Jacob Have I Loved (7 page)

“T
rudy” was what did it. Simply by using Auntie Braxton's first name, the Captain confirmed himself as the true Hiram Wallace. He still didn't go to meet the ferry in the afternoon like most folks, or hang around Kellam's after supper matching water stories, or go to church. But despite these aberrations he seemed to be accepted as an islander, simply because he had called Auntie Braxton “Trudy,” a name nobody had used for her since she was a young woman.

Call's life and mine took a strange turn at that time. The Captain decided that while Auntie Braxton was in the hospital, the three of us should tackle her house. I tried weakly to argue that it was like trespassing to clean up someone's house without her permission, and trespassing was something
Methodists were forever bent on getting forgiveness for, so it was likely to be a fairly serious sin. The Captain just snorted impolitely at that. If we didn't do it, he said, the Ladies' Society of the Methodist church was likely to take it on as a good deed. Although Auntie Braxton went regularly to church, she had, for years, been considered strange, and once her cat population had passed four or five, she had been on very strained terms with the other women of Rass.

“Would Trudy rather have them poking about her property than us?”

“She'd rather have nobody, I bet.”

He sadly admitted that I was right, but since the alternative to our doing the cleaning was having it become a missionary endeavor, I had to agree that we were certainly the lesser of two evils.

The problem, of course, was the cats. Until something could be done about them, there was no hope of getting the house in any kind of order.

“How in the world did she feed them?” I asked. It had always seemed to me that Auntie Braxton was below even Call's family on the poverty scale.

“The wonder is she didn't feed them better,” the Captain said. “These poor things look half-starved.”

“Cat food costs a lot of money,” I said, trying to remember if Auntie Braxton had ever been known to buy fish from a local waterman to feed to her cats. Anyone else would have used scraps, but anyone else would have had more people than cats in the house.

“I would have thought Trudy had more money than most people on the island,” the Captain said.

Even Call was flabbergasted. “What makes you think a thing like that?” he asked. We both remembered that Auntie Braxton got a basket from the Ladies' Society at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not even Call's family rated a basket.

“I was here when her father died,” the Captain said, as though the two of us should have known such a simple fact as that. “Old Captain Braxton had plenty, but he never let on. He let his wife and child scrimp by on next to nothing. Trudy found the money after they both died. And it scared her something silly to suddenly find all this cash, so she come running to my mother. My mother treated her like she was her own daughter. Poor Momma,” he shook his head, “she never gave up hoping I'd marry Trudy. Well, anyway, Momma told her to put it in a bank, but I doubt that Trudy did. What did
she know about mainland banks? What's left of it after all these years is probably hidden right here in this house, if the damn cats haven't chewed it up.”

“Maybe it ran out,” I said. “It's been a long time.”

“Maybe. It was a lot of money.” He suddenly looked at us both, changing his tone abruptly. “Look,” he said, “don't say anything about any money. If she'd have wanted anyone else to know about it, she would have told them. I'm not even supposed to know. Just my mother.”

Call and I nodded solemnly. Real intrigue was far more delicious than the pretend kind. The fact that there might be money hidden convinced me beyond a doubt that the Ladies' Society must not take over the housecleaning.

But the distasteful problem of the cats remained. The Captain made both me and Call sit down in his clean, refurbished living room. He served me tea and Call some of his precious tinned milk, and then, very gently, he tried to explain to us what he believed had to be done.

“The only way to resolve the problem of the cats,” he said, “is to dispose of them humanely.”

Either I was a little slow or the language was too elegant, because I was nodding my head in respectful
agreement when, suddenly, it hit me what he meant.

“You mean shoot them?”

“No. I think that would be hard to do. Besides it would make a mess and bring the neighbors running. I think the best method—”

“Kill them? You mean kill them all?”

“They're almost starving now, Sara Louise. They'll die slowly with no one to care for them.”

