by Betsy Byars
At the wharf two men were loading a raft with barrels and sacks, preparing to move down the river. Their shouts were carried by the wind to where Rama crouched, and once, when the smaller man dropped a barrel on his foot and shouted with pain, Rama tensed and opened his eyes wide. Then he looked away. The men were not what he was waiting to see.
It was just before noon when the cat appeared. Rama saw him first on top of the riverbank beside the men’s wagon. He was licking his paws carefully. As the men approached to take another load from the wagon, he would stop licking his paws and crouch, ready to run if they bothered him. When the men moved back to the raft, he would resume licking his paws. He did not see Rama, who blended in like a shadow with the gray of the old wooden boat.
In the shelter of the boat Rama continued to watch. Now all thoughts of hunger had fled, all thoughts of the cold wind. The strange cat occupied his mind with a completeness that only an animal can know. His muscles were tight and ready, and from time to time his tail whipped eagerly in the wind.
The men finished their loading and drove away in the wagon. As they drove off, the cat turned and walked toward the old building. This was the moment Rama had awaited. Carefully he moved from the shelter of the boat to an old log that had been washed up on the bank. He paused there for a moment, then he ran up the bank and stopped, again in a crouch. Sensing danger, the old cat turned. He saw Rama and his ears flattened, his yellow eyes slitted.
Without a sound, he circled Rama warily. Rama turned, too, and the two cats faced each other. Now both knew that it was to be a fight to the death.
Rama made a sound, warning the old cat, and the old cat took up the sound, drawing it out until the wind carried it away. He moved closer to Rama. Then both were still, waiting.
Abruptly, without any warning, the old cat lashed out with his sharp claws and caught Rama across the cheek. In a blaze of fury, Rama struck back. He felt his claws digging into the cheek of the old cat, catching the flesh. The cat pulled back and then struck again at Rama. This time his front legs were wrapped around Rama’s head and his teeth dug into the side of Rama’s neck.
Both cats lost their footing and rolled over on the ground, locked together in battle. Rama’s hind legs thumped against the old cat’s stomach, pushing him away, and he turned and sank his teeth into the old cat’s shoulder.
Again they rolled, and the old cat was on top of Rama, heedless of the pain in his own shoulder. He ducked his head, and grabbed Rama by the throat.
Rama now knew with a terrible certainty that he was in a dangerous position. In a burst of extra strength, he wrenched himself free and ran, the old cat right behind him.
If Rama had run directly back down the bank and into the brush, he could possibly have saved himself, but he was confused. The fight had been sudden and terrifying, and now he was not sure of his directions. In his confusion, he ran toward the old building, and after a second’s hesitation, slipped through the rotten floor board into the old warehouse.
Instantly he knew his mistake. This was the old cat’s sleeping place—his nose told him that. And here, in this familiar place, the old cat would have added advantages. Rama hid behind a wooden box and waited.
Flesh hung from his throat where the cat had bitten and torn, and the pain, as well as the fear, made Rama frantic. He saw the old cat enter the warehouse. Although he wished to hide himself, a low cry of fear and warning came from his throat, rising in the stillness. At once, slowly and evenly, the old cat began to move in Rama’s direction. He had tested Rama, and he knew his own strength was greater.
At the edge of the box, when he could see Rama, he paused in a crouch, his claws open and ready. He opened his mouth, but the sound he made was low, so low Rama could barely hear it. He moved closer.
In a flash, truly desperate now, Rama lashed out. His claws ran down the left side of the old cat’s face, and the cat cried out in pain. In that moment, Rama rushed around the cat, slipped through the hole in the floorboards, and ran. The cat was behind him, intent on killing him, and Rama knew it.
He ran down the bank, onto the raft the men had loaded, and leaped for one of the pilings of the wharf. But the pilings were slick and still wet with the rain. His claws held him for a moment, and his tremendous fear gave him strength to pull himself up the piling, slick though it was. As he reached the top, however, his claws suddenly slipped and he fell backward. He struck his shoulder and head on one of the barrels, a sickening, shattering blow, and then he slipped, unconscious, between the barrel and the grain sacks. There he lay without moving.
