The Mink

The Mink

The college freshman affirmed her autonomy.  “Carver made an incredible impact!  He’s a genius, compassionate, my mentor!”

Hands waiving the air as if sweeping her aside, Hami, her brother, winced in agony ridiculing her.  “You goin’ Iowa State ‘cause Carver goes there?  What idiot does that?”

“Carver?  He’s dead.”  Blushing, Mia grinned adeptly rolling her eyes over her brother’s left shoulder as not to offend him for his lack of knowledge.  “I chose botany and genetics.  I chose Iowa State because they’re great in both.”

“You dying to be dead.”  Hami teased mocking.  “His spirit talking to you?”

“I do read, Hami.”  Mia reached across the table to clutch his sleeve, trap his attention, but he moved quickly to avoid.  “You should try it sometime.”

“Hey guys,” a youthful café owner prompted as she cleaned the dining counter, “time to close shop.” She dried her hands on her festive apron.  Her smile welcomed payment for their meal. “On Christmas Eve, you got a better place to be than my diner.”

Hami flashed a wicked grin across the table to his younger sister. “We dined.  Now we dash!”

Mia wrinkled her brow defiantly squeezing a high pitched, “No.”

 Hami shuffled bills below the table like a player shielding his hand.  Mia watched a full house, three Lincolns and two Washingtons, seventeen dollars, unfold between their plates.  She sipped a final swig of root beer before rising.

“Everything you do about ripping people off?” Mia accused fitting her stocking cap over her ears.  Her brother ignored her.  

“Thanks, guys.  Merry Christmas!” the enthusiastic host hollered gratitude from beyond the order station bordered with garland and holly.

Hami shot a glance and cocked his chin to his host hanging pots in the kitchen.   Brother and sister stepped into the dense snow blanketing the neighborhood decay.   He scanned the chipping window paints advertising Santa’s seasonal special, a drink, a burger, and fries $5.50!  Green neon “open” flashed “closed.”  Spectral colored lights chased one after another clockwise around the walnut frame.  

Hami’s eyes bore down upon Mia.  “University’s ripping you off.  You makin’ D’s and F’s.”  He laughed.  “Bustin’ your ass to prove you’re dumb?  You’re stupid to be there.”

“I got two A’s and one B.” She fought not only her brother, but her mother, high school counselor, friends who worked rather than attend school. 

“You correct.” Hami taunted, “You flagged the other two!”  

Mia defended raising her index finger.  “No!  One D and one F.”

“Yea, as a first semester freshman.  More flags coming,” Hami forecasted failure.  “And that loan officer still takin’ your money!”

Heavier flakes mixed with sleet fell through street lights.

            “You still thinkin’ you’re gonna be that Carver dude? … well you ain’t.” Eyes glaring, Hami smothered her effort to respond.  “You ain’t never gonna be Carver!”

Mia repressed her desire to resurrect her brother’s action to drop out of high school four years earlier.  She started her walk away, uncommitted as to which direction.  Snow clung to deteriorating structures crowding the urban street.  Homeless, faces engulfed in smoke, warmed bodies huddled around a barrel stuffed with burning trash and rotting timber.   Cars parked off side streets disappeared cloaked beneath white cover. 

“You seen dad?” Mia hoped for positive words.

“Saw him a week ago.  Changes oil at Skelly’s.  We don’t talk.  He always breakin’ me down.” Hami drifted behind, trailing his little sister.

“You don’t talk to mom either.”  Well aware of her brother’s conflicts, Mia ignored her brother’s pause.  “Mom cares about you, you know.”

“Mom cares about mom, always yellin’ and gettin’ in my business.” Hami yanked cords cinching his hood.

“Like you don’t.” She stated as a matter-of-fact, not in her mother’s defense.

 Hami lunged, sliding to impede his sister’s advancement.  He exposed assorted pharmaceuticals crammed into a bottle from his over-sized coat.  Eyes darted, assessing the perimeter.  Her brother, a dealer, strategically flashed cash rolled tightly into a cylinder with rubber bands.  “All in three days.”  His breath, heavy, warm blazed Mia’s forehead.  As magically as the currency appeared, the bottle and rolled bills vanished. 

