“I’ve been on my own my whole life,” I said defensively. “I’ve done pretty well.”
“You have,” he agreed. “But you’ve done it keeping everybody in your life at arm’s length, trusting no one. Today you took a terrible risk.”
“You should talk!” I protested. “Besides, I trust you!”
“Zoë,” Henry said flatly, “that cat of yours trusts me more than you do.”
It stung when he said that. I looked down at my lap, not wanting to look him in the eye.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” he asked.
I thought about the bow peeking out of the boy’s bag. The last thing I wanted to do was get him in trouble.
“You said you didn’t know that boy,” Henry said.
“I don’t,” I told him. “But I’ve seen that deer in the woods between here and the cabin, three times counting today, and each time I had the feeling that another animal was with her, one I couldn’t see.”
Henry nodded.
“Until today, I thought it was just another deer.”
“Anything else?”
“You know that old cabin?”
He nodded again.
“I’d fixed it up, made it nice. But Hargrove and his cousin went up there and tore everything up, broke the windows, stole my stuff, wrecked everything I’d done. I wrote about the cabin in my journal. The one that got stolen.”
The phone rang then, and Henry answered. Sheriff Bean. While they talked, I tried to picture the sheriff being five and Fred and Henry being the boy’s age. I thought of the boy and the white deer alone in the woods tonight. After today, I didn’t hold out hope for that deer to survive hunting season. I hoped they were all right for now.
Henry hung up the phone. “The sheriff says from what little anybody in town knows, that boy’s a transient, in and out of the migrant community, a picker, probably illegal.” He stood up, came around his desk, and stood over me, looking serious. “I need to get back to our guests. Will you promise to think about what we’ve discussed, please?”
“I promise, Uncle Henry,” I said.
“Then I’m going to trust that you and I can work this through in our own way,” he told me. “All right?”
“Okay.”
“Coming with me?”
“Not just yet,” I said, and he nodded once and went out.
I headed upstairs without saying good night. Bessie was still fussing, telling Fred he’d forgotten what it was like to be young. I took the little carved cat from my nightstand and turned it in my hand. I’d completely forgotten to tell Henry about it. But what could I have said? I wondered now if the wild boy had made it and the others Hargrove had stolen, or if he knew who had. I thought about the crazy events of the day, about Harlan showing up and Maud with her possum, cats, and crippled dog, about Henry and Fred saving little Garland, but most of all about the boy and his deer. Seemed like I had the pieces of a puzzle, if only I could see how they fit together.
I took the small book called The Boy Who Drew Cats from my bedside table drawer. I opened it and looked at the pictures, trying to quiet my mind, but the story had the opposite effect. I liked it so much I read it twice, about the Japanese boy who drew cats everywhere, on walls, in books, on furniture, because he couldn’t help it, because he had “the genius of an artist,” and how his cat drawings came to life one night to kill the goblin rat and save his life.
Before I turned out my light, I slipped the book and the cat carving under my pillow, so I could reach for them in the night.
15
After Thanksgiving, Bessie pressed Henry into hiring Harlan to put the cabin right. Everybody but me liked the idea right off. Harlan would bunk with the Padre and help out evenings at the church, while working days at the cabin and providing what Henry called “a presence” in the north woods. That was the deal Henry struck with the sheriff and the condition he set for me. I could go up to the cabin and wander the woods so long as Harlan was around.
The mayor let his reward offer stand: Any squealing no-account could collect five thousand dollars for proof of who’d hurt Hargrove. The sheriff thought Maud had winged him, and I’d kept the boy’s bow a secret. There’d been no sign of him or his deer since Thanksgiving. They seemed to be long gone.
My journal never turned up either. At the request of the mayor, Mr. Reardon moved Hargrove to another fifth-grade class, which suited me fine. Except for glimpses of Hargrove at recess, lunch, or assemblies, I hardly saw him anymore. Mad as I was about the cabin, I had better things to do than spend any more energy on someone that hateful and weird. If he stared at me across the playground or came anywhere near me in the halls, I just sidled up to Shelby or one of my other classmates and started up a conversation. I went about my business as though I was deaf, dumb, and blind to his existence—until one strange day right before Christmas break.
Thursdays Uncle Henry spent the day volunteer-doctoring at the Sugar Hill free clinic, picking me up at school afterward. He was always late, though, and on this particular Thursday he was later than usual. I didn’t mind. I went around behind the school to see Sparky, who belonged to our custodian, Mr. Sylvester. Sparky was a little brown mutt-terrier, sweet and loyal. Mr. Sylvester had rescued him from a traffic island on a California freeway. Sparky was pacing the island back and forth, trapped by traffic going seventy and eighty miles an hour on either side. Seeing Sparky’s trouble, Mr.
