Living Things

by Landon Houle

  Another car drove up. It was the fire chief, who, Officer Marty said, had been down to Waffle House with his wife and oldest boy. He pushed himself out of the SUV that belonged to the fire department. He took one look at the pole and said, There’s nothing we can do about this. You’ll have to call Duke.

  Pete, it seemed, was perilously close to a transformer, and the fire department couldn’t get up to the top of the pole without possibly electrocuting themselves. It wasn’t a risk they were willing to take. Not for a cat, the chief said.

  He’s not just a cat, Miriam said.

  Right, the chief said. I get it.

  But Miriam knew he didn’t. He didn’t get it at all.

  They were waiting on Duke Energy, and there wasn’t much they could do but watch. All of them, even the fire chief, looked skyward, and they did their best to seem concerned even though many of them weren’t, and if a stranger had come upon that scene and did not know there was a cat on the top of the pole, they might feel a certain shudder, the tremor of fear inspired by an unexpected astrological event. Miriam and the people there on the street looked to be staring up at the sky, as puzzled as an ancient tribe witnessing some imminent catastrophe they were too small, too weak, too stupid to stop.

  And, in fact, there was some threat of explosion. If Pete—any part of Pete, including the bushy tail that curled and twitched—touched the transformer, he would be as good as gone. A regular firework show, the fire chief said under his sausage breath. His oldest boy, nine years old, giggled and hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans to loosen them some.

  Miriam made a low whining sound, and Officer Marty looked at the transistor and Pete up above it and said to Ann, Can you take her inside?

  Ann reached out to Miriam, and again Miriam pulled away, but she wasn’t so frightened this time. She just wanted to be left alone.

  Miriam, Ann said, you think you could get me some water? I’ve been out in the yard all morning.

  Miriam looked at the girl in the ridiculous hat and the overalls. It seemed more like a costume than anything anybody would really wear, and just seeing the girl made Miriam’s head ache. I’ve got some orange juice, she said, and she let Ann take her arm. She let herself be guided back into her own house.

  The day was already bright. Inside, it seemed strangely dark, and even though it was Miriam’s house, the same house she’d spent most of her life, she found herself feeling her way along, using the edge of the kitchen counter to orient herself. Perhaps because it was so dark, the smell of things was even stronger.

  Tomorrow, there was to be a visiting pastor at St. Matthew’s where Miriam was a late-in-life member. She’d never been particularly religious and preferred to think of herself as educated and vaguely spiritual, but after Bobby died, Miriam realized that church served many purposes that didn’t involve religion. Church, in part, kept old widowed women, like herself and like Clarice Powell and like so many women in Black Creek, from going completely crazy. It was a place you could at least see other people, talk to somebody if you felt like it.

  Sometimes Miriam had trouble sleeping. She’d gotten up early that morning and started the pasta salad. It wasn’t anything special. Just some roasted tomatoes and olive oil and basil, but everyone went on about it. They’d asked her to make it special for the pastor, and so she’d been about to roast the tomatoes when she felt a little flush, a little dizzy, if she were honest, and she’d gone outside to sit on the porch and get some air when she saw the Datsun and then the newspaper land square in the street. There were the tomatoes, sliced on the cookie sheet, a tin of brownies and a plate of tortilla roll-ups under Saran wrap and waiting on the counter. The kitchen smelled of cream cheese, salsa, and cocoa. Like, Miriam thought now, a holiday.

  Outside, one of the police radios squawked. Someone, the chief’s son maybe, laughed out loud.

  You’ve been cooking, Ann said.

  I have, Miriam said, and she didn’t know whether it was the fact that Ann seemed to have a special way of stating the obvious—Sure is hot, Ann would say when Miriam passed by the house—or whether the events of the day had finally caught up to her, but she suddenly felt very tired. She’d forgotten she was still holding the paper. She turned loose of it, set it there on the table.

  Ann was watching Miriam, but her eyes fell on the newspaper, the picture of the girls and their crowns. Look at them, Ann said. They don’t know anything about anything.