“You’re killin’ people, Hami.” She indicted him.

“I ain’t killin’ nobody, ya drama queen!”  He jeered mocking her.

A head shorter, but of greater determination, his sister side-stepped him still uncertain as to her destination.  He advanced a few steps ahead as she retrieved her cell.  “Message: Clarice.”  The blue screen illuminated her soul.  “Merry Christmas from too many miles away!  Wish you were here!  Hoping we get to meet over break.  You’re a blessing to me.  Love you so much!”  Mia smiled.  The message healed her soul and melted her brother’s cruel, biting words.

Eagerness swept the college freshman’s face.  Distracted, her thumbs danced through tiny droplets upon the screen.  Finished.  As she buried her phone into her coat pocket, she felt a firm tug upon the same arm.  Aggravated, assuming it to be her brother, Mia snapped, “Hey!” She slapped his face struggling to break free.

“Give me your phone!”  A gruff voice, not Hami’s, demanded. 

Her phone sheltered contacts whose Spirits lived within.  “No!” she screamed.  She glimpsed the gun barrel advancing to her ribs the instant she heard.

“Run!”  Hami grazed her shoulder as he planted his chin into the stalker’s throat.  Both, the dealer and the assailant, tumbled, plowing, churning the snow.  With the strength and agility of a cougar, the dealer forcefully bore his knee into the stranger’s forehead intending to dislocate consciousness from life as he separated the firearm from the attacker’s hand. 

Streetlight bathe his sister from behind as she raced away.  Snow dissolved her fleeing image.  Her brother cut a tight corner escaping into a narrow channel between brick buildings. 

Sprinting across a vacant street, Hami searched a route to vanish into the park.  Momentarily, he failed to consider; his foot prints trailed him in the snow as he navigated the shallow forest in the dark.  Gasping for air, he wove between oaks, elms, and hickories before stumbling upon a protruding root.  He scrambled to his feet, dodged an oncoming maple. 

Buried frozen twigs snapped as footsteps chased.  Hami felt acorns crack beneath his feet. Barren branches lifting, yielding to the sky, invoked trespassers to surrender.  Exhaustion suffocated hope as the strong, lanky youth gasped for air.  He approached a lake centered with a clear shoreline.  Honeysuckle underbrush shrouded the perimeter.  Scattered picnic tables littered an open pavilion planted above a short thirty-foot rise from the water’s edge.  Panicked, attempting to quench his heavy breathing, the dealer ducked behind a robust, towering oak.  The sound of encroaching footsteps continued momentarily before being consumed in silence.  Hami listened.  His heart about to burst from his chest throbbed in his mind.  To settle the conflict, he considered the consequences of entering the clearing. 

Silence.  Silence.  The dealer reasoned the stalker chasing him failed to locate his exact position.  When Hami stopped, he listened.  He heard footsteps continue briefly.  The attacker was listening and tracing footprints breaking the snow crust as the dealer fled before him.   But, the assailant had no visual of the man he was pursuing.

A lone twig snapped to his flank.  Hami spied a dark shaded area behind a concrete pillar cast beneath the pavilion roof.  He eased away from the oak and shuffled through a natural tunneled beneath arching honeysuckle.   The sound of cracking twigs and nuts tapered away from Hami.  The assailant still unsure as to Hami’s location was circling avoiding potential entanglement in the honeysuckle.

The dealer slid across the concrete floor.  Masked in darkness, Hami steadied his firearm aiming into a clearing about to be invaded.  A silhouette carrying a weapon crept into Hami’s sight line.  No adjustment, Hami reacted.  Pulling the trigger instantly fired a round.  Nearly separating his shoulder from the unanticipated kickback, Hami fumbled the gun onto the concrete pad. 

Dropping like a doe, the stalker bobbled his gun as he tumbled backward heels over head down onto the ice frozen over the lake.  His gun, a spinning top across the surface, came to rest.  Ironically the barrel pointed in the dealer’s direction.      

“You shot me!  You shot me!”  The assailant writhed in pain groping at his hip flipping back and forth like a catfish landed ashore.

“I shot you!”  Shaking, Hami thrust his fist aggressively pointing, frightfully oblivious to the fact he abandoned his firearm on the pavilion floor. 

