Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Inexperienced thieves leave fingerprints. Unbridled success leaves clues. Careless eaters leave crumbs.
The Jenkins brood—three children, ages ranging from 7 to 13—were such eaters. Two girls and the youngest, a boy. Mealtime, when it wasn’t dished out on separate plates, was a free-for-all. Stabbing forks and piercing knives, launched from chairs nudged tight to the table. No standing room allowed. Failure to land a hunk of meat in the first ten seconds would inevitably lead to dining in second class. Vegetables and legumes, the measure of which wouldn’t feed a cat.
Portions were small. Bellies were smaller. The rapidly growing Noah had an appetite that demanded bigger portion sizes, equal to his two older sisters. His short reach was a handicap in their jousts, but the boy’s confidence was growing with his height. His sisters, wary of the threat, bullied him off the dinner table in a sibling pact, secretly hoping that the vegetable diet would somehow stunt his growth.
The parents were oblivious to the unfolding drama at 6pm each evening. Mr Jenkins, a large doughy factory manager, enjoyed a free canteen at work, and often took a second helping of lunch that carried over to his dinner, which he finished before driving home. At suppertime his attention was often elsewhere, foregoing TV in the living room for the one in the kitchen with the kids. Quality family time with the family, he would say. If you asked him—ideally during the commercial breaks. Dinner was conducted to the background noise of the newscaster discussing wars, famine and economic uncertainty.
Mrs Jenkins—a stay at home mother—was a small waif of a woman. Her children had never seen her eat from her plate of food. There was always one set at the table—for it was her that set it—but it was never used. On the rare occasions she did eat, the hollow-cheeked cavernous face would do so on the move. Nibbling a biscuit or corner of a sandwich like a rodent. Fidgeting thin fingers, cupping the morsel of food to her thin lips, she displayed a nervousness even in her own house.
“Hey, leave me some!” Noah cried.
“Snooze, you lose.” Sorcha clinked forks with her sister Deena, and gave a conspiratorial wink.
Noah looked to his parents for support, expecting none and getting just that. Mr Jenkins had already pivoted his chair from the table. His large frame was fully extended, threatening to slope off the small chair. Hands clasped over his large belly, lids half closed, watching the telly. Noah’s mother leaned forward, arm on her knee. Her head was propped up by the heel of one hand and she was chewing the pinkish stub of a thumbnail, staring off into space.
“You’re mean.”
“And you’re small.” It was Deena this time, but it could just have well have been his other sister. They were one and the same. Plotting and planning to make his short life a misery.
Noah raked the remains of the other plates onto his own. Pilau rice and wet lettuce leaves. His sisters had used a spoon to scrape the sauce remains that lay at the bottom of the chicken dish. He took it anyway, holding it upside down and used the fork to edge what he could onto his plate. The sisters laughed at the miserly drops that wet his colourless plate.
“Just you wait.” Noah said under his breath, fighting back tears.
The sisters finished their dinner, and excused themselves from the table. Noah, mechanically grinding through his flavourless meal, finished quickly and dropped his fork on the plate. The rattle startled his dozing father, who, checking his wristwatch, decided that that was enough family time and charted a course for the living room where he would sit until night fell. His mother would patiently wait until the room was cleared before washing the dishes. Noah looked at the small nervous woman, mumbling to herself, and then back at his plate.
There was a sudden squeak below him. Like the sound of a chair leg scraping on tile. Noah hesitated, unsure if he had heard correctly. A few seconds later, again, there was the same sound. Close to the wall behind him. He took a thumb and slid off a few wet grains of rice and dropped them to the floor beside his chair and remained perfectly still, staring down at the kitchen tiles. A minute passed before, very gingerly, a small mouse inched forward, sniffing the air. Noah watched in amazement as the animal moved closer, almost level with his boot. The mouse, in fact, walked over his loose shoe lace, edging toward the fallen grains of rice.
“Mum,” he whispered, looking up at his mother. “Mum!”
The woman broke free of her reverie for the briefest of moments, to notice her son’s wide-eyed expression.
“Mouse,” Noah said, and pointed down. His mother followed his glance, and seeing the small hairy rodent barely three feet from her chair, she leaped and screamed.
Noah hopped up and down on his chair, giddy with excitement, watching the mouse zigzag like a lightning bolt, weaving around the hopping woman, who was doing her best to get out of its way.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” Mr Jenkins announced, rolling into the kitchen. The TV remote was tucked in his waistband, fixed there like a side arm.
“Mouse! Mouse!” screamed his wife.
“Calm down woman,” the man said, looking far from calm himself, and in fact taking a step toward the exit again. “Noah, get away from there.”
Noah casually stepped from his chair. “It’s gone already. Was only a small thing. Nothing to worry about,” he said nonchalantly, and walked out of the room.
Two weeks passed without incident, and the house guest had been forgotten. Noah was still being elbowed from the meat dishes, and his complaints continued to fall on deaf ears. The sisters had divided the meat equally on their plate, mocking the boy with long luxurious bites and ecstatic oohs and aahs to royally piss him off.
“What’s the matter, Noah?” Sorcha said.
“Yeah,” Deena added. “You gone vegetarian all of a sudden?”
Noah loosened his grip on the fork, rolled up a sleeve and slopped more cabbage on his plate. “Could say I’m turning over a new leaf.” The girls stopped mid-chew, looked at each other confused. “Besides,” Noah added, smiling. “You never know where some meat comes from nowadays.”
The girls looked down at their plates. Sorcha took a fork and stabbed a chunk of meat and slipped it into her mouth. “Who cares, as long as it tastes good?”
Noah nodded, calmly taking a measured forkful of rice and cabbage to his mouth. Dabbing his mouth with a napkin, he added: “Well, don’t forget the best part. The tail.”
The girls looked down again. On Deena’s plate, covered in sauce, was a long thin tail. The girl shrieked, and pushed her chair back from the table.
“Deena!” Mr Jenkins scolded. “I’m watching the news!”
“Sorry daddy. There’s a…it’s a…”
Sorcha dipped her fork into her sister’s plate and raised the object. “It’s a shoelace.”
“Noah! Did you do that?”
“How did that get in there!? I was looking for that,” the boy said. “Give it here.”
“You’re disgusting,” Deena said. “I’m not eating that now.” Deena tipped the meat from her dish into the centre pot.
“Well, if you don’t want it…” Sorcha leaned across with her fork, but before she could reach, Noah’s hand raced out. Their forks clashed in a blur of steel above the prize. From the cuff of the boy’s shirt a small hairy snout peeked out, sniffing the air.
“Mouse! Mouse!” shrieked Sorcha.
Sorcha drew back, and Noah alone was victorious, reaching for the slab of meat, casually picking it up and dunking it on his plate.
“Daddy, that mouse!” Sorcha cried.
“Would you two girls shut up! If you’ve had your dinner, leave the table.”
“But, Noah has—”
“NOW, Sorcha!”
The girls left the table in a sulk, while Noah, victorious, smiled, watching their exit. The TV droned on, and his father tuned in again. His mother had tuned out, still battling an imaginary hangnail on her finger. While Noah, pleased as punch, thumbed a rice grain off his plate, and secreted it inside his shirt cuff, where a hungry mouth gobbled it up.
This story was written for the ambitious creative project, ‘The Weekly Kook’, where I release a brand new short story every week for a year, totalling…yep, you guessed it – 52 stories.
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