Cat sat down on the ledge and stayed there, just thinking, for a long time. She thought mostly about Sammy. Almost entirely about Sammy. She went on thinking about her most of the way home. It wasn’t until she was crossing the empty pasture behind the Kinsey house that she remembered the reason she’d taken all those things to the grotto in the first place. Right at first she’d mostly been thinking about paying Zane back. Paying him back for being too mean to let his little sister have a measly old stick of chewing gum, just because someone gave it to her.
At least that had been the reason in the beginning. It was funny how she’d almost forgotten about paying Zane back.
NINETEEN
CAT WAS SURE, PRETTY sure at least, that Sammy had kept their Sunday meeting a secret. Or maybe not—because Zane was obviously angry about something. Either he thought he had something to be mad about, or else he was just naturally getting meaner all the time. Because all that next week at school it seemed as if he was trying his best to make Cat’s life as miserable as possible.
For one thing he had suddenly started joining in when people pestered her about racing with him. “Come on, Cat Kinsey,” he started saying. “Let’s you and me have a little ol’ race.” And of course everyone else would chime in. “Yeah, Cat. Come on. Why don’t you race with the fast Okie? Be a good sport, Cat.”
And then Zane would say, “Yeah, Cat. How’s about it? Be a good sport.” That made her madder than anything—when Zane Perkins called her Cat, like they were old friends, and told her to be a good sport.
And when Zane wasn’t tormenting her about racing with him, he was apt to be hanging around looking at her. When she took her turn on the bars he usually just stood there watching, but once or twice when her skirt came untucked from the legs of her underpants he joined right in with the other boys who liked to say nasty things like “I see London, I see France. I see someone’s underpants.”
He also started making a nuisance of himself when she was trying to beat her record on Janet’s new paddleball—a fancy twenty-five-cent one that had a nice thick paddle with a special coating to made it less slippery.
Cat was almost as good at paddleball as she was at running and she’d kept the ball going once for almost five hundred strokes, which would have been a new Brownwood record. She’d have broken the record easy if Janet hadn’t gotten so excited she started jumping up and down and squealing, which ruined Cat’s concentration and made her miss. But recently she hadn’t been able to get anywhere near five hundred because of Zane. It was hard to keep her mind on hitting the ball squarely and counting the strokes when she knew he was staring at her, just trying to make her miss. Watching and counting out loud in his dumb Okie accent. Saying things like “tyou” when he meant two and “fahve” instead of five.
Usually she simply tried to ignore him, but once in a while she’d get so fed up, she’d turn around and stare back. And then he’d just grin and pretend he was looking at something else.
It was rainy on Wednesday and again on Thursday, and having to stay indoors every recess gave Zane Perkins a lot of new opportunities to make a nuisance of himself. Like for instance choosing Cat’s pigtail to be the answer in a game of twenty questions. Cat hated for anyone to call her braid a pigtail and she hated it even more when Zane did it. But the worst thing of all happened when they were playing musical chairs. Just as Miss Albright stopped the music, Zane pushed his way into a chair that Cat was headed for, so that just for a moment she was sitting in his lap. Of course everyone had to tease her about that all the rest of the day.
By Friday the rain had stopped but Zane’s pestering didn’t let up. It was during the noon recess on Friday, when Cat was playing dodgeball, that she fell down and skinned both her knees, and it was Zane Perkins’s fault.
The game had just started and there were a lot of dodgers still in the circle. Hank Belton was on the outside team. Hank was a good thrower and when he played dodgeball he threw hard and fast—and usually right at Cat. So this one time when Hank got the ball he wound up like crazy and threw at Cat, and just as she started to dodge Zane Perkins jumped right in between her and the ball. The ball missed Cat and hit Zane, but Cat hit Zane too. Ran right into him in midjump and crashed down on the blacktop and skinned both her knees.
It hurt a lot, but if there were tears in her eyes when she got to her feet it was mostly from anger. She pushed aside the hands that were trying to help her up and stormed off to the office, where Mrs. Jayne, the principal, kept her first-aid kit.
