The Ballad of West Tenth Street

by Marjorie Kernan

  Eventually he hung there in the water and felt it fill him. His paws churned the water a last time and then his lungs filled and he died.

  The Cap’n walked happily home, cheered by having seen his pal. He was very careful to make no noise as he opened the gate and went into the cabin. He sat in the armchair sighing, reaching to take his boots off. But something was terribly wrong. With a heart frozen by fear he saw the bed and knew its murderous intent. He looked around, but the one who had done it was clearly gone. Inside his icy reason he feared one thing over all others.

  “Titus,” he called softly, going down on his hands and knees. “Titus?” Very carefully he explored every spot the cat might hide in. There were not many. Oh Titus, where are you?

  Wait, there’s a chance he escaped to the garden and is hiding there. Taking off his bulky coat and picking up a flashlight, the Cap’n went out and began quartering the garden in a crouch, whispering: “Titus, Titus.”

  The hope that had filled him when he began searching the garden leached from his mind as he came to the back fence. Sitting very still he listened for an answering meow. He sometimes thought he did hear one, at times was almost sure of it, yet he knew that almost sure is a long way from reality.

  Aiming his flashlight over the stone terrace he saw something in its beam. A tuft of silky hair, which the breeze had already begun to scatter. He picked it up and touched it, a hair floated up and clung to his nose. Unheeding, he let out a cry, an uncomprehending note of despair.

  Deen woke with a start. She looked over at Gretchen in the other bed but she was sleeping soundly. The sound, whatever it had been, caught on the hem of sleep, had not come from her. Concentrating on what the sound had been like, she thought it had come from below, in the garden. Putting on her bathrobe and slippers she went downstairs, taking a flashlight from where it was kept by the back door.

  Cap’n Meat was standing on the terrace, looking down at something in his hand. Deen touched his arm and saw that it was a tuft of orange and white fur. She shook him, mutely asking him to tell her what had happened?

  “I went out. Someone very bad came while I was gone. Titus is missing.”

  “Have you looked for him everywhere?”

  “Yes, everywhere.”

  Deen looked around the garden. “Titus, here kitty,” she called out softly, moving to look under some bushes. A queer feeling came over her, as if she could feel Titus’s presence, feel some trace of pain or fear in the air, no, she could smell it. Walking across the terrace, her eyes half shut, she traced it, traced the tingle of molecules through the air. “Over here,” she said. She was standing next to the old well.

  The Cap’n went to it and pushed the heavy oak cover aside. Deen pointed her flashlight down. Titus floated below them, his tiger-striped fur caressed by the vagaries of the water, flowing out then flowing closer to his body, silently and slowly in the black water.

  Cap’n Meat fetched a plank and placed it over the well, then crawled onto it to reach down and pull up the body of his cat. He saw that his paws were bloodied by the attempt to climb out, so he hid them from Deen.

  “I know!” she cried. “How he tried and tried to climb out. How all alone he was and how he tried time after time to get out. I wish I’d never known him, wish I’d never loved him or knew anything about him. I wish I couldn’t see how much he suffered.”

  Crying as if she would never be free of her grief, Deen turned and ran back into the house.

  The Cap’n’s eyes followed her sadly. The poor girl, if only she could have been spared seeing that. Taking the lifeless body of his cat in his arms, he carried him into the cabin. He carefully dried Titus’s fur with a towel, then sat in the armchair with him on his lap, stroking him. I’m sorry, he said, so sorry. Oh, my dear friend, if only I’d been here to protect you. I am so sorry. Oh, please don’t leave me, I’ll be so all alone. I loved you so much. You were the best and noblest companion a man has ever had. You were my friend.

  He sat for a long time, with the body of his cat on his lap, absently stroking it. Eventually he got up and wrapped it in a towel, because it seemed that as a once-living thing traveled closer to its own cellular destruction it needed the dignity of a shroud. But he couldn’t lay it down all alone, so he held it on his lap for the rest of the night.

