Dancing Dogs (24 page)

Some nights she crept up onto the farmhouse porch, where she lay on one of the farmer’s hammocks, listening to the noises from inside the house. She loved to look in the window and see the flickering images on the box in the corner, hear the farmer and his wife talking or the phones ringing, smell the food cooking on the stove. Once in a while she thought the farmer’s wife saw her, and when she sensed she was being watched, she would vanish, fleeing into the woods or back to the barn. But she liked being close to the bustle of the farmhouse.

She was not like the dog though, of whom she was contemptuous. She did not bow and scrape for food, or follow humans around. She did not play with them, or want to be scratched or touched by them. She did not want to be inside the house, trapped and helpless. She could take care of herself, find something to eat, seek out a warm spot by the cows, or the generators, or bask in the rays of the sun.

The farm was full of places she loved, but when her work was done and the night was quiet, she felt most comfortable in the barn near the rooster. She was the only creature on
the farm who didn’t take the rooster seriously, although his crow, coming at odd times these days, would sometimes startle her and ruin her secret naps under the roost. At some point every day she found herself checking in with the rooster, who had gotten used to her, accepted her, even watched out for her.

When she came into the barn, the two of them would settle down, one next to the other. She would nap there, or just sit and look out the windows toward the farmhouse. Once in a while, she rubbed against the rooster, and although he was startled at first, he didn’t get flustered or huffy, didn’t crow or flap his wings at her. He seemed to like her company, and she his. This was not something she thought about; it was just something that happened.

I
N THE AUTUMN
, almost all of the rats were gone. One by one, she had hunted them down, slaughtered the adults, killed the babies. There were still some mice in the barn, but there would always be some, just as there would always be some bats.

That November, as winter approached and the days turned gray and the nights cold, the farmer came into the barn and saw the rooster lying on his side by the chicken roost inside the pen where the chickens slept. He knew the old Rhode Island Red was tiring, and was not surprised to see him near death.

But he
was
surprised to see the tortoiseshell cat—the one who had cleared the barn of rats—lying next to him. She sat up and looked him in the eye, but she didn’t run. The farmer was taken aback. The cat, who had never allowed him to get
close, was sitting coolly just a few yards in front of him, her green eyes meeting his.

He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and called his wife, who appeared shortly with a saucer of warm milk. The two of them took in the strange sight of the cat sitting next to the rooster. “She’s protecting him from the other chickens,” the farmer’s wife said. Chickens were ruthless when one of their flock was dying. They would often peck the dying chicken to death, starting with the eyes. “She’s watching over him. Keeping him company.”

The rooster was lying down, able to lift his head and attempt some feeble crows, but otherwise almost inert.

“He’s dying,” the farmer told his wife. “I’ll go get the ax. I’m not wasting a bullet on a chicken.”

“Pete, just hold up,” she said quietly but with authority. “She’s sitting with him. Let’s leave them alone.”

“Why do you think she’s protecting Argyle?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging, “But she’s clearly not leaving him.”

The farmer’s wife had witnessed a few of these peaceable-kingdom friendships—a horse and a sheep, a donkey and a lamb, a dog and a hen. There was no understanding these odd pairs, she thought—they could be explained only by the Lord. But that animals could reach so far down into themselves to find loyalty and friendship always touched her deeply.

The farmer and his wife left the barn.

For the next three days and nights, the cat sat with the old rooster. If she left to hunt or eliminate, neither the farmer nor his wife saw her go. In the daylight, the cat hung back a few paces, but at night, she curled up next to the old bird,
leaning against him. If any of the hens came near, the cat would get up and hiss, and they would retreat hastily. Although the farmer’s wife never saw the cat eat, the saucer was always empty when she came to replace it. Sometimes she sat down in a corner of the roost and held out her hand to the cat. Sometimes, when her husband wasn’t around, she spoon-fed the rooster.

On the second day of her vigil, the cat approached the farmer’s wife, sniffed her hand, and allowed her to stroke the back of her head. The cat purred.

