The Wild Road
Page 11
Then he said quietly, ‘Who’s this Fitz? I thought I was talking to Little Pimpie.’
He considered this. ‘Little Pimpie Wimpie,’ he said. ‘Mm.’
He stared straight into AKA Fitz’s astonished eyes.
Fitz lunged, forelegs open.
All his fight was in his front end, in the thick neck and barrel chest of the mature tomcat. If he could, he would hold, bite, and maul. But Tag had been in embraces like that before. He knew he hadn’t the weight for them. Rather than submit to Fitz’s clutch the way he’d submitted to the marmalade tom’s at Tintagel Court, he sprang as high as he could into the air. As Fitz passed beneath him, beginning to be puzzled. Tag turned and landed with his teeth buried in the back of that surprised cat’s neck. Fitz, an uncontrollable pack of bone and muscle, had writhed out from under in an instant. He was so fast! The damage, though, was already done. Twisting about like that under Tag’s clamped teeth, Fitz had tom out a triangular lump of himself, which now flapped at the back of his neck like a little red and white bandanna. Worse, he had lost his orientation. Even worse, perhaps, he had lost his dignity.
Tag slapped him in the face.
Tag rocked to one side to evade the counterblow.
Tag blinked and spat.
‘Come on, Pimpie!’ he said.
But AKA Fitz had backed away.
Astonished, Tag watched him lower his hindquarters and hurry off.
‘And don’t come back!’
At that, the rest of the cats turned on Tag. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. That they would be cowed, perhaps. Or grateful. Wrong. With AKA Fitz two streets away and begging to be let in by the nice milk lady, all bets were off. The ferals set about Tag. They set about one another. Filthy Mike sprang on Hairy Mary, whom he had never liked. Microchip, quite a small cat who nevertheless believed he should replace Fitz, fixed his teeth in the left rear leg of Razor, quite a large one who was determined that he shouldn’t. Soon the strip of grass in front of the arches was nothing but a wheeling, screeching whirligig of Felidae, deep in the midst of which the cat who had started it all was desperately trying to keep his skin.
Yow! thought Tag.
It was his last thought for some time. His very personality had vanished into the need to fight. Tag was gone. All that remained was an increment of rage in the common pool. He was saved by an unlooked-for turn of events. Into the melee stepped an extraordinary figure. It was the female feral the Coldheath cats called Sealink.
6
Sealink
If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat
– MARK TWAIN
Feral wasn’t quite the right word. Tag would find out later, for a cat of Sealink’s quality. She lived outside; she lived off her wits. But any resemblance to AKA Fitz’s tribe ended right there. Sealink didn’t have time to get mange. They never saw her under the arches more than once or twice a year. Some years they saw her not at all. No one asked where she spent the rest of her life, so she never told them. She was her own cat.
If Sealink’s pedigree was uncertain, her country of origin was not. Ancestors in Maine had bequeathed her their stature and heavy bones. Her color was Cape Cod calico, bracing orange and black on white. To balance this Puritan heritage she had the charm, manners, and warm golden eyes of the honey-dripping South. Her feet were big. What you’re born with you can add to, was one of Sealink’s beliefs. She had added to herself. She had eaten oysters in Detroit, lasagne in Los Angeles, and alligator sausage in New Orleans. Dishes like that had made her proud in her flesh.
For size she was the equal of Ragnar Gustaffson. Her temper was less certain than his. She looked about her now with the devastating calm of a mother amid warring kittens, who identifies all parties to the quarrel, and who wades in, laying out right and left about her. As thick as kapok wadding, her Maine Coon coat confounded tooth and claw. Her eye was quick. Her arm was quicker. If anyone looked like getting the better of the cat called Sealink, she simply fell on him. With a kind of grandeur, rolling hips and furry haunches, she made her way through Spiky George the Sailor, Iggy the Fish, and Fortune Smiles, bowling Bedroll over on the way. Hairy Mary she spared.
Then she looked around. ‘Hey!’ she said. In her voice competed Kentucky mountain vowels, the Creole sugar of the French Quarter, the edgy bark of Manhattan. ‘Don’t none of you guys want to play?’
None but Tag had stayed to answer. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Tag.’ He was ravished.
