Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

“She has run away,” Ryan said, “we’re looking for her. Mary and John are . . . oh, but that’s a long story. Kit, you said Mindy’s headed for the freeway? What’s the child thinking! We’ll be right there . . .”

Kit hung up and fled back through the cat door toward Ocean and the freeway watching for Mindy and Pan, looking around for Ryan’s red truck, but the first car she saw was Clyde’s dark green Jaguar gleaming in the moonlight. Clyde pulled over. Kit leaped in beside Ryan and Joe.

“There,” Joe said, front paws on the dashboard, staring ahead where Mindy and Pan were almost to the highway, Pan pressing against her legs, rearing up, pushing her back. When Clyde pulled up just ahead of them Mindy looked shocked and turned to run, but not before Ryan bailed out, grabbed her, knelt and put her arms around the frightened child. “Were you going home, Mindy? To your grandpa?”

The child looked uncertain, and nodded.

“In the night? Alone? You don’t know what kind of dangers . . .”

Mindy tried to break away. “Let me go. I won’t go back, not to that apartment. My father’s gone and good riddance. Now my uncle’s gone, too, and anyway he’s just as mean. So is my mother, most of the time. I don’t want to live there, they argue about money and about stealing and . . . I won’t go back.”

“If you want to go to your grandpa, we’ll take you there,” Ryan said, looking at her deeply, stroking the child’s mussed hair.

Mindy still looked uncertain.

Clyde said, “We trust your grandpa, and we trust you with him.”

“We’ve heard your parents fighting,” Ryan said. “We know how that must make you feel.”

Mindy’s look softened. Hesitantly she climbed in the front seat next to Joe Grey, putting her arms around him. Kit and Pan leaped in beside them, crowding onto her lap, while Ryan climbed in the back.

“Will you park away from the house, let me go in alone?”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “But we’ll wait, to make sure everything’s all right.” They were just passing the Harper ranch. All the lights were off except the outside yard lights. Cops got up early, Mindy guessed, and so did writers.

If anything happened at Grandpa’s house, once they were alone, if tomorrow Mama came to get her she could run to the Harpers, and hide. If Charlie wasn’t home, Billy would hide her, he took kind care of the horses and dogs and cats. For fourteen, he was responsible and smart, he’d know where she could be safe. Billy Young was an orphan, too. She wasn’t an orphan, but she felt like one—except that she had Grandpa.

At the next road, Grandpa’s house was dark, too, and tonight it looked coldly forbidding; they could see no movement within, beyond the moonstruck glass, no one looking out. Sometimes Zeb went to bed early, but sometimes he sat up watching old westerns. Clyde parked halfway up the gravel drive. Mindy flung the door open, untangled herself from the cats, and leaped out. “Will you wait for me? Until I make sure he’s home? Everything’s so still . . .”

“Of course we’ll wait,” Ryan said as Clyde turned off the engine.

But not everything was still. At the sound of the child’s voice a nicker came from the far field, loud and eager in the night, and then the sound of hoofbeats.

“Tango,” she cried, and a louder whinny reached them and Mindy was racing across the moonlit yard past the house, dropping her backpack, her sweater flying, the child herself flying to the back fence and under it where the big buckskin pony came galloping, still whinnying, so excited he rushed the fence and rushed Mindy. He slid to a stop beside her as she ducked between the rails; her arms went around his neck, he nuzzled and pushed and mumbled the child’s cheek, nosing at her tears, and that made her bawl the harder. Ryan had gotten out, and she was crying, too. And were those tears in Clyde’s eyes? Kit wiped her black-and-brown face with a tortoiseshell paw. If Joe Grey and Pan turned away, it was only because tomcats weren’t supposed to be softhearted. They all watched Mindy slide bareback onto the pony, without even a halter, and ride away into the moonlight.

13

When Mindy scrambled on Tango, she looked back toward the house, too, longing for her grandpa. But he would be asleep, and Grandpa was hard to wake—while Tango was wide awake, bright and sassy with the excitement of her return; he looked away through the pasture and beyond, ready to go anywhere; Tango loved the night; and when she leaned forward he broke into a canter. Her thrill of being home, of being on his back, of guiding the pony with no halter, with only her gentle movements; the thrill of his loving response filled her with the joy she had so longed for. They were together, free, with miles of country around them, just the two of them alone in the moonlight.

Far behind her at the house, Clyde tried the kitchen door, found it unlocked, and he and Ryan stepped in, the door squeaking, the three cats crowding against their ankles. Ryan found the wall switch and turned on the overhead bulb. Harsh light glared in their faces.

They stopped cold.

They stood looking, both guns drawn, as the cats slipped back silently into the shadows. They scanned the open doors and what they could see of the living room—then stared at the floor where the old man lay sprawled silent and unmoving, blood seeping from his torn arm. Blood flowed from his wounded head and face, running across the scarred linoleum. Clyde grabbed his phone and called the chief’s house as Ryan called 911.

Max said, “On my way. Call the station, get a medic. Are you carrying?”

“Did that. Of course we are.” Clyde grabbed the kitchen towels Ryan handed him, they both knelt trying to ease the bleeding but still watching the open doors to the bedrooms and the living room. The three cats slipped away staying to the shadows, meaning to inspect those rooms even before the cops arrived. Ryan couldn’t tell if Zeb was conscious but when she took his hand, his eyes flashed open filled with rage and he came up swinging.

Then he saw who it was, and he lay back down; gently she helped him, supporting his undamaged arm. Clyde said, “Lie still, it makes the bleeding worse. The medics are on the way.” And in the silent night they heard a truck come barreling over the back road from the Harper place, soon they saw its lights out the kitchen window and saw, at the far end of the pasture, the pony veer away to safety, Mindy leaning over him. In minutes they heard the medics’ sirens, too, from the highway, and could hear two cop cars, could see their flashing lights.

As the rescue team pulled into the drive, the kitchen door squeaked open and Mindy stood in the doorway staring down at her grandpa, her face white, the pony pushing through where she’d forgotten to latch the gate, pushing into the house behind her. Ryan put her hand on his nose and backed him out as the little girl knelt beside Zeb.

The next half hour was all confusion, front and back doors wide as the cops cleared the house, the four EMTs bringing in their equipment and a gurney. Ryan led the pony into the pasture and locked the gate properly. Max arrived in wrinkled jeans and a work shirt. He questioned the old man as much as he could, with the medics hushing him as they tried to do their work. Mindy tried to cling to Zeb, but a medic gently moved her away. When Zeb did talk, his speech was shaky, sometimes muddled. “It was the boys, fighting. Fighting bad . . .”

He spit up blood, then spoke more clearly. “I was in bed, I heard a car pull up, heard someone come in . . . I thought a burglar was in Nevin’s bedroom . . . a light went on . . . I put on a robe and went out. It was Nevin . . . rummaging like he was packing some of the stuff he’d left . . .”