Mrs. Jayne was not very sympathetic. “Not again!” she said when Cat limped into her room. “You’re just going to have to slow down a little, child. I never in my life knew anyone with such a full-tilt-ahead approach to life. You’re not going to have any knees left if you keep this up.”
Cat didn’t appreciate the lecture, particularly since this time the skinned knees weren’t her fault. But she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t going to be a snitch, not even about an Okie. But at least being angry helped her to keep from crying when Mrs. Jayne dabbed on the iodine.
A few minutes later when she was on her way back down the hall, with her knees hurting worse than ever from the iodine, she passed Spence Perkins, sitting on the railing as usual.
“Wooee!” Spence said as she went by. “That must be ahurtin’ some,” and there was something in the way he said it that made her stop and look at him. He looked and sounded so much like Zane—but with a mysterious difference that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. He was younger, of course, eight or nine instead of twelve, but there was more to it than that. For one thing he certainly seemed friendlier and a little less ornery. Cat decided to sit down on the railing for a minute until her knees stopped hurting.
Pausing every few seconds to blow on her knees, she said, “How do you—and your brothers—like Brownwood School, now that you’ve been here awhile?”
Spence nodded slowly, smiling with that same wide Perkins mouth—but with the mysterious difference. “Jist fine,” he said. “Leastways a lot better than the last place we tried to go to school.”
“Where was that?”
“Down south a ways. Town name of Cottonville.”
Cat was intrigued. She’d hadn’t expected him to say they liked it at Brownwood. How could they when everybody, or nearly everybody, called them Okies, and made fun of their accents and bare feet and raggedy clothing? “What happened at Cottonville?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Teachers made us sit on the floor at the back of the room. And some of ’em wouldn’t let us have books, nor paper and pencils even. This one teacher wouldn’t even call any of us camp kids by our rightful names. Jist pointed and said, ‘Okie. Hey you, Okie.’”
It was a peculiar thing. Listening to Spence’s soft, shy voice, Cat kept on hearing the difference and guessing how Zane would have told about Cottonville. It would have been, she guessed, with the same shocking fierceness that had been there when he made Sammy spit out the gum. But Spence didn’t sound fierce or angry at all when he said Okie.
She turned away, embarrassed by the hurt on Spence’s face, and when she looked back he was sitting quietly, looking down at his hands. For no reason at all Cat suddenly felt guilty—and angry that he’d made her feel that way. She’d always hated it when people made her feel guilty.
“Well, people call you Okies here too,” she said. “And that’s what you are, aren’t you?”
She’d meant to make him mad but when he looked up he was smiling. “No siree,” he said. “Not us Perkinses, anyways. We’re from Texas. From Panhandle country right ’nough, but ’cross the border in Texas. So we’re Texans, not Okies.”
“I know that,” Cat said impatiently. “But when people say Okie they don’t just mean people from Oklahoma.”
Spence laughed shortly. “You’re shorely right ’bout that,” he said. “When Californians say Okie they mean dumb and dirty and lazy and most everthin’ else bad they can think of.”
It was true, of co
urse. Cat wanted to say it wasn’t but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It would be too much of a lie. Trying to change the subject—just for something to say—she asked, “How’s Sammy?”
Spence sighed and shook his head. “Sammy’s sick,” he said.
“Sick?” It was like a squeezing hand had caught at something in Cat’s chest. “What’s the matter with her?”
“Don’t know for sure,” Spence said. “But it might could be her lungs agin. Back in Texas she had dust-lung real bad jist ’fore we left.”
“Dust lung?” Cat’s hand went to her chest and she breathed deeply, feeling a sort of dry stiffness there, just from imagining what “dust lung” must be like. Then, remembering Granny Cooper and her long naps, she asked, “Well, who’s looking out for her? Who’s seeing that she doesn’t go wandering around in the cold making herself worse?”
“Ma is,” Spence said. “Ma stayed home from work yesterday and today too. She’s fixin’ to work tomorrow, though, lessen Sammy’s worse.”
