She tugged on pantyhose in the bedroom and decided on the full slip under her light teal dress. Paige put on her pearls. It was a wedding, after all.
She carried her suitcases into the living room. He was sitting in the leather lounger. Light poured in through the window behind him, and his hair was illuminated by it. The television was on with the sound off.
“Set those down,” he said. “I’ll tote them. Your car is running fine. I jumped it six times, then checked the gas tank.”
“It was empty?”
“It was.” He nodded, grinning like a cat. “It’s not now. I have a tank for the tractor out back.”
The old man stood from his chair while Paige went back into the bedroom to get her purse.
“May I pay you for the eggs and fried chicken?”
“Now, that wouldn’t be neighborly of you at all,” he said. The old man rubbed his chin and glanced at the living-room wall. “But here’s what you can do, if you’d like to offer my wife a favor.”
Paige waited. His wife?
The old man pointed to the mask on the wall. “That was hers,” he said. “She got it from some old boys up in the woods. It’s just the top half, but she thought it was special. It’s made of maple, and it’s pretty old. Supposed to change anyone who wears it into a cat. Here and in Tennessee, they call it a Wampus Mask. That’s the thing about her I meant to say last night. My wife loved weddings and such. Never missed one when she was young, when everybody at the church was invited.”
He removed the mask from its hook. He held it in his hand as if it were alive. He smiled at the piece of wood with two holes for eyes.
“Reminds me of her,” he said. “I hung it there on the wall, and it’s like she’s looking at me, like she’s still here. I’m sentimental about it. I talk to her now and then, and we watch the TV together. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind taking the mask to the wedding with you.”
“So your wife may be able to see the ceremony?” Paige asked. She was touched by the love he had for his wife.
“She’d sit stern as a funeral at a wedding. Never make a peep until she got home. Then she would tell me and start laughing and laugh herself to sleep. No explaining the way that woman was. You can leave it at the desk at the inn. I’ll be getting over there and will pick it up sometime soon.”
“I’ll be happy to,” Paige said.
She reached for the wooden half-mask. It felt smooth as skin when she slipped it inside her purse.
He’d made a map for her. The drive to Bridge Street was an easy one, except for the curves and hills. Paige drove on to the Laurel Skyland Inn in time for the wedding. Rows of white folding chairs lined a short path under huge oak trees. Paige was seated on the bride’s side, second row from the front. Faith Bailey’s mother turned around and said hello. Paige apologized for missing the party.
A large tree branch formed a natural arch in front of the chairs. It was decorated with streamers of white flowers. Paige thought it was too pretty for words. The green lawn of the Laurel Skyland Inn was immaculate. Mountain views rose in the background.
Soon, the groom was in place, with his best man. The bridesmaids stood side by side in pink chiffon dresses with short, puffy sleeves. One was Faith’s sister. They wore red shoes, and each had a wide red silk sash tied around her waist and finished in a large bow to one side. A flower girl came down the aisle, and the wedding march played. Paige tried not to stare at the groom.
Faith was too nervous to notice anyone. She took a little dip with each step as she came down the aisle in her wedding gown. Paige thought Faith might fall over when she dipped. Faith’s father seemed to think so, too. He held her by the arm. Each time she did her dipping step, it looked as if Faith were trying to pull away from him and fall over.
Once the ceremony was under way, Paige’s purse fell in the grass against her ankle. She picked it up and set it on her legs, remembering the mask just in time.
“Do you, Patricia Faith Bailey, take this man …”
Paige opened her purse to lift out the mask. It was a sentimental gesture and a small favor for the old man and his missing wife. But instead of seeing the mask when she glanced down, Paige saw two green eyes staring back at her. A cat was in her purse. The eyes were alive. She could barely believe it. A cat was in her purse, but not for long.
“… in sickness and in health, to love …”
The cat was the color of the maple-wood mask, with a short, smooth coat that glistened over its sleek muscles. It climbed out of her purse and planted its hind paws on Paige’s knees, its front paws stretching to the back of the chair in front of her.
