The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013

by Laura Furman

  “Jess, you got it?” said Chicken.

  I could hear Uncle Alton shout something I couldn’t make out.

  “Jess, you find the door?”

  I moved toward the door, pulled the emergency handle, and slid the boxcar’s door open. The light of the co-op spilled inside and I looked back and saw nothing. Uncle Alton came down the platform stairs with a length of burlap and his set of heavy ice tongs.

  I stepped out of the car and walked toward him. I could feel the bile still burning my throat. The Mexican’s white eyes. The way they moved behind the hard mask of his face. I walked toward my uncle and stopped and looked back. Plainly seen now, in the open door lit by the co-op’s light, was the ice block resting on the oranges.

  “I’ll grab it and slide it onto the burlap. Then we’ll just haul the whole thing back to the icehouse,” Uncle Alton said. I watched as he stepped into the car.

  Years later I’d move to Amarillo, have boys of my own that I would raise in a world very different than the one I had been a child in. I would tell them this story. Only I tell them a version where there is no ice, no oranges, no Mexican man. In it we’re watering cattle cars. A string of thirteen holding Mexican steers, up from Hermosillo. The steers are colorful, I say. Very different than the ones we see in west Texas. The Mexican steers are marked blue and green and yellow, I say, like lichen on granite. And they are wild, and buck against the sides of the wooden cattle car, making it rock. Their horns are like swords and their eyes are black and their breath, God their breath, is awful. I tell them about how Chicken just avoided being crushed when they broke free from the car, how they’d kicked their way through the slat boards, and how Chicken scaled the outside of a boxcar and climbed to the top. I tell them about how I hopped from the platform onto the boxcar’s roof and from there the two of us, safe, watched as the Mexican steers ran. How they scattered into the wash, through the cottonwoods, and out onto the night plain. Running, all of them running. I tell them this story because in the West what we love most are lies. What we love are images of a stampede, of animals running; of what we think are the right stories of stealing away.

  Nalini Jones

  Tiger

  THE TROUBLE WITH THE cats, Essie believed, was entirely her son-in-law Daniel’s fault. They first turned up on the day that Gopi was expected to come shake the coconuts down from the trees. It was mid-morning, a January day without too much Bombay haze, and early enough for the children to play outside without Marian worrying about the heat. Still, she insisted on hats for them. Essie said nothing when her daughter called the girls to the front veranda steps, just sat and helped Marian rub their limbs with lotion to protect them from the sun. Both were fair-skinned, though darker than Daniel, whose pale, pinkish skin reminded Essie of chicken not cooked long enough.

  Marian went upstairs to help the servant Ritu wash the children’s clothes, but Essie stayed to keep an eye on the girls. They were five and six only, babies still by Essie’s reckoning, and it was her belief that Daniel did not pay close enough attention. She knew better than to approach him directly, of course; he would only turn to her with his blank American look and smile his blank American smile. It was all too soft and spongy for Essie, who had wondered when she first met Daniel whether he fully understood her. Who was this man her daughter had married? Did he know proper English? Were his mental faculties intact? She had adjusted her speech in his presence, talking loudly and slowly, using smaller words. But her efforts had no effect and eventually she realized that conversation with her son-in-law would always have a shapeless quality, like sinking her fingers in a lump of dough.

  She had prayed for guidance and patience, as she had once prayed for her daughter to come home again and marry an Indian Catholic boy from their own neighborhood. Such nice-looking boys! Essie had kept her eyes open to suitable possibilities. And then, the shock of this Daniel and his soft American answer: “Well, not exactly Catholic.” There is no exactly in this matter, she’d informed him. A person is Catholic or not. She had confessed her disappointment to all the parish priests. But one after the other, they disappointed her too. What to do, they said, but accept?

  Now when Essie was troubled by his American ways, she took her concerns straight to Marian. But her daughter, so clear-eyed in her girlhood, so close to Essie that they had seemed two limbs of the same living thing, had gone a bit soft herself after so many years in the States. When Essie pointed out that Daniel was too relaxed with the girls, Marian looked down, or away, or said, “Oh, Mum,” as if Essie were one of the children, acting up and tiring her.

