Every Living Thing (5 page)

On top of the pot, among the ivy, a robin had built her nest. Right there, on the porch of Mr. Henry P. Willis, she had nested. There were plenty of trees about, but no, she had chosen to grow her babies on his porch.

Mr. Willis had thought at first she was one of those stuffed birds used to decorate Christmas trees or Easter bonnets. He thought someone had tricked him.

Still, being a cautious man, he had not reached for the bird but had moved closer, eyelevel with her. And he knew then she was real. Real and sitting on eggs.

“Charlotte!” He went right to his wife's bedroom. “Charlotte!”

She was lying on her back, looking up at the ceiling. The room was gray.

“Charlotte, you will never believe this. There is a bird nesting in the Swedish ivy!” Mr. Willis's face was the brightest object in the room. She could see it shining. He took hold of her hand.

“It's a robin, dear,” he said. “A robin. And she has eggs. I stood right beside her—can you believe it!”

Mrs. Willis smiled slightly.

“I'm happy for you, dear,” she said.

Mr. Willis rubbed the top of her hand.

“Would you like to see?” he asked.

“I don't think so right now.”

So Mr. Willis went back out to the porch, quietly closing the door behind him, and he sat down softly in his chair and watched the bird, feeling his heart pound in his chest.

The following morning Mr. Willis went to check the nest. The bird was away, and he saw three blue eggs lying in the nest, Swedish ivy bunched all around and spilling from the pot. Mr. Willis knew not to touch the eggs. He went on to his chores and waited for the robin to return.

After he had given his wife her morning milkshake, he asked her again, gently propping up the pillows behind her head, “Would you like to see the nest, dear?”

Mrs. Willis smiled and patted his hand. “I'll see it. Don't worry. I'll see it soon.”

“Would you like to see it now? Can I help you out to the porch?”

Mrs. Willis sighed. “No, thank you, dear. I'll just lie here and rest a while. You go on. Don't worry about me.”

Mr. Willis left her, worrying about her as he did nearly every minute he was awake. He pulled up some onions, watered the eggplant and checked the nest again.

The robin was back, sitting like a statue, never moving her head or blinking an eye, no matter how near Mr. Willis stood. Her being there on his porch among his ivy took his breath away.

One day Mrs. Willis stood at the front door and finally did see the bird, to satisfy her husband. She said she found the bird's being there “curious” and went back to bed.

Mr. Willis spent many summer evenings sitting on the porch with the robin. He never told anyone else about her, never pointed her out
to visitors, for he feared that someone might frighten her or touch her eggs or steal her nest. He had learned that she would not leave her nest to protect herself.

Sitting with her, day after day, was like waiting for a baby to be born, as it had been for Mr. and Mrs. Willis when they were young and expecting their child. It had been quiet then, too, the waiting. The world had slowed down for them, and the days had been long and full of conversation. And finally their baby boy, Tom, had come.

Mr. Willis remembered this, sitting with the robin, and it gave him a feeling of great peace. He was sorry he and his wife had had only one child.

All three of the robin's eggs hatched sometime on a Thursday morning. Mr. Willis went to check on the nest after fixing his wife's breakfast, and he discovered the robin missing and three skinny, squawking babies.

“Well!” he said to them. “I'm a daddy!” He stood beside the nest, beaming.

In the days that followed, the mother robin was away from the nest most of the time, hunting for food. Mr. Willis wished he could make it easier for her—and he tried leaving popcorn
and bread on the porch—but she was a particular mother and seemed to want only baby food he could not supply.

So he just sat with her babies, commending them on their fine growing bodies and scolding them for their constantly gaping mouths.

He sat in his chair and watched the birds and laughed out loud.

Mrs. Willis stood at the door once, watching her husband and his birds. She was surprised they had actually hatched, and she congratulated him.

“You have always done well with your planting, dear,” she said. “Your Swedish ivy must have been good for them.”

Then she went back to bed.

Mr. Willis had thought the birds would probably fly away from the nest one by one, as children do.

But one day, they were all gone, the mother and the children, and they did not come back.

It is probably best, thought Mr. Willis. Best they go all at once, with no long leave-takings and teary good-byes again and again.

But he did not miss them any the less, just because they had all flown in one morning. The
empty nest stayed in the ivy until the winter, when he was sure they wouldn't be back.

He brought his chair and his ivy inside for the season, removing the nest and putting it on top of his dresser.

Mr. Willis would look after his wife all winter. Then, come spring, he would put the nest, ready-made, in one of his apple trees.

He was a man who enjoyed planting things.

“Louie! Louis! Where are you?”

The woman called it out again and again as she walked along Route 6. A bad road for cats. She prayed he hadn't wandered this far. But it had been nearly two weeks, and still Louis hadn't come home.

She stopped at a Shell station, striding up to the young man at the register. Her eyes snapped black and fiery as she spit the question at him:

“Have you seen a cat?” The word cat came out hard as a rock.

The young man straightened up.

“No, ma'am. No cats around here. Somebody dropped a mutt off a couple nights ago, but a Mack truck got it yesterday about noon. Dog didn't have a chance.”

The woman's eyes pinched his.

“I lost my cat. Orange and white. If you see him, you be more careful of him than that dog. This is a bad road for cats.”

She marched toward the door.

“I'll be back,” she said, like a threat, and the young man straightened up again as she went out.

“Louie! Louis! Where are you?”

She was a very tall woman, and skinny. Her black hair was long and shiny, like an Indian's. She might have been a Cherokee making her way alongside a river, alert and watchful. Tracking.

