A Curious Affair

by Melanie Jackson

So, I decided to split a few hairs and indulge a rationalization of two. I would trust—believe with my whole heart—that Tyler would protect me if I asked him to. But I would hold my silence on this matter to spare him worry and pain and professional conflict. It was an act of mercy, a belief in his goodness and his protective instincts, without any proof. That sounds crazy, but then I think we have already established that I am not entirely sane. And this is no more foolish than believing that cats can talk to me, is it?

  And anyway, I finally decided, I was not ruining my life, or the cats’, because Wilkes had been too stupid to realize that he wouldn’t gain anything by killing his uncle for a played-out gold mine. No way. He had tried to kill me; I had fought back and now he was dead instead. That was justice.

  So, for the second time in my life, I was going to break the law in a big way. I resolved that even if asked point-blank, I would not tell the truth, the whole truth, or any fraction of the truth. Nothing that endangered me or the cats or put Tyler in a difficult moral situation. It would be hard, but I would hold fast to this resolve.

  Completely clear-headed, though still cold all the way to my soul, I fetched the shovel with which Wilkes had tried to kill me and threw it down the hole, that gaping wound in the earth that had not—and would not—heal in my lifetime. I closed my ears and ignored how the spade didn’t hit stone but something softer that absorbed the blow.

  I pushed my hair out of my eyes and looked tactically at the terrain we had fought over; it was time to start thinking like a general and not a foot soldier. The land was ringed almost all the way around by brambles and stony ground punctured with the spear like trunks of cypress trees and bull pines. The cypresses weren’t natives, but that hadn’t stopped them from setting down deep roots like the rest of us immigrants; they’d be here until the Last Trumpet called. If I dragged some of the brambles across the one gap, it was doubtful that anything but birds would find their way into this place, even if someone brought in equipment to pull down Irv’s cabin. That was good. Nevertheless, I decided to obscure things a bit further.

  Atherton came back as I began dropping armloads of pine needles down over the corpse. It was unlikely that anyone would see Wilkes down there, even with a powerful flashlight, but I thought I’d make doubly sure that there was nothing to see should someone happen to be wandering around with a spotlight. I was careful in my work, skimming only the top layers of needles and making certain I left no obvious signs of trespass and tampering. Some of the needle thatch was roughed up in places, but there were tufts of cat hair lying about, which should tell a convincing if misleading tale of some feline having a showdown with a raccoon or coyote. It happened in these hills more often than people liked to believe. That would also explain any traces of blood.

  Atherton jumped up on a stone slab and watched intently. He seemed to understand what I was doing. His fur was still standing on end and matted with gore in places, but he was calming down. The eyes that watched me were as wise as Solomon’s, and they approved of my work.

  “Atherton, how old are you?” I asked, suddenly curious. Who was this animal? Surely not just some stray cat.

  He looked at me, either calculating or still genuinely disturbed enough to need to time to process the question.

  “How many winters have you seen?” I asked, pulling back a step as a living blanket of ants came boiling out of the ground. I backed off a few steps, giving them room to organize. These ants had a nasty bite, and I didn’t need any more body damage to hide or explain.

  Many. How many I couldn’t say for certain.

  The vet had said that he thought Atherton was seven or eight but couldn’t tell for sure.

  “More than seven?” I asked.

  Yes, many more than seven.

  Many more.

  “Did you have a…person before Irv?”

  Yes, but she wasn’t as kind as food man. She was … what you call crazy. I left when she died. I was free until the day that food man started hearing our voices. Then I belonged to him.

  Atherton’s answer made me sad and also a bit uneasy. It was the phrasing. I was free until the day that food man started hearing our voices. Then I belonged to him. It sounded like involuntary servitude. I didn’t want him to feel that way about me.

  “I guess that makes you a senior cat,” I said.