  It was a strange thing to say. Ann turned her back to Miriam and reached for the cabinets. Cups? she said.

  Right. The girl had wanted some orange juice. I’ll get it, Miriam said, and even though she was suddenly exhausted, she dragged over to the refrigerator and got the orange juice. She took down a glass and filled it from the jug.

  When she turned around, Ann was sitting down at the table. The girl lowered herself gingerly as if some part of her was tender. She was too young for that, Miriam thought. Too young for the chronic pain that plagued Miriam and the other women at church. Miriam blinked, her eyes adjusting to the light. She watched Ann take off the hat and lay it on the table. Ann’s bobbed hair was thin and stuck down on her forehead, which was paler, Miriam thought, than it should have been. Miriam was tired, but somehow Ann seemed even more worn out.

  Miriam set the glass of orange juice on the table. Then she pushed it closer to Ann. I made some brownies, she said. Let me cut you a square.

  Ann held up her hand. Her fingers trembled. That’s all right.

  But Miriam already had two plates out of the dish drainer. She peeled back the tin foil and cut a couple of generous portions. It was the kind of thing she and Evie used to do, after school when Evie was very little, before everything went so bad, when the biggest challenge they faced was the next day’s spelling test.

  You don’t have to do all this, Ann said.

  Miriam shook her head. She’d been too hard on the girl. What exactly did she want from people? It was something Bobby liked to ask her.

  I didn’t mean—Miriam started and stopped.

  Ann held the glass. She pressed it to her forehead.

  Miriam pulled out a chair and sat down in it. I didn’t mean to get so upset, she said.

  Ann smiled a quick smile. It’s all right. She took a long drink that worked the chords in her neck. Then she set the glass on the table, but she didn’t let go of it. Pets, she said.

  Miriam nodded.

  They’re just like kids.

  Yeah. She thought about Pete, the way he curled up in her lap. She took a bite of the brownie and tried to swallow.

  What I’m saying is, Ann said, and she hesitated long enough for Miriam to look up at her. I’m saying that we can love animals like they’re people, like children.

  The girl went on, each sentence more complicated, more difficult to follow than the last. She was working through her own thoughts even as she spoke, and though some of it sounded like the sort of idle talk—Sure is hot. Think it’ll rain?—that drove Miriam crazy, there was more to it than that. Ann was really looking for some kind of answer, a solution when Miriam couldn’t follow the length of the problem. There was a certain gleam in Ann’s eye, a sheen that bordered on the kind of hysteria that Miriam herself often felt but managed, she thought, to push down under the surface of things until it was nothing more than a hum any reasonable person could learn to ignore. All that stuff with Evie and Bobby—it all happened so long ago.

  We’re animals too, Ann said, when you get down to it.

  Miriam swallowed, and time sort of stretched out between them so that the specifics of Ann’s imploring mattered less than the urgency of her doubt, and Miriam might have told her then what it was like to have your daughter go missing, to be told a body had been found. She might have done her best to describe the wash of relief but also disappointment when that woman, a cop, called back to say the body wasn’t Evie’s after all. Miriam had been hopeful that at least a body would mean an end. Several years later, there had been a different
kind of closure. Like something out of her shows, Miriam had hired an investigator. He'd found Evie only to determine that Evie hadn’t gone missing but had run away. She had no real desire to ever come back for reasons Miriam didn’t completely understand. Miriam could have done a little less fussing, like Bobby said, and there had been a thing about a boy Evie liked, but was this all it took? Was it true that the bond between them could be broken so easily?

  I have a daughter about your age, Miriam could have said because just then she was beginning to sense that Ann had also lost something, and with this came the glimmer of recognition that if Miriam had misunderstood Ann, perhaps there were other things she wasn’t seeing so clearly.

  In that brief moment in the dark kitchen, so much moved between Miriam and Ann that the knock on the screen door caused them both to jump back as if they’d gathered around something that carried a charge and, losing themselves, gotten too close.

  Miriam stammered. She hadn’t forgotten about Pete on the pole. Of course she hadn’t, but sitting there with Ann, she’d felt some distance from it.

