Cat Running (15 page)

She started for the grotto that day soon after one o’clock. The pony pasture was a muddy marshland. The pasture where, it suddenly occurred to her, Father might someday, when the depression was over, let her keep a horse of her own. The steep path to the canyon floor was a slippery slide and the usually clear creek had become a noisy tumble of muddy water.

The trip down to the grotto was slow, complicated, and a little bit dangerous. There were places where Cat had to climb over boulders or forge a new trail along the side of the cliff face. And other places where the only route was through stretches of shallow water, wading along carefully in Ellen’s leaky old boots. But the stairlike descent down the face of the cascade slope was unchanged—except wetter and a lot more slippery.

When Cat rounded the last boulder and the grotto thicket came into view, it was immediately apparent that the tunnel was underwater. Not a great deal of water, but enough so that crawling through it was going to be a soggy, muddy business.

She checked out the other entry then, the one she’d cleared when she brought in the playhouse panels, but the water was even deeper there and the vicious berry-vines had again twined up the face of the cliff. And of course she hadn’t thought to bring her gloves or shears. So she returned to the tunnel, took off her boots, shoes, and socks, and put them on top of a fairly dry boulder. Then she tucked her coat up into the legs of her underpants, got down on her knees in the shallow, muddy water, and started to crawl. When she came out of the other end of the tunnel she was shocked to see that the grotto was flooded too.

The water wasn’t deep on the grotto floor, but at least an inch or two of muddy water was everywhere. All of Cat’s treasures on the high shelves at the back of the grotto were safe, high above water level, but little waves of muddy water were lapping at the cottage door. Splashing barefoot through the cold, slimy mud Cat hurried to the door and jerked it open. Lillybelle’s bed was underwater.

As she waded across the cottage floor, waves created by her splashing feet lapped up over the legs and slats of the doll crib. It wasn’t until she was bending over it that she realized it was empty. There were no blankets or mattress in the bed and no Lillybelle.

No Lillybelle. The startling fact had just begun to sink in when suddenly Cat saw her. Not in her crib but still there in the cottage. Still wrapped, not only in her pink blanket, but also in Sammy’s blue dress, she was lying safely on the stone ledge high above water level. Someone had been to the cottage since Cat was last there and had moved Lillybelle up to a safer, drier place. Cat didn’t try to guess who it was that had been there. For some reason she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know who had come through the rain and flood, all the way to the grotto, just to put someone else’s doll up out of harm’s way.

She stood perfectly still for a while staring at Lillybelle before she took her off the ledge and buttoned her, still wrapped in the dress and blanket, inside her coat. It was a tight fit but not too tight. Since it was actually a grown-up woman’s coat there was enough room in the chest to hold a good-sized doll.

Then Cat crawled back out through the flooded tunnel, shoved her muddy feet back into her socks, shoes, and boots—and headed downstream. She certainly hadn’t planned to visit Okietown when she left home, or even when she was in the cottage. In fact, it wasn’t until she was under way, climbing over boulders and splashing through shallow overflows, that she asked herself why on earth she was doing it. For one thing it was getting late. It had taken much longer to reach the grotto than usual. The heavy, sunless sky was already darkening and the shadows were becoming long and dark. “I just have to say good-bye,” she told herself. “I have to tell them all goodbye. I just
have
to.”

But there was another reason. Looking down to where Lillybelle’s stiff, starchy ringlets could be seen peeking out from inside the tightly buttoned coat, Cat suddenly knew the real reason she was going. To give Lillybelle to Sammy to take with her to Bakersfield or wherever the Perkinses might go next.

Okietown was an almost deserted sea of mud. The outhouse was still there, tipped slightly to one side now, and the ugly piles of trash were even larger. But most of the tents were gone, and the shanties, too, except for, here and there, a rusty tin wall or a soggy heap of cardboard. But the Perkinses’ tent was still where it had been. And smoke was coming from the chimney in one of the old workers’ cabins.

Cat was making her way through the deep mud of the camp road when she became aware of clanking noises and the sound of voices coming from what had been the Perkins family’s tent. She approached cautiously. In the light of a lamp that hung from the roof beam she could see that the tent was empty now except for two men and a car. The Studebaker had been turned so that its open hood was inside the tent. Beside it, on the ground, was what seemed to be most of its motor. The two men, dressed in wet and greasy overalls, were crouching over the pile of engine parts.

