The Deadman knocked. I could see him through the crack between the treehouse doors. He had a pinky ring on with a red stone in it. The Deadman had real nice eyebrows and a long, skinny face. His shirt was cut low but he didn’t have any hair on his chest.
“You got what I need?” Daddy said. And the Deadman said back:
“If you got what I need, Mudpuddle, I got the whole world right here in my pocket.”
Only Daddy didn’t. Daddy stared at his shoes. He looked like a princess-body without a princess-head.
“I’m just a little short, D. I started a new job, you know, and with a new job you don’t get paid the first two weeks. But I’m good for it.”
The Deadman didn’t say anything. Daddy’d been short on his sugar a lot lately. And I knew he didn’t have a new job. Or an old one.
“Come on, man. I’m a good person. I know I owe you plenty, but owing doesn’t make a man less needful. I’ll pay you in two weeks, I swear. My word is as good as the lock on a bank. I’m a gentleman. Ask anybody.”
The Deadman looked my Daddy up and down. Then he looked past him, into the living room, at my princess’s three headless bodies lying on the carpet. The Deadman chewed on something. I thought maybe it was bubblegum. Red bubblegum, I supposed. Finally, he twisted his pinky ring around and said:
“Did you ever hear the one about the Devil and the fiddle?”
Daddy sort of fell apart without moving. He was still standing up, but only on the outside. On the inside, he was crumpled up on the ground. “Yeah, I heard that one, D,” he sighed.
“I tell you what,” the Deadman said. “I’ll give you what you need this week—hell, next week, too and the one after—if you give me whatever’s in that armoire back there.”
Arrr. Mwah.
Daddy looked over his shoulder, all frantic. But then, he remembered that he’d put me in his room with his TV and his painting of frogs and I was safe as a fish in a bowl. Only I wasn’t.
“You sure, Deadman? I mean, there’s nothing in there but an old purple sweater and a couple of moths.”
Daddy kept looking on down the hall like he could see me. Did he see me? Did he know? Little black cats have eyes that shine in the dark. Sometimes I think the only important thing in my whole life is knowing whether or not Daddy could see the shine on my eye through the crack between the doors. But I can’t ever know that.
“Then I’ll guess I’ll have something to keep me warm and something to lead me to the light, my man,” laughed the Deadman, and he made a thing with his mouth like a smile. It mostly was a smile. On somebody else it would have definitely been a smile. But it wasn’t a smile, really, and I knew it. It was a scream. No, Daddy. I’m in here. It’s me. But I still didn’t make a sound, because Daddy loved me and didn’t ever want the Deadman to see me.
“Okay, D,” shrugged Daddy like it didn’t matter to him at all. Like he couldn’t see. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he really put his coat down over those mudpuddles.
The Deadman gave him something small. I couldn’t tell what it was. It wasn’t a cup of sugar, for sure. How could something a man needs so much be so small? Daddy started back toward my treehouse, but the Deadman stopped him, grabbed his arm.
“You ever hear the one about the cat who broke his promise?”
Daddy swallowed hard. “Yeah, Deadman. I heard that one a bunch of times.”
Mudpuddle hit the lightswitch in the hall that had all those dead bugs on the inside of it. The Deadman danced on ahead of him and took a big swanky breath like he’d bought those lungs in France. He hauled on the doors of my treehouse but they didn’t come open because of the secret latch on the inside. Daddy Mudpuddle put his hands over his face and sank down on his heels.
“This thing got a key?” the Deadman said but the way he said it was all full of knowing the arrr mwah had more than a moth inside.
It’s ok, I thought and squeezed my eyes tight. I sank down in my blue and yellow butterfly dress. I’m a little black cat. Little black cats can be invisible if they want.
Daddy looked sick. His face was like the skin on old soup. I’m a little black cat and I have magic. He flicked out his pen-knife and stuck it in the crack between the doors. The latch lifted up. I’m a little black cat and little black cats can do anything. The Deadman opened the doors like a window on his best morning.
The Deadman didn’t say anything for a good while. He looked right at me, smiling and shining and thinking Deadman thoughts. His eyes had blue flecks in them, like someone had spilled paint on his insides. I’m a little black cat and no one can see me. He pulled down the purple sweater and shut the doors again.
“I’ll come back for the moths, Mudpuddle. It’s such a cold day out. I’m shivering already. You stay in and enjoy yourself. Have a hot drink.”
The Deadman took his red and disappeared back out the door.
AFTER THAT, THE Deadman came around a lot more often. I didn’t have to hide anymore, though sometimes I did anyway. Mostly I played with my toys and thought about who came up with the names for all the colors in the 64-color crayon box or whether or not rhinoceroses were friendly to girls who really liked rhinoceroses or how much 3 times 4 was because those are the kind of things you think about when you’ve soaked up all the smart in your dress and some of the smart in your school, too. Deadman and Daddy got to be best friends. They didn’t talk about the day of the closet, ever. They’d lay around and drink and eat plain tortillas out of the bag and watch game shows on the living room TV. The Deadman always knew all the answers. The first thing I ever said to him was:
“Why don’t you go on one of those shows? You’d make a million dollars and you could move to a nice house that’s really far away.”
I popped my princess’s head off and stuck it on the blue ballgown body. The Deadman turned his head and looked at me like I was a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk with no one around.
“Wouldn’t be fair to all those other contestants, Badgirl.” He glanced back toward the TV. “What is plutonium?” he said to the game show man in the grey suit. Then back to me: “Why don’t you come and sit by me? I’ll let you have a sip of my… what are we drinking, Muddy? My vodka’n OJ.”
“Don’t want it.”
“Come on, it’s just like water. It’ll make you grow up fierce and bright.”
But I didn’t want his nasty vodka in his dirty mug that had a cartoon cactus on it saying GOOD MORNING ALBUQUERQUE. I didn’t know where Albuquerque was but I hated it because the Deadman had a mug from there.
“Don’t be rude, Badgirl,” my Daddy said, because he loved me but he’d heard the one about the cat who broke his promise and he didn’t want to hear it again.
So I sat down between them and I hated them both and I drank out of the Albuquerque mug while the man in the grey suit told us that the dollar values had doubled. The Deadman touched my hair but after awhile he stopped because little black cats bite when strangers pet them. Everyone knows that.