Motherhood Is Murder

by Carolyn Hart

  Florie Mae didn’t say anything. Maybe more to keep her mind off Rebecca more than anything, she was hard set to catch that tomcat and get him “fixed.” It hurt her bad to see her two mouser cats have kittens and more kittens all spring and summer and most of them ended up with James drowning them. Those two Mama cats were fine mousers and ratters, but the poor cats spent half the year nursing kittens, and for what good? Their babies hadn’t no future. Not like a human child. Not like her and James’s young’uns, that would be fetched up strong and wise and ready to go into the world. Them two cats hardly had time to teach their babies to hunt afore they were taken away, and the mamas coming into season again with the tomcats prowling around. And her sweet cats was some scared of that big brindle tom, except when they was right in heat. Even then, when he got them in the family way he left them wounded and bleeding across the shoulders from his rough riding of them, biting them all blood-hungry, pulling the fur and skin right off.

  But even given the matter was important to Florie Mae, she took a lot of hassling over that cat trap. When Herald Fremkis came into the store to buy gunnysacks and bailing wire and he saw the big wire trap-cage out back, he near laughed his head off. He shuffled back into the store from the back door carrying his gunnysacks and just a snickerin’. “You plan on catching a bear, Florie Mae?”

  Herald was forty, with a big gut, balding hair, and red veins in his face from all the beer he drank. But still he had an eye for the ladies, an eye that made Florie Mae keep her distance. Martha called him a dirty old man. When they were girls and they’d gone up to the lake, sometimes he’d be in a boat fishing and hang around leering at them, hang around the dock looking at them in their bathing suits. Herald’s wife kept a tight rein on him. Eldora made him clean up ever’ Sunday and go to church proper; but she marched him right home again afterward, not a minute to set on the benches outside the church and visit. And Eldora never would stop for Sunday dinner at the Greeley Steak House where everyone went after church, for fear some woman would lay her hands on Herald or smile the wrong way at him.

  The idea of laying a hand on Herald Fremkis made Florie Mae feel unclean. But she had to laugh at Eldora. Because if Eldora wouldn’t let Herald take her to the steak house, of a Sunday, she had to go home and cook Sunday dinner her ownself.

  Now, as Herald set his gunnysacks on the counter, laughing about Florie Mae’s “bear cage,” Florie Mae watched him with anger. But she didn’t snap back at his bad manners. Herald was, after all, a customer. Though if he made one rude remark about her carrying another baby—even if she really didn’t show yet—she thought she’d slam the cash register down on his head.

  But Herald took one look at her face, and didn’t push his rudeness. “How long James going to be able to get them gunnysacks, Florie Mae? Right proud to be able to buy ’em, ain’t been no gunnysacks in these parts since my dad were a boy. Nothing as good for hauling out a deer or carrying a few renegade chickens—or drowning a passel of kittens,” he said glancing across at the big cardboard box where Florie Mae’s little cat family was all tucked up nice and cozy. She’d used a washing machine box from Luke’s Appliance, to make a nice big house for the two mothers and their thirteen kits.

  “We’ll be gettin’ those gunnysacks,” Florie Mae told him shortly, “as long as Mrs. Hern in Gilmer County can get the burlap and keeps a sewin’ ’em.”

  Herald grinned and reached over the counter, tousling Florie Mae’s head as if she was still a child. “What you going to do with thet trap out back, missy? Your Granny says you aim to trap thet tomcat? Haw haw. What you goin’ do with him? You got enough cats right here already to mouse all of Greeley.” He poked a toe at the cardboard box where Goldie and Blackie were nursing their kittens, all fifteen cats curled together. Both mother cats glared up at him with eyes like coal fires. If Herald reached a hand in, Florie Mae hoped they’d slash him. If they didn’t, she would. She’d heard stories about Herald when he was younger tying a stray dog to the back of a pickup so it was drug to death—well, he wasn’t touching her cats.

