She was crouched, her tail flicking back and forth, and creeping up on one big unsuspecting seagull at the edge of the flock. Michael panicked, knowing that seagulls could be aggressive and attack cats and small dogs by dive-bombing and raking their heads with their hooked beaks.
He rushed toward her, shouting, “Tabor, whaddaya doing? Tabor! NOOO!” Tabor understood no, but she just looked at Michael and plowed through the sand, toward the enormous seagull, who flew off along with the rest of the flock.
“Tabor, leave ’em alone. Their lives are hard enough without you harassing ’em!” Michael said as he caught up to her and swooped her into his arms. She let out a small rumbling growl, angry that he’d disturbed her ambush. As he clipped on her leash, she hissed, furious. It was the first time she had ever hissed at him, but she needed to wear the leash for him to be able to protect her from predators, being swept away by waves, and a million other things. When he had first tried to train her to walk on a leash, she’d lie down and refuse to move or leap onto his shoulder. But she had found comfort in their ritual walks on the beach and she followed him to their camp.
But when they got back to their home beneath the acacias, Tabor turned her back to Michael and sulked, thumping her tail. When he tried to stroke her, she’d turn around, pausing only long enough to give him a look of disgust before scurrying away with a cranky little aieou. But by lunchtime, when he served her favorite dish of Fancy Feast chicken, she shoved her face in her bowl and forgot her anger.
Michael liked to think Tabor had a conscience about things, although that didn’t always stop her from doing things she shouldn’t. At the same time, he adored her mischievousness, which only added to her many charms. Sometimes she would rebel and run off on some secret mission. He tried to follow her without being intrusive, but she would usually sense him looking and turn around to mew with a trilling, birdlike call that kittens make when calling their mothers.
Late one morning, he trailed Tabor to a parking lot adjacent to the beach. He managed to keep her in sight until she slipped inside an open camper van. It took him a few minutes to walk over to peer inside. Through a fog of marijuana smoke, he made out a couple of surfers in youthful drift. A good-looking young guy in wet denim cutoffs, with cheekbones like cliffs and scruffy sun-bleached hair, looked up.
“I think my cat went in there,” Michael said.
“I think you’re right,” the surfer replied, smiling and pointing at the cat behind him. Tabor was stretched out, belly up, on a stack of wetsuits. She turned her head lazily when she heard Michael’s voice. “She’s chilling,” he said. “Wanna come in? Think she’s too stoned to move.”
“I hope not,” Michael said as he stepped inside the van, which was filled with a blue haze. Back in Portland, he’d gotten angry at a couple of the street kids who had blown pot smoke in Tabor’s face for a laugh. “Take all the frickin’ drugs in the world if you want,” he’d yelled at them. “But don’t ever get the cat high. I have to deal with a stubborn adult cat; I don’t want to deal with a high adult cat.”
“This cat’s the real deal,” the surfer said, puffing on his joint. “She came in here, climbed on my chest, and started licking my eyeball. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, cat, really . . . we’re not lovers, I’m just chilling with you, dude.’ ”
Michael laughed as he picked up his errant cat. “She does that. Once while I was panhandling, this police officer comes over and says, ‘You can’t do that here.’ And the cat goes up to him and climbs up his leg because she’s used to whooshing up my leg and thought she could climb up anyone. I said, ‘No, Tabor, no. That’s a policeman.’ I had to pull her off him. I told him, ‘Sorry, officer.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s not a good idea.’ There was something about that cop the cat liked. But she’s like that with some people.”
On the way back to their tree squat, Michael found a crumpled Los Angeles Times sticking out of a trash can and snatched it up. On the front page was a story of an LAPD ex-cop who had gone on a revenge-fueled shooting spree in the snow-covered woods of Big Bear. He was still at large in the San Bernardino Mountains, which, luckily, were about three hours away.