“You shot me!  You shot me!” The stalker screamed repeatedly.

“You bet I shot you!  Stop harassing me.”  The dealer shuffled closer.  “I’m glad I shot you.”

The wounded drew deep, deep breaths before succumbing to intense pain, passing out of consciousness.

Hami selected each step cautiously approaching the body.  Heat flushed his face cascading through his arms and legs.  Sweat fused flakes melting on his cheeks.  He tasted salt trickling across his lips.  Heightened alert amplified snowflakes striking the icy crust.  He crouched at the bank’s edge dreadfully aware he did not swim.  He’d never shot anyone before.  He expected blood pools, but little blood soaked the blue jeans at the stalker’s hip.  The hole where the bullet pierced the fabric was scarcely visible.  Ice cracked beneath the body.  The startled dealer leapt back away from the edge.  

Hami’s eyes darted over his shoulder, behind him, over his other shoulder and then ahead.  

Not twenty feet away, a black furry body erupted through a knothole in a rotting log at the lake’s edge.  It made a quick charge toward the dealer.  Frantic, Hami instinctively searched his pocket for his gun.  Where’d he leave it?  As if staring at a photograph, he saw it on the pavilion floor.

Nearly losing his footing, he charged the bank to the pavilion to recover his weapon.  He revolved and pulled the trigger.  The gun jammed.  The creature made another brief charge and paused again staring.

“Fur-ball got a death wish!” Hami jiggled the safety and pulled the trigger at close range to the creature.  Again, the weapon failed.  He glanced at the gun and then back to the area where the animal once stood, but it disappeared assumed in retreat. 

The body on the ice remained motionless.  The dealer plopped heavily upon the picnic table camouflaged in darkness.  Time froze the image of his sister fleeing beneath the street lamp, snow falling. 

“Look, what you have done!” 

A voice rising over his right shoulder terrified the dealer. He spun to confront.  Two black pearls mirrored falling snow.  Errant light glistened off the well-oiled fur of a creature slightly larger than the boy’s forearm.  Its tongue swept over razor sharp teeth.  Hami rapidly leveled his pistol inches from the animal’s face.

“Must be amateur night for you two!”  The assumed rodent spoke nodding to the body sprawled on the ice and then to the dealer. “Don’t bother.  I’m not interested in anything you’re sellin’.” 

Terrified, Hami slashed space between them with the barrel of his gun attempting to strike.  On short stubby legs, the furry critter danced and juked dodging the dealer’s potential blows.  Finally, it retaliated with quick precision scratching, drawing blood across the back of the intruder’s hand.  Bleeding, Hami flung the gun aside. 

“You surrender?” the voice teased.  Grooming the white fur bearding its chin and throat, the fighter whipped its nearly foot-long tail like a beach towel popping Hami’s nose.

The frustrated dealer stuttered.  “You, you some kinda mutant rat?”

It whipped his face with its tail again.  “I’m a mink.  I eat muskrats! You surrender?”

“You got balls!” The dealer leaned away in retreat.

“Don’t need ‘em.”  The mink implied her female persuasion.    

A dog, a predator to the mink, barked in the background.

Allowing the dealer to assess his present predicament, both sat silently watching large white clumps layer the snowfield.  Flakes pelting the wounded melted to beads of water. 

Hami buried his face in his hands and peeked through his fingers. “I’m talking to a mink wonderin’ what I’m gonna do with the jerk I shot.”

The mink bobbed her head mocking Hami.  “Should have thought about that before you shot him.  More meat than my family eats in a winter.”  She uttered as if the dealer might option the body her way.  She gracefully arched her white neck purring. 

“Can’t deal with Johnny Law, tonight.”  The dealer declared.

“No wonder you treat Mia so poorly!”  she exclaimed nearly splitting his nose with her claw.  “You are dumb!”

“Watch your lip fur ball.  I’d crush you with one blow,” he threatened, hands warming in his pockets.

“Look who’s bleeding now!” Bobbing and weaving, she exhaled a guttural chuckle.  “You got a body on ice and don’t know what to do with it.  They can’t trace the gun to you.”

“How you know that?”