But Route 6 was no river. It was a truckers' road, lined with gas stations, motels, dairy bars, diners. A nasty road, smelling of diesel and rubber.

The woman's name was Magda. And she
was of French blood, not Indian. Magda was not old, but she carried herself as a very old and strong person might, with no fear of death and with a clear sense of her right to the earth and a disdain for the ugliness of belching machines and concrete.

Magda lived in a small house about two miles off Route 6. There she worked at a loom, weaving wool gathered from the sheep she owned. Magda's husband was dead, and she had no children. Only a cat named Louis.

Dunh. Dunh. Duuunnh.

Magda's heart pounded as a tank truck roared by. Duuunnh. The horn hurt her ears, making her feel sick inside, stealing some of her strength.

Four years before, Magda had found Louis at one of the gas stations on Route 6. She had been on her way home from her weekly trip to the grocery and had pulled in for a fill-up. As she'd stood inside the station in front of the cigarette machine, dropping in quarters, she'd felt warm fur against her leg and had given a start. Looking down, she'd seen an orange-and-white kitten. It had purred and meowed and pushed its nose into Magda's
shoes. Smiling, Magda had picked the kitten up. Then she had seen the horror.

Half of the kitten's tail was gone. What remained was bloody and scabbed, and the stump stuck straight out.

Magda had carried the animal to one of the station attendants.

“Whose kitten is this?” Her eyes drilled in the question. The attendant had shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody's. Just a drop-off.” Magda had moved closer to him. “What happened to its
tail?”
she asked, the words slow and clear.

“Got caught in the door. Stupid cat was under everybody's feet—no wonder half its tail got whacked.”

Magda could not believe such a thing.

“And you offer it no
help?”
she had asked.

“Not my cat,” he answered.

Magda's face had blazed as she'd turned and stalked out the door with the kitten.

A veterinarian mended what was left of the kitten's tail. And Magda named it Louis for her grandfather.

“Louie! Louis! Where are you?”

Dunh. Duuunnh.
Another horn at her back. Magda wondered about her decision to walk Route 6 rather than drive it. She had thought that on foot she might find Louis more easily—in a ditch, under some bushes, up a tree. They were even, she and Louis, if she were on foot, too. But the trucks were making her misery worse.

Magda saw a dairy bar up ahead. She thought she would stop and rest. She would have some coffee and a slice of quiet away from the road.

She walked across the wide gravel lot to the tiny walk-up window. Pictures of strawberry sundaes, spongy shakes, cones with curly peaks were plastered all over the building, drawing business from the road with big red words like
CHILLY.

Magda barely glanced at the young girl working inside. All teenage girls looked alike to her.

“Coffee,” she ordered.

“Black?”

“Yes.”

Magda moved to one side and leaned against the building. The trucks were rolling out on the highway, but far enough away to give her
time to regain her strength. No horns, no smoke, no dirt. A little peace.

She drank her coffee and thought about Louis when he was a kitten. Once, he had leaped from her attic window and she had found him, stunned and shivering, on the hard gravel below. The veterinarian said Louis had broken a leg and was lucky to be alive. The kitten had stomped around in a cast for a few weeks. Magda drew funny faces on it to cheer him up.

Louis loved white cheese, tall grass and the skeins of wool Magda left lying around her loom.

That's what she would miss most, she thought, if Louis never came back: an orange and white cat making the yarn fly under her loom.

Magda finished her coffee, then turned to throw the empty cup in the trash can. As she did, a little sign in the bottom corner of the window caught her eye. The words were surrounded by dirty smudges:

4 Sal. CAT

Magda caught her breath. She moved up to the window and this time looked squarely into the face of the girl.

“Are you selling a
cat?”
she said quietly, but hard on
cat.

“Not me. This boy,” the girl answered, brushing her stringy hair back from her face.

“Where is he?” Magda asked.

“That yellow house right off the road up there.”

Magda headed across the lot.

She had to knock only once. The door opened and standing there was a boy about fifteen.

“I saw your sign,” Magda said. “I am interested in your cat.”

The boy did not answer. He looked at Magda's face with his wide blue eyes, and he grinned, showing a mouth of rotten and missing teeth.

Magda felt a chill move over her.

“The cat,” she repeated. “You have one to sell? Is it orange and white?”

The boy stopped grinning. Without a word, he slammed the door in Magda's face.

She was stunned. A strong woman like her, to be so stunned by a boy. It shamed her. But again she knocked on the door—and very hard this time.

No answer.

What kind of hoy is this?
Magda asked herself. A strange one. And she feared he had Louis.

She had just raised her hand to knock a third time when the door opened. There the boy stood with Louis in his arms.

Again, Magda was stunned. Her cat was covered with oil and dirt. He was thin, and his head hung weakly. When he saw Magda, he seemed to use his last bit of strength to let go a pleading cry.

The boy no longer was grinning. He held Louis close against him, forcefully stroking the cat's ears again and again and again. The boy's eyes were full of tears, his mouth twisted into sad protest.

Magda wanted to leap for Louis, steal him and run for home. But she knew better. This was an unusual boy. She must be careful.

Magda put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a dollar bill. “Enough?” she asked, holding it up. The boy clutched the cat harder, his mouth puckering fiercely.

Magda pulled out two more dollar bills. She held the money up, the question in her eyes.

The boy relaxed his hold on Louis. He tilted his head to one side, as if considering Magda's offer.

Then, in desperation, Magda pulled out a twenty-dollar bill.

“Enough?” she almost screamed.