A Curious Affair

by Melanie Jackson

  Yes. But in this case I think it will involve another death. Smelly butt must pay for what he’s done, and I do not believe that sheep man will be able to do anything to him.

  I nodded and then had the stray thought: How the hell did a cat know what redemption was? The question shook me and raised all my old doubts about my sanity and the danger of his ability to talk being nothing more than a hallucination. Did I need a companion so badly that I had invested this cat with human understanding?

  Jillian? What’s wrong? You look pale.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  Are you certain?

  I looked out the window. I couldn’t deny that Cal’s death had left a vacancy in my head and depression had moved in swiftly. And while there wasn’t a lease agreement, mental squatters are hard to evict once they get entrenched. I thought I had finally rid myself of the pernicious visitor that caused so much doubt and pain. And maybe I had, but I would have to be careful that something even worse didn’t move into the vacancy. I had to believe in something. Part of that plan for a new life was accepting that I could hear cats talk, and that one of them was a feline Einstein.

  “I’m certain. It’s just my jaw. Well, I’m off to town now. I’ll be back shortly.” My voice sounded a bit shaky, but Atherton didn’t question me further.

  As I’ve explained before, the road into town is a tricky one. It’s all horse shoe curves and hairpin turns the entire way up and down the hill. The shortest distance between any two points is a line, but we don’t believe in those in Irish Camp. We like corkscrews and convolutions if it means we don’t have to quarry through solid stone.

  It also makes one question whether you really, really need to go to town. Or anywhere.

  The eerie half-light can play tricks with the eyes—especially mine—and that day was no exception. I was half looking for ghosts when I saw Marie Antoinette à la milkmaid at Versailles come walking toward me up the hill. This was before the guillotining, of course, because her head was still in place.

  I began to giggle, and the phantom raised a hand in a casual wave. I knew it wasn’t a ghostly apparition but only Crystal covered in a cloak of spun-sugar. Her hair was especially webbed with strands of pink crystals. She had told me weeks ago about being roped into volunteering at the Sierra Candy Company’s cotton candy booth. It was tradition that amateurs help spin the cotton candy that was given away on Good Friday. Again, what this had to do with Easter, I didn’t know, but the tradition was a lovely one, and it made the air in town smell delicious. This was also extremely messy for the volunteers, since the machine was ancient and tended to throw most of its threads up into the air to net anyone standing over it.

  Crystal and I talked briefly while she did her best to stay away from the fire ants and wasps that were following her. She assured me that Tiny Bubbles was doing well. I knew that already from my feline sources, but was glad to hear that Crystal was doing well, too. I promised that we would have lunch the following week and then I let her flee for her bathtub.

  I met no one else on my walk, except a family of quail who bolted for the cover of shrubbery when they heard me crunching down the road. They ran in pecking order, never breaking rank of that tiny wobbling line that ran tallest to smallest. Unfortunately, when the first bird reached shelter, it slowed down, not taking into account the welfare of the others left in the road. They were frightened and chirping, but still refused to leave their place in line. Had I been a fast-moving car, they would be dead. Cute birds. Not real bright, though.

  I made it to the bank parking lot where the screeching children had amassed, and then began following my nose. I detoured a half block back to the High Sierra Candy Kitchen where the confectionery was actually made onsite, and stopped in for some fresh caramel corn. I was probably getting contact diabetes from all the sugar in the air, but didn’t care. My mouth said it had to have caramel corn or die.

  I paused a moment in front of the opera house, allowing myself a moment to appreciate the oddity of the architecture. The old hall looks like a prison and a Russian Orthodox Church mated and produced offspring. Officially it is designated as being of the Romanesque Revival style, though it has variations not seen anywhere else. It’s large, square, brick, tall and has an onion dome on top of a turret that shines prettily on a sunny day. An out-of-town investor—a cousin of our mayor’s—had wanted to buy it and use it for a car showroom, but the public outcry put an end to that idea. We knew that new money had a way of wiping out history in our town. Our opera hall was misshapen and had lousy acoustics, but that wasn’t the point. So we said no at the ballot box to the filthy lucre, even though Nolan had wanted the deal.

