Cat Bearing Gifts

22

IT TOOK VIC a while to hide the Lincoln. On leaving the Greenlaw house he had detoured past the village market, parked on a side street, and walked back. Bought a jar of peanut butter, a box of crackers, and a cup of machine coffee that tasted like boiled sawdust. The market wasn’t two blocks from the PD, and that gave him a thrill of fear. But who was going to recognize him, all shaven and cleaned up? The cops had never even seen him, all they knew was what that old couple told them: two men, shaggy hair, old wrinkled clothes, and him with a ponytail. No one was going to look at him twice now, dressed all proper like some village shopkeeper on his way to open up the store.

He’d eaten in the car parked under some low-hanging eucalyptus trees, then headed for Debbie’s place. Passing Emmylou’s, he’d checked for her green Chevy. Just as he’d hoped, it was still gone as if she hadn’t returned from the hospital, had stayed there all night worrying about that little wimp, about her friend’s baby brother.

Easing on by, he turned down onto the cracked streets of the neighborhood below among the small, ragged cottages, expecting the streets to be empty as they usually were. Not so. Here came a fat woman walking a skinny old dog and, overtaking them, a pair of joggers dressed in tight black spandex like earthbound skin divers, and from the other direction a young boy in a blue jacket cruising on a bike, the whole damn neighborhood suddenly crowded with people. He circled through, parked on a side street. Waited until the streets were empty again, then headed back to Debbie Kraft’s place. Her station wagon was gone, and that annoyed him.

Passing on by, he turned into the drive of the place he’d spotted earlier, house and narrow garage sat way at the back, all secluded back there, bushes rangy and tall; the dirt-crusted Lincoln looked almost at home there. He pulled clear on back to the garage. Cracked gray paint, heavy wooden garage door hinged at the side. Getting out, he tried to open it but it was securely locked. He moved around to the side. That door was locked, too, but this was one of them old-fashioned skeleton-key jobs, older than dirt. Fishing out his pocketknife, it didn’t take him long, he had it open. The power to the place was shut off, and with no windows it was dark as hell in there. Moving to the big door, he turned the knob for the lock and pushed it open, lifting where the door wanted to sag and scrape on the cracked cement drive. Jury-rigged kind of arrangement, only one door and not two, even if this was just a one-car garage. Good thing he hadn’t heisted a stretch limo to hide here, he’d be flat out of luck.

By the time he’d finessed the Lincoln inside and had the door closed again, he was sweating like a pig. Shutting the big door, leaving the place looking as deserted as he’d found it, he’d walked on over toward Debbie’s place hoping she’d got home, meaning to give her the money and talk her out of her car. But when he came in sight of the house, the drive was still empty. Walking on up her drive like he belonged there, he looked in the garage window.

Garage was empty except for some boxes of junk, kids’ broken toys, some dried-up paint cans. If she was out “shopping,” light-fingered and involved, she might be gone for hours. Turning away, he headed on up the hill, past Emmylou’s. Her car was still gone. He moved on up the stairs of the stone house thinking to pick up the sleeping bags, stash them somewhere up the hill in the bushes, clear the place out before them cops showed up. Maybe even wipe the place down of fingerprints, he thought, amused. Like some big-time criminal. When all he ever did this time was borrow a car and lift some money that was already stolen, for Christ’s sake.

PAN AND JOE, having raced away from Lucinda’s house as their human friends moved on inside, were wandering the rooftops above the center of the village, Pan still grousing about Kit’s stubborn nature, when they saw Debbie Kraft walking down Ocean Avenue wheeling her empty baby stroller. The interior, as usual, was swaddled with a concealing pink blanket. They watched her approach the drugstore and wheel her “baby” inside; they had watched this routine before, they knew too well what she was up to. Joe, pausing on a shingled peak, his paws in the damp gutter, looking down at Debbie, wanted badly to nail her. This was the first time in his life he had turned his back on a thief, the first time he hadn’t called the department the minute he saw a crime coming down. Shoplifting might seem like a minor offense, but even in their small village hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise vanished every year. The local shopkeepers were having a hard enough time, with the sharp failure of the economy. They didn’t need any light-fingered visitors trashing their livelihood; he itched to snatch her up like a struggling mouse, and turn her over to the law. He didn’t like Debbie anyway. He had bristled at her nervy attitude when she’d moved in with Ryan and Clyde uninvited and had disliked her even before she first arrived in the village just from her pushy letter. It would be a real treat to see her cooling her heels in Max Harper’s jail—but if he turned her in, what would happen to Tessa? To both her little girls?