  35

  Gretchen went down to the kitchen the next morning to find Ettie hunched over the table, weeping. When she heard Gretchen’s step and looked up, Gretchen asked with her eyes, What’s wrong?

  “Oh, missy, something terrible. The cat of the Capitain’s who is so nice? A devil, an evil one, came into his cabin last night, when the Capitain he is gone, and threw the cat down the well. Yes, he drown. The bad one, he cut up the Capitain’s bed too, into many, many pieces, like he want to kill him. Mother of God this a bad world sometime. And what will the poor Capitain do without this friend of his? We know to love him, when we see how he love his cat. Such a good cat, always so clean.” Ettie put her hands over her face, her shoulders shaking.

  Gretchen put her arms around Ettie. When her shaking had quieted, she went to make her a cup of strong coffee, putting plenty of sugar and heated milk into it. She set it firmly in front of Ettie.

  Ettie, being a good girl, wiped her eyes and drank. And when Gretchen pushed some buttered toast before her, she ate.

  Feeling she could safely leave Ettie now, Gretchen patted her hand and went off in search of Deen.

  Next door, Brenda wielded the vacuum with more than her customary ferocity, aiming it over the rug as she narrowly missed furniture legs with it, all the while muttering to herself. Switching it off, she took an oiled dust cloth from her pocket and began attacking the surfaces.

  What am I thinking, she muttered, not doing the dusting first, then the vacuuming? Everything’s at sixes and sevens lately, and that’s the truth. Liall had told her that some crazy man had thrown that old bum’s cat down the well. Lord, and why would a person want to go and kill a cat? Sure enough, aren’t pets the most trusting of Your innocent creatures? But that old bum’s just another forlorn human, can’t even keep his own cat safe, probably went out and got himself all liquored up. Boozing and paying no mind to his own kind, just like all men.

  Her dusting brought her to the piano, which she swatted and rubbed at. Glancing out the French doors, she saw Liall, Hamish, and the Cap’n digging a hole in the next garden. Oh Lord, just look at that old bum, every line of him one of misery. Fooled everyone into being nice to him just because of that cat of his, when he’s just some worthless layabout, who ought to be doing a job of work like the rest of us. Only it doesn’t seem right, him losing his pet that way, not right at all. I guess maybe I just might go and pay my respects, that sure was a nice-looking cat. Throwing some poor cat down a well, that’s the Devil’s work.

  Gretchen could not find Deen because she was tucked behind the boiler in the cubicle next to Ettie’s kitchen, her head on her knees, feeling and puzzling her way through a miasma of such abject misery that she felt herself unfit for human society.

  The colonel walked heavily up to his bedroom to put on a more somber suit. He chose the dark gray, rather than the black, which he decided would be too gloomily Victorian. He exchanged his brogues for a pair of black shoes, lacing them carefully and tying the bows. Picking up his watch and chain from the leather box on the dresser, he fed the chain through his vest and tucked the watch into its pocket. He hadn’t been able to read time from it for nearly fifty years, but it was a repeater and chimed the hour when he opened it. It had been his grandfather’s watch, and with it he’d not only been able to keep a sense of respectability, he’d also been able to maintain the fiction of his sight, looking down at it to say, “My word, nearly half past six.”

  He went slowly downstairs, counting the steps, until he reached the kitchen. Turning his head from side to side, as if inspecting his domain, he said, “Hello?”

  “Oh, Colonel,” Ettie’s voice answered. “It’s all ready
. You go out first, I walk behind you. If you give me your arm, like you’re being nice, I’ll show you where to walk.”

  “Right we are,” the colonel said. He was carrying his family prayer book, in which had been inscribed the names of his ancestors, all the way back to the first Harringtons in the New World, who’d arrived in the Virginia Colony in the 1620s. Their descendant, Blaylock Harrington, had fought with his four grown sons in the revolution, going to war with the rifles they hunted for food with.

