by H. L. Logan
Then I heard again. It was definitely there; I wasn’t imagining it—a cat’s meow. I glanced around again, walking back in the direction I thought it had come from. “Kitty?” I said. “Where are you, kitty?”
It came again from above me, and I peered up into the tree, surprised to see a small black cat clinging to the lowest branch. What is this, I chuckled to myself, some kind of bad luck omen? I didn’t need any more poor luck, but I also wasn’t going to just leave a scared little cat outside in the rain. “Stay there,” I said, and reached up to grab it. It allowed me to take it beneath the arms and lift it down. He meowed to me again.
“Poor guy. Better get you inside.”
Where had he come from? The Richardsons lived about a quarter mile up the street, and I knew they didn’t have a cat. The next closest neighbor was Reynold Golden, who owned the gas station, but his house was over a mile away, and he didn’t own a cat either.
Thunder boomed again, and I felt his tiny body tremble against my chest. He squirmed, trying to get loose, but I held him tight and picked up my pace until I was back at the house. “Lucky that I was out there,” I told the cat as I sat him down on the floor of the sunroom. I stripped off all my clothes and carried the sopping bundle to the laundry room. When I turned around, I was surprised to see the little guy had followed me, water dripping from his fur. He immediately flopped onto the floor and started to lick himself. I laughed and then went upstairs to put on some fresh clothes, and pulled out a towel from the closet. The cat was still sniffing around at the base of the stairs, and I quickly scooped him up with the towel and carried him up to the bathroom.
He definitely wasn’t a fan of the shower, and he meowled and struggled, clawing at my arms as I cleaned the dirt and mud from his fur. Eventually, he seemed to realize that I wasn’t letting him go anywhere, and gave in to the bathing, sitting there with a pissed off look on his face. When he was clean enough, I pulled him out and rubbed him down the best I could with the towel. He struggled free and scampered back down the stairs to the living room where he plopped down onto the Persian rug that lay in front of the couch, and set to grooming himself vigorously.
“Don’t piss on that rug,” I told him. “It was my mother’s, and she didn’t like cats very much.”
I crouched down next to him and scratched his ear. He meowed and licked my hand, apparently forgiving me for my offenses against him. I smiled. “Though maybe she would’ve liked you. You’re a sweet one. What the hell were you doing out in that tree?”
In the kitchen, I pulled out a small bowl and filled it with water, and then looked through the fridge to find something a cat might like. I had some roast chicken leftover from dinner, so I shredded off some of the meat into a bowl and brought it back to the cat, who was still making himself presentable. He immediately flipped onto his feet and made a beeline straight for the chicken. He scarfed it down.
“You were starving, weren’t you, little guy?” Had someone passing through town dumped him? We did have a small pet store up the street on Armstrong that occasionally sold dogs and cats, but it seemed unlikely that they’d lose track of one of them. I crossed my arms over my chest and watched him clean the bowl, and afterwards he licked his paw and wiped his face. Then he padded over to the couch and hopped up on it to gaze out the window. He turned his wide eyes over to me and let out a drawn out meow. It sounded sad and longing somehow, though maybe it was just me projecting onto him.
“Sorry,” I said, sitting down on the arm of the couch. “You’re not going back out there and besides—”
Thunder rattled the windows, sending my furry guest tumbling off the couch and scrambling for cover beneath it.
“Yeah. That.”
I went back to the sunroom to try my hand at the pottery wheel again, slapping the mound of clay back in the center and starting my routine. I’ll just do something simple, I decided. A present for my new friend. After fifteen minutes I’d made a plain bowl with a flat bottom, about twelve inches in diameter. Using a slip mixture, I added some texture to the outside of the bowl, and then designed the inside with concentric circles emanating from the center, like ripples in water. I examined the work, and thought that it was acceptable. It’d been a while since I’d had a reason to make something. Every time I’d tried to make something different or new, something that surpassed the art I’d created during the time I’d felt was my peak, I’d come up empty. Literally unable to make anything. My inability to create was the whole reason why I’d moved back to my family home. Well, asides from rescuing it from ruin. I’d thought that the peace and quiet and familiar atmosphere would help lift my mental block and nurture new inspiration… but all the move had done was bring even more frustration.
Maybe this was my fate; the cost of sacrificing my creative soul to the corporate gods. A lonely existence in my childhood home, with nothing but the companionship of a cat. Maybe I should get five cats. Or six. I could make bowls for all of them.
I chuckled to myself and put the bowl into my electric kiln, fired it up, and set the shutoff timer. Back in the living room, my guest had come out from his hiding place and was lapping at the bowl of water. I gave him a scratch behind his ears, and he let out another long meow.
“Tomorrow, I’ll see if I can find out where you came from, okay?” I figured that I would go in to the pet store, buy some supplies, and see if the owner there knew where the little black cat had come from. If she didn’t, well… maybe I would keep him. Something about him had grown on me; maybe because I’d rescued him, or maybe because he’d helped me complete the first piece of pottery I’d done in ages.
