Cat Bearing Gifts

16

IT WAS MUCH earlier that night when Misto, wanting company, prowled the cool night looking for Joe and Dulcie or his son, Pan, to share the late and secret hours. Thinking that Pan might be visiting Tessa, he galloped away through paths of moonlight, through shadows as black as soot, trotted across rough oak branches above the narrow alleys, making for the crowded cottages that rose just above the village. Soon, from the roof of Tessa’s small cottage, he looked down on the dark driveway where a reflection of light cut across from the kitchen window.

Backing down the pine tree by the front door and peering in, he watched Debbie at the kitchen table sorting piles of bright new sweaters and blouses and cutting the tags from them. He didn’t scent Pan, and when he moved on to Tessa’s window, there was no sign of him, no red tomcat. When he tried the screen, it was firmly shut and latched, and Tessa slept soundly. He wished she’d wake and talk to him.

He didn’t hide from the child as Pan did, to keep Debbie from knowing he was about. But he didn’t flaunt himself in front of the woman, either. Sometimes he’d come into the yard when Debbie wasn’t watching Tessa, and the child would follow him, slipping away from her mother and sister up across the deserted streets into Emmylou’s yard. If Debbie saw her, she’d drag her home again, she didn’t want the child wandering off after “some stray cat. First that cat up in Oregon, that red-colored cat always hanging around. The fuss you made over it. And now this scrawny yellow one. What is it with cats, Tessa? Can’t you play with one of your dolls and leave the dirty animals alone? I won’t have it in the house, a dirty stray sneaking in and out carrying fleas and germs and dead mice.”

But up at Emmylou’s, the older woman was kind to Tessa, she liked the shy child, she talked to her just as she talked to Misto, never expecting an answer, just rambled on, and that put Tessa at ease. She would soon curl up on a chair or on the bed close to Misto, watching Emmylou and listening to her random comments and stories, and then she didn’t look pale and pinched anymore. Now as he looked in at Tessa he heard Debbie’s step, and saw the kitchen light go out. He dropped from the sill down into the bushes.

Heading away again, on up to Emmylou’s house, he saw her windows were all dark, her lights already out, and he thought to curl up at the foot of her bed. It was lonely with his own family gone, even staying with the Damens sometimes it was lonely. Slipping in through the old, splintery cat door and through the dim house, he found Emmylou sound asleep. But before settling for a nap on her bed, he leaped to the dresser.

A finger of moonlight through the window reflected across the two pictures of Sammie. The little child. And the grown-up Sammie. Two photos taken sixty years apart, and that long-ago life nudged at him.

He thought about nine-year-old Sammie and how she had confided her fear of the man who followed her mother, and confided her dreams of her uncle Lee Fontana and his last big robbery, a lone bandit in the style of an earlier century making off with saddlebags full of stolen cash, never a hint of conscience or remorse, just a smug smile at the corner of his thin, leathery face. Was this, then, what these old musty bills were about, was this young Sammie’s legacy from Lee Fontana that he’d sent her after he fled the country for Mexico? Misto’s memory of that time was as fragmented as a shattered windowpane, only a few scattered moments coming clear, only a few snatches of that past life.

It was a noise outside from up the hill that drew him away, footsteps moving down the stone stairs from the little building above. Dropping to the floor and slipping outside again, he stood in the shadows of the porch, tail twitching, as the taller man eased down the stone steps carrying a bucket, a spade, and a heavy paper grocery bag. His jacket pockets bulged, too, and on the night breeze Misto caught the money scent. He watched him open the shed and disappear inside. The place was so small it was a wonder he’d gotten that long black car in there and been able to shut the door against its rear bumper. He came out again carrying only the spade and bucket. He knelt beside the stairs and began to dig, dumping crumbling dry earth into the bucket. There was a sense of hardness about him that Misto sometimes encountered in his travels, the cold brutality of some of the men around the coastal fishing docks that made him steer clear of them.

He expected the black car must be stolen, and he wondered what they’d done with their old truck. Maybe it had quit running and they’d traded it, in the way of thieves, for something far more grand. Easing down Emmylou’s wooden steps and then up the hill for a closer look, he veered into deeper shadows as the man carried the full bucket inside and shut the shed door, shut it right in his face, never seeing him.

There was no way to see inside, no windows. The door itself, though ancient, was so tight a fit there wasn’t a crack to peer through. The sounds from within were a dull clunking and gritty scraping, almost as if he were stirring the dirt in the bucket, and then a sliding, rubbing sound, then after a very long while there was another clunk and then silence. Waiting, he grew impatient, and at last he slipped on up the hill and up the stone stairs to the stone room to whatever he might see there.