The old cat came carefully forward. Ignoring the blood that was dripping from his own face, he looked down at Rama. Rama did not move.
Slowly, the old cat began to lick his paw and front leg and draw it over his wounded face. He did this again and again, all the while looking down at Rama. And all the while Rama did not move.
ON THE RAFT
THE OLD CAT HEARD the men returning to the raft. So he left Rama and, skirting the men cautiously, ran back to the warehouse.
“You gonna have a cold trip,” the small man said.
The other man agreed with a nod of his head. He was tall and thin and his shoulders were slightly stooped beneath his deerskin shirt. Without speaking, he untied the rope from the wharf piling, stepped onto the raft, and took up the pole.
“Bess and me thank you for your trouble,” he said, letting the pole slip into the water.
“I wish there was more we could do to help out. You and Bess and the boy could stay the winter with us. You know that.”
The tall man nodded. “We’ll be all right.” Wielding the pole, pushing with all his strength against the river bottom, he moved out into the mainstream of the river. He lifted one hand in farewell to the man on the shore and then steered the raft around the point and out of sight.
As he lifted the pole from the water, his eyes were dark with concern. A week ago the barn containing all the supplies for his family’s winter had burned, and he had had to make this unexpected trip up the river for more supplies.
The banks of the river slipped by quickly, but the man did not notice the hills that rose golden and tall on either side of him. He continued to stare at the water.
Again, in his mind, he smelled the odor of smoke as he had on that terrible night. In his mind he saw himself running out of the cabin, carrying water from the well and throwing it on the fire. But the fire was firmly caught, and nothing could stop it and save the precious supplies.
“I got the cow out, Pa,” his son had said.
He had put his hand on his son’s head and ruffled his hair. That was his way of praising the boy. And then he had turned to his wife and said, “I reckon I’ll have to go up the river for supplies.”
At dawn he had set out. The sight of the smoldering ashes—the ruins of all they had worked for during the year—had sickened him in the light of day, but he had said evenly, “I’ll see you in a week,” and started up the river.
Now he poled the raft closer to shore and sat wearily on the largest of the three barrels. He looked at the bank and judged that the raft was moving about four miles an hour. This meant that it would take him eight hours to reach his home, a log cabin on the left bank of the river. He steered the raft around a tree branch that rose like a black arch from the grayish water.
Behind him, although the man did not know this, Rama stirred once. Blood ran in a thin stream from the wound in his throat and lay like crimson yarn against his white fur. His eyelids blinked once; his eyes focused on a gray world that had no meaning for him; and he lost consciousness again.
It was dark when the man reached his home. He was fortunate in having the moonlight to guide him, and when he saw the cabin set on a rise in the trees, he called: “Hollo—oo!”
At once his son came running down the bank with a lantern. “We was waiting up for you, Pa. We ain’t been to bed at all.”
He put his hand on his son’s head for a moment. His eyes, lined wit
h fatigue, softened and then he said, “Well, gimme a hand. We got to get this stuff up to the cabin.”
“Yeah, Pa.”
“Your ma all right?”
“Yeah.”
Without pause, for he knew his father’s passion for getting work done straightaway, Jimmy heaved a sack of grain to his shoulder and, staggering slightly under the weight, stepped to the bank.
Ahead, in the doorway of the cabin, his mother stood. “Is your pa all right?” she asked.
“Yes’m.”
“I’ll come help you unload.”
“Too heavy for you,” he said in a strained voice.
“Well, I reckon I can hold the lantern.”
In her nightgown, her worn coat over her shoulders, she ran down to the river, the long braid down her back swinging as she ran.
“Could you get everything?” she asked as she took the lantern from the rock where Jimmy had set it.
He nodded.
