Cat Bearing Gifts

33

IT WAS FULL night when two hobos, dressed in dark clothes and bearing heavy backpacks, had come walking down the winding grade that cut through from Highway 68 down onto Molena Valley Road. As they turned right onto the shoulder of the dark two-lane, the light of a half-moon illuminated the surrounding bushes and trees as if ragged and ghostly figures were watching them in the night. Heading west along the dirt shoulder, moving in the direction of the ocean some twelve miles beyond, they watched for a deserted side road, somewhere to get off the highway and camp for the night, maybe a denser woods than these scraggly, stunted oaks, or maybe some deserted old house or barn where sheriff’s deputies wouldn’t come nosing around to hassle them.

They’d parted from the slat-sided farm truck they’d hitched a ride in, up at the top of the grade, the driver hauling crates of chickens, coming over from Salinas. Truck stunk real bad of caged chickens, the smell still clung to them—or maybe it was the dead chicken they carried, dangling by its feet. Riding in the back in the truck bed, they’d slid open the nearest crate, hauled out an old brown hen and wrung her scrawny neck, her squawks hidden by the rattle of the truck’s old engine and loose body. Now, by the time they’d hoofed it down the grade, they had their dinner already bled, cleaned, and plucked.

The narrow road was dark as hell, no car lights streaming by, no houselights off to the sides, and none of them fancy overhead vapor lights out here in the boonies to pick them out moving along the blacktop. In their dark old clothes, they were part of the night itself, blending into the hill that rose steeply on their right. Half a mile down, they crossed the two-lane and stepped off into the shadows of the berm, moving along beneath another stand of scraggly trees. When they came on a battered station wagon sitting there on the berm, they stopped to look it over, watching for movement within.

Nothing stirred beyond the dark, partially covered windows. They approached warily, with a keen and predatory interest. The oddly shaped curtains blocked their view through the windshield and through the driver’s window. They tried the doors but they were locked. Cupping their hands to peer into the back, they couldn’t make out much more than a long, dark lump in the darkness, a bundle of some kind, but then they snickered and pressed their ears to the glass.

“Guy asleep in there, snoring. Dead to the world.”

“Here, hold the chicken. Hell, don’t lay it down, you want gravel in our supper?” Slinging off his pack, the taller man reached down into it and fished out a long, heavy wire that he kept in the side pocket, a carefully recycled coat hanger fashioned for just such emergencies. Hauling a flashlight from his coat pocket, he shielded its light, moved to the driver’s window, peered down where the beam led, and got to work.

DEEPLY ASLEEP IN the car, Vic’s dreams carried him through scattered stirrings from a bumbling childhood, as his father moved them all from one small town to another, one sorry job to another, one miserable grammar school to another. His father was sometimes absent altogether, while he did a short stint in some two-bit jail, but mostly he was traveling, dragging the nine kids and wife behind him like cans tied to a stray dog. The dreams were always the same, of a sorry and muddled past without shape and without hope. Maybe it was the scuff of footsteps in the gravel outside the Suzuki or maybe the faint scrape of the coat hanger as it slid in through the crack in the window that stirred him, that sent his dreams careening down into the dark nightmare chasm where one twitches and moans and cries out, where one would try to pry himself awake again, if he’d known he was asleep.

He woke feeling hands tightening around his throat. This was not part of the dream, cold hands and rough, cold air sweeping in through the open car door, and the ripe stink of an unwashed body and unwashed clothes, and a bright light blazing in his eyes so he couldn’t see.

“You got money, hand it over.” The guy had his knee on the blanket, gouging into his ribs, leaning his body full over Vic, close and threatening.

“I got no money. If I had money, would I be sleeping in this heap?”

The other door opened, second guy flashed the beam over the mess of broken toys. “Where’s your woman and kids?”

“I got no woman and kids. I borrowed the car.” He had no weapon handy, either. He’d been asleep, for Christ’s sake, peacefully minding his own business—and with what little money he had left, that that contractor woman hadn’t found, tucked deep in his pants pocket. He should have hid it better before he went to sleep but he’d wanted it on him in case the cops showed up and he had to leave the car, make a run for it. He tried to sit up, tried to push the guy’s clutching hands away from him, and it was then that he saw the knife. The guy with the flashlight had a switchblade in his other hand, the knife open and gleaming.

