The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (10 page)

Yet the kitten realized that the horse played with her too. The horse turned its great head and neck to look at her, and was careful not to step on her. Once when the horse was lying down, the kitten in a nervous rush of anxiety and mischief dashed up the horse’s soft nose, up the bony front, and seized an ear and nipped it. Then at once the kitten had leapt down and crouched, fearing the worst in retaliation. But the horse had only tossed its head a little, showed its teeth and snorted—disturbing some nearby wisps of hay—as if it were amused also. Therefore the gray kitten pranced without fear now on the horse’s side and haunch, leapt to tackle the coarse hair of the horse’s tail, and dodged the tail’s slow flick with ease. The horse’s eyes followed her. The kitten felt those eyes a kind of protection, like her mother’s eyes which the kitten remembered. Now the kitten slept in the warm place under the horse’s shoulder, next to the great body which radiated heat.

One day the fat woman caught sight of the little kitten. Usually the kitten hid at the first glimpse of a human figure coming from the house, but the kitten was caught unawares while investigating a well-pecked chicken bone outside the stable. The kitten crouched and stared at the woman, ready to run.

“Well, well! Where’d you come from?” said Bess, bending to see better. “And what’s happened to your tail?—You’re a tiny little thing!” When Bess moved closer, the kitten dashed into the raspberry bushes and disappeared.

Bess carried the bucket of oats into Fanny’s stable—poor Fanny was standing and doing nothing now—set the oats on the corner of the trough, and led Fanny out for water. When Fanny had drunk, Bess opened a fence gate, and led Fanny into an enclosed meadow.

“You’re having a fine holiday, aren’t you, Fanny? But we’re going on a picnic today. You’ll pull the wagon. Down to the old brook where you can cool your feet.” She patted the mare’s side. The top of Fanny’s back was on a level with Bess’s eyes. A huge creature she was, but she didn’t eat a lot, and she worked willingly. Bess remembered Harry at thirteen or so, sitting astride Fanny for his picture to be taken, legs all bowed out as if he were sitting on a barrel. Bess didn’t like to recall those days. Harry had been a nicer boy then. Engine Horse, Harry had called Fanny, impressed by her strength, as who wouldn’t be, seeing her pull a wagonload of wheat sacks.

Bess went into the stable, poured the oats into Fanny’s trough, then went back to the house, where she had a peach pie in the oven. She turned the oven off, and opened the oven door so it stayed ajar about four inches. Bess never measured or timed things, but her baking came out right. She ought to give the little kitten a roast beef rib to chew on, Bess thought. She knew the type this kitten was, half-wild, full of beans, and she—or maybe it was a he—would make a splendid mouser, if it could hold its own against the pair of cats here till it grew up a little. Bess took the plate of leftover roast beef from the refrigerator and with a sharp knife cut off a rib about fourteen inches long. If she could manage to give it to the kitten without the other cats noticing and stealing it, it would do the kitten a power of good.

The ham and cheese sandwiches were already made, and it was only a quarter to twelve. Marylou had deviled half a dozen eggs this morning. Where was she now? They were both upstairs talking, Bess supposed. They did a lot of talking. Bess heard a floorboard squeak. Yes, they were upstairs, and she decided to go out now and see if she could find the kitten.

Bess approached the chicken yard in her waddling gait, calling, “Here kitty-kitty-kitty!” and holding the bone out. Her own two cats were away hunting now, probably, and just as well. Bess even looked in the stable for the little one, but didn’t see her. Then when she glanced at Fanny in the meadow—Fanny with her head down, munching clover—Bess caught sight of the little kitten, gamboling and darting in the sunlight around Fanny’s hooves, like a puff of smoke blown this way and that. The kitten’s lightness and energy held Bess spellbound for a few moments. What a contrast, Bess was thinking, with her own awful weight, her slowness, her
age
! Bess smiled as she walked towards the gate. The kitten was going to be pleased with the bone.

“Puss-puss?” she called. “What’ll we name you—if you stay?” Bess breathed harder, trying to walk and talk at the same time.

The kitten drew back and stared at Bess, her ears erect, yellow-green eyes wary, and she moved nearer the horse as if for protection.

“Brought you a bone,” Bess said, and tossed it.