  A troop of giggling high schoolers pushed by me as I stood smiling at the building. The kids were out for Easter break and probably on their way to the park for the concert. Seeing them made me feel wistful and a bit sad. For now they were lovely blanks, just soft contours where their adult faces would go when stress and love and loss were done carving them. Poverty, too. Few of them would ever make more than minimum wage. I silently wished them well as they rushed off to whatever urgent task called them, hoping the Divine Artist in charge of their fates would use a gentle hand on them.

  I didn’t do my usual cat avoidance and weave through the backstreets as I wandered town. This time I stopped to talk to every feline I could find and damn the consequences. Not that it did me any good taking this risk of being thought a loony: Whatever Wilkes was up to, he wasn’t getting up to it downtown.

  Wilkes might have been a no-show that day, but the birds were putting on their first real spring serenade and being watched carefully by the appreciative neighborhood cats. There was one feral cat in particular who caught my eye. He was a lean creature with a striped coat and a supple body that could go from curled up and peering at his butt with his one good eye to uncoiled and halfway up a tree faster than you could say one-Mississippi. The robin escaped the assault, but only barely. It took a roost about four feet up a tree and began to scold. It would be sad to see the cheery little redbreast end up as someone’s snack—and far worse if there were eggs of hatchlings waiting—but I didn’t reprimand the cat. Not every animal was as fortunate as Irv’s cat. My cat. Whatever. I couldn’t ask the animal to starve or dine off rotten food in garbage cans when something yummy and alfresco was available and practically begging to be put on the menu.

  My next stop was the bowling alley. It took me by the fire museum where they had rolled out the old calliope and were pushing her for all she was worth. An ancient man with a long white beard sat atop it, playing “Bicycle Built for Two.” I tried to pretend that the music was cheery and not minor-key creepy, but failed. Carnival music has always seemed sinister to me, and the shrill tones hurt my ears.

  The bowling alley was crowded, it being a senior bowling league day, but I wanted to talk to PJ, Double Lanes’ feline mascot. The cat was cozy with all the patrons. It turned out that I had to talk with Deputy Dawg’s ex as well, since she was working that day. Goldie may be a preacher’s niece, but she hasn’t really embraced the whole forgive-and-forget concept. She referred to Dawg’s latest girlfriend, a nurse from Modesto, as the slut du jour. I didn’t argue, since I’d never met the woman, but didn’t take the accusation seriously. Goldie had thrown Dawg over, but she was still being very dog-in-the-mangerish about letting anyone else near him. Once something was Goldie’s it was always Goldie’s, and as far as she was concerned, Dawg was obliged to live in misery and die alone pining for her.

  I didn’t approach the seniors at play, though I knew many of them. Most were active, healthy specimens, poster children for the benefits of calcium supplements and high doses of ginkgo biloba. But a few were not. With every decade of difference in age the teams grew frailer, until the eighty-plus group that seemed hardly more substantial than ghosts. The younger seniors laughed and cheered and high-fived. Some even bumped knuckles as they saw their grandchildren do, though more softly because of the high rate of arthritis. Th
e older ones, like Mrs. Alcott, did not high-five, or low-five, or even pat each other on the shoulder. Any contact could lead to broken bones.

  I watched Mrs. Alcott shuffle up to the yellow line and drop her child’s-weight ball. I looked on in agony as it crawled away from her, willing it to reach the end of the lane, or at least roll into the gutter so she would be spared the ignominy of having one of the employees go and fetch it for her. Eventually the ball arrived at the end of the lane and knocked down one pin. She seemed very happy as she accepted her teammates’ congratulations, but I couldn’t endure any more. Thou too are mortal. I didn’t want to think about it.

  PJ had no news, and eventually I escaped Goldie’s post-divorce vitriol and the greasy smell of French fries that was weighing on a stomach already full of sweetened popcorn. I breathed deeply of the cool air outside, attempting to cleanse my lungs and mind. The bright red banner hung over the street reminded me that there was a blues festival going on at the fairgrounds on Saturday. And I had a ticket I had bought from Gemmie, Abby’s eldest daughter, when she was selling them as a school fund-raiser. The thought of going was daunting, but now that I thought of it, the fairgrounds bordered Irv’s property and harbored a colony of feral cats that I should talk with, since it was possible that they had seen something.