  I had heard of some cats living until twenty or so, but most only made it to about fifteen, and cats in the wild had even shorter lives. It was stupid to complain about biological destiny when the universe wasn’t going to reorder itself to suit me, but I didn’t want to lose anyone else. I had had enough of bad things: death, depression, hallucination, now murder. Still, what would mourning the inevitable avail me? I knew full well that it was like arguing about how many traumatized angels could dance on the head of a pin.

  Don’t worry, Atherton said kindly. His fur was now back in place and his eyes were relaxed. Isn’t it said that cats have nine lives? I’ll be with you for a long time to come.

  I prayed it would be so.

  “Was anyone hurt?” Anyone other than Wilkes, I meant.

  Not badly. We are bruised and limping, but we live.

  “Good. That’s good.” I put a hand against my ribs, trying to quiet the pain. “Could you go and tell the others that it would be best if they slept in the garage to night? The side door is open. I want…It would be best—safest—if they remained out of sight for the next little while. Just in case the neighbors heard something and called Animal Control. We don’t want anyone getting nabbed.” Not with blood on them. I was being paranoid, but even small towns knew about DNA testing. “I’ll bring out towels and food as soon as I get home.”

  And you want us hidden in case the sheep man comes to ask questions because Smelly butt is gone.

  Atherton had a point. Tyler would probably be around once the inn noticed Wilkes was missing. Not because he suspected me of anything, but because I was the one who’d insisted that Wilkes killed his uncle, and would want to know about any suspicious behavior.

  I took a long, slow breath and thought things through again. Should I begin this lie? Once started, it would take on a life of its own. I reminded myself that Tyler was a compassionate man, a committed one who still wore a cuff acquired in childhood to honor a soldier who never came home from Viet Nam. But there was no denying that such devotion to what he thought was right could work both ways. I trusted him ninety-nine percent, but that still left a single percent of doubt. Might he put together reports of animal fights and Wilkes vanishing and begin to wonder if they were related? He knew there was a played-out mine somewhere on the property and it wasn’t too big a stretch to think that Wilkes might go looking for it.

  I exhaled a long, loud breath. Until I had gotten involved with Tyler, I hadn’t realized that there were so many gradations of the truth, and that I would spend so much of my time selecting which shade of gray I wanted to live in.

  “Yes. Tyler is a friend but…” He was my friend, not the cats’. At least not in the way that I was their friend, their protector.

  I understand. Atherton turned and walked away. He wasn’t limping, but I could tell his muscles were strained. He’d left bloody paw prints on the rock. We are grateful, Jillian. Not everyone wants us.

  His words hurt. Because they were true. No one wanted the strays, the castoffs. They were, to many people, just living garbage.

  “You saved my life, Atherton. I think it’s a push. Anyway, I want you. Others will too, I promise.” And they would, if I had to bribe or blackmail them into it. We were having no more strays on our hill. By next winter, every cat would have a home.

  I went back to the shaft. The hog wire that had covered it was buckled on the left and almost rusted through everywhere else. It wouldn’t hold an adult’s weight but would probably catch any child or dog that was unlucky enough to wander this way. I couldn’t imagine anyone coming up here, but later I would need to find a better grating. Just in case. For now this would hav
e to do. I bent down slowly, favoring my ribs, and pulled it back into place. Then I scattered more pine needles and downed limbs on top. I was sodden and cold but didn’t stop until things looked pretty much as they had before our fight. The returning rain would also help wash away the red splotches on the rocks and Atherton’s damning footprints.

  Jillian? a distant voice called. I hear a car on the road.

  “Coming.” It was probably nothing, but I hurried as best I could.

  Ants robed in angry orange were already busy crawling over the needles and down into the mineshaft. The drizzle didn’t seem to bother them. I also saw the first of the yellowjackets arrive. Rain would not deter these aerial scavengers, either. There is another local name for these wasps: meat-bees. As a child I watched them strip a dead sparrow of its flesh in under an hour. Wilkes was bigger than a bird, but every obscuring bite was welcome. I had seen enough dead animals to know that blowflies would also come soon to lay their maggots in the corpse. They were always hungry and worked swiftly.

