Beware of Cat

by Vincent Wyckoff

  “I’m Edith’s brother,” he said by way of introduction. The family resemblance was obvious. A tall, strong, capable man from rural South Dakota, he wore a leather string tie with a turquoise clasp over a western-style long-sleeve dress shirt. His face was deeply lined and tanned, accentuating a long white forehead. Only the cowboy hat was missing, and I thought perhaps he’d left it at home or in the truck out of respect. To my great relief, he told me she was coming home from the hospital later that day.

  “So, what’s the prognosis?” I asked, daring to hope for

  the best.

  “Not so good. She’s basically coming home to die.” He explained that the extended family was coming together to care for her. It was a little awkward talking to him. After all, I had just met him, his sister was dying, and he had no knowledge of my friendship with Edith.

  “Will you give her a message for me?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Tell her the mailman is thinking of her. I miss her and wish her well.”

  He smiled. “I’ll do that. Thanks.”

  For a couple of weeks after that it was a merry-go-round of cars out front of Edith’s house. I met three generations of her family, but I never saw her. Edith’s brother told me that she had smiled when he gave her my greeting. “From her reaction, I can tell you must have been pretty good friends. I appreciate that.” His expression clouded over, and he added, “She doesn’t get out of bed anymore. I suppose it’ll be any day now.”

  It still seemed impossible to me. Only a month earlier she had been meeting me at the door; a few weeks before that she was working in the yard. While I’m sure she cherished having her whole family around, I knew it must have been very hard on her to be bedridden. That just wasn’t her style.

  Her brother was staring at me. I didn’t know what to say. My relationship with Edith had always been spontaneous and comfortable, full of teasing and joking around. Even though she was gravely ill, I thought that speaking to her would be easier right now than talking to her taciturn brother. I decided to pretend I was speaking directly to her.

  “You tell Edith I’m waiting to see her at the door again.” Bluffing a threat, I added, “Tell her I come by every day to deliver her mail, the least she can do is meet me at the door like she used to.”

  His expression was somewhat befuddled at first, but when he saw me smile, a conspiratorial grin broke out over his weather-beaten face. “By golly, I’ll do it,” he said with a wink. “I’ll give her your message.”

  Walking away, I worried that my remarks had been disrespectful, that I had overstepped the bounds of civility. Arriving at Edith’s house the next day, I found several more cars parked out front. Her brother, smoking a cigarette, stood on the steps watching me work my way down the block. A straw cowboy hat was pushed back on his head.

  As I approached, he came down the steps and said, “She’s been up since seven o’clock—baked muffins for the whole crew.” He looked down at his boots and shook his head. “She didn’t get out of bed for nearly a week, but after getting your message she’s been watching for you all morning.”

  The fact that it was nearly lunchtime could have made that a humorous overstatement, but before he pulled the brim of his hat down I caught a glimpse of moisture around his eyes. Turning away, he nodded at the front door. “She’s waiting for her mail.”

  Looking up, I was greeted by Edith’s mischievous smile. Her whole family stood around her. I climbed the steps to hand her the mail, and she offered me a blueberry muffin in return. Her hand shook, and she’d lost a lot of weight, but that spirited gleam in her eye still flickered through the frailty. We talked as we always had, about the weather, and the lawn, and the birds at the feeders. And, just as always, we never mentioned the obvious.

  She died two days later. Her brother thanked me for helping her go on such a positive note. “It was like a party around here—Edith herding her family around the house, baking desserts and keeping busy right up to the end. She just went in to take a nap and didn’t get up again.”

  But, as I told him, it wasn’t because of anything I did. It was her spirit and strength of character. It was all Edith.

  Working It Out

  My route runs through the middle of a blue-collar neighborhood with a wonderful diversity of residents. There are older folks and young, life-long bachelors and families with so many children it’s hard to make a count, even when they’re all playing in the yard. I meet people of every race and religion. There are a lot of friendly folks and a few crabby ones. Diligent, working class citizens, relaxed, retired seniors, and some people who don’t work, don’t want to work, yet somehow manage to survive off the system.

  And there are always one or two that don’t easily fit into any category. These are the people who attract no attention, are easily lost in a crowd, and disappear through the cracks of our society. One such character lived in a small house on my route. It took me years to learn his story. I pieced it together from bits of information offered by his mail, comments from neighbors, and snippets of conversation we had over the years.

  Thomas was a chain smoker. I never saw him without a cigarette. His index fingers and long fingernails were stained a dull yellow. He wore the smell of cigarettes like an aftershave; it preceded him wherever he went and lingered in the air when he passed. His vocabulary and grammar were impeccable, but he needed to be spoken to first, as he would never presume to initiate a conversation. On those rare occasions when we did talk, he held his own on most topics, although I had to prod him regularly to keep him talking.

  I assumed early on that Thomas got all his clothes at a second-hand store. He was tall and skinny, and his trousers were always several sizes too big, rolled up at the cuffs, and cinched tight around his waist with a narrow brown belt. He wore the same clothes for weeks at a time, which didn’t improve his musty, nicotine-soaked aroma.

