“People still have to get through it.”
“How am I s’posed to come up with that kinda money?”
The policeman looked down at him with a mixture of pity and exasperation and extended a hand to help Michael to his feet. “Let me give you some advice,” he said. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Okay, officer, sorry,” he mumbled as he turned to walk away.
Tabor had stretched out in a sunbeam, half-veiled by the mesh of jasmine that splashed across the wall, watching quietly as the two men talked. When the policeman looked at her as he started to leave, she sauntered over, brushing against his legs, meowing to be picked up. She did her best to charm him, but he walked straight past her.
She turned her head toward Michael and let out a soft, sad little mew.
“I’m sorry, Tabor,” he said, propping himself up against a wall only to slide back down clumsily onto the pavement. Empty cans, bottles, and cigarette butts surrounded him.
Tabor yawned wide, stretching her legs, then padded over. She leaped up onto his shoulder and nuzzled his cheek.
“This is no way for a lady to live,” he said to her. Tabor gazed back at him as though she knew what he meant. “I’ll try to do better.”
She rubbed her head against his chin, purring loudly, her fur soft and warm from the sun, trusting that she was in the right place, with him, together.
Chapter 13
Bad Moon Rising
The rain was pelting down. The palm trees were bent over by the wind, and coconuts fell from the sky. Ron huddled behind the ruins of a stone house, clinging onto Mata and watching bits of wood and branches flying past. As the winds grew, lashing at them, Mata slipped out of his grasp and was swept away into the sea as he watched helplessly.
Ron’s eyes snapped open. He was disoriented and drenched in a cold sweat. He heard a thud as Creto skidded across the wooden floor and out the bedroom door. He must have been scared off by Ron starting to awaken from his bad dream.
It was nearly eleven on a bitterly cold January morning. Every morning felt so bad and he struggled to get through each day, but the weekends were the hardest. He had fallen into the habit of not leaving the house for days at a time. His friends teased him that he was in danger of slipping into the murky twilight world of daytime TV and antidepressants or, worse, collecting guns. He lay there, dazed, staring at the three vintage black velvet Elvis prints on his wall, pondering the meaning of his dream. He felt as though he were being swallowed by his searing heartache and anger, which were sapping his energy.
Creto reappeared and jumped onto the pillow beside Ron’s head, meowing. Ron stroked his furry cheek. If it weren’t for this cat, he thought, I wouldn’t bother with anything. I’d probably end up like Brian Wilson and just live in bed.
Not a moment too soon, Jim, a sleek chocolate-faced Siamese, jumped on his bed, too, meowing for breakfast. Jim belonged to his lodger, Steve. Ron had met Steve four years earlier when Steve, a struggling young musician, had just become homeless, along with his elderly cat, Lennie. Ron kindly took them both in without ever charging any rent, and after Lennie died, Steve adopted Jim as a kitten.
Ron went to the kitchen, his eyes red with fatigue, moving sluggishly toward the coffee machine. Creto and Jim dashed ahead of him and stood by their food bowls. Ron knew that Steve already fed the cats, but they always wanted more and acted like they’d been starving for days to cadge an extra meal.
While filling the cat dishes, he glanced out the window toward the house across the street, where Jack lived. Ron was convinced the guy was a drug dealer—he had a stream of wild-eyed and strung-out creatures going in and out of his house at all hours like it was a Chinese takeout. Just the thought of him made his blood boil. “Junkie loser,” he mumbled, “I hope you die of an overdose.”
As he put down the cats’ second breakfast, Ron told himself he had to try to stop the loop of vengeful thoughts about his hateful neighbor. Willing himself to do something positive, he got on the computer and sent some money to his favorite feral-cat rescue charity, and then scoured the house for towels, blankets, dishes, and other items that the local shelter could use. Afterward he browsed on eBay for Stratocaster parts for his store, and he went on a vintage-guitar-buying frenzy. Then it was time to pack up the Christmas decorations. He turned on the golden oldies radio station, listening to Linda Scott sing “I’ve Told Every Little Star” in her sultry, sugary-sweet voice, as he took the lights and ornaments off the tree and boxed them. He tried to keep himself busy, because if he stopped, he’d start pining for Mata, and a cyclone of dark thoughts would spiral in his head.