  My stomach rolled over as I thought about the animal kingdom dining on Wilkes only yards from my neighbors, but a voice that could only have been mine said: “Bon appetit. And be swift about it.”

  I went home and looked after the cats. They assured me again as I wiped them down with a wet washcloth that they weren’t badly hurt. It took almost the last of my strength to pour out food and water and to drag out all the linens in the cupboard for their bedding. Some of the cats were uncomfortable being indoors, but none protested when I explained that it was to keep them safe. I also left the door ajar so that they would know they were not prisoners.

  I finally showered, taking inventory of my own hurts. I put antibiotic cream on my various scratches and bandaged the worst ones. The bruises would have to heal on their own; I wasn’t going to a doctor.

  Unable to put it off any longer, I dialed the sheriff’s office. I knew Tyler was on duty and hoped that I could speak to him directly because, in spite of the shower, my jaw was locked tight and snapped painfully every time I forced it open.

  A volunteer dispatcher answered. I didn’t recognize his mellow baritone voice and worked especially hard to speak clearly. I managed, but felt like I was forcing open a pair of rusty scissors every time I spoke.

  There was a rasping noise as he laid the phone against his shoulder and called to Tyler. I thought I heard him say, “It’s your girlfriend.”

  Was I the girlfriend? Did people know about us already? I almost groaned. The garden path to carnal knowledge is rarely straight and narrow in a small town. And the woods of emotion are thick and obscuring, and there are plenty of side paths on which to go astray—paths that didn’t lead to happily-ever-after even if they might be exciting. I wondered which path we were on and how many spectators and Peeping Toms were lurking in the shrubbery.

  “Who was that?” I asked Tyler when he came on. I sounded pretty normal. For me. “He has a nice voice.”

  “Oscar Levoi. He’s a retired policeman from Modesto who is helping out three days a week.”

  “That’s great,” I said, and it was. The sheriff’s office couldn’t run without volunteers.

  “What’s up?” Tyler asked. “Your jaw sounds a bit tight. Is the rain bothering you?”

  It was raining now, a hard cleansing rain. I closed my eyes and picked a shade of gray that was very close to black. I promised that I wouldn’t live in this darkness for long and that my only lies to Tyler from that day forward would be to protect him and the cats from what I had done to Wilkes.

  “A bit. One of the cats got caught in a tree. Maybe a coyote treed it. There’s quite a bit of fur about. Anyway, he started howling like blue bloody murder when it began to rain.” I heard myself lie smoothly, not so much as hesitating as the word murder crossed my lips. “I got him out eventually but I’m kind of scratched up and have picked up a vile case of poison oak on my legs and face.” It made me oddly happy that the last part was probably true. I was already beginning to itch. “I’m going to lay low for a couple of days, just until my face heals and I won’t scare the neighbors.”

  “Poor Jillian. Those cats have been a burden and a half. You have a heart of gold to bother with them. Do you need me to bring you anything?” Tyler asked with his usual ready sympathy.

  “Nope. I have chicken soup in the cupboard, baking soda for baths, and calamine lotion. I am set for a couple days in solitary. And maybe I’ll finally get some work done. I’ve been lollygagging.” I actually had stronger things than calamine lotion and baking soda, but didn’t feel the need to go into why I required them. Vicodin or morphine for poison oak was a bit extreme.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to stop by? I could come around nine to night. I have to go to the hospital first. Three drunks got into a peeing contest down at The Mule. For round two they got up on the roof and tried to pee on the hardware store across the street.”

  “That old tin roof?” I was involuntarily distracted from my own problems. The Mule’s tin roof had the steepest pitch I’d ever seen on a building. It was practically a church spire.

  “Yes, and they promptly fell off. Onto Dell, who was refereeing. In front of a bunch of tourists from the Modesto Baptist Church. With their pants unzipped. All four of them are on their way to the hospital. Dell has a broken leg. The others are concussed, and two need stitches.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” I said, and then almost laughed. I sounded just like my mother whenever she found me in dirty clothes. Which was rather often when I was young.

