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Three Ring Circus

Mitch and his brother were out in the yard playing with a frisbee. Mitchell was clad in a stained and limp, somewhat undersized white t-shirt and a pair of sky-blue, nylon running shorts. Like nearly all of his clothing, the shorts were a hand-me-down from his elder brother Kyle, who was off in college and no longer needed any of his old clothes.

Now, Mitch didn't get out enough to know it, but the shorts were out-of-style for boys and very much in fashion among the girls. When Kyle had fit into them, girls could have gotten into trouble with the law for going out in the skimpy things. It was the hottest Summer on record, though, and Mitch had nothing better to do than play outside. The clothing to wear was whatever best kept the heat at bay.

"Hut!" he hollered. His brother, who was in a green t-shirt and yellow cotton shorts, both of them old and bleach-stained to keep him from ruining his expensively tailored "good clothes," jumped a good four feet into the air and caught the frisbee in his teeth, and he gave a cocky look as he dropped to the ground and ran over to return it.

As he started to throw it again, he suddenly noticed his mother was standing at the door, her nose crinkled in disgust. She was holding her purse and dressed in a blue polka-dot dress, signalling that she was on her way out the door. "Son," she said plaintively, "Is it really necessary to play with your brother like he's some kind of dog?"

"Is it really necessary for you and Dad to treat him like a baby even though he's five?" Mitch retorted. "Where you going?"

"I'm heading to the store to get some bananas," she said, not even gracing the retort with a pause. "I'll be gone a good forty minutes at least seeing what they have on sale. I need you to watch Zeke."

"Okay, Mom," said Mitchell.

Appeased, his mother turned to leave. However, she stopped and cast Mitch a disgusted look, and she said, "And Mitch, stop wearing those shorts. You look like a queen. Or, skinny as you are, more like a pride-whore lioness." And she departed through the door before Mitch could form a reply.

Shaking his head in annoyance, Mitch just turned his attention back to the frisbee game. He decided to see how good his brother's range was. "Go long!" he shouted. "Go! Go! Go! Hut!" As his brother fled to the opposite side of his parents' large back yard, he chunked the frisbee as hard as he could. His brother almost caught the disc, but veered at the last second and flew off into the bushes. Growling in frustration, Zeke bolted off into the bushes after it.

Mitch thought his parents were crazy. His brother had grown into a very stocky and muscular adult in the past half-year, and he had been getting increasingly difficult to control. A normal family would have had him castrated by now. The law required that the feral-born, especially in predatory species, be either castrated or kept "contained." His parents said castration was "unnatural," though, so Zeke was kept indoors.

Nobody even knew for sure that feralism was entirely genetic. Here and there, the feral-born had a chance to conceive, and only occasionally did their children turn out to have full-blown feralism. Usually, the characteristics of children born to ferals followed a pattern similar to most of their non-feral relatives. Here and there would be an unusually long muzzle, and digitigrade feet were common. Their only behavioral problems stemmed from not entirely understanding what was expected of them.

Mitch's brother returned with the disc, having found where it was laying on top of a berry bush. Actually, he paced up to a place about three feet from where his brother stood, and then he laid down in a patch of weeds and proceeded to gnaw at the frisbee destructively. Just then, Mitchell heard his phone ringing.

Taking the toy from his brother with a soft word and a pat on the snout, Mitch fled across the yard toward the back porch, leaping nimbly over patches of hitchhikers and sand-spurs to keep from getting them stuck in the long fur tufts of his ankles. His brother, equally fastidious it seemed, chose to weave around such hazards. The gray, weather-proof steps of the back porch thudded and rumbled as he ascended them as if performing some Matrix move, and they rumbled again as his brother bounded up after him. In one swift motion, Mitch opened up the hatch of his phone and greeted his friend.

"Hel-lo!" he sang.

"Well, it's about time you answered!" said a whiny voice at the other end. Anthony was an excitable least weasel he had met back in Kindergarten while attending a racially integrated school. His parents had later sent Mitch off to a local all-felidae charter school, but it seemed that Mitch was the only tom in town who could hold his own in Chess. However, it was Anthony who had started the Chess-playing, and Mitch had gotten his friend hooked on street-skating.

