Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

We were about halfway through the cat, going down the ribs, when Cheryl lit up. Twice as bright as Dougie, like a blast furnace. I felt the warmth radiate from her body before I even turned my head to see her transfigurement. She had a halo like a catechism saint. The brassy blondness burned out of her hair, and it went a rich mahogany. Her complexion cleared as if her body were casting off all impurities. I stared at her as the glow gradually faded. I crouched long moments in the rain, blinking the drops from my lashes, waiting for the last light to fade from her face before I realized it wasn’t going to. That new light would stay, a vitality burning inside her, giving off the same aura of health and determination that had made me stop and pick Dougie up. She smiled, and it was like someone pulling up the blinds to let in a sunny day. I felt blessed.

“Well, go on,” she told me, and it took an instant for me to realize what she was talking about.

“That there was the sixth rib on the left side, Missy Cheryl. You’re going to want to remember that now.”

Cheryl smiled her beatific smile and gestured toward me. Dougie passed me the next bone. We worked slowly through the rest of the ribs. I felt a shiver of excitement as we started down the left front leg. Soon. Only the leg bones left. Cheryl and I exchanged a smile as I started on the right front leg. Soon now. She was watching me closely, waiting for it. She reminded me of a lover I had who always tried to look at my face during orgasm. It seemed a very personal thing, but I wasn’t bothered by it. Cheryl and Dougie and I would soon share a very unique bond. I didn’t mind her witnessing my initiation.

The left hind leg. Dougie was handing me the bones more slowly now, and I held each under my tongue a few seconds longer, just to be sure. As I took the first bone of the right hind leg under my tongue, my heart began hammering against my ribs. I felt heat rise in my face. For a moment I thought this was it, but it was only my building excitement. “Come on, come on!” Cheryl was chanting as I continued down the leg bones, the fine thin bones of the leg, and then the smaller, knuckly bones of the foot and toes, and then . . .

There were no more bones.

I stared in disbelief as Dougie dropped the last remnant of boneless cat onto the heap of discarded fur, meat, and entrails. It still steamed faintly in the fading afternoon light.

“What happened?” I asked groggily. I felt as if I were just coming to after a faint. The blackened burner of the camp stove, the scorched pot, the slithered flat cat remnants, the mounded bones on the road, dusty cardboard. It was like a videocassette tape snapping, or sex suddenly interrupted. I couldn’t grasp what had happened. Dougie looked like a man who had suddenly lost his erection just before his partner climaxed. “What happened?” I demanded again. “What went wrong?”

“Ain’t gonna work for her,” Dougie announced, and turned away.

“What do you mean?” I cried out, and Cheryl asked, “How come?”

Dougie jerked open the car door and started dragging his stuff out. “Look at her,” he said gruffly. “She’s not like us. I shoulda seen it. Bones don’t work for someone like her.”

I swung my gaze to Cheryl. I tried to meet her eyes, but her look roved over me, summing me up. “I see,” she said slowly.

I looked back to Dougie. I felt like the family pet at the moment when the car door swings open on the country road and Bubby pushes you firmly out. Dumped. Cheryl stood up, took the kettle, and emptied out the liquor of cat.

“Wait a minute,” I said as she handed Dougie the empty kettle. “I probably just missed a bone. Just missed it, that’s all.” I grabbed one at random, slipped it under my tongue. Nothing. Go on to the next one.

“Nope.” Dougie’s voice was final as he picked up the camp stove. “Don’t work for people like you. And you knowed it all along.”

“No!” I wailed around a mouthful of ribs. I spat them out, grabbed another handful of tiny bones, and shoved them into my mouth. “Wait,” I choked as I struggled to get my tongue over them. “Eweul see.”

“What’d she say?” Cheryl asked Dougie.

“I don’t know. Who cares? Now look, missy, you can’t take all this stuff. You got like a pack or something?”

“I got a pillowcase,” Cheryl said brightly. She dug through the back of the car, came up with her pillow. “And a sleeping bag.”

“Well, good. Now that’s real good. Dump out the pillow, ’cause you ain’t gonna need that. Keep the sleeping bag. Now, in the pillowcase, you put a change of clothes, a comb, that sort of thing. Nothing much, ’cause you ain’t gonna need much no more. No, forget makeup, you’re prettier without it. Sure, take the Cheetos. Not that we’ll be hungry, but snacking’s fun as we walk along. Now let me tie it up for you.”

The bones were wet with rain, and grit from the cardboard clung to them. I calmed myself, forced myself to do one bone at a time. They’d see. Any minute now, they’d see. As I watched them hike away, I thought how I’d jump and shout and they’d look back to see me glowing like a torch, brighter than either of them, burning like a bonfire. I’d show them. The rain pelted down faster. It grew harder to see them through the dusk and falling water. It didn’t matter. I had the car, I’d catch up with them. I picked up the next bone.

I don’t know how many times I went through the bones. I stopped when blue and white lights started flashing before my eyes, wondering if I’d hit it. A blaze of white light hit my face and blinded me, and a cop asked, “You okay, miss? I saw your dome light on and stopped. You sick or something?”

He took his flashlight beam off my face as I staggered upright and leaned against my car. I’d never closed the door, and the dome light inside was still burning. Cheryl’s stuff was spilled half out of the car. I told him something about the stuff in my backseat falling over so I stopped to rearrange it. He couldn’t have believed it, not with my clothes soaked to my body and my hair dripping down my back. He played his light over the deboned cat while I stuffed everything back into the car. Probably decided he didn’t want to know what was going on. He stayed behind me while I got my car started again and watched me pull out onto the freeway before he spun off the gravel shoulder and passed me in a flicker of headlights.

I drove on, not going anywhere special now, just counting the cats. I never saw Dougie or Cheryl again, but I did once find another stewed cat by the side of the road. I gathered up what was left of it and took it to a motel that night. I tried every bone. Probably two or three times. Nothing.

I never got to New Mexico, either. I stopped off in San Rafael, to live between my car and the women’s shelter there until I found a computer firm that would hire me.

They’re paying me to go to night school now, and I know that things are getting better for me. If I study hard and pay attention to my job and get along with my coworkers, I’ll get ahead. If I work at it.

There are still times when I think about it. Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed, semiawake after a restless night, waiting for my alarm clock to go off, I think of them, rising from a peaceful night in some dewy field, glowing with health, to start their daily trek down the highways and byways of America. No clocks to punch. No classes to study for. Nothing to do but hike down the road in the fresh morning air, looking for that fifth squashed cat. That’s what works for them. And what works for me is getting up at five to leave the house at six so I can fight traffic and get to work by eight. Who’s to say which way is better? Who’s to say who has the better life? But sometimes, on those mornings when I wonder, I step out of my door early, at five thirty, into the fresh morning air. I look at the wide blue sky, at the sun just opening the day. And I get into my car and drive slowly and carefully to work.