“Cause you stole it.”  The mink marched across the table and back as if a prosecutor before the bench.  “I’ve seen too much shooting and killing in this park.  I also know you got a place to go, but you’re too condescending and too proud to go there.  Ego chewing your butt and you don’t even know it.”

“Mouthy female,” the dealer accused.  “Why you really here jawin’ with me?”

“You’re killing too many folks.”

“I just got done tellin’ ya.  I ain’t never shot nobody before.”

 “You’re killing with your words not bullets!” The mink locked her eyes on Hami’s refusing to let go.  “You’ve beaten Mia.  She’s hemorrhaging badly.”

“No way!” Her brother denied then realized.  “I never told you my sister’s name.” The dealer’s self-assurance waivered.

            “I know everyone who enters my forest.”

            “Your forest?” the dealer scoffed. 

            “Whupped you!” She growled displaying razor sharp incisors.

            The dealer lunged throwing his fist over a ducking mink.  She struck clawing three parallel tracks to draw blood below his chin.

            “Damn!” he winced examining the scarlet smeared upon his fingers.

            “Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.  George Washington Carver!” the mink recited.  “You know nothing of George Washington Carver, a botanist and graduate of Iowa State University.  A brilliant man who advised Mahatma Gandhi during his hunger strike for peace and delivered bean oils for treating polio for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

            “I don’t know the dude,” Hami admitted, “Mia talks about him too much.  And I don’t hate Mia.” Hami corrected as if the mink was saying he did.

He reimaged his sister fleeing beneath the street lamp.  Snow falling. 

            “You got the right image, but the wrong understanding.”  He failed to see the mink’s lips move.   She unsettled him.  Hearing her purr, he stared intensely.  “Tonight, Mia ran away from you, not to protect her phone from that guy.”  She nodded toward the body.  “You’re sucking life, suffocating her, bleeding her intellect, stifling her spirit, slowly killing her.”

The mink mimicked Mia’s brother.  “I think You’re too dumb to be at that university!  You still thinkin’ you’re gonna be that Carver dude … well you ain’t. is hateful.  You’re breaking her down just like you say your dad is doing to you.”  Showing no fear, the mink closed in.  She wrapped her tail into a defiant fist.  “You shove colorful pills in her face and an illusory roll of cash to pound her down even more, to make her feel worthless.  And you’re her older brother.  Yes, I call that hateful.  You are killing her spirit.”            

            “Carver didn’t allow lack of education to stop him and Mia won’t either.  He was ill and he knew his grades were weak going into Iowa State, but his passion for discovery and perseverance to make a difference was unstoppable.  When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you command the attention of the world.”

            The dealer drilled his eyes into the beady black enthusiasm of his challenger.  “You’re a mink.  You’re nothing.”

            The mink nosed forward.  Rising on stubby hind legs, she seized the intruder.  He felt her claws pierce his earlobe.  He stiffened, the dark statue of a scolded child .

            “You listening?”  She yanked his earlobe.  Silent, he sat poised to hear.  “You have no right to come into this world, this neighborhood and go out of it without leaving behind you distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it.  Mia, she understands that!  She has little time for social life.  Sure, she’s struggling in college.  She’s fighting her toughest battle now.  She ain’t waiting.  Mia’s fighting deception, a deception that gave her good grades for little or no effort.  A deception too mired in arrogance and bureaucracy to expect and deliver better than what they promised and provided.  She is not failing!  Mia is making a difference, a huge impact now.”  The mink wrenched the antagonist’s face close enough to rip.  “You are going to back off or get lost!”  The mink jerked her claws tearing three parallel stripes into a blood tattoo.

            “She traveled home to visit you.  And you?  You beat her into doom and gloom.”

            Hami didn’t flinch or release his eyes.

            “Don’t expect her to come around anymore,” the mink warned.  “She’s building strong friendships.  She doesn’t need you.  She’s gone after tonight.” The mink retracted her claws and stroked the dealer’s cheek gently. 

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” 

            “Carver didn’t say that.  King did.” Hami informed the mink.

            “True,” she acknowledged.  “You do have some intelligence.  Cultivate it.”   