  There was the knocking at the door, and the shadow was short and wide, and for a minute, Miriam thought it was the fire chief, but when the door opened before she or Ann could move, Miriam saw that it was Cathy.

  Inside the kitchen, Cathy seemed much larger. They told me what happened, she said.

  A powerful force had passed through Miriam, and now she felt as though she was reeling herself back to the here, back to the now. What she said might have been a recording: Spikey’s never out. Pete’s hurt. Where were you?

  Cathy rubbed a wide hand over the top of her buzzed head. We’re installing a system. Security, she said. There’s some boxes back there, and I think he jumped on them and got over the fence.

  My husband says we should get a dog, Ann said.

  Cathy turned. She seemed to see Ann for the first time. She stuck out her hand.

  Ann just blinked. I’ve seen you with Spikey, she said. And the girl.

  There was a look on Ann’s face that was almost a smile, but her voice was sharper now. With Miriam, she seemed unsure of herself. But as soon as Cathy showed up, there was a kind of hardness about Ann, the same sort of tension Miriam had seen in Spikey just before he leapt at Pete.

  It calms her down some, Cathy said. She talked about the baby, how they could hardly sleep at night, how the walking seemed to wear the girl out.

  I knocked on your door, Miriam said.

  I know it. They told me.

  Miriam let out a little breath of air. She glanced at Ann, but Ann was staring hard at Cathy.

  Did they tell you what happens when people’s dogs get loose? Ann said. I bet they didn’t tell you what they do.

  Cathy didn’t answer, and Miriam looked back and forth between them. They won’t hurt Spikey, Miriam said.

  It was a question really, but Ann didn’t answer and finally Cathy turned away. She looked out the storm door and scratched at the back of her leg where there was a large tat too of Caduceus—the staff and the snakes—inked in rainbow colors.

  Now the news is here, Cathy said.

  You’re kidding, Miriam said just as the van pulled up and scraped the curb. On the driver’s door was a magnetic sticker that said The Record.

  They just want us to look bad, Cathy said. We’re just trying to do our jobs.

  At the moment, Cathy wasn’t technically trying to do anything, but Miriam knew from previous conversations that as an EMT, Cathy considered herself of a kind with the fire chief, the police, and more broadly, the FBI and the FDNY. If one of them was on the job, all of them were.

  Miriam looked down at the paper, wrinkled as it was from her grip. She felt oddly attached to it, as if the words on the page represented some part of her life that made a lot more sense. They’re not so bad, she said.

  All they do is talk bad, Cathy said. She coughed and cleared her throat, and it looked like she might spit right there on Miriam’s floor, but she didn’t. Criticize.

  Maybe, Miriam said, but everybody knows better.

  Miriam kept talking.

  One time, I locked Tommy up in the car.

  She told them Tommy was her grandson, that he’d come to visit her one summer. It had happened after they’d found out that Evie was living in Arizona, just outside of Flagstaff. And she had a little boy. Miriam hadn’t thought about that day in years, but her mind was working in strange directions, and she felt a sudden and pressing need to say something in the dark kitchen that smelled now not so much like a holiday but a funeral.

  This was years ago, she said. I was keeping him for—she stopped and started again. For a while. We were getting something or other at the store. Ice cream. Chips. This was before you had to put kids in the back, so he was in the front, and I threw my keys up on the dash so I could get him buckled in his car seat, and then I just locked and closed the door.

  You left him in the car? Ann said. You just forgot?

  Ann was doing more than trying to get the story straight. She seemed shocked at what Miriam had done, angry even. For the first time that day, Miriam saw some color in Ann’s cheeks.

  I didn’t just leave him, Miriam said.

  It happens, Cathy said. She rubbed at her face, at the dark circles under her eyes. Sometimes you mess up.

  I didn’t know what to do, Miriam said, so I called the police. They said they didn’t handle unlocking doors, and I said, Even when there’s a baby inside? Boy, they came then. I mean, they were there in minutes.

  Even a few minutes is too long, Ann said, for a kid in a car.

  We do our best, Cathy said. She gave Ann a hard look, but Miriam didn’t notice.

