To Skin a Cat

LITTLE EXTRAS

David and Rita were starting their life together. David was a hard-working twenty-two-year-old with the strong features of his Norwegian parents and the muscles his manual work produced. Rita — a Miss Montana Runner-Up — was admired for her terrific ambition. They were married up the Valley in August and moved into the double-wide on Rita’s father’s ranch. Rita helped her father with the cows and the books, while David worked at the grain elevator in town. Rita wanted a house immediately and they had already saved for a down payment. When Mr. Penniman, the grocer, passed away, David approached the lawyer who was handling the estate, asking if he and Rita could buy the house. The lawyer, who was known all over Montana as a ladies’ man, pulled his mouth to one side and gazed at the couple before answering. “There will have to be an appraisal.”

“We know that,” said David. He really didn’t.

“And there is an heir, a daughter.”

“Oh,” said Rita. The lawyer, a Mr. Neville, looked at her.

“She won’t want that house. She’s well off. But she may want a thing or two for sentimental reasons.” She noticed how very thin and well-dressed Neville was, and there was something appealing about his sneering delivery when talking.

“We wouldn’t mind,” said Rita. David looked at her, curiously weighing her words. These domiciling arrangements seemed thunderous after an unexceptional small-town courtship. They looked at the house every day, a pretty white house that had been painted and fussed over all its life. When the appraisal came, David had to go home from the elevator, take a shower, change, and meet Rita at the bank. The bank officers went along with them, and they bought the house as is with the understanding that Mrs. Callahan, the grocer’s daughter, could have a day in the house alone, to select mementos. There were beautiful things in every room. David and Rita packed the contents of the double-wide in the back of David’s truck. Mrs. Callahan used a U-Haul and a crew to empty David and Rita’s new home. Rita wept all the way back to the double-wide. That night Mrs. Callahan called to say there were no hard feelings.

Neville, the lawyer, phoned up the following morning in response to five panic messages from David and Rita. “You said you didn’t mind her taking something for sentimental reasons.”

“We didn’t expect her to clean out the whole house,” said David.

“You should have thought of that at the time,” said the lawyer. “You bought it as is.”

Rita got on the line and said, “She took the stove and refrigerator.”

“Whatever,” said Neville. “I’ve got calls waiting.”

Neither David nor Rita could stop everything for this crisis. But it was a fact that they couldn’t move into their new house until they had saved for furnishings. When David went back to the banker, he said, “I’m afraid you have been treated badly. But this can’t be solved by me. You’re going to have to learn this lesson and go on with your lives.”

“So, we do nothing?”

“I tell you what. Why don’t we try this. I’ll wangle you an invitation for Mrs. Callahan’s rodeo party. And you and the wife just put your best faces on and make a pitch to get your things back. Whether you do or not, you’ll learn even more about life. Take it from your banker.”

The night of the rodeo, David thought he was too tired to go. His muscles were sore from loading grain and salt and steel T-posts. But Rita was excited. David tried to be touched by her belief that they would get everything back. Even Rita’s father thought that David would have to take on some of Rita’s optimism and eye for the main chance if he was ever to get out of the elevator and go places. But he got dressed. So did Rita. By the time they put on their cowboy hats, they didn’t know what to think. David took some aspirins and carried a beer to the truck.

They could hear the crowd roaring before they ever got there. There was a glow of light over the rodeo grounds. The bleachers were full and they had to edge their way past people’s knees for a long way before they could sit down. They could see Mrs. Callahan and her companions in the reserved seats. Rita got cotton candy and visited school friends sitting all around them. David didn’t want to move until after the saddle broncs. Before the calf roping, a man came onto the field and penned sheep with quick little collies on whose backs rode monkeys in cowboy suits. Rita sat back down with her cotton candy. “I can’t believe her,” she said, staring across at Mrs. Callahan and her friends, who now were leading a cheer for the dogs and monkeys. Then it started to rain hard. During the bulls, it became such a wallow, people headed for their cars. The roundup banners popped in the wind, and the hard beer drinkers got under the bleachers with their coats pulled up over their heads and jeered passersby.

