Archie

By ​​Ashley Farrelly

Archie lived in my mother’s basement right up until she died. He had been around for as long as I can remember, taking up space and eating up money. It wasn’t Archie’s fault, though. Wild animals don’t belong in suburban homes.

We called him Archie because my brother and I had always wanted a dog, and we thought that was an excellent dog name. He came from my grandmother, who gave him to us when she got too old to care for him. Or was it my great-grandmother? I can’t remember, but he must have had a name before us, though no one ever mentioned it.

Most of the time we ignored him, but as children, we tried to play games with him. We would lie at the top of the stairs and drop peanuts through the empty back of the staircase into the darkness. Then, we would flash a light down into the basement to see whether they were still there. When they weren’t, it  meant Archie had snatched them and taken them to some corner to devour.

In her last moments in the hospital bed, my mother had only one worry, which she voiced often.  “Who’s going to take Archie when I’m gone?” she had said, not to either of us, but to the long blue lake out the window. Bushy trees, still covered in yellow and orange, lined the shore. They reminded us that we were at a nice hospital and that it wasn’t so bad being there. On the other side of the lake, there was a large hill with a row of houses on it. I hadn’t noticed them from the ground floor, but it must have been where the doctors lived, perched atop a hill, as high as they could go.

When she asked again about Archie my eyes darted down to the edge of the bed, where her thin, freckled arm lay. Growing up she had always worn bangles and bracelets, seeing her wrist bare looked indecent.

“And who’s going to take Archie when I’m gone?” she asked again, but we had no answer for her. My brother and I had no plans to move into that old house or take him with us.

I lived in a small apartment that was unsuitable for any kind of pet. It was a one-bedroom box on the seventeenth floor, but I had windows all around me, which I loved. I liked to wake up on winter mornings, stick my head out the sliding back door, inhale the punishing Rocky Mountain air and let it buzz around my lungs. People in our city liked to complain about the dryness hollowing you out, but I liked it. It made me stand tall and stiff.

I wasn’t afraid of heights, but my mother refused to visit. Even before the cancer, she was growing timid, at first not wanting to drive very far outside of her corner of the city, then her neighbourhood, until simply leaving her home became an effort. When she once accused me of choosing my apartment just so she wouldn’t visit, I felt bad, because—maybe I did? The truth was she brought the smell of that house, of Archie, with her wherever she went. I never said that to her, or my brother, though he would have been the only person who understood.

My brother had made a different choice. He lived in a big house right on the edge of the city, in one of those new developments—Mountain Vista, or Vista Radiance, or something like that. New houses were being built on either side of him. Everything was new. He liked new.

It was a different way of doing the same thing. I went high in the sky to make the city vague, but he went far away, putting glossy things in the way. Both were attempts to obscure something, but not quite erase it.

He had two children who were allergic to all sorts of things, and his wife was unbearably shy (or so he said). She was always sick on Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And Easter. I didn’t mind, since no one in my family cooked, but I could tell it bothered my mother, and I mean how hard would it be to host one dinner, or show up one time? All it did was draw attention to how whittled down our family tree had become, just my mom, my brother, and I, and sometimes my uncle Paul, who helped with food for Archie.

For all those many reasons—reasons that kept coming—my brother couldn’t take Archie either, so in the hospital, all I said was “Archie will be fine,” because, after all, he might be.

Neither my brother nor I cried when she passed. I thought there would be wailing, buzzers going off, nurses all about, but it was quiet. We didn’t stay for long after it happened either. My brother signed some things while I sat in a chair under the bright fluorescent lights, holding my mother’s bag of personal items on my lap. I buried my hand in the bag and let my fingers run over the items. There was a school picture of each of us, with watermarks across the front that obscured parts of our faces. I felt her bracelets and bangles, though the gold layers chipped off under my fingernails. A romance novel. A stuffed animal that my brother’s kids had brought her when they visited.

​I put the bangles on my wrist, but they were too heavy to be comfortable, and I considered throwing it all in the trash—her things, the house, with its grimy corners and faded walls, the freezer—burned microwave pizzas, the broken drawer handles, and of course, Archie. 

---

The next morning, I met my brother at a coffee shop downtown. The sky was gray, and the trees looked thinner. It felt like all the leaves had dropped overnight, and the ugliness of November had arrived. At this time of year, the bones of the city protruded out of the earth. Its industrial backbone, brittle and cracked, was on full display.

People in suits said hello to him, but didn’t look at me. I still dressed, and slouched, like a student, though I hadn’t been one for years. I ordered two croissants knowing he would pay for them. It wasn’t like I was poor or anything. I worked at the big recreation centre downtown, but it was the kind of thing a big brother was supposed to do.

We had an important matter to discuss.

“When’s the last time you’ve been to the house?” I asked.

He sipped his coffee slowly. “Last year, I think,” he said. “It was pretty bad then.”

“It’s worse now,” I said, as I stirred my cup. I wasn’t being judgmental. When one of us would get angry or frustrated with our mother, it was the other’s job to bring them back. To remind each other about all the things she had done for us.