I went back to the kitchen, pulled some more breast meat off the leftover chicken, and brought it out to my guest, who was pacing around the room, rubbing his face up against the sides of furniture and stopping occasionally to inspect things of interest that were apparently invisible to my eyes. I set the dish of chicken down on the floor next the bowl of water, and smiled as he dashed to it and went to town. I was grateful to the little guy for giving me a reason to make something. Maybe that was what had been lacking—a reason. Artists created their best work when they had something to say, whether they knew it or not, and maybe I’d just run out of things to say.
I rummaged around in the garage and found a shallow, unused plastic storage bin, and filled it up with shredded newspaper as an impromptu cat box. I brought it inside, and set it in the sunroom. “Shit in here,” I said to the cat, picking him up and placing him inside the box. He stared at me, batted at one of the strips of newspaper, and then hopped back out. “Shit in there, you hear me?” I called after him as he strolled back into the house like he belonged here. I huffed a resigned laugh and followed him.
My old childhood bedroom upstairs, along with my Dad’s old study, was packed to the brim with moving boxes filled with things from my old New York apartment. Charles and I had lived there together for five years—the duration of our marriage. We’d been together for seven, though the definition of “together” was a bit up in the air. He’d been somewhat of a mentor during my last years at Beasley University, managing at the gallery that I’d showed and sold my ceramics work in, and after I’d finished my masters he’d taken me under his wing. I stayed at the gallery, and it wasn’t long before he’d pitched her idea to me for starting a ceramics design firm. We’d start small, with me as the lead designer until we could bring on others, and we’d sell work to people interested in limited, high quality pieces that weren’t quite one of a kind, but felt that way.
I was a fan of money—still am—and so I saw the value in doing the commercial stuff. And hey, I could still retain some of my artistic integrity. I was head designer after all, and I could make what I thought was good. It didn’t stay that way, though.
The company grew, my work’s reputation grew, and soon we were getting offers from big corporations requesting designer features to use in their catalogues. Being a fan of money, it didn’t take much convincing for me to start making
my work more and more mainstream, and more consumable. By this time too, Charles and I had decided to move in with each other. He’d been the one to suggest it. I was hesitant, but my mother was sick at the time, and she was so concerned that I wasn’t married yet, so… to ease my dying mother’s concern for her youngest daughter, I asked Charles if he wanted to get married.
Was he in love with me? I don’t know. Like I’d said, we’d made a great partnership, and he was a great friend. Maybe Charles was the type of man who normally wouldn’t have been interested in marriage. He was forty when we married, and he’d never mentioned any prior marriages or girlfriends. Business and art was his life. He knew the advantages of our marriage, and he knew why I’d asked him. He’d never been interested in my body.
I’d been back here for two months now, and I still hadn’t unpacked most of my things—just the tools, mostly, and some necessary clothing. I didn’t know how long I would be staying here. Just until I got over this creative block, I’d told myself, but I’d begun to wonder if that would ever happen.
3
Chrissy
Lee had offered to put me up at his and his wife’s house until the storm lifted enough that we could mount a proper search operation for Henry. I’d spent over an hour trudging around in the mud and rain in the woods surrounding the gas station, but I’d found no sign of him. It was when the lightning started to strike that I’d decided Lee and Reynold were right, and it would be safer for me to wait, but the thought of Henry scared and lost somewhere out there during that thunder and lightning tore me up inside. That night, Lee’s wife, Margery, made a big lasagna dinner and gave me a slice of apple pie. It was the best I’d eaten since I’d left Georgia, but it was difficult to enjoy it knowing that Henry was out there hungry somewhere.
I was responsible for the little guy, and I’d let him get lost right under my nose. I figured he must’ve wandered outside when Lee had opened the garage, and gotten startled by the thunder and ran off somewhere to hide. The other possibility, which I really didn’t want to think about, was that he had gotten snatched up by some coyote or hawk out there. He was small, so it was possible…
I lay awake in the guest bed, my eyes blurry with tears. Damnit, I thought. Please let me find him. The thought of moving on to California without Henry just killed me, and the thought of going back to Georgia was even worse. And there still remained the problem of what I would do next. Get another soul sucking job? Same shit, different town?
Maybe I could stay here. It was a weird thought, but at the same time, a pleasant one. All the people I’d met here were so nice, and there was a real sense of community. Of course, I doubted there were any apartment buildings I could move into, and the nearest city was an hour’s drive, so staying here was probably not going to happen. I’d find Henry, and then move on.
Please let me find him, I thought again.
I was sad and couldn’t stop thinking about him, but my body was exhausted and relieved to finally have a proper bed to sleep on, and I quickly fell asleep.
I woke to another dreary day, the sun hiding behind grey clouds. Margery had made pancakes, and the news on the kitchen television said that the storm was passing east. “Worst of it’s over for us, I think,” she said, drizzling maple syrup onto her pancakes. She was robust as her husband, with an appetite to match her size, and her stack of pancakes towered over mine.