  For a little while, the girls practiced badminton, a game their grandfather had played when he was young. Daniel, Essie noted, did not have good form with his swing. But everything had to be cleared away before Gopi arrived and coconuts came pelting down into the compound. Daniel pulled up the stakes of the net and the girls were collecting shuttlecocks. Nicole, who was older, flung her racket onto the lawn and ran up and down the garden wall, checking under leaves and behind the roots of trees as though hunting for Easter eggs. But it was Tara, a year younger, who found the cats behind a thick clump of bamboo and called everyone to come and see.

  “Look at that! Kittens!” Daniel peered into the corner where a mother cat and two half-grown kittens had been hiding. All three were alert and staring.

  “Don’t touch!” Essie said quickly, drawing Tara back. “They’ll scratch.”

  “No, they’re nice,” Nicole decided. She squatted on the ground and held out her hand. One of the kittens made a tentative move closer and Essie inhaled sharply, a sound meant as a warning.

  “So dirty, baby! See their fur? They don’t live with people.”

  “They don’t look too bad,” Daniel said. The mother cat was thin and dingy, with white fur that reminded Essie of yellowed muslin and patches of gray and ginger. One of the kittens was spotted, half its face shadowed in gray, and the other was ginger-striped, as if the mother had poured some part of herself into each of them.

  Nicole extended her arm as far as she could and Daniel put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Not too close, you’ll scare them.” He began to call the animals with a whispery noise.

  “These aren’t your American cats,” Essie said. “They could carry disease.”

  But Tara was spellbound. “One kitten for each of us …”

  “Your grandmother’s right. These cats don’t like to live inside with people.”

  Nicole looked up at her father, stricken. “But we have to take them inside. Gopi is coming!” The danger of the falling coconuts had been impressed upon her all morning; she must hold someone’s hand when Gopi did his work, she must stay safely beneath the veranda roof. Otherwise, tuk! Her grandfather’s fist had knocked against her head. (Essie had watched this display with disapproval and scolded her husband. “Such a thing to clown about, Francis! Have some sense.”)

  Now she hastened to reassure Nicole. “These cats are wild, darling. Like tigers. They like to look after themselves. See the mummy cat? She won’t let anything happen. She’ll hear Gopi and they’ll all go running.”

  “Where?” Tara was solemn, all eyes and wonder.

  “They have places they like to go.” The girls were clearly unconvinced, Tara’s eyes reproachful. Essie spoke brightly. “Maybe they’ll go to the fish market, for a nice piece of fish!”

  “Maybe Ritu has a little fish she can give them,” Daniel suggested. “Let’s see if they want something to eat.”

  “Not in the house,” said Essie at once, but the girls were already scrambling up, naming the cats, begging them not to run off, promising to be back in another minute, stay, stay, their voices high as fevers as they called from the staircase and Essie watched while Daniel followed, letting them run up the steps without holding the railing, not saying a single word to slow them down.

  The next hour was given over to the cats. They were easily lured into the garden with pieces of cheese, and step by step, the girls co
axed them up to the outdoor landing with saucers of milk. This was the main entrance to the upper story, by means of a staircase that began on the far side of the veranda and ran up the side of the house beneath a narrow wooden roof. The small square landing at the top led directly into the front room, and the heavy wooden door was kept open all day long to let in light and air. The cats, Essie thought grimly, were literally at her doorstep.

  It was some small satisfaction, at least, that Marian greeted this development with dismay.

  “Babe, what could I do? Their father told them to feed the cats. I cannot contradict him. All I can do is tell him the way we live here, but …” Essie paused. “What could I say?”

  “Well,” Marian said. “At least they don’t look like they have fleas.”

  “Fleas are too small to see. We’ll only see the bites.”