"Look, how many times have I told you?" Mitch said in falsetto anger. "Stop being gay!"

"Never," said the little least weasel, who had been with his boyfriend Shea since second grade.

"Suit yourself," Mitchell replied. "Jokes aside, though, how did that physics project go?"

"The peeps at the university loved it," Anthony said, his voice turning excitable suddenly. "I think they're going to accept me as soon as I've got my diploma in hand, which will be soon enough!"

"Awesome, man! You know, Bradford is actually a lot closer here than the school you're going to now. I've done it by longboard a million times. Well, not recently, and I don't think I could pass for a college student."

"Their student center is public, man!" Anthony rebuffed. "Look, when I start there, we could hang out and teach some humility to the Chess club prats, right?" Neither of them thought much of people who joined clubs.

Mitch laughed at that. "Hey, I'm hoping you'll introduce me to some of of those college girls. I've heard the ones there are really hot."

"Oh?" his friend responded archly. "What happened with that jill Michelle you keep talking about?"

"Queen, man," Mitch corrected.

"Oh. Queen, yes."

Mitch sighed. "Man, I don't know what to do. My brother keeps me cooped up in the house, and I can't take him anywhere..." As he spoke, he went into his bedroom and shut the door.

"Come off it, man," said the least weasel. "Dude, you have to start standing up to your parents. You can't let them push you around. Jesus Christ, I'm the queer in this relationship. As usual, we have things backwards, but someone needs to tell you this: stick up for yourself, dude. Nobody else will."

Mitchell knew his friend was right. "Yeah, I know. Okay, I guess I really should quit being such a fairy, but it's not that simple. My bro needs me; and it sucks, but I can't just walk out on him. It's not his fault he is the way he is, you know?"

"Mitch..."

"Yeah?"

"You really are something awesome," his friend said. "Look, I know you'll figure something out."

"Thanks," Mitch said. "Now, tell me how it went at Bradford."

Anthony told him about in detail, remarking excitedly about the landscaping and stopping occasionally to explain some of the more arcane details of his work. At some point, Mitch stopped to pour himself a glass of half-frozen red kool-aide found languishing over the crisper behind some leftover beef stew, and he spiked it with a jigger of Old Charter from his father's liquor cabinet. As his old friend went on, the conversation drifted into a discussion about street skating, another shared activity between them.

Mitch longed suddenly to bust out his old longboard and just go cruising down toward the river port and watch the ships come and go like he used to when he could still be a regular kid. He had fallen grossly out of shape lately, and that had probably contributed more than anything to the excess tissue deposits on his chest. He was far-left enough that his appearances left him unfazed, but the feel of sidewalk rumbling beneath his paws was like an amazing narcotic to him. It made him feel free, and it was kind of cool that he could do something that most people with digitigrade feet couldn't do.

Eventually, Mitch started to grow hoarse, so he excused himself to go and study. He would never be an overachiever like his best buddy, but he was a grade ahead and holding a 4.0. In some ways, it did help to have nothing better to do most of the time than read in one's books. He wasn't due to start school again for a week or two, but he always skimmed the first three chapters of any textbook before he started a semester. It made things easier.

He shed his clothes and curled up against the pile of pillows and cushions at the head of his bed, placing a pillow between his legs and pulling them up to his body. He was altogether unconscious of how this arrangement made him look, but he tended to assume this sort of position regularly when he wasn't feeling self-conscious.

There was a slim volume in his pile of books regarding the history of the Race Wars. He didn't like it because it over-emphasized the role of the Great Cat races in stopping the murders of the Purebreed Faction. It nevertheless contained some information that could not be found in more balanced volumes, so it had its value.