  Her two mother cats were so close that Florie Mae didn’t think either mother knew her own kits. They always dropped their litters the same night, and each cat nursed whichever kits crawled up to her. One would nurse all the kittens while the other went to hunt. Dragging a field mouse out from behind the feed bags or nail bins, either hunter would share her supper—though Florie Mae fed them good, too, from big bags of dry food specially made for mother cats, that James pulled out of stock for her. The whole time Herald was in the store he didn’t mention Rebecca, though that was most all anyone in Greeley was talking about. And Herald had sure made eyes at Rebecca, ever’ chance he got.

  “What you plan to do with them cats this time, Missy? You can’t give away kittens. You gone put ’em in a gunnysack and drop ’em in Carter’s Pond?” Herald smirked, and stood watching her. “Hope you not turning yourself into another cat lady. You too pretty a little thing to go mental. One daffy female’s more’n enough for Greeley.”

  Florie Mae just looked at him. Herald and his beer-drinking no-good friends laughed at most anything that wasn’t just like the way they lived.

  Keeps them cats right in the house, they’d say of Martha. Feeds ’em from them little fancy cans. Store-bought food for cats, I’ve seen her in the A&P loading up on them little cans. And totes ever one of them cats to the town square ever spring fer them free rabies shots. Shuts them cats in a cardboard box and carries ’em over there, as prissy as if she was toting a dish to church supper.

  That amused Granny, too, that Martha and a few older women would carry their cats to where the veterinary set up his tent every spring in the square, just about dogwood time, for his free rabies clinic. Granny said maybe it was all right to take your coon-hounds there for a rabies shot. “But a cat? That veterinary ain’t doing nothin’ but lining his own pockets,” the old woman would say darkly.

  The Greeley vet made his living on sick cows and horses, but he tried ever year to get folk to pay for fancy shots for their dogs and cats. Tried to get folk to “neuter” them, too. “He draws folk in to get them free rabies shots,” Granny said, “then tries to sell ’em all them other fancy shots—and that neutering. What a joke. Tomcats do what tomcats do, it’s God’s way. You can’t change God’s way.

  “’Course, if a tomcat gets into the chickens, or makes too much noise,” Granny said, glancing toward the cupboard, “well then you shoot it.” And as for “fixing” the females like the veterinary said, Granny said females were meant to have little ones, that such “fixing” went against God’s law.

  Florie Mae loved James’s Granny, but there were times she had to hold her tongue. It hurt her to see her poor cats carrying two, three litters a year. Hurt her to see the cats’ bellies dragging, then them nursing all those kittens, then the poor little kittens give away or dead and the tomcat was on the mamas again. Florie Mae didn’t tell anyone, for sure she didn’t tell James nor Granny, that she thought cats ought to be loved and happy. She didn’t tell anyone she thought cats ought to be happy.

  But she knew how it felt to be dragging around heavy with child all the time, and the little ones hanging on her, Lacie June’s arms around her leg and the child just a chattering away. Or Bobbie Lee tormenting his little sister so she had to set him down and have a talk with him, the kind of talk where he knew his Mama wouldn’t stand no foolishness. She loved her babies fierce, but she was right tired, having ’em all so close together. Never a minute to her ownself, it seemed like.

  Well, for sure she did set a store by her young’uns, they was her own flesh and blood, hers and James’s. Soon enough they’d be growed big, working in the store a bit and starting to carve out their own lives. And even now, as tired as she was, the minute she was away from them she felt lost.

  It was only sometimes that she thought there ought to be more to her own life than making of herself a brood cow. She’d thought some about going on to school in the nighttim
e, maybe to the trade school for two years, but there was never time for that, with the children.

  And oh, James did love his young’uns. Her James was real proud to be starting a fine big family. Working out in the sheds stacking heavy bags of feed or loading customer’s trucks, she’d see him glance toward the house where he could hear the children’s voices and hear them laughing, and he’d smile.

  Well she didn’t need to go out to night school to be happy, she did just fine working in the feed store, with Granny there in the back room helping with the babies. Those young’uns was more’n a handful for the spry old woman, playing with their blocks back there in the big kitchen and running their little trucks around, and Lacie June already playing house with the soft dolls Granny made. In between customers Florie Mae could step back into the kitchen and hug Bobbie Lee and Lacie June and wipe their sticky hands and sit down for a minute, with the two hanging on her, and nurse the baby. She could help them with their color books and help Bobbie Lee learn his numbers and his letters. And Granny Lee was there to make the noon dinner and all, to fry up some pork and make beans and corn-bread, or fry up a chicken, and always plenty left over for supper, with fresh tomatoes and greens from the garden.