‘I ain’t concerned with you,’ said Sealink. She looked him over. ‘Though you’re cute, and tough enough. I seen you dust that AKA Fitz. Not bad.’ She swept past him and into the echo chamber of the arch. Her voice rang like a ship’s bell in a fog in San Francisco Bay. ‘Now, honey,’ she said to little Cy, ‘you come to me and be comforted. Because, honey, all males are brutes.’
She looked down her nose at Tag.
‘You know it to be true.’
*
Early afternoon. A pale but warming sun broke through the clouds. It gilded the grass arena and picked out the fur that lay scattered there in tufts and swatches. All colors and textures were represented, along with several varieties of tipping. Three cats sat before the railway arches enjoying the warmth. The largest was grooming the smallest with long sweeps of a rough pink tongue the size of a small vole, while the third, a cat of surprising color, told his story. In this tale the soap bubbles of kittenhood led inevitably to garden life and thence to the dreary fevers of Coldheath. Tag described how the cunning magpie had lured him from his home. How he had blundered onto the highway and been rescued by a fox. He gave account of the long cold nights and unfamiliar staircase arrangements of Tintagel Court. How he had met the King and Queen, lost them, and only then discovered that he should have taken them to Tintagel, not found them there. He dwelt on shopping expeditions, the way to eat a rat, and his discovery that not everyone is always what they seem. If he spoke of the Majicou, it was glancingly; and his darker fears he did not name.
‘So here I am,’ he finished. And he blinked up into the benign sun. ‘On my way to Tintagel, I suppose. As soon as I find them again.’
Having ensured that Cy – now sleeping peacefully, even through the clatter of her own purr – was for once in her life quite a clean cat, Sealink too looked up. She nodded. ‘I said you was tough enough,’ she remarked, only to add – ‘but you left out the toughest thing you did.’
‘I did?’ said Tag.
Sealink looked down at the sleeping tabby, then back at Tag. There was a silence, then after a moment she purred. ‘You gonna tell me your name, kitten?’
‘Tag!’ said Tag, surprised out of the reverie into which her voice had thrown him. ‘I’mTag.’
Sealink deliberated on this. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I guess you are.’
A little shyly, Tag asked, ‘What’s your name?’ Then, ‘Do you live here?’
‘I’ve lived about everywhere, hon,’ she said complacently. ‘You don’t mind if I proceed to groom myself?’
‘No, no. Of course not!’
‘As to names, why I’ve had ‘em all –
‘In New Orleans, the town where I was bom, they called me the Delta Queen. I was known as Rocket for a while in Houston, Texas – never could think why. Spent a summer in Missoura, picked up the name Amibelle. And in Alaska, one-forty below, I lived with a pipeliner name of Pete called me Trouble – but, hon, he weren’t no more than a fighting tomcat himself. Loved women.
‘Abroad—’ Sealink shifted her weight a little so that she could extend one mighty back foot. She spread its sinewy toes to clean between them. ‘Abroad, they’ll call you anything: Cleo, Minouche, Justine, Isadora, Brunhilde – can you believe that? I was in Sweden for a week, they called me Volvo. Or was it Vulva?’ She laughed.
Her feet dealt with, she now passed to her great brushy tail. This, as she said, was an animal all its own, and a damn nuisance, though it had had its admirers.
�
��Under these arches they call me Sealink, you know why? ‘Cause I once crossed the Channel on a ferry of the same name. Ferry? That’s a boat to you, kitten. How’d I get on it? Well, I stowed away! Countries, cities, I seen most of ‘em. Cairo, Constantinople, Prague’ – this she pronounced to rhyme with vague – ‘Amsterdam, I been there. Budapest, you know? Liked the food well enough though.’ She licked her lips. ‘Liked them Magyar tomcats, too. Enjoyed them droopy whiskers.’
She thought for a bit. She gave her tail a final lick.
‘Ain’t never been to that Mother Russia,’ she admitted, ‘or flown the Atlantic Ocean both directions. But I aim to change that soon.’
Tag was entranced.