  It was a beautiful spring day, nearly as fair and warm as early summer. The leaves budding out were fresh and palely green. The quince was in bloom and the wisteria beginning to show trails of lavender. It was a day so lovely it mocked sorrow.

  Brenda looked very churchy, in her navy blue coat and hat. Ettie whispered to the colonel: “Liall’s mother.” The colonel turned in what he hoped was the right direction and bowed to her.

  Hamish, Liall, Deen, and Gretchen stood to one side. Deen clutched a bunch of daffodils, which she’d mangled rather badly in her grief. She was blubbing quietly yet unceasingly. Hamish had tried to get her to shut up, but decided that it was hopeless, as she’d only blubbed louder.

  The Cap’n was very much touched by everyone coming, even Liall’s mother, who he knew did not approve of him. He patted Titus’s form and whispered to him that he was being sent off in state. He’d sewn the cat’s body into a canvas sack at daybreak, placing a bit of plank under him first. He’d had an idea that if Deen saw the cat’s limp form, she’d take it even worse. In this he was quite correct, and saved Deen from howls of pity, as he carefully placed the stiff bundle into the ground.

  “Ahem,” the colonel said. “Perhaps a few words to see this very fine creature off to the next world. I thought I might read the burial service. It was written, of course, for man, but in this case I think is more than appropriate for the friend who we mourn today.”

  Opening his prayer book to a random page, he recited the service. When he’d done, there was a silence, then Brenda said “Amen!” The Cap’n, helped by the two boys, filled in the grave.

  As people went quietly away, Brenda shook the Cap’n’s hand, saying she was sorry for his loss. Hamish and Liall went off to throw a basketball around, both of them feeling the need to hit something quite hard. Later they discussed some elaborate plans for catching the person who’d killed Titus, and killing him in turn. They weren’t terribly practical plans, but not lacking in gumption, and the grit to carry them out.

  The colonel went back to his parlor to consult with Mrs. D by phone. There was no question in his mind that that woman would not only make sure that fellow never got in again to harm them, but would personally see to it that he was put in custody. He didn’t like the idea of causing another human any harm, but in this case, shooting was too good for the fellow.

  Only Gretchen, Deen, and the Cap’n remained in the garden. Gretchen knelt over Titus’s grave, smoothing it and tucking bits of sod into place. It was a fine grave, well mounded up, and wouldn’t sink into a pitiful hollow after a few months.

  Deen sat hunched on the step to the terrace, crying in ragged gasps, while the Cap’n patted her hand, looking wretched. Suddenly she let out a howl of pain. “I can’t stop thinking of him in that well, trying and trying to get out, all alone!” she wailed.

  Gretchen got up and went over to stand in front of her sister. Taking her by the shoulders, she shook her, forcing her to look at her.

  The old bum and the young girl looked up at Gretchen, startled. It was clear she had something to say. They waited.

  “The world has sadness in it,” Gretchen began at last. “Suffering is always with us, and inside of us, and around us. Once, I felt it too strongly, heard too many cries of pain, too many whimperings of the cast-off and broken. Until it drove me mad. Worse, I forgot the other voices, the ones that must exist too if sorrow does, the sounds of joy.

  “Yes, your friend struggled alone in his last few moments to live. And he did not live. We are all animals, awaiting our death. But think if we only had that, birth and survival and then death, never knowing friendship or love? You rescued that cat as a kitten, Cap’n, were his friend and protector. He spent nearly all his life with you, loving you and knowing that your voice and touch could be trusted until the end.

  “What you cry for, Deen, is his trust. Your tears honor him, but they also find too much meaning in the random cruelty of the world. His death was not just the result of man’s cruelty, but also the cruelty of existence, the unknowing, spinning world that we live on that brings to a place, an hour, a creature’s fate.

  “The two of you are children. Good, kind-hearted children who put yourselves in his place and cry with pity, imagining him calling out and lonely as he died. It’s you who are calling out and lonely now, tormenting yourselves in your own well of suffering, while around you everywhere are others who’ve never known what that cat knew of love.”

