Cat Bearing Gifts

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  The old guy had turned, looking across the rock slide toward him, but Vic didn’t think he could see him, there behind the truck. Guy told the dispatcher, “Nothing stirring over there. I’ll have a look, see what I can do. Yes, I’ll stay on the line.”

  He spoke to the woman again, dropped the phone in his pocket, and started limping across the rock slide. He turned back once, to the woman, his voice raised against the pounding of the surf. “You sure you’re okay?” She nodded, then mumbled something as he moved on away. The old guy negotiated the rock pile half crawling, his white hair and tan sport coat caught brightly by the truck’s one headlight. But Vic’s attention was on the Town Car, on the big, heavy Lincoln. A car like that could take a lot of abuse. Even with deep dents and dings from the slide, it looked like it would move right on out and with plenty of power to spare.

  Easing back around to the pickup, where the old guy crossing the rocks couldn’t see him, Vic pulled the plastic bag of money out from under the seat and stuffed it inside his shirt. He didn’t speak to his passenger; Birely was pretty much out of it, close to unconscious, gasping as if he wouldn’t last too long. Vic watched the old man approach, balancing precariously, the pain showing in the twist of his long face. He moved on past Vic, never seeing him, and as he scrambled and slid down the unsteady boulders, Vic eased closer in behind the camper, hefting the weight of the tire iron. The old guy paused at the turned-over delivery truck, stood looking in at the dead driver. Shook his head and moved on, to the pickup. He still didn’t see Vic until Vic stepped out into the truck’s headlight, holding the tire iron low against his leg. The old man looked him over, took in the tire iron, and glanced into the cab of the pickup. “Your friend needs help.”

  “Best let him be,” Vic said, “best not move him.”

  The old man nodded, watching him. “My wife’s hurt. I called 911, ambulance is on its way. They’ll both have help. I’ve got to get back to her, I think her arm is broken. You have any flares? I have two, I can set them down the road, at that end.”

  Vic didn’t say anything. He nodded and stepped closer. The man was lean and, despite his look of frailty, Vic could see now that he was wiry, tightly muscled. He wore his white hair short, in a military cut, ice pale against his tan. The old guy was quick, he saw Vic’s intention—the instant Vic swung the tire iron he lunged, grabbing for it despite the hurt leg.

  But his timing was off, Vic stepped aside, hit him a glancing blow across the head. When he tried to break his fall, clutching at loose rocks, Vic kicked him hard. He went flat, didn’t move again, lay bleeding onto the blacktop. Stepping around him, Vic saw Birely looking out at him, helpless and pleading.

  He’d thought to leave Birely, the guy was already half dead, but some stupid softness touched him, he couldn’t leave the dumb bastard. “Hoist yourself out of there, Birely.” He didn’t wait to see if Birely could get out, he headed on past the old man, who was bleeding bad now, past the turned-over truck and across the rockfall toward the Lincoln. He heard Birely struggling behind him, groaning as he tried to free himself. Hell, he wasn’t jammed in there that tight, he could get out if he tried.

  Approaching the driver’s side of the Lincoln, Vic saw that the bumper was knocked loose on one end. It wasn’t low enough yet to drag and make a racket, he’d find something to tie it in place. He didn’t see much else wrong, he just hoped to hell the other side wasn’t bashed in or that the other wheel wasn’t bent. The passenger door hung open, the interior lights on. The woman sat holding her left arm, the damn cat still in her lap. He could see the keys in the ignition. He stood by the hood, watching her, holding the tire iron low and out of sight.

  KIT WATCHED HIM approach, the thud of his steps timed to the rhythm of the breaking waves. He paused by the hood of the car, and frantically she nudged Lucinda, her nose against Lucinda’s ear. “Get out,” she whispered, “get away. Now, Lucinda! Move!”

  Slowly Lucinda climbed out, unsteady on her feet, shaking her head as if to clear it, cradling her hurt arm.

  “Hurry,” Kit hissed.

  “I can’t, I can’t move faster.”

  The man stood watching. Can he hear me? Kit thought. So screw him. “You can!” she hissed, her fur bristling. “Run, Lucinda. Run!” her voice more hiss than whisper.