“Er, hello,” Cat said. “Could I—could you tell me ... One of the men, tall, with a thin face and gray-blond hair, got to his feet and stared in her direction.

“Yeah?” he asked. Only one word but something, the tone of his voice or the expression in his eyes, said other, more desperate things.

“The P-P-Perkinses,” Cat stammered. “Are they still here?”

The man’s strange, tormented stare didn’t change. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Catherine Kinsey,” Cat said. “I came to see Sammy. Sammy Perkins.”

The man shook his head, still staring at Cat in the strange unseeing way. Then he pointed, flinging out an arm toward the closest of the old workers’ cabins, and went back to whatever he’d been doing to the pile of engine parts.

The one-room cabin was made of weathered, unpainted wood, and stood up on a foundation of stiltlike legs. Three rickety wooden steps led to the only door. A murmur of voices came from inside the cabin. When Cat knocked the voices stopped and a moment later Roddy Perkins opened the door. Roddy’s nose was running. His eyes were red and swollen and his face was wet with tears.

The room was very hot and smelled of woodsmoke, kerosene, and unwashed clothing. Mrs. Perkins was there and Spence and Zane. Zane was on his knees by the potbellied wood stove, pushing a small log in among the flames. Spence, who was standing near an oilcloth-covered table on which a kerosene lamp was burning, had been crying too. Mrs. Perkins was kneeling beside a mattress on the floor.

Roddy grabbed Cat’s arm, pulled her into the room, and closed the door behind her. Mrs. Perkins glanced up briefly but then turned away as if Cat’s presence had failed to register. As if her blank, unfocused eyes were full of something so terrible, they had become blind to anything else.

Sammy was lying on the mattress, her head and shoulders propped up on a pile of blankets. Her eyes were closed. Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing in noisy little gasps. Cat was still staring, when Zane grabbed her arm and pulled her back toward the door.

“Sammy ... ?” Cat started to ask, but Zane was already answering her question.

“She’s took real bad,” Zane said. “Ma thinks it’s pneumonia.”

“P
NEUMONIA.” CAT STARED AT
Sammy. She was horror-stricken, unbelieving. “But—but I thought she was getting better. Nobody told me.”

“Yeah, she was. But she snuck out and went up the creek. Me and Spence and Roddy was at school and Ma and Pa didn’t know about—you know—about your cave place and that doll she sets such store by. So they didn’t know where to look for her. She was gone a long time. I found her when I got back after school. On her way home, all wet and turrible cold. She started getting worse that night, but she wasn’t took real bad till yesterday.”

Cat felt a sudden pain, as if something sharp had stabbed deep into her chest. She knew where Sammy had been and why. And she knew now, for certain, who had put Lillybelle up on the ledge. The pain was so bad, she clutched her chest, wrapping her arms tightly around herself—
and
the sharp bulge that was Lillybelle. Frantically unbuttoning her coat she held the doll out to Zane.

“Here,” she said, her voice out of control, high and wailing, “take it. I brought it for her. I brought it for Sammy. For her to keep.”

It wasn’t until that moment that she remembered about Zane and the chewing gum. And how Zane felt about the Perkinses not being beggars. She didn’t care, though. She didn’t care what Zane Perkins thought. She was going to give Lillybelle to Sammy no matter what Zane—

But Zane didn’t argue or even hesitate. Instead he took the doll out of Cat’s hands and went over to kneel beside Sammy’s bed. At first, when he whispered in her ear, her eyelids only fluttered, but after he whispered again they opened. When Zane held the doll up in front of her face, her lips curved in just a flicker of a smile before they parted in another quick gasping breath. Zane was still whispering as he tucked Lillybelle under the blanket, and again a smile trembled on Sammy’s lips and then died away.

The pain in Cat’s chest had spread to her throat and her eyes were wet and hot. Angrily, she brushed her hand across her face. She wasn’t going to cry. Crying was useless. There had to be something better to do than stand around and cry. There had to be ....

“Mrs. Perkins,” she said, “why don’t you take her to the doctor? I’ll bet Dr. Wilson could help her. Dr. Wilson’s real good with pneumonia. I’ll bet if you took Sammy to ...

Mrs. Perkins was nodding her head. “We’re going to,” she said. “Jist as soon as Pa and Elmer gets the car runnin’ we’re goin’ to take her in to Brownwood.”