  Life would be just about perfect, Florie Mae thought, if Grady Coulter didn’t always come nosing ’round the store. If she hadn’t to be shut in the store so near Grady ever couple days. Grady knew he did that to her, he saw her blushes and confusion. Grady stopping in to buy a little of this or that, one hank of baling wire, a couple of tomato plants for his ma, he said, and then he’d stand watching her.

  Not that Grady did anything, exactly.

  And not that he didn’t, neither, the way he looked at her.

  You want to come in the back, Florie Mae? Show me where them bags of cracked corn are stacked?

  No, Grady. You know as well as I do where that corn is stacked.

  You want to show me, in the back there, which of them termater plants’ll make the best crop, Florie Mae?

  No, Grady. You know more about growing tomatoes than I do—or you can ask your ma. She knows all about such matters.

  Well, Florie Mae, maybe tonight you’ll step out in the back yard there around the sheds, and we can have us a little kiss.

  Go on, Grady, get along home. I’m a growed woman with three children and I don’t have time for your foolishness.

  All right, Florie Mae, he’d say, stepping out the door and looking back at her. All right, but maybe tonight, round after supper time, I’ll be out there, waitin’.

  Of course he never was, nor did she expect him to be.

  But she set the cat-trap early, way before dark fell.

  And ever’ time after Grady left the store, she had to wrestle with that hot feeling that left her addle-headed and annoyed with herself—and ashamed.

  And then if she got busy with the little ones and had to wait until after dark to set the trap, had to sneak out when Granny was upstairs, she’d carry the heavy meat-pounder in her pocket that, if she’d ever hit anyone with it, would leave a waffle grid on their skull. Hurrying out in the dark with her little packet of table scraps for bait, she’d search the shadows for the tomcat. But she’d be lookin’ for Grady, too. Or for anyone else who might be hanging around.

  She was spooked, all right, thinking about Rebecca. Out in the dark yard she’d slide that food into the cage real quick and hurry back across the open concrete, hurry back into the steamy warm kitchen. Pour herself a glass of tea from the jar in the refrigerator and sit at the table, feeling sick with fear, fear for herself and her babies. Sick, wondering what had happened to Rebecca. She’d get to thinking about the fellows Rebecca’d dated before Tommie, about Grady, and Albern Haber, and a dozen others. Albern was taller than James or Grady, well over six feet, with eyes so dark they looked black, and straight black hair hanging below his collar. Albern liked to dance, he was a dancin’ fool: if you dated Albern Haber, you better wear dancin’ shoes and you better be able to hold your beer. She’d get to thinking about Albern, with his sometimes rude ways, and about the older men who always looked sideways at Rebecca, watching and watching her. She’d get to wondering too much about what could have happened, let her imagination get to wandering, remembering stories on the TV news about mass murders. How maybe the first murder was an accident but it got the killer all worked up. Set him off on a rampage of killing. Just like that tomcat would get set off killing baby kittens, work up a regular hunger for killing.

  And then Florie Mae got scared maybe she’d brought bad luck, her thinking like that. Because, not two weeks later, the middle of June, a second girl come up missing. Over in Simms, the other end of Farley County.

  She told herself a person didn’t bring bad luck, that was foolish talk. Well, everyone knew something terrible had happened. Two pretty girls couldn’t go missing, the same summer, without there was foul play. Middle of June and it was tornado weather for sure, the sky heavy-dark with clouds and rumbling like a cornered bear, the night Susan Slattery was reported missing. Simms was just twenty miles from Greeley. Florie Mae would remember the time because the tomato plants were all but sold out, just the half-dead leggy ones left, when their hired boy, Lester, brought her the Greeley paper. She didn’t know Susan very well, but sometimes Susan worked in Greeley, helping out in the office at the trade school. And she dated several Greeley fellows though Florie Mae didn’t know that she was serious about any of them.

