“What makes you say that?”
“Lester called it a sense I have for animals. My seventh sense.”
“Who’s Lester?”
“One of Mama’s friends.”
“Friends?”
I sat on my knees in a kitchen chair, elbows on the table, stirring my coffee, watching it swirl. “That’s what she called the men who liked to take her out, took care of her when she didn’t feel good, and minded me when she was in the hospital. Mama was real pretty, so she made friends easy, but she was real crazy, so they didn’t last long. Lester worked nights at a vet place and let me sit with the boarded animals while he cleaned up.”
Fred turned to wash the dishes. I offered to help, but he said it sounded as if I’d been cleaning up after grown-ups since the day I was born and I’d earned a rest. “You got other talents besides your gift with animals?” he asked.
“Manny taught me to pay Mama’s bills and figure out her checkbook. And Charlie taught me how to prune and mow.”
“Those aren’t talents, those are chores!” Fred said over his shoulder.
“What do you mean? I’m good at them!”
“Well, fine, but there’s a difference between a chore and a talent. Chores are what you have to do. Talents are your natural abilities, what believers like Bessie would call your gifts from God. Things you’re good at without knowing why.”
I’d never considered the difference.
Fred saw my confusion. “You know Henry used to be a doctor?”
“I read about it at the library. He operated on the President.”
“That’s right. A heart surgeon. He operated on Bessie’s heart after he moved back here. Did it for nothing, too.”
“I thought he quit doctoring.”
“Mostly. He still keeps up his license, though, looks after Bessie and a few others at the free clinic in town. But don’t say where you heard that.”
I zipped my lips.
“Anyway,” Fred went on, “Henry was a good doctor, but that’s what Henry’s daddy, Augustus, wanted him to be.”
“My grandfather?”
“That’s right. Stern fella, Augustus. Not a man you said no to.”
“You knew him?”
Fred nodded. “Bessie and I grew up here, same as Henry. Everybody knew Augustus and his temper. That man would fuss if you hung him with a new rope.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Somebody who complains about everything, even things that don’t matter.”
I saw now. Born griping. Like Ray.
“Anyway,” Fred went on, “when he was growing up, everybody could see Henry was good at art, except Augustus. To please his daddy, Henry joined the Navy, went to medical school, and became a fine doctor. But it didn’t make him happy. So after a while he left doctoring and went back to making art. Good art, too. Had people lined up clear to China to buy it. He fell into a little slump, but he’s coming back.”
“What kind of slump?”
Fred’s voice softened. “His wife died.”
So that’s who was in all the drawings and paintings.
“He didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head.
“When Henry first came back, I hadn’t seen him since we were kids. Doc Wilson was out seeing Bessie, and he said he didn’t know why I’d called him when I had one of the country’s best heart specialists living right next door. I drove over and found Henry raging over a flat tire on his trailer, throwing things and cursing to wake the dead. I turned my truck around and hollered, ‘Give me a call when you’re civil!’”
“Over a tire?” I asked.
“He was wound tight after his wife passed. He’s not easy under the best circumstances, but that put him over the top. Can’t say I’d be different if anything ever happened to Bessie. Scares me to think.”
“What happened then?”
“He called the next day to apologize and said he’d do whatever he could for Bessie, though aside from a transplant he couldn’t do much. Bessie was really the one who took care of Henry. She saw how he was and hired him to make a sculpture for the church. Or, as she says, ‘to do what he was born to do.’”
Fred set the broom and dustpan in the closet and eyed the cat-food bag. “So what else were you born to do besides feed stray cats?”
“Gosh, we got to talking and I forgot!” I grabbed the bag and raced outside, toppling my kitchen chair. I ran across the lawn to the crate. Both bowls were empty. I studied the weeds. I couldn’t see him, but I felt him watching.
I filled his food bowl and ran back into the house to get water. Fred pressed himself flat against the wall to keep out of my way.
“Wait!” he called, and I stopped. He walked to his truck and took a small foil-wrapped package off the front seat. He parted the foil and handed it to me. “We had catfish for supper. Saved a little piece after Henry called.”
I filled the moat and water bowl and set the catfish on top of the food while Fred waited for me by his truck. He squinted at the weeds, trying to see. “You think he minds me being here?”
“Not as long as you keep your distance.”
“Like certain people,” Fred said, giving me a sidelong look. “Shall we go to town and give him a little space?”
I took the cat food back in the house and then climbed in the passenger side of the truck. I put on my seat belt and looked up, but Fred wasn’t moving. He sat still as stone, staring out the driver’s window at the crate, his index finger to his lips.
“Don’t slam your door,” he whispered. “Your friend is taking our bait.”
He could taste her kindness in the sweetness of the water.
Usually he drank from the creek or puddles, from the natural bowls of ditches or stumps. Each had its particular flavor, some strong, others bitter, some gritty, some chalky with mud. He hadn’t tasted water this delicious in a long time. How long? He had vague memories from long ago of the crazy old woman