Most of what she said was meaningless to him. But her fur shone in the sun, and her voice was gold dissolved in honey. She made things feel brand-new again. Her life seemed huge to him. It flickered hypnotically before his eyes. It was a world in itself. He sought for something to say – something that would impress a traveler of the world. He sighed. ‘I suppose Tintagel seems nothing to a cat like you.’ He paused. ‘You don’t happen to know where it is, do you?’
Sealink gave him a sharp look. ‘You got a lot to learn, hon,’ she said. ‘A journey’s a journey to a cat like me. Hey! I might just come along! Ain’t got nothing better to do right now. Sounds like fun. Might even help you find these Royals!’ She gave him a sharp look. ‘Maybe meet this one-eyed creature you don’t talk too much about.’ She said, ‘You just wait here a minute, hon. I got someone here I want you to meet.’ And she sailed off across the grass, up to the disused tracks where they inclined north, and out of sight.
Five minutes later, she was back. With her she had a cat the color of an old-fashioned shellac comb. His coat was so heavily mottled and patterned, so dark in places, as to be almost black. The fur itself was very short and coarse, with a suspicion of a curl. One of his eyes was a frank and open speedwell blue, the eye of an honest country cat. The other seemed to belong to a more urban kind of animal altogether. It was the color of a sodium lamp. The effect was rakish and undependable.
‘This here’s my friend,’ said Sealink, ‘when I’m under the arches.’ She stared at the tortoiseshell with her head to one side. ‘Ain’t no use for anything but the two F’s. But we travel together.’
The tortoiseshell introduced himself.
‘My name’s Marsebref.’
‘Marsebref?’ said Tag.
‘Marsebref. Marsebref.’
‘Oh, Mousebreath!’
‘Yeah. My name’s Marsebref.’
He seemed to think for a moment. When Mousebreath was thinking, his thoughts passed from one eye to the other like slowly swimming fish. You wondered which eye they would finish up in. Blue or orange? Town or country?
‘I seen you about the arches,’ he acknowledged eventually. ‘I seen you about.’
‘I think he likes you, hon,’ Sealink told Tag.
‘I never been to Tintagel,’ said Mousebreath. ‘But I had an uncle come from there, and he told me the way. He called himself Tinner. Said he did, anyway. Said he come from there.’
*
So it was arranged.
‘We’ll leave as soon as it’s dark,’ said Sealink. Then she caught Tag’s eye. ‘Okay, hon,’ she said. ‘You told me something. Now I’m gonna tell you something. Fair exchange. It’s this. You want to get to Tintagel before the end of the century, you got to do better than you been doing.’
‘I have?’
‘You have. Now, I don’t say I understand all the Kings ‘n’ Queensy stuff you told me. Nor yet this problem you been having with the highway. But the rest of your trouble’s simple.’
‘It is?’
‘It is. Why, kitten, you got no plan! Until you met my old mate, you didn’t even know where Tintagel was! This whole trip so far, you just got pushed from pillar to post. Every way the wind blowed, you went! A traveler’s at the will of the journey, hon. No one accepts that more than me. But you got to learn that will, then use your skills!’ She rose to her feet and stretched magnificently. ‘Speaking of which, I’m going stir-crazy,’ she said. She looked fondly upon her consort, who had sat down next to Cy and closed his eyes. ‘Mousebreath can look after the little one an hour or two; he’s just got brains enough for that.’ At this Mousebreath opened his eyes again and winked the speedwell blue one heavily at Tag. ‘So you and me can take a turn around. Get to understand each other’s journeys, keep an eye open for your friends. You like that? As an idea?’
Tag loved it. ‘I do,’ he said.
*
It had turned out to be one of those sunny winter afternoons that appear tantalizingly between the sleet and frost. Sharp, still air and a cloudless sky made distances look magical and gray. Birds, surprised into activity by the sudden sunshine, were competing by opera for the available space – ‘My little territory!’ ‘Oh no, I don’t think so!’ – as Sealink led Tag up onto the derelict railway track that stretched in both directions like a country lane. Sunlight fell across the old gravel roadbed through dense growths of hawthorn, young birch, and elder. The sounds of the city seemed to recede. As she walked, Sealink talked. ‘I ain’t been everywhere, kitten, and I ain’t seen everything. But I sure seen a lot. Human beings, now—’
‘The fact is,’ Tag announced, ‘I’m not very interested in human beings.’ He added proudly, ‘Who cares about them?’