  He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses. On someone else they might have been considered retro, or chic, but on Thomas were merely a degree or two beyond nerd. He was in his late forties, but he didn’t work, didn’t own or drive a car, and never learned how to ride a bicycle.

  There was obviously something very wrong with Thomas, but I never heard him lament any aspect of his lot in life. His mail brought him a disability check as well as money from Social Security. In the summertime I usually encountered him sitting on the front steps reading a book. The first time we spoke, the book was The Iliad, by Homer. Having read it years earlier, I asked him how it was going.

  “Oh, I’ve read this particular volume several times,” he replied as if launching into a lecture. “It’s far more engrossing than The Odyssey. After all, without The Iliad there wouldn’t have been a Trojan Horse.” He paused to scratch the top of his head, leaving a swatch of hair sticking straight up. It was apparent that he took his reading very seriously. “The Iliad is a great reference tool for understanding the Greek gods,” he continued. “But everyone wants to read about the adventures of Odysseus, even though it’s The Iliad that sets up his remarkable journey.”

  “Do you usually read a book more than once?”

  As I would come to learn over the years, Thomas responded to the few things he confronted in life with an intellectual intensity that bordered on panic. Everything was a test, even my simple question, and he was like a game show contestant racing to throw out the correct answer. There wasn’t much space left for common sense.

  “When I deem it necessary, I’ll read a book several times.”

  “And what have you uncovered in The Iliad that requires your reading it more than once?”

  Thomas pushed his glasses further up on his nose. He had a bad habit of never looking at the person he spoke to. “It’s that whole debate over the existence of Homer.” He said this like it was a discussion everyone engages in from time to time. “At the very best, I’d give him
credit for recording stories that had existed in the oral tradition for generations. But if you study the writing closely, you find variations in style, like you’d expect to find with more than one author.”

  Thomas set the book aside and scrunched his knees up tight. Looking at the sky above my head, he continued. “Please understand, I don’t actually speak the language, but the term Homer in Greek means hostage. In ancient times, the blind were often considered hostages, as in a hostage to their infirmity. So, I’m considering the theory that someone else may have written for a blind poet named Homer.” He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “In fact, it’s just possible that Homer was a pseudonym of Plato. It becomes quite a mystery, especially when the original texts were written in ancient Greek. Who knows how the language has morphed after several layers of translations.”

  I considered Thomas in a different light after that initial conversation.

  His mother was an odd character, too. She lived one hundred and fifty miles away in Duluth, a city in northern Minnesota with a port on Lake Superior. The first time I met her she breezed into town driving her big, flashy Cadillac. A sleek fur coat hung nearly to her feet. Despite her caked-on makeup and high heels, she looked ancient when viewed up close, which only made sense considering that Thomas was pushing fifty himself. Without help from her son, she carried two bags of groceries to the front steps. She then returned to the car to heft a large carton of books, which I helped her set on the landing. I recognized many of the titles, mostly classic hard covers, packed tight between layers of bubble wrap. There must have been a small fortune in books.

  We introduced ourselves. I had seen her return address on letters she mailed to Thomas. She lived on London Road in the east end of Duluth. It was easy to envision this impeccably dressed woman ruling her domain from one of the large stone mansions overlooking the Lake Superior harbor, shipping canal, and lighthouse.

  Thomas extracted two or three books at a time to bring inside. The entryway and living room beyond were a sea of books. I watched as he strategically placed each volume on a different stack, occasionally changing his mind to rearrange a pile, giving the distinct impression of having an order or system to the stacks.

  Mother and son didn’t have much to say to each other. He didn’t invite her in, but she seemed to have no interest in lingering, anyway. I walked her back to her car. “That should be enough books to keep him busy for another month or two,” she said without looking back.

  “Your son is a prolific reader,” I offered.

  “And a prolific smoker, too,” she added with sarcasm. “I’m surprised he hasn’t burned down the house and all those books with his damn cigarettes.”

  At the door she paused to look at me. She carried herself with elegance and poise. Her hair was long, pure white from age, and piled high on her head in a hairdo more common to an earlier era.

  I said, “His smoking aside, Thomas is a brilliant man. Where did he go to school?”

  Pulling the door open, she hesitated, resting a gloved hand on the top of the doorframe. “We sent him to the finest schools in Europe. Did you know he’s fluent in four different languages?”

  Of course I didn’t know that, but I was so surprised by the information that I blurted, “Well, he doesn’t know ancient Greek.”

  She gave me a puzzled look, ignored my stupid grin, and continued. “He was born in Germany. My husband was a diplomat for the U.S. government in Berlin at the time.” She looked down at one of her heels, turned her foot sideways to get a better view, and added, “There was a problem with the birth. You may have noticed that Thomas struggles with the details of his life.”

  What a strange way to put it, I thought.

  On another occasion, I found Thomas pacing along the side of the house. As I watched him muttering to himself and gesticulating at a nonexistent audience, I wondered what caused him so much distress.

  “Hello, Thomas.”

