One-Eyed Cat (13 page)

Reluctantly, Ned dragged himself from the window and sat down across from Mr. Scully at the kitchen table.

“It's the stovepipe,” said the old man. His voice had risen and his skin had a mottled, bruised look. Ned realized he was agitated.

“There's a host of things that need doing,” Mr. Scully went on, speaking quickly. “That stovepipe has to be cleaned out or I'll burn the house down around my head. I've written to Doris and I'd be obliged if you gave the letter to the Reverend and had him mail it. I'll give you the two pennies for the stamp. Winter is such a hard time! Just a few degrees difference in the temperature and look what happens!”

The old man's voice, its exasperated tone, showed Ned that he was tired of the cat. His heart sank. It was as if the cat weighed two hundred pounds and now he would have to carry it alone.

He took Mr. Scully's letter to Doris home with him and gave it to his father along with the two pennies for the stamp. When he went upstairs, he saw that his mother was dressed and in her wheelchair, for the first time since her attack on the day of his fight with Billy. She looked pale, but as soon as she saw him, she smiled and told him to come in. One of her hands was gripped around her favorite china cup that was painted with rosebuds and rose leaves and was so thin you could see through it when you held it up to a light.

“Don't look so worried, Neddy. I'm much better,” she said.

He went to her, and she took her hand from the cup and put it on his. The swelling of her joints had lessened. He knew that that was what she had wanted him to see.

“It's mysterious,” she said. “What makes it worse or better, no one seems to know. It's like sailing a small boat through reefs—you never know what you're going to hit or when. I'm tired, but that's all. I almost think I could walk. It's been a while since I tried. My legs are pretty weak, yet I think I could.”

Slowly she extended one foot from beneath the blanket which covered her knees and lap.

“Uncle Hilary brought you those slippers from China,” Ned said.

“He brings us the world, doesn't he? Aren't you glad to be going on a trip with him?”

It was hard to lie to her. Instead of answering her question, he said he had to run back to Mr. Scully's. He'd forgotten to bring in a second load of wood for the stove, and it was so cold, Mr. Scully might need it.

He ran downstairs and put on his coat and went outside to stand shivering under the crabapple tree on the north side of the house. As he looked up at the stained-glass window on the staircase landing, he knew he'd never been quite so miserable in his life. Through the kitchen window, he saw Mrs. Scallop standing at the sink. She seemed to be singing. Suddenly she flung out both her arms as though conducting an orchestra. She held a potato in one hand and a carrot in the other. In the middle of feeling so terrible, Ned found himself laughing. He could not have believed, until that moment, that Mrs. Scallop would ever be able to make him feel better—but she had.

He got up early the next day, Saturday, and started out for Mr. Scully's house without stopping for breakfast.

The weather had changed. The sky was clear, and Ned walked down the slope in the pale yellow winter sunlight. From the meadows rose the rustling sound of ice and snow thawing.

Ned stamped the snow from his boots and went into the kitchen. Mr. Scully was looking out the window. He turned to Ned, every tooth in his jaw visible as his mouth widened in an immense smile.

“He wasn't dead at all!” he shouted at Ned even though he was standing only a foot or two away from him. “The old fellow's gone! Look out there. He got up and went. I can see his paw prints over there under the pine tree branch. See? Whatever it was—poison, germs—he wore it out! Now he's off to take care of things. He hung on. I'd given up—but he fooled me! Isn't that wonderful? To be fooled like that?”

Ned was dazed. Happiness came like a strong blow across his back, and it smelled of the fresh coffee Mr. Scully had made for himself and of wood smoke, and it was the buttery color of the ray of sun across the kitchen table, and the color, too, of the blackened quilt, no longer a bed for a dying animal.

He heard the Packard go by and wished he was sitting in it with Papa. He could have gone to church with him today after all, if he'd known about the cat. Papa would be meeting with the deacons about the Christmas programs, and the Ladies' Aid Society would be in the basement stringing cranberry and popcorn balls for the Christmas tree, and candying apples, and wrapping presents for the children of the congregation. And it might even be today that the great church doors would be opened and half a dozen men would carry in the enormous tree. One person would go up to the gallery and put the big star in place, then the rest of the tree would be decorated. And Christmas Eve the tree would fill the entire church with its marvelous smell of deep pine woods and snow, and there would be, too, the peppermint smell of candy canes. But he wouldn't be there! He would be on his way to Charleston with Uncle Hilary.

