9006. STANDING EVIL

STANDING EVIL

My foot came through the window,

but I didn't recognize it. Me and 

Kenny Meserve just gawked. He

lived over behind the firehouse.

There's a little street that curves.

It doesn't do anything much, just 

connects to Route One North if

you want it. There used to be an

old house on that corner too  -  

small but neat, kept up by two

old folk. Then she died, and then

it was just the old guy alone. For

years. He was like the best fireman's

friend; right next door and probably

on land he'd given. Then he died too.

Maybe 1975 or so. They tore it down

and paved over everything in a firehouse

expansion. I would have figure more 

for a controlled, practice, fireman burn,

but I guess that didn't happen. So,

anyway, I said to Kenny Meserve, my

best friend from grammar school, over

on Fifth, 'Hey, you remember that old

house next to the fireman joint?' He

shrugged and said 'Yeah.'
-
There was always one of those 
urban-legend type stories connected to
Kenny, I guess because he was so raw.
It went that he'd had a dead cat, put it
in the freezer for a long time. Then he
took it out one day, in a box, and walked 
it to the underpass, went upstairs, and
dropped the frozen ice block down to
the street  -  where it broke into a hundred
little pieces, cat included, like ice cubes.
That was, to me as a kid, an awe-inspiring 
story, and against all grain, as bad as it 
was. Can that happen? I never found out
 if it was true, or not.