September, Chapter Ten: Long Eye
It was late morning, and a gauzy half-visible dome of weed-smoke hung over the living room. There had been three fairly serious puff sessions so far this morning, we were the type of house where you could easily rip six bowls on a weekday. The couch dwelling kids had just gotten back from the convenience store with their snack breakfast, and they were spaced out and chewing, a pleasant fallowness taking over the room.
Danny broke the silence, “What are we going to do about Long Eye?” He asked, taking a big bite of his Snickers.
“Who the fuck is Long Eye?” Andrew asked, breathing out a large cloud of smoke. Andrew was sitting low on the couch, his head resting on the couch’s back, his long leg stretching out in front of him, his knees pushing against the wooden trunk in the center of the couch-area. Andrew had his glasses on, and wearing one of his, now several, party shirts: a black short sleeve button up, with blue flames or red racing stripes or a green outline of a dragon. Today’s shirt had white dice on left pocket.
I was sitting directly across from Andrew, on the part of the sectional that faced the kitchen. Molly, Kendra, Melody and Danny took up the center of the couch. Kneeling on the floor next to me was Travis.
“It’s the racoon,” Travis said, “that lives in the chimney.”
Kevin was in the kitchen, cooking his ramen in the same pot that I re-heated the coffee in. He stepped back from the stove so that we could see him, “there’s no racoon!” he shouted at us.
There was some complicated movement when Molly took the bong from between Andrew’s knees, and Andrew had to sit up and lift one of his legs.
Molly’s hair was parted in the middle, held in place with rainbow barrettes. As she leaned forward for the bowl, the wad of plastic rainbow bead necklaces hung away from her neck. Her mouth was wide on her small round face, all of her perfectly square teeth.
“Of course there’s a racoon!” She smiled, “who else do you think is eating all that trash?”
The trash situation in the house was getting worse and weirder. When the kitchen trash began overflowing too much, I would bag it up and throw it in the garage. But the pile in the garage was getting bigger and was encroaching on the space where Elliot had his DJ rig set up. I knew most people in town took their trash to the dump, but I had no idea about how to go about doing that myself. The smell in there was the smell of the entire house but more focused and intense: rotting fried food, ash, and something metallic.
In addition to the trash, a strangle pile of objects were condensating up in the corner behind the kitchen table, including but not limited to: Andrew’s wooden easel and some of his art supplies, a bent Badminton racket, a pool cue, and a large spool of wire.
Danny sprung up from his spot next to me on the couch, and hopped over the trunk, “there has got to be some way to prove to you guys about Long Eye! I’ve seen him!” He moved the lay-z-boy out of the way, and then the metal screen to the fireplace. Danny got on all fours and stuck his head into the fireplace, “he comes down outta here at night.”
Molly spoke while holding a hit in, “I would leave him alone if I were you, seems to me that this is his house, not yours. I wouldn’t fuck with Long Eye.”
Andrew threw both of his arms up and then let them fall backward over the back of the couch, “I don’t care who Long Eye thinks he is! This is our place!”
Melody looked at me, smiling, her voice unusually high and child-like, crinkling her upturned nose, “what if he has a little hat and a sheriff badge?”
Kendra chimed in, “aww! That’s the cutest! Guys, leave Long Eye alone.”
Danny made sure his red baseball hat was on tight and slid down onto his side, so he could point his ear up the chimney, “I definitely can hear raccoons up there. Kevin check this shit out. I’m not even joking about this.”
Kevin sighed, poured his ramen into a small bowl, left it steaming on the kitchen table. Moving the lay-z-boy over even more, Kevin came over to the fireplace and got down on his hands and knee to stick his head in. He got down on the floor slow, his large body seeming dangerous to maneuver. He was wearing an XXL maroon t-shirt and grey sweatpants, and his sweatpants sagged on his butt when he bent over, revealing his butt crack and some of the small hairs at the base of his back. Melody and Kendra and Molly made silent stink-faces at Kevin’s butt-crack.
He stuck his head all the way in the fireplace, Danny on one side of him, Travis on the other, both waiting on Kevin’s judgement. His face pointing down into the small pile of ashes gathered around the wrought iron bracket support.