Deliberately placing her steps in the snow, Mia posted behind a wide oak.  Pressing an ear to the bark, her heart resonated with her pulse throbbing against her temples fearing what she might find.  She scraped against the trunk fingers digging into the bark as if clinging to a cliff.  A body lay sprawled on the ice, face up and head directed to the center depths of the lake.  Despite quick shallow breaths, she choked on the midnight air.  Heat flushed her body paralyzing her legs.  Cautiously, she lengthened her stride to stay out of the sight-line of the body.  Ears, hypersensitive, listened for clues in falling snow on guard against threats. 

            Suddenly, ice buckled breaking beneath the body’s hips and feet.  The murky dark water engulfed the feet to eventually swallow the hips.  The shifting ice momentarily lifted the shoulders and head.  The layered snow separated with the splitting ice as a section a few feet above his head collapsed and opened to freezing water.

            Time pressed Mia to react before the lake’s water completely devoured the body freezing it in its depths.  As she broke cover sliding to the bank’s edge, she identified the body as the man who twisted a gun barrel into her ribs.  She immediately attempted to plant her boots firmly into mud. Gradually, she slid further from the bank while sinking deeper into the mud.  Frigid water topped her boots flooding then numbing her toes.  Pain seized her feet.  She bent at her waist to clutch the body’s coat.  Astonished to see blood oozing from his hip, she thrashed knee-deep water to escape.  Her phone, the cell her stalker failed to steal, popped free from her coat pocket and slid well beyond reach to the hole open above the unconscious man’s head.  He was alive.   

            “Oh God, please no!” Mia begged, hoped the divine Creator would suspend the laws of physics.  She watched her phone teeter half over open water and half on a solid edge.  It kissed the ice before the lake submerged her contacts.  Tears burst unrestrained.  “I can’t believe you!”  She cursed the heavens.

            Visually, she measured the distance to the eroding bank increasing.  Heavy water climbed her waist.

            “This is ridiculous!” 

Spooked, Mia gasped believing the unconscious spoke. 

“Why you saving him?”

            As the rescuer processed, the explosive voice was the voice she sought.  The obscure hawkishness of her brother occupied the upper flat lurking from a picnic table above. 

            “He could’ve shot us both!” Animated anger possessed Hami’s charge toward confusion.

            All sensation deserted her fingers, arms, and legs.  Tiring, Mia was losing.  The dead weight slid through her arms deeper into the lake.

            “Why you saving him?” His accusation indicted her a traitor. 

            “I’m not!” Frustration intensified fear though Mia refused to surrender.  “I’m saving you!”

            “I don’t need savin’.” The dealer bickered as he scavaged a fallen limb.

            “He drowns, you goin’ to prison.  Nobody cares.  You don’t even care.  Too busy beatin’ down neighborhood kids with your pills.”

            Tears burned her cheeks and fell sacrificially into hostile waters as if to appease a felonious apetite.

            “He’s slipping, Hami! He’s pulling me down!”  Hami studied the small female refusing to let go as the dead weight of the man he shot threatened to drown her.  She sank beyond her waist. 

From the shoreline, Hami scanned the pavilion for the mink.  He yelled, “You gonna help us?  Where are you?”  Hami never saw the mink disappear. 

Mia didn’t see anyone.  Unsure as to whom her brother was seeking, she cried for his attention while still clinging to the adversary’s jacket. “I can’t make it to shore.  Mud’s buried my boots.  I’m so cold!  Don’t let me drown!”  

He saw his sister’s hope battling her fear of water.  Stripping from his coat, the dealer tied the loose fabric of one arm to the end of a stiff oak limb.  Stepping off the edge of the bank into shallow water, he spiked the limb into the mud midway between his sister and himself.

            He whipped the free opposing arm of his coat in Mia’s direction.  A projectile launched from the coat’s interior pocket out onto the ice.  He ignored it.

“Grab my coat.  Pull yourself my direction.”  Hami lowered it within her reach as water froze pain in his toes.  Using the limb, he levered Mia tugging the assailant toward him. 

Fearing the water, she wrapped her free arm around the limb wrestling closer to shore.  Hami pivoted before her and lifted his competitor’s opposing arm.  Brother and sister dragged the limp body up onto the bank and dropped him. 

Both collapsed onto a fallen log. 

