Cat Bearing Gifts

17

HAVING LEFT PEDRIC’S room hidden in Clyde’s backpack curled up atop his spare sweatshirt, Kit lay now beneath Lucinda’s white covers pressed between the bars of the hospital bed and Lucinda’s warm, familiar side. Her housemate seemed frail and vulnerable in her heavy bandages and cast, and wearing only the flimsy hospital gown. Whenever Lucinda slept, Kit drifted off, too. She woke when Lucinda stirred sleepily and stroked her back and head. Wilma sat close beside the bed in a folding metal chair, her brocade carryall hanging on a knob of the bed where Kit could slip easily down into it. Three times within the last hour, the nurse had come in. Each time, Wilma had risen to distract her, asking needless questions, going into useless detail about Lucinda’s condition and care—maybe if she made a pest of herself the nurse would stay out of there for a while.

But nurses weren’t easily distracted. This small, square Latina woman had answered Wilma’s questions briefly as she checked and replenished the IV bottle and went about tidying up, picking up discarded tissues and adhesive tape and paper wrappers from the metal table, and then bringing Lucinda a fresh pitcher of water. Clyde was down the hall with Pedric, but soon someone would come to relieve him and to pass Kit back to Pedric again—like a library book forever changing hands. The time, by the big round clock above Lucinda’s bed, was three A.M. and despite Kit’s satisfaction at being with Lucinda, the predawn hour made her incredibly lonely.

This was the cats’ hour, the shank of the night, the time when, if she were at home, she would be bolting out her cat door and down her oak tree to hunt the hills with Pan. Or they’d be lounging in her tree house listening to little animal sounds bursting suddenly out in the silent dark. But tonight, here in this strange town and strange building, shut in this small unfamiliar room among unpleasant hospital smells, she felt edgy and dislocated.

She knew that Lucinda and Pedric, lying bound to their beds, felt much worse, helpless and so far from home, felt far more displaced than she.

There were no windows in the ER—when dawn did come Lucinda wouldn’t be able to look out at the sky, at the first hint of sun as she so liked to do. She always rose from bed when the sky was barely light, would put on the coffee and then, with the house smelling deliciously of that dark brew, she would sit at the dining table sipping her first cup, looking out through the big corner windows enjoying the sunrise, watching its blush brighten and then slowly fade again and daylight spill golden onto their little corner of the world, onto the round and friendly hills and the intricate tangle of rooftops spread out all below her.

And Kit herself, if they were at home, as they should be, would soon return from hunting. Another two hours and she’d bolt into the house as dawn broke, Pedric and Lucinda up and showered and in the kitchen making breakfast. She’d sit on the windowsill cleaning up, washing off the blood of the hunt. She’d long for a nap but breakfast would win, the three of them would enjoy waffles and bacon and then head out for a walk up the hills or through the nearly deserted village streets looking in the shop windows.

Would they do that ever again? Would her housemates come home healthy and well, ready to enjoy their long, free rambles and simple adventures?

But she knew in her little cat bones that they would, just as she knew the dawn was on its way, just as any cat at this hour would wake and begin to prowl restlessly—knowing something good was coming. Soon her housemates would be home again, as eager and hardy as ever; stubbornly Kit clung to that thought with a keen and sharp-clawed resolve.

She could hear, up and down the ward, little clinking sounds as late-night medications were prepared or other mysterious routines attended to. The smells of alcohol and human bodily wastes were not Kit’s favorite scents; she longed for the smell of new grass and its sweet, cool taste. Around her the ER, though still shrouded in the hush of night, was slowly beginning to stir, the steps of the nurses quickening as they attended to late-night medications. Glass doors to several little rooms were slid open, curtains were drawn back. Whenever their night nurse left them alone, pulling the door closed as Wilma requested, the three of them talked in whispers. Lucinda sometimes slipped into sleep, but always when she woke she asked after Pedric.

“He’s feeling better,” Wilma told her, “the concussion’s not a bad one. As soon as we get home, the knee will be repaired. Clyde’s with him now, to keep him awake.” And they talked again about that lost world where Kate had gone to learn about her forebears and had found only a dying civilization. All the anticipated magic was gone, only the cruelest creatures still blazing strong with their greedy hunger.

Wilma, like the Greenlaws, was comfortable with Kate’s secrets. While Clyde, like Joe Grey, shied away from the tales. But, Kit wondered, what did Ryan think?

Ryan had cleaved easily enough to the knowledge that Joe Grey could talk, she hadn’t been terribly shocked the first time the gray tomcat spoke to her—but still, Ryan had been raised in a hardheaded law enforcement family. Where were the limits of her sometimes willing imagination? What did she really think of a world teeming with remnants from the old Celtic tales that so embraced the cats’ own history?

And what, Kit thought, will Pan think, when he learns where Kate has been?

She could imagine Pan’s amber eyes blazing with a keen and hungry fascination, with a bold curiosity that would lead, where?