“I definitely hear something,” he said, “but it could be the wind. Dover? You want to check this out?”
I stepped over Travis and got down on my knees. Kevin stayed just to the side, kneeling on the tile apron. His bushy eyebrows were down over his brown eyes, his lips pulled in. If there was some sort of animal infestation, that might be a problem beyond our powers to solve. That might involve our landlord, his mom, and perhaps hiring an exterminator. Dealing with a raccoon might force us to change our ways, to clean the house up, to put a damper on all the parties and folks crashing on the couch.
It seemed dangerous to stick my head in a fireplace. It was something in your body that you knew you just shouldn’t be doing. The smell inside of it was terrible, damp and sharp, a tang that made me think of lead poisoning.
I tossed my hair over my shoulders and stuck my head in the way Danny had, tilting to the side so that my ear was pointing up. Just as stuck my head in the was a spout of noise from the gang, Andrew muttered something I didn’t hear, and a couple of the girls said shut up and then Kevin shushed them all. When I was able to shift my focus, tune in to the sounds of the chimney, I heard it right away: a skittering, scratching noise.
“It’s an animal,” I said.
Kevin sighed.
Putting my hand on the brick edge of the fireplace, I carefully pulled my head out. “I don’t know if it’s a racoon, might be squirrels, but there are definitely some animals living up there.”
Andrew grabbed his black party shirt by the collar, his nostrils flared, “ugh, what are we going to do? Who do we call? Do we need a chimney sweep?”
Kevin stood up slow, “no chimney sweeps,” he said, “those are the shadiest motherfuckers around.”
Molly bobbled her head side to side, “why don’t you just light a fire in the fireplace? That’ll smoke ‘um out.”
Kendra said, “but what if Long Eye gets hurt?”
Melody said, “he’s just a working-class dude trying to provide for his family.”
I nodded with them, even though I wasn’t really agreeing with them, “it can be dangerous to light a fire if a chimney hasn’t been cleaned, and we don’t know what kind of trash they dragged up in there.”
I was still on my knees, and Kevin was standing over me, his arms crossed across his chest, looking down.
“We’ll just light a fire big enough to flush out whatever’s in there. And we’ll send Danny up on the roof to scare ‘em off.”
Danny squeaked, “why me?”
Kevin pointed at Danny with his thick index finger, “because he’s your fucking racoon.”
It was a cooler day, the sun diffused by high dirty clouds. There were still track marks on the lawn from where Mick had crashed into the house. Andrew, Melody, Kendra and I stood beyond the front stoop, while Kevin brought a ladder from around the side of the house. Danny was holding a broom and standing on the edge of the lawn, by the driveway, next to Kevin’s Camaro. The front door was open, and the outer storm door, propped by the sliding metal wedge on the automatic closing piston. Inside, Molly and Travis were in charge of the fire.
The lowest part of the roof was over the garage, and when Kevin came around the corner of the house, big metal ladder in hand, he propped the ladder between the dented roof gutter and the bumper of his Camaro. Satisfied that the ladder was secure, Kevin jerked his thumb for Danny to go up.
Danny was pale in the face. He held the broom limp at his side. Good soldier marching to his death. Making sure his hat was tight on his head, Danny ascended the ladder. Half way up the ladder, Danny’s foot caught on the hem of his big jeans and he paused. He held out the broom for Kevin to take, and once his hands were free, he rolled up his wide legged jeans until they were wrapped north of his knees.
The wind blew around me and Melody’s hair. It was solemn, like the rocket launch.
Kevin handed the broom back and Danny mounted the roof. The roof over the garage was less slanted than the rest of the house, easy to scale. Standing at an angle, Danny climbed up and over the peak of the house.
Danny had a special relationship with the house now. In the six months that me and my friends lived in that house, the only one that would ever go on the roof was Danny. It was a perspective that only he would ever know.
I was worried about the broom. I liked that broom, and it was our only one.
The rest of the roof was higher than the garage-part. Danny scrambled belly first up onto it from behind the chimney, then disappeared for a second, on the far slant of the backside of the house. He reappeared again, further down the roof, over where the hallway would be, straddling the apex, the safest place to get footing. Danny held the broom in the air, bristle side up, and waved it like a flag.
