Эд Горман - Moonchasers and Other Stories

He went into the age-worn garage and came out with a garden spade. The wide backyard was burned stubby grass and a line of rusted silver garbage cans. The picket fence sagged with age and the walk was all busted and jagged. To the right of white flapping sheets drying on the clothesline was a small plot of earth that looked like a garden.

He set the shoebox down on the ground and went to work with the shovel. He was finished in three or four minutes. A nice fresh hole had been dug in the dark rich earth.

He bent down and took the lid from the shoebox. From inside he lifted something with great and reverent care. At first I couldn’t see what it was. I moved closer. Lying across his palms was the dead body of a small calico cat. The blood on the scruffy white fur indicated that death had been violent, probably by car.

He knelt down and lowered the cat into the freshly dug earth. He remained kneeling and then closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross.

And then he scooped the earth in his hands and filled in the grave.

I walked over to him just as he was standing up.

“You’re some guy, Murch,” I said.

He looked startled. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“I was watching.” I nodded to the ground. “The cat, I mean.”

“They’ve been damn good friends to me — cats have — figure it’s the least I can do for them.”

I felt I’d intruded; embarrassed him. He picked up the spade and started over to the garage.

“Nobody gives a damn about cats,” he said. “A lot of people even hate ’em. That’s why I walk around every few days with my shoebox and if I see a dead one, I pick it up and bring it back here and bury it. They’re nice little animals.” He grinned. “Especially Caesar. He’s the only good friend I’ve made since my wife died ten years ago.”

Murch put the shovel in the garage. When he came back out, he said, “You in any kind of mood for a game of checkers?”

I grinned. “I hate to pick on old farts like you.”

He grinned back. “We’ll see who’s the old fart here.”

When I got home the night following the incident with Kelly and Briney, several people along the block stopped to ask me about the beating. They’d heard this and they’d heard that but since I lived in the house, they figured I could set them right. I couldn’t, or at least I said I couldn’t, because I didn’t like the quiet glee in their eyes, and the subtle thrill in their voices.

Murch was on the porch. I went up and sat down and he put Caesar in my lap the way he usually did. I petted the big fellow till he purred so hard he sounded like a plane about to take off. Too bad most humans weren’t as appreciative of kindness as good old Caesar.

When I spoke, I sort of whispered. I didn’t want the Brineys to hear.

“You don’t have to whisper, Todd,” Murch said, sucking on his pipe. “They’re both gone. Don’t know where he is, and don’t care. She left about three this afternoon. Carrying a suitcase.”

“You really think she’s leaving him?”

“Way he treats her, I hope so. Nobody should be treated like that, especially a nice young woman like her.” He reached over and petted Caesar who was sleeping in my lap. Then he sat back and drew on his pipe again and said, “I told her to go. Told her what happens to women who let their men beat them. It keeps on getting worse and worse until—” He shook his head. “The missus and I knew a woman whose husband beat her to death one night. Right in front of her two little girls.”

“Briney isn’t going to like it, you telling her to leave him.”

“To hell with Briney. I’m not afraid of him.” He smiled. “I’ve got Caesar here to protect me.”

Briney didn’t get home till late. By that time we were up off the porch and in our respective beds. Around nine a cool rain had started falling. I was getting some good sleep when I heard him down there.

The way he yelled and the way he smashed things, I knew he was drunk. He’d obviously discovered that his compliant little wife had left him. Then there was an abrupt and anxious silence. And then there was his crying. He wasn’t any better at it than I was, didn’t really know how, and so his tears came out in violent bursts that resembled throwing up. But even though I was tempted to feel sorry for him, he soon enough made me hate him again. Between bursts of tears he’d start calling his wife names, terrible names that should never have been put to a woman like Kelly.

I wasn’t sure of the time when he finally gave it all up and went to bed. Late, with just the sounds of the trains rushing through the night in the hills, and the hoot of a barn owl lost somewhere in leafy midnight trees.

The next couple days I worked overtime. The road project had fallen behind. In the early weeks of the job there’d been an easy camaraderie on the work site. But that was gone for good now. The supervisors no longer took the time to joke, and looked you over skeptically every time you walked back to the wagon for a drink of water.

Kelly came back at dusk on Friday night. She stepped out of a brand-new blue Mercury sedan, Pete Briney at the wheel. She carried a lone suitcase. When she reached the porch steps and saw Murch and me, she looked away and walked quickly toward the door. Briney was right behind her. Obviously he’d told her not to speak to us.

That night, Murch and I spoke in whispers, both of us naturally wondering what had happened. Briney had gone over to her mother’s, where Murch had suggested she go, and somehow convinced Kelly to come back.

They kept the curtains closed, the TV low and if they spoke, it was so quietly we couldn’t hear them.

I spent an hour with Caesar on my lap and Murch in my ear about politicians. He was a John Kennedy supporter and tried to convince me I should be, too.

For the next two days and nights, I didn’t see or hear either of the Brineys. On Saturday afternoon, Murch returned from one of his patrols with his shoebox. He went in the back and buried a cat he’d found and then came out on the porch to smoke a pipe. “Poor little thing,” he said. “Wasn’t any bigger than this.” With his hands, he indicated how tiny the kitten had been.

Kelly came out on the porch a few minutes later. She wore a white blouse and jeans and had her auburn hair swept back into a loose ponytail. She looked neat and clean. And nervous.

She muttered a hello and started down the stairs.

“Ain’t you ever going to talk to us again, Kelly?” Murch said. There was no sarcasm in his voice, just an obvious sadness.

She stopped halfway toward the sidewalk. Her back was to us. For long moments she just stood there.

When she turned around and looked at us, she said, “Pete don’t want me to talk to either of you.” Then, gently, “I miss sitting out on the porch.”

“He’s your husband, honey. You shouldn’t let him be your jailer,” Murch said.

“He said he was sorry about the other night. About hitting me.” She paused. “He came over to my mother’s house and he told my whole family he was sorry. He even started crying.”

Murch didn’t say anything.

“I know you don’t like him, Murch, but I’m his wife and like the priest said, I owe him another chance.”

“You be careful of him, especially when he’s drinking.”

“He promised he wouldn’t hit me no more, Murch. He gave his solemn word.”

She looked first at him and then at me, and then was gone down the block to the grocery store. From a distance she looked fifteen years old.

He went two more nights, Briney did, before coming home drunk and loud.

I knew just how drunk he was because I was sitting on the porch around ten o’clock when a new pink Mercury came up and scraped the edge of its right bumper long and hard against the curbing.