  The day Susan disappeared, there still had been no sign of Rebecca and no lead to help the sheriff. Tommie was still crisscrossing the county looking in all the back country and around old abandoned home-places for some sign to her. Florie Mae imagined him searching every patch of tangled woods, and every old dry well and shallow draw, dreading to find Rebecca’s grave but unable to rest until he did find it or found Rebecca herself miraculously alive. That evening that Susan vanished, it was hot as sin in the Feed and Garden, and the storm just a-rumbling. It was near to closing time, Florie Mae was toting up the day’s receipts at the front desk—she was getting real good at keeping the books, as good as James, he’d said—when Lester came stumbling in the front door carrying the Greeley paper from the Cash-and-Carry. He just shoved the paper at her, front page up. He couldn’t talk right, he was so upset, was stuttering the way he always did when he got aggrieved.

  Well, no wonder. Lester had growed up in Simms and had went all through school to tenth grade just two years behind Susan, Lester’s family’d lived right next door to the Slattery home-place, its five houses all occupied by Slattery’s, so Lester had played all his life with Susan’s two little brothers and her cousins. Florie Mae suspected that Lester’d had a boy-sized crush on Susan, the way he was acting, so naturally he’d be upset, with the headlines blabbing,

  SECOND WOMAN DISAPPEARS,

  SHERIFF SUSPECTS FOUL PLAY

  Florie Mae read quickly, watching Lester. Susan Slattery hadn’t come home from work at the new Wal-Mart out on the highway. Her parents said she never had liked working late, but she was saving money to go to the two-year college. And she had been helping them make house payments. They were all tore up that she’d gone out working late and someone, some son-of-a-bitch, her father said, had gotten to her. He saw no other explanation. The paper was real sympathetic but it did criticize the Farley County sheriff for letting this kind of thing happen twice in just a few weeks.

  Standing beside the counter not looking at her, looking down at his shoes as he usually did, Lester was silently crying, a quiet little gulping that made her want to comfort him. She reached out to him, but then she drew her hand back. She was uncertain why. And she stepped back from the counter.

  Lester was thin and tall, with round shoulders. You could tell a mile away he was a Slattery. Same light brown eyes and brown hair as all the Slatterys, and with the same weak chin. Same way of looking down at the floor most of the time, like he didn’t know where else to look. But Lester was strong, and James was proud to have him. He c
ould hike the straw bales and the heavy creosote fence posts right up to the top of the shed just as good as James could, could toss up the heavy rolls of wire fencing to James. The sight of the two of them working so easy together always warmed her.

  Florie Mae did most of the watering and took care of the nursery plants, feeding them and repotting them when they needed it, but James and Lester did the heavy work. They’d be hard put to do without Lester.

  But this evening, Lester just stood there in the center of the store, staring at his toes, his knuckles in his mouth, silently bawling. Florie Mae tried to think if Lester had ever taken Susan out. But that couldn’t be, Lester might look grown up but he was hardly more than a child.

  Folding the paper she laid it on the counter and looked at Lester. At the top of his head. “Lester, go out back and unload the truck, get those bags stored away in the shed. Then get on over to the sheriff’s office, see if you can help look for Susan. Sheriff’s bound to be sending out posses.” Florie Mae didn’t know if that was true, but it would give Lester something to think about. Same as Bobbie Lee and Lacy June when they got to bawling. Granny or Florie Mae would start walking them around looking at the new pots of bright flowers or pointing out the birds nesting under the tin roof, and pretty soon they’d forget what they were bellyaching about.

  But Lester was harder to deal with than her little children. When he looked up at her, the tears were just running down.

  “It’s better for you to be doing something, Lester, than moping around the store. Go on now, get a wiggle on.”

  Lester went, scuffing along. Granny said that boy watched his feet so much it was a wonder he knew what part of town he was in.

  The paper said Susan had left her cashier’s job at Wal-Mart at 9 in the evening. None of the clerks had seen her once she walked out the door, didn’t know if she’d got in her own car, or what. But her green Plymouth was gone, no sign of it.