Fugitive serial killers were the least of his worries. But the most pressing danger Michael and Tabor faced was not from cops, crackheads, or home bums, but the local coyotes. Michael could hear them at night and feared that sooner or later they would try to snatch Tabor. He’d already spent several terrible nights wide awake, as he and Tabor lay bundled together in the sleeping bag, listening out for every sound. He had even worked out an escape route. He had broken branches off the tree trunk to create handholds and footholds so that if the coyotes got too close, he could just grab the cat, push her into her carrier, and climb with it into the tree. They’d even practiced the route a few times, like a fire drill.
Michael had to be vigilant, but constantly watching out for Tabor and trying to teach the cat that there were real dangers out there made him anxious. He started drinking more to calm his fears. A pair of red-tailed hawks that occupied the neighboring tree also worried him. They would fly about ten feet above their heads, mostly hunting mice, but one evening, he had seen them kill a squirrel and drag it up to their nest.
Several times a day, Michael would say: “Look up, Tabor, look up,” pointing upward, and she’d turn her sweet little feline face to the skies. He even taught Tabor to come when he whistled—what he called “the Tabor whistle.” In a sense, he thought, it was like having a child: you feed them, protect them from bad things, do your best to educate them, and hope for the best.
Teaching animals felt like a natural instinct for Michael. When he and Mercer were living in the row-house apartment in St. Louis, Michael had trained the landlord’s bullmastiff show dogs.
One evening, while sitting beneath their tree squat, Michael saw a lone coyote on the edge of the bluff by the highway, his silver-tinted coat glinting in the moonlight. A few nights later, a coyote came out of nowhere on the beach and moved steadily toward them, his sly, slanted amber eyes glowing in the dusk as he edged closer. Another two joined the first, and they all started circling Michael and Tabor’s camp. Michael, at that instant, snatched up Tabor, stuck her in her zip-up carrier, grabbed a couple of cans of cat food, and scrambled up the tree. Once he was high enough in the tree, he threw a can at the largest coyote, who seemed to be the alpha, and nailed him right on the snout. The coyote yelped and growled, but didn’t budge. Michael felt bad hurting the animal, as the coyotes were just doing their best to survive in a hostile world, but he had to protect Tabor no matter what.
After a while, the coyotes wandered off. When Michael was sure they were gone, he climbed down, hoisted on his pack, grabbed the carrier, and took off, too. That night, he and Tabor camped outside the Bank of America doorway in the center of town. But Michael was unsettled and kept thinking, I’ve been traumatized by wild dogs. I’ll never be able to sleep again.
In the morning, Michael bought a hard plastic carrier at a PetSmart. The mobile home would give Tabor more protection from wild animals. He also got another, longer, twenty-foot leash so that Tabor could walk around but stay safely connected to him. Even with this new protective gear, he decided they should relocate to Thousand Oaks, another town nearby in Ventura County, at least for a few days to put the coyotes off their scent in case they returned. Thousand Oaks had a shopping mall and a senior citizens center with lots of foot traffic, and Michael hoped that they would be able to beg for enough money or food to get by. Across the road from the mall, there was also a wide grassy area dotted with palm trees where they could sleep at night and Michael could drink in peace, undisturbed by the cops or anyone else.
In Thousand Oaks, Michael quickly established a routine. Every day by 6 a.m., with Tabor on his shoulder, he made his way from the palm-fringed grassy knoll to the main street in town to get coffee. On his way there, people would notice Tabor, pull over, and get out of their cars to pet her and hand him money. They all seemed to have the same
questions: “How’d you get the cat? How’d you train it to stay on your backpack? How’d you become homeless?”
After having his coffee, he would put Tabor on his shoulder and go to the shopping mall and set up near the senior citizens center. He put out his cardboard sign asking for spare change, and almost every day someone gave him a bag stuffed with cat food or a coffee shop gift card. One genial, cat-loving old gent even bought Michael new clothes and invited him around his house to take a shower. At first, Michael thought it was a bit weird going to some guy’s house for showers. Turned out he was a widower with three rescued cats of his own and was just happy to help.
Around noon on the third day, an old lady with a cane teetered toward them. Michael wanted to rush over and help her but thought she might take offense.