“… and to cherish, till death do you part?”
Paige was afraid to move. The perfectly blond cat pointed its pink nose at the bride and stared intently at the proceedings.
When Patricia Faith Bailey opened her mouth to say “I do,” she meowed instead.
Paige giggled. Everyone had heard it.
The bride’s eyes widened noticeably. Her mouth trembled. She tried again.
“Meow, meow,” Faith said loudly, clearly.
The cat wagged its tail.
The officiating minister placed his hand on the bride’s shoulder.
Faith tried one more time. “Meow,” she said slowly. Her eyes crossed as she stared at her own nose, try to see her mouth. She dropped her bouquet. “Me-ooow!”
Everyone from the first row back laughed. Faith’s mother leapt to her feet, spilling her chair. The cat leapt with her, finding momentary purchase on her shoulder.
Paige quickly checked her purse. She couldn’t find the mask. It wasn’t there.
The cat turned in a circle on Faith’s mother’s shoulder and stretched its head high to see over the crowd. Its eyes looked like big green marbles. Paige swore she saw the cat smile. It looked right at Paige and slowly closed one eye, then let it open. The cat winked at her. Paige grinned, knowing she’d been had.
“Me-ooow!” Faith screamed, swatting at her own mouth. The cat had her tongue.
She’d meow until the cat was wood again.
Paige hoped the old man would enjoy his wife’s telling him about this one. She hoped he would like hearing how the bridesmaids looked like pink pigs done up for Christmas. She hoped he would have as much fun as if he’d actually seen it.
Whoever carved that mask knew what he was doing.
MYRTLE BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA
Mostly There Cat
High tide came with the dark moon. It was always thus.
And with the rising tide the ocean brought to shore bits and pieces of the sea, things lost. Shells and bones. After strong storms, treasure hunters combed the beaches for items washed ashore from shipwrecks. On a very lucky day, a beachcomber might find a porcelain saucer, an antique bottle or two, or perhaps a silver coin resting in the sand and seaweed. Small pieces from shipwrecks take their time—in some cases, hundreds of years—coming ashore.
The cat of George Burrows Thomas, a Welsh seaman originally from Ystrad Flur, valley to the Wye, late quartermaster of the sloop Delight, Francis Spriggs captain, searched the sands near Myrtle Beach each morning after the tide was out. The cat, Stripe, came on the sole mission to find bones in the sand. Those who saw the cat thought it was mostly there. This was because parts of the cat were missing.
Kimberly was sixteen when her mother took her to an offseason rental near the coastal sands along Huntington Beach State Park, south of the Myrtle Beach airport. It was time, she was informed, for a mother-daughter vacation. She was told they needed to get to know each other better.
“I can’t believe it,” Kimberly said on the drive. “You shouldn’t make me miss a month of school just to get to know me better.”
“I need to get away for a while.”
“Bull,” Kimberly said.
“I’m going to write my novel. It’s time. And you’re between boyfriends. Next thing I know, you’ll be head over heels in love, and I’ll never see you again.”
“Bull, bull, bu
ll. You’re leaving Dad.”
Her mother made a face. “It’s not as simple as that, young lady. It’s just a short separation. And you know I’ve always dreamed of living by the ocean.”
The rental was a tiny neglected bungalow with two small bedrooms and one bathroom. At least Kimberly had her own room, even if it wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet with a window. The sea made noise all the time. It was distracting.
The bungalow had no television. Kimberly had nothing to do. And nothing to wear she wanted anyone to see her wearing.
Her mother had bought her three pairs of creased cotton shorts with pockets for the beach. The shorts had half-inch cuffs.
“Who would wear those?” Kimberly wanted to know.
The pairs were bright yellow, bright pink, and bright green. Her mother had bought her three matching tops, white cotton blouses you could almost see through, with square-cut bottoms that reached below her hips. The sleeveless blouses had flat, open collars and buttoned down the front. The button rows were decorated with machine-embroidered flowers in yellow, in pink, and in green. Matching embroidered flowers were on the collars.
“Where did you find these?” Kimberly asked.