Mrs. Callahan lived on the edge of town where it broke off into big pastures. Her place seemed almost like a ranch, with a few small buildings set away from a two-story gray house with white trim and big rose-cluttered trellises around the doors. There were a lot of cars parked in the driveway and in the yard; the rain-covered cars shone in the house lights. They were not really a cross section of the town’s cars, and it made David nervous to be going in there at all. Rita, on the other hand, strode toward the house combatively. It got worse inside, where they could see their furniture scattered among the antiques. Everyone who David and Rita had ever consulted about their teeth or their bodies, their finances or legal matters, was there, gathered around a tank of Everclear punch. Dr. Dillingham went past, fastening hundred-dollar bills to his forehead with saliva, announcing, “This is how I meet girls in Las Vegas.” When Mrs. Callahan doubled over with laughter, the lawyer Neville deftly spooned pickle relish into her hairdo. It went unnoticed.

Rita stretched out on one of the sofas that had come from her house. Mrs. Callahan waggled a finger in her face. “Keep it up,” said Rita, “and I break it off.” Mrs. Callahan moved her gaze to Neville and pulled the corners of her mouth up into a sort of smile.

Then the power went off for an hour. A few people walked outside with their drinks and waded in the irrigation ditch. When they came in, their muddy pant legs clung to their legs and they were all amorous. “Did you pull this?” Mrs. Callahan screeched at David on finding the relish in her hair. Now she was drunk.

“No, I did not.”

“And you can steer the little woman right out of my sofa.”

“Okay.”

Harvey Perry, a sober accountant, led Mrs. Callahan by the elbow to the Mexican snacks, where her guests stood and stared in the anesthesia of the punch. Dr. Dillingham was on the phone with his bookie, holding up different numbers on the fingers of one hand while he placed bets. Mrs. Dillingham stood behind Mrs. Callahan in a wing chair, redoing Mrs. Callahan’s hair with a brush and a piece of paper towel. Every now and then, Mrs. Callahan gripped the arms of the chair to twist in David’s direction and fix him with a look.

The banker came in and played Garry Owen, the old cavalry call, on the bugle while two wives, making like vestal virgins, emptied a vessel of grain alcohol into the punch tank. Mrs. Callahan staggered out of the wing chair and cried, “The chili!” By the time she carried the big drip-baste pot to the table, there was an extraordinary tension about what the condition of the chili would actually be. Was it burned or dry? This was famous chili with cascabels and black olives, and woe betide if it had burned. But then, finally, it was okay, it was fine.

“You stay out of this,” said Mrs. Callahan, shaking her ladle at David. The others lined up all the way to the porch. David got a beer, drank it down, and got another. He sat on the piano bench and listened in around him. A realtor, a rural type, picked at his chili, shuffled, raised his shoulders, and moved his lips real slow in an effort to be a man of few words. He was talking to Anita Baldich, the banker’s wife. “I got this itty-bitty place on the edge of town,” the pitch began. Mrs. Baldich had a sudden fullness around her mouth and her nostrils flared: a concealed yawn.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Callahan was telling of an out-of-body experience she’d had when she banged her head on a rafter as a girl. “Ever since then,” she said, “I’ve seen life from a great distance, a great distance.” David wondered if this was what had made her glom their furniture. “In effect,” added Mrs. Callahan, “I died.”

Said lawyer Neville, as though in reply, “I had an uncle who spoke with a Lebanese accent. As a joke. Gradually, he lost the ability to talk without his accent. My generation of people grew up referring to him as ‘the old A-rab over the store.’ ”

“Oh, come on,” said Mrs. Callahan, “don’t cover up your origins for us.”

“Easy there, Toots,” said Neville. “You’re letting the gin talk.” Loud laughter broke out among the guests, really loud. Neville conducted the noise like an orchestra. The gambling doctor was particularly sarcastic in his laughter, and Mrs. Callahan hurled her bowl of chili in his face. That got it quiet.