  It took a moment for him to come back to himself and recognize me standing at the corner of his house. He broke off pacing and approached me abruptly. “The city is going to fine me if I don’t clear the brush from around my garage. I have to paint it, too.”

  The look on his face expressed fear and panic, not the anger I would have expected. As far as I could see, his whole yard was a disaster area. A paint job seemed like the least of his problems, considering the house had been in need of a new roof for the last five years. He handed me the letter.

  “Says here you have six weeks before they take action.” Thomas crowded up next to me to see the letter. I was certain he had read it hundreds of times already. The rank aroma of cigarettes and body odor wafted over me. Stepping aside, I said, “Why don’t you clear some of that brush away and see what kind of a job you’re looking at? It probably won’t be too bad. It’s a small garage.”

  Thomas was incredulous. “I don’t even use the garage!”

  “But it’s yours, and it’s on your property.”

  “It’s my mother’s property.”

  “Regardless, your neighbors don’t want to look at the mess back there. It’s an eyesore.”

  Thomas peered at the neighbor’s house, suspicion in his eyes.

  “Not necessarily that particular neighbor,” I quickly added. “Just, you know, the neighborhood in general. Folks around here take good care of their belongings, and they don’t want to look at a mess like that all the time.”

  Thomas surveyed the houses down the block like it was the first time he had ever noticed them.

  “Just cut back some of that brush. You have lots of time. Do a little each day.”

  I left him with that thought. The next day I found him sitting on the steps, a cigarette burning a black smudge in the concrete next to him, his nose buried deep in a book. “How did the brush cutting go?” I asked.

  He looked up, startled, fumbling to put the cigarette in his mouth. Holding up a shaky hand, he displayed several band-aids and dried blood on his fingers.

  “How did that happen? Are you okay?”

  Thomas was in a high state of agitation. I don’t know if it was due to the bloodied fingers, the anxiety of a seemingly impossible task, or anger at the city for thrusting this ordeal on him. Whatever the reason, Thomas was too distraught for words.

  I helped myself to a walk in the backyard. There wasn’t much of a dent in the tangle of buckthorn and vines clinging to the garage. I spied a kitchen knife, and then a scissors, lying in the grass. I should have known he didn’t have the tools, much less the capability, to cut back the brush.

  Over the next few weeks I kept an eye on the backyard. The bushes appeared to be having a good summer of growth. Thomas didn’t show himself, but a couple of times I thought I saw movement behind the blinds in the front room. Finally, just a few days before the city inspectors were due to return, I again encountered Thomas on the front steps. He wasn’t reading, but sat watching me approach. The smoke from the cigarette dangling from his lips gave him a ghostly appearance. Maybe it was more wretched than ghostly, but either way, I found myself feeling sorry for him. Without being invited, I sat beside him on the steps.

  “What, no book today, Thomas?”

  No response. Smoke blew straight out from his puckered lips. I could feel the tension around him. He wasn’t so much smoking the cigarette as sucking the very essence out of it. I had a hunch as to what was bothering him, so I asked, “Have you thought about hiring someone to work on your garage?”

  When he replied, his voice was strained, edgy, almost falsetto in timbre. “Are you crazy? It’s too much money. I can’t afford that.”

  “What about your mother? Won’t she help pay for it?”

  “She told me to deal with it,” he sneered. “She said it’s my problem.”

  We sat for a few moments. When he reached for another cigarette to light o
ff the one still burning, I had to get up and move away. His hands shook as he performed the habitual lighting ceremony.

  “Have you ever had a job, Thomas?” I asked. I wasn’t trying to be mean, it was a question I had wanted to ask for a long time. I didn’t expect him to respond, so when he began talking I sat down again to listen.

  The first words out of his mouth were the name of a huge market research firm in downtown Minneapolis. “I managed the accounting department. All receivables and expenses went through me. There were two whole walls lined with filing cabinets. Even though I had four assistants, I knew the status of each and every account. More than two million dollars worth a year.”

  I was shocked. If it had been anyone else I would have burst out laughing, but Thomas wasn’t the joking sort. Smoke billowed around him again when he stopped talking. Time for some prodding.

  “How long ago was that?”

  Without hesitation, he responded, “Over twenty years ago. Before all the computers and everything. We lived in an apartment in Uptown back then.”

  “We?”

  “Catherine and myself. She was my girlfriend, but it didn’t last.”

  This was too much. An executive position was a stretch,

  but a live-in girlfriend, too? “Hmm. Thomas, what happened

  to the job?”

  “I had to resign. The board was reluctant to let me go, but the pressure was too much for me.”

  “I suppose having responsibility for all those accounts, not to mention all that money, would be a little nerve-wracking.”

  “On the contrary, the position was perfect for me,” he countered. “When I started, there were two rooms stacked to the ceiling with boxes of papers and files. I went through every one of them, cataloged and filed everything. After it was all organized, one of the rooms became my office. My desk was a huge antique wooden credenza, and I had a conference table with chairs. When anyone in the firm needed client information, they came to me.”