Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

I glanced in the rearview mirror and nearly gagged. The old man had found a piece of cardboard by the roadside and had coaxed most of the cat’s body onto it. The hindquarters were dangling. Obviously everything in the cat’s middle was crushed. He was using a stick to poke the rest of it onto his improvised stretcher. Cheryl trotted back to the car and jerked open a back door. Her eyes were wide, her face pink.

“Get in,” I said softly. “And let’s get the hell out of here. Just push his stuff out the door.”

She reached in and grabbed his backpack and unstrapped the top flap. She dug into it, pulling out a single-burner hiker’s stove, and then an aluminum pot.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Just drag the whole thing out.”

“What? No. This is all we need. Oh, and Dougie says it would look better if you got out and acted like you were changing the tire or looking under the hood. Okay?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, but stepped away from the car and nestled the stove down into the gravel of the ditch and set the pot on top of it. The car blocked the casual glances of passing motorists. “Cheryl!” I hissed, but she crouched down by the pot, not hearing me.

I opened my door just as a semi whooshed past. A gust of damp air sucked at me, and a horn blared aggressively. I staggered out in the wake, slamming the door behind me, and hurried around the car.

“What is going on?” I demanded, but I had a sick feeling I knew. Dougie was sliding the cat off the cardboard and into the pot. It didn’t quite fit, so he bent it in half and tamped it down with the stick.

“Now we need the canteen of water,” he announced, and they both looked up at me like I was supposed to bring it.

“This is sick,” I told them. “And I’m leaving.”

“Sheila!” Cheryl whiningly protested, even as Dougie asked her, “Well, what’s the matter with her?”

I got back in the car and slammed the door. Cheryl opened the door and leaned in. “You can climb in and go with me,” I told her. “Or you can pull your stuff out and stay here. But I’m leaving.”

“Sheila, why? What’s the matter with you?” She looked genuinely perplexed.

“Look. I’m not sticking around while you two barbecue a roadkill. It’s disgusting.”

“Oh, Sheila!” Cheryl started laughing. She reached over the seat and fished a canteen out of the old man’s pack. “We aren’t barbecuing anything, silly.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Just boiling it down,” she said reasonably. “Dougie says we boil it down to the bones. Then there’s this one certain bone, and you put it under your tongue and . . .”

“Oh, gross!”

“It confers perfect health and vitality upon you. Dougie says that’s all he does anymore. He used to work for a living, go after that old paycheck, slave away for somebody, just to keep body and soul together. But no more. All he has to do now is hike along the road until he gets to a fifth squashed cat, boil it down, and put the bone under his tongue. Easy. And his life is his own.”

Her cheeks were flushed with more than the wind that was blowing her hair across her face. Her blue eyes sparked through the net of her hair. Oh, you True Believer, you!

“That’s stupid,” I told her bluntly.

“Oh, Sheila, don’t you ever try anything new? Look, it’s only going to take a minute or two. Come on. Have an open mind.”

I looked at her, unable to believe what I was hearing.

“In the interests of science,” she added, as a finishing touch. She spun away from the car, leaving the door open. As I leaned across the seat to reach the handle, I saw her dumping water onto the cat in the pot. Yes. It had been a Persian with good tire tracks. Gotta give it to the man, he sure knew his roadkills. Dougie dug in his jacket pocket and came out with one of those camp knives that unfold a spoon at one end and a fork at the other. He prized the spoon out and began poking the cat down into the pot with it. That did it.

“Cheryl. I’m leaving. Either get in or get your stuff out of my car. You, too, Dougie.”

They glanced over at me, then back at their cat. It was gently steaming now, and the smell of simmering cat blended with the smell of rainy freeway. Dougie spoke, but not to me. “For me, it’s the fifth neck bone down from the head bone. Now, I don’t know what one it’s gonna be for you. Too bad you never had your aura done with a crystal, so’s you’d know. But what we can do, Miss Cheryl, is just try the bones one at a time, keeping track of which one is which, until we get the right one. Okay?”

I slammed the door on it. Damn, I was mad. Furious. Because they knew, both of them, that my threats were empty. They weren’t even worried. I am not the kind of person who can drive off and leave two people stranded on a freeway, even if they’re sautéing a dead Persian. Because I’m a sucker. A wimp. I closed my eyes and worked on my anger. Remember the time I asked Cheryl to quit calling back orders for chicken tits? Remember how she smiled at the trucker and said that it was the girls with little tits who got offended about tit jokes, because they didn’t have anything to laugh about? Remember the night her drunk boyfriend threw up all over the men’s room and I had to clean it up because she had to drive him home and none of the guys would touch it and Ernie was coming in any second? Remember that I am almost sure she’s the one who snitched all my tips out of the coffee mug I was keeping them in?

Remember that she’s the one who has a cousin in New Mexico for me to stay with while I job-hunt?

So I heaved out a big sigh and lolled my head back on the headrest and looked at the ceiling. I have always been a spineless wimp. And I think I give off some signal that attracts people who prey on spineless wimps. I despised myself. And I despised those assholes out there boiling their cat. Cretins. But then, I thought, Oh, well, what the hell, and slid to the passenger seat and watched. It couldn’t be any worse than what I was imagining.

It was raining in a misty, invisible way. Damp made a sheen on Dougie’s wool jacket and jeweled Cheryl’s hair. They were hunkered down beside the pot in cheerfully primeval companionship. The cat had softened and sunk into the pot. Maybe it had been dead longer than I thought. Dougie kept poking at it with his spoon and nodding approvingly. He noticed me watching them and waved the spoon at me and said something. Cheryl laughed. A few minutes later she got up and came back to the car. She opened the door, letting in rain and cat steam.

“Dougie says he’s not offended or anything. Come on over and he’ll figure out which cat bone is right for you.”

Like Mommy tapping at your bedroom door and saying, “Okay, you can come down to dinner now if you promise to behave and not call your brother ‘snotnose’ anymore.” Same answer to both.

“No. Thanks.”

“Suit yourself, then.” She turned and went back to her stewpot, leaving the door open. She whispered to Dougie and he shrugged elaborately. They ignored me assiduously.

She’d make someone a great mommy someday. Now, Priscilla, don’t sulk in your room. Come down to the family room and suck on your kitty bone like a good girl . What a crock!

I slid out of the car to stretch my legs. The afternoon was fading. We could have been in California by now. Unremarkable stretch of freeway. Pavement, gravel shoulder, chain-link fence, nondescript woods beyond it. Cretins stewing a cat.

“There now! See how that’s falling apart. I think she’s ready. Now, you hold that cardboard steady.”

I turned involuntarily as they fished out the cat. Soggy, steaming fur slipping off gray boiled meat that was sliding off bones. Dougie burned his fingers as he arranged it on the cardboard. It was falling apart, legs going different ways, the trailing guts swollen shiny.