My brother was old enough when my dad left to remember mom having to figure everything out. The long nights of her sitting on the back steps, drinking and smoking with my uncle, right below our bedroom window. I liked the smell of the smoke. It would float into the window as a wisp, an invisible string connecting me to my mother.

“So, what are we going to do with him?” he asked.

I shrugged. He was waiting for me to say I would handle it, and I was waiting for him to do the same.

We had agreed, when we knew my mother only had a few months left, that we would sell the house, but we ignored the topic of Archie completely.

“I don’t mind paying someone to come in and clean the place to get it ready to sell, but Archie has to be gone by then,” he said.

“Maybe Uncle Paul will take him?” I offered. “He's been feeding him since mom's been in the hospital.”

“No, I already asked,” he said. “He's done.”

“They’ll probably paint the stairs,” I said, changing the topic. When we were ten and twelve my mother painted the wooden stairs going down to the basement. Carpet was expensive and she didn’t like the idea of getting something used, so she got some half-finished cans of paint from our neighbours, who had recently finished painting their kid’s bedrooms “Frosted Blue” and “Coral Reef”. I stayed by the stairs as my mother crouched down on each step and painted intricate designs like you would see on a Persian rug. She was impulsive, always with a new idea or project. She had almost made it down to the bottom, but she ran out of paint and couldn’t finish. I think she was relieved because Archie made strange sounds under the stairs as she painted, and even she, who loved that damn thing, felt exposed dangling her limbs through the stair rungs.

“Let’s just be honest, okay? Neither one of us is going to take him. It’s a crazy pet to have, and it’s probably not legal,” my brother said, as he fidgeted in his spot. “I think we should surrender him to animal control.”

He expected me to put up more of a fight, but after running through the options, this was the inevitable one. There was no sense dancing around it anymore.

“Yes, I think that’s what we have to do,” I said.

​We planned to meet at the house after work. We agreed to do it together so there would be no confusion about whose “fault” it was, as if Archie’s feelings would be hurt. My brother had already researched how it would work. Someone was going to show up at five P.M. and take him away. We would be surrendering him, and the city would decide what to do with him, meaning he could be sent to a facility, a sanctuary, or possibly be put down.

---

I waited outside the house in my car until he arrived. I didn’t like being left alone with Archie, I never had. In the summers during junior high I was the first one home after school, so I sat on the front step and read until someone else came home. During winter, it was trickier. There were always a few days, when it was unbearably cold, and my best friend Lindsay had basketball practice, that I had to stay home alone with him.

On those days, I would go upstairs into my mom’s room, crawl under her big duvet, turn the T.V. up loud and crunch on potato chips. It was as far away from the basement as I could get. On one of those winter days, I heard Archie scratching at something. It was constant, and I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t turn the T.V. up any louder. I thought about how cold he must be down there, because our house was cold everywhere, and I cried under the covers until my mother got home.

I worried about him being lonely as well, but my mother would wave me off and tell me about what a nice life Archie had. He had a window where the sun came in, and could look up in the sky to see the birds fly by. He even had an outdoor area, though it was tucked behind the house, and the fence surrounding it was high and covered vertically with black tarp that we didn’t dare peek through. Sometimes, when I was in the backyard, I could sense he was there, looking at me through the little cracks.

When my brother’s car pulled up, I was relieved. It was getting closer to five and I was not going to do this by myself.

“I’m sorry! Meeting ran long!” He said, waving his hand. “Oh god,” he said, staring at the house. The stucco exterior was balding in some places and cracked in others. He surveyed the yard as we walked up the front steps and entered the house. In the entryway, his eyes closed in on a small, dark, black spot on the floorboards.

“Is that mold?” he asked, and shook his head in disgust. What his gesture really meant was how could you let it get like this?

“Well maybe you should have come and checked on her. Taken out the garbage, and made sure she bought food for herself,” I barked. Archie ate a lot. It was why we never had any money for other things.

The doorbell interrupted our argument.

The man on the doorstep had a uniform with a logo I didn’t recognize. I had assumed we would be surrendering Archie to the Fish and Wildlife Department, or something like that. Part of me expected a zookeeper to be standing there, but this man reminded me of the animal control officers from the movies, the ones with mustaches that collected stray dogs by the scruff.

I listened to my brother describe Archie. “He’s about eight feet long, greenish brown, with black dots.”

I furrowed my brow and turned to him as he talked, but the man seemed satisfied and went back to his truck to fetch the equipment he would need.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. “What are you even saying?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You’re telling him that Archie is an anaconda?”

“Yes…”

Neither one of us moved.

“Archie is a tiger,” I said with conviction.

“Are you nuts?” he exclaimed, waiting for me to let up on the supposed joke. “You think mom kept a tiger in the basement all these years?! How would it even fit? And with that little outdoor space? Do you know how much a tiger eats?”