  Deen blew her nose into a sodden Kleenex, which promptly fell into pieces. The Cap’n offered her his bandana. “Did you feel like you’d been thrown down a dark place, when you were taken to Rollingbrook?” she asked Gretchen.

  “No, Deen. I was lost inside my own wandering then and didn’t know what I was, or how I felt. Later, I did feel abandoned, but as my reason came back I realized that I’d been smashing up everything around me. Even then I couldn’t stop wanting to undo things, make a mess.

  “I had to think very hard. You see, I didn’t want to lose that part of myself, the negative. As objects are defined by shade, so is the psyche. But when it grows destructive, blots everything else out, well, they cut that part out of a person with drugs, they have to. I had to find a way to keep it inside me, but not let it tell me what to do. Maybe I had to take that part out and touch it all over, in order to keep it where it belongs.”

  “Do you think you might actually have been beset by demons?” Deen asked, quite interested by the idea.

  “Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”

  “Are you going to be normal now?”

  “No, Deen. I hope I shall never be normal. Now you mustn’t talk to me for several days, I’ve used up a year’s worth of words.”

  Oh look!” Sadie said, “it’s the dear old Brooklyn Bridge.” She was burbling, addressing herself first to the driver of the ambulance, then to Brian, in back. “Gawd, it’s been two months. Since I abandoned my children for this git here, the one strapped in the back,” she explained to the driver.

  “Do you think my children will recognize me?”

  “I’m sure something about your face will ring a bell,” Brian said. “Stir up all sorts of bad memories.”

  “Darling, I never should’ve let you have that coffee. The doctor warned me you’ll need to be reintroduced to stimulants very, very slowly.”

  “Oh, get stuffed.”

  “You hear how he talks to me?” Sadie asked the driver. “What’s your name?”

  “Dennis.”

  “I should change that, if I were you.”

  “What’s the matter with Dennis?” he said.

  “She’s a right snob, our Saids is,” Brian shouted from the back. “But she’s onto something; Dennis is never going to get you anywhere.”

  “We can’t help teasing you just a tiny bit,” Sadie explained to Dennis. “After all those grisly weeks in the company of the most direly serious people. Doctors are so humorless these days, don’t you find? They seem to think anyone with a few kinks in them is headed straight for hell. While Brian lay there pretending to be dead for weeks and weeks, and I had to stay in the most wretched hotel, the most ghastly place you can imagine. And I had to abandon my children for all that time, and they’ve all run away from where I left them, taking the law into their own tiny hands—oh look! It’s our block! Do honk the horn, dear Dennis, please. Oh for Christ’s sake, don’t be such a lump, honk the horn. Live a little, signal to all that I’m home, with Lazarus back there, in tow. I don’t know, how about tw
o bits and a shave? Whatever grabs you.”

  Walk back now, away from the house with the blue door and the tarnished brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin. Stop for a moment to let the ambulance driver get that man in the wheelchair out, stand considerately out of his way. And wonder a bit about who they are, the runnelly faced man and the woman with the untidy hair helping to tug him up the front steps, then dumping her pocketbook upside down to find her keys. There’s a story there, it’s clear, but this is New York, where people don’t stare, so walk on, past the basement Suds Café with its Formica tables strewn with yesterday’s papers. Past that restaurant that always looks so chic, its window seats piled with jade green silk pillows. Back toward Seventh Avenue, below the tiny office built into a turret that juts over the street from the white brick parking garage, the one that looks so neat, with its vintage metal desk and red swivel chair. Back to the noise and traffic on Seventh that thunders and roars like a great river, past sushi joints and newsstands, head shops, book shops, and solid brownstones, their shutters prudently closed against the curious gaze of those passing by.

  About the Author

  Marjorie Kernan, a former painter, owns an antiques shop on the coast of Maine. This is her first novel.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Credits

  Cover design by Robin Bilardello

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE BALLAD OF WEST TENTH STREET. Copyright © 2009 by Marjorie Kernan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.