“How was Frances and the kids?”
“They was all right.” He rolled the largest of the barrels onto the bank.
“Bert, too?”
He nodded.
Jimmy returned for a second load. He took up another sack of grain and then paused abruptly. “What’s that, Pa?” His voice rose with sudden excitement. “Ma, bring the lantern closer.”
His mother stepped toward him, held the lantern high, and the light fell upon the motionless form of Rama, dark and small against the grain sack.
“It’s a cat,” Jimmy said in the silence.
His father pushed the barrel to a secure place behind a tree and came to stand beside Jimmy. He looked at Rama.
“A dead cat,” he said.
Jimmy put his sack down and knelt beside the cat. His hands touched Rama gently. With a quickening of spirits, he felt a faint warmth in the body.
“He ain’t dead, Pa. He’s alive.” He wiped his hands against his britches. “I’ll take him on up to the house where its warm.”
“You got work here,” his father reminded him.
“I’ll be back, Pa, I’ll be right back. It won’t take me more than a minute to take him up to the house.”
Making a cradle of his hands, he lifted Rama’s limp body and carried it up the path to the cabin. He dared not linger and risk his father’s displeasure but he did pause long enough to put an old shirt by the fireplace and set Rama gently on it.
“There,” he said. “You’re going to be all right, Cat. I know it.”
With a backward glance at Rama, he went out the door and joined his parents at the raft.
“I think he’s going to be all right, Ma,” he said as he picked up the sack of grain.
In the thin light of the lantern, his mother’s eyes were wide and shiny. “We’ll do what we can for him, Son, only don’t be too disappointed, hear, if the cat don’t. ...”
“He’ll be all right,” the boy said as he moved shakily toward the house under his heavy load.
His mother shook her head slowly. There had been many disappointments for the boy since they had come here and built the cabin five years ago: money saved for a rifle now gone to help buy these supplies; a beloved hound dog that had been bitten by a rabid fox; crops that didn’t grow; barns that burned; a calf carried away by the flooding river.
When the raft was unloaded, she hurried up the path to have a look at the cat herself.
She was standing with Jimmy looking down at the cat when the man came in. He crossed to the fireplace and propped one heavy mud-caked boot on the hearth.
“It’s his throat that’s hurt, Pa,” Jimmy said.
His father bent down, looked into Rama’s eyes, and said, “It’s more than his throat.”
“What is it, Pa?”
“The cat’s hurt bad.”
“But where?”
His father ran his long fingers gently over Rama. “It’s his head most likely.”
“Ain’t there nothing we can do for him?”
“Just let him be. An animal gets hurt, you let him be as much as you can.”
“All right, Pa, only I’ll stay with him for a bit. If he wakes up, he might be scared in a strange place.” He sat on the hearth and covered Rama’s body with part of the shirt.
The shirt was of linsey and had once been red from the dye of sumac berries, but now it was faded and worn. Only Rama’s face, gray and small, showed between its folds. His eyes were open wide and stared straight ahead without seeing.
A BOY AND A CABIN
FOR THE REST OF the night, Jimmy sat beside the cat. He stroked Rama softly between the ears to let him know he was not alone and talked to him in a low, encouraging voice.
There were not many things a boy could wish for in this remote country. The stores with their silver knives and shiny harmonicas were far away, and this made Jimmy’s want doubly painful now. The cat was the first thing he had seen to want in a long time, and he wanted him to live so much that he would not leave him even for a moment.
Although Rama lay still now, his muscles slack and powerless, the boy could imagine him springing upon a bit of yarn, chasing it across the cabin floor. He could imagine the cat rubbing against his legs, asking for attention.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said again and again. “You’re going to be all right, Cat.”
Just before dawn, his mother came to the fireplace. “Son, did you get any sleep at all?” she asked.
“Ma, guess what?” Jimmy said in a soft voice. “He’s got a golden earring.”
“What?”
“An earring. Look.”
