Cat Running (12 page)

It was probably because of the guilty feeling that Cat stood there by Mama’s bed for quite a while asking her if she wanted some more aspirin, or a piece of ice, or a different pillow.

“Or I could call Dr. Wilson,” Cat said. “Would you like me to call Dr. Wilson?”

“No,” Mama said, in her weak headachy voice. “There’s nothing anyone can do for my headaches, I’m afraid. Not even the famous Dr. Wilson.”

Mama wasn’t being sarcastic. Dr. Wilson, a big round-faced man with a slow, gentle voice, was practically famous, at least in Brownwood. He was particularly famous for curing people with serious diseases like bronchitis or pneumonia. Ellen was always wishing out loud that Dr. Wilson had been their doctor when her mother had pneumonia. Ellen always sighed wistfully when she said that, to show how much she wished her mother were still alive.

“Oh, if only Dr. Wilson had been in Brownwood back then, Mother would still be alive today,” Ellen would say. And there was always something about the way she looked right at Cat that seemed to add something more. Something about the fact that Cat would never have been born if Eleanor were still alive—and Ellen made it pretty plain she didn’t think that would be so bad either.

But Mama didn’t want Dr. Wilson to come. So Cat brought more water, and then sat there in the room and waited until the sound of Mama’s breathing became deep and even. Then she tiptoed out the door and down the hall.

Less than a minute later she was shrugging into her coat and heading for the back door. Partway across the kitchen she stopped, went back to her room, and pawed through the closet until she found what she was looking for—a sweater that she’d had for years but never worn very much. An old rose-colored sweater that Ellen had made when she was just learning to knit. It was a little bit lopsided, with one sleeve longer than the other, but it was heavy and warm and not very worn out. After tying it around her waist under the coat, Cat again tiptoed down the hall. When the back door closed behind her she began to run.

It wasn’t raining but it was another cold, gray day. The heavy rains on Wednesday and Thursday had left the air damp and clammy and mud puddles were everywhere. In the canyon the muddy water of the creek was higher, and parts of Cat’s favorite paths were flooded. Detours around or over boulders were necessary, and now and then daring crossings of flooded areas by jumping from stone to stone. By the time she reached the grotto she was sweating in spite of the cold air.

The little sandy strip in front of the blackberry thicket was quite a bit narrower, and the air in the tunnel smelled damp and earthy. Inside the grotto, however, everything was dry, protected from the rain by the rocky overhang, and from the flooding by the slight rise of the grotto floor. All Cat’s belongings were safe and in their proper places—and no one was in the cottage.

She hadn’t really expected Sammy to be there, but she had to be sure. If Mrs. Perkins had gone back to work today, as Spence said she might, and if Granny Cooper’s napping habits hadn’t changed, there was no telling what a headstrong and determined kid like Sammy might do, if she wanted to badly enough. Even a little kid who had just been sick. And if Sammy Perkins wanted to do anything really badly, it might very well be to visit the grotto—and Lillybelle.

But Sammy wasn’t in the cottage and probably hadn’t been there since last Sunday. The Kewpie doll and Lillybelle were exactly where they had been, and the blue dress was still lying on the ledge, just the way Sammy had left it.

Cat took the sweater out from under her coat, folded it carefully, and put it on top of the dress. For Sammy’s next visit. She’d been thinking of Sammy playing in the cottage, wearing the thick, warm sweater over the pretty blue dress. But on further consideration she had to admit that Sammy probably shouldn’t visit the grotto again anytime soon. Not in this cold, rainy weather and with the creek on the rise.

Of course, there probably wasn’t much point in taking the sweater to Sammy at home. Certainly not if Zane was around, at least. But because she couldn’t decide what else to do, Cat tied the sweater back around her waist by its lopsided sleeves before she crawled back through the tunnel.

Downstream from the grotto the creekside paths were flooded in places just as they had been farther up the canyon. As Cat headed downstream toward Okietown, picking her way carefully over muddy stretches and around boulders, she tried not to think about all the terrible things she’d heard about the Okie camps. All the stories about dirt and disease and mean, sneaky people who’d just as soon stick a knife in you as look at you.