“You look tired,” the woman told the cat. “I wish you’d come into the house once in a while. Remember when there were three feet of snow on the ground, and it was almost thirty below? I opened the basement door and put down some food and a bed for you, but you just walked away. Remember that?”

The farmer’s wife could feel the love for this cat swelling in her heart. She admired her courage, her independence, and her loyalty. She was beautiful, not ratty and worn down like some barn cats. But she also feared the cat’s vulnerability. She knew what happened to barn cats. They simply vanished one day. All of them. There was never a trace. They were just gone. She didn’t want that to happen to this cat. She couldn’t bear it. This one was special.

She wondered at the very strange relationship that had developed between this wild and undomesticated creature and the dutiful rooster who had watched over his hens and crowed religiously—and loudly—for so many years. Now it was the barn cat who was dutiful, keeping her faithful death-watch.

The farmer visited the two friends every morning, and his wife came in two or three times during the day and once
just before bed. The rooster grew perceptibly weaker, and still the cat didn’t leave his side.

Late one night, after the farmer and his wife were asleep and the woods and barns were quiet, the rooster’s heartbeat became faint, and he began to struggle for breath. He raised his head to look at his hens, and then at the barn cat beside him. She felt his heart stop and his breathing quiet. Almost instantly, his body began to grow cold. She felt a strange, unfamiliar sensation, unease that was almost like sadness, isolation that was almost like loneliness.

Then she stood up, hopped onto one of the wooden beams that held the hay, and leapt up onto one of the bales. With no time to brace herself, she soared straight up into the air and caught a barn swallow in full flight, the bird stunned and in her mouth before it even noticed her presence.

She jumped back down and dropped the dead bird down onto the ground near the rooster’s head.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, the farmer’s wife came in with some oatmeal—the temperature had plunged to fifteen degrees. The old rooster was dead, stretched out on the wooden pallet, his eyes closed. The cat was still pressed against him, as if passing him her warmth. A foot away was a dead barn swallow, stiff and cold. The cat turned to watch the woman.

The farmer’s wife disappeared into a corner of the barn and returned with a shovel and a garbage bag. She scooped up the rooster and the bird and deposited them both into the bag.

She looked over at the cat. “What did you do? Bring him a gift?” She smiled and shook her head. Then she carried the bag out to the trash heap, which her husband would later
collect with his tractor and dump into a hole in the back of the pasture. The coyotes and vultures and other scavengers would make quick work of the rooster’s carcass.

When she returned to the barn, she sat down near the cat with the steaming bowl of oatmeal. “Good job,” she told the cat, who looked up at her, then padded over to sniff at the oatmeal. The cat was disoriented; she seemed to be looking around for the rooster, waiting for him to appear. She meowed, as if calling out for him.

“You’ll miss your friend,” the farmer’s wife told the cat. She isn’t likely to find another, not the way she lives, she thought silently.

“You can come into the house anytime you want,” the woman said. “Your life is hard and you’ve done enough.”

The cat came over and sniffed her hand, but when the farmer’s wife reached for her, she vanished into the dark stacks of square bales.

F
ROM HER
P
HARMA
-R
ITE CASHIER STATION
, K
AREN COULD PEER
out the door and look across the highway—through the whizzing trucks and cars—to her aging blue Corolla. She couldn’t actually see Ernie, her noisy five-year-old Boston terrier (though often she could hear his distinctive high-pitched barking), or Napoleon, her imperious orange tabby; they were tucked away on their beds in the animal encampment in the rear of the car.

But she believed they could see her, and thus know she was all right. She knew Ernie worried about her when they were apart.

Sometimes when her boss, Jim, the assistant manager of the store, was in the storeroom or taking delivery of some orders, she would run out into the parking lot so her “guys” could see her more clearly. Or to make sure they were safe. In the summer, she parked the car in shade and left the windows open (she had a portable fan working from the backseat
on particularly hot days), and in the winter, she always parked in the sun. Despite these precautions, she couldn’t help looking in on them a few times a day. She felt guilty about leaving the animals out in the car.