Beside him, Pan had already tuned Debbie out; all his anger, for the moment, was still directed at Kit, at her puzzling disdain for adventure. “Even my pa never explored such a land. If Misto ever once set paw there, he’d be bragging about it, rambling on so you’d never shut him up.”

Joe said nothing. The Netherworld made him nervous, he knew exactly how Kit felt. What was so inviting about a dark world that had decayed and fallen to ruin? No way he’d venture down there into those crumbling caverns. Maybe their heritage did have its roots among the ancient Celts, and maybe some strain of those races were down there beneath their own coast, emigrants from an ancient time, but so what? That didn’t mean he had to launch himself into some nightmare encounter with a world that should be left to complete its own destruction. The very thought made his paws sweat.

They watched Debbie emerge from the drugstore, tenderly arranging the pink blanket over her baby, taking care that the little tyke was warmly covered. She smiled sweetly at two uniformed officers coming out of the coffee shop, heading for their black-and-white. The younger officer smiled back at her, but Officer Brennan was busy brushing crumbs from the ample front of his uniform.

“She’s going to get caught,” Pan said softly, finally paying attention. “Caught without any help from us. Are those guys taking a second look at that stroller? Did you see Brennan glance back? Maybe,” the red tom said, smiling, “Debbie’s little operation is going to hit the fan. But then,” he said, dropping his ears, “where does that leave Tessa? If Debbie’s arrested and goes to jail and has to do prison time, what will happen to Tessa?” He didn’t mention Vinnie, he didn’t give a mouse’s ear what happened to that little torturer. Too many times up in Oregon Vinnie had poked and teased him, tormented him until he raced out of the house, often into the snow and rain, and it would be a long time before he came creeping back—only to be with Tessa, with his own small human.

“The girls have one aunt,” Joe said. “Debbie’s older sister. I guess by law they’d go to her, if she’d even take them. That would be a pity for Tessa. Sour woman, no use for kids.” They watched Debbie move on up the street leaning over the stroller, whispering tenderly to her baby. “Tessa has a half brother,” Joe said, “but Billy’s only twelve. He’d take her if he was older, just like he adopts stray cats and cares for them.”

Billy Young had lived with Charlie and Max since his grandmother died, an arrangement they’d made when his father went to prison for the murder of Billy’s mother and, later, of Sammie Miller. Billy was a caring boy and dependable. Ever since his mother died when he was eight, he’d worked on the neighboring ranches, he was trusted with their horses, and proud to help in his own support, as boys did in past generations, taking pride in doing a man’s work. Then when Billy’s grandma died shortly after Christmas, and neither Debbie nor her sister wanted him—not that Billy wanted to live with either of them—he had moved up to the Harper place. Had gone where he was wanted, had taken over the Harpers’ stable work before and after school in exchange for his room and board and “a little to put aside in the bank,” Max had told him. But now, for the Harpers to take in two little girls as well, both with emotional problems, would be, in Joe’s view, an exercise in calamity.

The two officers still sat in their black-and-white, Brennan in the right seat filling out paperwork, the rookie in the driver’s seat talking on the radio, both men watching the street only casually, barely glancing at Debbie as she passed. Whether Brennan’s instinct alerted him was hard to say, neither Debbie’s amateur ruse nor her body language seemed to touch the older man. The cats, trotting away over the roofs, followed Debbie’s progress on the sidewalk below, watched her looking covetously into the shop windows. Over the cool rooftops, they moved through shafts of sun and through pools of shade, beneath twisted oak limbs and splayed pine branches that overhung the shops. When Debbie turned into the little village market they eased down a bougainvillea vine, deftly avoiding its thorns, dropped to the sidewalk and followed her. They had, looking back, seen the black-and-white move away from them, heading toward the shore.