The kitten leapt backward, then caught the smell of meat and advanced, nose down, straight towards her objective. An involuntary, primal growl came from her small throat, a growl of warning, triumph and voraciousness. With one tiny foot on the great bone, in case an intruder would snatch it, the kitten tore at the meat with baby teeth. Growling and eating at the same time, the kitten circled the bone, glancing all around her to see that no enemy or rival was approaching from any direction.

Bess chuckled with amusement and gratification. Certainly old Fanny wasn’t going to bother the little cat with her bone!

Marylou was already loading the wagon with baskets and thermoses and the blankets to sit on. Bess pulled a fresh tablecloth out of the kitchen cabinet.

Harry went out to hitch up Fanny. He strode like a cowboy in his high-heeled boots, grabbed the curved brim of his Stetson and readjusted it to reassure himself, because he was not an expert at throwing a collar over a horse’s head.

“
Whoa
, Fanny!” he yelled, when the mare drew back. He’d missed. Damnit, he wasn’t going to call for Bess to help him, that’d be ridiculous. The mare circled Harry, facing him, but drawing back every time he tried to slip the heavy collar on. Harry jumped about like a bullfighter—except that the collar was getting damned heavy in his hands, not like something a bullfighter had to carry. He might have to tie up the beast, he thought. He seized the bridle, which dangled from a halter. She hadn’t even a bit in as yet. “Engine hoss!
Whoa
, girl!”

Fortified and exhilarated by her half-eaten banquet, the little gray kitten leapt about also, playing, pretending she had to guard her bone, though she knew the man hadn’t even seen her.

“Whoa, I
said
!” Harry yelled, and lunged at Fanny and this time made it with the collar. Harry turned his ankle and fell to the ground. He got up, not at all hurt by the fall, and then he heard a cry, a rhythmic cry like something panting.

Harry saw the little gray animal, thought at first it was a rat, then realized it was a kitten with half its bowels out. He must have stepped on it, or the horse had. Or maybe he’d fallen on it. He’d have to kill it, that he saw right away. Annoyed and suddenly angry, Harry stepped hard on the kitten’s head with the heel of his cowboy boot. Harry’s teeth were bared. He was still getting his own breath back. His Gramma probably wouldn’t miss the kitten, he thought. She usually had too many of them. But Harry picked the kitten up by its oddly short tail, swung it once and hurled it as far as he could across the meadow, away from the house.

The mare followed the movement with her eyes, until the kitten—even before it landed on the ground—was lost to her vision. But she had seen the kitten smashed by the man falling on it. Fanny followed docilely as Harry led her towards the gate, towards the house. Fanny’s awareness of what had happened came slowly and ponderously, even more slowly than she plodded across the meadow. Involuntarily, Fanny turned her head and tried to look behind her, almost came to a stop, and the man jerked her bridle.

“Come on, come on, Engine!”

T
HE BROOK, SOMETIMES CALLED
L
ATHAM’S
B
ROOK
, was about two miles from Bess’s farm. Harry knew it from his childhood visits with his grandmother. It crossed his mind that the wooden bridge might be different—wider, maybe with a rail now—and he was relieved to see that it was the same: a span of hardly twenty feet, and maybe eight or nine feet wide, not wide enough for two cars, but a car seldom came here, probably. The road was a single-lane, unpaved, and there were lots of better roads around for cars.

“There’s the old spot,” said Bess, looking across the brook at the green grass, pleasantly sheltered by a few trees, where the family had come for years to picnic. “Hasn’t changed, has it, Harry?” Bess was seated on a bench that let down from a side of the wagon, the right side.

Harry had the reins. “Nope. Sure hasn’t.”

This was where Marylou was to get down, and according to plan, she said, “Let me walk across, Harry! Is it shallow enough to wade?”

Harry tugged Fanny to a halt, sawing on her bit, and Fanny even backed a little, thinking that was what he wanted. “I dunno,” said Harry in a frozen tone.

Marylou jumped down. She was in blue jeans, espadrilles, and a red-checked shirt. She trotted across the bridge, as if feeling happy and full of pep.

Harry clucked up Fanny again. He’d go over the right side of the bridge. He tugged Fanny to the right.