  “Unfortunately, there were no fatalities.” Tyler’s voice was dry.

  “Think of the paperwork you’ve avoided by having them live,” I said lightly. “I imagine that a corpse—let alone four—would be cause for a lot of red tape.” I couldn’t believe that I’d said that. I had gone from tempting Fate to taunting her.

  “I think, in the long run, they’ll cause me more work alive than dead.” I heard Levoi laugh in the background, and then say something. Tyler snorted. “Anyhow, I can come by after I go by the hospital and look in on you.”

  “I hope I’m asleep by then. Antihistamines knock me out.” This wasn’t a lie either. Especially when you took them with Vicodin. “I’d just as soon sleep through the worst of this, anyway. I hate looking like a leprous tomato, and refuse to let anyone see me. Especially you.”

  “I don’t blame you, though I doubt you look all that awful, even with a rash.” I snorted, and he chuckled. “So, I’ll call you tomorrow and see how you’re doing. Maybe ply you with donuts and coffee.” It probably wasn’t wise to see Tyler until I had completely healed, since many of my bruises were clear hand or boot prints. I’d have to invent some excuse to put him off in the morning, but this promise of future contact made me feel better. This was going to be a long, lonely night. I needed to believe that better days were coming.

  “Maybe, if the swelling has gone down. Good night, Tyler. Be safe—and stay away from falling drunks,” I added, glad that he was at the office with someone else listening in. It meant that we had to keep things brief and superficial.

  “Good night. And call if you need anything. I’m serious, Jillian. You’re not alone anymore.”

  “I will,” I said. But I wouldn’t. Not until the marks of Cain had faded from my body. My mind was made up. No matter the invitation from him, I would never ask Tyler to share the burden of what the cats and I had done to Wilkes. This was a good man, a kind one, and he would never be asked to compromise his standards, to obfuscate, to lie. “Good night.”

  I put the phone down. Atherton was there and I petted him gently. We were both too bruised for much physical contact.

  I carry a snakebite kit in the car, purchased when Cal and I were fresh from the city and didn’t know that such kits are usually in effective and mostly unneeded in our part of town. Thriftiness wouldn’t let me throw it out, but I was vaguely annoyed by my old city-girl naiveté every time I saw it peeping out from under the car blanket and snow
shovel—neither of these items ever being needed, either, since I didn’t go out in bad weather. But along with a scalpel, the kit also had cortisone cream. I hoped it was still effective. My ankles already felt like they were on fire, and the rash was spreading toward my knees. I was going to need something for the itching but wouldn’t take the stronger drugs until I absolutely had to, because I didn’t want to fall asleep and maybe get trapped in bad dreams. There would be dreams, of that I was certain. I was going to have a long, painful night.

  Still, throbbing skin, bruised ribs and nightmares were far better than having my head caved in by Wilkes’s boot and my body dumped down a coyote hole like his now was. Far, far better. I would cope.

  “Atherton? Have you ever watched TV?”

  What is tee-vee?

  Appropriately, I showed him the wonders of Nature and the endangered snow leopards of the Himalayas.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods.

  —P. G. Wodehouse

  The day after Wilkes’s death, Atherton had news. Mac-Duff, Annabelle Winslow’s manx who lived on Green Street, had finally caught a glimpse of Wilkes on Friday night, as the murderer had been forced to park on Green Street when the inn’s lot was full. He’d staggered toward the inn just before dawn carrying some kind of large pan and a lot of angry dejection that had led him to try and kick MacDuff, who’d unwisely gotten too close. It was Irv’s gold pan he was carrying, I was betting. And he’d probably finally gotten a lesson in the difference between panning for gold nuggets and flakes, and in mining for ore or carrying on a dry dig. Of course, while this was interesting to know, and I was grateful for MacDuff for passing the info along, it was too late now to be of much use. Still, at least I now knew where Wilkes had been and what he’d been doing all the days and nights I couldn’t find him in town.