Kit herself had long ago come to terms with her own dreams of such exotic ventures, she had turned resolutely away from her own longing to descend down into the darkest pockets of the earth. When she was very young, when she first came to Molena Point, she had been drawn to Hellhag Cave that cleaved the hills south of the village, to its mystery, had sensed that dark fissure leading down and down, and down again deeper than any cat she knew had ever gone, she had longed to wander there, to discover whatever she might confront that would surprise and amaze her. Only fear—or a touch of good sense—had held her back. Then later she had been drawn to the cellars and caverns beneath the ruined Pamillon mansion that rose in the east hills above the village, intrigued by those dark clefts beneath the fallen buildings. But again she was afraid, she sensed evil there and a destruction she wouldn’t dare to face.

But Pan was bolder. What would he do with Kate’s secret? She thought Pan had never turned from danger. Her red tomcat had a hunger for adventure that had sent him traveling the coast of Oregon and half of California, one small cat alone never turning from a new and frightening adventure. Oh, she thought, when he hears Kate’s tale will he want to go there? Will he go away to follow the harpies and chimeras through that evil land, will he leave me for that adventure?

Or would he want me to go with him down to that dying place that could destroy us both?

VIC WATCHED EMMYLOU hurry down the hill tripping on the hem of her robe, watched her double-time up her own steps and inside. She was going to call an ambulance or call the cops, the damned old busybody. He should have done Birely while he had the chance, and now it was too late. Unless he could stop her, push on in and grab the phone from her. Had she even locked the door? He’d started down, two steps at a time, but then he thought about the car.

He had to get the Lincoln out of there before the cops came swarming all over. Maybe he’d been foolish stashing the money there, but where else could he have hidden it? He thought about moving the money before the cops arrived because it was too late to move the car, but he didn’t have time for that. He was reaching to open the shed when the whoop of the ambulance nearly deafened him, its flashing lights stabbing between the trees, a white medic’s van pulling up into Emmylou’s dirt driveway.

He eased back into the bushes as four medics in dark uniforms piled out and Emmylou came out her door onto the little porch and started down to them. He watched the shorter medic with the mustache follow her up the hill while the other three hauled out their trappings: stretcher, oxygen tank, black bags, and fancy stuff he couldn’t name. Sure as hell, there’d be a patrol car right behind them. What he couldn’t figure was, why would that old woman call the medics for a sick tramp? Why would she care?

And where would they take Birely? Some fancy emergency room? What if he started talking, if they gave him drugs for the pain and he got blabby, talking about the money, got some cop curious enough to start asking questions. Emmylou paused up on the stone porch while the medics hurried inside. That yellow cat had followed her winding around her ankles, damn thing gave him the shivers, he could see it there in the bushes, it kept looking at him, its yellow tail twitching in a way that made him twitch.

They took a long time in there. He grew cold in his light jacket. He crouched in the bushes hugging himself, antsy to get the car out. What had that old woman told the dispatcher? Had she said there’d been a break-in? Would she want them to search the whole damn property? Two medics came out of the stone house carrying Birely on a stretcher. Emmylou stood to the side, watching. Damned old do-gooder. A third medic, dark-skinned Latino, was asking her questions, writing down her answers on a clipboard. Vic watched her sign a paper when he passed the clipboard to her, and wondered what that was about.

She couldn’t be making herself responsible for some tramp she didn’t know, she couldn’t be promising to pay his medical bill? Talk about a bleeding heart.

Or did she know Birely? Maybe Sammie’d had pictures, family pictures. Maybe this old woman recognized him and had got all sentimental over Sammie’s little brother? Or maybe she knew Birely from when Sammie was alive? Birely had come here once in a while but Vic couldn’t remember if he said he’d ever saw anyone but Sammie.

If this old woman had any sense, she’d let charity or the government pick up the bill. The medics had to take Birely to the emergency room, it was the law, and the hospital had to treat him, the law said they couldn’t refuse. So why pay for it? Hell of a waste of money. He watched the white van back around in the old woman’s driveway and move on down the hill again, heading for some ER. Watched Emmylou head back down to her house, her bathrobe pulled tight around her. The black-and-white never had showed up. What had she told the dispatcher? Just that there was a man sick up there, and nothing about a break-in? Maybe said he was renting the place—all to protect Sammie’s little brother? He waited a few minutes, was about to slip back down to the shed when she hurried out again, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and got in her old Chevy. Hell, she was going to follow the van to the hospital. What a patsy. When she started the car it belched out a puff of dark exhaust. Yellow cat crouched on the porch watching her back out and head away following the medics, and Vic thought uneasily about Birely there in the hospital blabbing about the money.

He waited until the Chevy had disappeared, then headed for the shed, smiling. Maybe he could silence Birely right there in the ER, and wouldn’t that be a laugh. Shut him up before he spouted off about the money and the fancy Lincoln they’d stolen or, worse, about some of Vic’s own, earlier ventures. If Birely died in the ER before he started bragging about Vic’s successful robberies, and maybe about that store clerk he hadn’t meant to kill, if Birely died right there under the care of a doctor, how could he, Vic, be responsible?