“Ain’t gonna work for her,” Dougie announced, and turned away.
“What do you mean?” I cried out, and Cheryl asked, “How come?”
Dougie jerked open the car door and started dragging his stuff out. “Look at her,” he said gruffly. “She’s not like us. I shoulda seen it. Bones don’t work for someone like her.”
I swung my gaze to Cheryl. I tried to meet her eyes, but her look roved over me, summing me up. “I see,” she said slowly.
I looked back to Dougie. I felt like the family pet at the moment when the car door swings open on the country road and Bubby pushes you firmly out. Dumped. Cheryl stood up, took the kettle, and emptied out the liquor of cat.
“Wait a minute,” I said as she handed Dougie the empty kettle. “I probably just missed a bone. Just missed it, that’s all.” I grabbed one at random, slipped it under my tongue. Nothing. Go on to the next one.
“Nope.” Dougie’s voice was final as he picked up the camp stove. “Don’t work for people like you. And you knowed it all along.”
“No!” I wailed around a mouthful of ribs. I spat them out, grabbed another handful of tiny bones, and shoved them into my mouth. “Wait,” I choked as I struggled to get my tongue over them. “Eweul see.”
“What’d she say?” Cheryl asked Dougie.
“I don’t know. Who cares? Now look, missy, you can’t take all this stuff. You got like a pack or something?”
“I got a pillowcase,” Cheryl said brightly. She dug through the back of the car, came up with her pillow. “And a sleeping bag.”
“Well, good. Now that’s real good. Dump out the pillow, ’cause you ain’t gonna need that. Keep the sleeping bag. Now, in the pillowcase, you put a change of clothes, a comb, that sort of thing. Nothing much, ’cause you ain’t gonna need much no more. No, forget makeup, you’re prettier without it. Sure, take the Cheetos. Not that we’ll be hungry, but snacking’s fun as we walk along. Now let me tie it up for you.”
The bones were wet with rain, and grit from the cardboard clung to them. I calmed myself, forced myself to do one bone at a time. They’d see. Any minute now, they’d see. As I watched them hike away, I thought how I’d jump and shout and they’d look back to see me glowing like a torch, brighter than either of them, burning like a bonfire. I’d show them. The rain pelted down faster. It grew harder to see them through the dusk and falling water. It didn’t matter. I had the car, I’d catch up with them. I picked up the next bone.
I don’t know how many times I went through the bones. I stopped when blue and white lights started flashing before my eyes, wondering if I’d hit it. A blaze of white light hit my face and blinded me, and a cop asked, “You okay, miss? I saw your dome light on and stopped. You sick or something?”
He took his flashlight beam off my face as I staggered upright and leaned against my car. I’d never closed the door, and the dome light inside was still burning. Cheryl’s stuff was spilled half out of the car. I told him something about the stuff in my backseat falling over so I stopped to rearrange it. He couldn’t have believed it, not with my clothes soaked to my body and my hair dripping down my back. He played his light over the deboned cat while I stuffed everything back into the car. Probably decided he didn’t want to know what was going on. He stayed behind me while I got my car started again and watched me pull out onto the freeway before he spun off the gravel shoulder and passed me in a flicker of headlights.
I drove on, not going anywhere special now, just counting the cats. I never saw Dougie or Cheryl again, but I did once find another stewed cat by the side of the road. I gathered up what was left of it and took it to a motel that night. I tried every bone. Probably two or three times. Nothing.
I never got to New Mexico, either. I stopped off in San Rafael, to live between my car and the women’s shelter there until I found a computer firm that would hire me.
They’re paying me to go to night school now, and I know that things are getting better for me. If I study hard and pay attention to my job and get along with my coworkers, I’ll get ahead. If I work at it.
There are still times when I think about it. Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed, semiawake after a restless night, waiting for my alarm clock to go off, I think of them, rising from a peaceful night in some dewy field, glowing with health, to start their daily trek down the highways and byways of America. No clocks to punch. No classes to study for. Nothing to do but hike down the road in the fresh morning air, looking for that fifth squashed cat. That’s what works for them. And what works for me is getting up at five to leave the house at six so I can fight traffic and get to work by eight. Who’s to say which way is better? Who’s to say who has the better life? But sometimes, on those mornings when I wonder, I step out of my door early, at five thirty, into the fresh morning air. I look at the wide blue sky, at the sun just opening the day. And I get into my car and drive slowly and carefully to work.
I wouldn’t want to hit someone’s cat by accident.
Strays
Theme anthologies are gold mines for some writers. Give them a topic, and they can write a story around it. Cat story, horse story, a story about a magician with a sword, a haunted house story, a story about a mermaid . . . And oh, how I envy those writers.
I just can’t do it.
Lord knows I’ve tried. But it’s sort of like the fable about the emperor who would give his fortune to the man who could look at a white horse and not think about its tail, but in reverse. The more someone gives me a theme, the more those stories elude me.
But once in a great while, I still manage to wriggle and wrangle a story into a theme anthology. “Strays” is a tale like that. I was approached by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, a longtime friend and fellow writer. She was editing an anthology to be called Warrior Princesses. Surely, as a fantasy writer, I could come up with a story that had such a character.
Well. No. Or rather, yes and no. I was working on a story. And with a touch or two, perhaps I could convey a bit of royalty to my protagonist.
And once I did, I perceived that she’d actually been a princess all the time. For every female cat is a queen.
Lonnie Spencer looked like a boy. She sat on a rusty bike, one foot on the curb, the toe of her other ratty sneaker in the gutter. She had scabby knees, a smoking skull on her baggy sweatshirt, and a baseball hat backward over her chopped black hair.
As I edged past, she spoke in a clear girl’s voice, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
I had been staring. I’d never seen anyone my own age with a big scar down her face. It ridged her Native American skin, pulling her cheek and her eye to one side. It was hard not to stare. So I looked down and saw the Barbie doll lashed to the front of her bike. It had a fur skirt and one boob. Her clumpy hair was tied back with gold thread. A tiny wooden bow was slung over her shoulder.
“Amazon,” I said without thinking.
“Yeah!” Lonnie grinned and suddenly didn’t look so scary. “She’s an Amazon warrior. That’s why I cut off her tit. So she can shoot a bow better. I read that they really did that.”
“I know. I read about it too.”
Our eyes met. Connection. We both read, and we read weird stuff, stuff about women who were warriors. It’s so simple, when you’re a kid.
In her next breath, Lonnie announced, “I’m a warrior too. I been teaching myself martial arts. Ninja stuff, swords and pikes, too. I want to learn to shoot a bow. Scars are okay, on a warrior. Hey. My name’s Lonnie Spencer.” She stuck out a grubby hand. She had a boy’s way of doing things. “What’s yours?”
Her hand was scratchy, scabs and dirt and dry skin. “Mandy Curtis.”
“Mandy, huh. Bet you get teased a lot about that in school. Handy Mandy. I hate school. All the teachers hate me and the kids tease me all the time. ’Cause of my scars, you know, and because I don’t dress like they do.