The old lady stooped to pet Tabor. “You’ve got such a beautiful cat. What’s her name?”
“Tabor.”
She looked surprised and her eyes filled with tears.
“Why are you crying?” Michael asked.
“That’s my name, too,” she said. “I’m Linda Tabor.”
Michael thought, Holy cow, Catwoman.
“Did you just arrive here?”
“I’ve been coming to Ventura for the winter for about four or five years.”
“How come I never noticed you before?”
“I didn’t have a cat then.”
“Oh,” Linda said, leaning on her cane, thinking about this. “I’ll be right back.” She shuffled back to her car and, a few minutes later, returned with some cash. “How would you like to try some of my casserole? I’ll come by again tomorrow. And I’ll bring some food for the kitty, too.”
Michael was touched by this unexpected generosity, and his eyes misted. He struggled to say something, but all he could manage was “Thank you.”
Linda told him her story. Almost forty years ago, after her husband had died unexpectedly, Linda had started drinking heavily. She had kids and an elderly mother to look after but stopped caring. Often too drunk to drive, sometimes she couldn’t even get out of bed. She knew she was losing control of her life and decided to call Alcoholics Anonymous, which she found in the Yellow Pages. When she called, somebody asked for her address, and shortly after a woman named Pat showed up at the door. She took Linda to an AA meeting, spent the day with her, and then dropped her back home. Linda never had another drink, nor did she see Pat again—whom she called “the most important stranger I’ve ever met.” She’d been looking to pay back the debt ever since.
For the next few weeks, Linda met Michael at the mall once or twice a week, bringing him all sorts of delicious home-cooked casseroles. She brought Tabor roast chicken, cat food, and other treats. She also gave Michael clothes and a little money. Michael wished he could pour all the extra cash into booze, but he restrained himself to the odd six-pack of beer, since he worried constantly that someone would see him drunk and try to take Tabor away from him.
One day Michael noticed the store windows along the strip were decorated with big red cardboard hearts, paper roses, and metallic balloons. It was February, and Valentine’s Day was coming up. He became emotional, saddened by a childhood memory that suddenly resurfaced. His second-grade teacher, Sister Maureen Teresa, had given him colored paper and crayons to make homemade cards for the other kids in the class to exchange on Valentine’s Day because she knew Michael’s family was too poor to buy store-bought cards. But when he showed them to his mother, she snatched the crayons and paper out of his hand, put them on top of the fridge, and told him, “You’re not making cards for anyone.” He felt humiliated all over again at the memory of being the only kid without cards to give.
Sister Maureen Teresa died just a few years later. Michael had dressed up to attend her funeral, but his mother wouldn’t let him go. These sad memories were made even worse by another: around the same time that Sister Maureen Teresa died, one of his classmates was molested by a priest and hanged himself in his parents’ house.
Michael thought how strange it was that particularly crushing memories always stay with you—linked together indelibly.
That afternoon, Linda arrived with a poem she had written on a Valentine’s Day card. She handed it to Michael with a casserole. He opened the card and read the poem:
My new friend Michael makes me smile,
as he walks with kitty Tabor for miles and miles.
She’s cozy and snug ’cause she knows she’s well loved
by her daddy Michael and the angels above.
Michael was so touched by the card and, again, at a loss for words. “Thank you,” he murmured, looking up at Linda, his blue eyes teary. He got up and gave her a hug.
That was a good memory that would be marked indelibly on his heart.
Chapter 15
The Stars Are Out Tonight
On an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon in March, Ron mustered the energy to do a little gardening. Across the street, Jack was loading furniture into a moving van with his neo-Nazi buddies. All three had the same severe Hitler Youth haircuts with shaven undersides, and one was wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt and jackboots. When he spotted Ron, Jack stood on the curb, puffed out with alpha male righteousness, and started shouting abuse at him.