“You wear them unbuttoned, dear, over your swimsuit.”
Kimberly didn’t think so. She didn’t own a bathing suit she could wear in front of her mom. And she wasn’t going swimming in the first place.
Her mother needed time alone, she said. She sat in the house with a yellow legal pad in her lap and a felt-tip pen in her hand. Their first morning in the rental, her mother wrote “Chapter One” in bold block letters at the top of the page. She waited. She tapped the pen against her knee. Then she jumped up, told Kimberly she was going to get donuts, and drove off in the car.
Kimberly put on the green shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers. She kicked around outdoors. The birds made too much noise. The ocean kept looking like it was coming to get her. Kimberly was afraid of the ocean. It was too big. Too big to get along with. It was full of leeches, sea snakes, biting turtles, sharks, and yucky jellyfish. Lobsters and crabs. Nothing you ever wanted to touch. The ocean, she believed, was full of fish poop and seaweed.
The beach was awful, too. It smelled bad. She walked here and there aimlessly, trying to avoid the ocean.
The beach held nothing at all of interest to her until she saw the cat. Kimberly was walking in the tall grass behind a low sand dune when she saw something with stripes digging in the sand. It was a cat with three legs and a rear wooden one strapped to its hip. She had never seen a cat with an artificial limb before.
“Someone has made a wooden leg for a cat,” she told her mother. “And it didn’t seem to have a tail.”
“That’s nice,” her mother said. “Put more zinc oxide on your nose when you go back out.”
“It was talking, Mother. Talking and digging. It said something about bones.”
“I see.”
“At first, I thought it didn’t have a tail, but here’s the thing. It carried its tail around in its mouth. It laid the tail down when it wanted to dig. And it wasn’t the cat that was talking. It was the cat’s parrot. Well, actually, it was just a parrot head. A white parrot, you know that kind? With yellow feathers on the top of its head. It rode around on the back of the cat by clamping a piece of fur in its beak. When it wanted to talk, it let go, fell off, and then started talking.”
Kimberly’s mother stared hard at her daughter.
“And what did the parrot say, darling?”
“ ‘Aaawk.’ ” Kimberly mimicked the parrot head. “ ‘Find a bone. Aaawk, no bone. Find a bone. Aaawk.’ ”
“Ready for lunch, then?”
The next morning, Kimberly found the cat on the beach again. It was farther from the bungalow. The cat had dug several holes by the time she showed up. It dug another one as she watched. It propped its rear end on its good hind leg and the wooden one, then furiously scooped sand with its front paws, piling it up behind. The cat was a gray-and-black tabby. Its tail rested nearby on the sand.
Kimberly came a few steps closer. As she neared, a white-and-yellow-feathered head rose from the hole. It had huge black eyes, one of which looked right at her. The cat was backing up out of the hole in the sand. The bird head came with it.
The cat’s wooden leg was fixed to its rear hip with leather straps. When the cat was out of the sand entirely, she could see it wore a collar. A gold disk dangled from the collar.
The cat watched Kimberly, and Kimberly watched the cat.
The parrot started to talk, letting go of the cat. “Aaawk,” it said, falling to the sand.
It pulled itself along in the sand with its beak. It paused next to the cat, then pulled itself aboard by clamping its beak on a piece of cat fur. The cat picked up its tail in its mouth and cantered away at a brisk pace. Kimberly stared in wonder as the odd duo disappeared into the tall grass at the edge of the beach.
Kimberly ran back to the bungalow. She searched through everything and finally found a rusty trowel and a small shovel in the little shed attached to the back. She eagerly returned to the holes the mostly there cat had dug in the sand. Kimberly dug each hole bigger.
“ ‘Aaawk,’ ” she whispered to herself. “ ‘Find a bone!’ ”
She returned to each enlarged hole and dug it even wider. Eventually, Kimberly found a little sea-washed bone of some sort. The size of the middle of one of her fingers, it was worn smooth and was dark brown in color.
