A survivor on the streets of Paterson

04/10/80

The fury lump looks so misshapen, I mistake it for something dead, just another dead body on the streets of my hometown, Paterson still bleak even in memory.

I stop to mourn it, only have it move, tail stirring up the dust in an attempt to crawl away, seeking to escape my long shadow that falls over it.

When it manages to rise, I see only three legs, balanced as if from a life time of experience, perhaps a condition not inspired by massive dangers imposed by our machines, but by something worse, some aspect of genes that caused this to come at birth.

Elevated, it studies me with round black eyes, squirrel-like, but not a squirrel, its tail too skimpy for such a breed, small front paws struggling to keep itself upright yet determined to come together as if in prayer.

It takes me a moment to recognize it as a mouse.

When it moves again, it does not walk, it crawls, and towards me, not away.

The mechanic from a nearby garage comes towards me wiping his oily hands on already saturated work pants, peers down at the creature, and then advises me to kill it.

“I can't,” I tell him, already imagining the scream in my head if I do, how it will haunt me for weeks and wake me up from sleep, seeing it against my inner eyelids like a tattoo.

“Well if you don’t want to kill it, then pick it up and take it home with you,” the mechanic says. “The last thing I need is something like that sitting in my driveway.”

But what does anyone do with a crippled mouse?

What do you feed it, and how do you keep it from feeding the pet cats I have already adopted?

Who do you call to come save it?

Does this city have a mouse-catcher the way it does for dogs?

And what would they do with such a beast except kill it as the mechanic suggests, seeing it for what it is: a rodent?

Before, I can decide, the crippled mouse hobbles off, making good time with the feet it still has, vanishing into the underbrush from which it likely came, just another survivor where perhaps survival is enough.