  I went up Lincoln Street and was soon pushing my way through the minicrowd in front of the courthouse where the 4-H was giving a preview of their animals destined for the County Fair. Have I mentioned my horror of being reincarnated as a dairy goat? I know it’s a strange fear, but I have actually had dreams about it. The poor creatures! Their udders are so large that they walk like bowlegged sailors and practically drag their teats on the ground. Looking at them now, it was all I could do not to shudder.

  I caught a glimpse of Tyler outside the courthouse, but he was with Nolan and smiling for pictures so I gave them wide berth. As I was turning away, I realized something about Nolan that I had never noticed before. The way he stood, it made him look like his loafers were on the wrong feet. The thought made me smile, and not in a kind way.

  “Enough,” I finally said to the lone, turkey-shaped cloud in the sky above the hardware store, and headed for home with the pitiful remains of my caramel corn. I had hams to buy and vets—and their cats—to interview. Also, I just recalled that I was supposed to bring my car in for an oil change that morning.

  And I would stop at the animal shelter, too. Atherton and I would stop, I amended. He wouldn’t like riding in the cat carrier, but it would give me an excuse to bring him inside when I visited the shelter. After all, what kind of irresponsible person would I be to leave an animal shut up in a car on a sunny—I checked the sky to make sure that it was still sunny—day? This would work well. He could talk to the shelter cats while I dealt with the humans.

  Atherton was agreeable with my plan and sat on the desk beside me as I called Dr. Dervon to set up an interview. I already knew the horrible facts about feline leukemia but needed to have some authority figure to quote for my piece. I also rather liked Clive, the office cat. He was a bit of an aging hippie, like the doc, and never bothered me with stupid remarks about how I smell. In fact, I rarely rated more than a Hey, Jillian. I have no proof that the cat or vet ever smoked wacky tobaccy, but somehow it seemed likely.

  I told Atherton that I would be back soon, and headed for the garage (automotive repairs, liquor, firewood and snow supplies). I was way overdue on an oil change and was reluctant to cancel my appointment again. They do a good business there, since it is the last stop for gas, chains, and snow tires before skiers disappear behind the evergreen curtain. I was also amused by the signs leading up to the garage, put up by the owners of a seasonal fruit stand that used to operate in the parking lot but had fallen into disuse a de cade ago. Once upon a time the individual placards read: slow. down. fruit. stand. ahead. But with two signs fallen, it now said: slow. fruit. ahead. I always wondered what constituted a slow fruit. One that couldn’t roll? Or did it have something to do with fruit IQ? For instance, were prunes smarter than raisins?

  There was a vending machine that shared space with a glass-fronted refrigerator (live bait and cold beer) in the waiting room at Gold Rush Tires and Chains. Knowing it was probably a waste of time but feeling very thirsty, I dropped in my entire supply of quarters and hit the root-beer button. As expected, the machine jeered and refused to give me either a root beer or my money back. I called it two bad names, but stopped there. I was too parched to waste my breath and limited saliva.

  Denny, who ran the office, looked up from his newspaper and laughed. Above his head hung the faded picture of a naked woman. It was a 1969 Playboy calendar turned to December. It was always turned to December. Denny was a loyal, one-woman man.

  “That machine giving you a hard time, Jillian?”

  “As ever.”

  “It’s the damnedest thing. It never does that to anyone else, you know.”

  “Machines hate me,” I agreed, finding the situation much less amusing than he did. “Want to help me out?”

  “Sure.” Denny stumped over and gave the red box a solid whap. It obligingly spit out my root beer. The clunk of its arrival in the tray sounded like a bark of contempt, but I didn’t complain. Denny smiled again. “You just need to know how to speak its language.”

  “Thanks.” I picked the can up, but didn’t open it. Experience said that there was a better than even chance that the thing would spray me if I didn’t let it sit for a while. Machines really do hate me. It’s probably because of my stance on cell phones. In this age of the Internet, word has probably gotten around.

