Cat Bearing Gifts

11

THE HARSH RING of the phone woke Kate Osborne, but when she reached for the phone in the dark room, trying to sit up, tangled in the covers, she couldn’t find the damn thing. Feeling around her, she realized she wasn’t in bed; her bare legs were tangled in fur, making her shiver. She gingerly touched the animal feel of it, realized she was stroking the fur throw that she kept on the couch, that she’d gone to sleep in the living room. The phone was still ringing. Last night, she hadn’t bothered to turn on the answering machine. She used it when she went out, if she thought of it, but since she’d returned to San Francisco from her long, dark journey, she’d found even that innocuous electronic gadget annoying. This change in her life, leaving her cozy and successful designer’s position in Seattle, opting for unfettered freedom back in California with no obligations, taking the small apartment in the city, and then the amazing events that led her down through the cavernous tunnels into that terrifying other world, all of it had left her nervously intolerant of anything nonhuman speaking up for her. She found the phone on the ninth ring. Snatching it up, she pushed her pale hair out of her eyes, found the lamp, and switched it on. Her watch said ten o’clock, but it felt like way after midnight. “What?” she said. “If this is a sales pitch—”

“Kate, it’s Charlie Harper.”

She sat up, shivering in the cold room, pulled the heavy throw around her, shoved another pillow behind her. Beyond the open draperies the great, lighted span of the Golden Gate thrust its curves against the night.

“Wilma and I are in Santa Cruz, at Dominican Hospital. There’s been a wreck. Lucinda and Pedric aren’t hurt too bad, but—”

Kate came fully awake. “What happened? Are they all right? Where’s Kit? Charlie, is Kit all right?” A wreck at night on that narrow, winding two-lane. “Where’s Kit?” she shouted, imagining Kit thrown out of the car or running from the crash, terrified.

Charlie said nothing.

“Where is she?” She pictured Kit hurt, the confusion of cops and EMTs crowding in at her, Kit running from them in terror and confusion, the little cat who was more than cat but who, under stress, could revert to her basic feline instincts, running mindlessly, hiding even from the people she loved best, just as an ordinary cat might do.

“Ryan and Clyde have gone to look for her. She ran, but she’s all right. She called,” Charlie said, “called on Lucinda’s cell phone. She’s all right, Kate. They’re taking Rock, he’ll find her.”

Kate kicked the fur cover to the floor. Carrying the headset listening to Charlie, she made for the bedroom. “Where’s the wreck? Where exactly . . . ?”

“You can’t do anything, Kate. They’ll find her. I only thought you’d want to know—”

“I’m coming. Kit’s all alone—”

“She’s not, she . . . Rock will be there soon, Rock and Joe and Pan, they’ll find her. You’d only . . . If you took Highway One, you couldn’t get past the slide, you wouldn’t be able to drive on down to the hospital. You’d have to leave your car there, walk across, and ride with someone.”

“I’m coming. On my way. I’ll take 280 . . .”

“Come to Dominican, then. In Santa Cruz, we’ll meet there. I know a vet there, I’ve already called him, just in case. But she’ll be fine, Kate, trust me. Kit’s a resourceful little soul.”

In the bedroom, pulling off her robe, she thought about getting a car in a hurry. She’d been taking cabs and cable cars since she’d returned to the city, didn’t want to bother with a car, had rented one when she needed to. She thought about how Kit had loved the city, how only yesterday Kit had been right here shopping with them, the little tortoiseshell whispering secretly in her ear, letting no salesclerk see her, but so filled with joy at the wonders of the elegant stores and restaurants, and now she was lost, frightened and lost and maybe hurt. Oh, God, she couldn’t be hurt.

Standing naked in the bedroom she called 411, got the number for the Avis office just down the block, made arrangements to have a car brought around. Pulling on panties and jeans and boots and a dirty red sweatshirt, she snatched up her purse and headed for the door. Whatever she needed, toothbrush, change of clothes, she’d buy somewhere. She stopped at her desk long enough to lock her safe. She checked the balcony glass doors, locked her front door behind her, and headed for the elevator.