Trying to keep from worrying, she told herself that, according to what Spence had said, almost all of the grownups would surely be away at work. But then a sneaky little interior voice added,
All except for the really bad ones who probably never work anyway. Never work, and just hang around the camp instead, waiting for somebody to come along they could stick a knife into.
Two or three times, imagining all the awful people she might meet and the terrible things that might happen to her, she stopped and turned back toward home. But each time she went on again.

She stopped again for a longer time when she reached the wooded hillside from which it was possible to look right down into Okietown. It wasn’t really a town at all, of course. Except for four tiny wooden shacks that Mr. Otis had built years before to house some of his ranch hands, there were no real buildings at all. Just a collection of tents and lean-to sheds built of what seemed to be cardboard and canvas and pieces of rusty corrugated tin.

Among the tents and shacks were piles of trash where scraps of cardboard, tin, and glass mingled with the remains of dead cars. Oily pipes and wires, looking like metal veins and intestines, made ugly clumps among other broken body parts, such as bumpers, fenders, and running boards. Cat shuddered.

When she’d stood on that exact same spot a few weeks before, looking down on Okietown, everything had been covered by a gray veil of dust. The gray was gone now, but in its place were other ugly colors—muddy browns, dark red rusts like streaks of dried blood, and the nameless shades of rain-wet canvas and soggy cardboard.

No one was in sight. Maybe they
were
all away working. All except Granny Cooper and Sammy, at least. Cat squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and started down the hill.

On the outskirts of the camp she passed what was obviously an outhouse, a tiny enclosure made of an old billboard advertising Wonder Bread. The door was a sagging curtain of ragged gunnysacks. Cat walked faster, holding her breath against the smell. She was still hurrying when she rounded the first shack and nearly walked right over two little kids.

The children were squatting beside a deep puddle, doing something with a tin can and a stick. Still squatting, they stared up at Cat, their faces stiff with mud and surprise.

Cat tried to smile. “Hello,” she said. “I’m looking for the Perkinses’... She discarded
house
and
home
and wound up with
place.
“I’m looking for the Perkinses’ place. Do you know where the Perkinses live?”

For a moment no one spoke and it didn’t look like they were going to. The littlest kid, in fact, stuck a muddy thumb into his mouth like a cork and kept it there. But at last the other one, a pale, pointy-faced little boy with no-color hair, raised one arm and pointed to a tent only a few yards away.

Cat pointed too. “There?” she asked. “Is that it?” and the gray-faced boy nodded silently. Cat said thank you, carefully walked around the kids and their mudhole, and made her way down the soggy road.

The Perkinses’ place was not exactly a shack or completely a tent. A canvas roof and walls had been hung over a rough wooden frame. On one side the canvas wall had been pulled out and draped over a car, an old rusty Studebaker that sat deep in the muddy earth on bare wheel-rims.

A front section of the tent had been tied back so it was possible to see most of what was inside. At the rear of the dark enclosure Cat could just make out a small stove made of what seemed to be heavy tin. There were no chairs or tables. Two mattresses, a wide one and another cot sized, covered most of the floor. On some shelves against the right wall she could make out a washboard, a few pots, several jars, a few pieces of cracked pottery, and a familiar object—a small pail made from an oilcan with a bailing-wire handle.

There was no color anywhere. Everything, the tent walls, the blankets covering the mattresses, even the things in the cupboard, seemed faded and soiled to a dull gray sameness. Everything, that is, except for the flower on the orange crate that sat beside the entrance to the tent.

Someone had planted the flower, a geranium, in a rusty tin can. It was a scrawny, crooked plant but its blossoms, a bright orangish red, stood out bravely against the colorless tent wall. Cat was staring at the geranium when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move, and there on the narrow mattress a mop of tousled hair framing a small familiar face was appearing from under a pile of dirty gray blankets.

“W
ELL, HI, SAMMY,” CAT
said, trying for a smile and tone of voice that would hide how shocked and dismayed she felt. “Spence told me you were sick, so I thought I’d just drop by for a visit.”

Sammy sat up. She was wearing a nightgown that had once been a flour sack. Her face was thinner and very pale. Blue veins showed through the skin on each side of her forehead. “Cateren?” She sounded uncertain, as if she didn’t believe her eyes.

