Naked, on the Edge (18 page)

"I don't want to come in."

"Then sit on the porch. I don't mean any harm. Truly I don't."

I stood up and looked over my shoulder, hoping to find someone to talk me out of this. There was no one on the street.

"Never mind, then," said Miss Dowdy with a sigh. "I'm sorry I scared you."

I heard myself say, "I'm not scared," and in saying it, I found I wasn't so much. I pulled the cotton out of my ears.

"Come." She smiled. It was a lovely smile, really. "I'll explain it to you. Sit with me on the porch."

Once up the steps I could see the porch clearly. It had a little glider and a rattan chair with a sunny yellow cushion. She motioned for me to sit. I chose the chair.

"In a way," Miss Dowdy said as she lowered herself on the glider and began to rock back and forth, pushing at the porch floor with the tips of her shoes, "you children are right. No, I'm not a witch but yes, I do have power. You know that there was a dog. There was a hamster."

I nodded, noting with surprise my head didn't hurt any more.

"I've got a responsibility to help people, to try and keep their lives from being any sadder than they are."

"What do you mean?"

"Buddy was riddled with cancer, but David didn't know it. He would have been very upset if he'd had to watch his dog to wither away and die. I called for Buddy and he came to me. Now, David doesn't know there was a Buddy, so he won't be sad."

I thought about this. What a strange idea, yet it made sense. "But…what about Hitty-Pitty? You didn't call for her. I brought her to you."

"Honey, that hamster was going to get away from you kids the very evening you brought it here. A feral cat was going to eat it almost to death, and Marla was going to find it and have to put it out of its misery. Do you know how much that would hurt your friend?"

"But I didn't know that. I only did it as a test, to see what would happen."

"You might not have realized what you were doing, but something in you knew the hamster was in trouble and it made you bring it to me. Now, it won't suffer and neither will Marla."

Something in me? What the hell? "But…but what about…?"

"Yes, there have been others. There was one little girl a couple years back, who was soon to be kidnapped, raped, and murdered. I called her here, like I called Buddy. Her parents forgot they had a child, and so didn't miss her."

"Oh, yeah," I said, my fingers going to my suddenly dry lips and beginning to pick. "The little girl. She was cute, red hair. I knew she'd gone missing but nobody said anything so I just…I don't know…forgot, too."

Miss Dowdy nodded. "It's good the children think I'm a witch so they'll leave me alone. This work is best done without interruption."

"Have there been a bunch of others?"

"Oh, yes, from the whole town. Many you wouldn't know, and a lot of them before you were born."

I looked at the old woman, at her little white shoes and her little gray braids. I looked out at the street, and the sunshine that reflected off the bits of quartz in the gravel. I should be with Jena, collecting quartz. We were going to make a million selling our rocks once we had enough.

"You said," I began, then began again. "You said something in me knew about the hamster. I don't get it."

"It means you're like me. You'll take over for me someday."

"No!" I jumped up. "I'm not going to do stuff like you do!"

"Not now, honey. When you're grown and old enough to understand the importance and can handle the responsibility. It's nothing to worry about now. Later. Later." She reached over and patted my knee. It didn't burst into flames. Her touch was kind, soft. Then she said, "How about the cookies, now?"

"Oh." I looked at the cookies on the step. "No, you can't. They're…stale."

"All right, then."

I said good-bye to Miss Dowdy, collected the cookies, and hurried home. The plastic plate of Oreos went into the kitchen trashcan under a bunch of sloppy leftovers from supper the night before. That way, Mom wouldn't see it and dig it out to save the plate.

All night long I tossed about in bed, thinking about the terrible things that could happen to people and their pets, and how Miss Dowdy did all she could to make things better. It was kind of like Jesus or Superman, helping others like that. I tried to imagine myself as a grownup, sitting on a porch in the shadows, calling for people and animals to come to me, making those who loved them forget they ever existed.

Jena and I continued to collect sparkly rocks from the road until our jars were filled to the top. Marla finally learned the sign language alphabet and we signed dirty words to each other up in the tree house. David's mom gave into his nagging and bought him a black lab that he named Rusty. I walked around with an uncomfortable sense of superiority bubbling just under the surface, knowing that one day I would be a savior.

On a Friday afternoon in August, when Mom and Jena were watching one of Mom's stories on television, I sneaked out the back door to slip down to Miss Dowdy's house. It had been weeks since I'd sat on her porch. I just wanted to have a look to remind myself that what I'd learned was real, that she was real.

David was in the alley, sticking out his tongue and swinging an old jock strap he'd found in somebody's trash. "Where you going?"

"None of your business."

"Here, smell this." He wiggled the jock strap at my face.

"Get that away from me."

"No, smell it!" He jabbed it at my nose and I slapped it away.

"Stop it, you asshole!"

"I'm telling!"

Hatred and heat raced up my spine. "No, you aren't!" I drew up my fist and cracked him so hard in the jaw he fell back onto the gravel and bit his lip.

"You'll get a spanking for this, just you wait!" he wailed around a trickle of blood. "You can't do that to me!"

"I just did, now get out of my way!"

I left him in the gray dust, knowing Mom would be furious, knowing there would be punishment waiting. "One of these days!" I whispered around the knot in my throat. But still, I had to see Miss Dowdy again. Nothing was going to stop me.

The house hadn't changed. Still small and dark, the grass still tall and tangled. I

thought for a moment of going right up to her door and knocking, but I didn't want neighbors to see that. We had a secret, Miss Dowdy and I. So I sneaked around the side of her house and crept low beneath a scrubby forsythia bush. Maybe she would sense I was there and let me in the back door.