That gloomy afternoon, it was dark by 5 p.m. Steve came home from work earlier than usual and invited Ron for happy hour at one of the local bars, but Ron was too upset to leave the house, so Steve went out for the night.
Creto was curled up under the radiator across the room. Jim nuzzled around his ankles and watched with wide-eyed wonder as Ron dragged the tree outside, trailing pine needles along the way. Then he lugged the boxes up to the attic.
Paneled with cedar, the attic resembled a sprawling sauna. To Ron it felt like a secret tree house, his hideout from the world. Sometimes he went up there to meditate to clear his mind or listen to music. Its slanting walls and dormer windows faced the front and back of the house. Boxes of vinyl LPs were stacked against one wall, a framed early-1960s poster of the Beatles in the electric blue doorway of the London Palladium above them. A vintage mike stand sat beside a small bookshelf with a red lava lamp. Peaceful coziness pervaded every corner.
An antique barber chair faced the rear window, and Ron collapsed into it after stowing the Christmas decorations in their designated space. Carved out of walnut, with plush leather upholstery and metal foot pedals, the chair had belonged to his grandfather who had owned a barbershop in St. Johns, a tiny quaint suburb in North Portland across the Willamette River. Ron had virtually grown up in that chair, a little chubby-cheeked, towheaded boy getting his hair cut in a military-style flat top at his granddad’s dusty old-timey shop. With its traditional barber pole, vaulted ceilings, wood-paneled walls sporting yellowing photos of men’s hairstyles, and colorful tonic bottles lining the counter, the shop had a warm, homey atmosphere. And it was always filled with pipe tobacco smoke as mustached men sat back, smoking, talking, and laughing.
His granddad’s barber chair was like a time-travel machine. Every time Ron sat in it, his mind would wander back to being a kid playing under the misty-blue gothic arches in Cathedral Park beneath St. Johns Bridge. He had loved going to the neighborhood family-owned stores, some of which still existed: the Tulip Pastry bakery, where his mother took him for bear claw pastries and black-cherry soda after he got his hair cut; the cluttered comic book store with creaky hardwood floors, owned by a nice Iranian family who gave out Tootsie Rolls and where he’d spent all his pocket money; the old St. Johns movie theater where he first saw Jaws in the summer of 1975; the Lion’s Den Man’s Shop, the haberdashery whose funny name made him smile whenever he’d passed it.
Before he became a barber, his granddad had been a musician in a ragtime band in the 1940s. He had given Ron a harmonica and his first guitar and introduced him to everything from the old jazz greats to Buddy Holly and Bob Dylan. Swiveling around in the barber chair, Ron thought that now might be a good time to renovate the attic and build the small recording studio that he’d always wanted. It would be the distraction he desperately needed.
Ron turned toward the back window and looked up. It was completely dark by now, and a full moon lit the cold night air with a grayish tint. For a split second Ron mistook it for a blue moon. But the last blue moon had been in August, around Mata and Creto’s third birthday, so another was unlikely to come so soon. To Ron, a full moon meant emotional upheaval. He certainly felt that and thought how the chill and bleakness of January reflected his own depression. His birthday—which he liked to tell people he shared with Elvis Presley and David Bowie—was three days a
way. He suddenly felt trembly and wondered where his youth had gone: he’d made a lot of wrong choices, chosen bad boyfriends, and missed a lot of opportunities. His life hadn’t changed much from the way it was at twenty-five, except now he was alone, depressed, and living next to a sadistic sociopath.
In the glow of moonlight, bits of stray tinsel glittered on the attic floor. Ron got up to fetch a broom and dustpan and swept them up. Then he rummaged through a box, coming across Mata’s unopened kitty stocking from the previous Christmas, the first time she’d strayed. Seeing the stocking still sealed in its red plastic mesh, as if frozen in time, he recalled those long cold days of last winter when Mata was lost and living wild in the woods.
He replayed in his head the details of the day he’d collected Mata from the Vancouver Humane Society. She was so skinny and sick with the flu. When he arrived at the shelter, the staff couldn’t find her. She had been shunted into the back room, death row. She was only hours away from being destroyed because they had deemed her semi-feral and too ill to treat. The shelter kept animals for five days before killing them if they weren’t adopted or reclaimed, while the feral and less friendly ones were sent straight to death row. A sympathetic kennel worker led Ron to the bleak, bunker-like back room that held all the condemned animals. It was the saddest, most heart-wrenching place he’d ever seen.