Sealink stopped and stared at him. ‘That ain’t your own opinion, hon,’ she said, as if she could look into his heart. ‘And it shows how much you know.’
Tag was surprised. ‘If you want to make it in this world,’ he persisted, ‘you have to make it on your own, not as someone else’s property.’
‘No one owns me, kitten,’ said Sealink, her voice dangerously calm. ‘Nor ever will. But we share this world with human folks for good or ill, and we got to work around them. I heard some cats call humans it as if humans got no feelings. Wrong. Course, that’s only my view. But follow me now and I’ll show you why.’ She thought for a moment. ‘One other thing,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘You journey in a foreign land, you better learn the language.’
And so as they walked, she tried to explain the human world. She explained the things you saw in the sky – ‘Them’s airplanes, hon, and I stowed away on more than one!’ She explained the things you saw on the ground. Many of the latter items Tag had already encountered, some close to, some as mere objects in the distance, menacing and strange. But Sealink had opened up the world for him in a stream of light and now, for instance, he was able to boast, ‘Cars! I’ve run in front of one or two.’
‘Have you indeed,’ said Sealink with a grin.
Looking down from the railbed at some men ripping up the pavement in the street below, she was engaged in explaining roadworks. ‘See that, hon? Well, that’s a traffic cone.’
‘What does it do?’
‘I ain’t got the slightest idea.’
Later she would tell him about railway tracks, and where this one began. Where did it end? Tag wanted to know.
‘Ain’t no ending but it’s a new beginning, hon.’
*
Sealink quizzed Tag about his life. She was interested by the most ordinary things he’d done. Everything interested Sealink: a sudden smell of fresh earth, flickers of light off a car window in the street below as they passed over a bridge; the rush and hiss of a flock of pigeons going by – less a sound than a brief change in the nature of the air. Everything drew from her a response of delight tempered by her knowledge of the world. When you were with her, sights, sounds, colors, smells, seemed new. They seemed refreshed. Things were more themselves. Tag, too, had a feeling of being more himself; even, somehow, more than himself. It was as if Sealink’s experience was a kind of light she shone on the simplest and dullest objects.
‘You got your own light, Tag,’ she advised him gently when he suggested this. ‘People already admire you for the light you cas
t on things.’ Later, in the darkness and despair of another journey, he was to remember that.
After perhaps half an hour of walking, he asked, ‘Where are we going, then?’
Sealink laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you missed the point already, hon. The journey is the life! But if you’re looking for an actual destination, why I think we want to leave this track… around about here!’
She hurried down the railway bank, her long fur streaming back as if she were running in the wind. Below was a short street of shops and restaurants. The shopfronts were painted in muted reds and blues and greens. Little trees grew in tubs on the pavement. The windows were splendid with clothes and shoes, furniture and picture frames, trinkets, and boxes to put them in. Sealink stopped outside a cafe. Tag stood beside her and stared in. Checkered floor, mirrored walls, big menus. Shiny black bentwood chairs arranged ‘round marble-topped tables.
pizza, signaled the bright green neon sign above the window.
pizza. pizza. pizza.
‘Some friends of mine run this place,’ said Sealink. ‘They got a kid since we was last close. Nice, huh? These guys like me a lot, and I like them. Let’s go in.’ She stopped suddenly and gave Tag a look. ‘You ever eat pizza topping before?’ she asked. ‘Oh, not pizza!’ she said dismissively. ‘Pizza, that’s just bread.’ She half closed her eyes. ‘But now, pizza topping…’ Her voice lowered and was filled suddenly with a contralto heat, a languid noon dreaminess. Then she laughed and shook herself. ‘Well!’ she said. ‘Oh my! Let’s go right in.’
‘Door’s closed,’ observed Tag.
‘Hon, it won’t be closed for long.’
Whereupon the traveler stood upon her hind legs, drew back her right front paw, spread the toes, and – bang! – dealt the plate-glass window such a blow it reverberated like distant thunder. Quite soon after, the door was opened by a short broad man in a white apron. His eyes seemed a little tired but sharp and full of humor. Beside him stood a dark-haired woman, with long legs and a dreamy sensuous grin.