  He stepped to the car, blocking Lucinda. Lucinda grabbed Kit with her good hand, catching her breath with the pain. She twisted awkwardly, threw Kit as far as she could, out toward the rock slide. “Run, Kit! Run!” Kit landed on rubble, spun around and leaped atop the car. Lucinda had turned, reaching in. She backed out holding the big flashlight where he might not see it. When he grabbed for her, she swung.

  But again he was faster, he snatched her hand, jerked the flashlight from her, shoved her down against the fallen rocks. Kit leaped on him, landed in his face clawing and raking him. Lucinda rose awkwardly, turned, kicked him in the shin then in the front of the knee. He swung the tire iron hard across her shoulder, shoved her down again as Kit rode his back, clawing. He grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, swinging her out away from him. When she bit down hard on his arm, he threw her against the car. She tried to run, but staggered dizzily. Sick and confused, she backed away among the fallen rocks. He was a hard-muscled man, his arms brown and knotted and tasted unwashed. Long hair hanging down his back, dishwater brown, a short scraggly beard oozing blood where her claws had raked. Ice-blue eyes, cold and pale. He had moved around the Lincoln to the driver’s side when, across the slide, she heard a car door open.

  The passenger in the pickup staggered out. A small man with short brown hair, his face and plaid shirt slick with blood, his nose running blood. He came slowly across the rock pile, stumbling uncertainly, breathing through his mouth, wiping at the blood that ran from his nose. The man with the tire iron got in the Lincoln. “Get a move on, Birely.” He started the engine, gunned it, paying no attention to Lucinda sprawled so near the front wheels. His friend stumbled on across, falling on loose rocks, clutching at the larger boulders, stepping over Lucinda as if she were another rock. Edging around the Lincoln, he crawled awkwardly into the passenger seat. The driver pushed the engine to a roar. Kit ran to Lucinda, Lucinda grabbed her and rolled away as he backed around narrowly missing them. He took off in a shower of rocks, heading fast down the mountain on the twisting two-lane.

  ALONE AMONG THE wreck with only a dead man to keep them company, Kit and Lucinda huddled together trembling with rage. Against the rhythm of the waves came the metallic ticks of the two wrecked trucks, settling more solidly into the highway. From higher up the mountain among the pine forest, a lone coyote began to yip.

  “Cops will be here soon,” Kit said, “and an ambulance.”

  “I’m fine,” Lucinda told her. “Go to Pedric. Go and see to Pedric.” Her color was gray. She held her left shoulder unnaturally, and her left arm hung limp. Kit pressed a soft paw against Lucinda’s wrinkled cheek, pressed her face to Lucinda’s jugular, listening. Lucinda’s heartbeat was too rapid, faster even than Kit’s own feline rhythm. She pawed into her housemate’s jacket pocket, careful not to touch Lucinda’s arm or shoulder, searching for Lucinda’s phone. It seemed forever ago that Pedric had called 911, but she couldn’t hear even the faintest sound of sirens down on the flatland, could see no flashing emergency lights below approaching up the two-lane, no one to help them. The shushing of the sea, with its eons-old assurance that all was well, that all of importance in the world would last forever, didn’t comfort her much. She thought about a car coming down the mountain from above moving too fast as those trucks had done, the driver ignorant of the wreck ahead, not yet seeing the lone and disembodied headlight shooting up the rock slide. How far could such a light be seen, on that curving road? With no flares to mark the wreck, would an approaching car stop to help or would it crash into them? She found the phone, and before she raced to Pedric, she hit the key for 911.