Mr. Scully was telling him that he felt so cheered up, he thought he'd smoke a bit of tobacco, although it had probably dried up by now and wouldn't be worth lighting. His pipe was in the parlor, and when he went to get it, opening the door wide, Ned smelled the cold apple-scented air. Mr. Scully kept his baskets of apples in the parlor, along with a sack each of potatoes and onions. Mr. Scully came back to the kitchen with his meerschaum, which had a collie dog carved in amber on the bowl. The old man looked stronger to Ned than he had for a long time, and he was moving quickly as he filled up the pipe bowl and tamped down the tobacco, got a match from the tin box on the windowsill, and struck it alight.

“He'll come back and I'll feed him,” said Mr. Scully. “He'll be hungry now, and he'll want to get his strength back. Mrs. Kimball brought me a chicken yesterday. I'll give him some of that. You'll see … We'll have him running around soon.”

“You're glad, too,” Ned said, surprised. He had thought the old man was just being patient with him, putting up with Ned's concern about the cat. Now he could see Mr. Scully felt responsible—more than that, sympathetic—toward the animal.

“I'm glad,” Mr. Scully said in a serious voice. “When you get to be my age, the strength of life in a living creature can't help but gladden your heart. I don't know the reason for that, but there it is.”

Mrs. Scallop was somewhere upstairs when Ned got home so he was able to make his own breakfast and eat it alone in the kitchen. He washed his dishes and put them away, then he went upstairs to his mother's room.

“I am glad I'm going away with Uncle Hilary,” he said to her.

She laughed, and said, “Why, yes! That is an answer to what I asked you yesterday, isn't it? Sometimes it takes you a while to answer a question.”

He couldn't tell her all that had happened since yesterday, and why he felt so much better.

“I have some news. Your Papa has driven Mrs. Scallop to Waterville this morning. He's found work for her in a nursing home for old people. You remember how we talked about her needing a small country of her own? She may get one. Papa has taken her to her interview. She was wearing a hat that looked like a pumpkin pie. It may have been, for that matter. In any case, I'm sure it will impress the people who will hire her.”

“How did Papa tell her that she wasn't to stay with us anymore?”

She laughed again. “We had to rehearse it all,” she said. “He didn't want to lie, of course. But he had to dress up the truth a tiny bit. He hold her we were thinking seriously of moving to the parsonage, and that we really needed a practical nurse to watch over me until we moved. I'm so happy she's leaving.” Mama sighed and looked out of her windows. “What a glorious day! I like that mildness that can come in the middle of winter. Well, she was efficient, I'll give her that. But I do believe she disliked me immensely because I didn't admire the heart on her sleeve enough. In fact, her real heart, I suspect, may look like one of those rugs she makes.”

Ned felt Mama was really speaking to herself. She was still looking out the window; her voice was dreamy.

“Is there really going to be a practical nurse?” he asked.

She turned now and smiled at him as though suddenly seeing him standing there, his hand on the wheelchair arm.

“Yes, and it's Mrs. Kimball.”

“Evelyn's mother?”

“Indeed, yes. The newest baby, Patrick, Junior, is on a bottle now, so that one of the other children can look after him. Your Papa spoke to her several weeks ago—it works out well for us all.”

“Everything is happening,” Ned said.

“It always is,” said Mama.

VI

Christmas

Mrs. Scallop, Papa told Mama within Ned's hearing, had filled the bill at the nursing home for old people. Her interview had been entirely successful; the owners of the home had been especially impressed with her knowledge of how to make leftover food appetizing, and also with the warm-hearted feelings she said she held for old people. She would be staying on with the Wallis family a few more days before she took over her new post.

“There's that heart again,” Mama said, grinning at Ned.

“I hope you're not making fun of the poor thing,” said Papa.

“An unfounded hope, Jim,” Mama said tartly.

“I must admit, I won't mind her leaving,” said Papa.