The village grocery kept two cats of their own, assigned to rodent control. The customers were used to seeing them wander among the shelves, so why would they be surprised at a visitor or two? Slipping along through the aisles, and through the shadows at the base of the produce bins, they found Debbie in the canned goods, dropping one can of soup or beans in the little basket she’d picked up, and easing two more in under the pink blanket. By the time she headed for the checkout, the padded vehicle was so full she had a hard time pushing it along between the narrow aisles.

Easing into the shortest of the three checkout lines, she arranged the purchases from her basket on the moving belt and then set the basket on the floor beneath. Pushing the stroller along ahead of her, she paid for her groceries and moved quickly on out, looking smug with the success of her morning’s venture, both in resaleable merchandise and in food for her little family. Carefully arranging the three grocery bags down onto the lower shelf of the stroller, she headed around to the small parking lot at the side of the store. The cats saw, only then, that she’d left her station wagon at the back beneath a row of low-growing pepper trees that sheltered the adjoining building. Vanishing in among these, they climbed a few feet until they were hidden beneath its foliage.

Debbie set the grocery bags on the ground by the tailgate and then opened the side door. Leaning in, she retrieved some additional paper bags from under a tangle of toys. Opening them, and rolling the stroller close, she began to unload her take from beneath the pink blanket. When the bags were full she put a few groceries, a loaf of bread and packages of chips, in on top to hide the telltale new clothes and handbags. As she opened the tailgate and folded up the stroller the cats peered in at the tangle of toys, small sweaters, and empty drink cans. Lifting the stroller in, she laid it on top, squashing a cloth bunny and a sandal caught in the folds of a plaid blanket. Even as the cats watched, the blanket moved, a thin little arm flopped out, and Tessa turned over, a hank of pale hair straggling across the plaid cover, her dark lashes shadowing her soft cheeks. Waked by the intrusion of the stroller, she looked up at her mother, groggy and flushed. Her nose was running. Debbie fished into her own pocket for a tissue, reached in as if to blow the child’s nose, but Tessa turned away, turned over again, sniffed loudly, pulled the blanket higher around her, and closed her eyes. Had Debbie left her alone in the car all the time she was shoplifting? At least the vehicle was in the shade, and she’d left the windows down a few inches, apparently unconcerned that anyone would want to bother the child.

Had she kept Tessa out of nursery school because of a cold but, because she was sick, didn’t want to leave her home alone as she so often did? That was more motherly concern, Joe thought, than Debbie would normally exhibit. When she turned away from the open tailgate the two cats dropped down onto it and slipped inside, fast and silent. Pan hid at once among the rubble, concealing himself from both Tessa and her mother. They wanted to see where Debbie was headed and, of even more interest, to see if Brennan’s patrol car might show up again, if the two officers were, indeed, watching her.

AT THE GETZ house, as Wilma slept away her mid-morning nap, Dulcie sat alone on the desk in the soft glow of the computer, her restless mind too busy to let her sleep. Last night as the cats and humans crowded into the two motel rooms, the human contingent taking turns napping and one then another returning to the hospital to keep Pedric awake, Kate’s tales had filled Dulcie with such wonder that the pictures and words just crowded in. The grimness of that world had turned her incredibly sad; the pictures that filled her head grew dark, and this poem, now, was not like her usual ones, not sly and humorous verses that would make Joe laugh. She didn’t know what her tomcat would think of this effort but she didn’t care, she needed to get the words out, to make sense of what she felt for that lost land. Just as Joe was driven to slaughter the wharf rat, and catch the thief, her words must be brought to life. Needs were needs, and a sensible cat attended to those urges.

Down and down on silent paws

Deep into the earth I go

Down and down through caverns black

Stones hang like spears above me

Green light glows from granite sky

Harpies fly above me

Castles fall around me

Farms lie dead around me

Herd beasts dead around me

Bones all white around me

What was grand is lost

Twisted into ruin

Magic shattered now

Used too long for evil

What was loved is lost

Gone, that earthen magic

Gone, those magic people

Used too hard for evil

Used by greed and power

By the cold hard lust of evil

She didn’t know if it was a good poem or without value. She didn’t care, she needed to write it. She wrote quickly, changed a few words, and then sat reading the lines back to herself, her small cat being filled with sadness for that land where, now, neither she nor Kit would ever want to venture.