Shirley Murphy - Cat Breaking Free

"Come on," Clyde said stiffly. "It's not funny. Come have a cup of coffee, help me calm my temper."

Ryan chucked him under the chin. "Your temper? Or your libido? I can't stay for coffee, the girls are in the truck and I'm late, Scotty's waiting." And she was gone before Clyde could point out, with sarcasm, that Ryan was the boss, that she made her own hours.

Clyde didn’t see Ryan again for three days, during which time he grew increasingly irritable. "You think she's mad? Because of Chichi, because Chichi was here?"

Joe just looked at him. They were in the kitchen having breakfast, waffles and fried ham, with kippers on the side for Joe.

"She didn't give me a chance to explain." Clyde looked across at Joe. "If she's jealous, you think she's seeing that guy who came up to the ranch? This Roman something?" That was two days after Ryan installed the faucet. That night, Clyde paced the house for an hour, before Joe got him to settle down. "If she's not jealous, why hasn't she called?"

Joe had licked a smear of Brie off his paw, a late-night snack, as Clyde waited, fidgeting, for the phone to ring. "So call her," the tomcat had said impatiently. "What's the big deal?" But maybe he shouldn't have laid it on so thick, shouldn't have repeated everything that Dulcie had told him about how handsome this Roman Slayter was and how stubbornly Slayter had pressed Ryan to go out with him. And maybe he shouldn't have ribbed Clyde so much about Chichi.

"Doesn't Ryan know I can't stand the woman?"

" Call her!"

Instead of calling, Clyde poured himself a double whiskey, and kept pacing. "What's with you," Joe said. "Call her! There was a time when men did all the calling!" Clyde was so damn stubborn. And then two nights later as Clyde was passing Binnie's Italian on his way home from work, he saw Ryan going into the cozy restaurant with a tall, handsome fashion plate who had to be Roman Slayter.

Clyde got home mad as hornets-and found Rock in the back patio, complete with his bed, a rubber bone and a bowl of kibble. And a cryptic message on the phone from Ryan, saying she was leaving the dog there for a little while, that she wouldn't be late, that it was all very strange and she would explain when she came to get Rock.

"I'll just bet she'll explain! She goes out with this guy like it's a big secret, can't tell me where she's going or who with, just brings Rock over here like I'm some kind of paid babysitting service!"

Joe tried to talk to him. "Maybe she had a reason for not telling you, maybe she was in a hurry and didn't want to take time to explain. Why don't you…"

"Why don't I what} " Clyde didn't pet Rock, didn't let him in the house. He shut the door in Rock's face, and fastened the cover over the big dog door, leaving the Rock alone in the patio, looking hurt indeed. When Joe peered down at him through the kitchen window, Rock looked up at him, devastated. Never before had Clyde shut him out. His yellow eyes were incredibly sad, his ears down, his short tail tucked under in misery.

That wasn't like Clyde, to be mean to a dog. Clyde loved Rock. Incensed at Clyde's unfair attitude, Joe waited until Clyde had settled down in the living room with a book, then slipped out to the kitchen, slid the cover of the dog door open a few inches, and went out to snuggle down with Rock on his big, cedar-stuffed bed. Sighing, Rock laid his head over Joe, badly needing sympathy. It wasn't Rock's fault that Ryan had gone out with someone else when Clyde didn't call her, Joe thought indignantly. Nor was it Rock's fault that Clyde had let Chichi make an ass of him in front of Ryan.

Maria was bringing the newspaper in for Luis, before she put his eggs on, when she stopped in the doorway to sound out the English headlines. The words made her feel weak. She leaned against the door, her heart starting to pound. Dufio was in jail. Again. Oh, poor Dufio. That was why Luis was so angry last night.

Dufio was always getting arrested. And every time, it made her feel worse.

Closing the front door she headed down the hall for the kitchen, slowly reading the front page, frowning over the words. She wished she hadn't had to go to a bilingual school, that they'd made her learn English better. Luis said she didn't need English, except kitchen words. He'd never wanted her to learn anything.

She could make out, in the paper, enough about last night's burglary to know they had stolen jewels worth more than a hundred thousand dollars American. That would be a huge fortune to a family in Mexico, enough to keep cousins and uncles and all the children for the rest of their lives. The police had spotted two of the cars, but Luis didn't have any identification on them, just the stolen plates. Luis had been real mad when they came in last night, maybe because Dufio let the cops get him. She hadn't been able to hear much from her bedroom, they'd had the kitchen door closed. Whatever happened now, there would be trouble. She wished she had the nerve to run, before the police came. Take Abuela away now. Run away now.

But where would they go? Abuela was an old woman, she was slow and she wore out easily, even when she was in the wheelchair. And wherever they went, Luis would find them.

She wouldn't have the heart to leave those poor cats behind, in that cage. She would have to free them, too. And she didn't have the key. Maybe they were only dumb beasts. In Mexico, people would laugh at her. But she didn't think she could leave those helpless cats to Luis. She wished she had the nerve to take the key from Luis's pocket while he slept.

But even if she could, he'd know she did it, and his beatings hurt bad. It didn't matter that she was his sister. To Luis, women were for cooking and beating and for the bed. Though even Luis wouldn't do that with his sister.

Well, he did keep the others off her. Even if he didn't go to mass anymore, Luis knew that if he let them touch her, or touched her himself, he'd surely burn in hell.

Returning down the hall to the kitchen, she gave Luis the paper, cooked his and Tommie's eggs with the chorizo, then stood at the sink scrubbing the skillet. Behind her at the table Luis and Tommie ate silently as they read the paper. She thought about when she and her three brothers were children, in Mexico. When Mamacita made breakfast for them and dressed them nice and took them to mass. Thought of them all crowded into the pew, her and Dufio and Hernando and Luis lined up on the bench, and her feet didn't touch the floor. She was the smallest. They all wore shoes on Sunday. Her brothers had feared the word of God, then. And feared the anger of the priest, too.

But when the boys were bigger they got smart-mouthed and started stealing and didn't care what the priest said. That was after Mamacita died, and they lived with their aunt and her drunk husband. The boys stopped going to confession. Then they all three went away to make money in Los Estados Unidos and she was left there alone with her aunt and uncle.

She was eleven when Luis came back for her and they crowded into the back of a vegetable truck and crossed the border into California and lived with a third cousin's family in San Diego, ten to a room. Luis was stealing big and fancy then, and she worried all the time. Then the three boys moved into a room of their own and she cleaned and cooked for them and kept her little suitcase packed like Luis said. She was only twelve, and she did what Luis told her.

But then they were arrested, were all three in jail. She ran, then. Went to work for a Mexican woman who cleaned houses; slept on a pallet in the woman's kitchen-until Luis got out of jail and found her. After that it was one town after another, living out of his rattley old car, all their life was robberies and leaving town in a hurry, late at night. Not like in Mexico, when the boys had no car and couldn't get away fast. They weren't in so much trouble then.