Beginning, Middle, End

The main thing is to have a beginning and a middle and an end, Billy soon found out. Without the beginning, there is no anything, not even flowers or babies or anything. There is just gray air and a stroking feeling. The stroking got harder and harder and more painful, Billy realized, until there was blood, like that time with the cat that thought Billy smelled funny. The cat was named "Spiffy," but Billy didn't know that, and soon enough, Billy probably didn't want to know it. The cat was so fast! It was like lightening! Billy had seen lightening before, and it was so fast and pretty, but the cat was just fast. It might have been pretty, Billy thought, but it was so fast that he didn't have time to notice.

The middle was Billy's favorite part. Without the middle, why, it would be like Billy's Crazy Old Grandmother and her bookshelf. It would be like his Crazy Old Grandmother's bookshelf. His Crazy Old Grandmother owned no books, but she had a lovely shelf, all empty and Crazy, except for two bookends without any books between them. Two bookends by themselves looked Crazy, even Billy knew that. The bookends had two cats on them, both of them Crazy-looking. Billy thought maybe those Crazy-looking cats wanted a bite out of him, or maybe they wanted a bite from a rather nice mouse, if a rather nice mouse lived in Billy's Crazy Old Grandmother's house. Billy hoped there weren't any nice mice that he would name "Stan" because those Crazy-looking cats were so Crazy-looking and would probably eat Stan. As it turned out, those Crazy-looking cats didn't take a bite out of Billy or Stan, but instead jumped onto Billy! Onto Billy's head! Ow, ow, Billy thought it would never stop hurting, and Billy thought his Crazy Old Grandmother came too close to him after those Crazy-looking cats jumped onto his hurting head.

The end, Billy always said, was the part that made everything neat and pretty and tied-up. They were good, the ends, according to Billy, because some things like bananas and those darn cats' tails can't go on and on and on. Once, Billy remembered stepping on a cat's tail because it was so long, like it would never end and like it was everywhere at once. The cat danced around as if it were insane. His name was Marley and Billy's uncle, who was a mechanic, owned him. Billy thought Marley would never stop being mad. Billy thought Marley and everyone were mad, like Marley's tail, like they would never end at all.