I heard it then. Weeping, moaning. Very soft, but unmistakable. I squatted close to a tiny, filthy window at ground level and squinting, I peered inside.

The cellar was dirt-floored, stone-walled, and low-ceilinged. It was dark except for a roaring fire inside a huge oven set into the far wall. Miss Dowdy, in her blue dress and white sneakers, stoked the fire with a poker. The flames licked at her cheeks, coloring them orange and yellow.

In the deep shadows along the other walls I detected the outlines of cages. Cages with faces pressed to the bars. Small animal faces in the little cages. Human faces in the larger cages, and hands that reached through the bars, clutching, pleading. Miss Dowdy only laughed, and then tossed more wood into the oven, making the fire erupt anew in a bright and sparkling dance.

And then she looked up at me, smiled, and winked. Her lips were blood red; her eyes the same.

I fell away and ran from her house. I hadn't wondered what had happened to all those who had gone into Miss Dowdy's keeping. I suppose I'd thought they had, once forgotten, become nothing. As if they had never actually existed.

Up in the tree house, alone again, I held my chest as my heart pounded and railed within. They were still there. They were still alive. Miss Dowdy had lured them in and kept them for her own needs.

Terrible!

Terrible.

But what power that old lady had. What incredible power.

I heard Mom call me from the house. "Annie! Where are you! Get in here, I have a bone to pick with you!"

My heart clenched, picked up an angry, painful beat, but then it slowed, and didn't hurt as much.

“I mean it, Annie! I’ve had about enough of your bad behavior!”

A beetle crawled along a limb near me and I squished it with my thumb.

I wondered what it would be like to have that much power.

I guessed I would find out.

One of these days.

I
t took almost ten minutes to catch both the beetle and the centipede, but Hannah Livick's paper cup finally had the captives securely inside, and she walked them down to the grassy stretch behind the dumpster and let them go. Best to be out in the wild than in her apartment, where they might get stepped on or caught by one of Hannah's cats. It was more time consuming now to keep up with her promises. With the onset of fall,more insects sought warmth inside, and she spent more time chasing them and putting them out.

But promises she had made and promises she would keep.

She went back inside and dropped down on a kitchen chair. On the table before her was an opened letter from her father. The bastard. She flipped her hand and the letter fluttered to the floor. The two stray kittens she'd rescued from the college parking lot blinked at her from the hall. Timothy jumped onto the table. Hannah kicked off her shoes and tucked her hair back behind her ears. She waited as her breathing eased and her heart slowed. She needed to let things like this go. She was thirty-two, for heaven's sake, no teenaged flower child. She should no longer be thrown for a loop when others didn't understand. In fact, their lack of under-standing only clarified her own. It clarified that of Karla Casey and little Allen and Joe and the other student members of Voices for the Voiceless, people who had true commitment to great causes.

"Great causes," she said to Timothy. She gave him a kiss.

Last night had been a glorious moment for a great cause. Another round won for the animals. Hannah and her friend Karla had led Voices for the Voiceless in a midnight raid on the county animal pound. The pound was clean enough, and part of their purpose, that of placing unwanted animals for adoption, was humane enough, but Joe had said the holding cell of unclaimed animals was now full and an execution was pending. Joe Farrish, a psychology major at the college and one of Hannah's brightest students who worked part-time at the pound, had stolen a key and he break-in was not a break-in at all but a calm open-the-door-and-help-yourself-in.

Dressed in a denim skirt and black sweatshirt that read, "A Crow is a Cat is a Cow is a Dhild", Hannah had hacked the padlock from the holding cell, then stepped back as Karla's nine-year-old son, Allen, was allowed the first rescue.

“Go in, sweetie," Karla said, giving the little boy an encouraging push. "Those kitties and puppies are going to be poisoned if we don't set them free. They will cough and shake and vomit and suffer. Go get the first one out."

Allen, in his little red "Peace Now" ball cap, had gone into the dingy cell among the condemned, cats in a cage on the right of the cell and dogs in a cage on the left. The condemned watched him with hesitant wags of tails and blinks of eyes. He pulled the pin to the cat cage and lifted out a scraggly calico. As he turned to face the other rescuers, Joe snapped a Polaroid photo.

Grinning child and living cat. The crow is the cat is the cow is the child. Bless the beasts and the children.

Equality beyond specieism.

The photo was now displayed on her refrigerator along with photos of other events in Hannah's activist life; protests, marches, passing home-computer generated pamphlets out on the street in front of the college and the nearby grocery stores.

Commitment and courage. Promises kept.

As little Allen would say when asked if he would always look out for the weaker creatures, "Cross my heart and hope to die."

Hannah stared at the photos, letting pride in what she was doing squeeze out the irritation at her father's selfishness. It took a little while, but it worked.

J
oe wore a red plaid flannel shirt, not quite grunge but amazingly attractive in its carelessness, faded jeans, and boots. He sat, as he always did, in the middle of the classroom, leg crossed casually, pen top in teeth, scribbling notes faster than Hannah spoke.

Interpretations, she assumed. His own additions to her lessons, questions, comments, insights.

As humans went, he was beautiful. Young and dark. Committed and courageous. And agonizingly sensual.

Hannah spoke today on the contrasting beliefs within the fundamentalist denominations in early twentieth century America. As was true in any class period, some students leaned forward with interest, some slumped back in boredom. Timothy, brought to class each day in his airy cat-tote, lay on a fluffy folded towel in his windowsill overlooking the campus green. Every so often he would stretch, arch his back and scoot down a bit to catch the movement of the afternoon sunlight.