Cat smiled and nodded. “That’s right, Cateren,” she said, imitating Sammy’s pronunciation. Then she curtsied, holding her skirt out at each side, and, in a prissy, hoity-toity voice, said, “Miss Catherine Kinsey, actually. Come to call on Miss Samantha Perkins.”

Sammy caught on right away. Smiling delightedly she said, “Well, come right on in, Miss Kinsey, and set awhile. Set right down here and ... At that point Sammy looked down at her flour-sack nightgown and seemed to lose her train of thought. Quickly wrapping herself in a ragged blanket to hide the faded letters that spelled
GRANTS FLOUR MILL
across her chest, she glanced up anxiously to see if Cat had noticed. But when Cat looked away, pretending to be examining her own muddy feet, Sammy quickly got back into the game. “Set down on this here ... she said, and then hesitated, looking around the barren tent before she went on, “right here on my bed.”

But as Cat came into the tent, carefully making her way down the narrow passageway between the two mattresses, Sammy began to cough. A hard, racking cough that rasped in her throat and shook her small body fiercely. When the coughing fit finally eased Cat asked, “How’re you feeling, anyway, Sammy? Spence said you were real sick. You don’t have anything catching, do you? Like measles or scarlet fever?”

Still fighting the cough Sammy shook her head, tried to speak, and coughed again. Finally she managed to gasp. “No. Nuthin’ like that. ’Sides, I’m better now. Tomorrow Ma’s goin’ to let me git up.” And as Cat still hesitated she repeated, “Come on in and set.”

But Cat couldn’t bring herself to sit down on the dirty blankets. She was still standing awkwardly beside Sammy’s bed when she remembered the orange crate. “Just a minute,” she said, and ducked back out under the tent flap. Placing the geranium in its tin-can planter carefully on the ground, she carried the sturdy box into the tent. “Look,” she told Sammy. “A chair. A beautiful chair. Probably an antique, don’t you think?”

Sammy was coughing again but she managed a quick smile. Going back to her visiting-lady act Cat sat down primly, knees together and hands folded neatly in her lap. Sammy watched, pressing both hands to her mouth to hold back the cough.

“Yes, thank you,” Cat said. “I will have a cup of tea. Lemon, please, and lots of sugar.” Then she pretended to be drinking, stirring first and then holding the imaginary cup daintily, little finger extended. Sammy giggled—started to drink a pretend cup of tea herself—and began to cough again.

By the time the coughing fit finally ended Sammy had forgotten about the pretend tea party. Instead she was thinking about Lillybelle. “I was worrin’ ’bout her, in the rain and all,” she said. “She didn’t get wet or nuthin’, did she?”

“No. She’s fine. I stopped in to see on my way here. Everything in the grotto is dry and Lillybelle is too.” Cat paused, realizing that she, too, was calling Marianne Lillybelle. But then she shrugged and said, “Lillybelle told me to give you her love and to tell you to get well real quick.”

A faint shadow of the dimple appeared in Sammy’s thin cheek and her shoulders lifted in a happy shiver. “What else’d she say?” she asked. “What else’d Lillybelle tell you to tell me?”

“Well ... Cat was still groping for something really exciting to tell when another voice said, “Well, land sakes, if we ain’t got ourselves a visitor. Sammy, baby, you didn’t tell me you was expectin’ somebody to come callin’.”

Cat jumped to her feet. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Catherine Kinsey. I came because I heard Sammy was sick. Spence told me. I go to Brownwood School and yesterday when I was talking to Spence he told me she was sick so I just decided to—to ... She stuttered to a stop.

The woman in the entrance of the tent was tall and thin. Her long gray-brown hair was tied back except for a few strands that straggled around her face. She was wearing a colorless cotton dress and a torn and raveled sweater that might once have been bright blue. She put down a lard-can pail full of water and came into the tent.

“That was right neighborly of you,” she told Cat. “Right neighborly. Must not have been too easy getting way out here in all this mud. Road out to the highway is jist a bunch of mudholes.”

Cat thought of mentioning that she’d come down the canyon, and decided against it. “Yes, it was pretty muddy,” she said.

There was an uncomfortable silence and then Mrs. Perkins said, “You say you’re in Spence’s class?”

Cat was used to people taking her to be younger than she was. “No,” she said. “I’m in sixth grade. In Zane’s class.”