but
I’d gotten out there first. I’d found his eye near the storm drain, resting against
a needle and a balloon I wasn’t supposed to touch. It felt cold and hard inside
the pocket of my dress.
I was eating a baloney sandwich in the kitchen when Crash woke
up. He opened the fridge for a beer.
“Captain Rick lost another eye last night,” Darlene said.
I asked Darlene what would happen to him now.
“The VA will give him a new one just like last time.”
“Maybe he’ll get a blue one this time,” Crash laughed. “Then
he could pass for a husky.”
I laughed, too. Captain Rick reminded everyone of a mangy
dog no one wanted to be around.
Darlene didn’t laugh. She liked to talk to Captain Rick on
our way to school each morning. He was almost nice when he remembered to take
his pills. Crash said he’d lost his eye in the war along with half his mind
from killing so many people. Darlene said he only killed the evil ones.
The glass eye didn’t match his real one. The brown was
darker and the white brighter, like his real one had faded in the sun. Crash
said that’s what the desert does. And it never pointed exactly where his other
eye was looking. It followed me even when I hid behind Darlene.
That eye was clearer, too. Like it saw all the mean thoughts
inside my head and made me not want to think them. Like the eye of God, Father
William said.
We stopped going to church when I told Father William that Crash
kept a box of teeth under his bed. I got a quarter for each of mine. I wondered
how much Crash had gotten but none of his were missing. Crash hit me when he
found out I’d told. Darlene got mad.
“Little cats need to learn that curiosity can kill,” he
said.
“Crash, she’s just a little girl.”
“Not so little anymore." He'd looked at me funny.
Now, Crash had that same look in his eye. I sank down in my
chair and drank my milk. He tickled Darlene’s ribs instead, his fingers
creeping higher like they always did. She giggled and swatted away his hands
just like me.
That night, I set Captain Rick’s eye on a bottle cap between
the paws of Mr. Whiskers. Crash had won him the first Sunday we went to the
boardwalk instead of church. Darlene wouldn’t let me have a real cat.
Captain Rick’s eye watches over me now where it can see and
not be seen. Maybe it will keep the mean thoughts out of Crash’s head on the
nights he stands outside my door so I can finally sleep again.
© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III