Mrs. Scallop was more lofty than ever but it hardly bothered Ned. His confusion and apprehension of the last few months had sunk into the past, so that when he recalled some event, like the birth of Janet's kittens, for example, he would say to himself—that was during the time I was so scared and worried.

Then, in a minute or two on a cold afternoon, everything changed.

He and Billy had walked together from school to Mr. Scully's house. They had been speaking of all the things they liked best about Christmas. Billy said the absolutely best thing was not having to go to school.

Ned ran around to the back, stamped on the step to get the snow off his boots and opened the kitchen door. It was dead cold inside. No red line of fire outlined the stove grate. A few dirty dishes sat on the counter next to the pump. There was a box of oatmeal on the table, the cat's bowl, filled up with scraps of corn bread and bacon, and near the rocking chair, Mr. Scully's slippers.

Ned caught a blur of movement out the kitchen window. It was the cat walking across the snow to the shed. He lifted one paw suddenly and licked at it fiercely for a moment as though he'd gotten a piece of hard snow between his pads. Ned could see how he was filling out, though he still looked pretty scrawny. Ned took the food and a saucer of water out to the shed. The cat watched him from several cautious feet away. Ned could tell how different the cat's attitude was from what it had been. It was guarded but not surprised by Ned's presence anymore.

He would like to have stayed to watch the cat eat, but he knew it wouldn't go near the bowl if he was standing so close to it. He went back to the kitchen and forgot the cat, trying to puzzle out where Mr. Scully was. He might have dropped in to visit Mrs. Kimball, although he'd often said all that yelping and sniffling and shrieking was a strain on him—babies crawling and climbing all over him as though he were the Rocky Mountains.

Ned saw that the rum bottle had spilled and leaked out all over the floor near the rocking chair. He looked toward the stairs and shuddered. The shudder was very strong and seemed to last a long time, and Ned wasn't sure whether it was from the chill in the house or from something else.

He slowly climbed the steps. Lying across the threshold of the bathroom Doris had paid for was Mr. Scully, face down, both arms stretched out in front of him, his hands clenched.

Ned ran all the way to the Kimballs' house. He banged on the door until it was opened by Evelyn's four-year-old brother, Terence. He was wearing an enormous gray sweater with holes in it, and one large fuzzy bedroom slipper. A horribly wet cookie was dissolving in one of his grubby hands. Ned looked past him into the large kitchen. Sitting near the stove was a small woman with a ball of white and black hair pinned to the top of her head. A baby was straddling one of her small knees.

“Neddy Wallis,” she cried. “How nice to see you. Terence, go fetch Evelyn in the attic. See here, Ned, I've just made some Turkish Delight. Sit down wherever you can, and I'll give you some.” As Ned gulped and started to speak, one of several cats prowling about the kitchen let out a wild yowl and jumped on another cat. The baby crowed with delight; Evelyn appeared and grabbed him up, shouting, “Hello, Ned.”

“Mrs. Kimball,” Ned said as loudly as he could. “Mr. Scully is lying on the floor of the bathroom in his house and he isn't moving at all.”

“See to Patrick,” Mrs. Kimball told Evelyn.

“I think he's dead!” cried Ned and burst into tears.

By then, Mrs. Kimball had thrown a man's heavy plaid jacket over her shoulders and was sticking her bare feet into a pair of black rubber boots. The cats all ran into another room, Terence crawled under the table and Patrick laughed as if at the greatest joke in the world, his small hands gripping handfuls of Evelyn's shaggy hair.

Ned ran after Mrs. Kimball to Mr. Scully's house. She sprang into the kitchen and up the stairs, and by the time Ned had caught up with her, she was sitting on the floor and turning Mr. Scully over on his back as if he weighed no more than a pea pod. A pale line of foam had dried on the old man's mouth. Ned felt his stomach sink. Mrs. Kimball was holding Mr. Scully's wrist with two fingers.

“He's not dead,” she said calmly. “He may have had a stroke. We don't have a telephone, Ned. Would you kindly go to your house and phone the Waterville hospital and have them send an ambulance here? Right away, Neddy. I'll make him as comfortable as I can while you do all that.” She took Mr. Scully's flannel robe from a nail on the bathroom door and balled it up and pushed it gently under his head. “Hurry, Ned,” she said.