  Tommy was just laughing and pointing at the flashing lights and all. He loved every minute of it.

  Ann shook her head. She put on her hat, pulled it tight down on her head, but she didn’t get up.

  It was just a photo and a caption—Baby Rescued! Then another time, I called up there to make sure they didn’t print Bobby’s obituary.

  Miriam didn’t know why she was talking or how one thing led to another.

  I didn’t know you could do that, Cathy said, not have an obituary.

  If it’s a baby, they don’t make you, Ann said.

  Miriam looked over at Ann, and a second later, so did Cathy. Ann’s eyes went flat, and then she grabbed the paper. She bent her head so that the hat covered most of her face. Her fingers splayed over the big picture, those three young queens in glitter gowns, figures from a fairy tale.

  Well, Miriam said. She’d felt a certain warmth in telling the story about locking Tommy up in the car. She’d remembered Tommy as a baby and herself younger and even though she did silly things like locking the keys in the car, she was strong and capable then. Back then, she hadn’t thought about her time with Tommy as an opportunity to somehow set things right with Evie, though probably that’s what she’d been doing. She was just glad that Evie had agreed to let Tommy come stay with her for a while. Miriam had felt good talking about it, but now she couldn’t remember why she’d told that story in the first place. It seemed stupid.

  It wasn’t me that didn’t want the obituary, she said. It was Bobby.

  Bobby hadn’t wanted a funeral either. What was a funeral anyway, he said, but a bunch of people sitting around eating and talking?

  The preacher had said it was a bad idea, that the funeral really didn’t have much to do with Bobby at all. That a funeral would give Miriam some chance at comfort, at peace.

  At the time, though, Miriam had been intent on doing what Bobby wanted, no matter what it meant for her. He’d always blamed her for what happened with Evie, and this was something she could do to make it up to him.

  Tommy was in the middle of a college semester three states away. Miriam tried to get in touch with Evie, but her address book included six different numbers for her daughter and all of them had been disconnected.

  So that day at the cemetery, it had just been her and the pre
acher and a man in a backhoe waiting on the rise, and when it was over, Miriam came home and fell into the loveseat and Pete jumped up in her lap and together, they watched Columbo, and when she woke up, it was the next day. The TV was still on, and she was still in her funeral clothes, so nothing had changed, but everything was different.

  They’ll kill him, Ann said. They’ll put him to sleep.

  There was a part of Miriam that wasn’t aware she was still sitting in the kitchen with Cathy and Ann, that she was holding the fork, that she was actually gripping it like a knife and refusing to let go. Miriam didn’t realize that Tommy had come in either, that he was trying to take the fork from her, that he was saying, Mamaw, what happened?

  There he goes! Ann shrieked. She jumped up from the table and pointed out the door, and Miriam turned just in time to see a flash of Pete across the yard.

  Is he hurt? Miriam said, and they all—Cathy, Ann, Tommy, and lastly, Miriam—came tumbling from the house. They ran after Pete, toward the back fence, and although Miriam was old enough to be their mother or their grandmother, they were all as wild as children set loose on the world.

  Pete was all right. He was down from the pole.

  Miriam must have slipped out of her sandals because under her feet, the grass felt cool and pleasantly sharp. Some of the buttons on her nightgown had come undone, and her hand went up to her bare throat and felt a quick and hard pulse.

  Along the back fence and now creeping closer to the house, there had grown all manner of strangling vines and privet. Miriam always kept her yard tidy, but she wasn’t able to stay up on things as she used to. She hadn’t noticed how bad things were until now. Her heart was pounding. She called out to the cat. Her voice was something like a howl.

  But Pete got away from them. They couldn’t find him that day or the next or the day after that. The Record came out, and Tommy bought a copy so they could read the story. As it happened, there wasn’t much of an article. It was about like the caption they’d ran about Tommy as a baby. Just two pictures—one of Pete on the top of the electric pole and another that wasn’t Pete at all but another orange cat with much shorter hair. Happy Ending! the caption read. Neighborhood cat saved by Duke Energy.