  She had no notion whe
re central dispatch was located for these small coastal towns north of Molena Point, and she didn’t know if they could track a cell phone. Some areas could, and some didn’t have that equipment. When a woman dispatcher came on, Kit gave directions as best she could. She said Pedric had called earlier but that no one had come. She was so afraid of another car plowing into them that she was nearly yowling into the phone, her frightened words not much better than the scream of a common alley cat. “Hurry! Oh, please hurry . . . They’ve stolen our car, a black Lincoln Town Car, could you watch for it? Put out a BOL on it? Two men in it, one hurt bad.” She described the men as best she could, all the while thinking about the treasure hidden in the doors of the Lincoln, wondering how soon the thieves would find that. The wealth was of no consequence, compared to her hurt housemates, but it enraged her to see it stolen. Clicking off, she stood looking down the highway wondering if, alone, she could drag Lucinda off the road and up among the boulders, safe from an oncoming car? Drag Pedric up, too, get them both higher up, away from further danger? When the dispatcher asked for her name, she said, “Lucinda Greenlaw. My husband’s hurt, the man who took our car beat him.” When the dispatcher told her to stay on the line, Kit laid the phone down, set her teeth firmly in Lucinda’s jacket on her unhurt side, and began to pull. She could do this, she had to do this. Maybe the loose rocks beneath Lucinda would serve as a kind of rolling platform. Straining to get Lucinda up onto them, she fought as she had never fought, every muscle of her small cat body taut and stretched, crying out, her paws scrabbling for traction until her pads tore and became slick with blood that made her slip and slide. Lucinda tried to help, tried to roll with her, tried twice to get up but fell back, sweating with pain.

  “Go to Pedric, Kit. You can’t move me. Let me rest, then we’ll try again. Maybe easier, once I’ve rested. Go help Pedric. Is he bleeding? Can you stop the blood?”

  Kit licked Lucinda’s face, her own face wet with tears, then headed fast across the rock slide, praying for the gift of strength, knowing that if she couldn’t move Lucinda, she couldn’t move Pedric, either, only knowing that she had to try, that she had to help them.

  4

  IF EVER KIT cursed her small size it was now as she raced across the slide to Pedric. Diving under the twisted delivery truck, its metal cab tilting over her, loose rocks shifting under her blood-slippery paws, she heard the coyote yodel again, high above her, and then go ominously still. Pedric lay in a pool of blood beside the crumpled pickup, his forehead running blood. Hesitantly she pressed her paw against the gash where it flowed hardest, telling herself that head wounds always bled a lot. Soon she was pressing with both paws, with all her weight, but still the blood pooled warm beneath her pads, mixed with her own blood. She tried not to think of the billions of cat germs she was sharing with Pedric, that might harm him, and about the gravel her paws had collected, that would become embedded now in his open wounds. He was conscious, but only barely, whispering vague little love words to her. The only other sounds in the empty night were the tick, tick of the settling vehicles, the voice of the waves far below, and the dripping of some liquid nearby that she prayed wasn’t gasoline. Well, she didn’t smell gas, so maybe it was oil or water.

  Her paws grew numb with the pressure, but soon the bleeding did ease, and when the coyote yipped again she wondered if he smelled Pedric’s blood on the rising sea wind. Pedric said, “Don’t let me sleep, Kit, keep me awake. I need to stay awake.” He talked vaguely about a concussion, then rambled on from one subject to another that had no connection to what was happening at that moment. When he went silent she nudged him and made him talk again. Once, as she shifted her weight over him, he startled and tried to rise, looking around fearfully as if expecting another blow from the tire iron.

  “He’s gone, those men are gone. Lie still.”

  “Lucinda? Where’s Lucinda?” he said, pushing her aside, straining to get up.

  “She’s fine,” Kit lied, trying to press him down. “She’s only hurt a little, she . . .” She went still, listening, her heart quickening. She could hear, far down the mountain, the faintest echo of sirens whooping, she heard that thin ululation long before Pedric did. “They’re coming,” she said, “the cops, an ambulance.” Rearing up, she could see lights flashing far down the mountain, red and blue lights disappearing around the curves and appearing again, accompanied by the approaching whoop whoop and scream of emergency vehicles that put the coyote’s cries to shame. Now Pedric heard them, and he lay back, dragging her onto his chest, hugging and loving her.

  But soon again he rose on one elbow looking past the turned-over truck, searching for the reflection of the Lincoln’s lights that had been angled up the cliff, lights that would mark the wreck on the other side, for the approaching cars to see. “Lucinda,” he said, struggling up. “They won’t see her. I left the lights on . . . Did she shut them off?” He rose further, looking. “Where . . . ? Kit, where’s the Lincoln?”