“Take the car if you want,” Vic begged. He fished in his pocket for the keys then knew he shouldn’t have done that, maybe the guy thought he had a weapon. The knife flashed in the beam, he felt it go into his throat, it went in so easy, like slicing butter. He felt nothing more for a minute, then pain exploded. He heard himself screaming and then he couldn’t scream. He felt the blood bubbling up and he couldn’t breathe . . .

Vic’s own scream was the last sound he ever heard, the last sound he would ever make. He lay dead in the backseat of Debbie Kraft’s battered Suzuki. Blood spurted for a minute more and then stopped, his heart no longer pumping. The bleeding subsided to a dribble like a faulty tap, and stopped. He lay in his own blood, his own bodily wastes seeping out as his killer picked up the dead chicken from the front seat, and fished in Vic’s pocket for the car keys.

BEFORE ANYONE KNEW of Victor’s death, the cats waited hopefully for the law to pick him up, for a sheriff or the CHP to spot the Suzuki and pull Vic over, cuff him, lock him behind bars, and transport him back to Molena Point for arraignment and to stand trial. None of the cats allowed that justice might go awry and that Vic might walk, cats are ever hopeful, they didn’t want to think about failures of the U.S. justice system, they expected ultimate punishment for Amson. Maybe it was the cats’ expectations, sparked by divine fate, that had prompted Victor’s own peers to deal out his retribution, to provide his last judgment in this world, in a far more decisive manner than the law would have done.

But now, at this moment, Kit wasn’t thinking of retribution. Having just heard the current police report on Amson, and sure he would soon be apprehended, she smiled with satisfaction but then set those thoughts aside as she sought a way from Pedric’s hospital room out to the waterfall.

Max and Charlie Harper had just left, heading back to MPPD where a call had come in from a horse rancher up in the Molena Valley. His teenaged boy, out riding one of the yearling colts, had come on the Suzuki in the dark, the scent of death sharp to the colt’s senses so the young horse would not approach the car. Curious, the boy remembered a TV newscaster’s description of the Suzuki, and of Amson. He didn’t pause to see if Amson was in there, he hurried his horse home and dialed 911. The county dispatcher had routed him through to the sheriff’s office and then to MPPD. At once sheriff’s deputies had moved in that direction, and now were searching again along the two-lane roads though they had driven that area the night Vic had fled. Kit prayed the sheriff would find Amson and treat him as he deserved. But once she’d wished the worst for him she’d dismissed him and turned her attention to the garden again and to slipping out into it.

Able to prowl the room now that the Harpers had left, she had quickly followed the thin draft of cooler air that teased her from the far end of the room. Padding down to look, she found the narrow window, half concealed beyond the last pillar. Eagerly she set about opening it.

The room lights had been turned low. Lucinda and Kate sat by Pedric’s bed, the three of them deep in conversation as Kit slipped up onto the sill, finessed the hinged screen open with a soft paw, and pulled at the window handle. Yes, it flipped up. Pushing the glass out four inches, she was through and out into the night, into the damp and sweet-scented garden.

Beyond the small trees and scattered bushes the hospital building rose up on four sides, some windows dark, soft lights shining in others behind drawn shades. Did sick people prefer privacy over a glimpse of the more fascinating world? Only in Pedric’s room were the shades still up, the room as bright as a lighted stage. Pedric in his bed, Lucinda and Kate huddled close, the three of them lost in conversation. She smiled at the little tableau, then spun away, leaping up the rocky escarpment beside the waterfall. Pausing, she patted her paw in the falling water and then danced away; she spun, she bounced up the rough ledges to the very top where she crouched in shadow among the highest crags then raced away again down the rocks, ducking beneath cascades of falling water and out the other side, wet and giddy.