The stairs groaned and creaked with Lee’s heavy footsteps. He appeared in the kitchen wearing a rain jacket and holding two pairs of rubber boots. “Good morning,” he said, dropping the boots by the front door. “You have a raincoat, Chrissy?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Finish up your breakfast and we’ll get looking. It’s just a drizzle right now. I’ve got a pair of boots you can borrow.”
“Okay,” I said, scarfing down the rest of my pancakes. “What about you? Aren’t you going to eat?”
“I’ll be fine. I’d like to get out there as soon as possible. It was eating at me all night. I’d feel better the sooner we get out looking for Henry.”
“It’s not your fault, Lee. But I appreciate your help. I appreciate what both of you have done for me.”
Margery smiled. “We do what we can to help folks in need around here. The world needs a little more kindness in it, I think.” She picked an apple out from a basket on the table and handed it to her husband. “It’ll tide you over for now.”
“Alright, you ready to go?”
I nodded and quickly brought my plate over to the sink. “Thank you for breakfast,” I said. “Hold on, let me grab my raincoat.” I dashed upstairs to the guest room to dig my jacket out of my bag, then jogged back down and pulled on the spare pair of boots. They fit me perfectly.
“Belonged to our daughter,” Lee said. “She’s in Phoenix now. Programmer.”
We pulled up our hoods and headed out the door. The rain was light—not much more than a scattered pattering. We hopped into Lee’s car and drove the short distance to the gas station. My eyes scanned the trees in a shallow hope that I might spot Henry, but of course, I saw nothing. The woods spanned wide areas between houses and the chances of spotting him from the car were slim.
The chances of spotting him in general are slim.
I pushed the thought from my mind, and we pulled up to the gas station. We went up to the minimart, and I was surprised to see a paper flier taped up to the glass on the inside of the front door that said, MISSING: Henry. Black Cat, five months old. Call Reynold at 555-346-2311. Reynold was watching TV, his feet propped up on the counter, and he stood up when he saw us walk in.
“’Morning, you two,” he said.
“’Morning, Reynold,” I replied. “No sign of Henry?”
“I’m afraid not, Chrissy. Sorry. Hey, I printed out these fliers. If you can’t turn him up looking around in the woods, then you might try distributing them up in the town. We’ve got a pet store here, so if anyone found him, they’d probably go there.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “Thanks Reynold.”
“Hey,” he said, giving me an encouraging smile. “Keep your head up.”
I smiled back. “Yeah.”
Lee and I moved out from the gas station and started to comb the trees surrounding it. Lee split off from me to cover more ground, and he carried Henry’s bowl filled with kibble to shake and entice him out if he was hiding. Every dozen feet or so, I would call Henry’s name, stopping to look up into the overhead branches and beneath shrubs. I realized that the chances of just happening on him were pretty slim—he would need to come out and find us. There was just too much ground to cover, too many places he could be hiding.
After fifteen minutes of walking, I checked the map on my cell phone and saw that I was quite close to a street, and I followed the GPS until I reached it. I called for Henry again, and then stood there silently, straining my ears hoping to catch the sound of his meow. All I heard was the steady patter of rain on soil and asphalt, and the light rustle that came from thousands of trees caressed by the wind. I walked up the street a little ways until I reached a large wood paneled house with a white BMW parked in the front. I was surprised to see that it had New York plates.
Guess I’m not the only one from out of town, I thought, and turned to head back to the gas station. I’d have to depend on the fliers—they’d be more effective than walking around by foot, and I didn’t want to keep Lee. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, and he’d already done a lot more than he needed to just to help me. So far, everyone had.
I felt my eyes getting hot with tears. It was a weird mixture of disappointment in myself for losing Henry, sadness knowing he was out there scared and hungry, and amazement for how these strangers had gone so out of their way to help me and show me such kindness and hospitality. It was something that had been sorely missing from my world.
“Anything?” Lee asked, back at the gas station. I shook my head, and he patted me on the shoulder. “Nothing on my end either. We’ll drive up into the m
ain part of town, and put the fliers up in the pet store, the bank and the market. If anybody’s seen Henry, they’ll pass through one of those places for sure.”
I nodded and smiled. “Thanks, Lee. Really. I’m just blown away at how kind everyone has been to me since I’ve arrived. Is everyone this nice here?”
“Well, I don’t know about everyone,” he said, shrugging. “But I suppose most. There are a few that keep to themselves, but for the most part, Armstrong is a pretty close-knit community. We’re a small place, and we’re all the type of people who like simple things, so we all share something in common. Some folks have lived here all their lives.”
“Have you?”
“Oh, no. We moved here when we had our daughter. Wanted to raise her away from the big city life. Of course, that’s where she is now, but I’d like to think she has a wider appreciation for things after growing up here. And it’s not so bad, you know? We’re only an hour or so out from a city anyway. I’ve been retired for a while, but I still work at the gas station to keep busy. Reynold has been here his whole life; his father was the one who opened that gas station.”