Cat nodded and sat for a while thinking. Then she got down off the railing gingerly. Her knees weren’t hurting quite as badly, but they’d started to stiffen up a little. She shook one leg and then the other before she asked, casually, as if for no particular reason, “All you folks going to be working again this weekend?”
“Yep,” Spence said. “All of us ’ceptin’ Sammy. And Ma, maybe, if Sammy’s real bad in the mornin’.”
Cat said, “Well, good-bye. I got to go now.” She limped off down the hall thinking about Sammy and making plans. Planning a visit—to the grotto first—and then maybe on down to ... She couldn’t believe she was actually thinking of visiting Okietown—but she was.
TWENTY
ON SATURDAY MORNING MAMA HAD one of her sick headaches. As soon as the others left for the store, she went back to bed. Cat pulled down the blinds in Mama’s room and brought her some aspirins, a glass of water, and a wet washcloth. She waved the washcloth in the air to make it nice and cool and then arranged it carefully on Mama’s forehead. Mama opened her eyes, smiled weakly, and patted Cat’s hand.
“You’re being very kind and thoughtful today,” she said. “You’re a good daughter, Cathy.” Cat wanted to jerk her hand away angrily but she didn’t. The anger was because Mama was being helpless and pitiful as usual, and making Cat feel guilty. Even more guilty than usual this time because, down deep, she’d been at least a little bit glad when Mama said she was getting sick. Not because Mama’s head was aching, of course, but a little bit glad that now she’d sleep most of the day, which would leave Cat free to do whatever she wanted.
It was probably because of the guilty feeling that Cat stood there by Mama’s bed for quite a while asking her if she wanted some more aspirin, or a piece of ice, or a different pillow.
“Or I could call Dr. Wilson,” Cat said. “Would you like me to call Dr. Wilson?”
“No,” Mama said, in her weak headachy voice. “There’s nothing anyone can do for my headaches, I’m afraid. Not even the famous Dr. Wilson.”
Mama wasn’t being sarcastic. Dr. Wilson, a big round-faced man with a slow, gentle voice, was practically famous, at least in Brownwood. He was particularly famous for curing people with serious diseases like bronchitis or pneumonia. Ellen was always wishing out loud that Dr. Wilson had been their doctor when her mother had pneumonia. Ellen always sighed wistfully when she said that, to show how much she wished her mother were still alive.
“Oh, if only Dr. Wilson had been in Brownwood back then, Mother would still be alive today,” Ellen would say. And there was always something about the way she looked right at Cat that seemed to add something more. Something about the fact that Cat would never have been born if Eleanor were still alive—and Ellen made it pretty plain she didn’t think that would be so bad either.
But Mama didn’t want Dr. Wilson to come. So Cat brought more water, and then sat there in the room and waited until the sound of Mama’s breathing became deep and even. Then she tiptoed out the door and down the hall.
Less than a minute later she was shrugging into her coat and heading for the back door. Partway across the kitchen she stopped, went back to her room, and pawed through the closet until she found what she was looking for—a sweater that she’d had for years but never worn very much. An old rose-colored sweater that Ellen had made when she was just learning to knit. It was a little bit lopsided, with one sleeve longer than the other, but it was heavy and warm and not very worn out. After tying it around her waist under the coat, Cat again tiptoed down the hall. When the back door closed behind her she began to run.
It wasn’t raining but it was another cold, gray day. The heavy rains on Wednesday and Thursday had left the air damp and clammy and mud puddles were everywhere. In the canyon the muddy water of the creek was higher, and parts of Cat’s favorite paths were flooded. Detours around or over boulders were necessary, and now and then daring crossings of flooded areas by jumping from stone to stone. By the time she reached the grotto she was sweating in spite of the cold air.
The little sandy strip in front of the blackberry thicket was quite a bit narrower, and the air in the tunnel smelled damp and earthy. Inside the grotto, however, everything was dry, protected from the rain by the rocky overhang, and from the flooding by the slight rise of the grotto floor. All Cat’s belongings were safe and in their proper places—and no one was in the cottage.
