Pat stood there, his finger shaking and dripping with blood. He wasn’t going to cry. The sailor took his arm and raised it. “Keep it above your heart,” he said in an annoyed, flat voice.

“That’s it! I’m getting rid of that fuckin’ cat. It’s gone mad.”

“Stop it, Jack.” Hannah brought a tea towel to Pat’s finger, and they headed toward the bathroom. “Your horseshit antics caused this.”

These words set off the dark fury in the man, and Jack charged into the bedroom, retrieving a pillowcase. Jack came back down the hallway, growling: “Where is it? I’m gonna drown him in the fuckin’ river.”

Through tear-blurred eyes, Pat witnessed this from the bathroom. “No, Da. It was my fault,” he cried weakly, and Hannah held him. The wind wailed.

“Tom, hold the bag while I get this piece-of-shit cat. Where is it?”

The sailor held open the pillowcase as he slumped all fluthered back down on the couch. “Take it easy, Jackie.”

“Where is it?” And then Jack Malone spied the tail behind the radiator. He snatched Tommy by his back legs and into the pillowcase he went, tufts of calico swirling across the living room. Hannah ran cold water over Pat’s cut. It was a small but deep puncture, and it began to pulse with pain. Taking the pillowcase back from Donovan, Jack started on a coughing fit that ended with a long gulp of whiskey straight from the bottle. He was cruelly calm. “Once a cat bites, it can’t be trusted. It’s gone mad.” He looked down as the cat clenched and clawed from inside the pillowcase. “Let’s go.”

“In the middle of this?” Donovan slurred. “Are you gone in the head?”

Hannah reached into the cabinet for the iodine. Pat could only hear the helpless, terrified Tommy growling from the other room. “It’s not your fault, Paddy,” his mother whispered.

“Fine, you’re fuckin’ useless too.” Jack hacked hard and swallowed his sputum, his anger beyond the pale. “Fuckin’ cat does fuck-all. Rat shit strewn all over the fuckin’ store.”

Jack Malone lurched to the door with Tommy the cat howling for his life. Down and out of the building he went. Through gale-force winds Jack reeled his way toward the Willis Avenue Bridge to drown the animal in the boiling brown chop of the Harlem River.

Hannah locked Pat and herself in the bathroom, where they wept with the rain. The deserter Donovan passed out on the couch. Hannah found herself between despair and desperation—half wishing that her brutal husband would throw himself off the bridge too. Paddy sat on the toilet as the iodine burned into his cut. He looked up at his mother, heartbroken, washing all the blood away.

“Paddy, what in Christ’s name are we going to do? He’s sick. He’s sick, and I don’t know what to do.”