Ron was on his knees pulling out weeds, listening to Rubber Soul drifting out his kitchen door. He simmered silently and ignored his clichéd homophobic slurs, suspecting that Jack was looking for a fight just to show off in front of his thug friends. But minutes later, the van screeched up alongside Ron’s house, and Jack stuck his head out the window. “Bet you’re glad to see the back of me, faggot. You better stop spreading lies about me . . . you fat fishwife.”
Ron glanced up. “Look,” he said curtly, “I accept your story, but I don’t believe you. I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”
“Keep talking, bitch, and Creto’s gonna disappear. You’ll come home one day and he’ll be gone.” And with that, the van sped off and ran the stop sign on the corner.
Later that night, Ron was awakened by a loud crash. He crawled out of bed and went to the living room. Broken glass glistened all over the floor, surrounding a brick that someone had hurled through his window. He went outside and saw that FLAMING FAGGOT had been spray-painted across the front of his house, and all the tires on his car were slashed. Ron called the police, who escorted him, Steve, and their two cats out of the house to friends’ places for the night.
After returning home, they kept Creto and Jim locked indoors. When Ron went to work at his guitar store and Steve wasn’t home, he took Creto and Jim with him. Every night he slept with his phone on the pillow and a baseball bat by the bed. He was so shaken by these latest attacks, and he became more and more anxious. His growing unease made him think about moving to another house or leaving Portland altogether. But he couldn’t leave without finding out what had happened to Mata.
Talking to Ron on the phone after the vandalism and hate crime, his friend Miguel persuaded him to visit him and his partner on Sauvie Island over the long Easter weekend. He could bring Creto with him, and they both would benefit from a change of scenery.
Less than an hour away from downtown Portland, Sauvie Island was a world apart—a place of reedy cliffs and winding country roads flanked by fields of roses, corn, pumpkins, and apple and peach orchards. George and Miguel lived in an old farmhouse on a grassy bluff overlooking the Columbia River. Their house, a weathered cedar-shingled former country inn, was surrounded by lush rolling pastures. They had a small vineyard, grew their own fruit and vegetables, and kept pet chickens and turkeys, who all had names.
Carrying Creto in his basket, Ron arrived at George and Miguel’s on the afternoon of Good Friday. He found Miguel in the backyard feeding corn and grain to his flock of fifty hens and five turkeys—his girls, as he called them. He sold small batches of their beautiful blue eggs to the local farmers’ markets. Ron had met Miguel, an unassuming, thirtysomething man with dark almond-shaped eyes and smooth bronz
e skin, on the island twelve years earlier. His partner, George, a stylish silver-haired gentleman in his sixties, was a vintner and wine broker and sold his homegrown boutique wines to high-end hotels and restaurants across the West Coast.
George was out, so Ron and Miguel left Creto asleep in the house and took a long walk past surfers and rusting little boat wrecks along Warrior Point’s beach, a shimmering strip of sandy shore. They wandered toward the small white Warrior Rock lighthouse on the island’s northern tip and stumbled on a tiny rustic inn with a dining room for lunch. They took a window seat and ate fish and chips, comfort food that reminded Ron of summer holidays on the island with his granddad in the ’70s, when it was just a rough-and-tumble patch with a few fishermen and farmers. They would fly kites on the beach and afterward get seafood from a surf shack. Ron used to feed his fries to the gulls.
Ron and Miguel walked back to the house before it got dark. George had just come home, and the three of them settled into the family room on the second floor, facing a row of glass doors that opened onto a sundeck. There, they could hear the seabirds and the rustling of trees, and see deer feeding on the wild brush and long grasses. It was its own little paradise.
George had set out a couple of bottles of his special reserve wines and a cheese platter, with melon and strawberries, to nibble on as they drank. In spite of the peace and beauty around him, Ron worried that his house would be vandalized and broken into while he was away. Steve had gone to his sister’s for the weekend and taken Jim with him. Ron kept shifting restlessly on the sofa and glancing at his phone. Creto lounged on the sofa beside Ron, wearing his kitty harness, which was attached to a leash in case Ron needed to keep him from getting too close to Miguel’s birds.
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