Kimberly was exhausted and a little sunburned at the end of the day. She put the bone on the dresser in her room. She was going to show it to her mom, but her mom wouldn’t believe her anyway.
Kimberly was almost asleep when she heard a scratching sound at her window screen. She was startled by the noise. Someone was trying to break in. Before she could yell for her mother, Kimberly heard a familiar squawk.
“Aye, matey! Aaawk!”
The parrot head was fastened by the tip of its beak to her window screen. It left its beak open and stuck out its tongue to talk. The long yellow feathers on the back of its head moved up and down as it peered into Kimberly’s room with its big black eyes.
“It’s you,” Kimberly said in a normal voice.
“Gold for bones,” the parrot said. “Aaawk!”
“I have one,” the sixteen-year-old announced excitedly. “Right there.”
“Gold for bones,” the bird said again.
Its beak slipped out of the screen, and the bird head dropped from view.
“Bird overboard, aaawk, aaawk!” it screeched as it fell.
Kimberly rushed to the window. It was dark outside. There was very little moonlight. She could still see the cat in the yard, its tail in its mouth. The cat was mostly shadow. It walked to the white parrot head to help it climb up.
“Gold for bones,” the bird said again, then grabbed a piece of cat fur and flipped itself onto the cat’s back, where it found a better hold for the ride home.
Kimberly went to sleep wondering where the cat lived.
Early the next morning, she returned to the holes in the sand. They had been filled in by the tide. The cat’s tracks were washed away. Kimberly scoured the higher dunes for any sign of the cat’s hasty departure the day before. Gnats and sweat bees circled her. She found trails through the grass and, through the prickly short weeds with little purple flowers, narrow footpaths she hadn’t noticed earlier. She followed each one, winding this way and coming back, until she found the cat’s tracks, three paws and a peg, then three paws and a peg again.
Kimberly hurried after them. Far away from the water, the earth was more tightly packed. She hoped she was on the right trail. Once in a while, she found a little round hole that might have been made by the cat’s peg leg, but any paw prints were gone by then.
Then she realized she was lost. A pile of old building stones was far in front of her. Kimberly turned a complete circle, looking at everything. The sun was there. She could hear the ocean. She could find her way bac
k.
She walked slowly onward. About ready to abandon the hunt, she heard a parrot squawk. No words, just a squawk.
Then she heard another one. The sounds were coming from the pile of rocks. Kimberly climbed on the stones and listened. She bent over to hear better.
“Oh!” She gasped when she looked up and saw the striped cat on the rocks, its tail in its mouth. “I have it here,” she said.
Kimberly removed the bone from her pocket and held it out in her hand toward the cat. The cat put down its tail. It watched Kimberly with its head held low, ears back. It looked as if it were about to leap at her.
She stepped away from the cat, almost tumbling off the rocks. More carefully, she backed away a little farther. The cat let its tail drop and picked up the small brown bone. It hurried away over the stones. Kimberly stared at the cat’s striped tail. It wasn’t a minute before the cat was back to pick it up. Then it was gone again over the rocks.
An echoing version of the parrot’s phrase lifted from inside the pile of rocks.
“Gold for bones!” the voice said. It was a deep voice, not a squawk or a screech. It was a man’s voice.
She must have been standing on a grave, Kimberly figured.
“Aye, the lass,” the man’s voice boomed from underground again. “Give to her the gold she earned this day.”
Kimberly ran away. She didn’t know what to tell her mom, so she didn’t say anything.
The next morning, Kimberly showered, ate breakfast, and stayed in the house. She borrowed one of her mother’s books. She read sitting at the little dinette table in the kitchen, pushing six stacked boxes of donuts out of her way. She read sitting on the couch.
“Why don’t you go somewhere, dear?” her mother asked. “People are on the beach today, and the breeze feels marvelous.”
Kimberly didn’t know how to tell her mother that she was afraid of ghosts. She went into her room and read, sitting on the bed. She read only a page or two, then thought through everything she had seen and heard. She put the book down and rolled onto her side to look out the window. Something shiny glinted on the window sill.
Ghost Cats of the South Page 14