I pictured Archie’s stalking eyes behind the stairs—eyes I had never seen. I pictured his paws swiping the peanuts from underneath the stairs—paws I had never seen. Had I ever seen his orange fur? Heard a roar? No. Just shuffling, whining, and scratching.

“How long do snakes live?” I asked, intent on making a point.

My brother squinted his eyes like they were unbearably dry, “I don’t know, obviously a long time.”

I pulled out my phone and Googled.

“Ten to twenty years,” I said. “You're fucking thirty years old, and Grandma had Archie before you were born. He is not a snake.”

But what did that mean? Neither of us had ever gone downstairs and looked at Archie. For decades, we stayed upstairs.

When the man came back, we didn’t know what to say, so we followed him into the basement. I was still angry at him, but I nearly held my brother's hand. The light at the bottom of the stairs gave a soft glow, and we were careful descending.

Archie had taken a toll on the place. My mother’s painted carpet was scuffed and worn out, and the bottom stairs were splintering. I couldn’t tell if it was from large, rough paws or a heavy belly sliding over them repeatedly.

I listened for any sound.

“Is that all the light there is?” The man asked, and we nodded. He flicked on his flashlight and moved forward. The basement was concrete and mostly unfinished, though some sections were partially drywalled. There were two chairs in the main area, and a corner full of blankets, where Archie presumably slept.

It smelled awful, like musk and moisture, and I had to pull my sweater over my nose to continue. There were enough gaps and holes around for a creature to hide unseen, which made me nervous.

“Archie,” I said quietly, though I instantly regretted it. I didn’t know if he liked me or not. Would my voice make him happy or angry?

“Maybe he’s outside,” the man said. He moved towards a small window where a stream of filtered light came in. My mother had made something like a cat door at the back entrance, but it was large and heavy. The small, caged area outside the door was hidden at the side of the house, so only the neighbour on the East side could see it, and for as long as we had lived there that house had been empty.

The man pulled the door open with great effort and went outside. “There’s nothing out here,” he called, with frustration in his voice. “Oh wait, there’s a hole in the fence.”

We rushed outside to join him. The hole was the size of a microwave.

“He’s gone,” the man said and shook his head. He left to make a call, and my brother and I looked at each other in a sort of quiet panic.

“Do you know the last time Uncle Paul brought food over?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” I stumbled. “Two days ago, I think.”

We had to search for him. It wasn’t like Archie could escape to a forest or farmland nearby, the neighborhood was all houses and small businesses. A tiger or a large snake would certainly be noticed.

“What are we going to do if we see him?” I asked.

“Call each other, I guess. Call him," he said, passing me the animal control officer's card.

My brother took off down the street, so I walked in the opposite direction, moving deeper into the neighbourhood. It felt silly to call out Archie’s name, like I was looking for a lost dog. I hadn't walked around the neighbourhood in years, but it was nearly as I remembered, just a little more worn out, a little smaller and quieter. My mom had complained about there not being any kids around anymore. She missed handing out Halloween candy to hordes of excited children. Any kids that were left now went to other neighbourhoods to trick or treat.

I walked for a long time, eyeing a few open sheds, overgrown backyards, and dumpsters, but mostly I wandered, until I came across a familiar red house a few streets over from my mom’s. It had a big bay window with fake brick underneath. A boy named Michael or Mickey, used to live there. He was one of my brother’s friends and would shout at me when I walked by after school, making gross jokes about my body. I used to daydream about letting Archie loose on him. I would walk by like I usually did, and he would call me a “slut” or “fatty”, like he usually did, then I would whistle and Archie would appear out from around the corner, and I would smile as Michael ran down the street about to be mauled.

I took out my phone and googled how long do tigers live?

Twenty years, it said.

I returned to the house after an hour or so. My brother was sitting in his car. “The animal control guy is going to come back later to look around, but he doesn’t think there is much to do. He said he doesn’t think a snake could survive out in the cold for long. He said there would be big fines if mom were still alive. They might even have to do an alert,” he said through his window. He looked defeated.

“It’s not a snake,” I said. “Does that matter?”

He sighed. “Honestly, I’m just ready to be done with this.”

I nodded and let him drive away.

I sat in my car for a long while. I needed to keep searching, but as each minute passed the urgency to find Archie grew less and less, until suddenly it was possible that he might be a figment of our imagination, that he might not exist at all.

The neighbourhood was quiet. There were no cars driving by, and no people walking the streets, but a sold sign on the neighbour’s front lawn caught my eye. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to move into that decrepit place. Maybe they would knock it down and build something nice, but I doubted that. It was probably grown over inside with weeds and mold. It might be a nice home for mice and squirrels in the cold, but that was it.

​If I wasn’t going to look for Archie, there was no sense staying. As I drove away, I kept my window down, even though the air was sharp and cold. I was listening for something to stir the air and stop me, but I heard nothing. 

---

Ashley Farrelly lives in Calgary, Alberta, where she can see the mountains every day if she squints a little. She works in health care to reduce burnout in front-line workers and likes to write at night in her favourite green chair.