He walked in silence and in tears past rows of metal cages with terrified cats and kittens. Some cowered in their litter trays; others stood, crying with pleading eyes. The saddest ones had already given up and were quiet, hunched up in the back of the cages.
Mata was among them, hiding at the back of her kennel, her head resting on her paws. But the moment Ron shouted out her nickname, “Honey Bunny,” she pricked up her ears, looking up at him, and called back to him with a series of sad, plaintive little meows.
On the drive back home, Mata had stuck her paw through the bars of her cat basket and wrapped it around his finger. Ron wept remembering that he’d come so close to losing her.
Miserable, Ron went downstairs to grab his laptop to see if by some miracle he had any emails about Mata. Then he climbed back up to the attic with the laptop and posted on his Facebook page his favorite picture of himself cuddling Mata and Creto. He wrote: Mata please come home. We’re incomplete without you.
He flicked his laptop shut, set it on the floor, and crumpled up in the barber chair again, burying his head in his hands. At that moment, he heard the light footfalls of a cat on the creaky stairs. He looked up to see Jim’s head poke up over the top of the stairs. The big Siamese tom gazed at Ron intently, blinking his odd-colored eyes, one blue and one gold, repeatedly.
“Oh, Jim, Jimmy Jim Jim,” he cooed to the cat. “You’re such a sweet boy.”
When Ron spoke to him, Jim said, “mrrr” mournfully with his rusty meow. He sauntered over—his coloring made him look like he was wearing brown tights—and hopped into his lap like a little gymnast. He gazed up at Ron with his mesmerizing David Bowie eyes. Then he head-butted Ron’s face and patted his leg with his paw.
Jim’s pure heart and silly kittenish ways brought Ron around and made him smile.
Ron heard keys jingling on the front porch as Steve came home. He didn’t want his lodger to see him in this state. He lifted Jim as he stood up and turned to set the cat down on the barber chair behind him. He turned off the lights, took a deep breath, and wiped his tears with the sleeve of his sweater. He heard Steve banging around the kitchen for a late-night snack.
He needed to pull himself out of this gloom in case Steve staggered upstairs. Flipping through his boxes of vinyl, he put on the Modern Lovers’ punky anthem “Roadrunner.” He could happily listen to its gleeful, clashing guitars and drums forever. Music had always carried him along through the best and worst of times.
Somehow, he thought, he had to keep it together and get through this winter. He had to believe that he would find Mata and bring her home again.
Chapter 14
Ventura, California: Good Vibrations
In the middle of January, Michael took a local bus headed south out of King City. Then he hitchhiked, with Tabor riding on his backpack, down the coast. Almost immediately they were picked up by a kindly old man with a white mullet and plaid Western shirt, who was going to Santa Barbara for cancer treatment. He had a huge, gentle German shepherd in the backseat. Tabor, who always seemed to get along with dogs, just fell asleep all the way there. It turned out to be a smooth ride—a straight shot down the 101 Freeway to Santa Barbara. After their ride let them off on a coast-curving stretch of highway that tightly wound around the Pacific, Michael could see a sparkling inlet dotted with surfers. The waves tumbled end over end toward the beach, and the breeze carried the smell of warm creosote and salt.
“Come on, Tabor,” he said, walking down to the beach the moment they were dropped off. “I wanna show you the ocean.”
As they approached the water’s edge, Tabor looked ecstatic. Her jewel eyes were wide, and her nose quivered as she took in all the sights and smells: the crashing waves, the line of birds along the surf, the salty sea air, the blue vastness of the ocean. The moment Michael set her on the sand she crouched down and dipped her paws in the sea foam. She had no fear of the roaring waves or of the water lapping at her feet.
“Tabor, you’re so weird,” he said, grinning. “Cats aren’t supposed to like playing in the water.”
Tabor spotted a flock of seagulls landing along the shore. She crouched and locked her eyes on the birds, her whiskers twitching, rocking back and forth in hunting mode, ready to pounce. She spent a good half hour chasing seagulls and came away covered with sand and seawater, so filthy that he took her to the local pet-grooming parlor in town for a shampoo.