  She looked at him, puzzled. Hadn’t he seen and heard the Lincoln drive away? “It’s gone,” she said softly. “They took our car, those men took it.”

  He struggled up, the blood gushed harder again. “Lucinda. Where’s Lucinda?”

  “She got out before they took the car, she’s fine.” She nuzzled him, but as the sirens drew near she spun and raced away again, under the cab of the big truck and across the rockfall. Surely they’d see Lucinda lying there. How could they help but see her? The sirens blared, approaching up the steep highway, soon their lights would blaze along the side of the cliff. But Lucinda seemed so small, lying there unprotected and alone. In just a second they’ll be here, the world will be filled with their bright, swinging lights, they’ll see her, there’ll be uniforms all over the place, they’ll see Lucinda and help her and comfort her. They’ll help Lucinda and Pedric, cops or sheriff’s deputies or whoever come, they’ll have spotlights, they—

  Oh, she thought, but what will they do with me?

  Or try to do, if they could catch me?

  They sure wouldn’t take her in the ambulance, that was probably against the rules, to contaminate their germ-free rolling hospital with kitty fur and dander. Maybe they’d try to lock her in a squad car, drop her off at the nearest animal rescue to be kept “safe” in a locked cage until someone claimed her, like a piece of baggage lost at some lonely airport.

  And, if no one claimed her soon enough, if no one thought to look for her there, what, then, would they do with her?

  No way! No one’s taking me to the pound.

  She found Lucinda several feet higher up the rockfall than she’d left her, lying huddled into herself, the phone abandoned beside her, her face white with the effort it had taken to climb just that far. She licked Lucinda’s cheek and nosed at her worriedly. She prayed to the human God or the great cat god or whoever might be listening, prayed for Lucinda, and then the cops were there, the flash of colored lights, the last whoop of the sirens, the powerful shafts of spotlights sweeping back and forth. Patrol cars skidded to a stop, cops spilled out, the flashing strobe lights blinded her, strafing the highway and the fallen rocks, picking out Lucinda and the two wrecked trucks. Lucinda clutched at her, attempting to hold her safe. Kit ducked beneath Lucinda’s jacket, trying to decide what to do.

  The thought of strangers’ hands on her, even the kindest of cops, the thought of barred cages that she might not be able to open, of being locked in some shelter all alone, the thought of possible clerical mistakes where she’d be put up for adoption before anyone could come to fetch her, or consigned to a far worse fate, was all too much. Cops knew how to care for needful humans, but that might not extend to a terrified cat. Snatching up Lucinda’s phone between her gripping teeth, she scrambled out from under the jacket and ran.

  “Oh, Kit, don’t . . .”

  She didn’t look back, she fled straight up the cliff, dodging between rivers of sweeping light, gripping the heavy pho
ne; it nearly overbalanced her as she scrambled up the sheer wall of stone. Only tiny outcroppings offered a claw hold until, higher up, an occasional weed or stunted bush kept her from falling. The phone grew heavier still, forcing her head away from the cliff. Twice she nearly fell. Scrambling in panic, she veered over into the rock slide where she had more paw hold, though the rocks were wobbly and unsteady. Moving up over the loose stones and boulders, she was afraid the whole thing would shift and go tumbling again, hitting her and raining down on Lucinda, who lay now far below her. Higher and higher she climbed, dodging away whenever a slab shifted, breathing raggedly around the phone through her open mouth, her heart pounding so hard that at last she had to stop.

  High up on the lip of the slide, she laid the phone down on a stone outcropping. Below her, portable spotlights blazed down on Lucinda and two medics in dark uniforms knelt over her. Two more medics, one carrying a stretcher, the other carrying a dark bag that would be filled with life-saving medical equipment, were headed across the slide to Pedric. Young men, strong and efficient looking. The very sight of them eased her pounding heart.

  Where will they take them? What hospital? I have to tell Ryan and Clyde, but what do I tell them? A hospital somewhere in Santa Cruz, that’s where we were headed. They’ll know the hospitals, they’ll call CHP to find out, Ryan and Clyde will know where to come, and they’ll come to get me, too, she thought, comforting herself. But how soon? Soon enough, before those coyotes up there find me, soon enough to save my little cat neck?