The driver was at the curb, a tall, thin redheaded man, his long hair tied back beneath a chauffeur’s cap. Kate drove him back to the Avis office over streets slick with fog, waited in the car for him to run her credit card, and then headed south, the city’s narrow streets reflecting passing car lights and colored neon from the small cafés and shops. She pictured the city as a friend had described it from sixty years ago when Kate’s grandfather was alive, her mother’s father, Kate’s link to her amazing journey. It was a friendlier city then, without the stark, tall buildings whose lighted offices thrust up into the night around her now like tethered rocket ships, dwarfing the cozy neighborhoods of an earlier day. A city that had somehow soured with the spoils of modern greed and degradation. A gentler San Francisco then, where you could walk the streets in the small hours unmolested, laughing and acting silly but never in danger; and where so many true artists had come together, living in the lofts and in the Sausalito houseboats, their work singing with the passion of life, Kate’s own father among them. She had only recently visited his paintings again, in the San Francisco museums—but only his earlier works. Braden West, too, had gone down into the Netherworld, had lived there a long life with her mother.

She knew, now, that they had returned at least once, bringing their youngest child back with them, had made that last journey up to the city to put Kate herself into the care of a San Francisco orphanage. They’d had no choice. Even then the Netherworld was crumbling, they had wanted her away from its inevitable fall, wanted her to grow up in a city that would offer her some future, in a country brighter with promise than that decaying land.

As the tires of the rented Toyota sang along the wet macadam of the Embarcadero, she debated taking Highway One despite Charlie’s advice. She moved on past the entrance to the AT&T Park. The traffic seemed light for this time of evening. Accelerating up onto the 280, she merged into fast traffic heading south between the clustered lights of the bedroom cities that ran one into the next, San Mateo, Palo Alto, the smaller communities separated like islands by short realms of black and empty night. The east hills rose invisible in the darkness, marked only by their scattered lights high up like gathered fireflies in the night sky. She’d be in Santa Cruz in less than two hours. She knew Charlie was right, that she could do nothing for Kit but get in the way of the searchers, slowing them and causing them added trouble. But she prayed for Kit, her own kind of prayer that had little to do with churches, she prayed for Kit and was filled with an aching fear for her, for one small and special cat shivering and alone among the vast, wild cliffs.

KIT LOST HER nerve when the coyotes drew too close. Crouched among the jutting rocks, she shot out of the dark niche at the last minute, scrambled back down the crumbling cliff where she hoped the beasts wouldn’t venture. She still carried the phone, reluctant to leave her only link to the world of humans, but its weight was a hindrance, and put her off balance. Halfway down, sliding and clinging to the scruffy clumps, she heard the rush of the beasts above her, and when she looked up their shadows were too close, coming down the boulders. She scrabbled away across the face of the cliff, lost her balance and nearly fell, and it was then she dropped the phone. She froze, listened to it clunk end over end down the mountain.

When she looked up again a coyote stood just above her, peering over the top of the slide, his pale eyes narrow and hungry. She looked past him to the trees and knew she couldn’t make that long run. He stank of spoiled meat, his smell made her flehmen, pulling back her lips with disgust.

He padded casually along just above her, easily keeping pace as she worked her way along the cliff’s face, moving more easily now without the weight of the phone. She kept moving, seeking some fissure or shelter, until at last, ahead and below her, the black scar of a narrow crevice cut down into the earth. Zigzagging toward it, nearly falling, she slipped down into the four-inch crack. There was barely room for a cat, no room for the larger predator. The rough sides of the cleft was perfumed with the old, faint scent of skunk. She followed it deep, smug in her escape but terrified of being trapped in there if the earth should shift again. Above her, the coyote clawed at the stone, and she edged deeper down until she could go no further, until the rock closed beneath her hind paws. Above her the coyote’s eyes shone in, reflecting light from the floods on the road below. He began to dig.

Watching his frantic, shifting silhouette, listening to the beast’s scrabbling paws and smelling his rank breath, she longed to bloody that toothy muzzle. If ever the great cat god reached down with a helping paw, she needed him to do that now. Soon the coyote was joined by another and then a third, the beasts edging cleverly down the unsteady rocks and digging at the narrow crevice, panting and slavering, hungry with the smell of her. The night sky was milky, fog settling in again as the wind died, the thick mist easing down like a pale quilt over the shaggy beasts. She didn’t know how long she cringed there wanting to leap out and attack and knowing she’d lose the battle. She was shivering with cold when the coyotes suddenly stopped digging.