They stayed in Santa Barbara for a couple of days and hung out with some homeless friends, who couldn’t believe that Michael was traveling with a cat. Tabor became a big hit on the streets of Santa Barbara, riding on Michael’s shoulder and greeting people wherever Michael panhandled on the sidewalk.
But Michael wanted to move on, so they scored a ride to Ventura, a peaceful community that stretches from the ocean east into the California Coast Range. Michael headed to an old favorite camping spot in a secluded cove under some acacias, just down from the highway and out of sight of motorists. It was also hidden from anyone on the beach but was close to the center of town. He was relieved to find that it looked just as he’d left it last winter, which meant that nobody else had discovered it. And he intended to keep it that way, so he made sure to hide his campfire. He had to avoid being seen coming and going by the local “home bums” who might rob him or by residents who might call the cops, even though he wasn’t doing any harm. He hadn’t forgotten the words of the cop who’d given him a ticket for loitering: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Under the acacias, Michael wasted no time building their little house by the sea. He built a squat from driftwood, a mishmash of battered plywood, splintered branches, and plastic flotsam. He had learned to make squats in Brookings, Oregon, on the Winchuck River (which Michael called the Woodchuck River because so much wood piled up on its shores). It was a necessary skill, because the ocean acted essentially like a wind tunnel, and a shelter would protect him from severe wind chill. Yet even a good squat looked like it had been built by someone who’d survived a shipwreck.
That first day on the beach, Tabor seemed to love her new turf—spending a good long while lying on her back, flipping rapturously from side to side. She climbed into Michael’s lap, with a rumbling purr, resting on her curled-up forepaws like a roosting hen. Stroking her, he shaped up the soft, velvety fur between her ears into a little cat Mohawk, and she purred contentedly. As the sun dipped below the horizon, Michael felt something close to happiness.
On most mornings, Michael and Tabor would rise before the sun to the cooing sounds of mourning doves. At night, they huddled together in the sleeping bag next to the pile of driftwood. During the day, Michael filled the long ho
urs listening to LA radio talk shows, scribbling in his crumpled notebooks, and reading the mangled paperbacks he had found on people’s lawns among other castoffs. Besides Steinbeck, he liked classic American literature and books about American history.
While Michael was reading or doodling in his sketchbook, Tabor kept herself busy, often sitting on the low-lying branches of the tree above his head or playing alone beside him. She had become quite good at making her own toys out of leaves, feathers, and wine corks that Michael found on the beach for her. Tabor behaved like she owned the place, and she would sit for hours with her front paws crossed, gazing toward the sea like a lioness surveying her wild and infinite kingdom. She never ventured far from Michael, but he always kept a watchful eye on her as she swatted dragonflies or stalked tiny lizards and crabs.
In the late afternoon, when the silver-green surf was quiet and empty, they walked the beach, Tabor on her leash, Michael looking for sand dollars, seashells, and wood for the campfire. It was a simple, reassuring routine that kept at bay the crush of Michael’s depression, which was always threatening to flood in but never quite arrived.
One day, when Michael tried to clip on her leash, Tabor wriggled away and ran off. After she was safely a few yards away, she looked back at him playfully, mewling. She waited until he caught up and then scampered across the sand. He ran after her, stumbling, half laughing, and murmuring to her, “Oh, Tabor . . . come back.”
Michael couldn’t recall the last time he enjoyed himself this much without drinking. Anybody watching would have thought the bearded homeless guy had lost his mind chasing a cat down the beach.
When she’d tired herself out, she leaped on his shoulder, expecting him to carry her home.
On a few days when Michael woke up, he found Tabor playing in the surf. Then he’d whistle and she’d run back to him. But one morning when he had turned his back on her to light a fire and make himself coffee, Tabor disappeared. She had no idea that her little walkabout in the wilds could end in her sudden death in the jowls of a bobcat or coyote. He walked up and down the shoreline, looking for small cat-paw prints in the sand and desperately calling her name. Just as he began to panic, he heard the squawking of seagulls and a faint, faraway MEEEEEOOW and spotted her even farther down the beach, stalking seagulls.
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