And for a month, then two, Guy-Pie ate, still lost weight, kept on taking his pale orange pills, yet never complained, while Arlene forsook her daily Dumpster dives, telling herself that the recycling truck only came every other week anyhow, and that she didn’t need to gather as many cans.
The older cats and dogs took turns sleeping next to Guy-Pie; washing his head and ears, purring for him when he could no longer purr for himself. The tumor grew; his chest swelled in either direction. Silky tried to wash his friend into activity, until he realized what was up (or so Arlene let herself believe) and merely slept next to his cobby-bodied friend, waiting.
And when Guy-Pie ate no longer, even after Arlene rubbed the soft smelly food on his ever-paler gums, she wrapped him in a blanket which she held against one shoulder, while she carried the old black gym bag she’d found near the middle school in her free hand.
She couldn’t bear to let people see her carrying a dead cat through town on the way home.
* * * *
November wind, sharp and silvery pure as a freshly honed blade, whistled through the little gaps where Arlene’s scarf and thin gray hair met. She was walking along the curved spur of tracks near the depot, past the place where Dean Avenue curved out in the opposite direction to the west, scanning the rusted tracks for the right stones. Guy-Pie was a good cat, a beautiful cat. He deserved the finest stones to cover the flattened round of disturbed earth in the backyard. Her pea-coat pockets were heavy and hung low with the rocks she’d already found. Grays, pink-grays, and jagged bits studded with shimmers of mica. (The shine of those stones reminded Arlene of the liquid green light in the back of Guy-Pie’s eyes, just before the injection—)
Not worried that a train would run over her (the Soo Line had been sold years before, and the buying company cut out the Ewerton runs), Arlene followed the gentle curve to the west, walking stiff-legged down the middle of the boards, her feet moving in a strange gait as her feet sought out each nearest plank. Tracks aren’t made for walking, a calm part of her mind thought, as an old image came back to her. Guy-Pie as a kitten, dignified even in his hunger and footsore condition, as he stood on her front porch. Such a pretty kitten, not long and scrawny like most adolescent cats, but perfectly formed and solemn. And how the other kitties had taken to him, with none of that nose-out-of-joint tomfoolery.
(“—he’s had five good years, Mrs. Campbell, that’s the most anyone could’ve done for him. And remember, he had a recessed testicle when you found him, and if that had remained inside him, he would’ve been dead in a year from cancer. You gave him years he wouldn’t have had. And he was good to your other cats, and that new kitten of yours too—”)
And he’d even sat quiet while she plucked off all the fleas that survived his shampoo. Guy-Pie was the best kitty she’d ever had, until Silky came along, at least. And while Silky wasn’t like Guy-Pie, not in a lot of ways, he was good in his own way.
It had almost done her in when she brought Guy-Pie home, and placed him on the floor, then dragged the other animals over to see him. She had read once that that was important, making sure that the other animals in a household knew that one of their friends was gone. The dogs howled and took off after seeing him, and most of the cats did likewise, except for Silky. He had reached out one white paw to touch Guy-Pie’s flank, and when his friend didn’t respond, Silky let his head hang down but didn’t leave Guy-Pie’s side.
Pausing to dry her leaking eyes (it’s the wind, cuts like a razor it does), Arlene realized that she’d walked well past Dean Avenue, all the way up to the depot. The old rust and cream painted building was abandoned now, with the warped boards showing through fine-grained and silvery in the pale sunlight. On the side facing her were all the old wrought-iron benches bolted to the concrete platform, and above the benches was a multicolored flutter of paper; all sizes, shapes, and shades, attached with thumbtacks, tape, and staples.
After the Soo buyout, people began to treat the old depot like the world’s largest message board, putting up layer after layer of paper which grew rust-runneled after a good rain. Shoving her chapped hands into her already full pockets, Arlene stepped across the rusted rail and made her way toward the gravel and stone studded dead grass which lay between the rails and the depot.
Some of the posters were weeks, months old, and wind-worn, while others (written on lined notebook paper, or on patterned recipe cards) were obviously, painfully new:
“Cloths made to order. Any size, any fabick.
You suply the pattern.
Call 555-8743 p.m.”
“4-Sail: One (1) used trailor top, like new.
Also almost-new RV, and new child-size RV.…”
“To Give to GOOD Home; two Persian kitties,
litter-traned and gentile—”
Arlene had to laugh at the part about the kittens being Christian, even as she mourned the ignorance of the person who wrote the message. There was an address as well as a phone number on the piece of lilac notebook paper, on 7th Avenue East, less than a two—block walk from the depot. For a few seconds, Arlene wavered, torn by her inner misgivings.
On one hand, she had vowed not to take in cats that someone else might want, yet on the other hand, Silky was lonely, and needed a young cat—or cats—to run with.…
Thinking that no one would mind, Arlene tore the piece of paper off the depot wall, and stuffed it in her pockets along with Guy-Pie’s rocks.
* * * *
“I said will you shut them kids up already?” The young man pushed his long limp blond hair out of his colorless eyes (and past a whey-colored expanse of forehead) as he yelled at his wife in the other room. The shapeless young woman in the thin cotton maternity top only shrugged in reply and shut the door connecting the living room to the sunken back bedroom. The din of the six (seven? surely the young woman had to have been babysitting some of them) children was muffled by the door as the sweatshirted young man went on, “That sign’s been on the depot for two weeks now. I was almost set to…you know…the kittens.” The pale man made a two-handed gesture indicative of something being drowned, forcibly. Arlene nodded dully.
“I told my wife that she’s gotta be careful who Mr. Clean mates with, but my wife lets her out into the yard any old time—”
“I take it Mr. Clean is a queen?”
“Huh?”
“A female cat,” Arlene said succinctly, thinking, And he claims he’s breeding cats? while the young man bent at the waist to scoop Mr. Clean up as the plush red cat sauntered by.
“The kids named her ’fore we sexed her. Name stuck. But she’s pure, I got papers somewhere,” the man lied glibly, not knowing that no cat is ever issued papers unless it has been sexed.
Arlene let his faux pas go. She couldn’t wait to pick up the kittens, be they pure Persian or not, and get out of this tiny house that smelled like old French fries and stale beer.
Rocking in place on the littered carpet, Arlene asked, “Are the kittens in the house? All my cats live indoors, period.”
Nonplussed by her pointed remark, the man pushed a stingy lock of hair behind his ear and said, “They’re in the garage. Play in among the old engines and stuff. Course we got rid of