Turning, they stood looking down toward the road; they shifted nervously, the faint hush of paws on stone. A new, moving light reflected up against the roof of fog and she heard a car’s engine, heard tires crunching on the fallen gravel. Not one car, but two. She could hear voices muffled by the fog and the surf. The coyotes moved away and then back again, began to dig again. Still she heard voices, she listened for some time and then the talking stopped and she could hear someone walking up the road, two sets of boots tapping softly along uphill. Only then did the coyotes shift away, their shadows gone above her, but still she sensed them there, maybe crouched and waiting. She started up to look, scrambling up the narrow rift, straining, pulling herself up until she was at the top of the fissure again and could peer out.

Fog was thickening across the road below but she could see a long pickup. Ryan’s king cab? Or maybe only the first of the cleanup crew, come to disentangle the wrecked trucks, preparing to haul them away? Looking along the cliff, she saw the coyotes crouched in fog at the edge, their backs to her, looking down the steep drop, too bold to back away, too familiar with the human world to fear the approaching hikers. Disdainful of mankind but still tensed to run, their ears moving nervously. Could she run now, while they were distracted? Streak away, and up that nearest tree that stood tall and ghostlike at the edge of the misty woods? Could she reach it before they were on her?

She was crouched on the lip of the cleft, poised to spring away, when one of the beasts turned, glancing back at her. She vanished down the hole again, scrambled down as deep as she could go. Now the beast blocked the hole, digging, his breath as rank as soured garbage. His frantic seeking stopped when a glare of light shone behind him, picking out his shaggy coat. She heard a roar—Rock’s snarling roar, heard humans running, heard Rock’s barking attack, and a cat yowled with rage, and another cat, the night rang with snarls and cat screams, she heard the thunder of boots on stone. Ryan screamed, “Hold, Rock. Back off!” Rock’s roar was like a great wolf above her, a coyote screamed in pain, and she heard Pan’s yowl of challenge.

Clyde shouted, “Not there, the cats . . .”

A gunshot thundered down the cleft, deafening her, accompanied by a pained yip. Another shot, another cry of pain, cut short. Running paws scrambling away across the stony escarpment.

Then, silence.

She peered up to the mouth of the cleft. Pan looked over, backlighted by the beam of a flashlight behind him. Joe Grey and Rock looked over. Ryan and Clyde crowded to peer down behind them.

“Come out,” Pan said. “One of the beasts is dead, the rest ran off. Come out, Kit.” The light swept away, out of her eyes, and she could see again. She scrambled out, bolted into Pan yowling and crying and talking all at once.

A dead coyote lay beside the cleft. Ryan held Rock away from it, the big Weimaraner fighting to get at the animal, but then he strained up toward the woods, too, where the others had vanished. He huffed and pulled at his lead, torn between the two prey, but held in check by Ryan. Kit backed away from the mangled coyote, its face torn and bleeding. She glanced at Ryan’s revolver.

“I fired point-blank,” Ryan said, “away from you, away from everyone.” But Kit was hardly paying attention. Pan was licking her face, and she preened against him.

Ryan picked Joe up and held him in her arms, cuddling him, and she pulled Rock close, admiring them both, praising them both for their tracking, telling them they were the finest of SWAT teams. Joe Grey tried to look modest—not easy when he could still taste coyote blood, could still feel his claws in its rough coat, and felt more fierce than modest.

It was Clyde who had pulled Joe off the beast, forcing him away, and had grabbed Pan and somehow got hold of Rock’s collar, too, and dragged them away so Ryan could fire and keep them from being bitten. Joe allowed Ryan to admire him until he heard someone coming up the hiking trail.

“The sheriff’s deputy,” he said softly, peering down the cliff where the trail angled up toward them, watching the law approach to see what the shooting was about. “You two better get your story together,” he murmured. He wasn’t sure whether shooting an attacking coyote, in California, like shooting any wild animal in the state, was a major crime, whether such an act was punishable by unrealistic fines and extreme jail time.

“He attacked me,” Ryan said, “and he attacked Rock. Get in my pack, Joe. You, too, Pan. We don’t need any extra cats on the scene.”

Joe dropped from her shoulder into the pack, silent and obedient. Clyde scooped Pan up and deposited him unceremoniously in his own pack, then picked Kit up and cuddled her.

Settling down inside Ryan’s pack, Joe thought about rabies, and about the red tape and bureaucratic confusion that was going to follow this little event, maybe even quarantine for all of them while the carcass was examined and rabies was ruled out. Or not ruled out, he thought glumly. Looking down at the dead coyote, he hoped this one was clean. Looking out through the netting in the side of the pack, he watched the baby-faced trooper step smartly up the trail, his hand poised lightly over his holstered weapon.