  The girls were alone on the landing, the kittens playing near their feet while the mother cat perched a few steps below. Daniel joined Essie’s husband Francis, who had switched on the test match the moment he returned from a morning at his club. Daniel was new to cricket. He leaned forward to ask a question, a glass of beer in one hand, and Essie eyed him sharply to be sure he didn’t put it down on the wooden arm of the chair.

  She raised her voice to be heard over the television. “Marian, you were scratched by a cat when you were small—you don’t remember. A bad scratch, on your cheek. I had to rub oil every day so you wouldn’t scar.”

  Daniel did not turn from the screen but Marian sighed. “The kittens seem harmless enough.” One had been lured into Nicole’s lap. Tara, warned to be gentle, was stroking the other with exaggerated softness.

  Essie grunted. “They’ve been eating in rubbish piles, God knows what they might pass on. And what is keeping Gopi? Maddening, these fellows! Yes, yes, I’ll come, he says, and what? I’ve let the whole morning go waiting for him!”

  “Let them play awhile,” Marian said. “When Gopi comes, the girls will want to watch and the cats will run off on their own.”

  But Gopi never came. By lunchtime, the girls had names for all three cats—even the mother, a wild, skittish creature who kept her distance until she saw a chance of food and then came creeping up the stairs, low on her haunches as though she were hunting.

  “That one is Tiger,” Nicole told Essie. “She’s the mother.”

  “What is this one called?” Essie tried to enter the spirit of things. “Is this Panther?”

  “No,” Tara said. She was squatting, perfectly balanced on her heels. “That’s Smoke.”

  “And the little ginger one is Fire?”

  “That one is Ritu.”

  Essie felt strangely dissatisfied. She had never liked cats, all hiss and tooth and claw, slinking like vermin among the market stalls. She would not want the girls to name one for her, but it did not seem right that Ritu should be singled out.

  The real Ritu was bringing plates of food to the table, a chicken dish from the day before, a new fish curry. She heard her name as she was setting down a steaming bowl of rice.

  “Who is Ritu? Oh! See, bhai, chota Ritu! Thank you, Baby, thank you, Chota Baby.” She laughed, using the same sing-song the girls used when they remembered their manners. Ritu called both little girls Baby, but Tara, smaller, was Chota Baby. “Baby is taking care of Chota Ritu, and Ritu is taking care of Chota Baby. Come, food is waiting.” She stooped to pick up Tara but Essie stopped her.

  “Have you brought the curds to the table?” she said, picking up Tara herself. Ritu made fresh yogurt daily, which the little ones ate with their meals to cut the spice. “Come, darlings. Come and eat.”

  Nicole held one of the kittens to her chest, her voice pleading. “Can’t we eat out here?”

  “Girls.” Marian used her warning voice. “Grandma says lunch is ready. Let the cats be, they’ve had enough.”

  The girls did not disobey but dragged themselves to their feet.

  “Come,” said Essie. The men had got up from their seats near the television but were still focused on the screen, standing as though anchored. She spoke in a loud, ringing voice. “We’ll clean your hands first, lots of soap. Those cats must have been filthy.”

  That was the beginning. The cats returned the next day, just as lunch was being served, and again the day after. By the third day, Essie had agreed that the girls could leave milk for them on the back balcony. “At least let them be out of our way,” she said. She could not have people coming up and down with stray cats on the landing, and the days were filled with visitors, neighbors, tradesmen. But even after she had banished the cats to the kitchen balcony, they seemed to creep into her days, pushing from one minute into the next, curling around the arms and legs of the children as though they were entwined. There were ten days left, a week, five days. Already the children had gone to the market for the last time, and the beach at Juhu. The banana man had come on his weekly round and had given the girls a full bunch as a present; he would not meet them again. Marian had begun to arrange all her packing in piles, and Daniel had taken the suitcases down from the tops of the wardrobes. The cases lay on the floor, flopped open like wide hungry mouths. Francis began to stay home from his club in the evenings, waiting for the girls to be bathed so they could pad out in bare feet and flowered gowns and say goodnight. Essie read to them from the Bible at bedtime, longer and longer stories, until they had collapsed against her shoulders or across her lap. Still the girls went running whenever the cats appeared, no matter what other treats Essie planned for them. In the late afternoons, while she and Marian entertained guests in the front room, she could hear the sounds of the girls’ voices drifting in from the kitchen balcony as though from someplace other than her house, as though the balcony had torn free and no longer belonged to her but to the cats—the pirate cats with their patches and hooked claws, their grinning white teeth, their narrow eyes, floating slowly away with Ritu and the children, who were laughing as they left her.