“You carcass,” said the doctor. “Remind me to do your next myelogram.” He twisted his handkerchief around his forefinger and cleaned out his eye sockets.

David joined Rita on the sofa, but Mrs. Callahan spotted it. “Out!” she shouted. “Anyplace but that.” They moved to the piano bench. “You’ll regret coming around here,” said Mrs. Callahan from her place in the next world.

Soledad came in at three to one, and the doctor raised his arms like a champ. “Stick with me, kids. What’d I tell you?” Mrs. Callahan patrolled the edge of the party loftily. Suddenly, Rita tackled her. People crowded around screaming. They were on the floor in a heap. The doctor got Rita and pried her loose.

“Call the police,” said Neville in an even tone. David looked at his wife, more strange than anything in the National Geographic, and felt a pride that surpassed anything he’d ever felt, a surprise that lasted long into that night, after they had lain down in the front room of the bare little home. He could hardly believe she was his. Her high, hard breasts were almost more than he could stand. The middle of her body was a blank in the dull light from the uncurtained windows, a blank except for the dark, precise crevice he ran his hand over until it seemed right. Then David got atop Rita. He had a horrifying picture of Mrs. Callahan peering in the window, but it passed in time for him to keep going until the emission. Later, he and Rita pondered what a climax for her would be like. She dabbed at herself with a towel. “I’d sure like to know,” she said, and they went to sleep.

At three or so, the police came around and took Rita to jail. She went off with a red plaid wool shirt over her nightgown. David was paralyzed and helpless.

“You got her into this,” said her father and made David sign an IOU for her bail. But Rita didn’t get out till noon. Her name made the Courthouse Blotter before their marriage was even announced. Mrs. Callahan walked by the house wearing a neck brace. David and Rita went out to the ranch and walked over to the cows, who faced them with their calves behind them, slowly backing up.

“I wish we lived out here,” said Rita.

“We don’t.”

“Get this,” said Rita.

Rita’s father called them by blowing the horn of his Ford a mile away. They ignored him and kept stewing. “I just wish we could enjoy our house,” said David.

“The house. I just got out of jail.” She snorted slightly. “The house.”

“One word from your father about the good life on the ranch, and I break every bone in his body.”

That night when Mrs. Callahan passed the front window, Rita called out from the sink, “I wish you were dead,” David’s respect for Rita’s intransigence reached a point of fear. He suddenly felt less important in Rita’s life than her quest for immediate justice.

“I feel like a second fiddle,” he said.

“Oh, but you are.”

“Why are you being sarcastic?”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic. I’ll fix that whore if it’s the last thing I do.” Now that things had grown so sanguinary, David pined for the sex schmaltz of their courtship. He stared listlessly in the mirror, remembering his grandmother telling him that those black pupils were the home of Emperor Worm. He was prepared to do a lot to get rid of this feeling, change zip codes, anything.

“If this is all too much for you,” said Rita, staring into the sink, “get out of my way.”

“I don’t have to listen to this, he shot back,” said David.

“You aren’t funny.”

“Get me out of this popstand, he pleaded,” said David with no pleasure at all in his voice.

“The trouble with you, David, is you have no love of struggle.”

Neville picked Rita up at seven to go over the details of her case. He was wearing a cashmere sweater, in a deep tomato. He repeatedly smiled like a dog snapping at flies on a hot summer day. The house seemed to arouse in him a meticulously subdued sense of hilarity. When they’d left, David made for himself a potful of corn on the cob, boiling it until it was done. He dumped the cobs into the sink and ate them as soon as they quit steaming. He went out to the truck and listened to the news of hostages and inflation. He turned to a country station and heard a rural quartet with a basso profundo who intoned love ballads like a professional moron. He imagined his and Rita’s story blared by this sap and turned off the radio. He went back inside. He was nervous. He’d rather have had no furniture and no house than the current situation. He sat against the wall and read how to get rid of unwanted bikini hair once and for all, dead nervous. The next day when he got home from work, he found a note on the door. Rita was at the municipal pool. David went straight there in his overalls, covered with chaff and dust. He was breathless by the time he got to where Rita lay in a row of high school girls. When he spoke he was surprised at the pitch of his own voice. “Rita,” he said, “I’d like to know what you’re doing, what we’re doing. What’s the plan, what’s the future, what is going to happen to us?” Rita angled her hand to make a little band of shadow over her eyes.

