The Other

by Thomas Tryon

He laid the rat inside and put the lid on, then took a trowel from a nail on the wall—the one hanging between Mr. Angelini’s red-handled rose shears and the rubber hip boots Father used to fish in—and went to the kitchen garden. Close by, an outside stairway with wooden steps and a white railing rose to the house’s second story. With the trowel he dug a hole, buried the box, and, meditating, slowly covered it over. Oh Holland, you bastard. What a heartless thing to do. Those pellets from Mrs. Rowe’s garage—they weren’t Gro-Rite at all. It was as bad as the cat. Involuntarily his look shifted to the well across the drive. The pulley gear under the peaked roof was rusted with disuse, the bucket hung cracked and leached. Inside, the spring had long ago dried up and there were only puddles around the mossy rocks at the bottom. That and blackness, for now it was covered with a cement slab where toads would sun themselves and garter snakes slough their skins undisturbed, where summer weeds grew tall around it and clover sprang in patches of bright lavender. It looked like an ancient tomb, decaying. He thought a moment. Yes—he knew what was needed?—flowers for the grave, a memorial for the dead rat. Quickly he ran and gathered a suitable bunch of clover. He had started back to the tool shed to find a jar to put them in when his eye was attracted by a movement at an upstairs window. A curtain fluttered. Behind it he glimpsed a figure partially hidden by the shadow of the half-rais...