“I'll take care of them,” I said fiercely. “I'll feed them until Auntie Braxton gets back.” Even as I heard myself say it, the words hacked at my stomach. All my crab money, my boarding school money—to feed a pack of yowling, stinking cats. I hated cats.

“Sara Louise,” the Captain said kindly, “even if you had the money to feed them, we can't leave them in the house. They're a health hazard.”

“A person's got the right to choose their own hazards.”

“Maybe so. But not when it's getting to be a problem for the whole community.”

“Thou shalt not kill!” I said stubbornly, remembering at the same time that only the day before I had been rejoicing that not one word of the blasted Bible applied to cats. He was gracious enough not
to remind me.

“What are you fixing to do with 'em, Captain?” Call asked, his voice cracking in the middle of his question.

The Captain sighed, polishing his mug with the back of his thumb. Without lifting his eyes, he said softly, “Take them couple miles out and leave them.”

“Drown them?” I was getting hysterical. “Just take them out and throw them in?”

“I don't like the idea, either,” he said.

“We could take them to the mainland,” I said. “They have places there like orphanages for animals. I read about it in the
Sun.
”

“The SPCA,” he said. “Yes, in Baltimore—or Washington. But even there, they'd just have to put these creatures to sleep.”

“Put them to sleep?”

“Kill them as gently as possible,” he explained. “Even there they can't take care of everyone's unwanted cats on and on.”

I tried not to believe him. How could anything that called itself the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” engage in wholesale murder? But even if I was right, Baltimore and Washington were
too far away to do Auntie Braxton's cats any good.

“I'll borrow a boat,” he said. “One that will get us out fast. You two round up the cats.” He started out the door and up the path. In a moment he was back. “There's three gunnysacks on the back porch,” he said. “You'll need something to put the cats in.” Then he was gone again.

Call got off the bench. “C'mon,” he said. “We can't catch neither cat sitting here on our bottoms all day.”

I shuddered and got up reluctantly. It would be better not to think, I told myself. If you could hold your nose to avoid a stink, or close your eyes to cut out a sight, why not shut off your brain to avoid a thought? Thus, the catching of the cats became a sport with no consequences. We took turns, one holding the bag while the other dodged about the furniture and up the stairs in pursuit. They were amazingly lively despite their half-starved appearance, and once seized and thrown into the sack, they went after one another with ungodly shrieks. Five were in the first bag—they proved to be the hardest to get—and the bag was tied tightly with cord I found in the kitchen drawer.

By the second bag, I had become more wily. In
addition to the cord, I had found some cans of tuna and sardines in the kitchen. I divided a can of sardines between the two remaining gunnysacks and then smeared the oil on my hands. I risked being eaten alive, but it worked. I lured those fool cats right to me and into those infernal sacks. We got them all, all that is but the orange tom, which was nowhere in the house. Neither Call nor I had the heart to track him down. Besides, sixteen snarling cats were more than enough.

I sneaked down to our house and got the wagon. Very gingerly we loaded the live sacks onto it. We were already scratched and bitten enough. Those claws could reach through the burlap as though it weren't there. Once one of the sacks writhed and wiggled its way off the wagon and into the street, but we got it back on and down the path to the Captain's dock. He sat there waiting for us in a skiff with an outboard. He was wearing a black tie and his old blue seaman's suit. I had the feeling he was dressed for a funeral.

Without a word, Call and I put the sacks into the bottom of the boat and climbed in after them. The cats must have exhausted themselves fighting, for the sacks lay almost quiet at our feet. The Captain
yanked the starter cord two or three times and the motor finally coughed and then hummed. Slowly he turned the bow and headed for open water.

It was midafternoon and the heat closed in on us unmercifully. I was aware of the smells of cat and the awful spoiled sardine smell of my own hands. I jerked them off my lap.

Just then, a piteous little cry rose from the sack nearest my feet. It sounded more like a baby than a cat, which is why, I suppose, it suddenly tore the blinders from my mind. “Stop!” I screamed, standing up in the boat.