Kevin came and stood in front of us, called into the open door of the house.
“Light it up!” He said.
Molly’s voice back, strained from yelling, “we already started!”
The rest of us waited on the lawn, squinting into the sky. I was standing between Andrew and Melody, Kendra on Melody’s other side. Kevin was right in front of me. Andrew held one hand flat at the top of his forehead, like a visor, “is it working?” he asked, a normal volume, then shouted so that they could hear him inside, “is it working? Are you doing it right?”
Kevin hopped up the concrete steps, and stuck his head in the doorway, “they got it lit,” he called back to us.
On the roof Danny kept looking at his own feet to make sure his footing was safe, his eyes moved from his feet, to the chimney, back to his feet, back to the chimney.
Kendra shouted, “look!” and pointed with her entire skinny arm at the chimney. Our attention shifted away from Danny, as a thin trail of smoke began coming out. The chimney itself was made of light beige bricks, a little larger than your average red brick, with a stucco tube at the top. The smoke that came out of the stucco tube looked blue-ish in the light.
Danny called down to us, holding the broom with both hands, “there’s definitely some noise coming outta there! I definitely hear something!”
“It’s working,” I said to Kevin, “tell ‘em to put more fuel on.”
“Burn that shit,” Kevin said into the house.
We heard Travis’ voice from inside, shouting back, “fire’s pretty big already!”
Danny called down to us again, “oh shit guys there is something coming out!”
At first it just looked like the shape of that stucco tube was changing. Then there was a shadow, something black, at edge of it. I didn’t quite know what I was looking at. A small black thing emerged from the chimney, with little lines coming off of it. The lines were whiskers.
It was mouse. It was a tiny black mouse.
And I thought, that makes sense. Things echo in the chimney; things sound bigger than they are. I thought, in the darkness of the house at night, the kids on the couch saw a shadow of a mouse and it was exaggerated into a racoon.
That’s what I thought at first.
I was wrong.
It wasn’t a mouse. The thing that I thought was a mouse, was just its freaking nose. And then its whole huge head popped outta that chimney.
Long Eye.
The big-ass motherfucking raccoon.
Kendra screamed, and Andrew and Melody grabbed me on each side.
“Oh, fuck!” Kevin said, and ducked in the house.
It was completely improbable the size of the creature that squeezed itself out of the comparably small stucco tube. First the racoon’s big furry face popped out, then it shimmed its shoulders through, and after that used its grubby little all too human hands to pull its butt up and over the lip of the chimney.
Kevin’s face was pale, and he was out of breath. His thick eyebrows were high on his forehead, and his eyes wide. He was squatting across the threshold of the front door, his arms at his sides, dipping his neck low, tilting his head up. “Yo,” he said, alarmed, “yo, yo.”
At first the racoon just sat on the edge of the stucco tube, looking for all the world like a portly construction worker on lunch break dangling his legs over the edge of scaffolding.
Melody had both hands wrapped around my thin bicep, her broad cheek balanced on the shelf of my shoulder. “Aww,” she said, “he’s cute!”
Kevin shook his head, he was bobbing in place, squinting, “un, naw,” he said, “like, fucking, naw.”
Seeing Kevin react like this, it came back to me that Kevin was scared of rodents of all kinds. Mice, squirrels, even rabbits were included. I didn’t know if they were all technically rodents, but it didn’t matter to Kevin. As far as he was concerned the cutest, fluffiest bunny in the world could go fuck itself.
Danny had the broom high over his head, like he was in color guard, the bristles moving a bit in the air. Long Eye climbed down off the chimney face-first and started moving towards him, making a chittering noise that would seem to belong to a smaller animal.
Andrew let go of me, took a step away, stood on his toes and craned his neck to get a better view. “Look at the size of him!” He said, “he’s fucking ginormous,” Andrew looked over to me, “Danny’s a dead man.”
Melody was giggling, a rapid, hissy laugh, “he has such a juicy butt!”
Kendra cupped her hands around the edge of her mouth and called up to the roof, “Danny, don’t provoke him! Scared animals are dangerous!”
Long Eye was moving slowly but determinedly towards Danny. The racoon started making a new noise, high at first, and then like a dog growl, “Waow! Hrugrrrrr…”
It didn’t appear that Danny was breathing. His face had retreated into his neck, and he took two unsteady steps back while keeping his focus on Long Eye.