She played among the falls for a long time but then at last came down the escarpment again slowly, stepping daintily now, dropping from one level down to the next, quiet and thoughtful—wishing she were not alone. Where the thinnest sheet of water slid down over a little rocky cave, she slipped in through the clear curtain, into a small and secret aerie; looking down into Pedric’s room through the fall of distorting water, feeling her fur grow damper, she saw Pedric’s door swing open.

In the square of brighter light she saw Ryan and Clyde step inside to join them, they stood by Pedric’s bed next to Kate and Lucinda, Ryan talking excitedly. Clyde had placed his backpack on the floor, she watched Joe Grey slip out, heading straight for the windowsill. Leaping up, he made a dark silhouette looking out into the night, marked by his white chest and white paws. But another shadow slipped out, too, and, nose to carpet, he moved across the floor to the narrower window, where he slid through into the garden and disappeared among the bushes. Watching him, she drew back beneath the waterfall and remained still.

He stood in the darkness of the bushes looking up the little hill, taking in the wooded glade and the tall rocky escarpment and the bright, falling water. He looked intently at one part of the garden and then the next, scanning each, and lifting his nose to taste the air. Seeking her? Oh, she hoped he was.

At last he moved on, following her scent up the rough stones, up and up he went over the tumbled rocks and down again, leaping a fall of water where she had leaped but then he stopped, looking around.

Did he wonder if she was hiding and sulking, if she was still angry? The water plashing down before her sang softly; its sliding gleam distorted the garden and distorted Pan himself into a phantom image as he stood scenting out.

Suddenly he headed fast straight up the rocks to disappear above her. She listened but heard only falling water; she lay behind her watery curtain, her paws crossed, and then sat up nervously. Where had he gone? Had he given her up and turned away?

He burst in through the falling water, pounced on her like a lion capturing its prey, he cuffed her, boldly laughing. She struggled free and rolled him over and cuffed him good, too, and he let her. Battling and laughing, pushing each other out into the water, they were soon soaked.

“Let up,” he said at last, but she didn’t. “Let up! Listen! They found Amson.”

She stopped battling him. “They got him? He’s in jail?”

“No need.” Pan smiled. “He’s dead. Knife blade through his throat.”

“Oh, my,” she said. “Who did that? Oh, not Debbie?”

“Not Debbie, but they picked her up, she’s in jail. Charlie called Ryan and Clyde, and we came over to tell Pedric and Lucinda.”

“If Debbie’s in jail, what about Tessa?”

“She’s fine,” Pan said. “She’s more than fine, I’ll get to that. On the way over, we stopped by Wilma’s.” Kit imagined the homey scene as they pulled up in front of Wilma’s stone house, Pan and Joe galloping through Wilma’s deep English garden to the carved front door.

COME IN BEFORE the fire,” Wilma said, opening the door, “what can I get you? Coffee? A drink? A snack for you two tomcats?” She bent down to stroke Pan and Joe.

“Nothing,” Ryan said. “We can’t stay.” Joe leaped to the couch beside Dulcie, thinking a small snack wouldn’t take much time, but Ryan said, “We’re on our way to tell Pedric, we thought you two would want to know.”

“What?” Wilma said, pulling back her loose gray hair and tying her plaid robe tighter around her.

“They found Amson,” Clyde said. “Sheriff’s deputies found him out on Valley Road, dead in Debbie’s car, his throat cut. Looks like he was robbed. No other fresh tire tracks on the dirt shoulder, maybe someone traveling on foot, maybe some homeless person. They found grocery sacks in the car full of cashmere sweaters, upscale costume jewelry, new handbags, all with the tags still in place, and all too bulky for a person on foot to carry away.”

“They picked Debbie up at home,” Ryan said. “Her prints match those on the store tags—from four upscale village shops, and even two small pieces from Melanie’s, and their security’s pretty tight.”

“It’ll do Debbie good to cool her heels in jail,” Wilma said. “But what about the children?”

“Emmylou has them,” Ryan said. “We took the girls up to her, helped her fix them some supper. Left both girls tucked up in Emmylou’s bed, Emmylou making up a bed on the couch for herself. Every time Vinnie opened her mouth to sass her, Emmylou scolded her. By the time we left, the kid wasn’t saying a word, she’d crawled into bed and curled up around her pillow, real quiet.”