The Captain cut the motor abruptly, telling me to sit down. But as soon as the motor died, I jumped over the washboard and swam with all my might for shore. I could dimly hear the Captain and Call yelling after me, but I never stopped swimming or running until I was home.

“Wheeze. What happened?” Caroline jumped up from the piano at the sight of me, hair streaming, clothes dripping all over the floor. I stomped past her and my mother, who had come to the kitchen door, up the stairs to our bedroom and slammed the door. I didn't want to see anyone, but of all people in the world, Caroline was the last one I wanted to
talk to. I still smelled of sardines, for goodness' sake.

She opened the door a crack and slid through, leaning on it to shut it gently behind her. There was no way, now, to get down to the kitchen and wash.

“Can't you see I'm dressing?” I turned my back to the door.

“Want me to get you a towel?”

“Don't bother.”

She slid out the door and came back carrying a towel. “You're a mess,” she said pleasantly.

“Oh, shut up.”

“What happened to you?”

“None of your business.”

She got that hurt look in her great blue eyes that always made me want to smack her. She didn't say anything, just put the towel down on her bed and climbed up and sat down cross-legged beside it, dropping her shoes neatly to the floor.

“You and Call didn't go swimming, did you?”

No one was supposed to know that Call and I sometimes went swimming together.

I tried to run my fingers through my wet knotted hair. She slipped off her bed and came over carrying the towel. “Want me to rub your hair?”

My first impulse was to shake her off, but she was
trying to be kind. Even I could tell that. And I was feeling so awful that the kindness broke down all my usual defenses. I began to cry.

She got my bathrobe for me, and then she dried my hair with those powerful fingers of hers as gently as she might coax a nocturne from our old piano. So although she never seemed to urge me to talk, I began to do so, until, finally, I was pouring out my anguish, not for the cats, but for myself as murderer. It didn't matter that I had not actually thrown them into the Bay. I had cleverly lured them to their death. That was enough.

“Poor Wheeze,” she said quietly. “Poor old cats.”

At last I stopped crying, dressed, and combed my hair.

“Where are you going?” she asked. It was none of her business, but she had been too nice for me to say so.

“Auntie Braxton's,” I said. “We have to get it cleaned up before the Ladies' Society makes it a missionary project.”

“Can I come?”

“Why would you want to come? It's a filthy stinking mess.”

She shrugged, blushing a little. “I don't know,”
she said. “Nothing better to do.”

We borrowed a bucket and mop and a bottle of disinfectant as well as a pile of rags from my mother, whose face was set in a question she did not ask. As we entered Auntie Braxton's house, I watched Caroline closely. I suppose I wanted to see some sign of weakness. “Smells terrible,” she said cheerfully.

“Yeah,” I said, a bit disappointed that she hadn't at least gagged.

We had hardly filled the bucket with water when Call and the Captain appeared at the front door. They just stood there, hanging back a little, like a pair of naughty kids.

“Well,” I said. “Back so soon.”

The Captain shook his head sadly. “We couldn't do it.”

Call looked as though he were about to cry. “They sounded just like little babies,” he said.

I'm sure I should have felt joy and relief. Actually, what I felt was annoyance. I had spent a lot of guilt and grief over the death of those dratted cats. They had no right to be alive. “Well,” I said, the dried salt was making my skin itch and adding to my irritation, “what are you going to do with them, then?
We can't keep them here. You said so yourself.”

Wearily, the Captain sat down in Auntie Braxton's easy chair right on top of the pile of rags I'd left there. He scrunched around under himself and fished them out. “I don't know,” he was saying. “I just don't know.”

“We can give them away.” It was Caroline, taking over the problem just as though someone had asked her to.

“What do you mean, ‘we'?” I was furious at her.

“I—you,” she said. “What I mean is, just give the cats to as many people as will take them—”

“Nobody is going to take these cats,” I said. “They're wild as bobcats and half-starved to boot. Nobody in their right mind would take a cat like that.”