As Mitch read in his book, his brother milled around the house noisomely. This was a source of bother for Mitch because he did at least want peace to peruse his books. "I can't play with you right now," he said to his brother as the young feral came up to his bed at one point holding in his muzzle one of the tennis balls their mother used in the laundry; Mitchell knew he would be blamed for it being ruined, but he had been growing weary of humoring his parents' expectations that he be accountable for everything that went on around the house.

Eventually, his brother fell into a sullen silence, though, finally giving him enough peace in order to concentrate on his reading. In that time, Mitchell managed to cover three chapters, finding the writing style to be shallow but also very readable. Although he didn't especially like it, such books were easy to market, said his English instructor from last year, Dr. Sanders. The ancient dingo, who was a retired professor of rhetoric, also claimed that simpler styles were very good for expressing simple but important points, which made them superior in certain respects to styles that were more suited for poetry or philosophy.

It was unclear to Mitchell at first why he suddenly found his nose wriggling and pinching, but his attention soon came to grips with what he was smelling. He was smelling smoke. He slid himself off of the bed, which was elevated a little bit too far off of the floor, and he quickly pulled his pajama bottoms on to protect his legs while he recited to himself the appropriate methods for dousing various kinds of fire. Somehow, he knew that his brother was behind this. Only something caused by that little terror could give Mitch such a sinking sensation in his gut.

He ran out of his bedroom and into the hallway. From there, he could see a thin trail of smoke streaming from the living room, the door to which was between him and the door to the kitchen where the fire extinguisher was, right across from the door to the bathroom. Therefore, as he rushed by the living room on his way to the kitchen, his bare paws catching a little in the ridiculous plush, purple carpet his parents had put in a year ago, he cranked his head right and caught a glimpse of what was burning. It was father's beloved recliner. This was bad.

Mitch rushed into the kitchen, his claws skittering on the marble-green tile floor. A decade of practice on his skateboard helped him recover his balance easily, but he uttered a curse over his father's egocentric lack of consideration toward the non-plantigrade members of his family. The way his parents had the whole house arranged made for a three-ring circus with a feral child running loose in it. He opened up the cabinet under the sink, noting evidence that is brother had pillaged under there recently, and pulled out the fire extinguisher.

Just then, he heard the door jiggle as one of his parents fussed at the lock, and Mitch warred very briefly with himself over whether to recruit whoever it was to help with the situation or to hurry and take care of matters himself. He made a snap decision and ran up to flip open the cranky old lock and fling the door open, and he shouted at his father, who had just gotten home from work, "Your chair is burning! I think Zeke must have gnawed some cords back there or something."

"What!" his father shouted. "How in God's name..."

Mitch was already going back to the job of trying to get the thing contained, growling in frustration as he fussed with trying to get the fire extinguisher ready. On his way into the living room, he nearly tripped over the expensive orange-wood coffee table that sat in front of the overstuffed sofa, but he managed to rebound off the top of it. He felt one of the boards crack as it bowed and splintered, though. He got the extinguisher ready, and he stood back the recommended distance and started to spray down the chair.

As the fire died down, his father came in with a protective mask over his muzzle, fanning away the smoke, and pulled out the arking electrical cord with a rubber mitt. They stayed there checking over the damages and also checking for remaining signs of fire, but all they found was a pile of smoldering magazines that had probably been sitting back there since the first month after they had moved into the new house. His father soon left Mitch in there to keep a watch over it, and he came back in a few moments with a soaked blanket that he started using to pat down the area.

After they were sure that the situation was under control, his father finally decided to start laying into him as he knelt there. "Now, the question lingering in my mind," he spat, "and I can't help but wonder about this, is how in the heck you managed to almost set the entire house on fire?" His father ended the statement in a near-roar.

Mitch's jaw drapped open in disbelief. "Excuse me?" he said. "How could you blame...I didnt...it was Zeke who decided to gnaw through some electrical wires, not me, Dad!"

"You were supposed to watch him, you crazy fool!" his father roared.

"I was doing my homework, Dad! Nothing else!" Mitchell said defensively. That was not the whole truth, but all the same...

"Like hell!" his father snarled, not knowing what the truth was but reading his son's body language like a book. "You were in there playing your games!"