The water stilled deceptively deadly.  The snow ceased.  An uncommon silence settled.  No buses, no people, no barking, no wind, silence.  Overhead, between clouds, a crease of light erupted.

Farther from shore, a subtle disturbance bubbled up through the center of the hole in the ice.

“Those my drugs.”  The dealer pointed to the prescription bottle balanced on the ice.

Large bubbles percolated to the water’s surface.  Suddenly, two webbed feet emerged onto the ice.  Moonlight reflected off a rising phone screen clamped between her teeth.  Water rippled off the animal’s oiled fur shimmering in the moonlight.  The mink lifted herself on solid footing.  She nestled Mia’s phone adjacent to the bottle of pills.

Forming fists, the dealer thrust them high realizing the mink compelled him to make a decision.  “Oh, come on!  I can’t believe you!”

“Whatever that is you talkin’ to?  You better negotiate a better deal!” Mia commended the furry creature admiring her distinctive white bearded throat lounging behind the pills and phone.  She swallowed her preference.  She smiled anticipating her brother’s dilemma.

Surrendering his ego, he faced Mia with open palms and admitted, “I been talkin’ to that mink all night.”  Mia thinking her brother might be tripping on some of his own product grinned wildly awaiting the dealer’s decision.  “She’s playin’ me.  She is playin’ me!  She placed your phone next to the bottle in such a way that if I’m lucky I might get one, but the other I’ll knock into the lake.”

As soon as her brother issued his last word, the mink resigned to make a second dive.  Fur, wet and glistening, she waddled away across the ice into darkness beyond light.  The dealer’s arrogance evolved to an angry voice and a defiant fist chasing the mink. “Go ahead!  Easy to walk away, you rodent!  You could have fixed this!”

Mia whispered, “She did fix this.”

Lost in the moment, Hami reimaged Mia running away with snowflakes falling through the streetlights.  But, at this instant, she is a child, a little girl.  The child stops and turns to look back his direction.  Her eyes graced an innocent smile.  Silently, he turned to see the same innocent smile and grace-filled eyes awaiting his decision.

Clouds partially eclipsed a full moon providing excellent visibility.  Mia studied the deliberate arrangement of the bottle and the cell.  To successfully retrieve one the other would certainly descend to the dark depths.  She observed.  Hami extended a lengthy, yet flimsy limb onto the ice.  As the branch molded the phone into its curl, the bottle of pills as predicted toppled over the ice shelf sinking into the abyss.  With spatial precision, he cupped the phone and began to sweep in a large arc to shore.

Pouting succumbed to accomplishment.  Hami plunged his hand fishing the phone from the snow.  He trudged to the bank.  As if effort was spent foolishly, he tossed the phone into his sister’s lap.  “Worthless.  No good even for parts.”

Enthusiastic eyes captivated his; buoyant, fighting flight.  “No, it’s not.”

“My pills worth a set of wheels is gone.”  Attacking her hope, he attempted to wreck it, referring to her contacts.  “The card’s ruined.”  

Mia surrendered no ground.  “Maybe.  But it’s far from worthless.”

“Why? How can that be?”

From her seat on the log, shivering, Mia rose face to face.  She stood moonlit in purple.  Her face clear, her cheeks smudged, her eyes vibrant filling with life’s dreams.  She intended to make goodness happen.

“Because you didn’t choose the phone alone.  You chose me.” She turned cutting a fresh path, her own, never traveled through the glowing white crust.

Hami paused to consider his unconscious assailant.  He trailed Mia. “Where you going?”

“Get help.” She led.  Her brother followed.

“You know, Hami, if you love an animal enough, it will talk with you.”

Hami cringed desiring to be taken seriously.  “I don’t love no talkin’ mink.  I wasn’t doin’ no drugs either.”

Mia giggled, “I’m not talkin’ about you lovin’ the mink.  The mink, she loved you enough that you listened.” Mia stopped and faced him.  She popped him in the shoulder and smiled.  “Then, you spoke to her.”

Beneath the heaven’s vastness, trees stretched out illuminated now in the moon’s midnight blue.  Mia led blazing through the snow field.  She extended her hand behind her inviting touch.

Hami wrapped her frozen fingers into his warm palm.

written by Tim Morrison  Ó 2018