“Careful, Harry!” said Bess. “
Harry
, you’re—”

The horse was on the bridge, the two right wheels of the wagon were not. There was a loud bump and scrape, a terrible jolt as the axles hit the edge of the bridge. Bess was thrown backward, balanced for a second with the wagon side in the small of her back, then she fell off into the water. Harry crouched, prepared to spring to safety, to jump towards the bank, but the falling wagon gave him nothing solid to leap from. Fanny, drawn backwards and sideways by the weight of the wagon, was suddenly over the edge of the bridge, trapped in her shafts. She fell on Harry’s shoulders, and Harry’s face was suddenly smashed against stones, underwater.

Fanny threshed about on her side, trying to regain her feet.

“
Har-ry!
” Marylou screamed. She had run onto the bridge. She saw a red stream coming from Harry’s head, and she ran to the bank and waded into the water. “
Harry
!”

The crazy horse was somehow sideways in the wagon shafts, trampling all over Harry’s legs now. Marylou raised her fists and shouted.

“
Back
, you idiot!”

Fanny, dazed with shock and fear, raised her front feet, not high, and when they came down, they struck Marylou’s knees.

Marylou screamed, gave a panic-stricken, brandishing movement of her right fist to drive the horse off, then sank into the water up to her waist, gasping. Blood, terrifying blood, poured from her knees, through her torn blue jeans. And the stupid horse was now pitching and stomping, trying to get out of the shafts. Again the hooves came down on Harry, on his body.

It all happened so slowly. Marylou felt paralyzed. She couldn’t even cry out. The horse looked like something in a slow-motion film, dragging now the broken wagon right across Harry. My God! And was it Bess yelling something now? Was it? Where? Marylou lost consciousness.

Bess was struggling to get to her feet. She’d been knocked out for a few minutes, she realized. What on earth had happened? Fanny was trying to climb the bank opposite, and the wagon was wedged between two trees. When Bess’s eyes focused a bit better, she saw Harry almost covered by water, and then Marylou, who was nearer. Clumsily Bess waded into the deeper water of the brook, seized Marylou by one arm, and dragged her slowly, slowly over the stones, until her head was on the bank, clear of the water.

But Harry was face down and underwater! Bess had a horrible moment, had a desire to scream as loudly as she could for help. But all she did was wade towards Harry, hands outstretched, and when she reached him, she took as hard a grip as she could on his shirt, under his arm, and tugged with all her strength. She could not move him, but she turned him over, held his head in the air. His face was a pink and red blur, no longer a face. There was something wrong with his chest. It was crushed.

“
Help!
” Bess yelled. “Please!—
Help!
”

She waited a minute, and shouted again. She sat down finally on the grass of the bank. She was in shock, she realized. She shivered, then she began to tremble violently. A chill. She was soaking wet. Even her hair was wet. See about Marylou, she told herself, and she got up again and went to Marylou who was on her back, her legs twisted in an awful way, as if they were broken. But Marylou was breathing.

Bess made herself move. She unhitched Fanny. Bess had no purpose. She felt she was in some kind of nightmare, yet she knew she was awake, that it had all happened. She held on to a brass ring of Fanny’s collar, and Fanny pulled her up the slope, on to the bridge. They walked slowly, the woman and the horse, back the way they had come. It was easily nearly a mile to any house, Bess thought. The Poindexter place, wasn’t that the next?

When the Poindexter house was in sight, Bess saw a car approaching. She raised her arm, but found she hadn’t strength to yell out loudly enough. Still, the car was coming, slowing down.

“Go to the bridge. The brook,” Bess told the bewildered looking man who was getting out of his car. “Two people—”

“You’re hurt? You’re bleeding,” said the man, pointing to Bess’s shoulder. “Get in the car. We’ll go to the Poindexters’ house. I know the Poindexters.” He helped Bess into the car, then he took Fanny’s dangling reins and pulled her into the long driveway of the Poindexters’ property, so the horse would be off the road. He went back and drove the car into the driveway, past the horse, on to the house.

Bess knew the Poindexters too. They were not close friends, but good neighbors. Bess had enough of her wits about her to refuse to lie down on the sofa, as Eleanor Poindexter wished her to do, until they’d put newspapers down on it. Her clothes were still damp. Eleanor made her some tea. The man was already on the telephone. He came back and said he’d asked for an ambulance to go at once to the ford.

Eleanor, a gentle, rather pretty woman of fifty, saw to Bess’s shoulder. It was a cut, not serious. “Whatever made your grandson go over the edge?” he said for the second time, as if in wonderment. “That bridge isn’t all that narrow.”