“But”—Cat stared at Mrs. Perkins in dismay—”but the car’s still all torn up. There’s a big chunk of it still sitting on the ground. How soon is it going to be running?”

Mrs. Perkins shook her head. “I dunno.” She threw her arms out wildly in a despairing gesture. “Yesterday Elmer was sayin’ it would be runnin’ for sure by this mornin’. Him and Pa worked most all night on it. But now somethin’ else has went wrong.” Mrs. Perkins’s rough, work-worn hands were moving continually as she spoke, twisting and grasping each other over and over again. “And everybody’s moved on now ’cept us and Elmer. Nobody’s here with a car to take Sammy into town, or even to go lookin’ for help.”

“I was goin’ to go,” Zane said. “I was goin’ to go to Brownwood to look for a doctor. But Pa wouldn’t let me.” Cat could hear the familiar fierceness in his voice as he went on. “Pa said it warn’t no use. Said no doctor was goin’ to drive way out here on the say-so of some Okie kid.”

Cat stared at him. “I’ll go,” she said. “If I tell Dr. Wilson how sick Sammy is, I’ll bet he’ll come.”

For a moment something like hope shone in Mrs. Perkins’s eyes. But then she shook her head. “It’s a long way into Brownwood. Nigh on five mile, ain’t it? It’ll take you a long time to go that fer.”

Cat shook her head. “I can run fast. And it’s not quite that far to my house. I can phone from there. I can call from my house and if Dr. Wilson’s in his office I just know he’ll drive out here in his car.”

Mrs. Perkins nodded and then shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I jist don’t know. Like as not the doctor won’t come. And it’s goin’ to be dark ’fore long and it’s such a fer piece and ...

“I’ll go with her,” Zane said. “All right, Ma? Is it all right if I go too?”

But Mrs. Perkins wasn’t listening. Sammy’s breathing had quickened and every gasp seemed to be a desperate struggle against suffocation. Her mother knelt beside the bed as the frantic rasping gasp went on and on. With the sound of Sammy’s tortured breathing filling her ears, Cat ran for the door. She was on her way down the rickety wooden steps when the cabin door slammed again and Zane was right behind her.

“Which way you goin’ to go?” he said when he caught up.

Cat stopped. “What do you mean, which way?”

“I mean, up the canyon, or along the road? Up the canyon is shortest, ain’t it?”

“Shortest, maybe, but not the fastest. Not with all the flooding, anyway. I came down the canyon and it took a long time. The road will be a lot faster.”

Zane nodded sharply. “Awright,” he said, “let’s go.”

It was slow going in the deep mud of the unpaved trail that led from Okietown to the Brownwood road. Slow, sloppy going with thick mud splashing up at every step of Zane’s bare feet, and with Cat struggling to keep her footing in her floppy, too-big boots. When they reached the road she sat down and began to tug on one of the boots.

“Whatcha doin’ now? You gonna carry them things?” Zane had stopped, too, and was watching while she tried to get a grip on the mud-coated boot.

“No,” Cat said. “I’m going to throw them away. Or hide them somewhere. I can’t run in these things.”

“Guess not,” Zane said. Grabbing her foot he quickly jerked off one boot, and then the other. Both her shoes came off, too, and she quickly put them back on while Zane stashed the boots under a bush beside the road. Then they began to run in earnest.

Overhead the clouds still hung low. The air was stony cold and to the east the sky was darkening toward twilight. But even in the cold Cat could feel the sweat beginning to trickle down her cheeks and the backs of her legs. Underfoot, however, the surface of the old blacktop road was almost dry and fairly smooth except for an occasional pothole. A smooth, even racetrack stretching out endlessly in front of them.

But it wasn’t a race at first. At first they ran side by side, fast but not pushing it. Beside her Zane’s strides covered more ground than Cat’s did, but hers were smoother and more efficient. They had passed the rise beyond the bridge and were still running side by side when they looked at each other. Just one long, hard, testing look, and the race began.

Zane’s strides lengthened, his long legs angling up and down, up and down, like the parts of some awkward but fast-moving machine. Cat ran faster, too, feeling the familiar drive to win, and the deeper and more mysterious urge to run and keep running. Feeling the sure, swift flow of muscle, the strong, even beat of her heart, and the aching need to run fast and free. She was moving smoothly and easily—and faster perhaps than she had ever run before.