“Well, if it’s not the wild child,” the woman said the second I answered her knock. Her old eyes fixed on me, and starting at the top of my head, she studied every inch, giving me as close an inspection as I’ve ever had. I swore she counted I had ten fingers and ten toes and everything else besides.
“Beg pardon, ma’am?”
“It’s what the whole county’s saying. Thought I’d see for myself,” she said, and went on studying me from the other side of the screen. I studied her back. She was bundled against the cold; her coarse gray hair was pulled tightly into a bun at the back of her head. She was stringy, her face leathery, her old-lady eyes as penetrating as Ms. O’Keeffe’s.
“Uncle Henry’s gone out for a while,” I told her. “He shouldn’t be too much longer, if you’d like to leave word.”
“I didn’t come to see Dr. Royster,” she said. “Step out here where I can see you.”
She didn’t look dangerous, so I did.
“Nothing the least bit wild about you,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Small minds and wagging tongues, should’ve known.”
“Ma’am?”
“Though wagging tongues can serve a useful purpose. I’ve been grateful for the rumors that Roysters and Bookers shoot hunters trespassing on their land.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, remembering Ray. He liked to kill living things—squirrels, rabbits, deer—and he wasn’t too particular whose land he did it on. I was glad he wasn’t anywhere close by. The white deer wouldn’t stand a chance.
“He yours?” she said, nodding at the cat. Since the snow he’d taken to lazing in plain sight near his crate at the edge of the yard.
“He’s his own cat. But I’m working on him.”
“That left ear looks swollen.”
“It’s been that way for a while.”
“Does it stink?”
“Can’t get close enough to him to know,” I said.
“If it’s infected, it could kill him, especially considering how old he looks.”
“He won’t let anybody near him. Not yet.”
“The wild ones are like that,” she said, shaking her head. “Once they get a fear of people, it’s hard to talk them out of it. I’ve got a soft spot for old toms. Maud Booker, by the way. I’m the veterinarian around here. My land joins Dr. Royster’s about two miles north of here.”
She held out her hand and I shook it. Her handshake was like she was, cool and firm.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” I said, not sure if I meant it. At least she had good taste in cats.
“I’ve seen what I needed to see,” she said, turning to go. “I never mind other people’s business if I can help it. Just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
She walked out to her truck, opened the door, and took a small box from a cooler on the back seat. She handed it to me with four cans of cat food. “Fill the little bottle inside the box with water, shake it, and give him a dropperful twice a day in a little of this wet food till it’s all gone. If he tames, call me and I’ll come give him his shots. I’m in the book.”
“Thanks,” I said, setting the cans on the ground. I opened the little green box and took out the dropper bottle with white powder inside.
She climbed behind the wheel. “You favor your grandfather.”
“I do?”
“You have his chin.”
“You knew my grandfather?” I said.
“I knew Augustus well.”
“Did you know my daddy?”
“A short while.”
“When?”
She started the engine and jerked the pickup into gear. “For the nine months before I gave birth to him.”
And she slammed the door and drove off before I could say another word.
He watched her climb the snowy hill and started to follow, until he saw where she was going.
Though it had been years since he’d prowled the north woods, his memory of them was still strong. After she disappeared over the rise, he waited a short while in the cold, then turned back toward the crawlspace under the man’s house where it was warm.
When he was a kitten, he’d hunted the woods for rabbits. He missed those days, the time before the savage and his woman had roared up on their sputtering two-wheeled machine and moved into the silver house. The savage had spent his days motoring back and forth between the house and the highway and tending a rattling apparatus he built farther up in the woods. He sang loudly as he worked. Between songs he drank from a jar, and then he went back to tinkering and feeding the fire under his contraption. It was odd-looking, with coils spiraling out of it, smoke and steam escaping in clouds.
While the savage was away, the woman cleaned and swept the silver house. She left bread crusts for the birds and scraps of meat or fish for the cat. Her arms and legs were as fragile as a fawn’s, but when her belly grew over the summer, her graceful walk became a waddle. As big as she was, she worked hard. She sloshed bucket after bucket of water from the well into the house, then dragged a heavy basket to a rope strung between trees and hung wet things out to dry. She rarely spoke. The more her stomach grew, the less the man returned to her, though she sat evenings in the doorway as if waiting for him to come. Sometimes she sang in a soft, high voice.
When the savage did come back, he staggered about the yard. He teased the
