Cat Chase the Moon

Prologue

The old man didn’t want to wake up, he didn’t want to get out of bed, he felt so heavy he longed only to drop back into sleep. Through the curtain of the east window the first smear of fog-dimmed sun sulked lifeless and depressing. Even the hens outside sounded dreary, as if they had no desire at all to lay an egg or peck at the scattered grain. The world was without joy, no smallest pleasure awaited him, no sound of Mindy running and laughing and talking to her pony, or galloping across the field.

It was two weeks since her parents had left, taking the child with them, taking his little granddaughter away to live in town, Mindy shouting, “I don’t want to go! You can’t make me go,” crying so hard she nearly threw up. But of course they had taken her. Mindy was a brat when she was around her parents. She was nice as pie when she was just with him, or with her pony; she was full of life and fun. Why couldn’t Nevin and Thelma have left her here? Now, every day, every hour that she was gone the emptiness grew worse. He’d thought it would get better, but it hadn’t. No more than two weeks earlier he had begun to come to terms with Nell’s death. Then the last of their three grown sons left so soon after his mother’s funeral, taking Zeb’s only grandchild away and not giving a damn if he was alone, never caring if he was still filled with pain over Nell’s passing, never caring if Mindy might have been a solace to him. Never even wondering if he could manage the farm without a little help from Mindy.

Well, at least Nevin, his youngest, and his wife, Thelma, had waited until Nell was gone, they hadn’t hurt Grandma like Varney had, his middle son leaving six months ago, walking out on Nell while she was so sick. (Ever since Mindy was born, all three grown boys called their mother Grandma.) Varney said he’d gotten a job in town, one too good to refuse. He didn’t say what kind of job and Zeb didn’t ask. Varney hadn’t cared that he was breaking his dying mother’s heart. Maybe her hurt over Varney’s abandonment had made the cancer worse, Zeb would never know. Well, Varney’s leaving hadn’t been so bad in the end. Without his temper the house had been quieter for Nell.

But then his Nell died, of the pain and cancer or maybe of the medicine itself, how could anyone know? As soon as she was buried, Nevin and Thelma packed right up and moved into the village and never asked if Mindy could stay here with him. Mindy, with her curly brown hair, brown eyes, and turned-up nose, was twelve, bright and loving, and she was all he’d had left. Thelma might have let Mindy stay but she was too scared of Nevin to disobey him. Zeb and Nell had been married fifty years and just the one grandchild, and now suddenly everyone was gone. Zebulon Luther was alone.

Fifty years of marriage, a happy marriage. But as soon as his Nell passed, after all the illness, the last boy hauled out. Left Zeb when he wasn’t so well, either, with the arthritis and the kidneys. Left him to do for himself, cook, keep up the garden and farm work, though there wasn’t much of that anymore. He’d stopped haying some years back, when he was in his sixties. The two younger boys wouldn’t hay, they had let the land go to weeds not even fit for pasture. And DeWayne, his oldest, had never taken to farming. He liked the city life, he liked to travel. Zeb didn’t know how he made his living, he wondered a lot about that, but Zebulon seldom saw him.

Well, at least he had the two horses for company. But what good was the pony when the child missed him, and the pony missed her. “You can’t keep a horse in town!” Thelma had mocked when Mindy begged. And the pony without Mindy was growing as lifeless and sad as Zeb himself.

Earlier this morning, before dawn, something had waked him; or maybe he was dreaming that cold eeriness, the moon drowning in thick fog above a battered body that lay struggling in an open grave; and above it stood the shadow of a big tomcat. He lay half awake and puzzled; but the dream faded and was gone. Shivering, he pulled the quilts up and crawled back into sleep.