The one window was crusted with grime, its screen fallen off, lying far away overgrown with weeds. The small pane of glass stood open to the autumn night, and he leaped up to the sill to look in. He could smell the stink of soured food in dirty cans, and of dirty clothes, could see a pile of clothes flung in one corner. The room smelled of the tall man, and of the smaller man and, sharply, the stink of sickness and blood.

Slipping in through the open window onto the short kitchen counter, he dropped as soundlessly as he could down to the grimy linoleum. The man lying in a sleeping bag didn’t stir. He lay curled up like a hurt animal. This was Birely, the same man as in Sammie’s grown-up photo of the two of them, still the same slanted forehead and fat cheeks as the tiny child he had known, same protruding lower lip caught in a permanent pout. His nose and face were a mess of blood and he was breathing through his mouth; he was doubled up in pain, he needed help, but apparently his tall friend didn’t think so. He looked to Misto like he wasn’t far from death. The old cat’s instinct was to find a phone and paw in 911, to alert the medics. Leaping to the sill again, he was out the window racing down through the tangled yard to Emmylou’s dark house, passing the shed where clicking sounds had begun again.

The phone was in the kitchen. He was through the cat door and up onto the counter. He could do it without ever waking Emmylou, he had only to whisper into the speaker, he thought nervously, hoping the call couldn’t be traced, that the dispatcher wouldn’t pick up Emmylou’s number. Hoped Captain Harper and his detectives wouldn’t start looking at innocent Emmylou Warren for the identity of the phantom snitch, for the source of so many informative phone calls over the years when, in truth, Emmylou hadn’t a clue. The older woman had no notion about speaking cats or undercover cats who’d left their pawprints on so many village telephones.

But did Emmylou even have ID blocking? Not likely—why would she? This woman lived the simplest life, she didn’t take a daily paper, didn’t have a TV, didn’t allow herself any amenities that he could see. Why would she pay for ID blocking? If her phone number were public knowledge, who did she have to fear? He had lifted a paw to the phone’s speaker when Emmylou’s bedroom light came on.

He heard her moving about and in another minute she came into the kitchen, in her robe and slippers. She glanced at him where he sat innocently beside the phone, and then moved silently out the back door. Stood on the porch looking up at the stone shed, listening to the faint scraping noises from within, then she moved silently down her steps, pulling her robe tighter against the chill. Moved up the hill in her slippers, the hem of her robe catching on weeds and on the overgrown bushes, stood to the side of the closed shed door, listening.

Two more taps, and then another long silence. When footsteps within approached the door, Emmylou ducked into the bushes, crouching comically, her tall form hunkered down among the tangled twigs, her long hair caught on the branches.

The door didn’t open, the footsteps turned away again toward the back, and then again there was silence. So long a pause that Emmylou gave it up, just as Misto had done earlier. Rising, she looked up at the stone room above, stood listening, glanced back at the stone shed and then moved on up the hill as Misto had done, only pulling a small flashlight from her robe pocket and switching it on. The thin path of light picked out patches of wiry grass and the matted damp leaves trampled into a rough path. Twice she paused looking up at the house above her. The stone steps followed the ground only inches above it, and only near the top did she move from the yard up onto them, her damp slippers making no sound. On the little landing she switched the light off, and moved directly to the dirty window, again as Misto had done, and she peered in.

Even in the near dark she must have seen the figure doubled up on the floor, or maybe she heard Birely moan. She looked back down the long empty flight, making sure the man hadn’t left the shed and was watching, then she shone her light in.

She stiffened when she saw Birely. Even with his bloodied nose, she had to know him from Sammie’s pictures, and maybe she knew him, too, from when Sammie was alive? “Birely? Oh, my. What . . . ?” But even as she spoke, Misto saw the taller man slip out of the garage.

The doors had made no sound, only when he closed them was there the faintest scrape—but enough to startle Emmylou. As she turned, he saw her. He froze, then ducked into the bushes and was gone. Misto could hear him moving away, bumbling in the darkness crackling the branches, but then, as if gathering his wits, he moved on nearly silent as a cat.

Emmylou stood looking where he’d vanished, not where he was now. And then she ran, down the stairs and down the hill, up her own steps and into her cottage, and Misto heard the door lock behind her. Racing after her and in through the cat door, he watched her snatch up the phone and dial the three digits. He could hear the little canned voice at the other end, faint as a bee buzz, as the dispatcher questioned her.

When she’d hung up the phone, she fetched the crowbar, stood hefting it, looking out the kitchen window at the back porch. Misto rubbed against her ankles, wondering how Birely had been hurt so bad, wondering whether Birely would die, wondering why he still cared so much. Wondering why those lives, long past, had returned to haunt him so sharply, or why he had returned to this particular place and time. To play a part in Birely’s sad life? Or, perhaps, so he could know the last, sad fate of his little Sammie?