That tore it. "Hey," Mitch started sharply, "I put the fire out, you dope. Not you or Mom. Mom was supposed to be here, and it was my day off. But she has been gone a lot longer than she should have been to get some bananas to rot on the counter while nobody eats them because neither you nor I can taste sweet, and you know she just eats two or three of them and leaves them there." He gestured at himself, and then he gestured at the charred ruin of his father's recliner. "Yet somehow you think this is entirely my fault. I don't understand it."

Besides, he thought, his brother hadn't gnawed electric cords since he was a cub. How was Mitch supposed to know when he was suddenly going to start doing things he wasn't supposed to be doing anymore?

His father sighed and shook his head. "Son, I don't know what I'm going to do with you. When you're supposed to be watching your brother, you are holed up in your room playing video games or something equally mindless. Should your mother and I quit buying those things for you?"

Mitch was hurt, and his arms dropped to his side. "You know, Dad, that's not fair," he said. "And I wasn't even playing games. I told you I never got into those stupid things. I was talking on the phone for a while with Anthony-"

"So you lied to me. You weren't just studying, but;" he started counting off on his fingers while greatly exaggering his elocution, "you had your head stuck in the phone, you probably spent some time watching television, and I also wouldn't be surprised if you spent some time playing around on the internet. The one thing you were probably not doing, besides playing your games, which I think you still might have been doing at some point, was watching your brother."

Mitch was flabbergasted. How could his father be so completely off-base? How? "Dad-" he started haltingly, his ears laid back.

"Mitchell," he interrupted gently, "Your mom and I need you to realize that your brother can't look after himself. Even so, he's still your brother, and you're obligated to try to keep an eye on him."

The younger cougar's tail lashed back and forth in disgust. "You know, maybe the reason why he chewed through those cords is that you and mom don't even let him out of the house. I see feral kids running around by themselves all the time, and nobody ever says anything about it."

His father cocked his head to the side. "Now, son," he said firmly. "Do you even realize how many of those children end up in institutions because they wind up getting into something or doing something crazy? Don't you realize that that's the kind of situation your mom and I are trying to keep him out of?"

Mitch's tail flicked against the floor, and he wiped a paw across his eyes. "Maybe we should just go ahead and ship him off," he said bitterly.

His father looked shocked. "Mitch!" he gasped. He stood up angrily and approached his son belligerently. "How could you say that when your mother and I clothe you and feed you and have made sure to get you the best education we can afford for you..." his lip quivered, and he snapped his jaw shut.

Mitch started crying openly. "Dad!" he shouted through his tears. "Look, do you even know what you and Mom are doing to me? I can't even talk on the phone with my friends. You won't let me go out because you always have me here watching him. I can't even have a life, Dad! Don't you even realize how much you're ruining me? Or do you just don't care?" He launched into a tearful litany of all of the ways that taking care of his brother intruded upon his life. He had given up street skating, stopped talking to most of his friends, given up on ever having time for extra-curricular activities or ever being able to do enough community service to make his grades competitive at a place like Bradford...every aspect of dealing with the brat had been ruining and humiliating Mitch since the day it had become clear that Zeke woulf never mature into anything resembling normalcy.

By the time Mitch had finally run out of breath, his father was standing there looking more hurt even than Mitch, though he was too manly to cry. His face looked stony and gray, though, like it always did before he retreated to his room to drink on his bourbon. The stress of dealing with all of this was turning him into a drunk, and it was starting to show on the once-handsome cougar's belly.

After several quiet moments, interrupted only by Mitchell's sniffing, his father slowly said, "Okay, Mitch. How about your mom and I cut a deal with you? I'll find some way to clear up one day on your weekends and one afternoon during the week. I don't know how I'll do it, but somehow I'll figure it out."

Mitch looked up at his father through his tears. "It's not fair," he said.

His father bit his lip, stifling a wince, but he stepped up to his son and pulled him close to his chest. "I know, Mitch. I know."

They left the ruin of the old recliner and went to find where the youngest was hiding.