At times, when she thought nobody was listening, and even when she knew they were, she would yodel at Ernie from the edge of the highway. “Hey, Ernie, odel-odel-lay-he-hooo!” she would warble. It was their secret signal, a distinctive sound he could pick up on. She didn’t have a sound for Napoleon the cat. But cats didn’t really need that kind of reassurance.

The yodeling brought surprised and sometimes disapproving stares from people driving by and from customers in the store parking lot, but Karen, a wiry, brown-haired woman with a leathery face and bright green eyes, was not bothered. If they were dog people, they would understand. And if they were not, then she didn’t care what they thought anyway. Ernie was her heart, pure and simple.

The girls working next to her teased her mercilessly whenever she went outside to check on Ernie and Napoleon. “You got a guy out there? You can’t be waving to a dog!” they would jeer, but she just laughed them off.

It was clear that Ernie and Napoleon disliked each other. Ernie growled whenever the cat came near him, and the cat spent most of the day hissing at the dog. He was a worthless intruder in her eyes. (Yes,
her
eyes. Karen was constantly explaining to people that she knew Napoleon Bonaparte was a man, but she hadn’t known it when she named the cat and wasn’t about to change her name now.)

Napoleon disliked riding in cars almost as much as she disliked Ernie. But Karen made her come so Ernie would
have company out there in the Corolla. Even if they didn’t like each other, at least they weren’t alone. She imagined they brought some comfort to each other. And Napoleon did at least like sunning herself through the back window.

I
T WAS THE FIRST DAY
of the Pharma-Rite Regional Bottled-Water Contest. Karen had come to work at three thirty
A.M.
, even though her shift didn’t start until five. She put on a crisp blue Pharma-Rite vest and checked out the twelve cases of bottled water she had undertaken to sell that week. Each case had twelve bottles—she had a lot to move. The contest began at eight
A.M.
; no sales before that counted. The winner got a good crack at promotion to department manager, and Karen was hoping to get Cosmetics, one of the busiest departments in the store.

She came in at four
A.M.
most mornings to sort out the shelves—it was unbelievable how people liked to pick things up and put them down in the wrong place. “Slobs,” she muttered. Would they do that at home? Put dish soap in the linen closet or a towel in the refrigerator? But she loved that quiet time in the store, tidying up, checking stock, getting the place ready to open. Once the doors opened at six
A.M.
, she worked the drive-thru window where people on their way to work dropped off their prescriptions in the plastic pneumatic tubes.

Most of the jobs at Pharma-Rite were pretty much by the numbers, as easily done by teenagers as adults. That was why the turnover was so high and the pay so low. But at the drive-thru, she got to chat with people and even see their dogs once in a while. She kept a box of biscuits by her chair
and always tucked one in the tube when there was a dog in the car. She knew a bunch of the pet owners by name, or at least by the names of their dogs.

She had some regulars she looked forward to seeing—Spinner, the border collie; Tar, the black Lab; and Wrigley, the golden, were among her favorites. She told their owners about Ernie, and how she wished he could be in the back parking lot where he would be closer. He would enjoy seeing the other dogs, she knew, even if he did bark at every dog he saw. And every person.

Halfway through her shift she switched to the front-of-store cashier stations. She had fun up front too. She always tried to make some small talk with the customers. She had a good word or thought for everybody, little bright spots to help people get through long and tough days. Warrensburg was a poor town in the Adirondacks, and the faces of many of the people she saw were tired, worn. If she could get a smile out of someone, it was a good thing.

At the checkout counter, Karen wielded her wand like a maestro’s at the symphony. She almost danced around the things people bought—the jars of lotion, Band Aids and tissues, medications and stationery. She knew just how to angle the wand to scan the price, and she prided herself on her thoughtful and efficient packing of those shapeless plastic bags. When she said, “Have a good day,” she meant it, and she loved to say something nice about the scarves, pins, or hairstyles of the older women who came in to get their prescriptions filled. Most of them smiled and nodded. The teen customers were hopeless—they didn’t interact with her in any way. She just wished them all a safe and happy day.