“I tell you what, David. I like it pretty well here by the pool.”

They could set their clocks by the passing of Mrs. Callahan’s humped figure. “Hasn’t that thing healed yet?” yelled Rita from the doorway. They could just make out a streak of white against the viburnum.

“She’ll see you in court,” said David.

“Get off my case,” said Rita.

Rita was found guilty of aggravated assault and fined. The court attached David’s wages. Neville stopped by to pick up Rita wearing a smart Shetland, in lime. Rita went as she was. They were going to appeal. Rita’s father came by with a card table and a standing lamp and a hall tree. They sat on the front stoop and drank beer. “I think me and Rita got problems,” said David.

“Don’t come crying to me.”

They talked about farm price supports and the drought in eastern Montana. David could see the road like a band of silver. “What a mess this is, they all exclaimed,” said David sadly.

“You don’t sound so good yourself,” said Rita’s father.

The old rancher left a couple of hours before his daughter came home. When she returned, Rita put her foot through the screen. “God damn son of a bitch,” she said.

“Rita, what’s the matter?”

“I want a nice home, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Whether you care to put your shoulder to the wheel or not.” David thought she’d gotten this odd locution from Neville.

“But I’m actually paying for it,” said David.

“Boola,” said Rita, definitely from Neville.

At work, David tossed a fifty-pound block of iodized salt from the loading dock into the truck, and the rancher was out of the cab and in David’s face in one second. “That could have gone right through the bed, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“What? I need to talk to someone about you.”

At lunch the manager looked at David, exhaling cigarette smoke through his teeth. “I can’t wait until your honeymoon is over,” he said. “You ain’t worth a shit.”

“Fair enough.”

When he got home, Rita’s Runner-Up Miss Montana two-horse trailer was parked in front of the house. He undid his shirt and shook the loose hay out on the sidewalk. When he opened the door, it struck Rita’s suitcase. She skitted out of the way and buttoned her western blouse over her tanned bosom.

“What I bought you is,” she said, “a microwave.”

“For what?”

“For batching it.”

“For batching it? What is this?”

“And there’s a big stack of dinners in the Igloo. We go to Helena to appeal. The state supreme court. Neville says we’ll leave no stone unturned. We’re going to bomb that whore back to the ice age.”

“The ice age,” said David, like a student in English-as-a-foreign-language. He thought of Mrs. Callahan stooped under the weight of her neck brace. She was impossible but she was all alone, while Rita and Neville had not only their enthusiasm but their goal of ruining her. David made a mental note to call the computer technician school and the Navy recruiter. Too, if he got away from the grain elevator, he could quit snoose. You couldn’t dip and work on precision electronics at the same time. He thought of these possibilities with hatred, wondering if they had beaten the deadline for annulments.

David heard something outside and went to the window to see Neville hooking up the horse trailer to his Buick. He asked Rita what they needed the trailer for. For horses, she said. How were the horses needed in the appeal process? he wondered. For trail riding to keep their spirits up.

“I can hardly believe this is happening to me, he noticed,” said David. Neville came in for the bags. Rita trotted to the car and that was that. In two days, she called to say that Helena wasn’t buying her story. They were going to Elko to heal up, play the slots, get their minds off things. “They admitted it was a bad call,” said Rita. “But they have to look out for each other. I can see where they’re coming from.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t.”

Hearing that the marriage was shattered, Mrs. Callahan returned the furniture. She sent a note which made reference to the goodness of her heart. “I wanted,” she wrote simply, “something to remember my father by.”