She hadn’t really expected Sammy to be there, but she had to be sure. If Mrs. Perkins had gone back to work today, as Spence said she might, and if Granny Cooper’s napping habits hadn’t changed, there was no telling what a headstrong and determined kid like Sammy might do, if she wanted to badly enough. Even a little kid who had just been sick. And if Sammy Perkins wanted to do anything really badly, it might very well be to visit the grotto—and Lillybelle.
But Sammy wasn’t in the cottage and probably hadn’t been there since last Sunday. The Kewpie doll and Lillybelle were exactly where they had been, and the blue dress was still lying on the ledge, just the way Sammy had left it.
Cat took the sweater out from under her coat, folded it carefully, and put it on top of the dress. For Sammy’s next visit. She’d been thinking of Sammy playing in the cottage, wearing the thick, warm sweater over the pretty blue dress. But on further consideration she had to admit that Sammy probably shouldn’t visit the grotto again anytime soon. Not in this cold, rainy weather and with the creek on the rise.
Of course, there probably wasn’t much point in taking the sweater to Sammy at home. Certainly not if Zane was around, at least. But because she couldn’t decide what else to do, Cat tied the sweater back around her waist by its lopsided sleeves before she crawled back through the tunnel.
Downstream from the grotto the creekside paths were flooded in places just as they had been farther up the canyon. As Cat headed downstream toward Okietown, picking her way carefully over muddy stretches and around boulders, she tried not to think about all the terrible things she’d heard about the Okie camps. All the stories about dirt and disease and mean, sneaky people who’d just as soon stick a knife in you as look at you.
Trying to keep from worrying, she told herself that, according to what Spence had said, almost all of the grownups would surely be away at work. But then a sneaky little interior voice added, All except for the really bad ones who probably never work anyway. Never work, and just hang around the camp instead, waiting for somebody to come along they could stick a knife into. Two or three times, imagining all the awful people she might meet and the terrible things that might happen to her, she stopped and turned back toward home. But each time she went on again.
She stopped again for a longer time when she reached the wooded hillside from which it was possible to look right down into Okietown. It wasn’t really a town at all, of course. Except for four tiny wooden shacks that Mr. Otis had built years before to house some of his ranch hands, there were no real buildings at all. Just a collection of tents and lean-to sheds built
of what seemed to be cardboard and canvas and pieces of rusty corrugated tin.
Among the tents and shacks were piles of trash where scraps of cardboard, tin, and glass mingled with the remains of dead cars. Oily pipes and wires, looking like metal veins and intestines, made ugly clumps among other broken body parts, such as bumpers, fenders, and running boards. Cat shuddered.
When she’d stood on that exact same spot a few weeks before, looking down on Okietown, everything had been covered by a gray veil of dust. The gray was gone now, but in its place were other ugly colors—muddy browns, dark red rusts like streaks of dried blood, and the nameless shades of rain-wet canvas and soggy cardboard.
No one was in sight. Maybe they were all away working. All except Granny Cooper and Sammy, at least. Cat squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and started down the hill.
On the outskirts of the camp she passed what was obviously an outhouse, a tiny enclosure made of an old billboard advertising Wonder Bread. The door was a sagging curtain of ragged gunnysacks. Cat walked faster, holding her breath against the smell. She was still hurrying when she rounded the first shack and nearly walked right over two little kids.
The children were squatting beside a deep puddle, doing something with a tin can and a stick. Still squatting, they stared up at Cat, their faces stiff with mud and surprise.
Cat tried to smile. “Hello,” she said. “I’m looking for the Perkinses’... She discarded house and home and wound up with place. “I’m looking for the Perkinses’ place. Do you know where the Perkinses live?”
For a moment no one spoke and it didn’t look like they were going to. The littlest kid, in fact, stuck a muddy thumb into his mouth like a cork and kept it there. But at last the other one, a pale, pointy-faced little boy with no-color hair, raised one arm and pointed to a tent only a few yards away.
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