  Four days before Marian and her family were set to depart, Essie was soaping herself and felt the lump, a hard knot where her breast sloped toward her underarm. She checked again and again, feeling the way it seem to roll beneath her fingers. Then she checked her other breast: nothing. She stood for a moment, still and dripping, in the afternoon sun. They bathed out of buckets, one hot and one cold; now both faucets were off and instead of running water, Essie could hear the clear bright calls of birds. She leaned against the tile wall, slick but not cool. It was a thick afternoon, unseasonably warm, and she had come for a quick bath before the girls woke from their naps. She had not intended to wash her hair so she’d caught it back in a braid and flicked it over one shoulder or the other, out of the water. Now she pulled the damp tail of it to the front, over her breast, and slowly removed the elastic. She kept her hair carefully dyed, a flat tarry color that did not quite take on the living quality of her youthful black, but she was not yet willing to be gray. She had only two grandchildren, after all; her sons, one living abroad, one posted in Delhi, had not yet married. For the first time, she thought of letting the dye fade. She poured a dipperful of water over her head. Another. Another. Then she seized handfuls of her hair and wrung them like fruit, imagined the dye running down her chest and thighs in rivulets, staining the floor, pooling at the drain where a rubber stopper kept the cockroaches from climbing up the pipes. Slowly, carefully, she washed her hair. She did not rush, even when she heard the children wake and call for her.

  She waited until the girls were asleep that night—dinner and baths and wet hair combed, heavy heads against her chest, both children in her lap, one last story, a moment’s pleading, one more last story. Grandma, tell us about trains, tell us about Gopi, tell us about Mum when she was little. She went with Marian to tuck them into bed and pull the mosquito netting down like drapes.

  She waited until Daniel had taken her suggestion and accompanied Francis to his gymkhana, Francis puzzled but with the same foolish bland smile on his face as Daniel’s. Off they went to
gether, to cards and whiskey and long-running tabs and friends Francis didn’t bring to the house. Essie leaned out the front window and watched them go with relief. What help could the men give her? Let them at least be out of the way.

  She waited until Marian sat quietly, writing letters to aunts and cousins in other parts of India, letters Essie would post for her. Essie watched her daughter. Even now, folded into a chair, no proper jewelry, Marian was a beautiful girl. She had lovely skin, a delicate jawline. She might have married anyone, might have had her pick of the best neighborhood boys. She might have lived all her life only a few steps away.

  “You must cancel your ticket,” Essie told her.

  Marian stopped writing, looked up briefly. “We can’t, Mum. You know that. Don’t make it harder.”

  “I’m not making anything!” Her voice rose against her will; she wanted to stay calm, a woman prepared for whatever came next, a woman with her daughter beside her. “I have something here.” She put a hand near her breast.

  Marian’s voice sharpened. “What do you mean, something? A pain?”

  “Not a pain.” Essie considered. “Perhaps it’s a little tender. But not a pain only. I can feel something hard, under the skin. This is just what happened to Aunty Ann, you remember? One day she was fine and six months later she was gone. Totally diseased. Nothing the doctors could do.”

  “You have a lump? When, Mum? When did you find it?”

  “Today only.” Essie’s eyes filled with tears; here, at last, was the daughter she had been missing, Marian alert and focused keenly on her, Marian sharing her secrets. “What to do, babe?”

  “We’ll go to the doctor. I’ll take you tomorrow, we’ll go first thing.”