  “Denny, I’ve been thinking. You know what this office needs?” My tone was a shade too enthusiastic, and he eyed me a bit warily.

  “Uh…what?”

  “A cat. It hasn’t been the same since Grover passed.”

  “Well, no. But Grover was a dog,” he pointed out.

  “And that was the problem. Poor Grover—once he lost his hearing, it was just a matter of time before…” I didn’t go on. Grover had come to a bad end when one of the car lifts in the garage had dropped on him. “But a cat would just stay here in the office and keep people company while they waited for their cars to be fixed. They’ve done studies, you know. Pets help lower people’s blood pressure. Keeps them from being so cranky.” Unless they had allergies to cat dander.

  “You know, that isn’t a bad thought,” Denny admitted. “It would help folks while away the time. I’ll talk to Ross about it.”

  “Good. And I even know the prefect cat. His name is—Happy.” Happy really should have been called Sleepy Two. He looked like Sleepy’s cousin and shared the lazy temperament. “He’s a fluffy orange cat—looks like a pumpkin. He’s very mellow.”

  “Is this one of Irv’s cats?” Denny asked.

  “Yes. I’ve found homes for most of them.” That was a smallish lie. I had homes for three. Four, if you counted Atherton.

  Denny returned my keys soon after, and, feeling a righteous glow at having placed another cat and tended to the well-being of the Subaru—the one machine in the world that doesn’t hate me—I rushed back home.

  Atherton wasn’t enthused about the cat carrier I put him in—a leftover from a neighborhood yard sale that I had inherited when its previous owner abandoned it—but he understood the necessity when I explained about the shelter. I made sure to put him in the front seat where he could watch the world as we traveled. Once underway, I slipped Ian Hunter’s Rant CD into the player. Brother Ian was a good man, and I was feeling his indignation. Of course, he was singing about socio economic injustice in England and I was pissed off about greedy nephews who were getting away with murder, but it still felt like a meeting of the minds.

  Atherton listened intently as I sang along, and I had a moment of near-vertigo as I considered what this could mean. I could share anything with him: Shakespeare, Rossini, poetry. Of course, there was every chance that he wouldn’t care about Romeo and Juliet’s ill-f
ated love affair or the trials of the Barber of Seville. But who could resist T. S. Elliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats? All I had to do was read it aloud.

  We had a bit of bad luck on Apple Road. I got stuck behind one of the many turkey trucks headed for the ranch where they raise free-range fowl. The options, once trapped on the two-lane tarmac, are limited. There is no place to pull over and no place to safely pass. Cars have tried it, with disastrous results. Last year we had a truck overturn and it was a blood fest. Panicked juvenile turkeys went racing to their deaths on the freeway that runs parallel to Apple Road. They committed mass suicide by motor home and tour bus, and hundreds of turkey dinners were lost just before Thanksgiving. The road was covered in turkey slaw that had to be scraped up with snowplows, and there were white feathers ghosting around for months. The collisions hadn’t done much for the vehicles, either. The truck driver was unhurt but badly shaken, and soon retired from the turkey-hauling business.

  It was difficult, but I bided my time and crawled along at six miles per hour until I reached Ranch Road where the vet’s office was. It wasn’t the most painful of ways to pass the time. Daffodils were blazing on the hillside and the first lupines had leapt out of the ground overnight and burst into glowing purples and whites that almost hurt the eye with their vivid hues.

  Dr. Dervon was kind and very eager to cooperate on a story about the perils of feline leukemia. For those of you who don’t know, it’s an incurable viral disease that affects 2 to 3 percent of all cats. The rate goes up in cats that are ill, very young, or living in stressful situations. The disease can cause cancer, blood disorders, spontaneous miscarriages, and a host of immune deficiency disorders that sound a lot like AIDS. The only way to avoid infection is never to let your cat interact with infected felines, since it can be transmitted through saliva or mucus. There is a vaccine that is fairly effective but not foolproof. What I didn’t know was that there were some treatments for the disease that could add a couple of years to an infected animal’s life. I wrote them down carefully—Immuno Regulin, Interferon Alpha, Staph Protein A and Acemannan. I had to leave my readers with some hope if their beloved pets turned up infected.