“They’ll be all right with Emmylou,” Wilma said, smiling. Though what the girls’ future held, no one could say.

It was after the Damens left, that Wilma returned to the computer to read Dulcie’s newest poem, and the lines made her very sad. But one doesn’t choose a poem, the poem chooses the writer. Dulcie couldn’t help that this one left them both filled with a dark mourning, a strange uneasy balance, tonight, to the sadness of Birely’s unfocused life that was now ended, and to their satisfaction that Vic Amson would not torment and hurt anyone else.

A shadow in the somber stillness

Sways serenely.

The river in its roaring race

With the waning, woeful wind

Laughs loudly, luxuriously at the loser.

A mockingbird, moved by the midnight moon,

Trills tender notes

To the shadow standing silently now

Before a ruined barbican and bail

Now dead, decayed

Only the devil left within its fallen ranks.

The shadow sways,

Slumps sadly to the dark and hoary ground.

Nothing left but emptiness.

No bird sings now

No castle stands

Where ran the laughing river.

Dulcie herself didn’t know what to make of the poem. It just happened, a shadow of the lost Netherworld. Wilma put out the fire, stifling the cheery gas logs, and they tucked up in bed, Dulcie stretched out quietly on her own pillow. “What will happen to the children now? The law won’t let Emmylou keep them, an older woman without a husband. And their aunt won’t want them.”

“If the court lets Debbie out on her own recog,” Wilma said, “and then if she gets probation, maybe Emmylou would keep the girls during the day. Debbie will have to get a job, or try to, that will be a condition of her probation.” Stroking Dulcie, Wilma smiled. “Tessa would have a little more love in her life, with Emmylou. And Pan would be there for her, too. Emmylou won’t throw him out.”

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, “if Pan has his little girl back where he can be with her, maybe he won’t long to travel so far away. He knows Tessa needs him.”

“And Kit needs him,” Wilma said. “What’s that sigh about? What are you thinking?”

“Thinking how strange life is. Still thinking about that dark world where Pan wants to go, so different from our world—and thinking about that long-ago time in our world, where Misto once lived, that was so different from today. Two strange and different places,” she said, “but each is only part of something bigger. So many centuries, so many chains of life, and each one unique and different. So much we don’t know,” she said, “and in the end, what’s it all about?”

“It’s about the wonders,” Wilma said. “That’s what it’s about.”

Dulcie looked at her, purring.

“Wonder, and joy,” Wilma said. “No matter where you are in time or place, joy and wonder are what stand between you and the evil of the world. That, and love, are all we have against our own destruction.”

AND AWAY IN the night, in the dark garden, there was wonder, too. Kit and Pan, coming out from beneath the waterfall, sat on a rock away from the mists, licking themselves dry. “Maybe,” Pan said, looking around the garden, “maybe this world is pretty amazing, maybe what Joe Grey says is true.”

“What does he say, that pedantic tomcat?”

“That the greatest adventure of all is right here in our world,” Pan said, twitching the tip of his tail. “That the biggest thrill of all is to outsmart the bad guys right here, not go chasing off somewhere that’s already destroyed and beyond help.” He looked deeply at Kit, his amber eyes gleaming. “Maybe Joe’s right that it’s more fun to work the system right here, take down the bad guys right here. ‘Hold the fort,’ Joe says, ‘and make our own world better.’ ”

“Maybe,” Kit said. “But what if somewhere in the Netherworld, down among those dark caverns, some small portion of those lands did survive undamaged, as Kate thinks might have happened? What if there is some small country there that’s still strong, some hidden village that managed to escape the dark?”

Pan said nothing. They sat thinking about that. Maybe it was the enchantment of the garden that made everything seem so different tonight, that made them come together in their thoughts, that helped the two resolve their conflict. Sitting close together looking around at the garden and down into Pedric’s lighted hospital room watching their human friends, they no longer bristled at each other; they sat thinking about the amazing world around them, and about their roles in it. And when, at last, they returned through the narrow window, their ears were up and they were ready to move on, to trot boldly on into whatever amazements waited, there ahead of them.