The bowl beside him was a complete strangeness. He sniffed at the still little creatures inside it. Some smelled like bird, but weren’t bird; some smelled like fish, but weren’t fish. He kept his eyes on them as he sniffed, expecting one to wriggle or scurry any second. He tried batting them with his paw. Nothing. He batted harder, tipping the bowl, and some spilled on the ground. He crouched, waiting to pounce if one ran for cover, took wing, made a game of it, but they all stayed put.
He glanced up at the girl’s window. He saw her shadow there, unmoving but unmistakably her. Without taking his eyes off her, he bent down to the bowl and took one of the strange creatures in his teeth, bit it, chewed, and swallowed. Then another and another, until the bowl was empty.
The next morning she left him something more delectable. There were fish in the creek below the man’s house, but this was different, firm-fleshed, aromatic, savory.
He licked the last of it from his nose and whiskers and remembered the boy’s mother. She had left him such tidbits before the boy was born, nearly the cat’s whole lifetime ago. But the day she’d died bearing the boy, the cat had sworn off humans. Taking food from the girl was risky, he knew, but at his age he wasn’t the hunter he used to be. He could always leave the food tomorrow or the next day, if it was even there at all. With humans, you couldn’t count on anything. For now, though, he let himself be persuaded.
3
Henry came back near sundown, but it wasn’t long before I was wishing he hadn’t. At first he seemed okay, tired but civil, even forked over my fifty dollars when Fred testified he’d seen the cat.
“He’s black and white and has a mustache!” I told him.
“Well, I haven’t seen him with my own eyes, now have I?” Henry said.
“Fred saw him. Didn’t you, Fred?”
Fred nodded. “Big fella. Must weigh twelve or thirteen pounds. Watched him swallow half a catfish from last night’s supper.”
Henry looked doubtful, like maybe we’d cooked up this story between us.
“And guess what else?” I said, waving the bills in the air. “I got arrested!”
“What?” Henry turned to Fred.
“Sheriff Bean put on a little show,” Fred explained.
“It wasn’t any show! I got fingerprinted and Fred had to pay a fine.”
“Fine?” Henry asked.
“Twelve whole packs of Juicy Fruit,” I told him.
“Sheriff Bean’s quit tobacco again,” Fred put in.
“I see,” Henry said.
“He says if I get so much as a sprained ankle, he’ll put you in jail and throw away the key!”
“There’s justice for you,” Henry muttered.
“And after that, I got released into Fred’s custody and met the Padre and Bessie!”
“Bessie all right?” Henry asked.
“She had a fine day,” Fred told him. “How about you?”
Henry sighed and looked grumpy. More so after Fred handed him a pile of phone messages, all from the same woman, who’d called three or four times since Fred and I had been back. Henry cursed and stormed off to his workshop out back the second he read her name.
I headed for my room. Past experience with angry grown-ups had taught me to get out of the line of fire. A few minutes later Fred’s truck pulled out of the drive. Henry’s machines started up out back and his miserable music blared. He’d forgotten all about me. I brushed my teeth, took up my notebook, and climbed into bed.
I looked at all the things Fred and I had charged to Henry on our trip into town, mostly clothes for the coming winter: a warm jacket, two sweaters, three pairs of jeans, and a half-dozen long-sleeved shirts in different colors. Not one item was a hand-me-down or thrift-store special with stained places or holes you had to tuck in or wear a sweater over so nobody saw. Everything was really and truly new, still in the plastic packages with price tags attached. A half-dozen pairs each of new socks and underwear sat on top of my dresser, and on the floor of my closet was a pair of new sneakers that didn’t rub my heels or pinch my toes, alongside my prized new possession: a pair of red leather boots almost too beautiful to wear.
I lay back on the pillows remembering the good parts of the day, starting with the cat. He was big and black with a white bib and belly and four white feet, plus a triangle of white around his nose, and a black spot like half a mustache to one side. We sat in Fred’s truck, still and quiet, watching him eat every bit of food, after which he looked up at us with sleepy green-gold eyes, licked his muzzle, and then lumbered back to his weeds.
Sheriff Bean’s blue lights flashed behind us almost as soon as we left the drive. He was short and round and wore sunglasses and a cowboy hat with a star stuck to the front. He had a wart on the end of his nose that would’ve made me crosseyed if it had been mine, and his teeth were tobacco-stained dark brown.
“Looks like we got us a couple of dangerous criminals,” he said sternly, peering into the driver’s side. Then he lifted his sunglasses and smiled his brown smile, and he and Fred laughed.
After Fred and I went shopping, we met him at the sheriff’s department, where he fingerprinted me. He said it was just for fun, but I heard him whisper to Fred, “Now, if she ever goes missing, we’ll have ’em on file.”
He told me all four of his girls were grown now, and if I took a dislike to Henry, he and Mrs. Bean had empty bedrooms waiting. Then Fred’s cell phone rang and Fred looked worried, but it was only Bessie wondering where in the heck we