She bent forward, disbelief written on her face. “Why, so he has!” She looked at her son in wonder, then turned to her husband. “Pa, the cat’s got a golden earring.”
“Let me see.”
Jimmy lifted Rama’s head slightly, and there it was.
“Well, I never,” said his father.
His mother looked around. “Reckon where did he get it?”
“I remember Frances saying there was gypsies out of town a ways,” Pa said slowly. “Maybe it was their cat.”
“I bet you it was,” Ma said.
All of them were impressed by the fact that the cat wore a golden earring. They were people who had only the barest necessities. There was no gay cloth or lace to brighten the woman’s life, no candy or treats for the boy, no soft boots for the man. And now here was a cat with a golden earring. The unexpected little frivolity brightened them.
“I remember my granma had some gold earrings,” the woman said. “They had little red stones in them, and I always thought they was the prettiest things.”
“But I bet you never saw no cat with an earring before,” the boy said.
She smiled, shaking her head. “I never did.”
“Well,” the father said after a moment. “There’s work to be done. We got to get that shed up, Son.”
“I know.” Jimmy rose and looked down at the cat.
His mother said, “I’ll watch him while you’re working. Maybe I can get him to take some warm milk.” She went and poured some milk into a cup and brought it to the fire.
The boy watched as she dipped a small amount of milk into a spoon and held it to Rama. Carefully she let a few drops spill over on Rama’s mouth.
But Rama did not move. The milk ran untasted onto the crumpled shirt beneath him.
Jimmy’s mother looked up at him and waved him away with one hand. “Get going, Son, get your breakfast or it won’t be fit to eat.”
He ate quickly beside his father and then went to the doorway. He stood for a moment with his knitted cap pulled over his ears, looking at the cat.
“I’ll try the milk again in a bit,” she said. Without a word, Jimmy went out the door and joined his father beside the ashes of the old barn.
All morning, while Jimmy helped haul logs from the forest, Rama lay by the fire without moving. The woman came often to touch his forehead, but he did not stir.
At noon, when Jimmy came in to dinn
er, he said, “He looks a little better, don’t you think, Ma?” He took his plate to the fire and watched the cat while he ate.
She looked at him and shook her head. “About the same, Son. He don’t seem to be noticing much.”
“Pa, do you think he’ll live?” Jimmy asked after a moment. His father knew much about animals.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” he said.
Jimmy turned his face to the fire. “Well, he’s not going to die. He’s just not. That’s all.”
His mother looked at him and then came and sat by him on the hearth. She smoothed her skirt over her legs. “You know what I was thinking about this morning?” she said. “I was thinking about the goat we had when I was a girl. One day this goat got in our shed and ate up ... I reckon he ate up more than a bushel of feed. And he lay there just like your cat for three days. Never moved, never even opened his eyes. Three days he lay there and then he just upped and walked away, good as new.” She laughed. “I never will forget that old goat.”
“Animals do that sometimes,” Pa said. He rose from the table and crossed to where his son was sitting on the hearth. “Don’t let yourself care too much about the cat though, hear?”
Wiping his sleeve quickly over his eyes, Jimmy said, “I don’t care too much, Pa, I really don’t. You ready to get back to work now?”
Pa put a hand on Jimmy’s head and ruffled his hair without speaking.
Jimmy laughed shakily. “I reckon the cow’s got to have a shed by tonight or we’ll have two sick animals to tend, huh, Pa?”
“That’s about it.”
Jimmy rose, looked down at Rama, and then said, “Ma?” in a pleading voice.
“I’ll look after the cat,” she said.
Jimmy put on his jacket, an old one that no longer covered his thin wrists, and went out the door behind his father. Although he was tall for his eleven years, he had the awkward lankiness of a colt, and he looked, as he went out the door, like a very young and troubled boy. It bothered his mother that he already had to do a man’s work, and the expression she had seen on his face made her put down the dishes she was taking from the table and walk back to the fireplace.