Andrew shook his head, his nostrils flaring, “Danny’s a fucking goner, man. That thing is bigger than him.”
Travis and Molly called out from inside the house.
Travis, “did it work?”
Molly, “is there a racoon?”
Melody called back to them, “oh my god you guys get out here! It’s better than we ever imagined.”
I wasn’t as scared as Kevin, but it was scary, and exciting, and I was a bit jealous of Danny that it was him up there and not me. I couldn’t take my eyes off the racoon because I still couldn’t believe that there had been a racoon living in our chimney. He may have been in there the entire time. Long Eye was one of the original roommates.
I yelled up to Danny, “get out of its way dude! Give the racoon an exit!”
We were shouting up to him, but Danny probably could have heard us at regular speaking volume. For being on the roof, Danny didn’t seem that far away. And Long Eye, being on the side of the roof closer to us, seem way way too close.
Up on the roof, Danny nodded, and brought the broom down, so he was holding it horizontal. Then he moved slowly to the far side of the roof, to give Long Eye a clear path across the apex of the roof, towards the right side of the house where all the bedrooms were, and where some trees hung down for Long Eye to climb onto.
Travis and Molly pushed past a hunched over Kevin to come outside. They stood in front of us. When Travis saw Long Eye, he clapped his hands and hopped up and down, “I told you guys! Didn’t I tell you!”
Molly was laughing, “classic Long Eye”
There was a clear path for the racoon to go, but it still was moving towards Danny, making low growls, “Waow-waow-waow-waow”
Kendra kept on coaching, “it’s just confused!” She shouted, “what-ever you do, don’t frighten it any more than it already is!”
Travis waved his hands side to side in the air, like a baseball ref, “no way, just the opposite! You have to make yourself as imposing as possible! Wild animals respond to aggression! Raccoons are just like bears! Trust me bro!”
Molly got in on the yelling, “I don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity to say this again, but I completely agree with Travis!”
Andrew gave me a light hit on the shoulder with the back of his hand, “at least his grave will be small.”
Melody clacked her tongue ring against her buck teeth, “Danny probably smells like candy bars, that’s the problem.”
“Shit,” Andrew said, crossed his arms high across his chest, “it was his love of Snickers that did him in.”
We could still see Danny, on the far side of the roof of the house, from the waist up. He was holding the broom horizontally at shoulder level. Long Eye was on our side the roof, the part over the bathroom, moving towards the apex, towards Danny. The animal was making a low constant growl. Long Eye climbed up to the apex of the roof, and then stood on his hind legs, rearing up. Danny didn’t shout or scream or speak, but it was clear even at a distance that he was freaking out, some vibration off of his body, tremble in his hands, microscopic glint in his eye in the washed-out September light.
Danny wound-up with the broom and swung it at Long Eye.
It was hard to tell what kind of swing it was, how much weight Danny put in it, but it couldn’t have been that strong, because Long Eye just put his hands up, and, as the broom-head was about to collide with him, knocked it away.
All of us, on the lawn, in unison, gasped.
Kevin, who had been squatting and bobbing in the threshold of the front door, didn’t see what had happened up on the roof above him, but had seen all of our faces react to the melee with horror, and jumped off the stoop, onto the lawn, pointed his face to the sky, and screamed,
“I’M SORRY DANNY! I’M SORRY I SENT YOU UP THERE! GET OFFA THAT ROOF BEFORE THAT THING SLAUGHTERS YOU!”
Long Eye, perched upon the apex of the roof, spun away from Danny and looked right at Kevin and hissed.
Kevin screamed, and leapt, diving, into the house. Danny similarly, screamed, and leapt off the back side of the roof.
Long Eye also screamed, and ran across the roof, over to the tree at the far end of the building. Then we were all yelling and screaming, running into the house, locking the door behind us. Danny came limping in through the back door, face red and dripping with sweat, slid the glass pane shut, and closed the vertical blinds.
Everyone gathered in the living room, half-filled with smoke, streaks of ash on the ceiling in front of the fireplace, the house smelling like burnt plastic and grease.